Courting Morrow Little: A Novel (40 page)

"I've never seen finer," Loramie's clerk said as he examined
the pelts. "I hardly have to glance at them to know they are your
husband's, Madame Red Shirt. Every season it is the same:"

"They're more Morrow's than mine;' Red Shirt replied, selecting powder and shot further down the wide counter. "She
cured them"

Surprised, she looked at him. He'd not shown his appreciation till now, and it warmed her like the potbellied stove at her
back.

Taking her arm, Pierre Loramie gestured to row upon row
of trade goods. "What catches your eye today? I have fine silks,
embossed flannel, vermillion, gartering, ribbon, pinheads, handkerchiefs, and some brocade recently arrived from d'Etroit."

"Might you have a thimble and some thread?" she asked.

"For you, madame, I have more"

Crossing the plank floor, he led her to a lantern-lit corner.
There she grew wide-eyed at sewing chests finer than Aunt
Etta's own and a rainbow of fabrics she couldn't even name.
Elaborate tins held countless spools of bright thread, thimbles,
metal needles, and a bounty of buttons.

"I'll take one spool of plain thread, two needles, and one
thimble, she said softly, unsure of how the trading transpired.

Loramie winked conspiratorially. "Your husband has told me
you are to take anything you like:"

Turning, she looked at Red Shirt, who merely smiled while
Loramie began displaying his latest shipment of striped cot ton, the heavier osnaburg, and delicate silks. Thinking ahead,
she selected swanskin and watched as the clerk cut enough for
two babies.

"I know you are partial to cocoa," Loramie said, turning to
take two tins off a shelf.

She smiled her thanks, already perusing the bins of dried
rice and beans, huge barrels of pickles and brined beef, and a
selection of books that would have made Pa linger. A final aisle
boasted elaborately plumed hats and silk shoes and overdone
dresses.

Morrow watched the clerks move their goods across the frozen common, past Loramie's imposing house to the cabin that
would be their home till they went west. Soon after, she stood
in the middle of the impossibly small room and tried to summon some appreciation for the cane-backed rocker before the
stone hearth and the bed in the corner boasting a clean, if less
than fluffy, feather tick. Angelique brought over a washbasin
and pitcher while Morrow unpacked their belongings from the
Red River cabin.

Almost home, she thought, her mind on Missouri. She saw
Red Shirt's eyes linger on the thick-timbered beams strung with
spiderwebs before taking in every dim corner escaping the lamplight. Though he said nothing, she sensed his dissatisfaction.
Was he missing his old way of life? Wanting to be out under the
stars? The thought that he might be grieved her. They should
have been well on their way to Missouri by now ...

While he went with Loramie to settle accounts, she finished
unpacking. Esme helped make the big bed and set out kettles
and pans at the hearth before leaving Morrow alone.

As she bent to take some pewter cups out of a saddlebag,
her senses quickened. From far off came a distant yet distinct
sound, almost an echo. Long minutes ticked by, bringing the
noise ever nearer. The very room seemed to reverberate, re minding her of the steady cadence of regimental drums, full of
bluster and warning.

Red Shirt appeared in the doorway. "Redcoats, he said.

Redcoats ... notBluecoats. Lately she'd hardly thought of the
Americans who'd pursued them beyond the Ohio River. Within
the safety of Loramie's Station, she'd begun to feel cocooned
from the danger. Their ongoing honeymoon, sweet and hallowed
as any should be, had eclipsed the gathering darkness. Did her
fear show in her face?

He looked at her, the thunder of the drums between them, and
she looked at his weapons by the cabin door. Loramie's words,
spoken across the candlelit table on Christmas Eve, returned
to her in a haunting rush.

I fear for you, mon ami.

Having never lived within the confines of a fort, Morrow was
soon wondering how Lizzy and Jemima had managed traipsing
to the necessary at the far end of the common and laundering
their under things in plain view of so many men. There was
no privacy to be had unless the door was barred, and then the
boldest Indians and frontiersmen would appear at the windows.
Within a few days she'd all but abandoned the strictures of her
old Red River routine. Her new life was like a patchwork quilt,
bright and colorful but entirely without pattern or order. She
quickly learned to keep a pot of stew simmering all day and to
show no surprise when someone stopped in to have a bite to eat
and a good look at her besides. Soon there was a marked trail to
their cabin door and dozens of bewildering reunions.

"I think you know everyone in this fort," she said to Red Shirt
with wonder. "Perhaps the whole frontier"

He smiled and his eyes seemed to dance. "Once you asked if
I ever stayed in one place. Now you know the answer"

British soldiers, Indians, and frontiersmen gathered round
their hearth, filling the air with a thundercloud of smoke as they
puffed on their pipes and swapped stories or news. She understood little of the cacophony of languages-English, French,
Spanish, and a host of Indian tongues-but all reminded her
of Babel.

Sitting apart from the circle of men, she stayed engrossed in
her sewing, fashioning tiny garments made of swanskin from Loramie's store and praying for the child she carried. Sometimes
when her queasiness seemed unbearable, she would slip outside
to stand beneath the blockhouse eave. There, beyond the post's
open postern gate, she could see the glowing campfires along
Loramie's Creek and was rewarded with the sweet trill of a fife
or a fiddle.

And then, quite suddenly, the torrent of visitors slowed to
a trickle.

Slightly alarmed, she turned to Red Shirt. "Is something
wrong? We have so few visitors anymore"

"The trading season is simply slowing down, he said. "And
your patience has been rewarded with peace"

Peace. That was what she felt in the flickering firelight alone
with him in the evenings to come, when they sat shoulder to
shoulder and he read from his Bible. The treasured copy was
even more worn now, having survived a second immersion in
the river they'd crossed on their way to Loramie's. She'd looked
regretfully at the water-stained text and had been grateful when
their host had offered a new one from his stores.

"Take it with you when you go out on a scout, mon ami," he'd
said. "It will cheer you when you sit about your campfire and
are missing your lovely wife"

Later, as she packed both Bibles in Red Shirt's saddlebags,
sneaking in some sweetmeats and other nonessentials from
Loramie's store, she prayed unceasingly for his safety. When he
first rode out, it seemed she held her breath and didn't exhale
till he came back again.

"What do you do out there?" she asked in the inky midnight
darkness when she couldn't sleep, knowing he'd be gone again
by dawn.

"Ride and read sign and hunt. Sometimes I come across red
flag men-"

"Red flag men?"

"Surveyors;' he said. "And I send them and their chains and
markers back from whence they came:"

She realized how dangerous it was, yet she knew he couldn't
be shut up in the post. He was earning their keep supplying meat
for Loramie's table, at which they were often guests. When he
was away, she spent much of her time with Angelique and her
daughters, sewing in their brightly lit sitting room. Their shared
talk and laughter seemed a living thing-warm and consoling,
strengthening and healing.

Often she thought of home, or tried to, but all the little details
that had cocooned her there were growing hazy. The view from
her bedroom window ... the leafy richness of the orchard ...
the disarray across the dogtrot ... the poignant timbre of Pa's
voice. Even her treasured, tattered memory of Jess seemed to
have fallen to pieces, as if leaving the Red River had broken their
last tenuous tie. Yet he was ever in her thoughts as she discreetly
studied the men who ventured into the post, hoping and praying he might be among them. But she soon grew disheartened.
There were so many bearded, trail-worn, dirty travelers. How
would she even recognize him if she saw him? And after so long,
how could he possibly know her?

As the snow thawed, Red Shirt's forays led to longer absences.
She began to sense a growing restlessness about him when he
was within fort walls. Though he never complained, she saw the
faraway look in his eyes and feared he was wishing they were on
the trail to Missouri. Sitting by the fire without him, she felt the
baby flutter inside her and pondered their uncertain future. Even
with Angelique across the way and hoards of people within and
without fort walls, she felt smothered by aloneness. She tried to
pray, but her tangled thoughts took a lonesome turn.

Pa, Ma, Euphemia dead. Jess missing.

And Morrow lost.

Red Shirt had been away for eight days. The first of spring's
wildflowers he'd picked for her-pale blue and nameless-had
wilted, bent over their vase in colorful disarray. Morrow tried
not to look at them as she walked to the postern gates and
gazed in the direction he'd ridden out, as if doing so could
bring him back to her. Even Loramie seemed tense and restless
in his absence. His best scout had gone missing and he could
not account for him, and he was a man who liked to account
for everything.

Awakening the next morning to a tumbled bed empty of
Red Shirt's bulk once more, she felt a gnawing restlessness. Finally, she could stand it no longer. She sat up on the side of the
feather bed and waited for the unwelcome rush of wooziness,
but all she felt were her cold feet and the miracle of life inside
her. Despite her heaviness of heart, the wonder of it made her
want to sing. She hummed an old French lullaby that pulled at
the corners of her mind.

She dressed in simple calico, reaching for the scarlet cape
Angelique had given her and settling it around her shoulders.
Quiet as an Indian, she slipped through the front gates in the
early dawn, past shelters and arbors full of sated, snoring wayfarers sleeping off their revelry of the night before.

As she walked south along Loramie's Creek, toward Kentucke
and the Red River and all the familiar things she'd turned her
back on months before, the implications of Red Shirt's absence
tugged at her. He'd never been away more than three days at
most. Eight seemed a lifetime. Anger crowded out concern and
then circled back to simple worry.

Lord, You know where he is even ifI don't. Please don't leave
me wondering, like I've always wondered about Jess.

The morning was new and clean-smelling, the air threaded
with birdsong. Out here God seemed to give her a gift at every
turn-a pretty stone, an eagle's majestic flight, a fragile wild flower pushing up through new grass. She stopped and rested
on a sun-warmed rock, eyes on a distant river unfolding in its
spring rush through the greening valley beyond.