A Place Called Home by Elizabeth Grayson

Author:Elizabeth Grayson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePublishing Works!
Published: 2015-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Reid had to admit he'd been wrong. Once the raiders claimed their dead, no other Indians breached the peace and solitude of their little valley. Nearly a month passed, and though he and Tad hunted the hills and hollows for miles around to augment their dwindling food supply, not once did he see any sign of Indians in the woods. Nor, as Campbell rode from station to station asking questions that might lead him to David's killers, did he hear any indication that the tribes to the north were astir.

To his way of thinking, that didn't make sense. With the peace treaty still being negotiated in Paris and the boundaries in question, the English should be recruiting tribes to raid Kentucky. Certainly there was as much at stake now as there had been in 1777, when the British and their allies had come howling down across the Ohio River to lay waste to the forts and homesteads. The Year of the Bloody Sevens, the settlers called it, and hundreds had lost their lives. Reid's conviction that it could happen again stoked the tension constantly simmering in his gut.

That Livi and the rest went on about their lives, when death and destruction could sweep out of the hills at any moment, riled Campbell beyond all provocation. He knew Livi took her pistol when she tended the fields or weeded her garden, but considering she'd fainted the first time she shot an Indian, Reid wasn't sure she'd use it.

Instead of erecting a stockade as he'd suggested, Eustace and Tad turned their energies to building a corncrib and an ash hopper so there would be lye for making soap and hominy. Violet still gathered greens in the woods, and when Cissy wasn't practicing her letters or helping her mother, she went with her. Dangerous practices, all of them, yet part of daily life at the Talbot cabin.

In spite of Reid's concerns, everything in the valley flourished. The corn was high, and in a week or two they'd be plucking the first of the roasting ears. They were already eating from the vegetable patch, and the first of Livi's pole beans were sweet as honey. Livi was rounding out a little more every day, her belly protruding, and her breasts growing lush and full. Though Reid knew she'd be mortified if he let on he'd noticed, it seemed to him a wondrous ripening. Somehow he'd put his uneasiness to rest where the baby was concerned and took pleasure in knowing she was keeping David's legacy alive.

His frustration at not being able to find the men who'd killed his friend took on a presence of its own. It fed his bitterness and grief, his anger and regret. In the thickest part of the night Reid would jerk awake, wet with sweat. In his dreams he knew the identity of the men who'd murdered David, but when he woke he could never quite remember. The nightmares kept the restlessness astir, kept him riding out, searching and questioning.

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