by Mez Blume
A faint recollection, like a fading memory of a dream, came into my head. “Wait a second …” I reached my hand into my hip pouch and pulled out the object I’d found in the dark. The stone glistened green and pearly white in my hand.
“Well I’ll be …” Jim clicked his tongue. “I’d take my hat off to you if I hadn’t lost it in that there avalanche.”
31
Painted Horses
Imogen and I sat crosslegged on the ground, chewing on some dried meat from the guard’s rations we’d found in the alcove and tried with all our might to think. Time was running out fast, and now with Jim unable to move, our options for rescuing Wattie and stopping Blunt before daybreak were looking pretty slim.
And now it was all down to me and Imogen … and Ka-Ti, of course. Though she had her hands full looking after injuries. As we tried to think of a plan, she was busy about her work with such focus that she almost looked like she was in another world. I watched her as she filled several clay pots she’d found in the alcove with water from a little stream that ran down the rock and carried them back to the deepest part of the alcove. There she took tiny bottles from her bag and shook some sort of powdery stuff from them into the water, then stirred it with a stick. I wanted to ask her what she was doing. Probably mixing some kind of Cherokee medicine, I thought. As I watched her, something niggled at my memory …
“How long do you think we have?” Imogen’s question jolted me back into the important conversation of what we were to do.
Jim squinted at the patch of sky that was just visible between the waterfall and the rock. “I reckon it’s about noon already. Governor’s treaty signin’ is set for daybreak, so that means …”
“Probably between fifteen and sixteen hours, assuming the sun rises around six o’clock in the morning.”
I stared at Imogen.
“What?” She shrugged. “It’s just simple maths.”
I turned back to Jim, who was trying to hide the fact that he was still wincing from pain by pretending to itch his nose. “But we have the stone,” I said hopefully. “Black Fox will never sign the treaty without the stone.”
Jim took a sharp breath. “That’s prob’ly true, but what’s to stop him shootin’ us and takin’ it? Last I heard, Black Fox has got good reason to be sore with you, Miss Fire-Hair. Prob’ly got a welt in his neck the size of a groundhog’s mound to remind him.”
“Then we hide it,” Imogen said, raising her open palms in a ‘what’s the big deal’ sort of way.
“Huh,” Jim shook his head. “You could hide it, sure. But Blunt’ll just find another bargainin’ tool. It won’t stop him from makin’ life difficult for the Cherokees. And if you hadn’t noticed, I ain’t in much of a state for playin’ hide ’n’ seek just now.”
Imogen sighed and rested her chin on her fist, scrunching up her face to think some more.
But I was thinking about what Jim had said. “You’re right,” I said. “Blunt needs to be stopped for good. People need to know what he’s really like, what he’s really up to. If we could only speak to the President—”
“Sure! You wanna ride up to Washington tonight and have a word with him?” Jim slapped his knee, then grunted in pain. “They should’a called you Katie Head-in-Clouds, instead of Fire-Hair. It’s a nice idea for a story book, but that ain’t how things work in the frontier. Blunt’s a powerful man. He’s got powerful people on his side. Trust me. I’ve tried goin’ behind his back once before. He’ll snap his fingers and have me right back behind bars for plottin’ against him, just like last time.”
I squeezed my fists, willing an idea to land in my head. If only we had help. If only Joseph McKay and Terrapin Jo and the rest of them were there to stand beside us … that was what we needed. I got onto my knees and looked Jim straight in the eye. “We need to tell everybody in Nickajack the truth about Blunt. We need a protest. We need them to come here and stand up to the Governor so he knows he can’t get away with his tricks anymore.”
Jim gave me one of his silent hard stares that I’d almost gotten used to by now. “And just how do you suggest we’re a’gonna get word to Nickajack, then get all them folks up here before daybreak?”
“They will ride.”
I jerked my head around, completely surprised to find Ka-Ti had been listening to the conversation.
“But Blunt stole all their horses,” I reminded her. “They won’t have anything to ride.”
Ka-Ti hadn’t turned around. She still knelt facing the rock wall in front of her, her head to one side as if she were examining something. “They will ride,” she said again in the same quiet, confident voice.
I pushed myself onto my feet. There was something so strange about the way Ka-Ti spoke. What was she looking at on that wall?
I walked slowly up behind her with a prickling sensation in my skin, like something was about to happen. I peered over her shoulder and saw now what she had been doing all the while. It hadn’t been medicine she had been mixing, but paint. She had used it to decorate the cave wall with dozens of running horses.
32
Dream Weaver
Realisation rushed over me, as strong and heavy as the pounding waterfall rushed overhead. “It was you?” The words came out in a breath. “It wasn’t your mother. It was you who brought us here?”
Ka-Ti turned her head and peered into my eyes, her brow knitted as if she were trying hard to remember something she’d forgotten.
Things were starting to make sense. I took the leather folder from my quiver and, dropping to my knees beside Ka-Ti, pointed to the Kingfisher at the corner of the first painting. “You painted this, didn’t you? But how did you know? How had you seen me on that horse?”
Her brow knitted; a memory flashed in her eyes. “A dream,” she whispered, as if it was all coming back to her. Her voice was like the softest breeze as she explained, “My mother speaks to me in dreams. She sends pictures of faraway places … and people.”
“And you painted them all?”
She nodded. A smile lit up her face as another memory came into her mind’s eye. “I used to dream of a girl with fire for hair.” She rested her hand gently on mine and looked very earnestly into my eyes. “I knew you were that girl,” she breathed. “You came to us across many suns and moons.”
“Yes,” I answered, and quickly added, “but not on purpose. We fell into your painting … this painting,” I said, nodding towards the cave wall. “It brought us here.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder as Imogen knelt down beside me, her mouth open and her eyes sweeping over the painted horses. A whispered “Oh my goodness” was all she could say.
Ka-Ti was positively glowing. Taking the painting of me and the horse, she threw back her long hair and rushed over to her father. “Pa, my dream friend has come.”
Jim Weaver looked at the painting, then up at me, then he did the same several times more. “Come closer,” he mumbled, and I obeyed. He stared at me with a strange, almost frightened look in his eyes. “Who are you?” He said it as if he’d seen a ghost. “Where’d you come from?”
I rubbed my bandaged hand awkwardly, not sure quite how to answer. “We came from … from a long way away. From—”
“Another time,” Imogen finished for me.
I nodded, and looked at my hands again, avoiding Jim’s eyes. They looked so pained … yet so hopeful. “Have you seen my Ramona?” he asked, his deep voice nearly cracking.
I shook my head, a knot tying itself in my stomach to see the disappointment on Jim’s face as he closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall.
“But I think I know where she’s been.”
His eyes opened again with a flicker of hope.
“Last summer I met a painter,” I began. “Tom Tippery was his name. He told me he had bought some paints from a woman at a market. It must have been Ramona.”
“Where’d you meet this Tom fella?”
I winced as I told him the truth. “In England, ov
er 200 years ago.”
Jim looked in shock. He rubbed his hand over his chin, his eyes fidgeted around as if looking for an explanation; then he hung his head in his hands. It was a long moment before he found his voice again. “Ramona used to tell me stories … of faraway places. Other times. I always wondered how she knew so much. She didn’t read English, but she sure knew things … knew ‘em like she’d seen ‘em with her own eyes.” I was startled when Jim looked up at me with pleading in his eyes. “Will I ever see her again?”
“I … don’t know,” I whispered. I had only one small flicker of hope to offer this broken-hearted man, but it was something. “I did see Ramona,” I said, “in a dream last week. She was holding you, Ka-Ti, when you were just a baby.”
Ka-Ti smiled and wiped a single tear from her eye.
“I think she wanted to come home, but there was still some danger in the way.”
“What kinda danger?” Jim asked, a bit of his old gruffness coming back.
“It was a snake. The Uktena.” Jim looked taken aback. This was the time to tell him Imogen’s and my theory. “We thought maybe Ramona left because people thought she had the Uktena Stone, and she didn’t want to put you two in danger. So we’ve been thinking, now we have proof that Ramona never took the stone, that … maybe she can come back somehow.”
“How?” Jim asked.
Imogen and I exchanged a helpless look. “We don’t know.”
“We don’t even know how we’re supposed to get back,” Imogen said. “We only know that we came through your painting, Ka-Ti.”
Ka-Ti got gracefully to her feet. She took one of my hands and one of Imogen’s in hers. “I remember a song my mother sang when she mixed her paints. A song that belongs to travellers. When she sang, her paints came to life. I remember every word of it.” She released our hands and ran to the alcove where her painted horses were still drying. “Maybe I can sing them to life.”
Imogen and I each let out a breath of disbelief. I had buried my fear of never getting home deep down until it was nearly forgotten in my race to rescue Imogen. But now, a fountain of hope was bubbling up inside of me and threatening to burst out at the corners of my eyes.
Jim cleared his throat, and I forced the tears back down with a deep breath. His voice was gruff again, but kind. “If you girls wanna get back to where you come from, can’t nobody blame you for it. Y’all done what you could here, but this ain’t yer time. It ain’t yer fight. Y’all get on back and let fate do what he will with the rest of us.”
I wanted to protest, to say that we would see it through … whatever it was. But I took one glance at Imogen, sniffling and wiping her eyes and runny nose on her sleeve, and kept my mouth shut. I couldn’t ask Imogen to risk her life again. Not after all she’d been through already. I made up my mind and opened my mouth to agree with Jim that it was time to go home.
But before I could get the words out, Imogen spoke up in a stuffy-nosed but strong voice. “Of course we’re not leaving now! Not when it’s just getting exciting.” She sniffed at me through her puffy eyes. “Sorry, Katie, but I’m not missing out on seeing the look on Blunt’s face tomorrow morning.”
I threw my arms around Imogen’s neck and gave her the biggest hug my sore arms could muster. Now the die was cast. We were in this adventure together to the end, for better or for worse.
The afternoon sun was already high in the sky. The waterfall kept pouring down into the pool below, like sand in an enormous hourglass. Time was running out. We needed a plan.
“What was that you were saying before, Ka-Ti?” It was Imogen who posed the question. Now that she had taken a stand to stay and fight, she was applying every cell in her brain to coming up with an idea. “About Nickajack? You said the people could ride here.”
Ka-Ti nodded.
“But where will they get the horses?” I asked again.
“I will show you.”
Ka-Ti did not want to leave her father, but Jim waved us away. “Y’all get on. I’ve been wantin’ to have a talk with this young guard here. See if he has anythin’ interestin’ to say about this treaty business.” So we left the guard still tied and propped up next to Jim, who appeared to be sharing a pipe with the man as we followed Ka-Ti along the ledge that took us out from behind the waterfall.
From there, we left the path and climbed, hands and feet, up the side of the mountain, grabbing onto rocks, roots, branches, whatever we could grip to pull ourselves up the steep slope. Ka-Ti reached the top first and gave us both a hand up. Then she pointed down the slope on the other side.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. At the bottom of the hill was a grassy gorge, and grazing on the grass were dozens of horses!
“So that’s where Lovegood’s been keeping all those stolen horses.” I turned to Ka-Ti. “How did you know they were here?” I asked in awe.
She was looking out over the horses with a serene smile. “I saw them in my mind. That is why I painted them.”
Imogen and I exchanged another awed look. Then she asked, “But how are we going to get all of these back to Nickajack?”
Ka-Ti gave Imogen an almost mischievous look. She tossed her curtain of hair back, raised two fingers to her lips and gave a whistle that echoed all around the gorge. Like magic, the horses’ heads rosed, their ears perked. They snorted, stamped, and trotted, every one, into a neat semicircle facing the mountain, as if waiting for Ka-Ti’s next command.
I shook my head in disbelief. “So you’ve got your mother’s horse-whispering gift as well, huh?”
Ka-Ti nodded. “They will follow me to Nickajack.”
It seemed at least part of our problem was solved. Ka-Ti could lead the horses back to their masters in Nickajack. We agreed she would go straight to the McKays’ house and take the Uktena Stone with her in hopes that Nickajack would rally behind her when they heard how Blunt had deceived them and saw the proof with their own eyes.
Jim kissed his daughter’s forehead, but couldn’t say much more than “You come back to me, Kingfisher, you hear?” She nodded and kissed his whiskery cheek. Then Imogen and I climbed back up to the ridge with her. At the top, she hugged us both, then climbed, as easily as a squirrel scurries down a tree, down the gorge to where the horses were grazing. We watched them gather around her, as if listening to her instructions. One chestnut stepped forward. She mounted it bareback and, with the whole herd falling in line behind her, kicked off into a gallop.
A minute later, a cloud of dust was all we could see of them, but Imogen and I didn’t turn back. While we’d been discovering the horses with Ka-Ti, Jim had discovered from the guard that the treaty was to take place in Hiwassee at sunup the next morning. Lieutenant Lovegood was to meet the guard at the cave in the early hours to retrieve the stone, then carry it back to Hiwassee where, so the guard said, the treaty would be signed in secret.
If Ka-Ti succeeded in rallying Nickajack, there was still a chance of throwing water on the Governor’s plot. But whatever happened, we had to rescue Wattie first, or who knew what Blunt might do? With Jim’s injury, breaking Wattie out of prison all came down to Imogen and me.
We had no plan, just each other and a rough map Jim had sketched onto a piece of paperbark. We’d go down the mountain for Robin Hood, then follow the river back to Hiwassee. With one more good look at the map, we started off across the mountain ridge, just as the sun started its journey downward. The race against time was on.
33
Prison Break
“You know you don’t have to hold on quite so tight,” I grunted over my shoulder to Imogen behind me in the saddle. Her arms were squeezed so tight around my waist, I was seeing spots. “Just use your legs a bit more to grip the horse.”
“Sorry,” she whispered, loosening her grip a little. “It feels a lot faster in the dark. And you never know when we might just ride off a cliff or something.”
“We won’t ride off a cliff,” I whispered back. “Jim’s directions were simple. We follow the Federal Road a
ll the way into Hiwassee. We can’t possibly go wrong. Now just try to relax. I’m going to get us back into a gallop. No time to canter.”
“Sure, I’ll just relax then,” Imogen answered sarcastically as she wound her fingers tightly around handfuls of my tunic.
The road was lonely and lit only by a pale sliver of the moon, but we kept up a steady pace. With every stride we were getting closer to Wattie. I tried to think of that and ignore the other fact – that we were also getting closer to our enemies.
We dismounted at the edge of the forest and crept towards the Garrison to spy out our prospects.
“It looks like there’s some kind of party going on in there,” Imogen said.
“That’ll be the delegates’ banquet. This is good,” I said, trying to keep an encouraging tone. “At least with all the people coming in, the gates are open. We’ll just ride in behind the carriages and hope nobody gives us a second glance.”
“Hope nobody gives us a second…?” Imogen’s expression was dumbfounded. “Katie, we’ll be riding into the Garrison on Lieutenant Lovegood’s horse which, in case you forgot, you stole. You’re wanted in there.”
I let out a long, frustrated sigh, resenting that Imogen was right. “Well what other option do we have? … Wait a second. There is another way in. Last time I sneaked out by a corral door behind the stables.”
Imogen considered this option and finally nodded. “A stable is probably the best place to sneak in a horse without getting unwanted attention.”
“The question is, what do we do once we get in?”
“More like if we get in.” She stood up and brushed the leaves from her skirt. “We’ll figure that out when we come to it.”
Several horses turned curious eyes towards us as we approached the corral, but there was no sign of any other person. With as much stealth as we could manage, I led Robin Hood through the gate, and Imogen closed it behind us. We crept along the fence and up against the Garrison’s outer wall towards the corral door. Imogen poked her head around the open upper half of the door to peek inside the stables.
