"Whoa, Ghi-goo-ie, sweetheart, " Eliza's gentle cooing to the mare drifted across the meadow on fragrant woodland breezes, calling Laurel back from her reverie.
Laurel recognized the horse's whinny expressing her displeasure at the confinements of the harness. The mare's stomping echoed over the settling waves followed by Eliza's soothing encouragement in her native tongue.
Laurel chuckled to herself. Eliza Blackburn believed that the only words Ghi-goo-ie understood were Cherokee. And that no white man's horse ever protested the harness like a Cherokee pony.
"Our spirits - even the spirits of our animals - need to be free." Eliza would often say as she patiently readied the mare to pull the wagon each day. "One is never content, o-gi-na-li-i, my friend, when another controls the reins. That is why your moccasins have measured many miles, Laurel, far from our great mountains. Your spirit searches for the one who can undo the harness."
Laurel's eyes searched the brightening sky eager for one last sighting of the free-flying gulls.
Will I ever be rid of the ghosts from the past ? Maybe Matt can help me somehow. Eliza seems to think so.
She turned her back to the morning sun, rising higher over the quieting breakers. The hint of a smile played upon her full lips as she imagined the long-awaited reunion with Matt in Bangor.
Though Lee and Grant had signed the treaty over a year ago, news traveled slowly to the Canadian wilderness. Matt's letter, dated mid-August, had caught up to the women while they were staying in New Hampshire during September. Money running low and worn out from traveling so many miles, so many months, they had stayed put for a season.
Eliza's colorful hand-woven reed baskets had been popular among the wealthier ladies looking for something pleasantly unusual to decorate their parlors. Both Laurel and Eliza helped the local farmers with harvesting corn, apples, and pumpkins. Occasionally, Laurel took in a bit of sewing to occupy her mind and hands during the chilly autumn evenings.
Matt had written of his recovery from the bout of influenza that had delayed his return to the States. The news of his job offer with The Scots-man's Shipping Company both excited and troubled Laurel's heart. Though glad he had chosen to settle in the States, night after night, she wondered what possessed a Confederate, mixed-blood Cherokee from North Carolina to make a Yankee town his home.
Anxious as she was to be reunited with blood - family, the sadness of the news that she must share with her brother overshadowed her anticipatory joy.
With the blanket draped over her arm, Laurel ambled back through the clearing, stooping now and then to gather a bouquet of red-and-yellow bittersweet and velvety black-eyed Susans. Once dried, the bittersweet would be added to her medicine box, the others to her collection of wildflowers that were "just pretty."
She shrugged her shoulders at the sound of snapping twigs. Probably just a woodland animal, tired of spying, resuming its search for breakfast. Her own mouth watered at the thought of Eliza's biscuits and sausage gravy.
As Laurel placed the blanket and flowers in the back of the wagon, the rumbling in her stomach tightened into a knot as her companion's scream rent the air.
