Dorothy Garlock - [Annie Lash 03] (9 page)

“I don’t like bein’ on this boat.” Maggie’s words came out on a breath of a whisper, her lips close to Light’s ear.

“It’s best for now, pet.”

The night was dark. A layer of clouds dimmed the quarter moon that was making its way across the sky. The mooring line attached to a tree allowed the flatboat to rock easily on the gently flowing river water a few yards from the steep bank. A big trout broke water alongside with a silvery splash. Somewhere in the woods to the north a wolf howled contentedly as if enjoying the night.

“I don’t like it here,” Maggie insisted, her lips moving against his cheek. “When can we get off?”

They had spread their blankets on the deck and sat with their backs to their packs. Light pulled the blanket up over her shoulders more to protect her from the mosquitoes than from the night air.

“As soon as we can.” He pressed her head to his shoulder. “Get some sleep.”

“Are you goin’ to sleep?”

“In a while.”

“I don’t like that bald-headed man. either.”

“Has he bothered you?”

Maggie thought for a minute and decided not to tell him about the incident at the water barrel.

“Mr. Nielson doesn’t like him.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just know, that’s all.”

“Not much gets by you, pet.”

“Mr. Nielson likes you.”

“I suppose you
just
know that too,” Light teased.

“He looks at ya . . . but not in a mean way.”

“If you don’t stop talking, I’ll have to kiss you.”

She laughed silently and nipped the skin on his neck. “It’s what I been hopin’ for.”

He kissed her softly on the lips and tucked her head beneath his chin.

“Sleep while you can.”

When he was reasonably sure she was asleep, he moved and eased her head down onto his thigh. Nielson had said he would fix her a place inside the shed, but she had insisted on staying with him. He was glad now that she had. Here in the velvet blackness of the night, with the sound of the water lapping against the raft, the feel of her warm, trusting little body made him realize how much he would miss her if she weren’t there.

Kruger had the first watch. Light did not trust him. The man’s face was easy to read. He was hungry for a woman and allowed his lust to rule his brain. His resentment stemmed from the fact that he didn’t understand why a white woman should prefer an
Indian
over a white man—any white man.

That the German was an angry man with a cruel streak was evident when the Delaware had tried to board the craft. Light had known immediately that they were young boy-warriors, out on their own. An experienced warrior wouldn’t have been so foolish as to attack the boat in such a brazen way.

Kruger had taken delight in repeatedly jabbing a young one with his pike as the boy tried to swim away from the boat, and he had laughed uproariously when the Indian sank beneath the water.

Sitting in the dark with Maggie across his lap, Light listened for movement from atop the shed where Kruger sat. He would not shut his eyes while the German was on guard.

If he and Maggie stayed with the boat for another week, they should be far enough upriver to be in Osage territory, that is if the two Osage he had met after they left St. Charles had read the map correctly. If the Osage were friendly, and he assumed they would be, he and Maggie would stay with them for the winter.

The night passed uneventfully with Light taking the last watch. If the Delaware planned an attack it would occur just as dawn lit the eastern sky. Maggie had awakened and sat beside him atop the shed where she had moved when Light took his turn to stand guard. She could see in the dark like a cat. There were times when Maggie could see things that Light couldn’t see but that his brain told him were there.

Sitting shoulder to shoulder, their hands clasped, they listened to the chirping of birds along the shore an hour before dawn and the splash of fish in the deep channel in the middle of the river. Together they watched the stars dim as the sky lightened in the east.

Daylight came quickly without anything to disturb the tranquility.

Otto Kruger arose, stretched and went to the edge of the boat and let water. When he finished, he made no attempt to shield himself before turning toward the shed where Maggie sat. Light had turned her away and was staring over her head with hard cold eyes at the German.

“You’re a crude son of a bitch, Kruger,” Eli said angrily.

Kruger laughed. “Ven a man’s got ta pee, he got ta pee.”

Paul grunted his disgust and began to build a fire on the flat stone beside the shed. Soon water was heating for tea.

Light lifted Maggie down from the roof and went to Eli.

“We will go to the woods.”

Eli glanced past Light to Kruger, who watched with a smirk lifting his thick lips. He brought his gaze back to Light.

“You don’t have to go to the woods for your wife to have privacy. Come.” Eli ducked his head and entered the long low shed. “I forgot about this until this morning.”

Walking stooped over, he led them to the far end of the shed. He reached behind several canvas-wrapped bundles and pulled out a tin chamber pot.

Obviously uncomfortable, Eli set the pot down and headed for the door. “You can hang a canvas across the corner,” he said over his shoulder.

When they were alone, Maggie put her hand on Light’s arm. He looked down at her. She pulled down his head and whispered in his ear.

“I want to go to the woods.”

“Use the chamber,
chérie.
Maybe tonight we can go ashore.” Light arranged the bales of goods to give her privacy. “When you finish, stay inside and I’ll bring you a pan of washwater.”

Paul was squatted beside the cook fire when Maggie came out of the shed to throw the washwater over the side. Fish were frying in one black iron skillet and hoe-cakes in another.

“That smells good.” She hung the pan on a nail above the water barrel.

“Ain’t nothin’ better’n river pike,
chérie.
” Paul grinned at her and turned the fish with a long, thin knife.

“Light calls me
chérie.
You call me Maggie.”

Paul lifted his dark brows. “I stand corrected,
madame.
”

“What’s your name?”

“My name is Paul,
mon petit chou.
” The Frenchman grinned.

“What’s that mean?”

“Pretty little cabbage.”

Maggie smiled. “I like cabbage.” She looked pointedly at Eli. He and Light were studying a map. “What’s his name?”

“Eli Nielson.”

“I knew the Nielson part. He’s not a bad man like the other’n.”

“I’ve known him most of his life,
madame.
You are right, he’s not a bad man.”

“I don’t like that bald one. Light will kill him,” Maggie said with a positive note in her voice.

“How do you know that?” Paul stood.

“I just know.”

Maggie walked over to take Light’s hand. Without looking at her, he put his arm around her and drew her close to him. His finger was on a spot on the map.

“At this point the river turns northwest. This is the Osage country.”

“Have you been there?”

“No. There are half a hundred Osage camps between the big river and the mountains. Maggie and I will stay there. If you give the chief tobacco and a bit of gunpowder he’ll furnish you with rowers for a week or two.”

“Then what would I do?”

Light shrugged. “Clark said that most of the tribes, except for the Delaware, were friendly.”

“Why not go on with us?”

“I’d rather go it alone.”

“I’ll pay you in trade goods.”

“We have all we can carry.”

“Dammit man. Be reasonable. Your wife will be safer if you stay with us.”

“I am the one who decides what is best for my wife. We’ll stay with you until we reach the Osage country.” Light’s tone put an end to the conversation. He folded the map and put it inside his shirt.

“Come and get it,” Paul called from the cook fire.

*  *  *

The weather was hot and sticky and had been for the past two days. Sweat poured off the men pushing the raft upriver. Eli dipped a bucket in the river and poured the water over his head. It cooled his body for the moment. He glanced at the woman sitting at the sweep oar. In all his travels, up the Ohio to Pittsburgh, across the Cumberland Gap and on to Chesapeake Bay, he had never seen a woman to compare with her.

Most of the beautiful women he had seen had been rather plump and useless, having been put on a pedestal to be admired. Maggie was not only beautiful, she was quick and capable. Her great green eyes seemed to see everything. She could have had any man she wanted. Why had she chosen Lightbody?

Eli looked over at the dark-haired man toiling at the pole. He was not at all the dim-witted, half-breed savage he had expected. Half-breed, yes, but far from dim-witted. He hoped to know more about him before they parted company at the Osage camp.
If
they parted. It was damn hard to change five years of thinking.

*  *  *

By mid-afternoon of the fourth day, a sultry calm had settled over the river. Not a leaf stirred. Even the birds fell silent. Light began to listen and to sniff the air. As they rounded a bend, a fringe of iron-gray clouds appeared above the forested landscape. In an hour’s time the dark mass had boiled upward until it towered into the sky. White wispy clouds scurried ahead of the storm.

The men moved the flatboat swiftly alongside a clay bank that loomed above their heads. Eli scanned the shoreline ahead with his glass, looking for a place to pull in and tie up. He knew the river was a formidable enemy during a wind storm and even more so if it were accompanied by lightning, especially if the boat had a cargo of gunpowder.

Light watched the distant sky for a downward spiral of clouds that might indicate a tornado was in the making. Puffs of hot dry air traveled down the river ahead of the storm. Even the current seemed to slow, as if waiting. From far away they could hear the roar of thunder that accompanied the flashes of lightning that illuminated the dark clouds. The atmosphere seemed ominously still, like a hungry cat perched on a limb with its eyes on a nest of baby birds.

“Sandbar,” Paul shouted.

The men increased their efforts and headed for the bar a few hundred yards ahead. A wave of water came rushing down and they strained to maintain what progress they had made.

“Somethin’s let loose up ahead,” Eli yelled, then, “Take ’er in.”

They reached the sandbar seconds ahead of a great gust of wind that came from behind them.

“Vind’s changed,” Kruger announced as if he were the only one to notice.

A wind-driven wave coursed upward against the current, bearing the flatboat on its crest and casting it upon the bar that jutted out from the bank.

All hands sprang to do what was necessary to save the boat and themselves. Poles were sunk deep into the river bottom and lashed to the boat to secure it. Eli and Paul grabbed mooring lines and jumped from the craft. Light rushed to tilt and tie the sweep oar.

Moving swiftly, Light slung his rifle and his bow over his shoulder, tucked his powder sack inside his shirt, grabbed a heavy canvas and, pulling Maggie along with him, jumped off the boat and headed inland.

The storm broke over them with fury. Rain poured from the sky. Huge drops, propelled by the wind, whipped their faces. Streaks of lightning were followed by loud claps of thunder. Light ran through the thick grove of trees that grew alongside the river. Maggie easily kept pace with him. In the middle of a clearing away from the trees, the river, and the boat with its kegs of gunpowder, Light stopped, sat on the ground and pulled Maggie down between his legs. Setting his long gun beside him, he covered the two of them with the canvas.

They were both breathing hard.

Maggie loved the storm. Her hair was sopping wet, rivulets of water ran down her cheeks. Wrapped in her husband’s arms, she tilted her head to nuzzle her nose into the warm flesh of his throat.

One particularly loud bark of thunder made her jump. Over the sound of the rain pounding on the canvas they heard the cracking and rending of trees hit by the fiery knife.

“I love you,” Light said to the woman he held in his arms. He said it slowly and sincerely because he was not sure if he would have a chance to say it again. The next strike could end their lives, either by a direct hit, or by sending a tree crashing down on top of them.

“Yo’re my heart,” Maggie murmured, her mouth against his, her nose alongside his, her eyelashes tangling with his. She wrapped her arms tightly about his waist. “Don’t be scared,” she crooned. “We ain’t goin’ t’ die here. It isn’t our time. We’ll have years an’ years t’gether.”

“Ah . . . my little witch. How can you be so sure?”

“I just know. That’s all.” She offered the familiar explanation and lifted her puzzled face.

“Maybe I
am
a witch, Light.”

She was so serious that he chuckled. “Why do you say that?”

“’Cause sometimes I just know thin’s. Like the first time I saw ya, Light, I knew I was yore woman. And I knew that Jefferson’s old wolf dog wouldn’t hurt me; an’, that day when his brother tried to go inside me, I knew ya’d come. I only had t’ hold him off an’ wait for ya.”

“
Ma petite,
you may be a witch, but a most beautiful one.”

“I don’t want ya t’ love me ’cause I’m beautiful,” she murmured.

“Ah . . . sweet one. I love you because you’re my precious girl. I’ll love you when your hair is gray and your teeth are gone. You’re my life, my soul, my wife, my Maggie.” He whispered the words reverently.

“Ya say pretty words, Light.” She was quiet for a moment, then she leaned away from him and asked, “When my teeth are gone?”

Light laughed and hugged her so tight she could hardly breathe.

“You will be beautiful to me even then.”

The first violence of the storm was followed by a steady drumming rain which seem to last for a long while. When it lessened and stopped suddenly, Light threw off the canvas and they stood, stretching stiff limbs. Patches of gray light filtered through the scurrying clouds.