<< Go Back

Beneath the Blackberry Moon Part 2: the Sacred Writings (Creek Country Saga) (Volume 2)

By April W Gardner

Order Now!

Tensaw Settlements (present-day Alabama)
Blackberry Moon (June) 1814

Big Warrior Totka Hadjo, reluctant to take the familiar path, came to a slow halt, stopping when his feet touched the grasses that butted up to the forest’s edge. The tread of those who followed him went silent.
Dawn was moments away.
To his left, Wind Chaser stomped a hoof and tossed her head, ears twitching. The gnats were out in such maddening swarms they put the mosquitoes to shame. Picking one from the corner of his eye, Totka peered across the open field.
At his right, Copper Woman did the same, her forlorn sigh becoming pitch paste to his soles and floodwaters to his resolve. Twelve moons past, they’d stood as strangers in the same meadow, each wary of the other. Of their motives, their intentions, their skin tone. His heart had beat with the nervous energy of a war drum, and hers—bold, brave, beautiful—had begun to gently transform him.
They would have parted company in Mobile three sleeps past except for her request to accompany him as far as Tensaw. He’d been glad for the additional days with her, but now he wished the painful farewell were over.
Bit clacking against her teeth, Wind Chaser lipped his ear, her breath grassy and sweet. She was a good animal, if a bit untamed, and over the long seasons ahead she would quell his loneliness. He stroked her velvet nose and released her tether to let her forage.
Amadayh, leading the packhorse burdened with sacks of maize, bypassed him with a poorly disguised teary sniffle and a hasty kiss to Copper Woman’s cheek. For all her bravado, she was still a woman with a heart wounded by war and loss. She plunged into the meadow, burying herself to the knees in thick pasture.
His mind filling with the dangers of the trail ahead, Totka faced north. In that moment, the Fire Spirit, Grandmother Sun, broke free of the horizon and pierced Totka’s right eye. He winked and turned, but it was too late. It was shameful enough he’d not gone to water. Now he’d missed the breaking dawn.
The grasses, colored now in hues of green and gold, received the spirit’s full blessing. The Fire Spirit dwelt in the east, the sacred cardinal direction that was connected with purity and success. Life.
North, on the other hand, symbolized cold and trouble. Defeat. Today, the north also represented Kossati—home.
Was it an omen that he’d been facing north when the Fire Spirit greeted him? If so, it was not a good one. To add to his unease, not a whisper from the Wind Spirit influenced the morning. Only sticky heat.
The grasses stood unmoving, tall and regal, except for their heads which bowed heavy with moist grain. A colony of red-winged blackbirds, roosting in the pines on the opposite side of the meadow, chattered and fussed, then took flight as one and let calm reign over the field.
Only Totka’s wrenching heart defied the peace that settled around them.
He doused his face in Grandmother Sun’s beautiful brilliance, looking straight into her mighty eye. I beg your blessings. On my homeward journey. On my return. Bless me. Give me a vision, a sign of good to come.
It wasn’t often Totka asked for a blessing or a sign, but on this day as his life veered off course, they were vital. He could use some reassurance that Copper Woman would do well without him. That he would see her again.
Staring into the sun, he repeated his prayer four times. His eyes burned and watered until wetness trickled over his cheek and he saw nothing but white. A small sacrifice.
A warm hand joined with his. Squeezed. “Totka, where have you gone?”
He blinked hard to regain his vision, and when he looked down, he encountered a sun of a different sort.
Copper Woman—amber hair alight with Grandmother Sun’s own glory, eyes big and green and wise—gazed up at him, and he wasn’t sure which sight was more stunning. While the sun blinded his eyes, this woman blinded his good sense, enslaved his tongue, and adhered his feet to the earth.
Although born into a different people, she’d been knit together with Totka in mind. And she was perfection, except for the concern marring the space between her brows.
He glided the tip of his middle finger in a line from her forehead down, pausing to iron out the wrinkles, then pausing again at her full mouth. She snagged it between her lips, and his heart took a sprinting leap.
“Ahem.” Lachlan Gibb, Scotch trader and long-time acquaintance, pounded a fist against his muscled ribs and cleared his throat with flair.
Totka peered over his shoulder into the murky woods and gave his uninvited travel companion a droll look.
Lachlan’s toothy grin, barely visible through his generous black beard, rubbed Totka like sand behind the eyelids. He gave another exaggerated cough. “Must be the moisture in the wind,” he said at a near shout. Everything he spoke was overly loud, to compensate for hearing loss.
“What wind?” Totka’s vexation rang clear. “The Wind Spirit has hidden himself from us.”
Lachlan nudged Micco, his broad-chested French warhorse, past Totka and Copper Woman. “I could use a breath of wind myself.”
The man’s Muskogee, while bedecked in the more floral tones of the Scots, was impeccable. And well it should be, seeing the man had been wed to a Muscogee for thirteen winters. He was a widower now, returning to the Upper Muscogee towns to see if his forge and his wife’s trading establishment had survived the war.
He dipped his head at Copper Woman and raised a finger to the hatband of his woolen bonnet. “Miss McGirth, ’twas a pleasure.” After a brief exchange with her in English, he switched back to Muskogee and gave Totka a pointed look. “You will find me waiting on the other side. Restless to move out.”
Totka stared back, impassive.
It was no coincidence Lachlan chose to leave Mobile for Creek country the morning Totka set out with Copper Woman. Her father was to blame for their obtrusive escort, but he was also responsible for the supply of maize—enough to take Totka’s family through to harvest. And enough seed to stock every storehouse in Kossati by winter. The reminder spurred a respectful nod. “Give me but a moment.”
“Eh?” Lachlan showed Totka his ear. “Speak up.”
“I said, give me a moment. I’m eager to take to the path as well. My sisters will be anxious and looking for me already. But I will have these moments with my woman. Alone.”
Lachlan raised a disbelieving brow, chuckled, and applied his heel to his horse’s black flank, leaving them for the trail Amadayh had broken through the meadow.
“Eager to leave me, are you?” The teasing twitch on Copper Woman’s mouth begged purging.
Unfortunately for Totka, he was a man of his word and would not satisfy himself with so much as a simple kiss unless she gave him leave. As if there were such a thing as a simple kiss with this woman . . .
Best he not enter the comfort of that lodge lest he become careless and burn it down around them.
“Not a bit. But it got us out from under his hawk eye. Was I not convincing?”
“Not a bit.” Her chesty laugh did him in.
He wrapped his arms around her and drew her to him in a crush. “What will I do without my little Red Stick? You are my smile, my life.”
She clung to him, and when a silent sob convulsed her, he pressed his lips to her temple and wished he’d been more firm with her in Mobile.
That night in the white chief’s garden while standing toe-to-toe with her father, McGirth, he’d collected the fortitude to leave her, but the following dawn she’d asked him to escort her home ahead of her father, sister, and infant brother. McGirth should have protested, but when he hadn’t, Totka discovered he was a weaker man than he’d always boasted to be. Like a cave to earth’s tremors, he’d given in to her soft-eyed plea.
When they’d arrived yesterday, she’d revealed that her motives had been twofold. In addition to McGirth’s gift of maize, Copper Woman handed over the reins of her horse Wind Chaser as well as her mother’s holy writings, insisting the woman would have wanted him to have it. It rested now inside his saddlebag. He would treasure it, even though it was widely thought that all things written were disputably evil. And even though the odd black markings on its talking leaves were about as clear to him as a mule’s bray.
Soundless, she clung to him with a fervency that outmatched his own, fingers attached to his shirt, body trembling, lungs frozen. If she kept it up, he would never bring himself to leave her. He would find the nearest secluded spot and show her the kind of freedom unwed Muscogee women enjoyed.
Then he would take her home. To Kossati.
He tsked. “Where did my warrior go? We’ll be apart but a little while. A few seasons.” An eternity. He pulled her face free of his shirtfront.
She dragged in a chest-shuddering breath as he cleared away hair stuck to her mouth, in her tears, blocking her eyes.
“Are you afraid?” he said. “Tell me you are not afraid.”
“I am not afraid.” She scrubbed at her tears and shook her head inside the bowl of his hands, filling him with reassurance and pride. Perhaps she was all the sign he needed.
“My insides are already torn apart from missing you, but I am not afraid. The Creator brought you to me once. He will do it again. What is there to fear?”
What was there to fear? Now that he knew his soul mate—separation, death, sickness, loss. He feared everything. “Nothing. We have nothing at all to fear.” Was his smile telling? It must have lacked a certain element, because she leaned back into his hold and searched his face, eyes warbling with doubt.
Perdition take his inability to lie!
Arms snaking about his neck, she raised up and gentled her cheek against his. “Come back to me.” Her whisper was a demand hot in his ear, and it carried far more meaning than a trek back through Creek country. There were conditions to be met before she would bind herself to him.
Her father’s, Totka could meet: a lodge, a crop of corn.
Hers was another matter altogether: an acceptance of her Jesus as Creator, perhaps even abandonment of a portion of the Old Beloved Path.
But meet them or not, he would be back.
His hands settled on the outward curve of her waist. “Spoken as if I could choose. I’d carry you away now if I had even a pebble’s weight less honor.” He made himself put distance between them, then brushed a kiss across her forehead. “You know I cannot help but come back to you.”
She followed him as he retrieved Wind Chaser, then she whispered in the horse’s ear as he mounted with a springing leap off his good leg. The animal nuzzled Copper Woman’s neck, chest quivering with an extended nicker.
Totka patted the horse’s broad shoulder. “She agrees with me. You should come away with us.”
“It is as it must be.” Sadness shadowing her smile, Copper Woman flung the closed reins over the mare’s head and moved to place a hand on Totka’s thigh where the flesh puckered over his old musket ball wound. Even under the spell of her touch, the ruined bone continued its constant, dull throb.
She looked at him through eyes magnified by tears. “Push too hard and you will regret it. Kossati will be waiting for you whether you arrive in four sleeps or five. Conserve your strength for planting, for rebuilding.”
He grazed her cheek with his knuckles, loving her more by the moment.
She tipped into his hand. “My prayers go with you, Totka. Send Singing Grass and the children my love. White Stone as well.” She hastily tacked on the last with a charming touch of color to her pale throat.
He laughed and tightened the rein to keep Wind Chaser’s eagerness in check. “White Stone would let me hear of it if she were forgotten and ”
A low moan accompanied the first breath of wind he’d felt all morning. The wall of pines behind them whistled and rattled as a great gust swept in, whipping their hair and clothes into a frenzy.
Wind Chaser loosed a nervous whiny, and Totka cooed to quiet her. The wind rolled over the field, laying low the grass and startling a doe. The animal sprang from her hiding place and bounded into the cover of the woods.
Wind at last. Powerful, alarming, unusual. Not a life-giving wind from the East, nor a disaster-laden wind from the North. No, this wind came from the West.
The land of the dead.
He had received his sign. And it was a clear one.
Fear seeped into every bone. And accompanying it, a chill. It clambered up his back and dug its claws into his neck. A menacing Shadow crossed over his soul, shrieked in his mind. The ghost was there, and in the next breath it was gone.
“Are you all right?”
Grimacing, he massaged the base of his head, floundering for his previous line of thought and not getting any further than one word. Death.
No, he would not allow death one more victory.
But if it could not be avoided . . . In the name of all that was unpolluted and good, he hoped it was his own.
“Totka Hadjo, are you listening to me?”
“Yes. I’m fine. A cramp. Just a knot in my neck. Nothing a long day in the saddle cannot fix.” He forced a chortle and rotated his head in a slow arc, more to stall for composure than to release the kink.
“Would you like me to knead it?”
“Hmm, I would. My neck, and a few other places.” This time, the grin came without difficulty.
Contrary to pattern, Copper Woman did not flush but leaned into his leg. “I might do that. With pleasure.” The sultry slant to her lips widened his eyes, and then she gave way to laughter. “Twelve moons from today.”
“Ach!” He shoved outward with his foot, clearing her of the horse and making her safe from him. But she came right back, laughter still burbling out of her. Unable to resist, he joined in. “You are a shameless tease.” And so alluring he knew she would spend the passing seasons fending off the advances of other men—white men. Men more suited to her than himself.
The thought sobered him. “And it is eleven moons and twenty-six sleeps from today, not twelve. I’ll count every one of them. In the meantime, men are sure to bid for you. Tell them you are spoken for. By an Indian to whom the fearsome owls report.” He added a grin to the statement but let his Red Stick blood take over his eyes.
“Tell them my sight reaches far,” he said. “That my jealousy runs hot, and my revenge is not mild.” If anyone harmed her, if the Master of Breath decided to take her—
He hacked off the thought and instead filled his head with her image, one last picture to carry him home: hair battling for freedom from her grip, shapely legs outlined through the skirt plastered to her by the wind, an attractive reprimand twisting her mouth.
“I mean what I say, Copper Woman.”
All gaiety gone, she backed away, letting her hand trail the length of his leg. “I believe you, and love you for it. Go then. We’ll meet here next spring, at the new blackberry moon.”
He nudged the horse forward and, while passing by, ran his fingers over her hair. A parting kiss. “Only the Master of Breath could keep me away.” Without another glance, he released Wind Chaser and let her fly into a gallop that devoured the pasture and thundered through his bones.
But no matter their speed, the Wind Spirit drove against them from the west. Hard, persistent.
Screaming death in his ear.
~ ~ ~
Gray and white ash soiled Totka’s moccasins. It coated his airways and reeked of ruin. Like heaps of dirty snow, it covered the plot of earth Lachlan Gibb had called home. The lodge, the forge, the storehouse. Even the potato bin. Gone. Only the horse shed remained untouched.
Anger reddening his features, Lachlan bumped his boot through the scraps of his cabin, creating white billows of soot that settled to his Scotsman’s kilt, his Indian leggings, and to each of the many black hairs on his stout arms. “Nothing. They have left me not a thing to call my own.”
“The anvil survived. And some of the tools.”
With a grunt, Lachlan bent and picked over the skeleton of a lamp, kicked it aside, and moved on.
Totka abandoned the lodge for the horse shed, passing Amadayh who tended the animals. Three sleeps had passed since they’d left the McGirth child with the new wet nurse, and still the childless widow carried herself delicately, painfully. Her body missed the boy. And peering from her eyes, a heartache Totka understood all too well.
The battle was a constant one to keep the loneliness from knotting his throat and his thoughts. Even when his mind was fully engaged in activity or conversation, the ache was there, like a stomach satisfied too fully. But he would not wish it away for all the corn in Creek country, for he would rather be crippled by longing for Copper Woman than return to the emptiness that had been his existence before her.
When he arrived at the creaking gate to the open-sided stall, his gaze fell upon marks in the straw-spattered dirt. Footprints. Fresh, not smudged by the wind.
Senses on alert, Totka slowed his approach, grasped the haft of the knife at his belt. With an experienced sweep, his eye took in the yard and the Federal Road running alongside it, then the horses, ears relaxed and muzzles buried in vegetation, followed by the wall of surrounding forest whose bowels were as thick and dark as the foreboding that tightened Totka’s own.
The prints led both in and out of the enclosure, and the ones leading out had been applied in a hurry.
No fire had been struck in the courtyard pit for quite some time. A glance inside the shed revealed a mound of moldy hay partially covered by a tattered blanket. In its center, a man-sized indention.
Whoever had been staying here did not want to be discovered. Or caught.
The scent of sour clothes preceded Lachlan’s arrival. “Visitors dropped by, eh?” He spoke loudly from over Totka’s shoulder. “Must not have found the excellent accommodations to their liking.”
“It is us they do not find to their liking. Keep your eyes open. They’ll not have gone far. My guess is fugitive Red Sticks.” Those unwilling to surrender to Old Sharp Knife at the newly erected Fort Jackson—that symbol of conquest strategically constructed in the heart of the Muscogee Confederacy. “They will be looking for food. Weapons, ammunition. Anything to hasten their flight to Spanish Florida.”
“They have already taken it all.” Gibb spread his hands wide.
“Not everything.” Totka leaned in so he could speak low on the chance their voices carried into the trees. “And I will not lose a single grain of McGirth corn to a band of warriors too thick-skulled to lay down the club.” A man should know when he’d been bested.
Rhythmic creaking and clattering pulled their attention to the road and the matched team of gray oxen that lumbered toward them, pulling a covered wagon. A bearded man, staff in one hand and musket in the other, walked beside the beasts. On the wagon’s bench sat a woman, the broad brim of her bonnet moving with the cart’s sway.
“What sort of man brings his family into Red Stick country before peace has been signed?” Lachlan scratched his beard and rained ash onto his grease-stained shirtfront.
“The sort who has a rock in place of a brain.”
“Aye, aye. Good evening to you!” With a song in his Scots, Lachlan hailed the traveler. “The name is Gibb. Lachlan Gibb.”
Happy to let Lachlan deal with the fool, Totka crossed the dreary lot, exhaustion matting his body like sweat. The day had been long, but now it dimmed to a blue-gray haze, and the night creatures were beginning their meditative chants.
A flash of red, human in its irregularity, whipped Totka’s gaze to the tree line twenty paces to his left.
Nothing. Not a shivering bush or swinging leaf. Not even birdsong. Only eerie silence.
Nerves raw, Totka continued on to Amadayh. He would not be lured into the dark.
She laid more kindling atop the fiery stack, distrust shifting her eyes to the wagon. “They will ask to share our fire.” As though angry at the idea, the flames lashed out at her skirt, and she hopped away.
“Not likely. Such an arrangement would make too much sense.” At her dry laugh, he smirked, then nodded toward the trees. “Stay out of the woods. Someone is prowling.”
“These days, there is always someone prowling.” Eyes setting up like mortar, she fed the already oppressive heat with an aggressive jab. Sparks hissed and flew into the purpling sky. “But I am done cowering. If I need to use the cover of a bush to relieve myself, I will.” She lifted her face, a twinkle in her eye. “But you must promise me—when you haul my dead body home, do not tell my mother what I was doing when I was freed of my scalp.”
Totka struggled to keep a straight face. “If you get yourself killed while behind a bush, I will tell your mother where she can visit your rotting corpse.”
They laughed—the first in many days—and Totka was pleased for it. Perhaps the lonesome seasons would be more bearable than he’d thought.
“Come, boys.” The stranger spoke and the oxen obeyed, applying their bulk to the yoke and setting the wheels to rumbling.
Good riddance.
Moments later, Lachlan joined them, bringing his nose-wrinkling odor with him. Totka appreciated the man’s taste in headdress and his dislike of trousers, but he had yet to see him go to water.
“They’ll stretch out their blankets closer to the pond.” Lachlan yawned.
“Closer to the mosquitoes,” Amadayh muttered while spooning a powdered substance into a small, long-handled pot.
Lachlan lowered his mass to the dirt and began rummaging through their sack of provisions. “The man needed an iron worker. That musket he brandished was useless. Warped barrel.” He wagged his head and produced from the sack a wheat biscuit—one of the dozens Copper Woman had packed for their journey. “Shame I could not help. A true shame. Tell me, why would they take my bellows? What would any Red Stick want with it?”
Totka flipped open his saddle bag. “Same thing a white man would want with it. To mold iron. Doubtful they possess the skills though.” The writings, wrapped in soft, cream-colored flannel, peeked up at him from the bag’s depths, and his lungs constricted.
Lachlan buffed his teeth with a scrap of fabric, eyes going to the blackened posts of the lodge. “My wife, Two Spoons, always said I should move the forge to Tuckabatchee. Coweta maybe. Said I would find more business there than I did here on the Federal.”
“That is especially true now that so many are rebuilding.” With a grimace, Totka sat, placed his bow and quiver within easy reach, and stretched out his cramping leg. “At present, iron is a luxury few Indians can afford. But you might find that over the winter, after crops have been harvested and the hunts have brought in skins to trade, they might be eager to stock their cookhouses with kettles and pans.” Singing Grass would be.
Writings in hand, he propped himself against his saddle.
“Hmm.” Lachlan became pensive, allowing Totka to descend into the aching cavity in his chest.
Flannel removed, the writings’ leather gleamed in the firelight. Totka traced the curious symbols indenting its cover, then with a flat palm, he caressed the surface, patterning his touch after the reverent strokes Copper Woman had made when she’d spoken of its strong medicine, its sacred words.
It did not feel powerful. Or sacred. But Totka trusted his woman. If she said it was sacred, then it was. Its age alone was enough to demand respect.
He opened the stiff cover and released the scent of dust and time and love. For hadn’t she loved him much to entrust him with it? The leaves crackled as he turned them one after the other. Black markings, like tattoos, filled the white space in neat rows and columns. At first, they overwhelmed him, but then, he began noticing repetitions.
His eye ran down the width of several rows until it became ensnared on a familiar symbol.
“You read?” Lachlan’s gruff voice severed his concentration.
“No, but I know this mark.” He stretched the writings toward the man and underlined it with a fingernail.
Lachlan drew the writings closer and squinted. “Oh, aye. It is called eff.”
“The markings have names?”
“Each is identified by a name, and when joined, they create words.” Lachlan paused, leveled an empty stare at the fire. “I have had this conversation before. With Leaping Waters.” He cocked his head at Totka. “Were you not wed to her at one time?”
Amadayh removed her bubbling pot from the fire and gave a sharp clack of the tongue. “Worse than a meddlesome woman, you are, Lachlan Gibb.”
Her stance in Totka’s defense was endearing, but not surprisingly, the question held little sting.
“Eh? What am I?”
“Meddlesome!” Amadayh said, then muttered, “And deaf as a rock.”
Lachlan’s smile showed off a set of carefully groomed teeth. “I have had this conversation before as well. With Two Spoons.” His jovial laugh ebbed into a melancholy sigh, and Totka pitied him.
“What is this symbol?” He indicated another letter. “Tell me its name.”
“That one is ah-ee. How is it you’ve seen them?”
Totka’s thoughts took wing and deposited him in Singing Grass’ courtyard before it had been touched by war. The ground was hot beneath his moccasins, his skin hotter yet for the glancing touch of Copper Woman’s arm against his bare thigh.
Her slender finger, white as dandelion milk, brushed furrows into the earth. Red dust marred her nose, her chin.
The urge to wipe them clean had been tempting. Intensely so. He should have given in to it. Then she’d suggested she teach him more. He should have given in to that as well.
No, he should have given in to Leaping Waters. Her offer of instruction had come many winters before he’d tripped over Copper Woman and dropped his heart in her lap.
“Eff, Ah-ee,” he reproduced the sounds and a smile warmed his face. “Copper Woman showed me the four symbols of my English name.”
“Fire. Mad Fire, aye? A strong name.”
“A spirit’s name.” He had always strived to live up to it.
Totka turned another page and trailed a finger along the scrawled markings at the edge. Someone had applied quill and ink to the sacred object. An incantation of sorts?
Like a medicine bundle? He touched the one hanging from a cord about his neck. It included a wolf claw—a representation of himself, of his role in the tribe, and of his spirit helper.
Lachlan reached for the writings. “May I?”
Hesitantly, Totka handed it over. “Be prepared to sleep with one eye open should you damage it.”
“That grin of his means nothing, Lachlan Gibb.” One brow hiking, Amadayh poured the contents of her pot into a wooden cup. “He will do as he says.”
Lachlan laughed, flipping through the pages with less care than Totka would like. “The advice is much appreciated, but Leaping Waters warned me about him when she was still a little thing. Said he was a guard dog without a tether.”
Amadayh swirled the cup to cool the liquid while putting on a sassy smile. “And his bite is every bit as ferocious as his growl.”
“I’m Wolf Clan. What do you expect?” Totka grunted, pleased at their assessment. They’d easily identified the role the Creator had given him. Why could Old Grandfather see not it? “More than one person has thanked me for my growl. Although . . . it has not always served me well.” He massaged his thigh with the heel of his hand.
Amadayh’s face gentled, then firmed when she studied the curtain of darkness. A hush settled over them as Lachlan searched the pages and Totka, following Amadayh’s cue, tuned his senses to the woods. They were equally quiet.
He felt for his bow and was reassured by the sturdy feel of black locust wood against his palm.
“Ah ha!” Lachlan angled the writings toward the firelight. “Found it. Come look.”
Ear still on the trees, Totka complied. There, above Lachlan’s dirty fingernail was the word fire.
“What has he found?” Suspicion flattened Amadayh’s mouth.
“My English name.” In more precise form than what Copper Woman used, but clearly the same. Of all the writing on all the pages, Lachlan had been able to find those four symbols joined together. Astounding, really. “Does it speak of the Fire Spirit? Tell me what it says.”
“If I remember the story correctly,” Lachlan began, settling into position as Old Grandfather often did before making a speech. “It tells of a great prophet. The queen of the land was evil and wished him dead, so the prophet ran. He prayed and the Creator sent a messenger to tell him to stand on a mountain.”
“Why would he do that?” Amadayh brought Totka the steaming cup. “Chicory. For your leg.”
“Maddo.” He thanked her.
“Look left,” she whispered and skipped her gaze to the blackened forest.
As Lachlan continued, Totka put the rim to his lips and examined the outline of each tree and shrub until he spotted an abnormality, the partial figure of a man—Muscogee, by the silhouette. A silhouette Totka knew well . . .
Tension eased from his bow arm but did not leave him completely. It was never wise to relax in his cousin’s presence, and if Tall Bull wanted to speak, he would have to show himself.
Lachlan cleared his throat and brought Totka’s attention back to the tale. “These are the words written down: A strong wind ripped the mountains and broke the rocks before the Creator, but the Creator was not to be found in the wind; after the wind came the earth shook, but the Creator was not in the shaking; and after the earthquake came the fire, but the Creator was not in the fire; and after the fire a still, small voice. And the Creator said to him ”
“It says there were no spirits in the elements?” Amadayh cleared rocks and sticks from where she would arrange her bedding.
“Who am I to know these things?” Lachlan said. “But perhaps it is showing the Creator is mightier than the elements, that he does not require them to speak to man.”
Amadayh considered a moment, then tossed away another rock with a little flick of her wrist. “It is true enough that the Creator can do as he wishes.”
“The words put down here are from his very mouth. Or so my mother told me.” Lachlan shrugged and returned the writings to Totka.
After Totka shared a quizzical glance with Amadayh, he closed the book with a snap, then wished he hadn’t. He would never find his name again.
From the darkness, a horned owl swooped low over their camp. Amadayh ducked and grumbled something about the writings and witchcraft. She unfurled her blanket with a rigorous snap.
Lachlan went for his own rolled blanket. “So if I were to put up the forge in a Muscogee talwa, which would you recommend?”
“What about Tuckabatchee, as Two Spoons said?” Amadayh suggested.
Totka slurped the scalding concoction. “Maybe. But Hawkins will probably supply the Tuckabatchees with craftsmen before any of the other talwas.” The treaty promised skilled craftsmen for a number of villages, and the agent to the Muscogees had a soft spot for Tuckabatchee.
Tall Bull’s wolf call rang out through the clearing.
Totka sneered through another bittersweet gulp of chicory, happy to keep his cousin waiting.
Eyes jumpy, Amadayh fidgeted with her bedding, unwilling to settle. “There is always Kossati. It sits at the joining of the rivers and is stomp grounds for a number of villages.”
Lachlan scooted toward her, sleep forgotten. “I like how you think, woman. Tell me, do you agree that to avoid becoming overrun, the Muscogees must assimilate some of the white man’s ways? By learning new skills such as iron work, or by making paper talk with symbols ”
“English symbols,” Amadayh said, voice flat.
“Yes, English, but to defeat his enemy a man must know his enemy.”
Lachlan could be Leaping Waters speaking—except for his odor, furry legs, and . . . everything else.
Totka slung out the dregs from his cup. “We are at peace with the whites. They are no longer our enemy. A treaty is soon to be signed. Are you suggesting rebellion?”
“Defense, Totka. Against invaders.”
Sheared hair, oily from several seasons of neglect, fell across Amadayh’s ever-sharp eyes. “The Muscogee must make themselves a confederacy worthy of respect. We must make ourselves equal to the pales faces in knowledge and craft. We should begin at once, as soon as ” She huffed, stood, and lifted her voice to a near-shout. “As soon as our skulking guest removes himself from the shadows.”
Lachlan glanced about, confused. But Totka choked over contained laughter.
Moments later, Tall Bull entered the circle of their light, but Amadayh’s hurled stone thudded off his chest and stopped him just inside the far reaches.
“Close enough,” she snapped.
Lachlan bounded to his feet, kilt askew, wide-eyed gaze split between Tall Bull’s appearance and Amadayh’s performance. Had Two Spoons taught him no woodland skills at all, or did his hearing loss make him inept?
“Your aim has always been shy of the mark, Amadayh.” Tall Bull brushed imaginary dust from his shirt.
Quicker than the Thunder Snake flashes the sky, she threw another. But Tall Bull’s reflexes served him well enough to avoid a braining. The stone skimmed the side of his head and sent his red feather swirling.
Chuckling, he straightened and unhooked a lock of hair from his nose. “Better.”
Lachlan ran a flustered hand over his beard. “Great stars in the sky, woman, you can put a man to shame with that arm.”
Ignoring him, Amadayh dropped to her backside with a redoubled huff and directed a fractious look at Totka. “It is only your slippery clansman. Make him go away. He attracts pests.” The woman was relentless in her anger. And her loyalty. She would never forgive Tall Bull for his theft of Copper Woman, for threatening to defile her, for having sent her to the slave post in the freezing rain.
It was an anger Totka supported, encouraged. Wholeheartedly. “I thought it was clear you are no longer welcome at my fire, Cousin.” He propped an arm on his raised knee in a lazy pose. No need to ask why Tall Bull could be found at Lachlan Gibb’s burned-out forge.
Leaping Waters would have suggested they seek refuge here.
Which meant she was near. Totka felt the touch of her eye—gentle, inquisitive, faithless.
“The fire is there,” Tall Bull said, pointing. “And I am here. Will you give us a portion of the grain you carry?”
“No. The maize is for the People.”
“Am I not a Kossati?”
“You’re a fugitive. And you have my answer. Go away.”
“Broken harmony in the clan?” Lachlan asked. “Sounds like a story to keep my ears occupied on the path to Kossati.”
“Tall Bull is not worth the use of my breath.” Totka picked at a hole in the toe of his moccasin. One of the many things that would need replacing with supplies he no longer owned.
Tall Bull spoke. “My cousin is tight-fisted with his bitterness, but vengeance is a beautiful thing. If he would look up, he would read my eyes and see that I have had my vengeance. And it was sweet . . . she was sweet.”
Sweat broke out of every pore on Totka’s body. Slowly, he got to his feet and, breath blowing through his nostrils like a gale, stalked to where Tall Bull stood as arrogant and handsome as always, even in his emaciated frame. “The next time you speak of Copper Woman in such a way,” he said through his teeth, “it will be your death song.”
Tall Bull shifted away, his tone amended, yielding. “If you want me gone, then give me what I need.”
“Take this.” Lachlan tossed him a biscuit. “Please, put something into your stomach. Your bones are glaring at me.”
Tall Bull began to devour it, and Totka curled his lip. “Will you not save any of that for your wife?” There would never be a day Totka did not feel some measure of responsibility for the woman. Long Arrow, her brother, had bred it into him.
“She isn’t here.” Food clogged his speech.
“How smoothly he lies,” Amadayh said.
Tall Bull’s chilly glare only made the woman’s chin tilt higher. “Watch how you accuse me, woman. I would feed my wife before myself.”
“Take her home to her mother,” Totka said. “In case you’ve not noticed, the Red Sticks are defeated. The fighting is done. Quit while you can.”
“I would sooner die than surrender!” Crumbs spewed onto his lips. He ridded himself of them with a rough swipe of his wrist.
“Keep up as you are and you will get your wish. Stop running. Your clan needs you.” Totka needed him—the old version anyway. Not the haggard stranger who stood before him barely visible through an impenetrable wall of distrust.
“I am seeing to their needs. By fleeing to the Floridas where we will join the British and the People of the Point.” The Seminoles. Wild men, as they were called for their appetite for trouble. Fitting Tall Bull should join them. “There is also a rumor of an army of runaway blacks. We have another chance to whip the pale faces, Totka! To drive them from our borders. Clear to the Great Waters if we choose. In Spanish country we can rally, gather weapons, come back for a final blow. We can defeat them!” His eyes blazed with vision. But it was a dream made of smoke and empty thunder.
Totka narrowed an eye. “Who is we?”
“Hillis Hadjo leads a body of Red Sticks, three-hundred strong, maybe more. Join us.”
“Not even my ghost in its wildest travels would conceive of joining that crazed knower.” The prophet, also known as Josiah Francis, was a liar and a lunatic.
Disappointment, thick as clotting blood, sagged Tall Bull’s shoulders. “Tohopeka is not the end.”
But the Horse’s Flat Foot, the battle that had slain the Red Stick forces, was the end. For all Indians owning half a brain with which to think.
Tall Bull’s line of sight—bald in its hunger—traveled to the sacks of grain. He removed the limp pouch slung over his shoulder and extended it. “If you will not join us, will you at least feed us?”
Totka crossed his arms. “No.”
“A handful of seed. No more. We are Wolf, you and I. Clan first. Always. Come, Brother, be reasonable.”
How dare he try to resurrect that term? “We are not brothers!” Totka’s shout drew a startled whiny from Wind Chaser and propelled Tall Bull back a half pace. “As I said. A waste of breath.”
Intent on soothing Wind Chaser, Totka tromped toward the horses, fanning his fingers wide to release tension before arrival.
“Tell Ayo that she will not see her daughter for some time. Leaping Waters will be coming with me.” Tall Bull’s statement arrested Totka’s retreat.
He spun back, but Lachlan was already in Tall Bull’s face. “You will not take that sweet girl into the swamp to be hunted like an animal!”
And Lachlan called Totka a snarling watchdog?
While the man continued to berate Totka’s flinty cousin, Amadayh snatched the pouch from Tall Bull and marched to the sacks of grain.
With a resigned sigh, Totka went to seek out Wind Chaser.
The animal plodded to him and bumped the flat of her skull against his chest. Totka tangled his fingers in her coarse forelock and scratched behind her ear. “I miss her too. But don’t worry. She is safe.” From hunger and war. From Tall Bull.
Leaping Waters was not, however.
But Totka refused to care. She had constructed her own rickety couch. Now, she must lie in it.
How times had changed. There had once been a day the talwa expected them to grow old together, he and Leaping Waters.
But that had been before the war, before he’d lost full strength in his leg. Back when Tall Bull was called Lance, and Totka was called Leaping Waters’ future . . .

Order Now!

<< Go Back