Free Wind Dancer by Jamie Carie Page B

head. His wife’s lifeless body was just feet away! Why had they thrust this infant into his hands as if he would rejoice and find solace in this small bit of flesh? He turned, stricken and sick, to the midwife, knowing that if he held the child any longer he would drop her. The woman reached for the babe, but there was great unease in her eyes.
    He couldn’t bear it. Not the bed where his wife lay so still and pale. Not the infant, unknown flesh of his flesh. Not themidwife’s eyes that said he should be more. So he left the infant in the woman’s capable hands … and fled.
    He walked away after the funeral service, turned his back on the grave site, his home, then finally, his entire inheritance. He joined the Virginia militia, rising quickly in the ranks with each bloody battle, becoming their finest sharpshooter and an unsurpassed tracker. It was here that he discovered a talent deep within that at first had terrified him. Something that left him leagues ahead of the other soldiers and, soon, commander of his own force. It was little but a sixth sense, a gut instinct for what was coming up ahead, around the next bend, through an open valley or wooded copse, some prophetic vision of things to come. He didn’t know how or why he possessed this gift. But he learned how to use it, and it never failed him.
    And now there was another Isabelle. A small part of him, that gut instinct, rose up to ask the question: Had Sara known something of the future? Had she known he would meet and love another woman? A woman called Isabelle?

7
    Broad sunbeams filtered down through the smoke over the little village of Kaskaskia. Tents and smoldering campfires lined the bank of the Kaskaskia River where coureurs de bois , runners of the woods, stood talking to one another and gesturing toward two canoes filled with trade goods. A tall, grizzled man with a walking stick nodded to Samuel, curiosity sparking his hooded eyes, as the frontiersman passed by with Julian and Isabelle in tow. Samuel looked into his eyes briefly, felt a shock of the familiar as they nodded once to each other, and looked away. This man would support their cause. The feeling that it was true flowed through him. Samuel found it was like that sometimes with a stranger, as though they had known one another in some other place and time.
    He studied the village with instincts long honed during years of gathering intelligence. While traders camped on the riverbanks, the citizens, in their French-style peasant dresses and pilfered Indian garb, traveled along the main road in their various pursuits, so domestic, so quiet, so not expecting the army that was coming.
    Kaskaskia was inhabited by the French, with what appeared to be a small British regiment holding down the fort. Not much in the way of artillery was visible. The commandant, Philippe de Rocheblave, a French nobleman, held a British commission to rule. It was rumored that de Rocheblave enjoyed little support from either the British or the French. One of the hunters Clark captured off Corn Island had reported that the British had not sent men or supplies for months and that de Rocheblave was running the office out of his own pocket.
    Clark had grinned at that and said to Samuel, “That can’t be making him too happy.”
    â€œNope.” A disgruntled commander was all the easier to defeat.
    The church, a humble log building with a belfry, was easy to spot in the center of the town. Samuel stopped and waited for Isabelle to catch up. “Father Gibault has the books?” he asked, seeing her hot face and handing over his canteen.
    Isabelle took it, turned slightly away from him, and nodded. She drank, then wiped the sweat from her face with her sleeve. “Yes, we should hurry to the church. I want to be sure that they are truly, safely arrived.”
    â€œYou’re taking this mission pretty seriously,” Samuel said with quiet teasing.
    â€œI am proving myself.”