Jack Fry dropped the pistol and reached up to touch the hatchet in his head, but he was already falling and was dead before he hit the ground.
Both women stared in horror at the dead man, then Fire Cloud wrenched his hatchet from Fry's skull. He kicked the dead man in the face, laughed, and said, “We go now.”
Grasping the rawhide, he jerked at it and it tightened around Sabrina's neck. She was half strangled as he dragged her out of the clearing. She did not look back, nor did Hannah, as they left the dead body of Jack Fry sprawled on the earth, his blood seeping into the ground.
****
The two days that followed had been nightmarish for Sabrina. She had lost track of time, for time had ceased to have meaning for her. All she knew was to get up and keep from being strangled as Fire Cloud dragged her through the forest. She stumbled through thickets with the branches scratching her face and arms and the cold air biting at her. At times the whole group waded through the creeks that the Indians sometimes followed for what seemed to be miles, and it occurred to her that they were doing this to shake off pursuit.
During the first night she had been terrified when Fire Cloud had come to stand over her. The thought of rape preoccupied her, and she knew Hannah had the same terrible fear. Fire Cloud leaned down and roughly caressed her body, then laughed as she drew back.
“You be Fire Cloud's squaw. Soon we be with my tribe.” He turned his attention to Hannah, his hands exploring her body, and he laughed again as she tried to draw back. “You bring many horses. Many warriors want white slave.”
After Fire Cloud left, the two women huddled together for warmth. They were hungry and exhausted from the endless hike. The Indians had taken lots of meat from the cabin, but they had shared very little with the two women.
As they traveled the next day, the nightmare repeated itself. Sabrina tried to take refuge in thinking of more pleasant times. She thought of her home in England and of the happy days she had had there when she was growing up, but mostly she thought of the cabin and of the happiness she had found there. It shocked her to realize that she had indeed known some of her happiest days in that cabin. Her memories were filled with Sion as he sat cleaning his rifle before the fire, or following the horse plowing the earth, or coming in with a bag of game. She could see his face clearly, although everything else seemed vague and indistinct.
By the second night Sabrina was completely exhausted. She knew she could not stand much more of this, and she feared that if she could not keep up, Fire Cloud would kill her. She knew life meant nothing to the war chief nor to the other Indians.
On the second night the Indians were all drinking again. They danced awkwardly, flinging their hands to the sky and shouting their songs to the forest. They came over to jerk at the women's hair, put their hands on them, and taunt them, but the Indians were too drunk to be much of a threat, and besides, Fire Cloud knocked one of them down with the flat of his tomahawk, claiming ownership of both women.
One of the Indians had killed a deer, and they butchered it roughly, sticking chunks of meat on sticks and roasting it over the fire. They ate most of it half cooked and some of it raw. Hannah had cooked two pieces and brought one part of it to Sabrina, urging her to eat.
“I can't.”
“You have to, Sabrina. The men will be after us.”
“They can't follow these trails.”
“My father can, and Sequatchie will be with him. He can follow any trail. God's going to get us out of all this.”
Sabrina took the tough meat and forced herself to chew and swallow it.
She lay huddled against Hannah, and finally the savages settled down. Fire Cloud came over and lay down beside Sabrina. He pulled at her for a while, and she knew that he intended to have her. But he was completely drunk now, and he finally fell back, his mouth open, and began to snore.
It was there in the darkness, in the vile embrace of a drunken savage, that Sabrina Fairfax felt the presence of God in a way she never had before. She had been weeping silently when suddenly a silence seemed to fall on her spirit. She could still hear the snores and mutterings of the Indians and the crackling of the fire, but that seemed far away. This silence was pregnant with meaning. It was not simply the absence of sound, but there was somethingâholy about it.
Holy
, that was the word. She could think of no other word that might describe it, and she suddenly remembered the many times her Christian friends had spoken of being “in the presence of the Lord.”
Those words had had no meaning to Sabrina. She had never had an experience like that, but now as she lay there, the silence seemed to wrap her in a mantle, as if someone had wrapped a blanket about her. The blanket was warm and comforting, and Sabrina knew that this was not a natural thing at all.
For a long time she simply lay there calmly, aware that all fear had left her. She was no longer afraid of what would happen to her body. She no longer held any fear of the Indians. Even the fear of death, which had been with her constantly, had ceased to exist for her.
She thought of what Hannah had said about the eternal God's consciousness of all people at all times. And in her mind a simple prayer began to form, just a reaching out in thought into the silence that surrounded her. It was almost like a conversation, except she did not hear her own voice and she certainly did not hear an audible voice in response. Nevertheless, she knew she was speaking out of her heart to God as she never had before.
I don't know you, God. I've heard other people talk about you as if you were real, and I've longed for that. But I haven't been able to find you. I've been lost for such a long time, and I've envied those who could call you Father. I can't call you that, but I do call out to you wherever you are and whoever you are. Right here I know you're listening to me
.
Sabrina lay quietly, and she remembered the text of the sermon on Christmas Day.
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
The words echoed inside Sabrina's heart. They reminded her as she went over them again and again of the sound of silver bells, and they were more beautiful than any words she had ever heard.
I need rest. I'm so tired, Lord, and I know that Jesus is the only answer. I ask you, Lord, to come and forgive me of my sins. I don't deserve anything, but Sion says you are a God of mercy, so I ask you to have mercy right now. Forgive my sins in the name of Jesus
.
Sabrina paused, and the silence seemed to swell. She still heard no sound, but there was a song in her heart. She did not know the words, and she did not know the tune, but nevertheless, it was there. And as the song went on, she was conscious of a great shock and surprise. There was no fear left, and she whispered, “Father, thank you for Jesus.”
Sabrina slept soundly that night. As the sun came up in the morning, she wondered if it had all been real and waited for the peace to leave and for the fear to return. It did not, and a great feeling of gladness came to her. She reached over and touched Hannah's shoulder and pulled her closer. Hannah whispered, “What is it, Sabrina?”
“I called upon the Lord, and He's done something to me. I'm not afraid, Hannah. I'm not afraid!”
Hannah immediately turned over and put her arm around Sabrina. She held her tightly and whispered fiercely, “No matter what happens to us now, you're a handmaiden of the Lord, Sabrina!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Pursuit
The men who had gathered around the cabin were all armed and wore grim faces. Sion silently struggled with the emotions that made a tumult within his heart. When he had returned to the cabin from a hunting trip with Fox and found signs of the raid and Sabrina missing, it had been Fox who had taken charge. He had commanded Sion to remain at the cabin in case the women returned and had ridden off to alert the Spencers and other neighbors. His last words had been, “Don't give up, Sion. She's not dead. My uncle can track a bird across the sky. We'll get her back.”
Sion had listened with part of his mind, but something in him practically screamed to go charging out to lookâto do something!
He had forced himself to remain calm as he examined the cabin for clues. He found no signs of blood. The cabin had been ransacked, as had his own lean-to. Many things had been destroyed, and other lighter things had been carried away. Fox had said the Indians were probably renegade Cherokee, but how he knew that Sion could not tell.
For what seemed like a long time he moved around the cabin touching things that belonged to Sabrina, his mind crying out and his spirit struggling with sinking into despair. He had heard all the tales of the cruelty of Indians to their captives. He had heard of some women carried away who had dropped off the earth, it seemed. Some of them had been saved years later but had practically forgotten their native tongue and had become toothless cronesânot at all the women that had disappeared.
But Fox had come back with a small party. Hawk Spencer was there, of course, with Joshua, and Andrew McNeal and Seth Donovan had joined them. Sequatchie had been visiting with Hawk, and he had come along too.
Sion was relieved when he saw the men ride into the yard, and he heard Hawk call out, “Sequatchie, you find their tracks out of here before we mess them up.” Sequatchie covered the ground quickly. He went to the edge of the clearing, leaning over and moving back and forth like a dog on the scent. Joshua came over to say bitterly, “Hannah's gone, too. She had come over to visit Sabrina.”
Hawk joined the two, saying, “I've got a man out raising more men. We'll have a hundred militia here, but we can't wait. We'll leave now. Are you going, Sion?”
“Aye.” Sion's voice was flat.
“Get your weapons, then. We'll take any food we can. We won't have time to stop and hunt.”
As the others prepared to leave, Hawk said, “They didn't kill them outright, Sion. That's good news. It means they want them as captives.”
“They'll mistreat them, won't they?”
“Maybe not if we move fast enough. They know we'll be after them, so they'll be going as fast as they can. The harder we push them, the better the chance they'll be unharmed.”
“Then let's go after them,” Sion said grimly.
Sion joined the party with Sequatchie in the lead. Hawk was right behind him, and the rest of them followed in single file. They traveled hard, stopping just long enough to get a drink with their cupped hands from a creek.
“It's a good thing we've got Sequatchie here, Sion,” Josh said as the two trotted along. “He's the best tracker among the Cherokees, which means he's the best there is, I think.”
“I don't mind telling you that I'm worried sick.”
“We have to put that aside. We can worry later. We've got some praying men here. You and me. Hawk, Sequatchie. All of us are praying men, as a matter of fact. I can't think of a better group to have out on a job like this.”
Josh's words encouraged Sion, and he turned his attention to the task at hand. He was happy to find that he could keep pace with the rest of the men. He knew he could not have done this when he first arrived, but now he had become a woodsman himself, though not as skilled as many of the others in the party. They had been at it for a lifetime, while he'd only lived here for a few months. Still, he determined,
I'll die before I drop aside. If I need to, I'll run until my legs are run off at the knees
.
Sion's thoughts were interrupted when suddenly Sequatchie held up his hand and uttered a cry as he slid off his horse.
“Something's up,” Josh said.
Sion moved forward with the rest of the men with fear in his heart. What he feared most was to find the body of one of the women. Sequatchie had indeed come upon a dead body, but it was clearly the body of a man with a horrifying wound to the back of his head. Sequatchie rolled the man over so they could see his face.
“It's Jack Fry!” Sion said aloud.
“Yes. He got a hatchet in his head,” Sequatchie added.
“I don't think it was an accident,” Sion said.
The men turned to look at him. “What do you mean by that?” Hawk asked.
“I think he was behind this raid. Everyone knows he worked for Caleb Files.”
“You may be right. Caleb's a shrewd man. He wouldn't be connected with it, but he'd send Fry to do his dirty work.”
“Well, he didn't get it done,” Fox said, staring down at the body. “Something went wrong. I wonder what?”
“We don't have time to wonder about it. Dig a hole and dump him in it. We'll bury him.”
“He doesn't deserve it,” Josh said, “but I guess we can do that much for him.”
The men made quick work of digging a shallow grave. They put Jack Fry's body in it, and Seth Donovan said a quick prayer for him. Then Fox said, “Let's go. We've lost time.”
****
As darkness fell, Sequatchie finally called them to a halt, saying, “We can't go on. I can't read the signs.”
“Can't we just continue on?” Sion asked, dreading the thought of stopping.
“If we missed them, it would be all over,” Hawk said. “We'll rest, and we'll move on at first light.”
Joshua started a fire, and they worked together to cook some of the venison they had brought along.
Fox sat down beside Sion and was quiet for a time. Finally Fox said, “I can't eat, Sion. I know Christians aren't supposed to worry, but I am worried.”
“So am I. I don't see how anybody keeps from it. I've got faith, but still I keep thinking about Sabrina and Hannah in the hands of those savages.”
Fox stared down at his hands and said, “I didn't know how much love I had for Hannah until I had to face up to losing her.”
Sion did not answer, and Fox asked, “You think that's wrong, Sion, that a man can love a woman too much?”