Читать книгу Beyond the Cherokee Trail - Lisa Carter - Страница 13

Chapter 4

4

January 1838

Sarah Jane stretched her arms skyward, billowing the sheet over the clothesline on the first, moderately mild day since Old Christmas. She reveled in the warmth of the sun on her cheeks beneath her woolen bonnet. And, she sensed his gaze out the window upon her. A smile flitted across her lips.

His tiny cubicle in her father’s surgery overlooked the kettle where she boiled the linens over the fire outside the house. She often encountered his scrutiny as she tended to her papa’s household while her father gave Pierce a crash course in herbal remedies he’d gleaned from his Cherokee friends and incorporated into his own practice.

And what was it her papa said yesterday, a teasing glint in his blue eyes?

That Sarah Jane’s domicile had never looked so well kept and scrubbed? How “. . . not a streak of dirt dared rear its ugly head amidst such dedicated daily ministrations.”

She blushed at the memory. Her papa knew her too well.

Had it only been a month since Pierce arrived? She felt she’d known him forever.

“Sarah!” Her father’s voice called from inside the house.

Her head snapped up as a blur of movement around the corner of the house snared her attention. Straightening, she wiped her hands on the faded blue calico she wore on washdays. Hurrying forward, Sarah observed a tall, Cherokee man and his older

companion leaning against the wood-framed farmhouse. The younger man wore fringed, deerskin leggings.

Sighting Sarah, he scowled. He crossed his arms over the loose-fitting ribbon shirt most Cherokee favored. His thick mane of dark hair unbound and blowing in the slight breeze, he moved to bar her path to the door.

Taken aback by the undisguised hostility on his face, Sarah faltered. She put a hand to her hair. Her fingers shook as she tucked an unruly tendril inside the bonnet.

What ailed this young man? But everyone was tense these days. Soldiers swarmed over the valley settlements erecting stockades and recording names in some military census.

She squared her shoulders. This wasn’t the frontier any more, although the copper-skinned man looked like a throwback to more primitive times.

As if he had his druthers, he’d just as soon scalp her.

She reminded herself the Cherokee were one of the Five Civilized Tribes and gathered her courage. “Excuse me, please.”

He stood unmoving, rock solid in her path.

Clearing her throat, she tried again. “Did you bring a patient?”

Towering over her, he peered down his long nose at her, adept at the silence game the Cherokee often employed.

Flustered, she felt the heat rise beneath her collar. One of the curses of her redheaded, Scots-Irish heritage. “My father called . . . He requires my assistance . . . If you’d just . . .”

Maybe, like many of the Cherokee especially those with farms high in the mountain hollows, he spoke no English.

His eyes darkened. One lip raised in a sneer, he muttered something in Cherokee. She reared back as much at the malice in his tone as the stinging, vulgar word he’d used. The old man made a motion of protest, halted by a sibilant hiss from the younger man.

She bit back the reply that rose to her lips, reminding herself of her father’s admonition—also from Scripture—that a gentle answer turned away wrath. An inexplicable wrath on this young man’s part.

“Nv-wa-do-hi-ya-dv.” Lifting her chin, she met his stare head on. But she took care to maintain a soft, even tone. “Peace. No harm,” she repeated.

An uncharitable feeling of satisfaction bubbled in her chest as his smoldering eyes widened in confused surprise. He had the grace, if not the manners, to flush.

Few whites, truth to tell, spoke the intricate, tonal Cherokee language, but Papa made sure Sarah Jane did as part of their mission. Along with his training of Cherokee convert laypersons, he believed to minister fully to the Cherokee’s body and soul, one must understand them. And speaking their language was a first step toward understanding.

The back door squeaked open. Pierce, his starched collar open at the neck and his sleeves rolled to his elbows ready for doctoring, emerged into the sunlight. A muscle twitching in his cheek, he inserted himself between Sarah Jane and the Cherokee. Forcing her to peer over Pierce’s broad shoulder.

Pierce jutted his jaw. “Is there a problem here, Miss Hopkins?” His gaze never left the Cherokee’s face.

Miss Hopkins. Sarah swallowed an inward sigh. Pierce, always so formal and correct on the surface. But his cornflower blue eyes often danced merry as he teased her over dinner at the end of a busy day.

Caught in her perpetual daydreaming, she’d been too slow to respond, Sarah realized, as Pierce angled toward her, concern etched across his features.

“Sarah?” His eyes did not dance with amusement at this moment. Something else, fiercer and protective, however, shone.

“I’m fine. I was just about to help Papa but . . .” Her gaze sharpened past Pierce’s chiseled New England features to where the Indian glowered.

Pierce clamped his hand upon Sarah’s arm. “Your father has a female patient.” Veering around the Cherokee as one would an annoying wasp, he advanced toward the steps, pulling her along behind him.

Something flickered in the Cherokee’s face. He sidestepped a pace, allowing her and Pierce access to the porch. But with another murmured epithet, the Cherokee screwed his face and spat, releasing a wad of saliva and tobacco, which landed square on the toe of Pierce’s shoe.

Gasping, she grabbed Pierce to prevent him surging forward to answer the Cherokee’s disrespect.

His pale face engorged with blood fury. “What did he call me, Sarah Jane?” Pierce hissed between thin, fine lips.

She fought to hold on to him as Pierce and the Cherokee strained toward the other like cocks at a fight. “Nothing. Ignore him.”

The older man jerked the younger’s sleeve. He repeated Sarah Jane’s earlier salutation of peace. “Nuh-wah-doe-he-yah-duh.”

In rapid-fire Cherokee, the old man reminded the younger man of his grandmother’s condition. The old man sent Sarah Jane an imploring look.

“U-lo-gi-dv,” the old one remonstrated.

His grandson stalked away toward the front of the house. She released a ragged breath.

U-lo-gi-dv? So the hostile one’s name was . . . Touch the Clouds.

The old man lifted his hands. “Excuse . . .” He shook his head at his broken attempt at English. “Young men . . .” He raised one shoulder and let it drop in resignation. “Angry these days.”

Pierce shrugged free of her grip. He extended his hand toward the old man. “Nuh-wah-doe-he-yah-duh,” glancing at her to make sure he’d pronounced it correctly. “Peace to you and to your family in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

The old man narrowed his eyes at his reference to the Lord, but accepted Pierce’s hand. Pierce, Papa had remarked for her ears only, possessed great medical expertise, head knowledge, and religious zeal.

Practical application? Her father had shaken his head. Not so much. Not yet.

She tugged at Pierce to follow her into the house. “Better to show him our Christ first through our medicine and compassion.”

“We’ll take good care of your wife,” she told the old man in his own language.

The old man, like his grandson, would prefer to remain in the habitat he knew best.

Yielding, Pierce allowed the door to bang shut. His lanky beanpole posture stiffened as his nose wrinkled. “Not sure why the Doctor feels it necessary to soil your fair hands in such professional matters.”

Untying her bonnet, she strode toward the washbasin and pitcher on the kitchen table and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Speaking of soiled . . .”

Papa had found Pierce an apt and able assistant. He predicted a bright future for Pierce in furthering God’s kingdom among the Tsalgi or Principal People, as they called themselves.

Just as soon, Papa had added, as God took down the young doctor and his notions a peg or two first.

“You said the patient was a woman. An old woman?” She scrubbed the lye soap against her skin all the way to her elbows. Another one of Papa’s medical protocols Pierce found inexplicable, but followed under Dr. Hopkins’s tutelage.

Grabbing a dishtowel, she wiped her hands and made room for Pierce. She poised the water pitcher over the bowl.

A mutinous expression on his face, he pushed his lips forward.

“Papa will insist you wash again.”

Grimacing, he thrust his hands over the basin, and she poured a steady stream of water over his hands as he lathered his hands and arms once more.

She tried her best to prevent her eyes from lingering too long on the corded muscles of his forearms. “The Cherokee, most of them anyway, even after Papa’s labor among them all these years, prefer their own shamans to treat their ills.”

He snorted.

She ignored his outburst. “The shamans are powerful figures, especially among the Snowbird Cherokee, less so in Georgia or—”

“The more civilized parts of the Cherokee Nation.”

“In the more prosperous regions, I was going to say.” She handed another towel to him. “Once it’s gotten beyond the shaman’s skills or enough fear for the injured has had time to set in, they will—with trepidation—seek out the white man’s medicine. The women and children usually prefer another female on hand during diagnosis and treatment.”

He flicked water droplets over the pan. “Yes, she’s an old woman. A bad cut on her leg from a misaimed axe stroke now infected, your father surmised from his questioning of her. In Cherokee.”

Pierce threw Sarah Jane a pointed glance. “I’ve almost finished my study of the herbs. Maybe . . . ?” He twisted the cloth around his hands.

Such strong, long-fingered hands.

A surgeon’s hands, Papa said. Her insides aquiver, Sarah Jane drew her gaze out the window. A mockingbird sang in the winter-bare branches of a dogwood tree.

“You want I should teach you the language?” she whispered. She kept her gaze averted to spare his male dignity the indignity of seeking help from a member of the fairer sex.

Pierce maintained such inconvenient ideas of what was proper and what was not she reflected, not for the first time in their short acquaintance.

Ideas—Papa had commented with a wry twist of his lips when Pierce objected to her attendance over a child’s broken arm—of which necessity would soon disabuse him.

Pinching his lips together, Pierce folded the towel in exact thirds, draping it over the ladder-backed kitchen chair. “If it led to the greater efficacy of my mission, I’d . . .” His eyes fell to the puncheon wood floor.

Efficacy. Pierce and his words. Must be how folks talked in the North.

Sarah Jane wouldn’t know. She’d been born and reared in these smoky blue hills, home to the Cherokee for millennia.

A sunbeam made its way through the glass pane, highlighting the curly, close-cropped blond locks on his head. A ping went through her. She ran her gaze over the angular line of his strong jaw.

Blessed be God. She’d never met a handsomer man.

Not white, leastways. And though she suspected her father schemed for someday Pierce to take over the mission—and perhaps wed his daughter—Sarah Jane, plain as she was, realized the possibility of Pierce ever thinking of her in that light was slim to none.

But she wouldn’t pass on a chance to spend more time with him.

Her heart hammered.

“I’d be happy to instruct you in the rudimentary elements of the Cherokee language. Perhaps a lesson every night after dinner?”

He raised his eyes to hers. A slight smile quivered on those oh-so-fine lips. “Perhaps over the washing and drying of the supper dishes. I’ve been told I’m quite handy when it comes to cleaning up.”

She returned his smile. There might be hope yet for Dr. Pierce if he was willing to disgrace himself with menial, womanly chores. “You have yourself a deal.” She extended her hand and then retracted it. “I’d shake your hand, but then we’d both have to wash again.”

He grinned, shuffling his feet. And being the lovesick creature she was, she grinned back at him.

“Sarah Jane! Pierce!” her father bellowed down the hall.

Pierce blinked and Sarah Jane jolted.

“Coming, Papa!” she yelled in her not-so-ladylike nurse voice.

Plucking a clean, white pinafore off the hook on the wall, she hurried to assist him. She schooled her heart, as she had a thousand times this last month, to pay better attention to her patients.

And, blessed be God, not to the handsome object of her affections.