The Frontiersman’s Daughter by Laura Frantz

Hayes’ blockhouse, time seemed to stand still, frozen into place by snow and the sameness of fort life. Even McClary’s unending chatter seemed ground down by fatigue. Not so many men came by Ma Horn’s cabin these days.
    “I’d be obliged if you’d help me make some shoepacs,” Lael told her ma once she’d stopped her spinning.
    Using strips of sturdy whang leather, they sewed high tops onto her moccasins and lined them with otter fur, creating snug shoepacs. Next she knitted herself stockings, and Ma made her a large linsey shawl, which she folded into a triangle and draped around her shoulders for warmth. A shapeless fur hat made from beaver pelts replaced her limp summer bonnet. At last, in a heavy dress dyed butternut brown, she could face the cold as often as she pleased.
    But there was nowhere to go beyond the fort’s four walls. Fear kept them all inside, the fate of the Canes an ugly reminder of what likely awaited any who wandered.

    Was this how Pa felt within the crowded, fetid fort that bore his name? There seemed no greater punishment, Lael reckoned, than to be confined to the company of a passel of people crammed together in close quarters. As each day dawned and ebbed, she longed for wide open spaces where she could draw an easy breath, but fear kept the fort gates locked tight.
    Standing along a high wall, peering out a gun hole toward the frozen river, its surface a gunmetal gray, she pondered the fear that had shadowed her for fourteen years, just as it had most who’d ventured over the Cumberland into Kentucke. She wondered if it would dog her all her days. If Pa wrestled with fear, she never knew it. Perhaps that was why his name was chiseled above the front gates. Even the Indians made no secret of their admiration for him. Indeed, their respect ran so deep it extended to her, a cowardly, would-be woman.
    Pa would not trade freedom for fear, so why should she? Her father’s blood ran in her veins. Might hers not contain a bit of boldness besides? Would she one day look back and regret a life of stepping carefully? Was it not a form of slavery?
    Aye, she would rather die than sit here another day.

    Quietly, so furtively as to be almost Indian-like, she unhobbled Pride and led him to the fort’s back gates. The sentry on watch simply stared at her.
    “Please open the gate, sir. I wish to pass.”
    She didn’t know his name, but he knew hers. Behind his brushy beard his brogue was thick with Ireland. “Miss Click, what would your father be sayin’ to that?”
    She nearly smiled. “I think he’d ask what took me so long.”
    For a fleeting moment she thought he would deny her. Then turning a wary eye past his post, he unbarred the massive gates and cracked them just enough to let her pass. Thanking him, she got up on Pride’s bare back, her fingers embedded in his thick mane, and rode out.
    When the gates thudded shut behind her and the bolt slid into place, she had but one fleeting moment of terror. Dawn painted the sky with sepia light. She wanted no onlookers on this, her first foray into newfound freedom.

    Heading east, she followed the sun. Pride seemed as exhilarated as she, kicking up snow and snorting wildly. Once she lost her shawl and went back for it, knotting it so that it would stay put about her shoulders. Strangely, she wasn’t cold. Beneath her fur hat, one plump straw-colored plait hung down her back to the horse’s belly.
    Soon she stood in a clearing. A blackened cabin and a once proud cornfield had been reduced to soot and stubble, as if a great unruly beast had stomped the cabin and crushed it, then gobbled up the corn with a fiery breath. Only the chimney of gray river rock remained. All around her the grass was still scorched save for a gentle rise to the west where a stately maple shaded seven mounds of earth and rock. Gravesites. This was the work of the Shawnee.
    At Cozy Creek she took some parched corn from her pocket, her fingers pausing to caress the blue