The Beloved Woman

by Deborah Smith

  “You needed the rest first.”

  She groaned at the headache that began pounding in her forehead. “Last night … I woke up once …” Her gaze darted to the rocking chair in one corner. “You were there. Why?”

  “Shhh.” He turned to face her, the weight of his big frame indenting the mattress so much that she rolled toward him, her hip nestling tightly against his. If he noticed the contact, he wisely said nothing. Instead, he lifted a strand of her hair. “I bet this almost reaches the floor when you stand up,” he murmured, rubbing the satiny black tresses between his fingertips and thumb. “And it’s so black that it’s got no shadows.”

  His frowning gaze traveled up her body, and Katherine finally realized that the quilt lay bunched at her waist and above that she was barely covered by a thin, sleeveless undershirt. Never be fooled by this man, she told herself. His sympathies were of the most selfish sort.

  “I didn’t undress you,” he said immediately. “Rebecca did.”

  He might as well have, she thought, the way his green eyes studied her. She pulled the covers over her breasts.

  “I’ll get out and give you some privacy in a minute.” Unfazed, he poured tea into a heavy ceramic cup, dribbled honey into it from a small pitcher, and handed the cup to her. “But I’m not budgin’ until you finish the whole cup.” He met her eyes. “It’s not drugged.”

  She drank the tea quickly.

  “You wanted some answers yesterday,” he said when she finished. He took the cup and thumped it on the tray angrily. “I won’t put you off any longer. I just wanted to wait until you were a little stronger, that’s all.”

  She shut her eyes. “Who took the Blue Song land?”

  “Easy, now. I want you to know how it was from the start.”

  “It won’t make it any better.”

  The regret in his eyes changed to grim determination. “Right after you went off to Philadelphia the state held a lottery for the Cherokee lands.”

  “I know that. It was illegal.”

  “Maybe then, but not now. People went to Milledgeville and drew their lots, most of ’em without knowin’ anything about the Indians, havin’ never seen the land they were drawin’ for.”

  He frowned. “So a dirt-poor, hardworking man won a lot, and he got the deed, and he spent his last dollar to hurry up here and start a new life. But when he got here he saw that his land had your family livin’ on it, and they’d built it into the finest farm he’d ever seen. He felt bad about showing ’em the deed. But if he hadn’t claimed the farm, some other white man would have stolen it from them.”

  When she didn’t comment, he looked disappointed. “But this hardworking man had a conscience, and he couldn’t kick a family off their farm, even though the state gave him the right to do it. So he made a deal with ’em, and it turned out real well.”

  “For the white man,” she interjected, rubbing her forehead. “Hurry. I feel strange.”

  “Your family showed him where to find gold, and in return he left their farm alone—even made sure that nobody else bothered them. That white man was willing to live and let live, and he did the best he could under the circumstances, wouldn’t you say?”

  She felt sleepy again, and her lips moved slowly. “Sounds like a saint. Too good to be … true.”

  “He’s sure not a saint, but he’s not a bad feller either. And he got real involved in your family’s problems, and the problems of the tribe, and he made a lot of enemies among his own people because he took the Injun side of things. How can you fault that man?”

  Katherine sank down into the comfort of her feather pillow. “I miss my family,” she whispered raggedly. “And I want … to go back to sleep. Tell me the rest … later.”

  Something was wrong, she realized hazily. This wasn’t how she’d felt a minute before. The reason managed to seep through her thoughts.

  “You lied,” she said, frowning. “The tea … was drugged again.”

  He moved closer to her. His thigh pressed lightly against her side. As he leaned over her, she gazed into his eyes and found them shadowed with regret.

  “I lied, sure enough,” he whispered. “I wanted to make things as easy for you as I could—and for myself. Katie, I’m that man who won the Blue Song land in the lottery.”

  She moaned bitterly, then turned her face to one side. “Get out.”

  He smoothed the backs of his fingers up and down her cheek. “Katie, try to understand.”

  “You tricked me … all along. You own the land. You think you … own me too.”

  “No, I’m your friend.” He grasped her hand, holding it gently. “You’re a fine, beautiful lady, and I can’t let you go off alone in the world. There’re too many men who think Injun gals are theirs for the taking, and when they see one as special as you, they’ll do anything to have her.”

  She began to cry again, to her shame, but coherent thought had nearly deserted her and she was half asleep. “You’re no better than them. You want to make me a-tsi-na-Ha-i. A captive. A slave.”

  His hand tightened on hers. He bent close to her, his mustache brushing her ear, and said gruffly, “I reckon that’s partly true. I’ll do anything to have you.” He kissed her cheek. “Now rest, Katie. I’ll leave you alone till you say different.”

  JUSTIS PACED THE aisle of the Gallatin-Kirkland General Store, a cigar clenched between his teeth. Rebecca and Sam stood behind the counter, safely out of his way.

  “One more day,” he said angrily. “If she doesn’t eat by tomorrow, I’ll force the damned food down her.”

  “Justis, she’s lost her whole family,” Rebecca said. “Let her grieve.”

  “It’s been a week! What has she swallowed—a little soup, a few glasses of milk. That’s all! I’ve done what I said. I’ve left her alone, I’ve not set a foot in her room or spoken a word to her!”

  He stopped pacing to punch his fist into a smoked ham hanging from a low beam on the ceiling. “She never comes out!”

  “I can’t blame her.” Rebecca slapped a ledger shut and shook a finger at him. “She feels cornered. You ought to give her a fair share of gold and send her back to Philadelphia, where she can start a life among people who’ll offer her a better chance at happiness.”

  “Who’s she got there? Nobody! She even admitted to you that she couldn’t go live with that doctor again, not after his nephew caused such a scandal in the family.”

  “Justis Gallatin, if you ever let her know that I told you that story, I’ll have Cookie put a purgative in your biscuits!”

  “Becky!” Sam exclaimed reproachfully, fighting a smile.

  Justis tossed his cigar into the unlit iron stove at the center of the store, then rammed both hands through his hair in frustration. Thinking about Katherine’s experiences with that young dandy in Philadelphia made him itch to fight.

  “Blue-blooded bastard,” he muttered. “He courted her, did all his fancy stuff—read poetry to her, all that high-falutin’ nonsense—and after she decided that he was a fine gentleman, he tried to kidnap her! And then told everybody she was the one at fault! He just wanted an exotic doxy!”

  “Isn’t that what you want?” Sam asked bluntly.

  The air seemed to freeze. Justis faced his friend and saw reproach in his eyes. Rebecca wore a look of horror.

  Guilt was all that kept Justis from anger. “I don’t know what I want,” he said finally, defeated. “Except I never met a woman like her before, and I’m not gonna let her get away.”

  His goal in life was to lord it over the kind of people who had turned up their noses at him for being born the son of dirt-poor Irish immigrants. Courting an Injun, whether for wife or mistress, was not exactly a smart thing to do if he wanted to rise in society, but Katie Blue Song’s appeal overwhelmed her liabilities. And frankly, he wanted her so much, he didn’t care about the consequences.

  “Let her go,” Rebecca urged, shaking her head. “She deserves a husband, white or red, but a husband. I know you can sweet
-talk her into some kind of arrangement. I’ve seen how women humble themselves just to get in your good graces.”

  “If you think I can sweet-talk that Injun princess, then you haven’t listened to her boss me.”

  “No, but I’ve sat in her room many an hour over the past week, and I’ve answered a hundred questions about you—are you an honest man, did you really keep her family out of trouble—and I tell you this much, she’s drawn to you despite herself, like a rabbit to a trap. I tried to warn her, without being obvious, about the trap’s success.”

  “I’ve never claimed to be a lonely man.”

  “I told her about Qualla and Big Pumpkin.”

  He thought for a moment. “She sees that I respect Cherokee women, then.”

  Rebecca rolled her eyes. “She sees that you lived with those two widows and they both called you ‘husband.’ ”

  “They never took that serious, and neither did I. Just because three people share the same cabin—”

  “The same bed,” Rebecca corrected him drolly.

  Justis sat down on a barrel of whiskey and rubbed his forehead wearily. “I reckon you even told her about the Cherokee name they gave me?”

  “Yes. I blushed, but I told her.”

  Justis crossed his arms and contemplated a crack in the plank floor. He’d never learned to pronounce the name very well, but the English translation said it better anyway. The Stud.

  “I hope she was impressed,” he grumbled.

  “She said that she wasn’t surprised.”

  Justis thought there were hopeful signs in that answer. Before he could wonder about them, a half-dozen soldiers arrived outside the store’s open double doors, stirring up dust and interest.

  Over by the courthouse a group of men who were fancily dressed started toward the store. A few miners ambled out of a nearby saloon and gathered on the store’s porch, gawking. Men halted their wagons in the middle of the street so they could stare at the blue-coated cavalry soldiers and their captain.

  The soldiers hitched their mounts to a rail and followed their officer inside. Justis stood slowly, suspicion putting him on guard. He’d come to this wild part of Georgia to escape authority, or at least to have more control over how it treated him.

  The officer tipped a snappy blue cap. “Good afternoon, gentlemen, ma’am. I’m Captain Taylor, and I bring you greetings from General Winfield Scott.”

  When Justis refused to respond other than by putting another cigar between his teeth, Sam came forward and made the introductions. Captain Taylor turned to his men. “Begin passing those handbills out.”

  By now a large crowd had swarmed into the store. The excited comments of those who could read provoked the nonreaders to anger, and some of the miners began threatening one another.

  “I’ll rip the eyes out of any man who starts a fight in this store,” Justis announced loudly, and that settled the crowd. Sam climbed on the counter and read General Scott’s announcement aloud.

  The army would build a temporary stockade two miles south of Gold Ridge, just as it was constructing stockades in other areas of the Cherokee Nation. The Gold Ridge station would be completed by the middle of May, in about three weeks. Every Cherokee within a fifty-mile radius would be brought to the stockade and held there for escort to the western lands.

  There were whoops of joy from the crowd. “It’s about time we had a rattlesnake roundup!” one man shouted.

  “Hot durn! I promised my ma I’d kill an Injun before I came home again!” another said.

  The captain held up his hands. “No violence,” he called out. “General Scott will prosecute any white settler caught doing harm to an Indian. He wants them treated as kindly as possible.”

  Justis scowled at him. “He’s a little damned late for that. Clear out of here. I’ve got no use for you federal loblollies.”

  “States’ rights man, are you?” the captain asked.

  “Just don’t like the smell of the general’s plan.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to Mr. Gallatin, Captain,” a man said. “He’s an Indian sympathizer. He had two Cherokee wives and he’s got a third shacked up over at his hotel.”

  Justis began to smile.

  “Oh, no,” someone whispered. “Get out of his way.”

  Justis started forward, but Sam grabbed his arm. “He’s new in town, partner. Let him have one mistake.” The man’s friends were already hustling him out the door.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” a majestic voice boomed. “Let Justis have at him.”

  The crowd parted to let a tall, regal figure stride down the aisle. Judge William Parnell, Amarintha’s father, had snow-white hair, a slight paunch that only added to his imposing appearance, and dark eyes that one or two gossipers suggested came from an Indian relative somewhere in the illustrious Parnell family tree.

  Judge Parnell had presided over Superior Court for the past four years, and his rulings were as stern as the black suits he wore. Justis studied him idly, seeing, as always, a smiling old lion who ate people alive.

  “You getting into trouble, boy?” Parnell asked jovially.

  “Every second of the day.”

  The judge was a grand politician, and after Sam introduced him to Captain Taylor he went through the crowd, finding new faces and shaking hands with the strangers. A respectful quiet had fallen as soon as he stepped into the store.

  Only one other man in Gold Ridge could inspire that reaction. When Judge Parnell finished his campaigning and halted in front of Justis, studying him with smiling, soulless eyes, they both knew who the other man was.

  “I’ll have the hide and tallow of any rascal who mistreats our peaceful Cherokee brethren during this tragic, tragic time,” the judge said in a solemn voice. He turned to the crowd. “It’s our duty to treat these innocent children of nature with respect. They are doomed by the good and proper onrush of civilization, and though God has given us the right to bring light into their dark country, He does not intend for us to lose our own souls in the process.”

  Several amens and here, heres demonstrated the crowd’s righteous support.

  Justis silently cursed every pious thief who’d engineered the Cherokee treaty, and wondered how he was going to break this latest news to Katherine. If he ever got to talk to her again.

  FOR TWO WEEKS Katherine alternated between periods of dull apathy and unnatural exhilaration. Either she sat by the hotel window for hours, gazing blankly at the activity on the town square, or she paced her room frantically, her mind fired by memories of her family and horrible imaginings about their deaths.

  Justis was waiting in the outside world, him and his vow, I’ll do anything to have you. She had twenty dollars left from her travel money, and until that ran out she wouldn’t ask him for anything. Though Rebecca had tried to refuse, Katherine had given her six dollars for room and board over the past two weeks. Katherine sat by her window every night until dawn, clasping her remaining money and staring at the stars as if they hid answers.

  “You can’t go on like this,” Rebecca exclaimed tearfully when she discovered Katherine asleep in a chair one morning. She guided her to the bed and stood beside it, arms akimbo. “Please talk to Justis. He won’t take advantage of your situation.”

  Katherine lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. “But will he give me my land and a share of the Blue Song gold?”

  “He can’t give you the land. I’m sure he would if he thought the state would let you keep it. But no Cherokee can own land here anymore.”

  “My family is buried on that land.”

  “It doesn’t matter to the state, Katherine.”

  “Then I’ll find some way to support myself until I can change the state’s mind. I’ll find employment here.”

  Rebecca gently patted her shoulder. “Justis will give you all the money you need. Just be patient about the rest. He can’t do anything to change it, but he wants to be good to you. He’s bullheaded but not cruel.”

  “I’ll n
ever understand him.”

  “He grew up on the docks down on the coast, an orphan, fighting for every crumb he put in his mouth. His parents were Irish. Irish and Catholic, and they died in a fire when Justis was little. Imagine, a little boy all alone, dealing with prejudice and poverty. An outcast. So much about his life has been brutal—even you came to him under brutal circumstances. But there’s honor, and courage, and a simple kind of idealism in him that tries to right all that, even though his methods are sometimes rough.”

  Katherine thought of the anti-Irish protest she’d seen in Philadelphia the previous year. It had been sparked by religious bigotry and a deep fear that the desperately poor immigrants would take too many jobs from American workers.

  “You’ve explained a great deal about him,” she admitted softly. “I think he’s more hot-blooded than you believe, but … he’s reared himself very well, considering what little life gave him to start with.”

  Rebecca smiled. “You see why he’s got such sympathy for other outcasts.”

  Katherine looked at her closely. “I heard you speaking Hebrew to yourself. I’ve studied the language a little. I recognize it.” When Rebecca paled, she added quickly, “I won’t tell. But is it such a terrible worry?”

  “We feared that the frontier was not the best place to be … um, different from everyone else.” She glanced away, frowning. “Is that cowardly?”

  Katherine sighed. “No, not in my experience.” She got up, went to the window, and inhaled the fresh, promising air of the spring morning. “But for me, at least, there’s no point in hiding from it any longer.” She squared her shoulders. “What day is it?”

  “Sunday.”

  Katherine thought for a moment. “Does Justis ever go to church, any church?”

  “No. I think he’s afraid a bolt of lightning might strike him dead as soon as he stepped across the threshold.”

  “Tell him that if he wants to see me, he can escort me to services this morning. I’ll fight this battle on my own grounds.”

  Rebecca clapped merrily all the way out of the room.

  JUSTIS WAITED ON the hotel veranda because it looked better than stomping back and forth at the base of the stairs inside. The last thing he wanted Katherine to see when she came down from her room was him pacing like a worried beau. The pretty red fox knew how to play her cards right, for damned sure.