Miranda Jarrett - Gift Of The Heart

“Hush, now, hush, all of you!” called Rachel, her voice shaking for all she tried to hold it steady. “It’s only me, and I swear there’s nothing to be frightened of!”

Brave words, those, she thought as she hurriedly hung the lantern from a beam. How could she scold the poor hens for skittering and squawking when she’d been the one seeing demons in the dark? She sighed with exasperation at her own foolishness and tried to calm the frightened animals, murmuring nonsense to the cow, Juno, as she broke the ice in the water trough and replaced the winter straw in the manger.

She set the bucket on the floor and ran her fingers through the bristly hair between the cow’s ears. This was all Jamie Ryder’s fault, filling her head full of grim warnings and cautions, and Alec’s, too, with all his tales of Tory and Indian raids. Indians, pooh. In the eighteen months since she’d come here she’d seen only two Indians, a pair of Mahicans traveling north with an English trapper.

And as wild as it had once seemed to her, this land so close to the river was downright civilized. On clear days she could easily make out the smoke from her nearest neighbors’ chimney, and though the journey to Ethan and Mary Bowman’s house took more than an hour through the forest, by the standards of this part of New York that was only as far as the house next door was in Providence. The war that was tearing apart so much of the country was so far away as to seem unreal to her, one more thing she’d left behind in Rhode Island. She was likely safer here than anywhere else in the state.

Besides, the sun itself would rise in an hour, and banish the dark and the shadows for another day. So why, then, was her heart still pounding, her breathing still as ragged as if she’d run four hundred paces instead of forty?

Though the rooster and his hens had settled once again with only a few lingering, irritated clucks among them, Juno had not, shifting uneasily in her stall with her eyes white-rimmed.

“Hush now, my lady,” said Rachel, her own voice finally settling down. “Hush now, you silly old madame cow.”

Yet still Juno tossed her head, the most defiance a cow can show, and enough to make Rachel wish she could postpone the milking. Once she’d made the mistake of continuing when Juno was feeling out of sorts, and learned the hard way how quickly a cow can kick. She’d had the bruise for a fortnight.

Instead she pulled the three-legged milking stool back and dropped down onto it with a sigh. She couldn’t wait forever; not only was Juno’s bag heavy with milk, but Rachel herself had to be back in the house before Billy woke and missed her. And Jamie Ryder, too. When she’d left he’d been sleeping soundly enough, but she didn’t want to give him any more time than she had to alone in her home, or alone with Billy, either. Lord, how everything changed with him here!

She pressed her forehead against the cow’s side and softly began to sing, hoping that would cure Juno’s restlessness. It usually did. The more morose the song, the better, as far as the cow was concerned, and she was particularly partial to the sailors’ laments Rachel had learned long ago from her brothers.

He has crost the raging seas his Molly for to tease And that is the cause of my grief,

I sigh, lament and mourn waiting for my love’s return,

Of whom shall I seek—

Abruptly Rachel broke off, listening. She thought she’d heard a scuffling sound, almost scratching, but as soon as she fell quiet it stopped. Daft, she thought with disgust, she’d gone daft and soft brained as an old rotten log.

So farewell, my dearest Dear, until another year Then the sweet Spring I hope for to—

There, she’d heard it again. Swiftly she moved the milk bucket aside and caught up the lantern. She smacked Juno’s angular hip to make her move away from the wall, and then knelt in the straw with the lantern held low. The scuffling sound was definitely there now, like something digging against the wooden wall, searching for a loose deal. Rats or squirrels, most likely, starving from the snow cover and desperate for the grain in the barn.

Scowling, Rachel rose and grabbed her musket. She’d had to pay dearly for that grain from Alec, too dearly to let it be nibbled away by rats. She stormed out the door with her skirts flying, ready to teach the thieves a lesson.

She slipped once on the ice and swore impatiently. She’d left the lantern inside, but with the door ajar a narrow beam of light slid across the snow. She peered into the shadows where the scratching sound had come from, trying to see as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light. Something moved, something low and dark, and she kicked the door open a little farther.

The pale light washed farther over the snow, down to the corner of the barn and the stone wall beyond. The low, dark shadow rose up from the snow, startled by the light, growing larger by the second. A long tail, the sharp triangles of ears and yellow eyes glowing in the lantern’s light. No scratching now, no digging, only the deep rumbling growl as the wolf drew back on its haunches to face her.

There had been something in the dark. She hadn’t been imagining things. But a wolf, God help her. Not a rat after corn, but a wolf.

He crouched there in the snow, cornered between the barn and the wall, his lips curled from his teeth and the hair bristling on the back of his neck like some mongrel guarding a stolen bone. But the wolf was bigger than any dog she’d ever seen, and she didn’t think he was going to run off if she stamped her foot and shook her apron.

Slowly, so slowly, she raised the musket to her eye and released the lock. Her hands were shaking, making the sight tremble, and she took a deep breath to steady herself. She had to make this single shot count; it could take her a full minute, sixty seconds at least, to reload the musket, and she wasn’t sure she’d have that time.

The wolf angled sideways, closer, testing her, the yellow eyes bright and hard.

She had to do this, shoot him now, before he came any closer. She told herself she couldn’t miss at this range. She couldn’t afford to, anyway. She swallowed hard, whispered a terse little prayer and squeezed the trigger.

She heard the hammer click, the little sizzle of the pan and the bright flash, she smelled the familiar acrid puff of gunpowder, and then—

And then nothing.

No thump as the butt kicked back against her shoulder, no crack from the ball flying from the barrel. Only the flat, worthless silence of a gun that had misfired.

Somehow the animal seemed to know Rachel had lost her advantage and began inching closer. His nails clicked softly with each footfall on the frozen snow, his breath gathering in white puffs around his bared teeth.

With a muffled cry of dismay and fear Rachel dropped the musket from her shoulder, her forefinger tangling clumsily with the trigger as she fought her panic. Eight feet away, maybe six. There was no time to dear the fouled gun, no time to reload, not even time to run back into the barn, not now that the wolf was closer than she to the open door. If she turned and tried to run for the house, the wolf would surely head for the open barn and poor Juno.

Or he could choose instead to chase after her. Forty paces uphill, across a frozen path in the dark where the animal could see so much better than she, chasing after her to seize her ice-heavy skirts in his jaws and drag her down, down.

Suddenly the wolf lunged across the snow and Rachel staggered back, barely keeping from the animal’s reach. Gasping, she slid her hands down the musket to the end of the barrel and swung it as hard as she could. She felt the impact of the butt striking the wolf, and heard the startled yelp of pain. But the same sweep of the musket through the air threw her off-balance, her feet sliding out from under her on the ice, and she pitched forward hard, the musket flying from her hands to spin across the crusted snow.