Longshadow's Woman. Bronwyn Williams
that most of his crewmates resented an Indian who spoke their language more precisely than they did. Although he liked Pratt, and would trust the man with his life—had done as much—he found it hard to trust other whites.
So after promising to return the favor by helping some white person in need, he arranged with Pratt to collect his pay directly from the ship owner and deposit it into an account in Longshadow’s name. Each time he returned to port, Pratt gave him an accounting, congratulating him on his good sense. While other members of the crew drank and gambled away their pay almost as quickly as they earned it, Jonah watched his savings grow. He studied the written account from the bank, visualizing the horses he would one day buy—a good stallion and two, possibly three sturdy mares.
For four years he had carried the dream, as one after another, three ships had foundered in the fierce storms called hurricanes and gone down. Each time, Longshadow, along with at least a part of the crew, had survived. That was when his mates had taken to calling him Jonah, saying that no ship he sailed on was safe.
Jonah recognized the name. It had come from the Jesus Book. He had rejected that path, but he accepted the name as a reminder that, just as the Feather Dance had not brought back the buffalo, neither his own god, who was called Tiame, nor the white man’s Jesus, had kept him from being punished for sins he had not committed.
Carrie braced herself to confront her surly prisoner and herd him to the creek. If she had to work with the man, he was going to have to scrub himself clean. She put up with her husband’s stench because she had to, else he’d knock her to kingdom come. For all his love of fancy clothes, Darther hated bathing. He always reeked of whiskey, sweat and cigars.
But she didn’t have to put up with a blessed thing from her prisoner. She’d paid her two dollars—he was hers to do with as she saw fit. And as long as she was going to be working at his side, she saw fit to clean him up. Once he knew how good it felt to be rid of his own stench and the vermin that infested his hair and his body, he would likely insist on bathing at least once a week.
She herself bathed every single day from either a bowl or a washtub. Once a week in the summertime she dunked herself all over in the creek and scrubbed, hair and all, with her best soap that had crushed bayberries added to the fat, ashes and lye to sweeten the scent. She did her best dreaming sitting in water, letting it lap around her, washing away the cares of the day.
With a towel over her shoulder, the Springfield under her arm and a chunk of plain soap—not the scented kind—in her apron pocket, Carrie let herself out early the next morning. The fog lay heavy across the clearing, sucking around the pines and gum trees. By the time it burned off, she intended to have at least five of the biggest stumps dragged out of the ground and all the way over to her burn pile. It would take more than a sore hand to slow her down, she told herself, setting her jaw in determination.
Scattering a handful of cracked corn to the chickens along the way, she sang out a greeting. “Rise an’ shine!”
Rise an’ shine… Carrie had been hearing those words in her head for as long as she could remember, saying them aloud even when there was no one to hear but the chickens and that aggravating mule. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember if they’d come from her own family or from one of the missionaries who had given her a home after the massacre. All she knew was that saying them made her feel better. As if she weren’t entirely alone.
Besides, “Rise an’ shine” sounded far better than her uncle’s, “Git your lazy ass down here and git to work, gal!”
Darther didn’t even bother with that much. If he was awake at daybreak, which was rare, because he usually stayed up half the night when he was home, drinking with Liam and planning ways to win the next race, he would kick her out of bed onto the floor. Kick her hard, too.
“Oh, how I hate that man,” she muttered. She tossed out the last of the corn, dusted her hands off and yelled toward the barn. “Rise an’ shine in there! Come on, time’s a-wasting!” He might not know what she was talking about, but at least he would know he couldn’t sleep all day.
Jonah was awake. He’d been awake for hours, lying on his back on the itchy blanket for no better reason than that he liked the oily wool smell of it. It reminded him of the blanket he had slept under as a boy before he had left his mother’s lodge.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he clamped his leg irons on, reattached the long chain, and stood, shaking straw from the blanket and folding it neatly. If he didn’t present himself, she would come in after him, armed with that damned Springfield, no doubt. He’d like to grab the thing and—
No, he wouldn’t. No scrawny, ignorant white female with colorless hair and the brain of a rock was worth losing his last hope for freedom. Clearing himself was going to be risky enough as it was, without the added offense of murder.
When she appeared in the open doorway, they eyed one another silently for a moment. She was not quite as shapeless as he’d first thought. Her hair was pale, not colorless. Looking as though it had been hacked off with a dull knife, it curled about her face, at odds with the firm set of her jaw, which was at odds with her small nose and large, wary eyes.
Jonah waited for her to speak, wondering if she would forget that he was only an ignorant savage and speak to him as if he were a man. He thought perhaps she was not cruel, only fearful.
She said, “Mornin’. Looks like another day with no rain in sight,” and unhooked the other end of the chain from the door frame. And then, as if remembering who he was, she said loudly, “Bath. Creek. You come now.”
And you go to your white man’s hell, he wanted to say, but didn’t. His time would come. He had learned patience in a hard school.
The creek was broad, but shallow, the water dark and clear. Judging by tracks on the worn bank, it served as a watering hole for deer and smaller animals. Some-one—the woman, most likely—had knelt there to wash, or to draw buckets of water. Trees overhung the banks, shedding a few yellowing leaves to drift slowly downstream.
Jonah turned to her and lifted a brow before it occurred to him that such a gesture might indicate a thinking being rather than a slow-witted half-breed.
“Here. It’s soap.” She handed him the chunk she had been holding. “You’re supposed to wet yourself all over and rub with this.” She mimed the action, which he found both irritating and amusing. “And don’t try to run away, because I’ve got ears like a bat.”
And the intelligence of an earthworm, he thought, letting amusement overcome his anger. With the lead chain wrapped around the wrist of her bandaged hand, she struggled to hold the heavy rifle in the other. Would she actually shoot him in the back if he waded across and climbed up the other side? Somehow, he didn’t think so. He wasn’t at all certain she could lift the weapon to take aim.
Awkwardly, she looped the chain around a hanging branch. She did not release her hold on the gun, neither did she release his leg irons. He could easily have freed the chain, but what good would it have done? Hobbled, he could hardly escape. There was still the Springfield, but even if she managed to take aim, he had a feeling it might not be loaded.
It was because he craved it, not because she forced him to do it, that he stayed, Jonah told himself. He eased down the muddy bank into ankle-deep water, closing his eyes as the abrasions under his irons caught fire. The pain burned right down to the bone.
“Well, get at it,” she snapped. “We don’t have all day.”
Pain and pleasure, pleasure and pain. Either of which, Jonah reminded himself, was better than merely existing as he’d been forced to do in that miserable hole of a jail.
“Use that soap,” she called out.
He looked at the ungainly chunk in his hand. As much as he hated the smell of it, he needed it to wash away the worse stench of the jail. Still dressed in the thread-bare shirt and canvas trousers he’d been wearing twelve days earlier when the sheriff’s men had come to take him away, he thought of how he must look. A once-proud warrior, a member of the Ten Most Brave—prisoner now