Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (10 page)

Arrogant Indian bastard! she thought in a sudden rush of anger. How dare he think that he could slip beneath her defenses with so paltry a subterfuge? Was she supposed to be impressed with his well-developed muscles or the tattoos that marked his ascent to manhood? Touch him, indeed! The next time she would leave the marks of her nails on his belly. She would make him sorry that he had driven so infamous a bargain with her. She was no giggling Indian maiden, ready to play slap-and-tickle and enjoy a roll in the bed furs. She was Elise Laffont, a widow of property, a Frenchwoman of pride and self-respect. The next time would be different; he would not have everything so much his way. She would conquer her aversion enough to defend herself, enough to set him back on his moccasined heels. He could save his pity for himself, for he would need it when she was through with him.

She lifted her lashes, looking once more to where Reynaud strode at the front of the column. He ducked beneath a tree limb, bending to the side with his heavy pack in a movement that was lithe and smooth in its strength. His breechclout swung and for an instant she caught a glimpse of the copper stretch of his muscled thigh above his leggings before he straightened again. She swallowed with a heated feeling in the pit of her stomach, her mind flashing an instant image of him as he had stood naked in the rain the night before.

She turned swiftly away, giving her head a quick shake to banish the vision. She thought instead of his stealth as he had returned to bed some time later, his intense quiet as he took care not to disturb her. He had fallen asleep immediately, or so it seemed. She had thought to lie wakeful, but it had not been so. Exhaustion had crept upon her moments later and so soundly had she slept that she had not known when the rain stopped, when the dawn came, or when he had left her once again. Good enough; she had certainly not wanted to face him. She would be only too happy not to see him ever again.

“If you please” Madame Doucet called. “I must stop, must rest.”

Reynaud strode on without pause. His gaze was alert, probing as he watched the trail ahead, but the tilt of his head was rigid and his manner so aloof it seemed his thoughts were elsewhere.

“M’sieu Reynaud!”

He swung at the despairing call of the older woman, coming to a halt as she repeated her request. A brief gesture indicated a rest stop for them all before he moved on. The men threw themselves down on the ground, but Madame Doucet beckoned to Elise, nodding toward a clump of evergreen myrtle a few yards into the woods.

Elise went with the older woman. A few minutes later, she stepped from the myrtle clump, wandering deeper into the woods and breathing deeply in her relief at being away from the others for even a few short minutes. It was difficult enough to be obliged to keep so close to people whom she barely knew, but the sidelong glances she had received this morning had strained her temper as well. She knew very well what they were all thinking. They wondered what had passed between her and the half-breed the night before, wondered if she had taken pleasure in it and if Reynaud was satisfied with his payment. Doubtless they pictured all manner of cavortings and wearisome frolic in the storm-wracked darkness and were each curious or concerned after their fashion. Elise reached up to jerk a handful of leaves from a beech tree, shredding them as she let them fall.

A shrill, demented scream brought her slewing around. She ran toward the sound, toward where she had left Madame Doucet. The scream came again.

“Indians!
Mon Dieu
, Indians!”

The older woman came running from the myrtles with her hands in the air, her mouth open in a wail, and her eyes wide with terror. Elise caught her and they were both nearly thrown off their feet as Madame Doucet reached out to grab her in a stranglehold.

“What is it? Where are the Indians?”

“I saw him.” The woman moaned. “It was horrible, horrible; a face, watching me.”

Elise flung a quick look around her, but could see nothing. By that time Pascal and Henri were upon them, shouting, demanding to know what had happened. Elise told them, completing her explanation with her gaze on Reynaud as he arrived from where he had ranged ahead, followed by St. Amant on his crutches.

“Return to the track, all of you,” Reynaud ordered. “I will look into it.”

With Henri supporting Madame Doucet on the other side, they did as they were bid. They sank down among the bundles they had dropped at the wayside with Elise cradling Madame Doucet in her arms. Henri and St. Amant settled close by, though Pascal, cradling his musket, leaned against a tree on guard. For long moments they were silent, though the older woman continued to sob. After a time her crying turned to words. “Ah, my daughter, my beautiful Annette, gone, gone, gone. And Charles, so sweet, so dear, so little. They will die, I know it. They will die.”

“Be still, woman,” Pascal grunted. “We will all die if you bring the Indians down on us.”

“But you did not see. He cried out and they struck him, my dear little Charles, my only grandson. My daughter, there was blood in her hair… . Oh,
mon Dieu, mon Dieu
, I cannot bear it. I cannot.”

Elise did her best to comfort the woman, murmuring softly and smoothing away the tears from her cheeks. Henri sidled closer. Keeping his voice low, he asked, “Did you see anything, Madame Laffont?”

She shook her head. “That doesn’t mean there was no one there.”

Pascal and St. Amant exchanged a long look and St. Amant shrugged. Henri asked, “How could they follow us so far?”

“For all Chavalier’s precautions, we are doubtless leaving a trail as obvious as that of a herd of buffalo. We are none of us
coureurs des bois
, used to living in the woods.”

“Why didn’t they attack then? Why follow and spy on us?” the boy persisted.

“Perhaps out of respect for our guide,” St. Amant suggested.

“Or cooperation with him,” Pascal said, his lip curled in a sneer.

“What do you mean?” Elise asked.

“He could be playing us along, pretending to lead us until he has what he wants. When he’s tired of the game, he’ll call in his friends — or kill us himself. Try to, that is.” The merchant hefted his musket.

“Don’t be ridiculous! We have nothing that he values.”

“Oh, no?” The sneer was more pronounced as Pascal allowed his gaze to wander suggestively over Elise.

She lifted a brow, her mouth twisted with derision. “If you refer to me, then I must remind you that it would have been much easier for him to have dispatched you all earlier and taken me prisoner.”

“Are you defending that half-breed?”

“I am telling you how I see our situation.”

“He must have been something last night if he managed to please our frigid widow.”

She stared at the merchant. “What did you say?”

“It was Chepart’s name for you. Didn’t you know?”

“I should have guessed it,” she replied with a snap.

“No Frenchman good enough to thaw you, and now you share the half-breed’s furs and seem to be melting. What kind of a fire did he light under you,
ma chère
madame; what kind of instrument did he use to warm you?”

There came a soft sound like a rush of wind and Reynaud stepped among them. When he spoke, there was deadly quiet in his tones. “If you are curious, Pascal, why not ask me?”

Pascal opened his mouth, then as he met the iron-gray gaze of the half-breed, saw the casual placement of a copper hand near the knife in his belt, he faltered. He licked his lips. “It — it’s no concern of mine.”

“Remember it.”

Madame Doucet reached out to pluck at one of Reynaud’s leggings as he stood so still beside her. “The — the Indian I saw?”

“Not Natchez, but Tensas.”

“That was one of the tribes expected to rise with the people of the Great Sun,” Elise said quickly.

“True. But because the Natchez attacked in advance of the chosen day, they are incensed against them instead of the French. The man was a scout only, and harmless.”

“You found him, spoke to him?” St. Amant asked.

Reynaud inclined his head in assent. “Briefly.”

There was an inflection in his voice that Elise did not understand. Did no one else notice it or was the half-breed so intimidating that they did not dare question him? The insight was vague, no more than a flash of feeling. A moment later, as everyone broke into chatter in their relief, it was forgotten.

The day slipped past in a haze of fatigue. Streams were crossed, fogs of mosquitoes fought with applications of bear grease, and packs shifted and exchanged to redistribute the chafed spots on their backs and shoulders. The stiffness of their muscles faded with their exertion, becoming a deep soreness. Their strides lengthened, developed a regular cadence.

There was no further sign of Indians. The leagues dropped behind them as they threaded the primeval woods, staring up at cypress trees that towered one hundred and fifty feet above them, skirting oaks and hickories so large that three men could barely reach around them and so prodigal with their acorns and nuts that the ground beneath them was ankle deep with the cuttings of squirrels.

Their way was enlivened by the antics of those same small animals, gray squirrels and those with orange-rust tails, squirrels so curious, so seldom hunted that they played tag above them and scolded from the lower limbs of the trees as the column passed underneath. They saw silent files of deer ghosting away from them into the forest or bounding in flight ahead; they had to stop more than once for a family of opossums, known as wood’s rats by the French, to waddle out of the way. Once they stood still, holding their breaths for what seemed like hours until a skunk scratching in the leaves had thoroughly searched the area for grubs and beetles and meandered away.

It was while Elise was stepping over a rotted log at the edge of a natural clearing that she rammed the thorn into her foot. The wild plums grew thick there, their quivering leaves turning yellow, their limbs armed with thorns. She did not see the dead limb until she felt the piercing pain. The thorn had sliced through her shoe on the side and ripped out again. She did not want to call attention to such a small thing by asking to stop and the rate of marching that Reynaud set was so brisk that there was no time to look at it and catch up again. By the time they halted once more, she had such a blistered place on her shoulder from her pack that she had not thought of the thorn again. She remembered it only after they had made camp for the night and the evening meal was done.

Still, she sat, so weary that it seemed too much of an effort to take off her shoe and tend to the thorn scratch. She leaned forward with her arms wrapped around her knees, staring into the flames. Madame Doucet retired early, crawling into her enclosure where her muffled sobbing was heard until she had cried herself to sleep. Henri wandered away. Pascal and St. Amant went into the woods and came back again before heading for their small tent-like shelters. In the back of her mind, Elise expected Reynaud to leave as he had the night before; there was a spring only a short distance away that had supplied their water for cooking and would doubtless do the same for those who felt the need of bathing. Her own pot of water sat simmering near the fire even now.

He did not move. He reclined across the fire from her, lying on his side with his weight supported on one elbow. She glanced at him, then at their own shelter that lay in the shadows apart from the others. If he was aware of any strain in the atmosphere, he gave no sign of it. The sharp-edged planes of his face, gilded by the leaping yellow-orange light of the fire that left the hollows in shadow, were schooled to impassivity.

But Reynaud was aware. He watched Elise in the firelight, feeling a slow tightening in his loins as the night drew in. She had rolled up the velvet sleeves of her habit and the flickering light was reflected in a gold sheen from the delicate turnings of her arms. He wanted to reach out, to stroke her skin, to put his finger on the frown between her brows and trail it down the narrow bridge of her nose to the tender softness of her lips. He could not and so he watched the expressions that crossed her face, and he listened.

There was a raccoon in the tree above the shelter he would soon share with the woman across from him. It had been there since they had stopped, dithering about from limb to limb. Soon, when everything was quiet, it would make up its mind to climb down and lumber off into the night. The rustle of cloth told him that Henri was not asleep. The boy was turning restlessly, probably thinking of ways to murder him and rescue Elise. Poor Henri was infatuated. Reynaud was not unfeeling. He would not deliberately exacerbate the boy’s natural sense of revulsion at the situation if he could prevent it. The trouble was, he could not. He would have to be careful with Henri. Often such raw emotion was more troublesome than having a rank traitor in the group.

Pascal would also bear watching. He had not cared for being forced to back down, not in front of Elise. His injured pride might demand some recompense. In dealing with him it would be well, Reynaud thought, if he could look beyond his dislike of the man and try to understand the frustration of one whose freedom had been bought and paid for by a woman’s favors. Or perhaps he was giving Pascal too much credit. The man might well be as much like the late Commandant Chepart as he seemed, too stupid, too self-centered to feel the obligation. It would make him easier to deal with, if it were so.