once more. Diana, although the hard travel left her tired, made no word of complaint, yet I was worried, fearing for her but hating to be driven by whoever it was who came behind us. If the young Catawba had been killed, the blood feud was mine as well as theirs, for he had been acting for us. It was all very well to say they would have come this way, and all might have happened, anyway, yet I liked it not. Had Diana not been with us, I would myself have turned back to see who our enemies were and to take toll of them.
Yet there was wariness in me, too, for if the Catawba had been killed, someone among them was a woodsman, and one skillful indeed. To hunt down and kill a Catawba warrior was no small thing; of course, even the best made mistakes.
We held close to the mountains, traveling in the forest when possible.
On the last morning I came upon a tree that I myself had blazed upon a trail my feet had often trod. 'We will be home soon,' I said to Diana, and she put her hand on mine, touching it lightly.
The trail opened upon a meadow where fresh-cut hay was stacked and beyond it a cornfield. Melons lay on the ground among the rows of corn. This would be a good harvest.
We saw the palisade before us, low upon its knoll near the creek. The gate stood open, and two men faced us, shading their eyes to see us. I lifted a hand, and there was an answering wave.
The first to reach me was Yance.
'Where you been, lad?' he asked, smiling. Glancing at Diana, his smile widened. 'I told Temp you'd be bringin' a lass with you, but not who it was. She's been devilin' me for a name, but I haven't told her a thing!'
'There's somebody behind us, Yance. Somebody who wants us real bad. He's killed one of our Catawba friends, or must have.'
'It is a bad time, Kin. Two of our men are down sick with chills and fever. Will they be many or few?'
'Few, I think, but not easy men.'
He grinned widely, cheerfully. 'When have they ever been easy? We were born to hard times and hard men, Kin, and I am thinking we are hard men ourselves.' He glanced at the Catawbas. 'Where did you come by them?'
So I told him as we walked, and he listened, nodding from time to time. He shook his head. 'You took a long chance going to the islands, Kin. A long chance.'
'White women are not so many, Yance, and they are noticed. Yet without Henry I could not have done it.'
'He is a good man and welcome amongst us.' He nodded toward the settlement. 'They know you are coming, and they have prepared a feast for the prodigal.'
'Me? A prodigal? It should be more likely you.'
They were wailing for us, and Temperance ran forward when she saw Diana. 'Oh, Di! You're my sister now! If I could have chosen, it would have been you.'
'Come within,' Lila said quietly. 'There is food upon the table, and you be hungry folk.'
My eyes went to her, this woman who had once served my mother and had married one of my father's best friends. The size of her never ceased to astonish me, for she was nearly as tall and broad as I, who am larger than most. There was a little gray in her hair now, and it pained me to see it. Yet she was older than my mother.
My mother, would I ever see her again? She was gone across the sea to England with Noelle and Brian, but I remembered her well.
Jeremy came up from the field, his hand hard from the work there but his smile as bright as ever. 'It has been too long, lad. You must stay now.'
This man had stood over me when I was being born during a battle with the Senecas, guarding my mother during her labor. He had been my father's friend and had left England with him, a down-at-heel gentleman, a wandering swordsman, and a farmer now but holding broad acres with excellent crops and a good trade in furs with friendly Indians.
'I have brought trouble,' I said, and explained.
'The men are coming from the fields,' Jeremy said.
They started within where the food was upon the table, but I lingered to look about. There was a place where some of the logs were blackened near the ground, a place where fire started by Indians had seared the logs before being put out. My father and his men had come into this country when no white man was nearer than the coast and had remained here until he went beyond the mountains scouting for fresh land. For this was our way, bred into us, and we knew it well, always to go beyond the mountains to open new lands.
Within all was bright and cheerful--sunlight through the windows upon burnished copper pots and the dull shine of pewter. The floors were spotless as always and the windows hung with curtains. Muskets stood in their racks near the walls, and the heavy shutters were thrown back now but could be drawn quickly shut.
A strongly built man with a shock of flaxen hair pushed back from the table. 'I go to the wall,' he said.
When he had gone, Jeremy said, 'He is Schaumberg, a German. He heard of us and came looking, one man and his woman with a baby son. They came through the forest alone.'
'He belongs here, then,' I said. 'He is a good man?'
'He works hard, and he is handy with tools. He seems to fear nothing.'
'It is better,' I replied, 'to fear a little. One is cautious then.'
'Aye, but he is a careful man.'
One by one they slipped away to the walls, and when I looked again at the rack of muskets, it was half empty. I started to rise. 'Sit you,' Lila said. 'There will be time enough when the fighting begins, if fighting there is to be.'
She filled my glass again and stood across the table from me. 'I like her. Does she have family?'
'A father. A good man. He should be amongst us. He would make a teacher,' I added, 'and we will need such.'
We talked long then and of many things. Yance came in and sat beside us. When I asked about our enemies, he shrugged. 'We have seen nothing, but they are there. A fawn was crossing our field where they always cross, and suddenly it turned sharp away and trotted back almost the way it came.'
'If it is Max Bauer,' I said, 'he will want victory without cost. He will wait, or he will find a way.'
I turned my head to Yance. 'I want him,' I said. 'I want the man myself.'
Yance shrugged. 'Let it happen, Kin. If he comes my way or Jeremy's, so be it.'
My hackles rose at the thought of him. There were few men I disliked, none that I hated but him. But this went beyond hate, for we were two male creatures of strength who saw in the other an enemy. No matter how we met, we should sooner or later have fought. It was in our natures, deeply laid, and he knew it as well as I. We ached to get together; we longed for the moment.
The man was a monster of cruelty, a savage man but cold and mean in his savagery. I had hated no Indian whom I fought. Warfare was their way of life, and they fought because it was their way. They were splendid men, most of them, and although they had slain my father, he himself would have felt no hatred for them. They were men, opposed to him but men, and warriors. They fought, but there was respect there, also.
It was not so with Max Bauer and myself. We must fight, and one must destroy the other, and each was aware.
Lila needed no urging to keep me from the walls, for it was in my mind that he would not attack. He would come, he would look, he would go all about us in the forest, and then he would try to find some way he could hurt or injure me or mine before he killed me. He was that sort of man, and he knew that death can be an end to suffering. He wanted me dead but only after I had suffered all a man can suffer. It was his advantage, perhaps, that he wished to kill and I did not. I wanted to fight him, to destroy what he was, to break him. I did not care about killing.
Jeremy came back and sat down opposite me. 'Kin,' he said, 'since the death of your father, you are the accepted leader here, but we have troubles coming that you have not, perhaps, considered.
'The settlements along the Virginia coast are growing. People are moving into the Carolinas. This you know.'
'I do.'
'This land we occupy is ours only by right of settlement, which in the courts of England would be no right at all. Think you not that we should take steps to establish a claim to our land?'
'But how? My father dared make no such claim. He was flying from the queen's justice, a wanted man.
