The Beloved Woman

by Deborah Smith

  DEBORAH SMITH was the 1988 winner of the Romantic Times lifetime achievement award for most innovative series author.

  BELOVED WOMAN

  A BANTAM BOOK / APRIL 1991

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1991 by Deborah Smith.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: BANTAM BOOKS.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-79671-4

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.

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  Many thanks to BETTY SHARP SMITH, Cherokee teacher, lecturer, and author, for translating and proofreading the Cherokee language used in this book.

  Many thanks also to the eastern tribe of the Cherokee Nation, who provided invaluable help through their publications and their museum at Cherokee, North Carolina.

  Last but not least, thanks to Carolyn Nichols and Nita Taublib, who guided this book from the start.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgment

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  CHAPTER 1

  Your soul has come into the very center of my soul, never to turn away. I take your soul.

  —CHEROKEE LOVE CHARM

  North Georgia, Cherokee Nation, 1838

  THE DAY was too pretty, too painfully serene in its fresh spring promise, with the late-blooming dogwoods lacing the woods in white and the sweet smell of wild honeysuckle wisping through the air. A man could hurt from thinking about it, hurt so badly that he cried.

  “She wasn’t more than half grown, God. You turnin’ your back on all the Cherokees now, even the children?” Justis Gallatin asked out loud.

  He inhaled raggedly, gagged on the scent of honeysuckle and death, then took his shirt off so fast, several of the wooden buttons tore from it. He knelt beside the small, naked form and wrapped it quickly but gently, arranging the long swath of coal-black hair over the shirt.

  Cradling Sallie Blue Song’s body in his arms, Justis walked out of the woods, past the burnt hulls of barns, past orchards standing untended, fields empty, fences broken—the utter destruction of what had once been one of the best farms, white or Indian, in this part of the Nation.

  He entered a sandy yard canopied by grand old oak trees and watched his partner drop a saddle blanket across one of the four bodies stretched out there. Sam Kirkland glanced up at Justis and saw what he was carrying.

  Sam gave a low moan of distress, walked to a blackened timber at the jumbled ruins of the Blue Song house, and leaned over it, retching. He began a chant in Hebrew as Justis laid Sallie by her father. Sam kept his religion a secret from the people over in town, but now he let the odd, melodic words of it ring out. Justis had no idea what the words meant, but he found them soothing.

  He covered Sallie’s head with the sleeve of his shirt. “That’s the best I can do for her right now, old friend,” he whispered to her father’s corpse. He sat down beside Jesse Blue Song and gazed sadly at the bronzed face capped by inky black hair. Jesse had kept his hair cropped short because he wanted everyone to know that he was as civilized as any white man. Intelligence and kindness had given him a dignity that few people, of any color, possessed.

  “You outdid ’em, friend,” Justis told him hoarsely. “And the sons of bitches couldn’t stand it.”

  He gently tugged a folded packet of paper from the pocket of the Cherokee’s bloodstained shirt. Opening it, Justis squinted at the delicate, beautiful handwriting. Shock poured through him.

  Dear Papa and Mama, I dreamed about home again. After more than six years away—forever, it seems to me—I still see the beloved mountains so clearly, and all of your dear faces. I can stand this dreadful loneliness no longer.

  Justis read on, shaking his head in frustration when he came to long passages written in Cherokee, frowning when he couldn’t make sense of the parts written in formal English. Jesse’s eldest daughter had more education than anybody he knew.

  He waved the letter in the air. “Sam, come read this and tell me what this gal’s trying to say. She doesn’t use many words less than a foot long.”

  Sam took the letter and read it anxiously. The breath soughed out of him. “She’s had some sort of falling out with her guardian in Philadelphia, she’s homesick, she’s given the rest of her bank account to a maidservant who’s needy, and she’s worried over newspaper rumors about the Cherokees being forced to give up their land.”

  Sam handed him the letter. “In short, my friend, she’s broke and she’s coming home. Judging by the date of this letter, she’ll arrive any day now.”

  Justis stared grimly at his business partner. He’d never met the eldest Blue Song daughter—she’d already been sent up north to get an education when he arrived in Cherokee country six years before. Shaking his head, he cursed softly. “The army’s fixin’ to kick her tribe clear across the Mississippi. She hasn’t got a home anymore.”

  Justis looked around at the Blue Song place and swallowed harshly. He owned it now.

  “What are you going to do?” Sam asked.

  Justis slowly lowered his gaze to Jesse Blue Song’s body. Jesse had led him to a fortune in gold and treated him like a son. There was only one way to pay him back.

  Justis closed the dark, unseeing eyes. “I’ll keep her with me and take care of her no matter what,” he promised softly. “I swear it.”

  KATHERINE BLUE SONG sat properly with her head up and shoulders back, but she thought her spine would snap if the carriage bounced over one more rut in the trail. Either that or she’d crack her head on the coach’s low ceiling. The trail was worse than she remembered, just a pair of wagon tracks in the hard Georgia clay.

  It was such a typical Georgia road that she began laughing. She loved the terrible road, every inch of it. She loved the unbroken blue-green hills on either side, and the smoky mist that filled the valleys in the afternoons, and the little creeks that leapt through the ravines. They belonged to Cherokees, had belonged to them for generations, and she was going home.

  Home. She gazed happily out the carriage’s window. It would be only an hour or two more.

  Katherine heard the hogs approaching before she smelled them. The sound was amazing, like a grunting, snuffling army. They topped a grassy rise, hundreds of them, and fanned out across the wagon trail. She grasped the window ledge and looked out in amazement while with a bellow of dismay her driver tugged his horses to a stop. The coach rocked as the hogs swarmed around it and under it.

  Katherine peered down and hogs peered up. What in the world could anybody need with this sea of pork, she wondered. She knew there were many more people living in the Nation now, but this herd would feed thousands.

  “These barnyard bungholers wanta rest a spell!” a loud male voice called out. Katherine arche
d a raven-black brow at the coarse language and watched as several scruffy drovers ambled over the rise. One of them led a pack mule; the others swung tall, stout poles, prodding the hogs as they went.

  “Clear the road!” Katherine’s driver yelled.

  “Get offen that coach and try to make me, you ugly mule arse!” came the reply, along with a loud chorus of guffaws.

  The driver snapped his whip. “I got me a lady here! Hold your tongues!”

  “A lady!”

  Katherine watched as the drovers jerked their floppy felt hats off and trudged toward her. Their quick change of attitude looked sincere. But when they pushed their grizzled, sweaty faces into the windows on one side of the coach, shock filled their eyes and politeness fled.

  “A Injun!”

  “In a fancy dress!”

  “Cain’t be! I never saw a squaw dressed thisaway!”

  “A good-lookin’ savage, ain’t she?”

  Katherine drew herself up so tightly, the fear churning in her stomach had no place to go. People in Philadelphia might disapprove of her or call her names, but they did it behind her back. She wasn’t used to this kind of blatant scrutiny with its insulting undertone.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said evenly.

  “She speaks real good English,” one of the drovers said in awe.

  “Some of ’em do. She must be one of them missionary-taught squaws.”

  Katherine folded her hands on her lap and clenched the fingers tightly. “I’m on my way home, sirs. My family has a farm near the town your people call Gold Ridge. My father is the chief in this district. Would you allow my driver to proceed?”

  They gaped at her. “I’ve heard about Cherokees like this ’un,” one drover told the others solemnly, and Katherine suddenly realized he wasn’t trying to insult her. He was just stating the facts as he saw them. “Mostly they’re mixed-bloods. Some’re almost as civilized as white folks.” He studied her face. “But damn, this ’un is a full-blood.”

  Gritting her teeth, Katherine picked up a small silver-gray umbrella that matched her skirt and rapped on the coach’s ceiling. “Go ahead, Mr. Bingham, please.” She met the drovers’ curious stares and said coolly, “I’m afraid I don’t have any more time to chat.”

  Mr. Bingham called down weakly, “Miss Blue Song, you oughten to be so quick with these boys.”

  Katherine heard the fear in his voice and knew with sinking dread that the driver—hired up in Nashville for his respectability, not his toughness—would be of no help.

  “Come on out,” one of the drovers ordered, his gaze darting over the snug black bodice of her dress. “Let us have a look at you. We ain’t never seen a squaw like you before, that’s all.”

  “No, thank you. I’m not an exhibit for the entertainment of rude men.”

  “Get out,” another said curtly.

  “Miss Blue Song, they just want to take a gander at you,” Mr. Bingham squeaked.

  Katherine eyed the drovers for a second, considered her options, then nodded. But before she left the coach she opened a bulky black satchel by her feet and reached into a box of surgical implements.

  The drovers moved back a little, forming a semicircle to keep the hogs away, then pulled the coach’s door open. Katherine stood, fluffed her skirt, and stepped to the hard-packed ground. She concealed a razor-sharp scalpel in her right hand.

  “Lord, what a beauty,” one man breathed.

  “Kinda skinny and tall. A little long in the tooth too,” another complained.

  “Nah. How old be ya, sister?”

  Katherine quivered with rage. “Twenty.”

  “Not too old to keep a man plenty warm at night.”

  “Is this the way you always talk in front of ladies?” she asked.

  A stream of tobacco juice barely missed the toe of her shoe. “Ain’t no such thing as an Injun lady.”

  A man stepped closer to her. “My wife shore would like this dress. Why don’t you shuck it off?”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  He grinned and grabbed a handful of the skirt. The man was near enough that Katherine barely had to move. She simply lifted her hand and made a quick, skillful movement across his arm.

  “She cut me!” he yelped. Hogs squealed at the smell of blood. The drovers stared at their injured companion in openmouthed surprise, then at her. Katherine slashed again as another man reached for her. He stumbled back, his forehead bleeding profusely. “She’s trying to scalp me!”

  “Now, really, you men calm down,” Mr. Bingham begged. “She’s no savage.”

  “Get that damned knife outer her hand!”

  Katherine swung again, and a drover grabbed her wrist. He squeezed painfully. “Let go of that cuttin’ piece.”

  Panic grew inside Katherine’s chest. “My father will have you in jail before sundown!”

  “Squaw, you’re plumb crazy.” He wrenched her arm a little and still she refused to drop the knife. “If we weren’t gents, we’d strip that dress off you and haul you into the woods for an hour or two.”

  “You would regret that.” She lashed a sharp-toed shoe into her captor’s knee, and he howled.

  “That done it! Grab her, boys!”

  Mr. Bingham gasped and began flailing the drovers with his whip. One man grabbed her around the waist and another sank his fingers into her throat. Katherine jerked her fighting hand free and swung the scalpel wildly, hearing curses when it connected.

  In the midst of struggling she suddenly heard something else—a deep, resonant thud, the sound of wood hitting a skull. A drover slumped to the ground, then another, and she realized that someone new had waded into the bunch, swinging one of the drovers’ own wooden staffs.

  The men let go of her and backed away, shielding their heads and squalling oaths. Katherine stumbled on a wagon rut and grabbed the coach door for balance. Dust rose off the trail in a thick cloud. The hogs scattered in every direction.

  The devil was loose in the middle of hell, and she could only watch in amazement.

  The newcomer was lean and tall, but he had the shoulders of a prime bull and the strength to match. His big-knuckled hand brushed a shapeless, wide-brimmed hat off his head. Dust swirled around shaggy hair the dark, rich color of chestnut. Under a thick mustache, his mouth curved into a lethal smile.

  Now, apparently, he was ready to do serious battle with the drovers. She stared at the newcomer as he punched one drover in the head and swung about gracefully to kick another between the legs. Katherine covered her nose to keep from choking on dust and excitement. Her rescuer, if that was who the devil was, began uttering inventive and filthy curses in a deep, drawling voice.

  When only one drover was left standing, he jerked a pearl-handled pistol from his belt and leveled it at the drover’s forehead. “Get your asses and your hogs outta my sight,” he warned in a deadly tone. “And if you’re takin’ ’em to Gold Ridge, keep your goddamned selves out of my sight there too. You hear anybody say ‘Justis Gallatin,’ you tuck tail and run, or you’re dead. Understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yes, sir,” Justis Gallatin corrected the drover.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Katherine wiped perspiration from her forehead and tried to catch her breath. She barely noticed as the drovers staggered off without looking back, taking their hogs with them. She was too busy studying Justis Gallatin.

  He stood with his booted feet braced apart, a rangy chestnut wolf guarding his territory, his eyes never leaving the drovers, his arm bent lazily so that the pistol pointed upward, ready to be leveled again if need be. His dark trousers were rusty with dust, and his loose white workshirt had turned a pinkish color.

  He wore a wide belt with a gold buckle, and tucked into it was another pearl-handled pistol, plus two large knives sheathed in leather scabbards. His shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest, revealing a thickly haired expanse and a gold nugget hanging from a leather string.

  A gold miner, she thought sud
denly. Her father had said they were all over the place now. And most were mean-tempered thieves, not to be trusted.

  This one might be no better. She stared at his drooping mustache. No gentleman wore hair on his face. She couldn’t recall when she’d seen such a hearty growth of hair on a man’s upper lip, and it was as intriguing as it was shocking.

  She must be overstimulated from fear, she decided, because she had a sudden mental image of him tickling his mustache across her naked breasts. Swaying, she nearly fell backward into the coach.

  Sometimes she saw things in her mind, and then they came true.

  Katherine shook her head ruefully and began to sweep the dust from her skirt. She still held her scalpel and glanced at it, distractedly noting that blood had run onto her fingers. At least it wasn’t her blood. She smiled.

  “Smiling. Lord, she’s smiling. If I live to be old and toothless, I’ll never see the likes of this again.”

  The rich, teasing drawl made her look up warily. Justis Gallatin headed toward her, grabbing his hat from the ground and tucking his pistol back into his belt as he walked, his gaze never wavering from a head-to-foot study of her.

  Katherine froze, her body on alert in strange ways she didn’t have time to analyze. He was a big man, tall and powerful, with corded arms that looked as if they could squeeze a bear to death, and legs that glided along in an easy cadence.

  He walked like an Indian, she thought. Silent, graceful. A woman wouldn’t hear him slip into her room, but once he was there, she wouldn’t want him to leave.

  “Thank you for your assistance,” she said formally, and waited for him to stop a polite distance away.

  He didn’t. He strolled right up to her, coming to a halt so close that she felt threatened by the potently masculine smells of sweat and dust and leather. Then he licked one forefinger and brushed the tip of her nose with it. The finger came away covered in damp red dirt.