The next day's journey--thankfully, Cora thought, after recalling the stress of the previous night--started uneventfully. Unable to sleep, she had joined Nathaniel at his post after he traded places with Uncas, wanting to continue the conversation with him that they'd started earlier. It was strange to her, but while during the day Cora perceived Nathaniel as by turns taciturn or mocking, he seemed much easier to talk to at night. He had asked her questions about life in London, and she in turn had inquired a bit after his personal history. She was able to glean from him that he had grown up in America, had been adopted by Chingachgook at a young age, though further details regarding his parentage he had neglected to fill in for her. Still, she took it a good sign that he was open to communication.
Nathaniel was in the lead this morning. The four had not lingered after awakening, but had risen quickly, broken their fast, and headed out in the direction of the river. Cora followed close behind as they passed through a field of grasses that was too much like the place where their party had been attacked. It was odd, then, to remember that they had been riding on horseback, and the scenery had seemed so completely different from that lofty perspective. Now, she was forced to be much more aware of what was under and around her. America was undeniably a beautiful country. No wonder she was in the middle of a three-way war.
The young Englishwoman glanced behind her. Nathaniel's younger brother and her sister were trailing behind. She was glad to see that Uncas was so attentive to Alice along the journey, because it meant she could relax a little. She quickened her steps a little and caught up to Nathaniel. He walked in long strides, when they were traveling across level ground, and she had to move fast to keep pace with him. "Are we being followed?"
He shot her a quick sideways glance. "Why?"
"Last night. When we heard others."
"Why do you want to know everything?" He didn't sound angry, though, but rather tiredly amused.
"Because it's the only way I can learn anything." Cora caught up the front part of her skirts which she had already tripped on several times in trying to match pace with him, and pressed on. "I don't want to be left out."
"I appreciate that, Miss Munro, but as the leader of this expedition it's my job to determine what information is passed on to the other members of the party." Nathaniel gave her a grim smile.
"And what is my job?" She was trying not to be piqued, but it was hard. He did have such an irritating way of getting eloquent at random times.
"Your job is to watch your sister, and..."
"It looks to me as if your brother has taken over that role." Cora flashed a smile as bright as his had been dark, and was pleased that the little barb caused Nathaniel to pause in his steps, turn, and, shading his eyes against the sun, look back at the two following them.
"Well," he said eventually, his expression revealing nothing, "That is also his job. To protect you both."
"Mmm. Then what is my other job? You said 'and'..."
"To obey me."
Cora's mouth fell open. For a moment she was sure she must have misheard him. "Sir, if you are jesting, you go too far. I assure you I have every intention of submitting to my future husband--" the words caught and choked in her throat as she recalled how close she had been to having that husband, but for the events of a few days' past.
"I have a hard time picturing you submitting to anybody," Nathaniel said, unfazed by her reproach.
"You don't know me."
"I'm beginning to."
"You are beginning to make assumptions. For shame, sir. Here I am scarcely at my best." Cora couldn't help but feel a wave of self-pity welling up. "Almost everything has been taken from me--"
"And you're feeling sorry for yourself." Nathaniel vaulted over a clump of brambles instead of going around. He landed like a cat, soundless. "Which is certainly permissible, except for the fact that if you become blinded by it, Nature won't show you any mercy."
"I suppose Nature in all her wisdom speaks to you personally."
Nathaniel turned then so suddenly that she almost ran into him. "Disobey me at your peril, Miss Munro."
She stared up into his dark eyes, not wanting to be intimidated but finding it hard. "Surely that is not a threat?"
"It is not. It is good advice."
Alice, with Uncas behind her, caught up to them in the few moments they stood there, frozen, neither one willing to look away first. The men, as they had become annoyingly accustomed to doing, exchanged a few words in their shared language, and then Nathaniel made a dismissive gesture.
"I'll lead from here," Uncas said then, stepping in front. Alice followed him, shooting Cora a look of commiseration.
Setting her teeth, Cora picked up her skirts again and followed after, ignoring Nathaniel, who would now be watching her until they next stopped. Impossibly-mannered man! She would love to take him back to London and show him that these backwoods ways of his would win him no friends in high society there. Then let him preach about self-pity and obedience. Ha!
She pressed herself harder from thereon, even more determined not to lag behind than she had been yesterday. Part of her knew it would be selfish to push herself to the point of exhaustion--she still had Alice to watch over, after all--but she was going to make her body perform as far as it could. If Nathaniel thought she was a sniveling weak-willed creature wallowing in misery, let him. She would prove him very wrong.
***
They reached the Mohawk river by noon. Uncas, glancing behind him at Alice, saw the look of dismay on her face as they neared the shores of the wide, turbulent waterway.
"Do we have to cross it?" she said, looking up at him fearfully. He was surprised and pleased. It seemed like it was the first thing she had said to him unprompted.
"We could follow it up from here, but it's likely to be easier walking on the east side."
Alice's dark-haired sister drew up, two spots of color sitting high in her cheekbones. She was obviously still angry at his brother, Uncas noted, and it didn't appear as if the two had exchanged a word since their earlier altercation that morning. He wasn't sure what Nathaniel was trying to prove with his poor attitude towards her. Uncas felt sympathy for Cora. She was taking too much upon herself.
He approached Nathaniel and the two looked out over the expanse of water. "What do you think, cross here?"
"Mhm. It's not that bad."
"Not for you and me," Uncas said, looking back at the women.
Nathaniel growled in irritation. "They won't break."
"You were the one who said they weren't like us, remember?"
"I said I wasn't like them, yeah."
"Same thing."
"So are we going to stand around talking about it or are we going to get moving before the sun sets?" Nathaniel jogged down to the water's edge, stripped off his shirt and tucked it in his bag, which he adjusted higher on his back, then turned around. Cora and Alice were trying not to look at him.
Uncas followed him down with a sigh. He took off his own shirt, while Cora picked her way across the stones and took her first steps into the water. Nathaniel was already wading, knee deep, towards the center, his rifle held aloft.
"Alice?" Uncas held out his hand for her arm. She was blushing, which he found odd and appealing at the same time. Did they never see their men with their shirts off? Then he realized she was looking at the tribal tattoos on his chest.
"I..I can't swim," she said, with an effort, still staring.
Guiding her by the arm, he drew her closer, into the water, which tugged at their legs. Nathaniel, ahead of them, was almost waist deep, with Cora wading after.
"You shouldn't have to. Not that deep."
"Uncas?" She grabbed his hand unexpectedly. Hers was ice-cold, and there was panic in her grey eyes. Those eyes that reminded him of the moon. "Don't let go of me."
Something stirred in his stomach, something beyond pity. Was it affection? For an intense moment he studied her. His people were not afraid of feeling, and neither was he, but there was a subterranean current running through him now warning him that feeling this might not be safe. Might not be...attainable. She needed him. Right now, he reminded himself. Only right now.
"I won't," he said gently.
Her small hand enclosed completely in his, he started towards the center of the river. This he could do. This moment. He could keep her safe. And he would, if he died doing it.
***
Nathaniel's leggings and loincloth were light and dried on him as he walked. He knew he probably should have put his long shirt back on once they'd forded the river, but he was unable to resist the sun burnishing his shoulders and back like a final blessing of summer, and perversely, he also enjoyed the idea of offending or at least tweaking Cora's sense of propriety. So he tucked the shirt into his bag and walked on, relishing the warm afternoon light.
He wasn't particularly fastidious by nature, but he preferred to be clean, and when the opportunity to get so presented itself in the form of a river, lake, or mountain stream, he rarely passed it up. Uncas was the same way. Swimming was not something that either of them did for pleasure, but their environment involved water, and they'd grown up learning to be comfortable with it, as just another skill to be mastered.
He looked behind him at the girls trailing along in their still sodden skirts and felt a moment's sympathy for the discomfort they must be feeling. Thank the Great Spirit, he'd been born a man and need never trouble himself with clothes that served anything other than a practical purpose. What a curse it must be to be female!
They made slow progress that afternoon, even though it seemed like Cora and Alice were both trying hard to keep up. The nature of the topography around the Mohawk prevented them from moving along quickly; while they were still in and surrounded by forest, there were vast open stretches of rock and cliffs now beginning to appear. It was Nathaniel's opinion that they were being followed by the same party that had come near to their camping spot of the previous night, and he spent the afternoon's travel considering where they might best find shelter tonight. It would need to be somewhere hidden, somewhere from which they would be able to see any attackers long before they got close enough to become trouble. He had in mind a cave that lay behind a major waterfall that, according to his reckoning, they should be able to reach before night fell. The cave he had discovered a few years earlier whilst traversing this same territory, and he thought it unlikely that the Huron, whose territory this wasn't, would know of its existence. At any rate, it would provide a safer shelter than the place they'd spent the night before and this was essential.
When they paused for a brief water break, Nathaniel communicated his plans to Uncas, who also thought it would be a good place to spend the night if they could find it, and added that he thought they might risk making a fire.
Nathaniel glanced past him at the women, who were resting atop riverside rocks and conversing between themselves in low tones. "If they're not dry by then. I suppose."
"Aren't you being a little..." Uncas paused, searching for the right word. Mohegan was a language better suited to talking about palpable things than it was about attitudes and feelings. "..hard?"
"I never knew you were so sensitive. I've seen you around some of the girls at camp, you were never so worried about whether or not they liked you then." Nathaniel ducked the hit that his brother threw in his direction.
"If we're taking them to their father, he's going to have to meet us and it would probably be better if they didn't hate us at that point," Uncas defended. "And anyway, I don't care if they like me or not, but they are different from the wolf people."
"You're only just realizing this now?" Nathaniel muttered.
"So...I'd like to get them to their father healthy in one piece, that's all I am saying."
"My brother the peacemaker."
Uncas shrugged and half-smiled. "Not such a bad thing to be. Your ancestors are the ones tearing this land apart right now, not mine."
This was true and Nathaniel couldn't think of any way to rebut it, so he clapped the younger man on the shoulder and turned. Cora and Alice rose also. Cora was definitely looking a little peaked. He gave her a sharp glance as he circled her. "You hungry?"
Cora shook her head. "I can wait till we stop for the night, thank you." Her words was polite, but there was a definite chill at their core. She was still sulking over having been told to obey him, no doubt.
"Alice?"
The younger girl shook her head quickly.
"Right," Nathaniel said. "Let's get going."
His memory of the location of the cave turned out to be accurate, though he wasn't terribly surprised to find it so because survival could and quite often did depend on such accuracy. A waterfall, not broad but with a long fall of about two hundred feet, pooled into white water in the river below.
To get to the cave's entrance behind the waterfall required navigating along a steep, slippery cliffside with no natural path. For Nathaniel and Uncas it would have meant a matter of only a few more moments of caution but with two tired women, the short journey from the surrounding forest to the narrow aperture of the cave was an ordeal. Cora slipped more than once, though Nathaniel was right alongside her to help, and Alice, despite Uncas's urgings to trust her eyesight, navigated almost the entire way with her eyes squeezed firmly shut, her hand enclosed in the young warrior's. When all four finally slipped behind the curtain of water and made it into the damp but safe rock enclosure, the women were not alone in breathing sighs of relief.
"That was fun," Nathaniel murmured, but he didn't think anyone heard him, the roar of the waterfall being loud enough to obscure a quiet comment. "Let's go further in."
The light filtering through the water allowed just enough for them to see partially into the cave, though by night it would be like being in a closed room. They explored the length and depth of the cave. It was more like a long tunnel, narrow rather than wide, that curved left around towards the back of the cliff and there ended abruptly.
Cora's shoulder was brushing Nathaniel's arm as they crowded there for a moment, uncertain of their next move, and he felt a tremor shake her body.
"You're cold."
"A little," Cora allowed.
"Stay here with them," Nathaniel said to Uncas, whom he couldn't even see, as they were out of direct view of the water now. "I'll be back."
He went out to the cliff and nimbly re-negotiated the rocks until he was back into the forest, then spent a few minutes gathering a sizeable armload of wood. The forest was full of dead timber and nicely aged material. He tucked a good bundle under his arm and returned to the cave.
It was not long after that that he had a good fire going, tucked out of sight in the back where it should be impossible to see if anyone came close without actually entering the cave itself. Cora and Alice both seemed grateful for and glad of both the light and the heat that the fire provided, as they crouched by it, wrapped in Cora's blanket, to dry their dresses.