Wild Indigo Page 5

  Brother Meyer laughed. “The Lord loves a cheerful heart.”

  Retha swept the basket to her other shoulder, then climbed the hard-packed, dusty street, dodging ruts. She wouldn’t think about laundry now. She would think about her wolf. It needed food, but she had best avoid the larder.

  She neared the Square, her destination straight across it, through the crowd. She searched the vendors, hoping her friend Alice would be here with husband Gottlieb Vogler. Some years ago on market day, Retha had met the exiled couple, and they had become fast friends when Retha spoke to Alice in her native language. A full-blooded Cherokee who naturally shunned settlers, Alice sometimes didn’t come for weeks.

  The marketplace bustled with traders. With little regard to rich or poor or Whig or Tory, Moravians in neat, plain dress set up their wares alongside ragged settlers and backcountry trappers in buckskins. Two-wheeled carts and heavy wagons displayed smoked meats, tanned hides, a smattering of early summer beans and corn. One woman offered flowering herbs. On any other day, Retha would have bought some to try for dyes. A shabby man at a rickety cart hawked small game. The wolf would love a squirrel, but its price was beyond her means.

  She stopped at a spotted cow tied behind a wagon. A tired-faced woman with an infant at her breast urged her closer to the cow. “She didn’t freshen again this year so she weren’t worth naught but for butchering.”

  Retha peered over the wagon’s side to see what else they had brought. One poorly made quilt, whether for themselves or for sale, she couldn’t tell. Her nose wrinkled at the pungent smell of cow. The Cherokee she lived with had survived on game, had hated stinking cattle. For her, learning to eat beef had been no easy task.

  “I need marrow bones,” she said anyway.

  “Got no marrer bones. Kept ’em at home. Don’t make no money,” the woman’s husband said.

  Retha understood. They were so poor they probably lived off bone soup. She backed away, but her legs struck what felt like a log. She collapsed, spilling her load of greasy tablecloths and smelly bed sheets on top of her. Shoving them off her face, she pushed herself up and braced on the heels of her hands. A giant man extricated his legs from her load and crawled out from under his wagon.

  “Oh, Gottlieb,” she gasped. “I am sorry.”

  Gottlieb Vogler stood and gave her a hand up. He was bigger even than Jacob Blum, his hands ham-sized and facial features big out of all proportion. So was his gentle welcome.

  “Alice will be glad to see you,” he said heartily.

  “She came?” Retha looked but saw no sign of her friend’s flowing black hair. “Where is she?”

  “T’other side of the wagon, handing me my tools. The wheels almost came off since the Continentals requisitioned it last winter. I guess we were lucky to get it back.”

  Retha streaked around the wagon and found her only Cherokee friend in the world standing by a cumbersome toolbox, her Indian face beautiful even where smallpox had etched it. Alice greeted her in the broken German she had striven so hard to learn. The minute Retha explained about the wolf, they switched to speaking Cherokee, consciously hushing its loud tones so as not to draw attention to themselves.

  “Marrow bones?” Alice laughed. “Of course you can have marrow bones. And for a wolf.”

  Retha heard approval in her tone. Alice would have proudly saved such a noble animal herself. She skirted the wagon and helped Retha restack her linens. Her friend showed a lot of courage, Retha thought, to come here with her husband and risk facing crowds of white men who hated her kind. Locals and Continentals had obliterated Alice’s clan that terrible spring seven years ago when Retha’s own adoptive Indian family had been killed. Only Alice’s ravaging smallpox had repelled the soldiers and saved her life.

  At the market, Retha chatted as Alice listened, wrapping two marrow bones in pillowslips and stuffing them between dirty sheets. It took a while to explain why the Single Sisters had grounded her to Gemein Haus. She was about to tell her friend about Jacob Blum’s amazing proposal when the buzz of the market died out.

  “Redcoats!” a voice cried out.

  Retha heard horses pounding up the road.

  “Continentals!” another shouted.

  A churning cloud of dust brought neither. Five local militia, wearing a hodgepodge of buckskin and scavenged uniforms, slowed their horses to a trot on the dusty street. Retha tensed. Unruly, half-regulated Liberty Men, who sought out Tories, Redcoats, and Cherokees with unremitting fervor in so-called support of the efforts of the Continental Army.

  Alice ducked under the wagon.

  “I thought they left her alone these days,” Retha muttered to Gottlieb, who stood on alert.

  “Now they think she’s a spy,” he grated softly.

  “A spy? For whom?”

  He wagged his great head in disgust but did not answer.

  Slowly Retha comprehended. After Colonials had slaughtered them, the Cherokee were allied with the British. “Alice a spy for the Redcoats? But you’re Moravian. You’re neutral. We all are.”

  “No longer, Sister Retha.” She heard regret in his voice for a faith he still honored. “I went against the lot, marrying outside our faith. And a Cherokee woman to boot. Perhaps you were too young to note the scandal.”

  Retha patted his hand sympathetically and smiled. “Oh, no. Your romantic sacrifice was all the talk among the Single Sisters.”

  The huge man actually blushed.

  “But what can we do for Alice now?”

  “Let her hide. ’Tis best if they don’t see her. Until I see who it is.” His big hands clenched and his gentle eyes blazed as the small band drew up in front of the market.

  Retha had a shock herself.

  Jacob Blum rode into the Square with the small band of Liberty Men. Sliding off his mount, the troop’s red-haired captain barked orders at his men. Jacob swung off his overworked tavern hack and confronted the captain. He answered angrily, chopping the air with the blade of his hand. With a final gesture, the captain stalked over to the spotted cow.

  Jacob marched after him, plunging into the argument as the captain haggled with the poor settler and his wife. Retha steadied herself on her friend’s strong arm, listening to the worn woman defend her price.

  Jacob resolutely took up the woman’s cause.

  Retha gawked. Neutral, she reminded herself without being reassured. Jacob was supposed to be neutral.

  But he looked militant. She studied the object of his anger. She couldn’t see the captain’s face, but red hair bristled under the battered brim of his tricorn. A chill crept over her. She hated redheaded men.

  Jacob jerked off his hat and swatted road dust from his breeches. Sim Scaife had wrecked his day. As usual. The thick-skulled, rabble-rousing Liberty Man had hounded Jacob for years, convinced that any Moravian who spoke English was a British spy. As if Jacob didn’t have enough problems balancing the Moravians’ precarious relations with both the British and the Continentals.

  “Don’t dicker with the woman, Baker,” Scaife was shouting to his sergeant who’d gone to purchase the spotted cow.

  Hearing the woman’s feeble protest, Jacob plowed toward the fray. And checked himself. A flag of red-gold hair captured his attention. Amongst the shoppers in the crowded Square stood his intended bride—with Gottlieb Vogler. It only needed this. He had been but a day away, and she was compromised again. But he could not well put her in a box.

  “We can take the blamed cow outright,” Scaife threatened.

  Alerted, Jacob bit down on frustration. At this moment he couldn’t even notice Retha. Not when Scaife’s malice demanded his attention.

  With a yellow grin, Scaife dug into a shoulder pouch, pulled out a handful of Continental bills, and shoved them in the husband’s face. “But we got money.”

  The farmer snorted. “That paper ain’t worth a hoot. I come here for barter.”

  Jacob wedged in between captain and sergeant. The farmer was right. Paper was worthless, a hundre
d bills on any given day worth what one had been the day before.

  “The town will trade you in salt, Finney,” he said in his formal English. Most of his fellow Moravians would not understand a word he said.

  The woman furtively shook her head at her husband. “We need wheat.”

  “We have only salt,” Jacob went on, “unless you can take something from the store.” He knew the woman needed staples. Everyone did. The summer was already hot and dry. The wheat crop had suffered, and corn was looking bad.

  The woman shook her head.

  Scaife’s lips thinned into a mocking grin. “You’ve naught to bargain with, woman. But we’ll be glad to take it off yer hands for free.”

  Jacob turned on him, aware of the crowd clearing a circle around them. “You can have what you came for, free food and rooms at the Tavern. Let the woman trade her cow.” Then he spoke to the woman. “But we cannot trade wheat, Mrs. Finney.”

  “We ain’t got any—” she began.

  “We have no wheat either, not to sell or trade,” he explained. “The army requisitioned it. ’Tis theirs as soon as they round up wagons to transport it.”

  “So you say,” Scaife growled back in Jacob’s face.

  “I showed you the papers,” Jacob answered edgily. Scaife’s men tried to break through the circle of townsmen and settlers, but Scaife waved them back.

  Jacob prepared for the worst. The hotheaded captain was unpredictable. This morning, holding a pistol to his head, Scaife had read Jacob’s requisitions from the Continental Army for grain, but had still taken him for a spy. Then he ordered Jacob to translate his German documents, minutes of church business for the Bethabara settlement, dull with convincing detail. Scaife chose not to believe him.

  “I ain’t a fool, Blum.” The man’s face flushed to match his carroty hair. “Your tavernkeeper let that English lieutenant stay five days, and the day he left heading east, we catch you going south with a packet of sealed documents.”

  “I translated them for you.”

  “They were in German.”

  “All church business is in German.”

  “They could have said aught. I may not know German, but some Englishman would.” He spit on the ground. “Everybody knows you’re a bunch of Tories.”

  Jacob hid his annoyance behind a shrug. Whigs thought Moravians were Tories, and Tories thought they were Whigs. They were neither. When the British ruled, Moravians paid them their due. Now that the Colonies had independence, Moravians paid taxes to the government in power. Threefold taxes, so they wouldn’t have to bear arms for the state. Some were drafted anyway.

  Some even fought. Jacob was sorely tempted to. Partly because he knew he would do a better job than Sim Scaife and his ilk, and the brutal war would end sooner. But more because of how he had come to love the promised freedom of this land.

  His blood raged to fight for it. Nicholas was not unlike him in that. Guilt trickled through him. What if his own secret relish for battle had somehow found expression in his older son’s intemperate nature. He dared not by word or deed set an example that would feed his son’s belligerent leanings.

  Besides, Jacob reminded himself, he did not have the choice of bearing arms. Every ounce of duty, faith, and honor in his soul bound him to stand by his community. The best that he could do was keep men like Scaife from destroying it.

  And Scaife would try. Jacob wished the man had stuck with his hardscrabble life of hunting and trapping on that precious property he had finagled out of some poor settler. The wilderness life took the edge off his spite. War honed it.

  “I will trade for Finney’s cow, Scaife.”

  “I’m here to say you won’t,” Scaife said, bracing his legs to fight, three of his men outside the circle.

  Jacob assessed him. He outweighed the Liberty Man by a good three stones, but Scaife’s meanness could make up the difference. Scaife hoisted his musket off his shoulder and feigned a move to hand it to his sergeant. Instead, he tossed it in the air, grabbed it by the bore, and swung it low like a scythe.

  Jacob saw the blow coming and stepped over the weapon. With a growl, he tackled the man, toppling him over into the dust. Scaife’s bony hands scrabbled up, his dirty broken fingernails digging into Jacob’s throat. Jacob wrestled the man’s hands to the ground and pinned them over Scaife’s head.

  “’Twould not be a fair fight, Captain.” He shifted, letting the thin man beneath him feel his weight. Around them, the circle tightened, a wall of Moravian men cutting off Scaife’s men from rescue or reprisal.

  Scaife’s narrow gaze darted up to the pressing crowd, as if noticing it for the first time. Jacob knew what he would see alongside his townsmen. A few Whig farmers and trappers who depended on the town for trade. A couple of suspected Loyalists, driven by need, who had taken a chance on coming to market. Whig or Tory, they had all dodged fire from every side. No one would go out of his way for Sim Scaife.

  “Yeah. You got reinforcements.” His accusation was loud enough to provoke the crowd. No doubt, he hoped to stir them up.

  “I fight my own fights. Save yours for the British.”

  “You gave them rooms.”

  “They took the rooms. Your army gets all our wheat.”

  “You gave them horses.”

  “They took our horses. They took everyone’s.” Jacob lowered his voice, striving to come up with something to convince Scaife that Salem was truly neutral. “They didn’t find the best ones.”

  Scaife barked a nasty laugh. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, as if he would never have thought the neutral Moravians had wits enough to hide a horse. He squirmed under Jacob’s weight. “I give.”

  “Give what?” Jacob blinked, uncomprehending.

  “Give up!” Scaife snarled impatiently.

  “What is ‘give up’?”

  “Yield, man. I yield, Blum, I’ll let you be. Let me up.”

  Shaking his head, Jacob released the man’s hands and raised himself off his body. The circle of townsmen melted, but Jacob watched cautiously. Scaife shrugged inside his sweat-stained buckskins, grabbed his musket from the sergeant, then looked up.

  “If I catch you out spying…” Scaife bared his yellow teeth in a half-hearted attempt to placate the man who had defeated him.

  “We are not enemies,” Jacob said to him quietly. “Go. Brother Meyer will serve your supper.”

  Scaife collected his men, who followed him down the street with their ragged horses. Breathing a sigh that mingled anger and relief, Jacob surveyed the crowd milling in the Square. A disgusted hunter packed up pelts and deerskins to leave. A farmer spread out meats and vegetables hastily stowed from harm. In this lean summer, trading his stores meant he was desperate. Mrs. Finney took her baby out from under her wagon’s seat.

  All was well, Jacob thought. He had forestalled another ugly incident. Relieved, he looked around for Retha.

  She was standing in the circle of Gottlieb Vogler’s arms.

  What else would the woman dare to do? he wondered angrily. His gut filled with an unfamiliar, powerful emotion.

  She was his. His. He clenched his jaw. He could not be jealous. Not of Gottlieb Vogler, of all men. Still, she looked far too secure in Vogler’s arms, too trusting of him.

  She should have come to Jacob. Marching up to them, he could see her pale face damp with tears.

  “Are you hurt?” he rasped, not in enough control to ask what he needed most to know.

  Are you safe? Are you mine?

  Breaking away from Gottlieb awkwardly, she lifted her eyes to Jacob’s. Then her gaze traveled nervously down his soiled shirtfront, down his dusty breeches. Impatient, unsettled, he endured her inspection, then gently touched a hand under her chin.

  “Who hurt you?”

  She averted her eyes. “No one. ’Twas naught.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “Do you understand my question?” Retha felt Jacob Blum’s massive presence, his breathing still ragged from his fight. “Are you hurt?”


  Yes. No. She shook her head. She wasn’t hurt. She wanted him to go away. If he hadn’t come after her looking like a thundercloud, she might have stilled her trembling. She might have ignored the bile that had risen in her throat while he grappled with the redheaded captain.

  Whoever that man was. He was vile, she knew it without knowing how she knew. When he had raised his hand, gesturing rudely in the air, then swung his musket at Brother Blum, she had flown into Vogler’s arms, her wits as scrambled as if the captain had swung at her.

  Now Jacob took her elbow protectively, as he had that day with the soldiers, and drew her to the edge of the crowd onto a crackling span of drought-dried grass.

  “Can you answer me? Are you hurt?” Jacob repeated huskily. Though he sounded riled, to her his soft German had the silkiness of song.

  “No, not hurt.” She shook her head, eyes closed against a confusing sweep of tenderness. The man who wanted to marry her was safe, he was holding her elbow tight. She had decided to accept his proposal the minute she had seen him ride into town, tall and stalwart and in charge. Yet as the argument escalated, fear overwhelmed her until he took his quarry down. It was as if he had been fighting for her, as if she had thrown her heart into the fight with him. She would have died if he’d been hurt.

  “Look at me, Sister Retha.” His voice sounded gentle, but she opened her eyes to a darkly troubled gaze. “Something troubles you.”

  “I…” What could she say? That the sight of the redheaded man had made her skin crawl? That the prospect of Jacob being hurt had torn at her heart? “Fighting upsets me.”

  “Humph,” he grunted. He didn’t sound convinced. “Fighting upsets a lot of people, but no one else cried.”

  She felt her cheek and found it wet. “’Tis only perspiration, Brother Blum. From the heat.”

  He leaned in to inspect her face, possessively, as if he had a right. He smelled of dirt and horse and manly endeavor, and she felt her face flush. “Heat doesn’t damp your lashes,” he said firmly, trailing a finger just beneath her eye for proof. Her breath caught at his tender touch. “I know a dirty, tearstained face when I see one. I have a great deal of experience.”