Shawnee Bride

“Damn good thing we got somethin’ outa this,” the man named Zeke growled. “Her boyfriend there didn’t have enough in his pocket to make rollin’ him worth our trouble. Leastwise, we can have ourselves a little fun. Wanna toss dice for who gets ‘er first?”

Clarissa could feel his breath, rank and steamy against her bare shoulder. Gulping back her fear, she glared at the wiry man in buckskins. “Don’t either of you touch me!” she snapped imperiously. “If the lieutenant and I don’t return straightaway to the fort, my uncle, Colonel Hancock, will have his whole regiment out looking for us. You’ll both be hanged on the spot!”

“Now ain’t you the uppity one!” Zeke’s grip tightened on her arms, hurting her. “You won’t be so high-an’mighty once you’ve had us atween your legs, will she, Maynard? Hell, she’ll be beggin’ for it, like they all do!”

The man in buckskins hesitated, scowling.

“Maynard?”

“Shut up. I’m thinkin’.” He scratched at his scraggly jaw. “If what the girl says is true, we’d be runnin’ a risk to take turns with her here in town. But if we was to carry her downriver with us…”

“Hell, Maynard, that’s the best idea yet!” Zeke responded with a whoop. “Ain’t nobody goin’ to trail us into Injun territory. We can keep the little spitfire tied to the boat an’ hump ‘er whenever we want. Atween times, she can cook an’ wash for us!”

Clarissa fought back waves of sick panic, forcing herself to stay calm. Her only chance of escape lay in keeping her head, she reminded herself. She would wait for the two men to lower their guard. Then, at the first opportunity”

We’re wastin’ time,” Maynard growled. “Let’s get to the boat.”

“What about the boyfriend?” Zeke glanced down at Tom Ainsworth’s limp body where it lay in the rainspattered mud.

Clarissa’s heart plummeted. She had been praying the young lieutenant was still alive and that someone would find him before it was too late. “Leave him here!” she urged. “Look at him! What possible harm can he do you now?”

“Plenty if he ain’t dead yet,” Maynard snapped. “And

even if he is, folks who find the body might piece together what happened. Only place this young bastard’s goin’ now is the bottom of the river.”

“Please.” Clarissa strained frantically against Zeke’s grasp. “Don’t kill him. I’ll do anything you say.”

Maynard laughed roughly as he bent to pick up Tom’s inert feet. “You’ll do it anyhow, girl. As I see it, you ain’t got much choice.”

The storm’s full fury was moving in, heavy rain whipping the river to a froth. Clarissa stumbled through the mud, pressed forward by Zeke’s painful grip on her arms. Through the downpour she could make out the river’s edge and the blocky outlines of the boats. Lanterns flickered through the darkness. Her heart leaped as she realized there were people on one sheltered deck-people who would surely not fail to heed a young girl’s cry for help.

Maynard had looped his arms around Tom’s feet and was dragging the young lieutenant facedown through the mud. Tom had not uttered a sound. Clarissa feared he was dead, but fearing was a far cry from knowing, and that uncertainty held her prisoner. If there was one chance in a hundred that Tom was alive, she could not break loose and abandon him.

“Step lively, now girl.” Zeke chuckled as he prodded her down the long slope toward the water. “The sooner we get you downriver, the sooner the fun can start!”

Clarissa trudged through the storm, willing herself to bide her time. Her gown was soaked, her shoes and petticoat caked with mud. Her hair hung in her face and streamed down her back in long, wet ribbons.

“I’ll wager you’re a virgin,” Zeke said, leering. “I can tell that much from the looks of you. Maynard an’ me, we always share the goods by half, but only one of us can break that cherry, an’ I aim for it to be me. I’m better equipped for it if I say so myself. Maynard, now, he’s just a little feller, if you get my meanin’!”

Clarissa steeled herself against his vulgar prattle. She had no illusions about what this unsavory pair planned to do with her. Just last month her newly married cousin, Jenny, had confided in breathless whispers all the details of physical love between a man and a woman. The description had fascinated Clarissa then. But what Zeke and Maynard had in mind was far removed from love, and the very thought of it made her sick to her stomach.

The lanterns were closer now. She could make out the silhouettes of three men in their light. They were staggering around on the deck, laughing raucously as they lurched against each other. They were drunk, she realized with a sinking heart. Drunk, and probably of the same evil stripe as her captors. But right now they were her only hope.

Another twenty paces, she calculated, and the strangers on the boat would be certain to hear her. Clarissa moved like a sleepwalker through the dark curtains of rain, every nerve quivering. Her life, and the life of Tom Ainsworth, hung in the balance, at the mercy of luck and timing.

She could hear the rush and tumble of the rain-swollen river. The lanterns were very close now, the strangers on board caught up in their own drunken revelry. Clarissa’s muscles tensed. It was now or never.

She spun hard away from her captor and plunged toward the lamplight. “Help us!” she screamed. “For the love of heaven-”

She saw one of the men turn. Then, without warning, a huge bolt of lightning split the sky and, in its booming echo, something cracked against the side of her head. She felt an explosion of pain. The lights spun, quivered then vanished in a dizzying spiral of blackness.

She awoke to the motion of the river.

For the first few breaths, the throbbing pain in Clarissa’s head seemed to fill the whole world. As her senses cleared, she became aware that she was lying on her side, her face pressed against a rough log surface.

Icy water surged between the logs, splashing her face and shocking her fully awake. Only then did she realize that it was near dawn. The rain was coming down in watery sheets, and the whole world seemed to be dipping and racing around her. When she tried to sit up, she discovered that her wrists were lashed to a support pole of a rude hut, built on to the log deck of a flatboat.

By the first pale light, she could make out a bulky figure at the rear of the boat. It was Zeke. Her scheme to rescue herself and Tom had come to nothing.

Tom! Where was he?

The thin rawhide cut her wrists, mingling streaks of blood with the rain as she writhed and twisted, her frantic gaze probing the shadows. When she could discover no sign of him, Clarissa knew, with a sickening certainty, that he was gone. She would never again see his eager grin. She would never again share his boyish laughter or watch his skilled fingers fashion a kite.

But there would be no time to mourn her friend. The boat was pitching crazily, spinning in the wild current. Zeke’s curses rose above the howl of the wind as he wrestled with the tiller. As Clarissa watched, numb with terror, Maynard staggered around the corner of the shack. He was fighting for balance on the lurching deck. “Take ‘er in to the bank, damn you!” he yelled. “We got to tie up till this devil storm blows over!”

“You take ‘er in if you’re so bitchin’ smart!” Zeke bellowed. “Blasted tiller ain’t worth no more’n a stinkin’ broom straw against this current! We’re gonna founder!”

Clarissa tumbled sideways, the motion wrenching her bound wrists, as the boat careened around a bend in the river. She could hear Zeke bawling helplessly above the roar of the storm.

“Give me that!” Maynard shoved him aside and grabbed the tiller himself. He was calmer and possessed more skill than Zeke, but he lacked the weight to manhandle the pitching craft. “Don’t just stand there!” he shrilled at Zeke. “Help me!”

As Clarissa watched the two men struggle, she suddenly became aware that the water-soaked rawhide thongs were softening around her wrists. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she twisted and sawed at the thin ties until, at last, they stretched enough to let her hands slip through. With every joint throbbing, she clasped the pole and clawed her way to a sitting position. Only then could she see the full scope of her peril.

Vast and black, the rain-swollen Ohio hissed between its banks. The flatboat shot along in the current, bobbing and spinning, out of control. Clarissa stared in helpless horror as a huge uprooted tree stump spun in an eddy and swept back toward them. She screamed as it swung to one side, then tumbled into the eddy again, missing the flatboat by a hand’s breadth.

Zeke and Maynard, if they had heard her at all, were too busy to pay her any heed. They grappled with the tiller, yelling curses at the storm and at each other. This, Clarissa thought, would be a perfect time to slip overboard and make her escape-except for one bit of irony. In all the years of her sheltered Baltimore girlhood, she had never immersed herself in anything larger than a copper bathtub. She could not swim a stroke.

The racing current funneled around a sharp bend, tilting the flatboat almost on its side. Clarissa screamed again as the hut tore loose from its fastenings. She glimpsed Zeke’s face as he hurtled past her to vanish into the darkness. Almost at the same instant, one corner of the boat struck something hard beneath the surface. The blow splintered the raft like a child’s toy.

Logs, boards and supplies flew in all directions, propelled by the same force that catapulted Clarissa into the air. For a heart-stopping instant, she flew through rain-filled emptiness. Then her body slammed into the river.

Dazed, she sank beneath the churning flood. The current’s icy embrace turned and tumbled her, sweeping her along like a helpless doll. Water filled her nose and roared in her ears. Something brushed her face-something cold and alive. Her body jerked with revulsion.

No! She couldn’t die now! Not here! Not like this!

As terror replaced shock she began to struggle. Her bursting lungs drove her instinctively to kick her way upward. A sheet of lightning, distant now, flashed against the dawn sky as her head broke the surface. She gulped a mouthful of precious air and, with it, a choking quantity of muddy water. Bubbles burst from her lips as the current dragged her under again.

Debris from the wrecked boat swirled around her. Clarissa jerked with pain as a big log crashed against her ribs. Miraculously she felt it pushing beneath her, lifting her upward. Clasping the log with her arms, she kicked until she broke the surface once more. The floating log stayed beneath her this time, keeping her there.

Choking and coughing, Clarissa filled her lungs with air. She was alive, but her peril was far from over. The unbridled current was still sweeping her downstream. Tree limbs, boat wreckage and things she could not even bear to imagine bobbed and swirled along with her. In rare moments of calm water, she caught glimpses of the wooded shore. There were no settlements here-no houses, farms or forts. This was wilderness, a land peopled by bears, snakes, pumas and naked copper savages who would kill her for the pleasure of hanging her scalp on their lodge poles. Drowning was a pleasant prospect compared to what might happen to her on land.

By the time the morning sun crept above the trees, Clarissa’s strength was gone. She lay across the log, too numb to hold on to the rough bark. Her red-gold hair streamed like a net m the muddy water, catching twigs, leaves and drowned insects.

Her mind drifted in and out of dreams. She fancied herself back in Baltimore, waking up to the mouthwatering aromas of scones, bacon and porridge. She imagined curling into the warm feather bed to steal one last delicious moment of sleep, then rising, brushing out her hair, slipping into her warm flannel wrapper and pattering downstairs to breakfast. This morning, even the sight of Junius’s sour face filled her with tenderness. She smiled at himA sudden impact jolted Clarissa’s body, shocking her awake. Her log had struck a sandbar that jutted out from shore within a sheltered curve of the river. The current was already washing the sand from around the log’s end. Seconds from now the log would float free again, carrying her with it. There was no time to lose.

Gathering her strength, she dragged her bruised, chilled body off the log and rolled onto the sandbar. For a moment she lay there, gasping. Then, rousing herself, she crawled toward the bank. The sand gave way beneath her weight, leaving hollows of water where her palms and knees had pressed. A small snake-she had no idea what kind it was-slithered across the back of her hand and vanished into the river. Clarissa was too exhausted even to flinch.

Only when the ground felt solid did she allow herself to collapse facedown onto the grassy bank. The earth was cold against her aching body. Icy water dripped from the storm-lashed trees. A magpie scolded harshly from a branch, its call a sharp counterpoint to the chattering sound of Clarissa’s own teeth.