Read Online Judith E French by Moonfeather - Free Book Online Page B

had been killed trying to get her back. Amookas still bore the scars of running an Iroquois gauntlet, and she had told in brittle words of seeing her dead husband’s heart sliced from his warm body and eaten raw by Iroquois warriors. Leah’s grandfather had led the Shawnee war party that later rescued Amookas. Her grandfather was gravely wounded in the ensuing battle and had died of his injuries the following winter.
    When Leah was eight, Iroquois had attacked her village. She’d come face to face with a painted Mohawk brave, and he’d seized her by the hair, ready to dash her brains out with his war club. Alex had gotten off a snap shot, putting a musket ball neatly through the enemy brave’s forehead and saving her life.
    “How many do you think are out there?” Brandon whispered, pulling her back to the present with a start. “Just the one, or a war party?”
    She shrugged. “I dinna ken. We’re close to the camp for a single brave to stalk us, but . . .” She shook her head. “Seneca, they dinna think as we do. I canna tell ye.”
    “Do they know where we are?”
    She shrugged again. “If ye’d give me back my bow, I’d—”
    “Forget it. You’re not going to—”
    A covey of quail flew up a few hundred feet to their right. The sudden burst of noise sent Leah to her feet. Catching Brandon’s hand, she ducked low and began running down the gully away from the quail. “Kschamehella,” she cried. “Run.”
    The matted roots of a fallen tree blocked their path like a wall of solid earth. Leah ducked to the left and scrambled up the bank.
    “Drop the venison,” Brandon ordered.
    “Mata!” She slipped on the wet moss, and he caught her around the waist and boosted her up.
    Something hard struck him in the back, and he dropped to one knee.
    “Are you hurt?”
    “No.” He caught hold of a sapling and pulled himself up the last few feet. They dashed toward a clump of hemlocks as another arrow sped past.
    Hidden by the low-hanging boughs, Brandon yanked off his pack and notched an arrow into the bowstring. Cautiously, he parted the feathery green foliage and scanned the forest. Nothing moved. “I don’t see him,” he said.
    “There was only one mon.”
    “What makes you so sure?”
    Leah peered through the branches. There was no sign of their pursuer. “We be alive.” She tugged at his arm. “See. I was right nay t’ drop our venison.”
    Brandon glanced down at his pack. An arrow protruded from the bundle of meat. “That’s why it didn’t hurt when I was hit.” He chuckled. “And I thought it was because I was so tough.”
    She laughed softly. “Ye be tough enough . . . for an Englishman.” She looked out at the woods again. “We maun wait a wee bit, but I dinna think he will trouble us again this day.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “’Tis a feelin’, Brandon mine. I canna explain, but in the same way I ken his coming, I ken the leaving.” Absently, she fingered the amulet at her throat.
    “Spells? Witch sorcery?”
    “Nay,” she replied sharply, letting go of the triangular-shaped bauble. He reached out for the amulet, and she jerked away. “Mata!” She flushed. “’Tis no witchery. Just a charm my father left me when he went away.”
    “And you’ve worn it ever since. You must have loved him deeply.”
    “Aye.” Her tone grew cold and distant. “But I was geptschat, a fool. He left me and my mother to return to his English wife, his white-skinned child.” Unconsciously, Leah’s small hands tightened into fists at her sides. “My father went awa’ in the time o’ new leaves, and when the first snow fell, it cast a winter pelt on my mother’s grave. She carried his bairn—a son, but they buried him wi’ her. Born too soon in a river o’ her blood.” Leah shivered. “I could have stood my father’s leavin’, but did he have t’ take my mother wi’ him?”
    “I’m sorry,” Brandon said. “Life is hard for an orphan. My mother and father took in my