Read Daughter of the Sword for Free Online

make for town, though. I hear the roads aren’t always safe after dark.”
    â€œI’ll protect you,” Rolf teased. “And I shall sup at the Whitlaws’, brother, whatever you decide!”
    Deborah couldn’t hear Dane’s response because Sara met her at the door and drew her into the house, wrinkling her nose. “You smell like a brewery! And your dress! What’ve you been up to, Deborah? Who are those men?”
    Deborah gave an expurgated account while the Shawnee girl rubbed goose grease into her scratches and added her opinion to the prevailing one that Deborah was fortunate to have escaped serious injury.
    â€œWas I just supposed to let the dogs tear that coyote apart?” Deborah asked hotly.
    â€œNo, meshemah .” Sara used the Shawnee word for sister. “But you must consider what an action may cost. Your life is worth more than a coyote’s.”
    â€œWould it be, if I let an animal die like that?”
    Sara kissed her. “You’re what you are, and my best friend. The strangers are handsome. Do you like them?”
    â€œNo! They’re patronizing, lordly, and so … so English it makes me want to kick them! Why ever did Thos have to invite them to supper?”
    â€œYou didn’t tell me everything that happened,” Sara observed with a slow smile. “But never mind now. Thos has Nebuchadnezzar ready, and you’d better go before he pretends to be lame. Here’s a loaf of bread for your mother, and give her my love.”
    Deborah thanked Sara, who waved good-bye from the door. Thos handed Deborah their dejected-looking mount’s reins while he ran back for a few words with Sara. Deborah again faced the problem of what to do with her skirts. Drat Thos! If he hadn’t invited the Hunters to supper, she could have ridden with skirts to the knee, and no harm done! As Thos came back and started to climb into the saddle, she said under her breath, “I think you’ll have to let me ride in front. My skirts—”
    â€œYour skirts?” he blurted out.
    She pinched his arm, then noted that Rolf was quelling laughter, and even Dane’s eyes twinkled. Stung past modesty, she put one foot in the stirrup, gathered her skirt, swung her other leg over the saddle into the opposite stirrup, and settled her dress as concealingly as possible.
    â€œGood for you, Miss Deborah,” applauded Johnny. “Now you’re showing sense!”
    Thos gaped, shrugged, and clambered up behind the saddle, holding her around the waist. “See that you don’t make us both fall off,” he hissed in her ear. “What’s got into you?”
    â€œI’m tired of being female!” she hissed back at him. “I’m tired of skirts and not being able to ride astraddle and … and lots of things! So you just hold on tight, brother, dear!”
    What a shame that Nebuchadnezzar, unmoved and unknowing, couldn’t summon up a bit of dash and fire! But he plodded along, dreaming of the corn he got after being ridden, and Deborah gritted her teeth as the Englishmen rode on either side, holding in their horses and answering Thos’s eager questions.
    Annoyed at his friendliness, Deborah dug her elbow into his chest. “Ouch!” he winced. “Why’d you do that, ’Borah?”
    He plunged on, establishing that the brothers had crossed the ocean in ten days in a Cunard iron-clad liner, spent some weeks in the north and south, then traveled by steamboat to Leavenworth and spent a month there, acquiring horses and Rolf’s hounds and picking up information about their proposed route while Rolf hunted and Dane sketched. They had only last night arrived in Lawrence and had found, in the home of Mrs. Eden, a widow, lodgings much more comfortable and private than the hotel. Deborah stiffened at that. Melissa Eden acted demure, but she carried herself in a way few men could ignore.
    When Rolf