AT FIRST SIGHT: A Novella(23)
Pistol drawn, his shadow leaned out over the window. “Run!” he ordered.
Skirts lifted, she whirled and sprinted down the slope. Her back felt like a broad target. Her heart pounded in her ears with each frantic step. The moccasins did make running easier. No pistol retort assured her she was safe – so far. She heard the slap of the river’s tide against its banks before she saw through the undergrowth its gleam beneath the pale quarter moon.
Another hundred yards further along, the stone outcropping known as The Rocks formed a natural wharf for Fort Christina. Even at that early hour, merchants and sailors were gradually coming alive. A few schooners bobbed in the harbor – and in the bay floated the huge, dark hulk that could only be Craven’s man-of-war.
She swung off to the right, toward the alders, upriver of The Rocks – only to hear gunshots. Those spurred her. She floundered on, thrashing through the concealing and combative alders and their underbrush that snagged hungrily at her skirts. Then, in the early morning fog, she located the canoe.
Closing in on her from behind, she heard the pounding of pursuing footsteps. “Halt!” came a shout farther back.
Heart thudding, she plowed on through the rushes and waded in. Her freezing, water-weighted skirts and cloak nigh moored her in the knee-deep tidal wash. She both tugged and shoved at the canoe. A shot ran out. She expected its impact. Expected certain death.
Suddenly, she was scooped off her feet and thrown, landing in the canoe with a hard thud. Another thud vibrated the canoe. She struggled onto her knees in its prow and half twisted to find behind her the bundled blanket and saddlebags – and Adam climbing into its stern.
At once, he was slicing an oar into the lapping water. His free hand slamming at the center of her shoulders shoved her down again. More shots whizzed by. Beside the canoe, the water erupted too close with yet another ping of a matchlock’s ball.
Swinging his body’s weight into paddling with deep rhythmic strokes, he sent the canoe speeding into the midst of the swirling river. Dawn’s upstream wind froze her wet clothes to her goose-fleshed body – yet she laughed aloud.
She turned to see if any soldiers pursued along the riverbank and locked glances with Adam. His expression was one of exhilaration. “Reckless abandon,” he called, without letting up on the powerful thrusts of his paddles, “this is the only way to live life.”
For what may have been another hour he paddled fiercely against the upriver current. Then, as the eastern sky pinkened, he veered the canoe abruptly into a narrow, dark estuary canopied by primeval pine, cedar, and cypress branches.
He shot the prow into a bank of rushes. Like a specter, Bonnie Charlie rose from the low-lying morning fog. Adam waded into the water and pulled the canoe ashore, concealing it in a thatch of cattails. She was shivering so violently her knees buckled after she got out of the canoe.
At once, he caught her against him, one arm braced around her waist. Briskly, his free hand slid beneath her wet cloak to chafe her arms and back. Over her head, he asked Bonnie Charlie, “The horses?”
“Hitched to a large sycamore up near the river road. But, they’re latherin’ hard. I figure yew got mebbe fifteen minutes most head start on Catamount and five Swedish militiamen.”
Adam looked down at her. “Up to making another run for it?”
Her teeth chattering, she asked, “Is th-there any other option?”
“If there were, I would find it.” His maddening self-assurance was insufferable. But his smile was friendly and natural.
He swept up the saddle bags from the canoe and threw them over one wide shoulder. Collecting the blanket bundle, he took her upper arm and propelled her forward. They followed Bonnie Charlie, who was scrambling up the bushy incline toward the road. Within a clump of sycamores waited the sweating horses – only two.
Bonnie Charlie’s mouth twisted. “I could manage stealin’ only that sorrel mare there from a drunken tavern patron before the militia guards caught sight of me.”
“She can ride pillion with me,” Adam said, tossing the saddlebag across his gray gelding and handing her the blanket bundle. “You can take the sorrel.”
“Nope,” Bonnie Charlie said. “Figure, I’d best wait it out here.” He patted the tomahawk at his waist beneath his deer-hide jacket. “Waylay those bastards, if I can.”
Only then did she notice the sleeve of the jacket was freshly stained. “You have been shot,” she gasped.
“Just a nick. Now you two git goin’.”
Adam stared hard at him. Some unspoken message passed between the two. Adam nodded then. He circled her waist and lifted her onto the sorrel’s saddle. “You can ride?”
“Well enough,” she hedged. Her riding experience had been more astride nags than steeds.
Quickly, he tied the bundle around the pommel. She cast a worried glance down at Bonnie Charlie. “You will catch up with us?”
“Aye, Mistress.” He looked to Adam, who was mounting. “Stay on the river road for another twenty-odd miles. Then, where it peters out, there’s a war trail. Strike out through the forest, northwest, straight as the compass arrow for a goodly sixty miles or so.”
Adam had already nudged the chestnut’s flanks into a canter, and she had to knee her sorrel to draw even. In the murky light, his gaze found hers. “We’re making another run for it, and we won’t be stopping until our mounts are stoved in – because, according to Bonnie Charlie, Catamount won’t be stopping. Are you sure you are up to it?”