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Hot Cannons & Warm Lovers Ch. 01

By: Dont_Move_the_Rabbit_Ears



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This story takes place amid the gathering clouds of the period leading up to the War of 1812-14 and a little beyond that, ending about 1815, though this won't encompass all of that. I'll only focus on a few individuals and events.

I've tried hard to get it right, but I can't guarantee anything. Some of the characters lived at the time, and as far as the military engagements which appear in this at various points, I've endeavored to be accurate, though this won't even get close to the major battles so historians can heave a huge sigh of relief right now. I don't mean to torture anyone's memory with this. :)

The people who played a part in actual events are for the most part, bit players in the grand scheme, though it likely wouldn't have made their hardships any lighter to know of it at the time.

This is a work of fiction centered around what is likely a little-known event late in the conflict, though aside from the fictional characters and their doings, I'll try to portray things as they happened. The words and actions of the historical figures have been left unmolested for the most part, other than what might have happened here and there in the dark.

Within the context of this piece, most of the character interaction is fictional and the lesser players never existed at all, except by coincidence if it happens.

There's some French in this, which I've probably buggered, so I'll apologize right now if I have. I was much more interested in the tight sweaters during my time studying French. It was a language course, but I had my mind on biology and some pretty much gravity-defying physics at the time.

Oh, and if it's a problem, the name of the lady in this chapter is Lise, pronounced "Leez".

Good luck with the names of the indigenous characters. ;) 

Sadly, I had no one to help me with the Ojibwemowin, or I would have been able to give this a lot more color and flavor. I had to rely on what I could cobble together from the net. Scary stuff, that - if you want to get something right, that is.

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Part One

Cap Rouge, outside of Quebec City, 1792

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Lise Robitaille was upset over the frail health of her old father and she wept a little at his knee before the fire late that night. He was growing slowly worse and there was nothing to be done.

"It is only natural, my girl," the old widower said a little weakly as they stared into the flames together, "I have lived long enough I suppose, and done the things that I wished to do. I had the love of the finest woman in your mother and raised my children.

Oh, I do have some regrets, of course, but then who could say that they do not, having gotten near to the end of their days? Everything is a mixture of joy as well as sadness. My children are grown and gone, save you. I have not seen most of them in years. 

But at least I will not die unloved. I have you and my small grandson still."

He lifted his cup of rum for a small sip. Lise had taken to watering it down as much as she dared out of her concern that he not hasten his end with it, and also out of their near-poverty.

Lise was a mistake in a sense; a surprise last pregnancy to her parents after the others were gone. Her mother had never regained much of her strength after the labor and had passed to the ravages of a late-winter cold when Lise had been only ten. 

Her father had been a busy man then with little enough time to watch her every move as he often worked a day through without ever once seeing the light of the sun.

Without much direction and advice on a few of the things pertaining to the hazards of young men to a girl such as she was, Lise had found herself to be a sweet-looking young thing -- all curly and long blonde hair and blue eyes - much sought after by the local boys.

The trouble with that was that she didn't live in the highest of circles and eventually one of those boys managed to pry her knees apart a few times with his soft talk and his kisses, and at only fourteen, while still a child herself, she'd given her father the only grandson that he knew of.

Since then, she'd had no reputation worth saving around most of the place, but she'd never made the same mistake again and no better man had appeared to sweep her off to a better place. There was no better place, she decided. This was all that there was -- and it was ending. Her poor wages as a seamstress in a shop didn't bring in enough to keep her and her young son fed and her father's small pension would disappear as soon as he'd drawn his last breath.

While he'd still been an able man, her father had been a smith, and in a better day long ago, he'd also been a bit of an armorer. He'd taught his young grandson as much as a little boy's mind and attention span could manage to hang onto until the illness had progressed to where things were tonight. The old man was seventy-nine, his youngest daughter was now twenty-one, and little Étienne was only seven.

It was a dying art these days - other than as a distraction for the rich, but with his grandfather's eternal patience and with more than a few wooden versions, young Étienne was more than a match in any swordfight with the dragons that he often daydreamed about. These days though, Étienne fought the dragons all alone, his grandfather not having the breath or the strength anymore to join in the fun of the adventure.

"But Papa," Lise sobbed a little as she worried, "what is to become of us?"

The old man coughed for over a minute before he sank back into the chair to rest for a bit. When he felt himself able to, he nodded, "I understand your concern, Lise. Were it not for your error which brought us the joy of your young son, you would likely be married to a fine man by now and having his children instead of living as we do; an aged man with a beautiful young woman and her young son."

He swept his arm around the room, "This is not for you. This is only where you are, and it is no place for a young woman to carry on a life in. The roof leaks and the rats rule in the night."

He cleared his throat, "But I have given it some thought. I did that when this first began. Of my six sons, only one has remained in some small contact with me since your mother's passing." 

He smirked a little, "The rest all think that I caused it somehow."

Lise was surprised. Sending mail was an expense to people like them. "Who is it, Papa?"

There was a knock at the door then and Lise felt a good deal of trepidation in going to answer it. Why the creditors chose this time of night to want to appear on one's doorstep was beyond her. 

"Well go and answer it, Lise," her father rumbled.

As she got to her feet, she turned to go to the door, but there was a man already inside and standing at the door to the room. 

"Papa," he said in a deep and cheery voice, "Thank God I have not come too late! Your last letter to me waited for three months before I was able to be in the right place to ask for it. Were it not for what I read, I would be content with having to wait until daylight to bang on the door."

Lise stared at her own brother, never having seen him before in her life. Jean-Luc was the second-eldest and had been gone from the age of sixteen, long before the world had heard the first of her wails as an infant.

He was a good size and very fit-looking with a full-beard and long dark blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. He wore the clothing of a Coureur des bois and Lise discovered that he was indeed a Voyageur with a license to trade in furs, though he worked in the employ of a distant merchant somewhere in the wilds of the 'pays d'en haut', or the higher country near to the Great Lakes. 

To Lise, he looked to be about half-wild in a very handsome way, but that was only appearances and the imaginings of her first impressions in a dark room lit by a single candle and the small fire in the hearth. 

The meeting was a strained but happy one for father and son, both knowing that it would be their last before the old man's death. With Lise's direction, Jean-Luc was able to get his father to bed easily and after saying goodnight and expressing his joy that Jean-Luc had come after all, the elderly man fell asleep in moments, tired out from the day, the joy of seeing his son again -- and from just being near to his end.

To her that night, Jean-Luc Robitaille was a handsome savior. She said as much and her bother laughed quietly as he admired the beauty of the sister that he'd never known, "I have been meaning to come home for some time to meet you because of what Papa said about you in his letters," he said, "but I am always so busy and often far in the woods from a good place to begin the trip when I have the idea. From Papa's letter to me, you are to come with me westward once he passes. You must travel lightly, for that is the way that it is done, but I can help in all ways. That is what I prepared to do when I set out to come."

"But," Lise began, "where will we go and what of my son?"

"We go to Prairie du Chien eventually," Jean-Luc grinned, "but that will be for next year, since the winter will overtake us en route. First, we go to Michilimackinac to winter there among friends. You and your boy must learn to speak English as well as a few of the Indian languages. 

But you will have help with these changes, Lise. My woman waits for us near Penetanguishene at the home of some of her relations and she will be glad to meet you -- as I am delighted to meet my young sister at last."

"Why will we need to learn English and the others?" Lise asked, "Is French not the most widely -- spoken language in New France?"

"Times change and there is no New France anymore. Not since the English came and France cast us adrift long ago," Jean-Luc said. "It does not surprise me that the provincial attitudes remain alive here."

"No matter what the people in Quebec City might want to tell you or to believe themselves, there are others here, Lise. And," he raised his finger as he drew a small flask out of his pocket, "the speech matters little. What matters is the trade of goods and supplies, and if I must speak English to do that, then that is what I will speak."

Lise shared a drink with her brother and found herself liking him a great deal. She realized that a lot of it had to do with his appearance on their doorstep as a bit of a savior, but she found that she really regretted not having met him long ago as they began to talk of a few of his travels. As she listened and asked a few questions, she realized a couple of things.

Their lives were about to change; hers and Étienne's, no matter what she might have wanted. She was certainly in no financial shape to do other than follow her brother's directions. As well, she smiled a little to herself, her son was going to be surprised in the morning to find that he had an uncle such as Jean-Luc. She only hoped that Jean-Luc didn't mind the barrage of questions which she knew would come. The only variable seemed to be their father's health.

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Jean-Luc was pleasantly surprised when he found his nephew Étienne to be a bright and lively, well-formed, tow-headed boy with blue eyes like his mother's. Étienne himself was amazed to learn that Jean-Luc was his uncle and after staring at the way that Jean-Luc was dressed in mostly fringed buckskin and learning what Jean-Luc did for a living, the boy stuck to his uncle like glue.

As it turned out, their father wasn't all that much of a limiting factor, for the old man passed so quietly in his sleep the next night that no one knew until she went to wake him in the morning for breakfast. Even though she'd known that it was imminent, Lise was upset, young Étienne most of all. 

Lise was about to leave to go to ask for the priest to come, but Jean-Luc pointed to the meal and said that their father would have shaken his head at them, "Papa would only ask us why, when he certainly will be going nowhere, and there is a hot meal waiting right here. 

And if there is one thing that I know as the God's own truth, it is that priests never miss a meal."

Lise had to agree, knowing the old man, so that was the order of things, as upset as she was.

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They were ready to set out four days later, but on the third day as they were packing -- during which period, Lise was certain that her brother's most used word was 'Non' in what could be allowed and what would be excess, Jean-Luc was surprised to find that his young nephew was prepared to leave everything behind, but was adamant about bringing just a few implements along. 

"Grand-Père told me that these were mine now and that I could use them to feed myself by doing work," the boy said, "I am too small yet to shoe a horse, but I know how it is to be done."

Jean-Luc nodded, recognizing the tools and seeing the seriousness in his nephew's young face. "These things have weight, Étienne. You may find them to be as stones around your young neck at some point." He sighed with a smile then, "But I suppose that I should be glad that you have agreed to leave Papa's old anvil behind us." He reached over and picked up a long and scabbarded blade. 

"And what of this?" he asked.

"No one uses these things very much anymore. We use muskets and pistols and even the Indians use their fighting hatchets, their tomahawks, as they are called if they must. No one uses swords and that thing is an old style even for what it is. The officers in any army carry much sleeker blades these days, though for the most part, they are only for ceremonies when they feel the need to dress in their finery. What can you do with that? You cannot even cut kindling with it."

To Jean-Luc's surprise, though young Étienne took two pulls on the long scabbard to unsheath the thing, he was able to hold it up with no sign of a tremor, and he was able to swing it a little carefully as he showed his uncle a few techniques a little slowly.

When Étienne handed it over, Jean-Luc saw that it was a full-weight blade at about three pounds -- quite remarkable for a boy of seven to be able to manage -- even if it was too long for him by half. "I practice what Grand-Père taught me every day," the boy said, "and I have not cut myself with it in over a year."

Lise rolled her eyes, deciding that she wouldn't ask Étienne to show her brother the pair of scars from the last times that he had cut himself. 

"These things are all that he has left of his grandfather," she said to Jean-Luc. "He never knew his father for I have never pointed him out, knowing that it would be the wrong thing to do. I know my son and as surely as the sun rises in the morning, one day, Étienne would get himself into trouble demanding that the roué make good on the cost of keeping a son alive. It would most surely not end well."

Jean-Luc laughed and nodded, "Especially if my nephew were to press the point of his argument with that old blade. 

Well we are as packed as we can be, save for a few things to make the morning meal with. Give the boy a few tasks to keep him out of trouble and let us go to where I might see the man who young Étienne would have a want in himself to whip."

Lise demurred at first, but her brother was very charming and persuasive, telling her that he'd been joking, though he would have liked to have gotten a look at the fool. They went for a drink at the local inn and she pointed out the man to Jean-Luc.

Jean-Luc nodded, asking only once which idiot it had been in the group to be certain and then they left.

They were off the next day on a boat bound for York, an unimportant town on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Lise remarked on Jean-Luc's clean-shaven appearance, but he didn't make much of a reply. It wasn't until they were well-past Trois-Rivières on the third day after leaving and it was also well-past the time when young Étienne was in his bunk asleep that Jean-Luc handed Lise a small purse of coins.

"What is this?" she asked, and after opening it, she stared at him open-mouthed.

Her brother smirked, "It is the poor efforts to save a little that a worthless man could manage to produce on short notice. 

I returned to the inn late during the evening. A coin or two in the palm of the sort of friend that Étienne's father might keep told me where I had to go, and, ... well, I suppose that I do look like a bit of a ruffian to one who might have always fancied himself as one and never had the stones in his sac to actually make that trip. This is the sad best that he could offer to help you raise your boy."

Lise was shocked, "What did you say to him?"

Jean-Luc laughed again for a long moment, "Well if you need to hear it exactly, I suppose that I might have said something like, 'Mon tabarnac jva te décalisser la yeule, calice!'" 

He smirked, "I guess that it is a hell of a way to be shaken out of a sound and rum-fueled sleep. I shouted it at him as I lifted him up by the throat, calling him a bâtard. The next thing that I knew, the stupid teton couldn't give me his money quick enough.

He had no idea who I was and even less that it might be over his callous treatment of my lovely sister some years ago."

She gaped at him, "But you have robbed --"

Jean-Luc shrugged, "And he did less to you and your life? 

This is a pittance for what any man should have done if he could not marry you. A good thing that he had this much I think, for I disliked him at the first sight of him at the inn. So, I helped him back to sleep with my fist against his jaw and I left quietly.

We are safe, Lise. I went in Papa's clothing and it was dark. I doubt that he got even a look in the moonlight as I towered over him in his bed."

"That is why you shaved the day that we left?" she asked with a little smile and he nodded.

"It ought to get at least a start at growing back before we get to Penetanguishene. I cannot allow my woman to see me like this or she will insist that I shave every day and that cannot be allowed."

"Well thank you for what you have done and I must say that I like you even more like this. It is not my place to say it, Jean-Luc, but I think that I would side with your woman over it."

Jean-Luc groaned and shook his head.

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York was a small and bustling place, though to people from a little place like Cap Rouge, it seemed large by comparison. As Lise and her son looked around, Jean-Luc procured a small wagon and a horse. It wasn't much, but it got them to Penetanguishene a few days later over the rough road and Lise was startled to find that Jean-Luc's 'woman' -- for he never once said that they were married -- was a very lovely Ojibwa girl who spoke more than a little French and a fair amount of English as well.

It was the accommodations which were the surprise.

They were welcomed by Kiwidinok, for that was her name, with a feast which Lise judged that she must have worked the whole day on, but the woman only smiled, "When you grow up like me, you learn ways to cook and prepare for men who come and go and often have little time from one day to the next."

Many of the foods were a little strange and new to them, but by then, neither Lise nor her boy were in a mood to be fussy and they discovered a great deal of good food that they now liked.

There were two tents there, neither of them large. Lise slept in one with her son and Kiwidinok slept with Jean-Luc in the other, though Lise had to wonder if they slept at all, by the sounds that they made over what must have been a very happy reunion indeed.

"We do not live here," Kiwidinok said as she brushed her long hair out before braiding it the next day, "This is only a place where I have people close by. I waited for Jean-Luc and you."

"But where is Uncle Jean-Luc?" Étienne asked, "I don't see him anywhere."


Hot Cannons & Warm Lovers Ch. 01



"He had to leave for Shawanaga early this morning," Kiwidinok smiled, "He has some business there, but he told me that he would return in maybe three days and then we can go on to Michilimackinac. First, we must go to Manitou's Island. I have a young daughter and she is there waiting for me. Then you will have a first friend too and we can go on.

You can help me, little fighter," she smiled, finding that young Étienne possessed more than ample charms to make him adorable to most women for a seven year-old with good manners and a pleasant disposition. "We will go down to the beach and look for clams and if you help a lot, I will be sure to leave you some to eat - the best of what we find." 

"Little fighter?" he asked and she smirked, "I have already watched as you fought out in the sunshine with that metal thing. I think it is a large knife, no?" she asked Lise who nodded a little wearily.

"It's a thing from the past, and I don't let him play with anyone else when he practices so seriously every day. It is an old weapon from long ago back in France, but it was a gift from his Grand-Père who died only days before we left and it is Étienne's most prized possession. At first, I thought that only tragedy could come of giving a thing like that to a boy, but he takes it all so seriously, more than I thought that he would be able to for one so young."

"Take a little advice then," Kiwidinok said quietly, "the rulers here are English, and they gather some strength in this place -- to guard the large batteaux, I think," she pointed at the tall sailing ships in the harbor, "Tell your boy to hide a thing like that before some fat fool in a uniform comes to take it away from him."

The three of them wandered off with a bucket that Kiwidinok borrowed from her relations and spent a lot of the day digging for clams. "I know where I can get good things to cook with these," she said, "we will have a fine meal later."

Lise felt as though she'd found a friend in Kiwidinok and it was clear that the other woman liked her and her son. She'd seen Indian women before, but this was the first one that she'd gotten to know personally first hand and she felt thankful for it.

"I don't know anyone here," she said, "Étienne can make friends as fast as he can blink, but I do not have that ability. I feel a little lost."

"You will make many," Kiwidinok smiled, "You are beautiful and to us, even though we have all seen yellow hair before, it is a little magical to look at. Where we go for the winter, there are more people like me than there are whites. I will be your first friend in a strange place to you, and I know everyone."

Lise smiled and thanked her, but after a while, she saw that something seemed to be bothering Kiwidinok somehow. She just wasn't certain of it, only having met the woman the afternoon before. Eventually, she asked and Kiwidinok frowned a little as she looked down, searching for the words to explain.

"What Jean-Luc would like, more than anything I think, is to have a trading post of his own. But that is hard to do because the posts are all placed by the large fur companies. He tried twice before in different places, but the posts were burned in the night. It was before I knew him. About two summers past, he ordered some goods from a company and it took most of his money to buy them.

When they arrived, Jean-Luc found that he had been cheated, because he could not be there when the goods were sent. Many things were not right. Things that he asked for were not there, and some things that were not asked for came anyway. As we looked through it, we saw some things that were not the best quality.

He would have sold those things for less money, but to buy everything, some people had already paid Jean-Luc and it was too close to the winter to do much about anything. It has cost my man some customers.

Now and then, he has to go and make his apologies and give money back for some things. A poor blanket is not a large problem, but you must see that my people often move a lot and so they travel lightly. A badly-made axe - or even worse - a musket which does not work, can mean that a family cannot hunt and ... 

Jean-Luc always asks that anyone who wants to buy a musket try to fire it first to be sure that it works, but sometimes, problems come later. People who feel that they have been cheated by a white can get very angry. I am afraid that one day, he will not come home anymore." 

They did indeed eat well that evening and Kiwidinok patiently began to teach them a little English as well as some Ojibwe.

"What is this called again?" Lise wanted to know.

Kiwidinok grinned then, "Ojibwemowin is the full name, though it can get even longer if one wants to be correct. We like long words. But it is alright to say only Ojibwe. It is a very useful language because many tribes speak a form of it;" she said, counting on her fingers, "the Ojibwa, the Odawa, the Algonquin, the Potawatomi, and all of the different Ojibwa groups, ..." she related them and used more fingers until she held up her palms, "There are many more to the south of here, the Shawnee and the Kickapoo; many, many more, all the way down to the great salt water to the south. 

Often, we are divided by our language. We are enemies with the Iroquois and most of their relatives, the Sioux and the Dakota. They speak differently. But it is not always so. We have friendship with some of the Wyandots, who are Hurons and can understand their Iroquois cousins."

"It sounds as complicated as the culture of the Europeans," Lise laughed a little as she counted off nations on her own fingers while it was Kiwidinok's turn to stare and then they laughed together, deciding that things were not all that different.

Each day, they learned from Kiwidinok a little more as they waited. Sometimes, she'd lead them on little walks, pointing to a thing or other and giving the name of the article in English or Ojibwemowin and then having them repeat it. If she could, she'd get them to try to use the new word in a sentence, though that usually only went as far as 'I see a ...' and whatever it was. 

And each evening, Lise thanked her new friend as they sat together and talked after Étienne had gone to bed.

It kept them busy as they looked for greens to eat, so that Kiwidinok didn't have to ask her relatives for very much meat. It also taught Lise and Étienne a lot beyond the words. Up to this point in their lives, they hadn't been wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but they'd still been able to buy a few staples to make a meal out of, and Lise had always kept a little garden for vegetables.

Out here, they were learning that there was an astounding array of things to eat all around them, pretty much, if one knew what it was and how to cook and prepare it. "The Great Spirit always feeds his children," Kiwidinok would say with a smile.

Lise learned how Kiwidinok had come to meet her brother and where they'd been together. 

"Your daughter is not by Jean-Luc?" Lise asked and Kiwidinok shook her head as she looked off at something across a clearing for a moment.

"Ayashe's father died fighting the Iroquois," she said, looking back at Lise. She shrugged, "I was very young when I made her. She was always a very happy little girl, but when her father did not come home to us anymore, she did not even smile anymore for over two years. 

But Jean-Luc is a good father to Ayashe and she cares for him as much as she can."

Kiwidinok smiled a little, "She will change her name soon, I think. A name is only good if it fits a person. My daughter's name means 'little one' and it was a good name while she was that. But she is a little large for her age and she is strong. She thinks that she does not want to live planting and picking a few crops for her family to eat. She tells me that she does not want to belong to any man and says that she can do anything that a boy can do, but make her water go a long way like a boy can."

Kiwidinok laughed a little, "She tries though, and I tell her that if she ever does find a way to do it, then I will name her 'Far Water Woman'. It makes us both laugh.

She misses him as much as I do. When she was small, she did not want to even touch Jean-Luc and she told him that she hated him. But he only smiled. She would have nothing to do with him until one day; she fell on some rocks right in front of him. He knelt beside her as she picked herself up but he said nothing.

Jean-Luc waited, knowing that we do not make much out of a child's hurts, but he knew that she carried something else in her heart. Ayashe's eyes were full of fire when she looked at him. He only smiled and gave her a piece of dried meat to chew. He said that he saw no tears on a strong girl, but he said that he saw that she was a little hungry and strong girls need to eat like anyone else. He walked away then and sat down to sharpen his knife.

It took a little time, but Ayashe came to sit beside him. She was still sniffling a little from the hurt of the scrapes and he knew that she felt shamed that she could not stop the few tears that came. He told her that sometimes they are pushed out by other things and she nodded and told him that her father was dead.

Jean-Luc nodded and said that he would be proud to be her father, even for only those times when she needed one. He said that she nodded, but said nothing at first. But after a little while, he saw that she began to cry, though she made no sound. He picked her up and took her away, where no one could see and he held her until she'd cried everything out. He told me later that it took a long time."

Kiwidinok laughed then, "I knew nothing of this! All that I knew was that when I came back from washing a few things in the lake, I saw Jean-Luc walking to me with Ayashe on his shoulders and she was laughing for the first time since her father left us to go to war. He gave me back my laughing girl! 

They are very close. She often sits between his knees and they talk while she pokes a stick into the fire. Her uncle teaches her to hunt like any boy and she will fight with anyone who tells her that girls cannot do this or that." She nodded with a bit of pride, "Ayashe is a wild little cat."

It all sounded wonderful and quite romantic to Lise, though Kiwinidok was careful to mention that it was not always so. "You must always look to the winter long before it comes," she said seriously, "No good to forget something because to forget is to starve or to freeze."

One day, she borrowed a canoe and took them out of Penetang Harbor out into Severn Sound. They went north and then northwest until they could see another body of land off in the distance. It was an island with an impossible name for Étienne and Lise and seeing their faces caused Kiwidinok to laugh. "I will not ask you to say it," she chuckled, with an apologetic wave of her hand, "but I know there are good things to eat that we can gather there."

It took a while to get out that far, but she showed them whole meadows full of blueberries and a few groves where the ground was covered in mushrooms. Lise couldn't believe it. Kiwinidok only said that getting there was too much work for a lot of people and so the ones who took the trouble were always rewarded.

As they foraged, she leaned toward Lise and put her arm around her to speak to her quietly, "I do not know if you are like me, Lise, but when I come here, I always like to see that I am alone, and if that is so, then I look for a quiet little spot to, ... " she sought for the words.

We say 'abaasandeke'. It means to sun one's self."

Lise nodded in understanding and then Kiwidinok smiled a little conspiratorially, "And I am a woman who must often wait for her man while he is gone for a time. Sometimes I miss him very much, so while I lie in the sun for a little while, I, ... "she struggled for a moment, "I use my hands?"

She ended it as an uncertain question, not knowing a better term in French. She saw Lise's very slight knowing smile as she moved her hand in front of herself for just a brief moment.

"I do not have a man," Lise said, still smiling a little, "but I know what you mean, Kiwidinok."

The other woman looked a little surprised, "But, ... Étienne, ..."

Lise shrugged a little sadly, "A mistake, the very sweetest kind for I have Étienne from it. I was very young, just the same as you. But I am so happy to have him for a son. I must catch myself thinking of it every day at least once. His father was just a young man, nothing else, and I was a fool. But I know what it is to want a man, so I understand."

"I will speak to Jean-Luc," Kiwidinok smiled, "I would have killed you for the wrong look at him if I saw that you had the wrong thought, but that was before I knew you. We might share a little sometime."

She saw Lise's expression and it caused her to laugh, "He told me that you never knew each other; never even saw each other before. I am not saying that you should take him as your man, Lise. He is mine. I think only of some nights when you have the want and he is there. I would help.

A shame to have that body and waste what the Great Spirit gave to you." 

She seemed to carry a look as though it was a pleasant thought to her for a moment, but then she came back to the present.

"I could take Étienne on a little trip around the island," Kiwidinok smiled, "It could take a little time, and you could ..."

Lise nodded, "I could sun myself," she laughed a little.

Her friend nodded with a grin, "and you could go for a swim if you wish. You could," she switched to Ojibwe, "aagonige -- bagizo, to swim unclothed, since there is no one to see you. Can you swim?"

Lise shook her head, "No, I was never in any place where I could learn."

"Then do not go into the water today," Kiwidinok said seriously, "But if I find a chance, I will teach you. A woman should know how to swim.

Come, Étienne," Kiwidinok called, laughing a little, "Bring these berries to the canoe with me and I will show you how to use a canoe to paddle yourself wherever you wish to go. Your mother will wait for us here until we come back."

The boy asked Lise to be sure and she nodded, so they walked off while Lise looked along the beach where they'd been standing. A little sunshine would feel wonderful on her body now, she thought. 

She was a little reluctant to disrobe however, and she chided herself a little for it. It was such a beautiful day and there was no one around on an island where Kiwidinok said that few people go. She looked behind her and saw the rise to the low crest. A person standing there could likely see all or most of the island, she reasoned. 

So off she went, and in a little time, she stood on the spot and looked around. She could see her son and her friend as she taught Étienne by watching and correcting him from where she knelt in the back of the canoe. Other than that, she saw no one and nothing.

So she walked back down to the beach and her clothes were off in a minute and she was right.

The sun did feel wonderful.

==================================================

Part Two

On a Georgian Bay not far from Penetanguishene Harbor, Upper Canada, 1792

------------------------

There was much on his mind. The whole of the Ohio Valley was on needles and pins. And that was only the start. Almost everywhere, the interest of the white settlers and their questionable ways of dealing with the many tribes and groups, driven by their insatiable hunger for ever more land -- and always at the Red Man's expense kept things as dry as tinder just waiting for the application of a lit match. He wondered how much hotter it could get before it needed no match at all.

There had been many battles and wars over land and even over beaver pelts, the combatants on either side dying for one thing or another and the survivors or the relatives of the dead swearing vengeance. One thing was certain, there seemed to be no end to the flood of people coming -- it was as though the white people walked out of the sea in their thousands, each wave walking a little farther westward past the fields, homesteads and settlements of the last.

He wondered for a moment. If they got their way and drove the tribes from the land - and if they reached the end of the land themselves -- what would happen then?

Would they just keep on going, on to the next patch of dry land to steal and cheat the existing inhabitants there out of their land as well?

Or having reached the end of the available land, would they turn on each other then?

Nehaseemo didn't know. He couldn't answer it. From the little that he knew or had heard tell of, there was a reason why the hated ones had come, and it was because they'd run out of land on the other side of the great water to steal from each other. They might not be as good as the tribes at fighting from close up, but they were very adept at killing each other in multitudes whenever they fought.

He came from a family of warriors. Trying to look back over his lineage, he failed to come up with even one relation of those who had risen to become chiefs who had been a peace chief. 

They were all war chiefs, every one. The peace chiefs ran things in the day to day, and always counseled the cautious path forward, given the chance and the choice. 

But when the day to day was tinged with the blood of the people -- where peaceful villages had been attacked and burned with women and children paying for the greed of the settlers as the white 'Fathers' preached peace and joint prosperity when they offered treaty after treaty, none of them honored by their own subjects ...

While the Red Man had to listen as he was talked down to as though he were a slightly slow child, hearing how the leader of them was the 'father' and how the white settler was his 'brother', and then coming home to find his 'brothers' squatting on the land that had just been promised to him ...

Lies. 

Dirty cheating lies, all of it.

Nehaseemo was on his way to visit with a good friend. Sometimes it was good to hear a different view. He was a war chief himself, though as yet little-known with only a few followers. Mostly, he rode with his brothers and other male relations; Blue Jacket, Dragging Canoe, his brothers Cheeseekau and Tecumseh, though Cheeseekau had been killed three years ago now in Tennessee.

As far as they were concerned, it would be best if the whites were pushed back into the sea from whence they'd come, but that wasn't going to happen. Tecumseh had noticed something though.

To try to turn one tribe against another to further the ends of the whites came as nothing to their leaders. The Americans hated the British and vice versa. Why not use this in the same way?

It had been done before to limited success, but that was when it was still the fractious tribes seeking a toehold. Perhaps with a united front where the enmity of one white man was played against the other it all might come out better. The brothers were agreed on one other thing as well. 

None of them could be trusted.

But it had been Tecumseh's idea to find out how their northern allies fared in their dealings with the British and so here he was, going to visit Assiginack, an Ojibwa chief and an old friend. 'Old' was perhaps an incorrect description, however. The man was in his early thirties, but Nehaseemo had first met him when he himself had been fifteen and Assiginack had been a brave and the two had just formed a friendship, liking each other instantly.

Assiginack never joked or kidded the younger man about his lack of years, guessing that he came in for enough of it in the usual course of events and Nehaseemo learned from the other one's every move and spoken thought and was thankful for it. The youngest sons of war chiefs in a busy time get fewer opportunities to learn and Assiginack knew this.




Hot Cannons & Warm Lovers Ch. 01



Assiginack never preached war, but he wasn't afraid of it either.

Nehaseemo was working his way northward, having met a pair of Odawa warriors. He was in no hurry. The two had agreed to take him to Manitoulin Island, but had asked for a couple of days to settle a few things and spend a little time with their families at Shawanaga . So while that went on, Nehaseemo was out in one of their canoes, poking around a little to the north of Penetanguishene, and thinking about doing a little fishing. It was already pretty late for it, so he stopped paddling long enough to get his buckskin shirt off. 

He'd been to Manitoulin Island before, but had never come up from the eastern side. It was a shorter journey to come from the west, but for the moment, Nehaseemo had enough of the rhetoric to be heard from both sides and had no desire to pass Michilimackinac to have to hear any more. He knew that there was war in the air. It was just a matter of time no matter how he saw it and it was plain that the British saw their starting position as lacking, to judge by the way that their few military resources were being stretched over impossible distances.

Another sure sign to his mind was the way that they were making overtures, seeking support from the indigenous tribes with the help of the Indian Affairs Department representatives, who advised the military commanders on which tribes tended to ally themselves easily based on common language, intertribal trade, and friendship. 

He was a Shawnee from Ohio, as an example, and here he was to visit a branch of the Ojibwa, travelling with a pair of Odawa to do it.

He looked deeper into the reeds and watched a pair of dragonflies for a moment as they chased each other around. He thought at first that it was about the natural aggression between two competitors, since they were different sorts, but it turned into a dance before his eyes as they pursued one another through and around the stalks. One of them landed for a moment, perched on Nehaseemo's thigh, but then the other one flew past and the game was on again. They left him to his thoughts then, and he watched them go, flying off to his left.

His eyes followed them as they flew off and that led him to look out at the island off to his left. He considered a moment and then pointed the prow of the canoe that way.

==================================================

Part Three

On what is now known as Giant's Tomb Island, Georgian Bay, Ontario 1792

------------------------

It wasn't all that long before Lise felt a little drowsy. She warned herself over it and fought the feeling off a little. When she'd been a little girl, she'd fallen asleep in the sunshine for part of an afternoon and she never forgot the pain of that burn.

She raised her head a little and looked around. There was no one there and she saw only a pleasant shoreline and a few trees off to either side of her. The stands of trees that close to the edge, a matter of only some yards, were thin and she could clearly see right through them. There were a few gulls a long way off and they were squabbling over the remains of a dead fish. The trees on either side of her and behind her were home to other birds more used to a forest setting and it came to her that as long as those birds twittered and sang their calls to each other, there was little cause for alarm, since they'd fall silent at the approach of anyone.

Her thoughts went back to what Kiwidinok had said and her hands began to move over her own body only a moment later, seemingly of their own volition.

She cupped one of her breasts, thinking of all of the times when she'd had this slight want of a little pleasure. But being the mother of a little boy didn't allow for a lot of things like this. She reached to tease along the line of her lower lips, sighing a little in the sunshine as she allowed her legs to drift apart, since it was what they seemed to want to do as well.

This was so ... good.

She hadn't had a chance at anything like this since her father had taken ill during the last stages of his sickness. Then Jean-Luc had come and, ... 

Well there just hadn't been much opportunity. 

So she was making the best of it right now. Where she was, she was in a hidden little cove and there was another island out there, some four miles distant. She felt safe enough.

Her fingers slowly teased toward the core of her and by now, there wasn't even a need to lick them. She was as wet as anything, so she guessed that she must have been missing this even more than she knew. She raised her legs and spread them more, rocking her hips a little as her fingers slid inside as deeply as they'd go.

---------------------------

He paddled around a sparse bunch of reeds to get to a sandy spot and he was out of the canoe before he heard the soft scrape of it against the sand. Nehaseemo pulled it far out of the water before he turned away to walk up the few stones which looked a little like huge steps to him. It brought him to the top of a very low rise of rock and he stepped slowly around the area in the middle, not wanting to upset the nesting birds there. 

He didn't care all that much about upsetting them, but it felt a little wrong for one thing and he had no want in him to have to listen to their upset screams for another.

He saw a copse of trees off to his left and headed that way for a little shade from the sun.

It was at that point that he heard the soft sounds coming from further off down the slope.

He had to stop and listen carefully, not quite believing the nature of what he heard. He was certain after another minute of it and he eased himself forward through the trees. 

At first, he'd thought that he'd stumbled across a pair of lovers, but he guessed that his impression had been incorrect after a little more time. He'd heard no male sounds.

The last part of his stalk took him to where he could step just out of the trees to still stand in the shade and he stared a little. 

Out here?

Was he really seeing what he thought he was looking at?

There was a, ... a woman, ... a white woman without a thing on, lying on the warm sand, and by her actions, expression, and most of all her very soft sounds, she was enjoying the day even more than he was. 

Nehaseemo smiled a little then, seeing nothing at all wrong before him. He was even with her in his thoughts, agreeing completely. A day such as this one, in a place as lovely and private as this, ...

He knew himself. He only wondered why the same thought hadn't already come to him.

He was a little puzzled, though. From what he knew, white women weren't given to this sort of thing very much, not out in the open and in daytime. He averted his eyes for just a moment, not wanting her to feel his gaze. 

He'd seen many white women before, he'd just never found them to be as attractive to him as this one. Nehaseemo knew that to most any man, a woman was a woman, just a female at the root of things. And to his way of thinking, that wasn't taking anything away from them. It was only simplifying things.

But this one, with her golden hair splayed around her head, the long gentle waves of it spread with abandon, this wasn't even wantonness. This was just a fine woman enjoying herself.

He found himself grinning a little in spite of himself when he looked back.

Her little sounds were growing more urgent and he liked that, as he silently urged her on in his thoughts. He didn't know her, hadn't the slightest idea of who this pale beauty might be, but for these moments, he wished for her to find her joy in the best way for her. 

Nehaseemo was a thinking man. He did have a heart in him. His recent thoughts about the whites notwithstanding, the little scene here before him pleased him to watch and not for the only the sensuality that this person embodied. 

His brothers advocated killing the whites at worst and accepting the British as allies under the assumption that they'd treat his kind better than the Americans at best. But what he was watching here was having an effect on him.

He smirked to himself. 

What he was watching here seemed to go a ways toward making just about everything else irrelevant. 

He had no wish to harm her in any way. He didn't even want to take advantage of her present state for his own lust. He wasn't like that at all. But he did want to get closer to her, if for nothing other than a better look.

He told himself that he couldn't do that, knowing the results beforehand.

He told himself that he shouldn't do it, since if nothing else, it would be an unwelcome intrusion, and would only frighten her half to death over nothing.

But he found himself moving toward her anyway, drawn by her loveliness. 

--------------------------

Lise felt it coming to her. It was as if her body recognized it's own need, to be sure, but it felt to her that even her very bones were taken with this time in this place, trying to stretch out the inevitable. 

She wasn't having any trouble getting there, she just, ... she was just loving this time so much. 

A stray thought came to her that Kiwidinok would be coming back here with her son soon, so this couldn't go on for the whole afternoon -- as much as she now wanted it to.

Her left hand released her nipple for the moment and she licked her fingertips a little before she brought that hand down to her little nub, teasing even more in lazy little circular motions. She felt her head press back against her dress, bunched up there as a pillow. 

She inhaled and it turned into a gasp of pleasure. This was it. This was the beginning. She shifted her right hand to get her thumb wet so that it could take on a little extra duty on her nub while her fingers still pumped in and out. This was coming quickly now. This was her own quickening, the fast uphill climb to the peak.

Lise raised her hips right off the sand, working herself hard in these last few moments. She mewled a little in spite of herself, and then her left hand flashed back to her nipple to squeeze and roll it as the sensations brought her to the very edge.

Oh, she wanted to cry out right then. 

Oh, mon Dieu, the joy of this as her body gave in to it all. Her hips rocked and humped into the empty air before her and she just barely managed to keep her voice from the wail of pleasure that she felt. It seemed to be a little criminal not to let it out, but with her luck, her son would be near and come running to see what was the matter with his mother.

A little cry did escape her lips for just the briefest instant, but then she had it reined-in tightly, allowing only her quietest grunts to pass out of her through her teeth as she held this for as long as it lasted.

Then it was over and she allowed herself to sag back to the sand with a long sigh.

After her breathing began to settle down, the first thing, ...

The first wrong thing which came to her attention was the silence. There were only the sounds of the gentle waves as they washed up against the sand a few yards away from her feet, that, and the quiet puff of the breeze past her ears.

What had happened to the birds? She didn't even hear the gulls now.

Her eyes had been closed to block out the dappled sunlight which came to them in bright flashes through the branches above her. That was gone now, replaced by unchanging evenness in the darkness behind her eyelids. Something was wrong.

Lise's eyes snapped open and her heart slammed to a stop as she looked up, ...

Straight into the deep brown eyes of a man.

He was large to her; especially given that she was here flat on her back, as naked as the morning that she'd been born. 

She must have seen eyes looking down at her then, she guessed, but being only a newborn infant screaming over the suddenness of the bright world around her through brand new eyes which likely hadn't seen her first look at that world all that clearly, well, ...

They took in this scene just fine, however, those bright blue eyes of hers and she was in terror, her body almost screaming at her to jump straight up as her adrenal glands opened wide.

He looked down at her in a rather serene way, his eyes opened a little wider than what she guessed they'd normally be. And why not, after all? He'd just been sitting there on one hip within two feet of her, watching her as she'd, ...

Mother of God and all of the Saints in Heaven!

He touched her shoulder very gently, opening his mouth to speak. He had full lips that she found rather attractive, but that wasn't the point.

Lise exhaled as she lunged forward, rolling to her feet and she ran as fast as she could go. 

She could think about his lips later.

And his brown skin and his long braid of coal-black hair which ended near to his navel. 

Even his wide bare chest and handsome face could be contemplated later. But first, she had to get away in order to survive this. Lise ran straight into the waves, turning to look back, needing to see if she'd been pursued.

She fell on her backside into the cold water.

Sitting there in terror, she watched as he slowly stood up and walked to the water's edge only twenty-five feet from where she sat. She crawled backward like a drunken crab until a wave slapped against the back of her head and drenched her, its coldness stopping her for the moment as the water poured over her shoulders and down over her breasts.

He was smiling.

Of all the luck, Lise thought. Where could she go? She couldn't just swim for it. She couldn't swim. Like this, he'd just wade in after her and drag her out onto the sand and then he's have his way with her, wouldn't he?

What she saw as she stared at him wide-eyed was, ... 

Well, at about any other time, she'd, ... 

At any other time, if she'd laid eyes on this man, she'd have probably glanced a couple of times, seeing that he was bare-chested and there wasn't a thing wrong with him to her eyes. But that would have been in a different setting, where things wouldn't have been so, ... very raw and shocking and, ... 

Lise would have loved to have seen a man like this at any of those times. 

But not now.

What was he going to do? She had a thought, but what about after? Would he kill her? Would he hurt her, not caring what she might be feeling? Would he callously hand her off to other men? Would he, ... 

"I am sorry," she heard him say in English, only loud enough to be heard by her over the sounds of the water around her, "I should not have disturbed you."

Lise felt her mouth drop open as though her jaw had gone slack. He was smiling a little shyly for her feelings.

"Je ne parle pas d'Englais," she said, and then she shrugged in a small Gallic way, while still managing to look quite upset, "Un petit peu, seulement."

-------------------------------

He'd seen people with blue eyes before and always thought that they looked as though some demonic force had been at work, ... or play, perhaps. But he'd never seen blue eyes quite this, ... well, ... blue before.

They'd mesmerized him, holding him motionless to the point where the only thing that he could do -- the single only thing that he'd been able to do, and it likely wouldn't have ever come to him otherwise, was to touch her.

Her soft skin against his fingertips had only completed his imprisonment. 

For the first time in his life, Nehaseemo suddenly felt that he'd met his match. Not in combat or in any contest of strength, not in powers of observation and reasoning, but in the way that a pair of eyes had been able to immobilize him so completely and worse, so helplessly.

It had been only logical to expect her to jump up and run, under the circumstances. But all that he'd been able to do was to sit and stare at her back and bottom as she'd run terrified into the waves.

He'd never seen a nicer bottom on a woman. He was sure of it.

He'd had to give his head a shake to find the pathways to the nerves which controlled his legs so that he could stand up. For the moment, he'd felt better, in control of himself once more.

But then she'd turned around and fallen to sit on the sandy bottom in the water and he'd seen those pert breasts and what looked to him to be the hardest nipples in the world -- at least on this side of the Great Water, surely.

What had he done, other than to frighten her anyway? It hadn't been his want, but it had happened all the same. He had to smile, not wanting to make this worse, and one of the reasons was the most absurd thought that he felt that he could have had then.

How to explain to her that he'd seen her and wanted nothing more than to be near to her, silently cheering for her as he watched the most natural of acts and admiring her for it?

He tried to apologize, but she replied in French. He spoke very little of it, unlike his brother Tecumseh, who had a gift for quickly learning the white man's ways of speech. He held up his palms, wanting her to see that he meant no harm.

As though that gesture was going to make it all better, he thought, feeling rather foolish.

-----------------------

She saw him hold up his hands a little, and it looked to her that he was trying to calm her. Well how was that going to work? She was naked here and he was, ... a little disappointingly only half-naked.

Lise didn't know why, but his gesture and her naughty little unbidden thought seemed to help somehow. By now, she knew that he probably didn't understand French either. A bit of a shame, she thought. She'd never seen anyone quite like him and it brought out a little of her humor at the silly situation. 

"Well, I think that you should either take those leggings and all the rest off or if not, then could you hand me my dress, please?" she smiled, "You have been standing there too long for one who would hurt me, I think."

He didn't seem to understand, but he also didn't charge into the water to pull her out either.

By far, most of it went over his head, but with her entertaining little pantomime as she sat in the waves, Nehaseemo understood and walked back, bringing her the dress and holding it up to make sure that it didn't get wet.

==================================================

Part Four

-----------------------

Kiwidinok regarded the beached canoe with a great deal of alarm and she turned them back to the point that they'd just swung around. Étienne tried to look back at her to ask. She said only, "We must go back to the other beach for a moment, Étienne. Just pull hard now and I will guide us in."

When the prow of their canoe had only just touched the sand, Kiwidinok was over the side and into the water, standing with her hand on the boy's shoulder to restrain him. "I want you to get out and pull the canoe higher onto the shore for me. After that, Étienne, you must stay here until I come back for you. It is important, yes? Please do as I say."

Étienne was confused and concerned, "Is it Maman?" he asked, "What is wrong?"

She shook her head in a way that seemed to brush what he'd said away, "I only need to be sure of something, Étienne. Please, you must stay and wait."

He nodded, but plainly didn't like it and Kiwidinok also saw that he was actually doing his best not to become upset. Such a son -- such a fine boy, she said to herself as she ran up the beach and over the crest. She had to get to her friend to warn her at least.

But Étienne saw something which unsettled him even more as he watched Kiwidinok run. She was wearing a long buckskin shirt over leggings. As she crested the top, he saw it as she pulled up the shirt on her right side and drew a long knife as she ran. He did as he'd been told and pulled the canoe higher before he stood looking at that crest in the dunes in worry.

Kiwidinok pounded through the scant woods silently with her knife held in a death grip. She stopped to listen for a few seconds every so often, her nostrils flared wide when she closed her mouth to breathe as well, searching for any clue. Then she was off again in the direction of the little cove where she'd last seen Lise.




Hot Cannons & Warm Lovers Ch. 02



***

If you suddenly found that your world had turned upside-down and what you thought that you had was no more by the actions of another, what would you do?

More to the point of this, what would you do if you only knew that you had to move ahead, rather than be alone in a land where you know absolutely no one?

How about if that land was largely unpopulated?

Hey, it'll be winter soon enough as well, ...

Sometimes things can be decided a little quickly with the right person in a place far from where you're from.

0_o

----------------------

Town Wharves, Moy, Upper Canada, 1792

It was already growing dark when two men met on a wharf at Moy. The place was a smaller center for the fur trade as well as a terminus for people passing through to and from the United States. Just as York would one day take a different name and flourish as the city of Toronto, Moy would one day become the city of Windsor. One thing which would not change was that it lay just across the river from Detroit.

The two men made their introductions to each other and began to walk along the wharf with a two-masted schooner in the background. 

"This one is not old," one of them said in a bit of surprise, "I came here expecting to see an old worm-ridden tub. She is as-new as I see her here and still has years of service to give. Why sell her now?"

The other man nodded as he began to point out a few features barely visible in the dark illumination of the ship's and dock lighting, "You must quite obviously return in the daylight hours to see most of her attributes, sir, but yes, you are correct.

Nancy was built just across the river there in the Detroit yards only three years ago. She was built by our own masters there. The place is American territory, but the formal passing-over of it has not occurred even yet. You know how governments act as though they have more time than money, as though time itself was a commodity that is inexhaustible.

That notwithstanding, however, I have the pleasure of telling you that Nancy is eighty feet long, with a beam of twenty-two feet and a draft of eight feet. Her hold has a capacity of sixty-seven long tons or three hundred and fifty barrels. 

She's quite the speedy lass with a fair wind up her skirts and can step along nicely. Oh, and she can turn about sharply if you've a mind or the need of it. Her draft is not all that deep and she can manage to navigate a good distance up many larger rivers and being a schooner of her size, she has no trouble in sailing upwind -- a selling point to be sure if she is to be worked in these waters. 

We're putting her up for sale as we presently have excess capacity on these lakes, from a commerce point of view. Nancy's master at present is her original one, a Captain William Mills. He and most of the crew I believe, would be happy to sail her for her new owners. They love the girl that much."

The other man nodded as he peered a little at the bowsprit carving, "I shall endeavor to be here not long after first light to get a good look at her, as you say.

That's a very lovely woman there. A bit of fine carving work, I must say. It must do the woman proud who provided the inspiration for it."

The first man nodded, "She was commissioned by Mister John Richardson, one of our senior partners. Nancy is named after his eldest daughter, who I believe, was also the inspiration for that figurehead. It was carved by a firm known as Skelling in New York.

I must also point out, since it grows quite dark at present, that Nancy is rather lightly armed, having only four three-pounder guns. She has never sailed into any difficulty, but the guns are there in order to preclude such, if necessary. She relies on her speed to get her out of trouble if needs must."

The other man chuckled as they walked off to resume their preliminary negotiations at a nearby tavern, "I've known many trollops back in London who have done the same back in my day, though what I see in the admittedly poor light is a high-spirited wench who looks to be able to dance a fair jig when she's working."

-----------------------------

Outside of Penetanguishene, Upper Canada, 1792

Étienne had been sleeping soundly for a while, worn-out from the day, but he awoke a little as he felt someone lying down beside him.

"Maman?" he asked in a sleepy voice.

"Non, mon petite cher," Kiwidinok smiled as she hugged him from behind, whispering, "It is only me, your Kiwinidok, Étienne. Your mother does not want to come to bed yet. She wishes to talk with my friend Nehaseemo for a little while, that is all. But I am as tired as you from all of the paddling today, so I have come to make sure that you do not feel lonely."

She kissed the back of his head as she wrapped her arm around him over his nightshirt, "You do not mind sharing your warmth with an old woman?"

Étienne smirked as he looked back a little, "No, and you are not old."

The remark earned him another kiss on his head. "Polite and charming as well as handsome. I see why your mother is so proud of her fine boy."

"Kiwidinok?" he began, "What's she like, your daughter?"

The woman found herself stuck for a moment as she considered her reply. "Ayashe is not one who makes friends as easily as you, Étienne. She is cautious at first. I think that you might say that her friendship must be earned. But I think that you will find that you might need her. Most of the other children where we go have grown up there from birth. They can be a little rough to get to know, so do not expect to make many friends easily.

Ayashe is one who thinks that she has no need of friends at all. I think it comes from being a girl who sees everything as a fight to prove herself equal to boys in anything. That makes her forget about having friends, I think. Perhaps you may need each other, I cannot say.

But that is for another time," Kiwidinok smiled, "Now it is time for a pair of tired canoe paddlers to sleep. Lay your head down, my friend, and dream well."

---------------------------------

Lise watched as he removed his buckskin leggings. There was not much light and he seemed to be doing it a little slowly. She even wondered if he was doing it that way as a means of increasing her feeling of anticipation over what would likely come.

He laid them aside and then he rose up on his knees to remove his breechcloth. Lise found that she was actually holding her breath -- which was stupid, she thought. He was a man, not some stallion, and she was a woman. What was there in this that would make her feel so, ... nervous, the way that she found herself feeling now?

Was she really going to do this? 

She knew that she wanted to, and perhaps one of the strongest background motivators was the knowledge that she'd only ever had one man -- who really hadn't been much of one back then. What had that been, she asked herself? She guessed that he might have been fifteen. From what she knew now, no fifteen year-old goes for a long time; not long enough for her, anyway. It had only begun to feel really good and then he was done.

Two repeats of that and she'd gotten Étienne to carry, bear, and raise alone.

There had to be better than that and Kiwidinok said that there was, and with a few quiet words from her, here they were.

The difference between the fuzzy cheeked fool who had managed to sweet-talk her and this man, ...

She could see nothing in any detail, since he still wore his shirt and it covered him to the tops of his thighs, but the answer came to her.

She felt nervous for a couple of reasons. She knew that she was pretty and that both of the two friends, Nehaseemo and Kiwidinok, both had said that she was beautiful to them. It was a comforting thought, but ...

Lise had only had a little experience at flirting with boys, and it had been back when she was a girl. The sum total of her sexual experience had been with only one boy three times -- and she now knew that he'd been an idiot with likely as little experience at this as she'd had back then. She'd never been with a man.

And Nehaseemo, ... well, he certainly was that, to be sure. This would be no hurried tryst in the back of a cart in an alley. That had been so long ago...

Well, a lot of water had gone under the bridge since then, and Lise had never again had anything to do with sex, other than when she masturbated and that wasn't sex. Not really; not in the way that two people perform the act together to mutual pleasure and benefit. From what she knew though, to these people, sex wasn't a huge thing. It was just something one did. That thought in her head earlier had caused Lise to ask her friend if Nehaseemo was very experienced.

Kiwidinok had laughed in the pleasing musical way of hers, saying that in her experience while in his arms, he certainly was, and long before he'd been there between her legs, too.

Lise watched as he reached down for the hem of his shirt and her mind went back to the thought of him doing this a little slowly to raise her anticipation.

She wondered if he knew just how well it was working.

As he drew the garment up and pulled it over his head, Lise saw the full measure of this man. It was so dark here and yet she could see the way that the long ridges of his powerful thighs stood out and - 

And she way that his abdomen rippled as he moved to get the thing off to lay it aside almost took her breath -- again. Before he had it off over his head, and before he could see it, she looked at what he had and she held her larynx immobile. She exhaled, but there was no sound to it -- which was what she wanted, because as far as she could tell in this darkness, ...

Kiwidinok had gotten her childhood wish for him. Her gaze seemed to zoom right in and as it seemed to twitch a little, either because he was doing that somehow, or perhaps it was only his pulse that she was watching, her thoughts rang in her head in perfect time to the slight motions of it.

'Mon ostie de saint-sacrament de câlice de crisse!' were her exact thoughts, and she even knew the blasphemous nature of them and the ridiculous non-connection between what she was looking at and her mental remark. What the hell did that sweet thing have to do with the sacred host or any sacrament or even any sort of holy chalice? But that was the phrase that she'd learned so far back that she didn't know where it had come from anymore.

Her stallion analogy came rushing right back to her unbidden, this time in his favor.

He had the shirt off and laid aside then and she saw his soft gaze turn toward her as his hands slowly motioned her to remove what she was wearing.

She had wanted to demure then, almost losing her nerve. 

Tabarnac, she almost wanted to get to her feet and run again -- and she didn't even know why. He was the most attractive man that she'd ever seen in her life!

And all of that real estate -- all of that fine countryside on him, the muscle and the nicest-smelling flesh that she'd ever laid her blue eyes on were hers right now.

All she had to do was to get her dress off and make the six foot journey to his arms. 

Six feet. 

Seventy-two inches.

Two hundred and eighty-eight increments of one-quarter inch each. 

The way that she felt rooted to the spot, it ought to take her no more than half a week -- if she couldn't manage to scrape up just a little of the same courage that she'd found in herself to play with her wet fingers in the sunshine only hours ago.

What the hell was the matter with her?

He reached for the end of his long braid and he began to untie it. Lise used the time to get her dress unbuttoned, thankful that she'd had the presence of mind to toss her undergarments long before. 

He began to get his braid loose and then he shook it out for a moment and that was it for Lise. 

Nehaseemo was naked and beautiful before her standing on his knees.

This time, she really did whimper softly. 

Oh God, there surely was no saving her from this. 

Please, dear God in Heaven, let there be no saving her from this.

Even if an army of Jesuits came in through the tent door, she'd likely kill the first few all by herself over the intrusion.

She rose up on her knees in imitation of his posture and he smiled to see it -- that same soft smile that she'd seen earlier today on the beach -- the one that showed nothing but his warm feelings for her.

The very same one which, if only they could have understood each other when she'd been sitting naked in the small surf, was almost enough to cause her to crawl to him and beg for this.

She pulled the dress off a little slowly, not to raise his anticipation, though she hoped that she might have a chance at doing that with it. It was more out of a sense that she needed to do it this way to prevent her shakiness from being seen.

She drew the thing over her head and shook her hair a little. To her amazement and utter joy, she heard his quiet gasp.

Two hundred and eighty-eight increments, hell, she decided; they didn't have half a week for her foolish skittishness.

Lise leaned onto her hands and she crossed that gap in a very slow crawl to him, and once there, she rose up so that they faced each other and she put her hand on his chest to look up as he looked down and she swore that she saw far deeper than only the powerful warrior in his soft brown eyes. 

Her arm went around his neck and she leaned in to put her head onto his other shoulder. It felt so good and he smelled absolutely wonderful as she kissed his throat softly, hoping that it would elicit some sound from him.

The quiet moan from him was enough. More than enough; and she lifted her head to offer him her mouth.

The first kiss between them almost toppled them both and it began the trading of caresses over their bodies as that kiss went on and on, neither of them seeming to have the ability or the will to break it. What hung between his thighs caused the end of the kiss when it rose to nudge Lise in the perfect spot. She moved her hips a little to tell it that it was welcome there.

The next thing that she knew, she felt his hand there and she reached for what he had as well. After a few moments of that, she was on her back and he was over her, working his dry shaft into her very slowly, using her wetness in little motions until a look into her eyes told him that she didn't want to wait any longer, now that she'd finally committed herself to this. 

He applied a little saliva until she stopped him with the sweetest of playful little smiles, so that she could help with her own.

As he looked down on the other most beautiful female that he'd ever seen, she smiled up apologetically -- as taken as she was by him in this -- as she slowly told him her apology that she was no maiden.

He stopped and stared at her then, and Lise felt a thrill of fear that she might have ruined it all then.

"But, ... I want, ... " he groaned then, finding himself back at the language issue again.

"I want, ... Lise," he said, "Beautiful mother, I want Lise." He leaned down to kiss her and then he was at her throat and her head was as far back as she could get it to go as she smiled and chuckled a little carefully.

"I, ... want, ... Nehaseemo," she sighed and she knew from his slight shiver that it had raised the hair at the back of his neck.

So she did have powers, she realized. She was someone who this man would want -- even though she was a mother.

She pulled him down onto her and she wrapped her legs around him tightly with a soft little whimper to tell him that he'd won her right there and then.

She felt his hair against her face and she loved it as her hands wandered over his shoulders and back while he thrust into her.

But he had a few surprises and he even retained enough of a brain to use them as he varied his motions, not only driving into and out of her. He moved it around, rarely only thrusting. It took her farther. 

It gave her many little climaxes which turned out to be misnomers. They were attainments; levels reached on the way. But when he did thrust more to the exclusion of all else, oh, ... she felt as though they were more than just a pair of people fucking somehow. A few times like this would have gone a long way to improving her outlook, if not her life!

Lise reveled in the way that his body felt to her hands and against her. All of this masculine power right here on top of her, placed so carefully so as not to crush her. Everywhere that she ran her hands, he just felt so wonderful, so, ... good. 

No; far better than good. This was right to her, somehow. 

He quickened it for her and she threw her head back again as she felt him slap against her, driving that sweet beast that he had in and out of her. What she remembered feeling all those years ago was an intrusion.

What she felt now filled her, spreading her to take all of the room that she had for it as she moaned softly for the way that she felt him pound into her. All that Lise could do was to hold him and whimper the sweetest- sounding nonsense into his ear. He didn't know what she said then.

Lise didn't even know. All that she knew was that it was important to say right then. After a time, she realized that it wasn't even words of any kind. She only knew that he understood them. His eyes when she looked up into them said that. 

He smiled at her and she could see that she was making him happy, beyond the foolishness of the thought. It was right there; his happiness and she chattered some nonsense to him very softly in her joy.

To her amazement, he nodded and then he kissed her, sending her flying off behind her now-closed eyelids.

He moved one of his legs out to the side a little so that he could lift up a little, one of his hands reaching for her breast and she almost keened out her joy.

But then he lowered his head and began to suck and chew her nipple in the sweetest way that had to be worth half an afternoon in a confessional at the church all by itself! Lise fell then, right then and she arched her back up to give him more as her hands clawed the blankets to pieces, as far as she knew or cared.

When she topped out, he was not long behind her and they hung on then, using only little motions to keep it going if they could with her wondering about him for a moment. 

Aside from very quiet grunts, he'd made no sound. Her own noises were quiet as well, but she had an explanation for that. She just wondered about him. The loudest sounds of their copulation were the soft slapping of him against her.

When she had the chance of it, she pushed him up until he understood and lifted up a little.

"Not good?" she asked, "Nehaseemo so quiet. Not good?"

He kissed her then, partly for speaking the first words in his language that he'd heard from her. He resolved to keep it as simple for her as he could.

"So good," he smiled, "But, ... Étienne sleeps."

Lise smiled up at him in surprise, "Nehaseemo makes talk like father."

He nodded and surprised her yet again, "Want to be father. Want son like Étienne. Want- "

He lowered his head for a moment and Lise was touched at how he struggled.

He knew what he wanted to say -- he just didn't know how to say it. 

He leaned down so that his lips grazed Lise's ear as he whispered, "I think too much. I think when you were in water. I make small dream that cannot be." He kissed her face, her cheeks, eyelids, nose, everything for a minute.

"Want Lise then. I see my friend again and dream grows in me. Lise and Kiwidinok. Two beautiful mothers, but Kiwinidok has man now. Meet Étienne and want son like him. I want woman who can make such a son." 

He sighed sadly, "A dream only. Nehaseemo can have nothing. War comes one day. War chiefs not grow old." 

He sighed once more, "War chiefs die."

Lise didn't know what to say. She felt her eyes sting over something which seemed so wrong to her.




Hot Cannons & Warm Lovers Ch. 02



He couldn't add any more to it, so he settled for kissing her tears away, telling her that he was sorry for saying it.

---------------------------

But Lise felt something in his sad words.

As the night wore on, she worked them both as hard as she could, bringing out all of her heretofore unrequited little fantasies from out of her countless nights as a lonely woman. 

She had him as she knelt before him with her sex held high in offering to him. She hugged the blankets to herself in a ball as he pounded into her and the way that his scrotum felt as he slowed and she enjoyed the sensations of it rubbing her sex, ... 

She lay on her back on top of him as he took her that way, lifting his hand from her breast to kiss it softly and then put it back.

She felt as though she'd lost her heart to him as she lay beside him on her back with one leg up so that they could look at each other and smile while he fucked her very slowly for what must have been an hour and she knew that it was the moment, but even if she discounted that, she was left with something like she'd never really had a chance to feel for a man before. 

She knew that it was dangerous to feel this way, but she couldn't help it.

When she was on her back with one leg over his shoulder, it was late and they were slow about it. She whispered to him, asking him if he could hear her. When he nodded, she shook her head.

"No," she whispered as she held his hand to her breastbone, "Lise wants Nehaseemo. Étienne has no father. Learn to be father. I want to know you."

He stared for a moment and then he nodded, smiling, "Want that; Lise and Étienne. Want that."

They ended up going even slower face to face on their sides and she hung onto him tightly as they whispered, "Kiwidinok has my brother," she said, "Lise and Étienne want you. How long can you stay?"

He shrugged, "Past winter, at least."

She nodded, "We do this again, tomorrow?"

When he nodded, she smiled, "Nehaseemo has Lise now. We talk to Kiwidinok."

He looked to be about happy enough to cry and she wrapped herself around him again. It was now something which he wanted very much.

------------------------------

Lise woke up in perhaps the worst way possible. 

Kiwidinok, her dear friend, was wailing in grief.

She hadn't even known that it was Kiwinidok at first. She heard a short scream and then a heart-rending wail that ended in several low sobs.

When she managed to shake the cobwebs out of her head a little while frantically pulling on some clothes to step outside, she saw Kiwidinok huddled in a little ball on the ground, almost screaming in anguish.

She saw Étienne, and he looked to be about ready to join her. She ran to him, "What happened? Étienne? Tell me!"

The boy almost began to really cry then, but she shook him gently, and he slowly told her, as carefully as he could that Jean-Luc was dead. 

Lise couldn't believe it. She hugged her son and told him to comfort Kiwidinok. As he touched the poor woman's shoulder, she seized him and they cried together. Lise turned and looked to see Nehaseemo speaking with a pair of others. "Francais?" she asked a little desperately, "You speak French?"

One of them nodded, so she stood up and stepped over, "Please, Jean-Luc is my brother. Tell me what has happened."

She learned that the two were Odawa from the small village at Lake Joseph. They told her of meeting Nehaseemo here and agreeing to go to Manitou's Island after a short trip home. While they were there, they saw the trader come and he was brought before the chief over a matter relating to a defective musket. The man with the grievance held up the musket and accused Jean-Luc of cheating him by selling him a faulty weapon.

From what they said, Jean-Luc had pointed out that the man had tried the piece before he'd bought it and it had worked fine. The chief then told the man to load it and show that it did not work.

With the musket loaded, the man pointed it at Jean-Luc's chest and pulled the trigger. Jean-Luc fell dead on the spot and the man had only shrugged, saying that he guessed that it worked after all.

Lise felt her own tears beginning. She went to Kiwidinok and she got to her knees to hold her. The two ended up together hugging each other while Kiwidinok wailed loudly.

It took a long time before the woman wound down and even then, after she'd stood up, one could see that she'd have a passing thought and almost collapse again, to end up on her knees, sobbing. Nehaseemo helped her up and spoke quietly to her trying to help. Finally, Lise put her to bed and stayed with her, coming out at intervals to make meals silently and to take something to Kiwidinok -- who only nibbled because she knew that Lise was trying.

At one point, she called for Nehaseemo and it seemed to take forever while she asked something of him. But at length, he understood and he took Lise's hand and brought her outside. Her lack of a more thorough vocabulary in his language caused their talk to be so stilted, but it was more comfortable to Nehaseemo that way -- as odd as it sounded.

"I go to Lake Joseph, tell chief that Kiwidinok be there in three days. Tell chief to keep the man in the village. Kiwidinok want speak to chief. I come back then." He kissed her, and it surprised Lise a little, since she didn't expect it. She expected what he did next even less.

He went to Étienne and knelt on one knee placing his hand on the boy's shoulder, "Étienne," he said in his best and miserably insufficient French, "Try not cry."

He looked at one of the Odawa and said something and the man said to the boy, "Boys and men do not cry. Nehaseemo knows this is not the way of the whites, but he asks you to try -- for him."

Lise asked why and Nehaseemo didn't trust himself to be able to get it across properly, so he looked to the Odawa man again and spoke briefly.

The man tuned to Lise, though he was also speaking to Étienne at the same time, "Nehaseemo says that for a time at least, Étienne has a father who is a war chief."

Nehaseemo nodded then and he kissed Lise and touched the boy's shoulder and smiled, "Wait for me. I will come back to you."

Then he walked away with the two men.

The long day was slow agony for Lise, feeling the pain of Kiwidinok so much that it was hours before she had the presence of mind to think of their situation -- hers, her boy's and her friend's. She said nothing of it, not wanting to burden Kiwidinok with anything more. 

While Étienne tried to come to grips with it, failing most of the time, Lise lay with her keening friend, holding her so that their foreheads touched quite often, crying with her, since it was what she really wanted to do now.

Kiwidinok left the tent for dinner and she sat in silence with tears streaming down her face as she ate a little. When she was done, she tried to wipe her eyes and she looked at Étienne.

"Jean-Luc told me that you have tools from your grandfather. Can I see them? Is there a saw?"

The boy nodded and he ran off, returning a few minutes later, almost dragging a roll. Kiwidinok moved some things and she placed it on the table, unrolling it to look. She selected a metal saw and a thin, round file, setting them aside.

"Come, Étienne," she said, sounding dead in her tone to him and she led him to her tent. She showed him four muskets and she drew the ramrod of one of them out to hold it against the side of the long barrel. "Look here. You see how deep it would go in the barrel."

She pushed it inside and then she showed him where the end stuck out. "Put your thumbnail against the stick here. Can you do this?"

He nodded and complied.

"Push it all the way in until it stops or until your nail is against the end of the barrel. Be careful not to let your thumb slip, or you must start over."

"Good. Now do not lift your nail, but take the stick out and lie it against the side as I did before. When he'd done it, she'd praised him quietly, "this one is not loaded. Now you must do the other three the same way, but if one has the stick all the way in and your thumbnail is NOT against the end, you must tell me, yes?"

He nodded and she walked out with the first musket. She laid it on the table. One by one, Étienne brought the rest out. 

"I think that one is loaded," he said. 

She tried it herself and she nodded, "Good boy, for finding it for me."

She removed the flint from the hammer and she wrapped a stone with a piece of buckskin before she held it so that it pointed at the soft ground and began to beat the side of the barrel gently. She did it slowly waiting a second or so before hitting it again.

"The barrel rings a little each time, "she said to Étienne, "I can feel it in my other hand. The ringing helps to shake things free."

True to what she'd said, about a minute later, a lead ball fell out followed by the wad and after that, then there was a short rain of black powder. She set it with the others. One at a time, she picked them up, cocked the hammer, and then pointed it toward the north sky and pulled the trigger. 

She did this ten times each, replacing the flint in the one which had been loaded before testing it.

Lise heard her curse in Ojibwe, and then she said in French, "Nothing wrong with even one of them."

Laying the first one on the table so that the stock hung over the edge, she looked at Lise, "Please sit here, right on this."

Lise sat, feeling silly to be sitting on the barrel of a musket that way.

Kiwidinok tied her hair back and began. It took a long while, but at last she had most of the long barrel off and she was looking at the rough edges that the saw had left behind. 

"Sit on this one now, and use the thin thing here like this, but try not to hit the end on anything inside the hole. Just remove this roughness."

Lise nodded and did her best, feeling the vibrations of what Kiwidinok did in her bottom at the same time.

When they were all done, Kiwidinok laid them - one at a time again, onto the table and asked Lise to lean on one with both hands and as much of her weight as possible. Then she sawed most of the shoulder stock off before taking up a knife to carve the roughness out of the wood. 

"What are we doing all of this for?" Lise asked.

Kiwidinok looked up at her from where she stood bent over a little with the knife in her hand, "We are making loud pistols."

"But why?" Lise asked then.

"I will use one to kill a man," Kiwidinok growled quietly through her teeth.

After that, she asked Lise to stand inside the tent and remove her undergarments.

Lise looked as though the slightest puff of wind could have knocked her over at that. For the first time, Kiwidinok smiled just a little.

She stuck her head through the door and asked Étienne to clean up the table, and to please put the saw and the file away again. "I am trying very hard to feel a little better and it is very hard for me to do, my young friend. Please help me in this as well, and I will make something for you -- and thank you very much for the tools and your help."

Étienne nodded and walked away and Kiwidinok hugged Lise tightly for a moment. When she pulled back, Lise saw more tears, though they seemed to be the silent kind that only ran down.

"Forgive me, Lise. I wanted to ask how it went for you and Nehaseemo last night. I think that it must have gone well by the way that you both look at each other today. I am so,..." 

She sighed and looked down for a moment as she forced her own feelings down and wiped her eyes again.

"I am as well," Lise whispered, "I had a brother for less than a fortnight. It hurts, but you have lost so much more."

"My friend," Kiwidinok began as she took Lise's hands, "Our lives have changed with the murder of Jean-Luc. You have no brother anymore and I have no man. But we are still here anyway. If you think that you can do as I ask, I will try my best to make us all a family. You and Étienne can come to live with Ayashe and me and we will stay with my people on Manitou's Island. The young ones will each learn to have a friend who lives with them."

"Nehaseemo can stay only the winter," Lise said, "What then?"

"If you have become close enough to begin something with him, then he would come back when he can, my friend. I know him better than anyone. So, ..." 

She looked down for a second and then she looked up and sniffled a little, "You will be winter-wife to Nehaseemo. He will likely leave us in the spring for a time. Then, you and I will live together. I will hunt for us all then until Ayashe and Étienne can hunt as well. Both of us will run our home. We will speak to Nehaseemo when we see him and say this. Only, .... " 

She exhaled heavily and her voice tightened, "This is the worst to say for me now, but I try to think ahead. I have known him almost all of my life. Lise, sometime, ... if he stays the winter, ... could I, ..."

Lise nodded, "I know you are close with him. You wanted to share with me before. Étienne and I have nothing anymore. We know no one here and I do not know how to keep us alive. But you offer to let us live with you. I would not say no only for that, but I have never had a friendship with anyone which holds my heart so much as this with you. But you must speak to him when it is what you want. I would not stop you if you finally decide to be his woman."

Kiwidinok shook her head, "No. I think that I may only ask to share sometimes."

Lise wiped her own eyes then, "Kiwidinok, I understand, but this is not where I came from."

She put her hands on the other one's shoulders, "We will share a man as we will need to share everything else, if he is willing."

Kiwidinok began to cry again and Lise held her tightly and stroked her head until it passed. "Thank you," Kiwidinok whispered into her ear in a tortured voice before she drew her head back a moment later to look into Lise's eyes.

"If he agrees, then we will stay on Manitou's Island and he can come to his new home there as he can. We can share my home, you can have the man that you need, and our children can each have a father when he can be there. It is unusual, but it has been done before. Right now, I want no one but the one who was taken from me."

She paused for a moment and then she went on, "Nehaseemo is a war chief and he says that there will be war, though he does not know when. He may die. But his family will go on; his women and the two that he will adopt.

I love him as always -- even though today I want to die. It will not change, because it never has. You start to love him also. I see this and I feel joy. He is that good a man. But I want to live with you, Lise.

Try to consider it as I fit the leggings that I have made for you. Hold up your dress." She stepped back and sank to her knees.

The fitting took only as long as Kiwidinok needed to lace them a little tighter. "I used my own legs as a pattern and cut a little from the top," she smiled up from where she knelt before Lise.

"What will I wear with these?" she asked and the other one smiled, "I am making you into an Ojibwa woman a little at a time. These clothes that we wear last longer than your fine ones and they cost only time and work to make, so you can save yours."

She produced a loincloth with a flap front and rear and she put it on Lise. "Tell me when you are about to bleed and I have something for that too."

Lise said, "I am trying to think of how what you told me would work. I already know that I want Nehaseemo. And I want to live with you. There is nothing else for me. I have no family to go back to and no money to return there anyway. I know no one but you."

Kiwidinok smiled up as she fussed over the fit, but it lasted only a moment before her tears won out again for a minute or two.

She looked down and Lise knew that her friend was on the edge again. She let go of her hems and knelt down to hold her friend until Kiwidinok nodded that it had passed. Standing up again, Lise looked down, "I just don't want to think of when he has to go. What will we do then?"

"You have me and I have you," Kiwidinok smiled up, and then she leaned forward to kiss Lise softly just below her navel. Before Lise could even manage to express her mild shock, Kiwidinok kissed her friend again before she looked up. 

"This has been done before as well. If your want grows too bad, then you have me. We will manage somehow as we live, though I do not know much of it. I will tell of it tonight when there is more time. If you cannot share Nehaseemo, I will understand it."

"Kiwidinok, " Lise said, "Can he understand it?"

She nodded, "Yes. We have always known, him and I. 

There will be a little trouble at first, only from the children, I think" she said as she knotted the ends of the legging laces to make it easier to get them on and off. She stopped then as she thought about it. "I think that it will be Ayashe who might be the trouble. She has never had a real family but me.She has always liked my old friend, but this change - this can upset her to lose another whom she grew to love as a father."

Then she stood up and helped Lise take off the dress the rest of the way, handing her a buckskin shirt like her own and helping Lise to get it over her head.

"In case you have not seen it before now, Lise, I love your Étienne. More every minute, but Ayashe must see that he will need her help for a little while as he learns, and he will need to learn to be a little rougher with other boys.

You and I?" she hugged Lise and kissed her for just a moment, "My good luck to have you. You have no one and are nowhere. Live with me and you will have a place and a friend always."

"You make it sound so easy."Lise whispered, "I don't know anything."

"You know enough" Kiwidinok smiled, "If you see any other way for us, then say it. I see only one way which leads to a good life. I have lost my second man. I want to lose no more. It is hard enough to do only once. This way, we all have something and we can be a family - enough so that we can live. 

Only some days with my yellow-haired friend and I know that we can do this, you and I. Widows among us go home to their parents, who are too old to want them until they grow weak near the end. Most never find a second husband. 

I am too strong to live in my brother's household, and you need someone. Let it be him and when he cannot be with us, then it will be me. You can have your first husband and together, we pray that he lives."

Lise nodded and threw her arms around Kiwidinok to hold her tightly for a moment.

Then Kiwidinok turned and called Étienne. When he stepped inside the tent, staring at his mother and how she was dressed, he smiled, saying that he liked it.

"Good," Kiwidinok grinned, "now I fit the ones I have made for you. Take off those breeches, please."

The look of horror on his face kept the two mothers straining to hold back their laughter for several minutes, until Lise explained. Kiwidinok felt a little thankful for the moment since it took her away from her dark thoughts, though it did little for the raw pain in her chest.

-------------------------------

Étienne stood trying not to cry. This whole day had been terrible. Now he was wearing buckskin leggings which he liked as well as the shirt and everything. Still ...

Kiwidinok walked over to him, "I am sorry, Étienne. I am the mother of a girl. I did not expect for that to happen. Lise has told me about it now and I understand."

She put her arm over his shoulder, "You think that I was laughing at you and it is not so. I laughed in surprise, not at what you have. Why would I laugh at a boy?"

She sank to her knees and looked at him, "I am still your friend and canoe teacher and I would seek adventure with you at any time. I just never knew that this happens to young boys so easily. Please forgive me. I am still the same old woman who held you last night while you slept. 




Hot Cannons & Warm Lovers Ch. 02



I learned something then too," she said smiling, "I learned that I love you. I have not ever had a son. But we will live together soon and you will have me as a second mother and you will be my son too. Can you forgive me? I will never laugh again." 

Étienne's eyes were wet as he struggled, but he nodded a little.

She smiled then, reaching to hug him, "And I am certain that when you are a man, what I saw will be enough and more for someone and no one will laugh then unless it is in joy to have a man as you will be.

And now that I remember, I should have known better. I saw Nehaseemo once when we were children. It was the same."

He'd been looking down until then, but he looked up at that, "It was?"

"Yes!" she laughed, "Just the same, and you heard how I lied to say it was not, neh?"

He nodded, feeling a little better, "I think that I just miss Uncle Jean-Luc and Grand-Père. Everything is different now." 

He looked into her eyes then. Though he was only seven, he knew what he'd just done, "I am sorry. You lost him too."

She nodded, her tears beginning again and he hugged her as she wept.

--------------------------------

They left early the next morning, borrowing a horse - which Lise did not know how to ride, but she got the hang of it with no mishap. The result was just a long day in the saddle -- which wasn't there, she sat on a blanket with her son hanging on to her. 

She and Étienne just hung on and Kiwidinok loped slowly along beside them. They traveled very lightly and slept together under a pile of blankets, which was not exactly the most comfortable way to do it. Kiwinidok was still heartbroken, but as time went by, a different look came into her eyes as she considered what had been taken from her by a cold-hearted idiot. After Étienne was asleep, when it became too much for her, she wept softly in Lise's arms.

"It happens sometimes that a woman lives with another and is like the man between them. We say that they are Half-Sky Women. I do not know about it much, but that woman, she becomes what we call an Iron Woman. I think that when Nehaseemo leaves us -- if he agrees to it, then that is what I must become for us."

She exhaled out some of the tension in her chest then against Lise's breasts and she looked up, "And if he does not agree, then you can still come to live with me if you need or want to after he leaves."

When they got up the next day, Kiwidinok was already stiff to begin with, so she wanted to get moving so that she might limber up a little. But first, she sat and loaded her brace of crude pistols.

"I must remember to hold on tightly," she told Lise, "the kick from this will hurt."

--------------------------

By about noon or a little after, they walked through the small village until they found Nehaseemo talking with the chief, as it turned out, with a very interested-looking young woman sitting next to the older man.

"Kiwidinok," the man began, "our honor to welcome the sister of Assiginack. This is -"

"Nehaseemo is an old friend of mine from childhood," she smiled as she put her hand onto his shoulder, "I asked him to come and say that I was coming here."

They exchanged the required greetings and Kiwidinok introduced Lise and Étienne. She got right to the point after that.

"A trader was killed here some days ago. I wish to see the weapon that was said to be bad and I wish to meet the one." 

The chief sent a runner to bring the man.

"Who are these ones? I know their names now as you told them, but why are they here?"

"The trader who was murdered was my man," Kiwidinok replied coldly, careful to maintain the correct tone of respect, "He was the boy's uncle and the woman's brother. He was father to my daughter. I am aggrieved over what was done."

"A sad thing," the man nodded, "But the musket -- "

"There was nothing wrong with the musket," she said, "It worked well enough to kill one that I loved."

A man was brought forward and she held out her hand, "Please give the musket to me."

The man glowered at her, "Who are you to ask anything of me? Who are you to speak to me?"

Kiwidinok looked to be holding herself in check, but just barely. "I say what I want to anyone. I want to see that musket. I do not come from this village, so I can speak to you. You are near to a mistake. Please give the musket to me."

Lise and Étienne understood little of the conversation, which began to grow a little heated until the chief told the man to hand the weapon over. 

Kiwidinok looked at it and pointed it into the air, "Is it loaded?"

"Give it here," the man grinned a little, "And I will see if it is."

Kiwidinok shook her head, "I have heard of the way that you test a musket. You killed my husband that way." 

She pulled back the hammer and she pulled the trigger. The musket fired into the air.

"Well," she said, "I guess it is safe now, neh?"

The startled man nodded as he watched her turn it around as though to examine something.

Then he was on the ground with a smashed nose from the way that she'd swung it. He tried to get up and she beat him with it, hitting him again and again, her face a mask of rage.

"I GUESS THAT IT MUST BE SAFE NOW!! You live and my husband is DEAD over NOTHING!! You killed an honest friend of the people, you fat-headed fool! "

She threw the musket at him, hitting him in the ribs before she stood bent forward a little with her fists balled at her sides, her ribs heaving. When the man grabbed the musket like a club and began to get to his feet, Kiwidinok drew her cut-down musket from under the back of her shirt and snapped the hammer back.

"Let me try now!" she shouted and before anyone could move, she shot the man in the face. 

The young woman next to the chief screamed out that he'd been her husband and she began to cry.

Kiwidinok dropped the weapon and her hands flew under her shirt as she whipped out two more of the crude pistols. 

Snapping both hammers back, she leveled one at the woman and the other at the chief.

"MY HUSBAND!" Kiwidinok yelled.

"MY GIRL'S FATHER! 

HER BROTHER! 

HIS UNCLE!"

She took a step forward, "Do you wish to know how it feels to lose a father as well? He will not care -- but you will. 

Trust me princess, you will."

The weeping woman shook her head as she began to keen, rocking herself forward and back.

"I wish to take a new man now because of what was done," Kiwidinok seethed, nodding to Nehaseemo and handing him one of the pieces, "if he will have me and my brotherless friend, so that our children might know a father at last."

She looked at the chief who stood staring at her, "You have angered the sister of an ally by allowing the murder and doing nothing. Kill me or this man, and you have the Ojibwas AND the Shawnees angered. 

My man came with a horse and a wagon. I want them."

Étienne stared at the twitching corpse on the ground.

-------------------------- 

Twenty minutes later, Nehaseemo rode on a horse, and Kiwidinok drove the wagon with Lise and Étienne sitting in it with her.

Nehaseemo's face was stern until they'd been on the road for an hour. Finally, he turned and looked over.

"So," he scowled a little, "You want me as your husband?"

Kiwinidok sighed, "I am sorry for shaming you like that, Nehaseemo. I was very angry."

He waved his hand back and forth, as though trying to clear away some smoke in the way, "I was not shamed. I wanted to kill that idiot for you and Lise.

But I know you, old friend. That is why I only stood by. I have not asked you for an apology, Kiwidinok. I only wish to understand this. Do you want me as your husband?"

She was about to nod, feeling foolish over what she'd said quite publicly, but she knew him, so, ...

"Lise wants you and I have always wanted you, if you think that you can abide my temper. You can have a woman in her and even me, if she would allow it. She and I must try to go on. I have always been your friend. If you wish for more, then we must all talk."

His eyebrows rose at that, "Oh? Lise as well? Say it to her so that she knows what we speak of."

Kiwinidok turned to Lise, "He asks if you would have him for a your man. I have said what we talked of. You have only had him one night, Lise, so think a little now. 

It is fast, but with the way that you do not speak the language of the other yet, winter will be on us, so I force this now. This is not where you come from, but among us three, anything may be said. Choose now if you want him and I would be happy to know that you know joy."

Lise nodded to Nehaseemo, "Oui." 

She held up her hand, showing three fingers and pointing to the three of them with her other hand, "Nous."

He stared for a moment and then he laughed a little, "Have you turned into an Iron Woman now?"

Kiwidinok shrugged, "We have two children between us and no man. If I must be an Iron Woman, then I must be. I have always wanted you, and Lise is certain. We must ask Étienne and -- "

She turned around in her seat and switched to French again, "Étienne, we are talking about making our family with Nehaseemo as the father now. He wants to know if it is something you want. Would you want this if it happens? He would have to leave and come back sometimes. He told Lise that you are the kind of boy that he wants for a son. It is a big choice for you, but say what you think if you can."

Étienne nodded, "Can we leave soon? I do not want anything to happen to any more of us. I like Nehaseemo. He likes me. It is enough. But I am tired of Penetanguishene."

She looked at Nehaseemo again, "We cannot ask Ayashe because she is not here, but I know how she feels about you." 

She heaved a sigh then, "Oh say yes, Nehaseemo. I need a reason not to cry again. My hand hurts from the shooting."

He looked puzzled, "That is the first time that I have heard you sound that way since we were children. Out of all of the women that I have ever met, only Kiwidinok is bold enough to say what she wants.

I am not even surprised. It is something that I have always admired in my friend. Will I have to build a lodge or ... "

She shrugged, "Ask my brother. He will be so happy that you take his wild sister that he would likely give you half of the island. 

He always joked to me that Jean-Luc was always away so much so that he could sleep without the fear of me murdering him while he slept.

Say yes. It is nothing for you to fear. Lise will protect you."

"How many more of these musket pistols do you have?"

"Only one more, why?"

He grinned, "Then give it to Lise."

"She already has it. I could find no more places to hide them under my shirt."

Nehaseemo threw his head back and he laughed, "Let me keep the one that you gave to me. We can call it a fair bargain then and I am yours."

Kiwidinok stared at him, and seeing the expression, Lise guessed that it had begun for them. She put her arm around Kiwidinok and did her best in Ojibwe, "I - I proud of Kiwidinok."

Nehaseemo didn't laugh, though he smiled widely, "I am proud too."

Kiwidinok turned her gaze back to the road ahead, but she did manage to find a small smirk in herself in spite of everything as she spoke in French to Lise quietly, "Nehaseemo would say that he is foolish, but I think that he must be a very brave man."

------------------------

They didn't stop until it was almost dark and they hid themselves off the road. Kiwidinok made sure that all four of the weapons were loaded and she and Nehaseemo took turns standing watch. 

Before the dawn, they were moving again. Nothing more happened and they came back to Penetanguishene, where Kiwidinok traded the horse and wagon for a larger canoe, using the difference in value as a gift to her relations for their trouble and patience. They ate a meal together after that and then set off for Manitoulin Island, hugging the eastern shore until it was to the north of them before turning toward the island.

Kiwidinok's brother Assiginack was saddened to learn of what had happened, but he was happy to see Nehaseemo again and very pleased to hear that they wanted to stay there on the island. Kiwidinok was truthful in what she'd told Lise -- she really did know everyone, from the oldest grandmother to almost the youngest child and Lise found herself and Étienne welcomed and accepted instantly.

It helped that she and her son arrived dressed mostly the same as everyone else, and Kiwinidok had made a point of braiding Lise's long hair the same way that everyone did. It was a little thing, but it was a nice touch that helped to win many over to her at once.

But it was only the calm before the storm for Étienne. He wanted to go back to Cap Rouge.

There were many children on the island. There were at least four villages there. Of all of those children, there were also a number who were Metis, that is, children born with both Caucasian and Native North American blood. As one might imagine, they ran the full range in their appearances from one to pretty much the other and there were some at either end of that spectrum who were not easily distinguished by their appearances at all. 

But Étienne stuck out for a couple of reasons, and not all of them related to his appearance. Étienne had no indigenous blood. He was white and that was known. That led a lot of the other kids to conclude that he didn't belong there. It was just the way that humans are; it had little to do with the anything other than being different.

As well, it became known that a Shawnee war chief would be wintering with them. By itself, that wasn't a big deal, but other than reasons of politics, this one was here because he'd taken two women -- which was a little unusual; one of them the chief's sister and the other the blonde boy's mother.

On top of that, it was also known that Nehaseemo would be adopting the children of those mothers. There were kids who wanted to fight the son of a war chief just because, adopted or not.

No one close to her age wanted to fight Ayashe. She was known to be fearless, and could make even a ten year-old think twice before taunting her even a little. But then it was seen that Ayashe ignored Étienne and would have nothing to do with him -- not even speaking to him unless she had been told to.

That made it open season on the blonde kid.

Ayashe had been very upset over the murder of Jean-Luc. The family rearrangement and the inclusion of Nehaseemo didn't do much to offset the loss to her. She liked Nehaseemo and always had, whenever he'd been on the island, but all of this was just something which kept her wound up and in trouble with her mother. It caused a lot of resentment.

"He is not my brother!" she said loudly to her mother one day when Kiwidinok had tried to reason with her, "I will not treat him like my brother. He waves that stupid knife of his in the air slowly all alone like he does magic outside behind the lodge."

Kiwidinok stopped what she was doing and reminded her daughter to watch her tone. 

"No, he is not your brother. But he lives here with us. Maybe think of him as your cousin if it makes things easier for you. Instead, I have seen you strike him or push him away only because he came to ask you something. That does not go here in this home. Do not let me see that again, Ayashe.

I did not ask you to protect him; I only ask that you help him a little. He is in a new place and has his own troubles. You would be lost in the place where he comes from, but I know that he would do this for you and not even need to be told."

Ayashe apologized to her mother because she had to; but she still said nothing to Étienne and glowered at the boy's back as he slowly walked out. He didn't get all of what was said. He only knew they were talking about him. 

Even Penetanguishene was better than this.

Ayashe was totally unprepared for what came next as Kiwidinok pulled her halfway across the place where she worked so that Ayashe could look nowhere other than her own mother's angry eyes. 

"Try to be a little older than three in your acts, Daughter. You spend so much time trying to prove something which is really that you are easily angered. It has little to do with the way that you are treated by others. Most of what you hear are only the words of the stupid. 

Do you think that you are the first girl to find that the thoughts of most boys can be stupid sometimes? I was there before you, Ayashe. Most of what is said to you by them is only said to make you angry, because you are known to be hot-tempered and easily driven to rage. You fall for it every time, so who is really smarter?

Where do you think that came from in you? You are my daughter." 

She released her hold on the girl's shirt then and Ayashe had to grab the frame of the wall to keep from falling off her seat., "I was there long before you." Kiwidinok said.

"He practices something that was taught to him by his grandfather relating to that sword. It is something which reminds him of a time when he was loved by someone other than his mother. He does it often because he has nothing else and no one his age will speak to him in words that are not hateful or taunting. 

My daughter cannot be this stupid herself. Open your eyes, Ayashe. A woman of the people becomes wise when she sees and thinks -- not when she is foolish.

Nothing has been done to you by this. No one loves you less because of it -- certainly not me. But it is time for you to think a little. Help Étienne; not always, not even often. But I know because I have seen that you help others out of a sense of what is fair. I have seen you dive into something only because another child was outnumbered and picked out for nothing. I ask that you do the same for Étienne; that is all. He comes in for far more than his share from the same thing that gets you the respect of being a chief's niece and Nehaseemo's adopted daughter. At least no one comes to you wanting to fight you over it.

But every boy does that to him -- and you do nothing. You make it worse because they see that you do not speak to him. I love you as I always have, from the first moment since I saw you. But I love him as well and while you shout if you are treated unfairly, I see you smile when you do the same thing to him.

He has been here a month and he knows only misery among us. It is not right. 

You like to act strong, but he is stronger than you inside, because he says nothing. He takes the beatings and does not know if he can hit back -- because no one has told him how it goes here. He does not cry loudly -- only silently because he feels shame and sadness inside and says nothing until Lise or I ask him because we see that he has been beaten in a fight again. I grow tired of this and your treatment of him and Lise is upset as well. He has done nothing to deserve the way that you and others treat him.

If you like, you may run away and live somewhere else. Maybe try to find someone who would put up with you. I can make another daughter who could show respect and not only look for reasons to complain. I would rather have a son like that than a girl of seven who acts like she is three."

She got up then and walked away, moving on to another task. Ayahe turned to speak, "But --"

"Leave me!" Kiwinidok said and turned away. "I do not wish to see you anymore. You have shamed me with your actions."

Ayashe walked outside, feeling the effect of her mother's strong words. All of it almost made her want to cry, though she wouldn't. She wanted to protest that it wasn't fair, but she knew that her mother's will was a lot like her own and she also knew that her mother was also upset with her, so there would be no making this up quickly. Ayashe knew that this was serious because her mother had always been her best friend while still enforcing the walls of the relationship. And Ayashe was the child; a smart and strong girl who could listen and hear what was said.