Back To Our Beginning (46 page)

“Leave him alone, Cord; he’s exhausted,” Tansy said, finishing her last stitch, then wrapping the wound with a clean strip of ripped linen to protect it.

“I want to know why they attacked us.”

“You’ll get more out of him if he can rest and eat,” Tansy said wearily. She had yet to sleep herself.

“No, I’ll get more out of him if I smash him again,” Cord threatened loudly, his posture daunting.

Tansy heard the young man whimper and her temper flared. “You can ask him after I feed him and give him something for the pain he’s in.”

“I’ll ask him now,” Cord boomed, causing the young man to yelp and cringe back in terror. He curled into a tight ball, as if seeking to hide within his jacket.

“Why do men always have to hurt?” Rose cried out tearfully. She’d been watching the altercation and was remembering what it felt like to be so frightened and powerless against one much larger and stronger. Startled, Cord and Tansy looked over at her tear-streaked pale face. “Can’t you see he’s afraid of you? Why can’t you see that? Why don’t you care?” The young girl began sobbing, her own hurt apparent. Emmy pulled the distraught girl into her arms.

“Rose is right, Cord. Why can’t you just ask him? He’s hurting and alone, he’s hardly more than a boy,” Tansy said, taking a more reasonable tone as she knew a placating voice would be more affective.

“Fine. Coddle the little bastard.” Cord stormed off as Aidan approached.

The boy didn’t need persuasion; he explained they were out hunting and saw the small group felled the bison. Confident the kill wouldn’t be shared, the hunters decided on surprise. The odds seemed to be in their favor at six to five, with one of the other number small.

“So you let us do all the hard work, before trying to cut us down. Bunch of lazy killing bastards,” Cord snapped, having approached again.

“I didn’t know they meant to try and kill you. I swear,” cried the young man.

“Jist what did you think they planned on doin’ with their weapons?” Clint demanded.

“Scare you. But when Joe realized one of you was a woman, he told us you must be holding her against her will; we would be saving her, we needed to rescue her. He said it would be the only reason she would’ve been dragged out into the freezing cold and snow.”

The boy’s tears ran down his face, his chest heaved with sobs. Tansy gave him some willow bark tea he gulped. His breath came in huge gasps struggling to down the tea and breathe at the same time. He was overcome with a choking cough until Tansy took the drink from his lips. His head hung almost to his chest, he looked so defeated Tansy felt her own tears ready to fall.

“Can’t we at least untie him?” she asked Ethan.

“No,” Cord snapped.

“Please, I won’t try to hurt anyone. I’m sorry we tried to steal from you. I’m sorry I hit you. I don’t want to fight. I just want to go home,” the young man cried up at Cord pitifully, his sobs deepening.

Cord pulled his hunting knife from his belt and approached him. The young man’s eyes widened in terror and he shrank back, but Cord cut his wrists free, glaring at him. Cord strung the released bonds from a loop in his clothing, keeping them close. The artful insinuation wasn’t lost on the boy.

“It’s Danny, right?” Tansy asked. He nodded, wiping tears and mucus away with the sleeves of his sodden jacket. He covered his face with swollen red hands as though to hide. Cord had tied him tightly; the lack of circulation and cold weather caused his hands to curl pitifully. “Where’s home, Danny?”

The young man looked at Tansy, horrified. He then glanced up at Cord, his gaze darted, not quite unobtrusively, at the loose bonds in the man’s loop. After taking a deep breath, he shook his head. Cord took a menacing step forward but Aidan restrained him by lifting a hand.

“He’s afraid we’re going to go and kill them,” Aidan theorized.

“Well hell, we need to get them before they get us,” Cord shouted.

Danny blanched and Tansy knew he was struggling to keep down the tea. “They can’t hurt you. You wiped out half of us. Attacking you wasn’t their idea.”

“How many more men?” Ethan demanded. He felt pity for the young man but was concerned for their own women and children. Danny remained a steadfast silent which had Ethan speculating.

“We don’t need his help. After the storm lets up, we’ll jist go back to where we felled the bison, find their tracks and follow ’em back to where they’s hidin’,” Clint reasoned.

“You can’t track us back; the snow will cover our trail.”

Cord laughed in a sinister way then squatted down to eye level with him. “I can track anything, in any season, any place,” Cord boasted. He leaned in closely to Danny; narrowing his eyes he said dangerously, “Hell, boy, I could track a guppy through the Pacific ocean.”

Tansy could see Danny’s pale face go even whiter; he began shaking harder. His lips quivering, he looked beseechingly at Cord, his tears now coursing down his cheeks.

“Please don’t hurt them. They’re no threat to you. Please don’t kill my mother,” Danny whimpered, his head dropped to his chest, but not before he vomited.

* * * *

It was later in the day. Tansy got Danny to lie down on her bed and covered him with blankets. She bathed his face and put him in a clean hide shirt. It was one of Ethan’s. Though Ethan was the smallest of the four men it wasn’t by much and Danny swam in it.

The men were arguing by the fire as Emmy and Shanie kept the children busy and out from underfoot, taking tedious turns shaking cream for butter. Tansy went to join the men.

“If you try to coerce the boy into telling us where they are, he will assume you intend to harm the others,” Ethan reasoned.

“He tried to kill me,” Cord snapped.

“He said he was trying to run away; you tripped him and he grabbed up a rock to try and fend you off,” Tansy said.

“So what, he still tried.”

“Maybe he was running away because he was terrified,” Tansy said. “Maybe he hit you because with everyone dead around him he felt it safe to assume he was next.”

“They attacked us! Hell, Tansy, you have no idea what they might have done to Shanie. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him,” Cord growled, defending himself and becoming irritated. Only the boy’s pitiful sobbing pleas and splayed shaking hands had spared him the others’ fate. Realizing he was fighting with a boy and not a man Cord had controlled his punches, wishing only to subdue him, remembering another not so lucky.

“You’re right,” Tansy said, she gazed into his outraged expression. “I’m grateful both she and all of you are safe. I can’t begin to tell all of you how grateful I am that you protect each and every one of us without hesitation. But Danny has no idea what four large and very powerful men, who just killed five of his own and beat him badly, intend to do with his mother. A woman who would be helpless against any one of you.”

Cord stared back thoughtfully at Tansy, his irritation evaporating. Understanding dawned.

“Tansy is right about that,” Ethan began. “He thinks he’s protecting her from us with his silence. What he doesn’t realize is his mother and whomever else he’s protecting is alone. No one will be coming back to feed them. Danny is terrified of us; from the way he’s protecting them, I doubt any of them are men, or even anyone that could give us cause for concern. They could starve to death, if they haven’t prepared for the winter.

“By Danny’s own admission, the other men couldn’t hunt, at least not well. By the looks of his worn, tattered clothing and shoes, I can only assume they’ve been unable to prepare suitable garments. None of the other men were in possession of anything useful to salvage, not decent clothing nor decently-made weapons. The others could freeze if their clothing is in the same desolate state. We’ve all seen by human remains in this area most of them froze to death. Who knows what the cold weather will be like this winter as opposed to the last in these parts.”

Clint became worried. He hadn’t thought of it like that; he was grateful for Ethan’s thoughtful intelligence. What if they were truly helpless and vulnerable? It would make sense of Danny’s steadfastness not to divulge where the others were. Clint didn’t want to think he aided in a woman’s demise, or God forbid a helpless child’s.

“I don’t want his mother freezin’ to death or dyin’ a starvation ’cause he’s scared a us. What do we do?”

“I guess we’ll just have to explain it to him,” Ethan said slyly, an idea formed within his mind. His glance was cast toward Aidan who was grinning with understanding; they exchanged knowing looks.

“How?” Tansy asked with confusion at Ethan and now Aidan’s smug faces.

“Well, what’s for dinner, darlin’?” Aidan laughed and winked at Tansy.

Tansy’s eyes widened in understanding. She rose, and enlisting Aidan’s help and Emmy’s, she soon had food cooking that gave off delicious aromas. She hoped the idea would work. She noticed Danny was very thin. That wasn’t uncommon in growing boys who seemed to grow rapidly in height then needed a while to catch up in weight. But she felt certain in Danny’s case it had to do with lack of nutrition.

The bison roast was medium rare. Cord’s favorite and the easiest to do. On a basic level Tansy understood Cord’s need to dominate. His perfect corner of the world had been invaded on a subconscious level. He was profoundly protective of all of his little family. It had taken him a long time to accept Aidan and Ethan. But this boy who wasn’t quite a man had unnerved him, defied him...him! The assault had thrown Cord into attack mode. One he’d discarded for a time but never fully released. And then, though obviously terrified of him, that same boy refused to bend to his will and divulge the information he wanted. Granted, he had been met with interference, but Cord felt his size and the initial beating alone should have sufficed to subdue the boy.

“Smells good,” Cord said, ambling up to Tansy as she basted the roast. She smiled up at him and sliced a healthy chunk that she handed to him skewered on a cleaned sharpened stick.

“Wanna taste it?”

Cord accepted the proffered meat and noticed it was an exceptional cut. Her peace offering. Cord was no fool and he was hungry. He took the meat into his mouth and chewed with his eyes closed as it almost melted the minute his lips closed around it.

“Damn, you sure can cook, woman,” Cord said appreciatively. Cord’s peace offering.

“Thank you.”

Tansy moved off to check on the bison tongue boiled with dried wild onion. She roasted the knot weeds root she had soaked in water to remove its bitter taste. Tansy left Emmy in charge of the bison’s liver and Aidan in charge of its heart while she mixed flour, salt, butter, honey and a tiny bit of milk to add to the piping hot bubbling stew for dumplings.

Before long everyone was gathered around the fire to eat a hearty dinner, Danny included. At first he didn’t know what to make of their changed attitudes. Even Cord had stopped glaring at him, somewhat. He wondered if it was some kind of a trick, but he accepted the flatbread Rose handed him she claimed was coated in butter.

“This is butter. Where did you find it?” Danny asked.

“Tansy makes it,” Ethan boasted.

“How?” Danny asked, as he wolfed it down between breaths. He was unable to breathe through his nose but this new taste was welcome and he was starving.

“From our goat,” Aidan said.

“I thought I heard a goat, but then thought I must be hearing things.”

Danny tried everything offered him and sucked the bison juice off of his fingers from a thick piece of meat greedily, while alternately slurping from a bowl of delicious soup. Using a small sharp stick he stabbed at roots and what tasted like carrots and onions with small chunks of tart apple. He thought he tasted a hint of walnut and garlic and was amazed at the dumplings.

The men he had been with knew nothing of hunting. They brought back rabbits and fowl, squirrels, chipmunks, a few fish but never any large game. That was why they were determined to get the bison. The smaller meats never went far and Danny was always left feeling hungry and unsatisfied.

“Where did the vegetables come from?” Danny asked around a large mouthful of food. He thought all of the vegetation to be dead now that winter was here.

“We collected and dried them for winter,” Tansy explained. She handed him a cup of hemlock needle tree tea sweetened with a dollop of maple syrup.

Danny’s eye closed, savoring the taste. His other eye was swollen shut. Tansy had been covering it with a cold cloth and chipped ice for most of the day to keep the swelling down. When he finished his drink, he stopped shoving food into his mouth as though it was his last supper on earth.

Danny looked over at Tansy feeling conflicted. Danny’s gaze went to Michaela who, without any fear, climbed up onto Clint’s lap; he fed her small pieces of bison and lathered a jellylike substance onto her flatbread. Clint offered her a long warm drink of milk from the goat. The child obviously felt no fear for her safety around these men. It was apparent neither did the women. Danny watched with a bit of shocked surprised as Cord did the same for the boy, Max.

Max approached Cord without any fear, and to Danny’s great surprise, the boy repeatedly squeezed his fist together in some type of gesture. Cord simply nodded and Max climbed into his lap and accepted a drink of milk. Max lifted a small hand and using his forefinger and thumb on one hand, squeezed gently at the skin between his forefinger and thumb on his other hand. Cord gave him meat. The boy looked up at Cord when he finished the meat and began gesturing again. This time he pointed to his little chest and taking two cupped opened hands he brought them out and to his waist. Max then tapped his fingers of both hands together at the tips repeatedly.

“I haven’t seen any manners,” Cord told the boy and, at the same time, Cord tapped his chest with a finger, pointed two fingers at his eyes, shaking his head in a negative way, and his large hand tapped at his own chest again but this time with his thumb, hand opened, and moved it up slightly toward his chin twice. Max, with a slightly opened flat hand, rubbed his upper chest in a circular motion.

“That’s better,” Cord told and signed to the boy and gave him more of the tender young juicy bison that tasted deliciously sweet.