A Place Called Home Read online

  Tad flushed, his eyes wide and flickering with golden sparks. "That buck came right down to the lick, Ma. Right down to the lick! Stood there pretty as you please. Still like. Listening, I guess. Almost as if he was waiting for me to raise my gun."

  All Livi could think about was running her hands over her son, making sure none of that blood was his.

  "And when the boy did raise his rifle"—Joss Smiley took up telling the tale—"he dropped that deer as if he had been hunting for fifty years."

  "Handles himself well," Lem Stewart added with a hint of awe. "Damn well."

  These men were as proud of her boy as he was of himself. Livi nodded, beginning to understand what killing his first deer meant to her son.

  A husky prickle rose in the back of her throat.

  David should be here for this, she thought. David or Reid Campbell, at the very least. Some man who could fully appreciate Tad's triumph.

  She sucked in a ragged breath and quelled her regrets. To show anything but pride would negate Tad's first act of manhood, betray everything he was struggling to prove. And for all her reservations, Livi Talbot was desperately proud of her son.

  She reached out to ruffle Tad's fair hair. "Good shooting, boy," she pronounced. "By the size of that stag, we'll be eating off it for a week."

  Tad grinned, flushed with his mother's acknowledgment. "Guess I did all right."

  Livi searched hard and found a smile. "I guess you did."

  "You be needing help with butchering, boy?" Sam Willoughby asked as the others drifted away.

  "I'd be happy for the help," Tad answered, assuring a share to the other man's family. "We'll cut some for Joss and the Stewarts, too."

  "Be back with my apron and my knives," Willoughby offered as he turned to go. "Your pap sure taught you good, boy."

  Livi noticed the way Tad's jaw stiffened. She saw the wash of color recede from his face. She shared the raw, parching pain of his sudden desolation.

  "Tad," she began, instinctively reaching toward her son.

  With a jerk, he shrugged away.

  "Tad, please." All she wanted was to assure him it was all right to miss his pa, that there were times when a boy needed a man beside him. Tad's straight back and squared chin denied her any rights where comforting was concerned.

  "I'm a man, Ma," he said, his voice gone bleak. "I killed my very first buck today."

  The declaration tore at Livi's heart. Tad was too young to call himself a man, for all that he had earned that right. He hurt too much to deny his grief for his father, yet he stubbornly refused to turn to her.

  "Your father would be proud."

  "Yes, Ma." She saw the harsh, wretched twist to Tad's lips. "I think he would."

  * * *

  In dry weather, crossing the Powell River would have been easy. After two days of persistent rain, it was anything but.

  Sitting her horse well back in the line of travelers, Livi watched with apprehension as a continuous string of riders skittered down the muddy embankment above the ford. As the horses entered, the dun-green water ruffled against their fetlocks and knees, swirled under their bellies and past their shoulders. In the best of circumstances it took skill to stay a crossing's shallower course. Without being able to see bottom or watch the ripple of the water passing over a bar, it was nearly impossible. With the river running so high, the current threatened to push the horses and riders off the hairpin shoal and drag them into the churn of rapids downstream. That the river was awash with debris made the passage even more treacherous.

  When they'd reached the Powell crossing, the heads of the families had met to decide what to do.

  "My husband's journal says the ford should run chest-deep and about twenty feet wide," Livi offered. "Today it must be twice that. I think we should wait for the water to drop."

  "Not all of us can afford to wait, Mrs. Talbot," George Willoughby put in. "We need to clear land before we can plant our crops. Every day we delay is a day we'll be short at harvest."

  A general murmur of assent ran through the group, though Lem Stewart came down on Livi's side. "Seems like we're taking an awful risk crossing the river while it's so swelled with rain."

  "The men scouting have seen signs of Indians on this bank," Sam Willoughby argued.

  "As if high water will keep the Indians here if they've a mind to cross," sniffed Turnip Carter.

  Hyram Boggs cast his vote. "I say we forge ahead. You, Reverend?"

  Lindenwood's words would decide the matter. "We need to believe that the Lord will provide."

  Livi thought what the Lord had provided was a good deal more river than was good for any of them.

  The men did make concessions to the uneven footing and the current. Four riders stationed themselves along the width of the shoal to assist members of the party as they crossed. Still, it proved to be slow going, traversing the river a single rider at a time and ferrying pack horses over in twos or threes.

  Livi, sitting well up the bank with her family, shifted in her saddle, trying to ease the knots in her back. She hated the waiting, and she blessed Molly Baker for keeping Cissy occupied. Tad sat his horse beside Livi, bearing the inactivity no better than she.

  The Lindenwoods, the Willoughbys, the Stewarts, and about half of the Boggs family had successfully crossed the ford when Joss Smiley, who was next in line, took out and lit his pipe. Ripe, pungent, and sickly-sweet, the tobacco smoke trailed in Livi's direction and brought a flush of sickness up the back of her throat. Her ears rang and her mouth went wet, and she knew she was about to disgrace herself.

  There was no time to dismount and seek the privacy of the distant woods. Tossing the pack animals' lead line in Tad's direction and urging her horse down the slope, Livi dodged around a rocky overhang.

  Once she was out of sight, the nausea took her in earnest. Clinging to the saddle horn, Livi bent double and lost what little she'd eaten at noontime. The trees danced circles around her, and a whirring filled her head. She closed her eyes and hung on tight until the spinning stopped. When she finally managed to raise her head, she was shaking and weak. With an effort, she lifted her water bag and rinsed her mouth.

  If anyone had seen her vomiting they'd realize she was pregnant. They'd also know she'd held back the truth of her condition to ensure her family's passage. That's when the men would gather, pack their pipes, and debate what should be done with her.

  The women would shake their heads in sympathy, but hold their peace. In the end, Livi Knew what the judgment must be—she and the children would be sent back to the Block House.

  A shiver shook her. She knew she couldn't trek those trails again. She couldn't fight her way through the high, constricting mountains. Couldn't brave the forest and the Indians on her own. Livi's breathing shuddered. Then outrage fought its way through her need to weep. What right did these men have to send her back after she'd come so far?

  Just then the clamor of voices raised in alarm snapped her attention back to the ford. What she saw made her blood run cold.

  Somewhere upstream, a century-old oak had been ripped from the riverbank and was bearing down on the ford—and the pack train—like a vengeful Medusa. Its huge trunk rolled in the current. Its branches clawed the water. A snarl of writhing roots streamed out behind.

  The people toward both banks were well out of harm's way, but caught halfway across the shallow shoal was Hyram Boggs's oldest girl, Jemima, and her little brother, Marcus. While the girl spurred her gelding toward the far side of the river, her brother Marcus clung to her back, his bony arms locked around her.

  The children foundered in the boil of the current, dwarfed by the size of the tree bearing down on them. Over the roar of the river, Livi could hear them shouting for help.

  She watched with her heart in her throat as the branches loomed above them. Then, just as the tree was about to run them down, the trunk slammed into a boulder rising out of the water just above the ford. Wood ground against rock. Splinters flew. The children pl
unged madly toward the riverbank as the huge tree began to swing, scribing a long, slow arc across the surface of the river.

  Gnarled limbs reached out toward them. Long, tapering branches stretched and curled. The children seemed to be nearly free of the danger when one of the limbs snagged Marcus's suspenders and snatched him off the horse's back.

  Both children screamed. On the near end of the ford Lem Stuart charged toward them. Hyram Boggs bolted down the opposite bank. Neither man was close enough to grab the boy as the tree dipped over the shoal and lurched downstream.

  "Papa!" Marcus shrieked as the river swirled up his chest. "Papa!"

  The boy's cry swooped to silence as the tree bucked and rolled, plunging Marcus beneath the surface of the water. Everyone on the bank stood frozen, horrified. The child was drowning in front of half a hundred people, and there was nothing any of them could do to save him.

  Livi sat with her hands clamped tight on Nancy's reins, praying for a miracle. Then abruptly the branches rose, revealing Marcus dangling among the twisted limbs, a speck of boy, still caught fast and at the mercy of the river.

  All at once Livi realized that hiding her bout of sickness might have taken her just far enough down the bank to make a grab at the boy as he washed by.

  Fear for her own children spun through her head, but only she had any chance of rescuing Marcus.

  "This is a damn stupid thing to do," she muttered and kicked her horse forward.

  Livi's buttermilk mare took off like the spirited hunter she'd been a decade before. With grace born of generations of good horseflesh, Nancy bolted two long strides toward the edge of the bank. She gathered herself and leaped as if the swollen Powell River offered no more of a challenge than a water jump.

  Livi closed her eyes and hung on. There was no telling how deep the river was, no telling what the bottom was like, no time to make plans. The jar of landing slammed her teeth together. Spray flared high, rising cold against her belly and chest.

  Hunching, Livi pulled Nancy's reins to the left and sent the mare lurching downstream.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Livi located Marcus as much by sound as by sight. The boy wailed as the current by turns doused him in the river and jerked him out. It was a thin sound, choked and warbly. She homed to it instinctively, maneuvering her horse.

  If she moved fast enough, if the timing was right, she might intercept the tree and Marcus a few yards above the first white foxtails of the Powell River rapids.

  She could sense the tree looming up, dark and malevolent. Overwhelming and powerful. Livi held back, knowing she would have a single chance to snatch the child.

  The web of branches whooshed past, nearly unseating her. As it did, her fingers snagged Marcus's shirt. She yanked him to her and wrapped her forearm around his waist. His fragile rib cage flexed beneath her palm. She couldn't remember Tad ever seeming so wiry and thin.

  With all her strength she strained to wrench Marcus free. The jolt of resistance all but unseated her. Marcus's braces were snarled in the branches like a ruined skein of darning thread.

  Marcus flailed in her arms. Opened his mouth in a cry she could not hear above the roar of the rapids just ahead.

  White water frothed around them. The tree bobbed and trembled. She tightened her grip on the child as the branches took a slow, inexorable dip, dragging Marcus down.

  Water closed over his head, and she could feel him squirming. It took everything she had to just hold on.

  Locking her knee around the saddle horn, Livi yanked hard. Branches bent, jabbing her. Twigs raked her face. The rapids seethed around them. Mass and water dragged at her arms as if they were taffy.

  Then with the shriek of tearing branches, Livi jerked Marcus free. She dragged the child against her chest and anchored him close. She felt his ribs expand and heard him coughing.

  Livi gave the mare her head, and as they made for the bank, the tree abruptly wheeled. One limb swung around to smack her between the shoulder blades. It knocked her forward, nearly out of the saddle. Another blow glanced off her temple, sending comets bursting before her eyes. As the white water sucked them downstream, Livi clung—to Marcus, to the reins, to her graying film of consciousness.

  Then she felt the mare surge toward the bank, churn through the shallows, and stumble up the slope. An instant later the sound of the rushing river receded.

  She was aware of Marcus in her arms, the way he was sobbing against her.

  Alive, she thought with a shiver of satisfaction. He was alive and safe.

  Nancy had barely come to a stop when people surrounded them—a blur of faces, a clamor of shouts and weeping. Hyram Boggs appeared at Livi's side and reached for Marcus. Livi lowered the child into his father's hands.

  She saw Hyram stroke the boy's face, run one trembling palm along the length of his back. There were tears on Hyram's cheeks. There were tears on Livi's, too.

  With tremendous difficulty, she untangled herself from the sidesaddle and slid to the ground. Her knees wobbled when she tried to stand and the sky wheeled overhead.

  Beyond the press of bodies, the murmurs of appreciation, the patting of hands, she could see the river churning, wide and fast and dangerous. She could see the tree, powerful and vicious, tearing itself apart in the rocky shallows.

  All at once the shivering took her. She realized what she'd done, what she'd risked. She might have been drowned or crippled in her attempt at rescuing Marcus. She might have been killed.

  She might have left her own two helpless babies alone in this wilderness.

  The buzz of praise receded. Livi's vision dimmed. Hands that had been supporting her eased her down onto the trampled grass as her consciousness narrowed and stole away.

  When Livi came to herself again, her head lay pillowed in Molly Baker's lap. "Are you all right?" the woman demanded, her voice gone shrill. "Are you truly all right?"

  Livi slowly raised her head. Though she was wet and cold, battered and weary, she was truly all right. But before she could answer Molly, Tad elbowed through the crowd with Cissy at his heels.

  "You all right, Ma?" her son demanded, dropping to his knees beside her. Cissy sobbed and threw herself against her mother's chest.

  "I'm fine," she said, gathering her children against her. "I really am fine."

  But even though the baby she was carrying in secret, David's last and most precious child, was still nestled safe inside her, she wasn't fine. She had seen the knowing look in Molly's eyes and, if Molly had guessed she was pregnant others would, too.

  With an effort, Livi worked her way up onto her elbows and finally sat up. Before she had managed to clamber to her feet, Hyram Boggs loomed over her.

  Livi scoured every cell for the fortitude to face the man who'd plagued her from the moment they'd left the Block House, but she couldn't manage so much as a gram of gumption.

  "Why did you do it?" Boggs scowled down at her. "Why did you go after our Marcus? I did my best to keep you off this pack train. I've tried to make things difficult for you and your family on the trail. So why did you risk your life to rescue our boy?"

  Livi saw Tacy Boggs standing beside her husband, with Marcus bound tight against her chest.

  "How could I do anything else?" she asked.

  Boggs nodded. "Then you've done me and my family a great service, Mrs. Talbot. One my wife and I can never repay. I'm sorry for how we treated you."

  Livi inclined her head in acknowledgment.

  With Hyram Boggs in her debt, no one could ask them to leave the pack train. As far as Kentucky, she and the children would be safe.

  Chapter 5

  Martin's Station was the single knot of civilization on the long, raveled cord of the Wilderness Road. Slightly more than fifty miles beyond the Block House and nearly a hundred and twenty miles from English Station in Kentucky, Joseph Martin's settlement was not much more than a trading post, a smithy, and a good, sweet spring. Still, nearly every traveler stopped there. It was a respite where travele
rs could prepare for the assault on the Cumberland Gap or catch their breath after the decent from it.

  What Livi, worn by the strain of the journey and the first months of her pregnancy, desperately needed during their stop was the chance to rest. So when Molly offered to look after Cissy their first day at the station, Livi took her up on it.

  When she woke at midafternoon, the first thing she saw was Tad's slate propped against the tent post.

  GON TO SHOOT US SUM DINNER

  "Damn that boy!" she muttered, seeing that David's rifle was gone. "What makes him think he can just take his father's gun and go hunting on his own?"

  This wasn't the woods around Lynchburg where Tad knew every hill and stream. It was back-country Virginia. Forests were thicker here. They might harbor bears or mountain lions. Or Indians lying in wait for an unwary hunter.

  A knob of fear growing in her chest, Livi prowled the campsite. She had scoured it from east to west when she ran into Turnip Carter. He must have sensed her agitation, because he asked her what was wrong.

  "It's Tad, Mr. Carter," she told him. "He's gone off hunting somewhere."

  "Not alone, surely?"

  Livi shook her head.

  "Well, Joss Smiley and Sam Willoughby went off a while ago. No doubt Tad's hunting with them."

  Livi did her best to rein in her concern. Joss and Sam would look after Tad.

  "But what if Tad is out there alone?" she asked in spite of herself.

  Turnip Carter took her hands, his round, ruddy face turned up to hers. "Now see here, missy. That's one fine boy you got there. Has more gumption than some folks twice his age. Got his pappy's rifle with him, doesn't he?"

  Livi nodded, tears welling.

  "Then hush, girl," Carter admonished her. "One way or t'other, he'll be all right. Shooting his first buck cut him loose of your apron strings. You want to tie him up again?"

  Livi gave a breathy laugh. "Maybe I do."

  Turnip squeezed her hands once more and let them go. "Now don't you fret. Tad will be back soon—probably toting something good for supper."