Later that night, Uncas would discover a gap in his memory, right after they hauled their father out of the river. He'd recall the three of them huddled close on the rock, remembering how to breathe, and then jump to the moment when he bent his knees, examining the dark-haired body that lay in a heap on the uneven stone floor of the Great Fall's cave.

The corpse, neatly tomahawked and efficiently scalped, belonged to the British militiaman they had rescued on their way to commandeer the Huron's canoes, which led them to two conclusions: Alice, Cora and the Major were still alive, and would likely be kept alive until they were in Huron country.

Nathaniel, who'd crouched beside the corpse alongside him, surged to his feet abruptly. The tense line of his back told Uncas that the realization brought him no peace. "We need to press on."

His father didn't move to stop Nathaniel, but his stance radiated authority. "The Huron will move more slowly. They have wounded prisoners. They will have to walk slower, and make camp longer." Chingachgook stepped closer to his oldest son. "We will start tracking at first light." There was a rare trace of apology in the older man's tone.

Uncas knew their father was right. It would be impossible to find a trail in the dark, the idea of making torches unthinkable unless they wanted to announce themselves to anyone and everyone for miles in every direction. They also needed to leave a measure of cautious distance between themselves and their quarry - if they did their job too well and came up on the heels of the Huron war party, they ran the risk of being discovered and killed.

And yet, for the first time in his life, Uncas wished they would be reckless. Wished they would shoulder their belongings and run across the pitch black forest until dawn, if only to combat the overwhelming sense of yet again failing someone he had made every effort to protect.

Nathaniel looked ready to bolt for a moment longer. Then he sank to his haunches and lowered his head. "I will not sleep, even if we stop."

It was as much of a concession as his brother was capable of making.

They buried the British soldier a short walk away from the mouth of the waterfall's cavern, where the ground was soft enough to shift with their hands. Uncas lay the largest rock he managed to lift near the head of the mound by way of a marker. They would never know the man's name or his reasons, but Uncas was inclined to think well of him, staying with Heyward and the Munro sisters to the last as he had, when he might have tried to brave his way to Fort Edward and save his own scalp.

The manual labor did nothing to calm Nathaniel. If anything, it seemed to fill him with restless energy, and Uncas was reminded of the charged silence that usually fell right before a rainstorm unleashed its fury.

Almost as soon as he was done forming the thought, a cross between a howl and a scream broke the silence: Uncas' hand instinctively reached for his tomahawk and their father bolted out of whatever shadow he'd been idling under.

Nathaniel, the source of the noise, stood still under a shaft of moonlight. Coming up at his side, Uncas saw his eyes were firmly closed and his mouth was twisted in a grimace; his fisted hands, streaked with earth almost to the wrist, were pressed firmly against his sides. He knew Nathaniel was trying to get a hand on his emotions, but the expression reminded him so vividly of the face he'd made as a boy when he tried not to cry that Uncas couldn't help putting a hand to his shoulder.

The touch only seemed to infuriate Nathaniel, who shrugged his hand off brusquely.

"My son." Their father's tone was half reprimanding, half soothing.

Nathaniel cursed.

Chingachgook didn't relent in the face of his anger. "I understand, my son."

Nathaniel turned back at that, raising his head like a snake curling in offense. The irony was not lost on Uncas: a son of Chingachgook, le gros serpent, rearing to strike like his father's namesake. "NO!" Whatever angry words had been ready to fly seemed to trip over themselves on his tongue all of a sudden, and Nathaniel clenched his teeth. "You do not understand."

Even though his brother's voice cracked with pain, something in his words immediately made Uncas' temper curdle. "What do we not understand, my brother?"

Nathaniel turned to him as if he'd forgotten Uncas was there – or rather, like he was surprised Uncas had spoken, and in a tone that was clearly laden with anger no less. Nathaniel wet his split lips, his eyes less unfocused. "The Huron are carrying my heart. I am less alive the further away they go."

"We have known that you love Cora Munro for a long time, my brother. And we also know loss."

"But you do not understand-!"

"I understand!"

Nathaniel stared, astounded into silence. Their father stared. And Uncas, belatedly realizing what he had said, closed his eyes and stared at himself.

His words seem to fall around the three of them like snow, cooling Nathaniel's anger along with his. When Uncas opened his eyes again, his brother had turned to him: his face was slack with something that bordered on pity. Uncas briefly wished the argument had gone on.

"I will take first watch." Nobody answered as Uncas turned away, but nobody moved to stop him either.

They had agreed that the cave was no longer safe, thanks to the fresh trail that the Huron had left leading to it. Uncas jogged higher up the riverside before stepping into the thicker darkness of the forest; tomahawk in hand, he chose the shadow of a sycamore as his vantage point and crouched, trying to concentrate on practical worries, like their lack of gunpowder, or the half-healed gash below his ribs.

A gash that had last been tended to by hesitant hands in a dark infirmary, small, uncallused fingers brushing his skin as they tied a knot in the bandages twice for safety.

Uncas winced slightly from a pain that had little to do with any wound.

Nathaniel came to him a few hours later, too early for the second watch.

Uncas could almost hear the muted pad of his brother's feet behind him – a precaution, because both of them could be effortlessly soundless when they needed to. A few more hushed steps later, Nathaniel sank down a little way off to his side, just within the deeper shadow cast by the sycamore.

"Na-ta-can." Younger brother.

Uncas said nothing, but Nathaniel knew better than to think silence on his part meant ignoring.

They sat like that for a while, amidst the twitter of insects and the distant roar of the waterfall, until Uncas could almost pretend it was a summer night like any of the other ones they'd had for years, that they would wake early the next morning to trap and run through the familiar woods of New York, always heading to the west on light feet.

But that would mean there would be no Alice in his world, and the thought made Uncas breathless.

There was a faint prickling on the side of his face, and Uncas knew Nathaniel was looking at him. "Na-ta-can." He seemed to cast about for the right words. "Since when?"

"I don't know."

He'd thought nothing of her at the beginning. The girl in the white cap that had raced after her mare had been a vaguely amusing stranger. He'd lamented whatever cruel fortune had made her cross paths with a war party, because Uncas was a human being who didn't wish ill on his fellow human beings, and thought escorting her a harmless inconvenience to their plans of making their way west. A brief detour, he'd thought, one they might have told their Delaware cousins about, once the dead of winter was upon the camp and they had exhausted more interesting stories.

And now he was here, thoughts of Alice Munro like a coil of rope around his heart, yanking and chafing at it with emotions he had no words for.

"You surprise me. I thought I was the rebellious son."

The unexpected bit of humor made Uncas smile into the darkness. "You are the rebellious son."

And it was true, Uncas realized, his amusement bleeding out of him. Whatever he felt for Alice Munro was a personal problem that would never come to disturb anyone's existence. If their rescue went perfectly and everyone escaped with their lives, Uncas had no doubt that Alice would return to England. Be eager to go most likely, after the endless string of tragedies that had marked her coming to America.

She would thank him in the wordless, sincere manner of hers and go back across the water, remembering Uncas and his family only as minor parts of the bloody, luckless summer in the Americas that had shattered her to pieces.

"Cora will be staying." Nathaniel's words had the calm conviction of absolute truth.

"Has she said so?"

"No. But she will stay."

It was the first he'd heard of this, and yet Uncas felt as if he'd known it always. Cora seemed much like his brother in how she reached out fearlessly to seize the things she wanted from life, and anyone who'd spared a glance at them together over the past few days could tell that she wanted Nathaniel. Since his brother clearly wanted her as well, their coming together seemed as inevitable as the change of the seasons.

Nathaniel shifted, probably turning to look at him again. "Alice might stay with her."

Uncas sighed. "She will not."

"She might if you ask her."

Uncas laughed humorlessly. While Alice had surprised him time and again with how little mind she paid to the fact that he was considered a savage amongst her people, he could almost see her blush and badly disguised horror were he ever to even imply something about his feelings. She wouldn't be unkind, but she'd be deeply troubled, as if he'd dumped a raw, gutted fish into her lap.

"If she lives to see me again, it would be nothing but cruel to suggest that she accept the feelings of a stranger, much less put her life upside down for him."

If. His implication seemed to drive Nathaniel into morose silence. Uncas had no doubt at all that they would find the Munro sisters – whether they would be able to retrieve them was not as likely. And whether they'd be alive or not for said retrieval was another matter entirely.

Uncas battled a surge of fierce, sorrow-tinged impatience, and wondered why the new day seemed to be taking so long.

Is this love? Is this brutal emotion that hurts and relieves me by turns love? If it was, Uncas thought he could finally understand why everyone, from the Lenape and the Mohawk to the French and the British, believed it had the power to drive otherwise ordinary men insane.

He would not say anything to Alice, couldn't say anything. He would not dump the weight of his affections on an already troubled mind, not when he was almost sure he was little more than an occasionally helpful shadow to her.

Uncas briefly imagined a world in which he told her, and Alice did not reject him – he nearly scoffed aloud in frustration. If she were to tell him she loved him, Uncas would first and foremost wonder if she understood what she was saying. Even the wildest animal was kind to the hand that protected it, and it was easy to mistake need and gratitude for affection. There were plenty of unions and marriages amongst the people of the frontier based on them, or its more practical cousin, the fear of being alone.

And if Alice Munro ever found it in her to love him, freely and sincerely, Uncas would remember a little brown mourning dove trapped in a Moravian missionary school. The bird, once it calmed down, wouldn't have starved or thirsted to death: Reverend David would have left it crumbs or ground corn, would have filled the tiny schoolhouse with cups of water and mounds of grass for the bird to sleep in. The children of the settlers and of the tribes would have ignored it at worst, befriended it at best.

But it would have been robbed of the sky and the tall, pale hickories, of soaring through treetops and nesting with its kin.

No…even if the world had turned upside down and the girl with the forest-shadow green eyes loved him, Uncas refused be the chain that shackled Alice Munro any further to the place of her sorrows.

But he would turn the frontier inside out looking for her. Turn the Huron inside out ensuring she could make it back to her home across the sea, worse for wear but alive.

Even if I die on the way.