Wild Indigo by Judith Stanton Page A

price.
    Jacob resolutely took up the woman’s cause.
    Retha gawked. Neutral, she reminded herself without being reassured. Jacob was supposed to be neutral.
    But he looked militant. She studied the object ofhis anger. She couldn’t see the captain’s face, but red hair bristled under the battered brim of his tricorn. A chill crept over her. She hated redheaded men.
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    Jacob jerked off his hat and swatted road dust from his breeches. Sim Scaife had wrecked his day. As usual. The thick-skulled, rabble-rousing Liberty Man had hounded Jacob for years, convinced that any Moravian who spoke English was a British spy. As if Jacob didn’t have enough problems balancing the Moravians’ precarious relations with both the British and the Continentals.
    â€œDon’t dicker with the woman, Baker,” Scaife was shouting to his sergeant who’d gone to purchase the spotted cow.
    Hearing the woman’s feeble protest, Jacob plowed toward the fray. And checked himself. A flag of red-gold hair captured his attention. Amongst the shoppers in the crowded Square stood his intended bride—with Gottlieb Vogler. It only needed this. He had been but a day away, and she was compromised again. But he could not well put her in a box.
    â€œWe can take the blamed cow outright,” Scaife threatened.
    Alerted, Jacob bit down on frustration. At this moment he couldn’t even notice Retha. Not when Scaife’s malice demanded his attention.
    With a yellow grin, Scaife dug into a shoulder pouch, pulled out a handful of Continental bills, and shoved them in the husband’s face. “But we got money.”
    The farmer snorted. “That paper ain’t worth ahoot. I come here for barter.”
    Jacob wedged in between captain and sergeant. The farmer was right. Paper was worthless, a hundred bills on any given day worth what one had been the day before.
    â€œThe town will trade you in salt, Finney,” he said in his formal English. Most of his fellow Moravians would not understand a word he said.
    The woman furtively shook her head at her husband. “We need wheat.”
    â€œWe have only salt,” Jacob went on, “unless you can take something from the store.” He knew the woman needed staples. Everyone did. The summer was already hot and dry. The wheat crop had suffered, and corn was looking bad.
    The woman shook her head.
    Scaife’s lips thinned into a mocking grin. “You’ve naught to bargain with, woman. But we’ll be glad to take it off yer hands for free.”
    Jacob turned on him, aware of the crowd clearing a circle around them. “You can have what you came for, free food and rooms at the Tavern. Let the woman trade her cow.” Then he spoke to the woman. “But we cannot trade wheat, Mrs. Finney.”
    â€œWe ain’t got any—” she began.
    â€œWe have no wheat either, not to sell or trade,” he explained. “The army requisitioned it. ’Tis theirs as soon as they round up wagons to transport it.”
    â€œSo you say,” Scaife growled back in Jacob’s face.
    â€œI showed you the papers,” Jacob answered edgily. Scaife’s men tried to break through the circle of townsmen and settlers, but Scaife waved them back.
    Jacob prepared for the worst. The hotheadedcaptain was unpredictable. This morning, holding a pistol to his head, Scaife had read Jacob’s requisitions from the Continental Army for grain, but had still taken him for a spy. Then he ordered Jacob to translate his German documents, minutes of church business for the Bethabara settlement, dull with convincing detail. Scaife chose not to believe him.
    â€œI ain’t a fool, Blum.” The man’s face flushed to match his carroty hair. “Your tavernkeeper let that English lieutenant stay five days, and the day he left heading east, we catch you going south with a packet of sealed documents.”
    â€œI translated them for