Free The Frontiersman’s Daughter by Laura Frantz

floor.
    “I’ve come to stay a spell,” Lael told her.
    She straightened, gleeful as a girl. “I’ve been wonderin’ when you’d come back.”

    This time the door to the tiny cabin stayed shut against the coming cold. As Lael ate her supper of stale cornbread and cider, Ma Horn tossed two pine knots into the fireplace and lit up the whole room.
    “I had to get away,” Lael confessed between bites. “But I didn’t tell where I was goin’. ”
    Ma Horn chuckled. “That don’t mean your pa didn’t foller you up here.”
    Lael flushed, gullibility gone, and watched as Ma Horn unfolded her thin frame to pluck her pipe from the mantle overhead. Tobacco smoke soon perfumed the air, mingling with the earthy smell of roots and herbs. There was comfort in this old cabin, sparse and solitary though it was, and an absence of secrets, so unlike her own. Here truth lived in every corner. Ma Horn had no skeletons to speak of. She’d been right to come here, Lael thought, heartsore as she was.
    Giving her a sidelong glance, Ma Horn ventured slowly, “Your ma still tetchy?”
    Lael sighed and pushed her empty bowl away. “Tetchy as the day is long.”
    The old woman took a long draw on her pipe, her mouth pinched at the corners. “Sara’s never been one for the wilderness.”
    The fire popped and called for another pine knot. Lael pitched one in but said nothing. Truly, her ma needed to return to the Carolinas, to be among civilized people, far removed from the savage. Lately her hot temper had mellowed to something far more troubling—a joyless resignation. It cast a pall over the cabin, wounding everyone within reach. Somehow it seemed to have even followed her here.
    Ma Horn winked at her, lightening the mood. “I hear your ma keeps threatenin’ to cut your hair but your pa won’t let her.”
    “Ma fears it would make a fine scalp,” she said wryly, touching her heavy braid. Slowly she wound the length of it around her wrists, imprisoning herself as she sat.
    Ma Horn’s thin face grew thoughtful as she crumbled more tobacco. “I don’t think scalpin’ is what Captain Jack has in mind.”
    Lael looked up. “We’ve seen no sign of him or any of them since the beads and the blanket.”
    “Oh, you ain’t seen ’em, but they’ve been by all right. Your pa says Shawnee sign crisscrosses your place like a buffalo trace.” This almost made her smile, though the thought of being watched made her feel queer through and through. Like the beads and the blanket, the Indians were still there, just hidden. Come winter, what would Captain Jack do? He’d not linger long, she wagered, in woods that had shed their leaves and no longer sheltered him.
    She took a deep breath and her green eyes reflected her disquiet. “Sometimes I think he’ll not go away . . . till we meet.”
    Ma Horn merely nodded, no mirth left in her face. “Say the two of you was to come face to face, what would you do?”
    Lael looked toward the fire, pensive. She’d pondered this very thing again and again without answer. The prospect was so terrifying it took her breath . Never give way to fear in an Indian’s sight . She’d stood tall the first time, on the porch with Pa. But once she was alone . . . what then? Her fearless father had a very timid daughter. Shame spilled over her and she nearly flinched under Ma Horn’s heavy gaze.
    “I reckon I’d fall to the ground in a cowardly heap,” she confessed.
    Ma Horn shook her head slowly, her wrinkled face dark with warning. “Your pa would be dead if he done that. You got to stand, girl. No matter whether they kill you or capture you, you stay standin’. ”
    Stay standing.
    Lael pitched the last pine knot into the fire, the simple words echoing in her head and deepening the dread in her heart. As she readied for bed she thought she heard the haunting call of a mockingbird beyond the shuttered window. The sound sent a chill clean through her.
    Hadn’t Ma Horn once said a mockingbird’s