Captive

by Heather Graham

  Whites, he knew, debated his parentage. Was Powell his father, or had the man simply been married to his mother? It didn’t matter. Powell had been a good man, but in the Creek wars now long ago, Powell had returned to Alabama while Osceola had come south to Florida with his mother’s clan. Theirs was a matriarchal society. A son was of his mother’s clan. He often learned from his mother’s male relations, and it had been from an uncle of his mother, a man called Peter McQueen after her own Scots grandfather, that he had learned he must spend much of his life fighting for his very way of living it.

  He had been a boy during the Creek wars. Young but growing when Andrew Jackson had come to Florida. The wars had come, the battles. The “First” Seminole War. But it seemed that he could still remember peace. Waking in the morning to the warm caress of the sun, listening to the sound of the breeze that drifted through the talwa, the village. He could remember hunting with his bow and arrow, learning to shoot the plentiful game in the forest. Their way of life had been so defined then. The mico had received town guests, issued invitations, presided over the meetings. His aide, the mico apokta, had helped him in all things, while other men, the micalgi, had guided and counseled each village as well.

  In times of battle, usually with the whites or hostile Creeks, the war speaker, the holibonaya, came before them all, shouting, gesticulating, preparing them for the fight. Young men longed to fight. The women cooked and performed most domestic tasks, while a young man was given such trivial chores as collecting sticks for firewood, tending pigs, or gathering roots and berries. He gained his prestige through a show of courage in either the hunt or in battle, and so young men longed for the chance to prove that they were brave and powerful and worthy of warrior status.

  Many villages, many clans, many chiefs and their people, met every May for council meetings and then again in the summer for the Green Corn Dance. All things could be settled then. Marriages were sanctified, claims were settled. Young men and women played games, some together, some separately. They flirted, laughed, fell in love and in lust.

  No Seminole was ever confined or chained, but crimes were punished. Adulterers were sometimes beaten; sometimes their noses or ears were clipped. Some crimes were minor, punishable by exclusion from tribal rites and rituals. Murder was severe, and many men decided upon a murderer’s fate, sometimes a heavy payment, sometimes banishment, and sometimes execution. Sometimes life was harsh, sometimes good. But it had always followed a special way, a special path. Now each day seemed scattered, unpredictable. Their very independence hurt them at times. Battles took place, then warriors hurried home. They searched for food. They tried to plant crops even while they ran and hid. Warriors kept dying. Children perished.

  He had known that they would have to fight. He had never been a hereditary leader like Micanopy; he had earned his station. The whites accused him of murdering Wiley Thompson after having befriended the man at times. They didn’t understand. A Seminole could not be chained. Wiley had thought to break him. Wiley had not understood that you did not chain a Seminole.

  There had been good days. He could remember so many good days …

  Now, too often, they all proved their fury and their power in battle. They died with it.

  He had spoken with Wildcat, with others. They were all aware that their situation was grave. Osceola did not know if they could endure another year of fighting. He was ready to negotiate with the military again, under one of the white flags General Jesup had given them. Osceola was well aware that since the failed peace of March, Jesup was a sad man, now fighting a war of extermination since he did not feel he had a choice. He did not blindly hate the white men. Indeed, his relations with the military that March had been so good that he had slept in the tent of Lieutenant Colonel William S. Harney while some of the negotiations took place.

  He had fought when it had been right to fight. He would still fight when he had to do so. But it was necessary that they talk again.

  He heard footfalls behind him. They were almost silent upon the soft earth, but he could hear the quietest of footsteps. He turned around.

  Otter stood there, his face as hard as if it had been cast in stone, so bronze, his eyes black and seeming to burn with an obsidian light.

  “I have come to tell Osceola that I am riding with my men to my own talwa with the dawn.”

  Osceola nodded. “Our strength lies in our ability to fight and withdraw, and go so deeply into the swamps and hammocks that the soldiers cannot follow us.”

  “I don’t withdraw!” Otter said fiercely. He slammed his fist against his bare chest. “I don’t withdraw.” He was nearly naked, wearing a breech clout only. The Seminoles had learned their ways of going into battle. They purged themselves with black drink often, and avoided the diseases of the bowels. They fought nearly naked because they had learned that bullet wounds sometimes brought threads and fabric ripping into flesh as well, and that such wounds often putrefied. Otter was shiny with bear grease. His plaited hair was a sleek ebony with it. He was ready for battle at any minute. No warrior had been more brave. Or more furious. More vengeful. His wife, infant son, and daughters had burned to death in a raid on his village. He wasn’t afraid of death himself. Osceola thought that he was afraid of life.

  “None of us here has given up the fight,” Osceola said.

  Otter gritted his teeth together, letting out a sound of disgust. He waved his hand in the air. “Osceola sees what he wishes to see. Many are giving up the fight.”

  “Many are weary.”

  “You have fought and killed not to give up the fight!”

  “I am weary.”

  “You—!”

  “Not weary enough to give up the fight,” Osceola interrupted angrily, the old power in his voice. “But now the soldiers do not know where we are. I am hunting, I am making new weapons of war. I am gathering strength. And I am waiting to see what move the white man makes next.”

  Otter shook his head. “I will fight with you again, Osceola. But I am war chief of my clan, and I will make battle as I choose.”

  “It is our way,” Osceola agreed. He was sorry for Otter, but weary of his anger. That was one advantage the white soldiers had. Discipline. Osceola knew that he was a leader in this war. But it was true that warriors chose to fight, sometimes chose to go home, and sometimes waged new, unwinnable battles on their own.

  “You grow weak!” Otter cried.

  “I grow more sensible. I seek to fight when I can win. I seek victories, not slaughters.”

  Otter slammed his fist against his chest again. “I seek death for the white men!” he cried.

  “Remember, we seek our lives here. Our land. Our children. A future for them.”

  “It will not be allowed us.”

  “We will seek it until it is ours. Otter, you are a fierce and valiant warrior. We are all in your debt. Remember that we are all waging the same war!”

  Otter stood very stiffly. “I remember,” he said. “But even now white soldiers gather at the fort. More and more of them. They seek to find me. To find Osceola. I will find them. I will find Warren, and I will have his scalp. I will take the lives of all the men who leave the fort.”

  He inclined his head, respectful despite his words, and spun silently on his heel and disappeared into the line of pines beyond the fire.

  Osceola turned back to the flames. He closed his eyes. He had fought, yes, he had fought! With fury, savagely, with cruel precision and wild abandon. He would fight again.

  But tonight …

  He was cold. So very cold.

  Far from the fire, laid against an old, moss-draped oak, slept Riley Marshall, an old black man who had made his way south to Florida. Riley served the warriors and was protected by them. In good times he had worked for his Indian masters, but he had been allowed his own plot of land as well. He had been free to join the Negro Indian bands at any time, but he had been an old man at the war’s beginning, and he had stayed close to Osceola’s band.


  Now Osceola woke him. “Ask Running Bear if he will come to me.”

  “Running Bear left to study the new fort.”

  “He is here tonight. He brought back a deer for the people to eat.”

  Riley did as he was bidden. Moments later, James McKenzie emerged silently from the darkness to walk toward Osceola where he stood by the fire.

  Osceola had taken such a hard line himself so many times with others that both whites and Seminoles wondered at the friendship he shared with the half-breed. But there were things he knew about James that he could not say he knew of other men. If they were attacked, James would fight with them until his own death. The words that James spoke would be the truth. He would not betray a confidence, and he would not turn from his own people. Nor would he wantonly commit murder for any man. He would not attack whites, settlements, farms, plantations—or even soldiers. But he would bring food to various bands when none was to be had. He would share what he had to his last morsel. He would not lie; he would not cease to defend his brother and other white men of his ilk. He would fight until he fell to defend his position—or what was his.

  And it seemed that the white woman at the fort was his.

  “You have called me, Osceola?” James said. He stood about three feet away, bathed in the firelight. Osceola was of medium height himself. He had never doubted his own appearance as that of a fine warrior and chief. But this half-breed blood brother of his stood over six feet tall, his stance straight. His frame was hard, well-muscled, his shoulders broad. He wore a white man’s form-hugging trousers along with a patterned cotton shirt. A single silver crescent hung from a chain at his neck, and an unadorned red band kept his black hair from his eyes. His bronzed face was taut and lean tonight, still striking but hard with a tension that burned a blue fire in the depths of his eyes.

  “You’ve fed many mouths tonight with your fine buck. Such kills are harder and harder to find in the forest,” Osceola told him.

  Running Bear arched an ebony brow, a flicker of amusement passing across his features. “Osceola is an excellent hunter himself. He has hardly called me here to compliment a kill.”

  “I have heard that Major Warren’s daughter is at Fort Deliverance.”

  No expression touched Running Bear’s face. He shrugged. “She is.”

  It was Osceola’s turn to feel a certain amusement. “My good friend, you are greatly mistaken if you do not realize that whispers and rumors travel the forest from band to band, borne on the breeze. Whether you abducted the woman or she ran to the shelter of your abandoned cabins is not known; that you have been involved with her is fact. For this reason I have called you. You have seen her? She is at the fort?”

  “Yes. I have seen her myself. I moved through the bush with Wildcat, and observed the soldiers and the life at the fort.”

  “It is true that there are men and women I will not kill. At the first battle at the Withlacoochee, it was my order that the braves not kill a young soldier named Graham. They will not disturb your brother’s home. There are others. I have commanded that Warren’s daughter be brought here if she is captured. But you must understand, some braves run with hot blood. They have lost their own families. They have seen children lie in the crimson pools of their own lost lives.”

  “I am aware of this.”

  “Be aware then that you must watch Otter. He will attack any and all soldiers out of Fort Deliverance.”

  “I have been warned about Otter,” Running Bear said. “But perhaps I will speak with him. Now.”

  Running Bear turned hard on his heel. Osceola watched him go. He wondered at the wisdom of his action. They could not afford to battle one another now.

  But if they did not strive to live their lives in their way, with honor and integrity, then why did they fight so hard?

  James knew where to find Otter. The Mikasukee mico had just returned to his makeshift shelter and lain upon his blanket.

  The Seminoles had a tendency not to post guards through the night. James had warned the chiefs time and time again that the white soldiers always slept with a guard, and that nighttime was no deterrent if the whites chose to attack by darkness. But lifestyles were hard to change. When James leapt atop the platform where Otter had slept alone since the cruel death of his wife, he caught the mico quite by surprise.

  Otter leapt to his feet, stunned, wary, ready for an attack. He saw James, and his wariness did not leave him.

  “McKenzie,” he said, spitting out the white name as he addressed James.

  “I have been told that you wish to kill all the soldiers at the fort,” James told him.

  “I wish to kill all whites,” Otter said flatly.

  “There is a woman there who is mine.”

  “No white man cared about my woman.”

  “But I ask you as a chief of your people to respect my position—”

  “As a half-breed?”

  “As mico of my people. Through my blood right by my mother.”

  Otter strode to James, standing directly before him. He was a smaller man; it did not matter. He stared up at him with bitterness and hostility.

  “You grew to drink the black drink; you learned the ways of our warriors. You learned to hunt and fight in breech clouts, to shoot your arrows straight and true, to wield a white man’s musket with skill. Men listen to you and follow you. You have great power and great strength. You could lead men to great victories, slaughter the whites. But you fight with us only when a musket is aimed at your heart. Then you come to me about a white woman.”

  “She is mine, and I don’t want her killed.”

  “If she is yours, take her from the fort, and the white men there.”

  James didn’t allow the feelings in his heart to be betrayed in his features. God! The anguish and frustration within him seemed to eat at his insides, gnawing away. He could claim that she was his, but she was not. She was a white woman, in a white man’s world. He could not claim her while she remained with Michael Warren.

  “I’m asking you not to harm her.”

  Otter suddenly drew a knife from a sheath at his ankle and threw it so that the point lodged into the crudely hewn logs at their feet.

  “Fight me, Running Bear. Fight for her. Decide her fate.”

  “Fight you? I do not seek your death—”

  “Nor I yours. I wish to see you fight as I have fought, for what you love. What you covet. Life.”

  Before James could respond, Otter had plunged downward for the knife again. James leapt back, aware that the warrior meant to draw blood tonight, even if he wasn’t seeking a fight to the death.

  Otter charged him again. James caught the wrist that held the blade, but Otter’s impetus caught him hard as the Mikasukee plunged into him. They both went down hard upon the platform, then rolled to the earth, caught in a deadly battle of strength.

  Otter rolled atop James, fighting to draw his knife high and aim it downward. James could nearly feel the tip of the blade piercing his throat. His fingers tightened on Otter’s wrist. He willed a greater strength into his arms and body, and managed to toss the smaller man from him. Otter landed on the earth about three feet away. James leapt to his feet. Otter was up as well. They circled each other. James let Otter attack again. This time he allowed himself to fall easily with the impetus, then he forced the roll as well. Otter tried to lunge with the knife, but James was prepared. He twisted his torso, then slammed down on Otter’s arm, causing the knife to fly. He wedged an arm close on his opponent’s throat, cutting off his breath, threatening to break his neck.

  Staring up at him with hatred, Otter went still.

  “Finish it. Kill me.”

  James shook his head slowly. “I didn’t come to seek your death!” he said, exasperated. “Concede to me the white woman should you take her.”

  Otter was silent for a moment. James realized then that he could hear the quiet sounds of breathing, a slight motion of feet against the earth.

  He looked up. Many of Otter�
��s people had come to circle them. They would not interfere in the fight. They watched, they waited.

  Otter was aware that they had come as well. James eased his hold, and Otter spoke woodenly.

  “I do not seek to attack the fort. I will wage war against the men who leave it, against the men who seek out me and my people to exterminate us!”

  “And the woman?”

  “If I take her, you must come for her. And take her from me. I have told you, when you speak, men listen. We admire your strength—we seek it more for our cause.”

  James stood uneasily. Otter leapt up before him. “I travel toward my home in the south hammock in the morning. I will not attack the fort. Warren’s daughter is only in danger if she leaves it. I will try not to forget that she is yours.”

  “I want your word, your promise.” Otter nodded.

  James stood still in the moonlight for a moment, watching Otter. The Mikasukee suddenly sliced his palm, offering it to James. James took the knife and sliced his own as well, then gripped it hard to Otter’s.

  He could still feel the blood when he turned away. Hot, sticky. He could remember Teela’s face as she had studied her own hands that last time he had seen her. So much blood, she had said. So much blood …

  And so much more would be shed.

  He had battled Wildcat and Otter now. Fought his own people. He had become deadly enemies with Michael Warren.

  And still …

  There was so little he could do to protect her.

  “Running Bear!”

  He had left Otter’s shelter behind and stood in a copse in the moonlight. He could hear the slight stirring of the night wind and the gentle movement of the stream that rambled not far from where the council lean-tos and shelters had been erected. He turned.

  Brown Rabbit, an old Mikasukee warrior with negro blood, had called him back.

  “Otter means his word to you. He admires you, and is sorry that you do not fight with us with greater will and strength. He says that you could kill twenty men each battle, and rid us of many soldiers.”