A Perilous Proposal

by Michael Phillips

  “Well, there it is,” she said.

  “You gwine gib it t’ dem, Miz Katie?” asked Emma.

  “I don’t know, Emma,” said Katie with a sigh. “I just don’t know. But I’ve got to be ready to give it to them if it seems like it’ll help.”

  From the tone of her voice, it appeared Katie had about given up all hope of saving Rosewood. The bag of gold sitting on the sideboard was the only hope left—and now she was ready to give it away. Jeremiah exchanged looks with his father across the table, but Henry only shook his head thoughtfully before bringing his coffee cup back to his lips.

  Slowly the morning passed.

  About eleven, Jeremiah couldn’t sit still a moment longer. He jumped up from the kitchen table.

  “I don’ know ’bout da res’ of you,” he said, “but I’m gettin’ me a gun.—Miz Katie, show me da gun cabinet, an’ wiff yer permishun—”

  Henry rose to his feet.

  “Now jes’ wait er minute, Jeremiah,” he began. “We don’ wants ter go git all riled. Ain’t no good comes from killin’, nohow. We ain’t gwine do no shootin’, not unless hit becomes a matter on life er death, which ain’t likely ef gold’s sittin’ at da root ob it—”

  “Look, Papa,” interrupted Jeremiah. “Dose men ain’t gwine ter be feelin’ too kindly tards Miz Katie when dey come, an’ wiff respec’ t’ yer feelins’ in da matter, I ain’t gwine let dem hurt her, or any ob da res’ ob dese girls. I ain’t neber shot nobody in my life. But I’s takin’ one ob Miz Katie’s guns an’ I’m hidin’ myself in dat barn, an’ effen dey lay a han’ on her or Mayme or Emma, or you either, den I’ll shoot ’em. I’m sorry, Papa, but I ain’t gonna stan’ by an’ watch dem do what white men sometimes does. Dey’s carryin’ rope too, an’ dat fears me right fearsome. You can whip me later ef you wants to, if you an’ me’s still alive, an’ I won’t gib a squeak er protest. But right now . . . —Miz Katie, show me yer guns!”

  Henry kept silent. Jeremiah wasn’t sure if his papa was upset or if he agreed with Jeremiah. He hoped it was a little of both.

  Five minutes later Jeremiah was on his way out to the barn carrying a loaded rifle and a shotgun in his two hands.

  Mayme called after him, “Jeremiah, please . . . be careful.”

  He turned back to her. “I’ll be as careful as I can be,” he said. “I’ll jes’ bide my time till I see’s what’s gwine happen. I won’t start nuthin’. An’ Lord knows I’s scared a da thought ob it all. So I’s keep quiet, res’ assured a dat, till I sees what dey’s gwine do. But I ain’t gonna let ’em rape Miz Katie, or hurt Emma or . . .”

  He paused a second and looked down into Mayme’s eyes. In that moment he knew he’d die himself before he’d let anything happen to her.

  “An’ I sure ain’t gonna let dem hurt you,” he said. “An’ if dey lay a finger on my daddy, den I’ll kill ’em.”

  Suddenly he stepped forward, leaned toward Mayme and kissed her. Then he turned and hurried off toward the barn.

  A WELCOME SURPRISE

  41

  I watched Jeremiah walk away toward the barn holding the two guns, leaving me standing there with my heart pounding about twice as fast as it should have been. It wasn’t how I’d imagined the first time being kissed by a boy—with us worrying whether we’d live through the day.

  I returned to the kitchen to wait with the others. At quarter till noon we were all the more on edge and scared. Even Henry was sober and silent and just sat in a chair calmly waiting. He still had no gun. As was clear enough from what he’d said to Jeremiah, he wasn’t a fighting man. He just sat there praying, though I could never have guessed the direction his prayers were taking. I reckon he would say that was his kind of fighting. We hadn’t heard any more from Jeremiah since he’d gone out to hide in the barn.

  Suddenly we heard a horse outside. The moment we’d been waiting for had come!

  I didn’t know if Katie’d decided what to do or not. At a time like this, as much as we’d shared of our life together, what we were facing on this day involved decisions she had to make herself.

  A tense minute went by. We heard the horse walk up and stop. A few seconds later a knock came on the door. It seemed so loud it nearly made us all jump right out of our chairs.

  We looked around at each other. I could tell that Katie didn’t know what to do. But she was the mistress of Rosewood now.

  She hesitated a moment, then got up from the table and went slowly toward the door. Slowly she opened it.

  “Uncle Templeton!” she exclaimed. The next instant her visitor found himself smothered in a tight hug of joy.

  The words flowed like a wave of deliverance into the room. The rest of us let out big sighs of relief accompanied by smiles, and of course Emma started carrying on immediately.

  “Hello, Kathleen,” said Mr. Daniels. Even as he embraced her at the door, I saw his eyes searching past the entryway into the kitchen until they found me. He smiled above the blond hair of Katie’s head buried against his shoulder, and I knew the smile was meant just for me.

  “You came back!” said Katie, still holding him.

  “That I did, Kathleen,” he said. “I can’t keep running forever. So here I am.”

  He stepped back from Katie, and the two of them walked into the kitchen, Katie beaming with pride. Like he had before, he was looking straight at me and gazing deep into my eyes. Now I knew why. And at last I wasn’t afraid to return the look of love in his eyes.

  “You and me are going to have to have a long talk, Mary Ann,” he whispered, “. . . a long talk about your mama, and about you, and me.”

  I just nodded my head, and for a moment the whole kitchen was silent.

  “We’re so glad to see you!” said Katie, excitedly interrupting the quiet moment between us. “We’re in trouble, Uncle Templeton. Those men I told you about . . . they’re back. They’re coming today, real soon . . . they said they were coming with guns! Jeremiah’s outside right now with a gun. I’m afraid he’s going to shoot them. We don’t know what to do!”

  A serious expression came over Mr. Daniels’ face. That’s when he noticed Henry standing on the other side of the room.

  He walked toward him and stretched out his hand.

  “I take it,” he said, “that you must be Henry.”

  “Yes, suh,” said Henry, shaking his hand.

  “Templeton Daniels,” said Katie’s uncle.

  “Henry Patterson,” said Henry with a nod.

  “Well, I’m glad to know you, Henry,” said Mr. Daniels. “From what these girls of mine tell me, you’ve been a mighty big help to them. I should have been doing more myself. I want to thank you. I am most appreciative that you’ve taken it upon yourself to watch over things here. I hope we will be good friends from now on.”

  A little taken aback to have a white man treat him with such courtesy and respect, Henry hesitated a moment before saying, “Miz Kathleen’s right ’bout one thing, Mr. Daniels,” he said. “Dem men’s comin’ back. Dat’s what I’m doin’ here. Dey’s after Miz Kathleen’s gold, an’ like she say, my son’s out dere right now—”

  But Mr. Daniels didn’t hear the rest of what Henry was about to say.

  “What!” he exclaimed, spinning around. “You found it!”

  “Oh yes! I almost forgot,” said Katie excitedly. “We found it, Uncle Templeton. There really was more gold after all.”

  “Where?”

  “In a lantern down in the cellar.”

  “A lantern! Well, I’ll be.”

  “I tried to tell them there wasn’t any more, but they didn’t believe me. They said they were coming back today and that if we didn’t give it to them, they were going to ransack the place. They even said they would burn us out if they had to.”

  “Looks like I got here just in time,” said Mr. Daniels, taking in everything Katie had said.

  He sat down with a serious and thoughtful expression on his face, then let out a long sigh.

  “What
’s this about your son, Henry?” he said after a minute, glancing toward Henry.

  “He took two guns, an’ is hidin’ out dere right now.”

  “We got any more weapons?”

  “Don’ know, suh,” said Henry, shaking his head. “Whateber else Miz Kathleen’s got, I reckon. But I ain’t no man ter use er gun. Dat ain’t my way.”

  Mr. Daniels thought a minute, then looked up at Katie.

  “Where is the gold, Kathleen?” he asked.

  Katie went and got the bag and set it down on the kitchen table. “So what should we do, Uncle Templeton?” she asked.

  He stared at the bag. “Why don’t we just . . . give it to them?”

  “What about the loan at the bank?”

  “It’s not worth anyone’s getting killed over. We can take care of it. We’re a family now. I’ll talk to the banker. I’ll tell him what’s happened and about Rosalind and the rest of your family. Surely he’ll understand. I’m certain he’ll extend the terms a few months. I’ll work. We’ll harvest crops.—That’s possible, isn’t it, Henry?” he said, glancing toward Henry.

  “Dat it is, Mr. Daniels,” replied Henry. “Dese ladies here, dey picked dere own cotton las’ year an’ wiff all da lan’ out dere, ain’t no tellin what can be done.”

  “There, Kathleen, you see. It’s just like Henry says. We don’t need gold, we’ve got land, and that’s better than gold. And we’ve got each other now too. We don’t need that little bag of gold to be a family and to make Rosewood prosperous again. All we need is each other.”

  Suddenly the sound of horses from outside interrupted him.

  Our brief enthusiasm vanished. Suddenly tension filled the room again. Unconsciously every eye in the room went straight to Mr. Daniels. Whether he liked responsibility or not, he was in charge now. He walked toward the open window and looked out.

  “It’s them, all right,” he said. “There’s four of them.”

  He thought a minute.

  “All right . . . Henry, you take these ladies upstairs.”

  “What about you, Uncle Templeton?” said Katie.

  “Right now I’m more worried about the rest of you,” he said. “I’ll talk to them and give them the gold. But I want the rest of you out of sight in case they’re on a short fuse.”

  “Should we hide in the cellar?”

  “I don’t think there’s any need for that. I’m going to try to handle this thing peaceably.”

  Reluctantly we all left the kitchen and Katie led the way upstairs.

  In spite of what he had said, the moment we were gone, Mr. Daniels went to the gun cabinet, took out a rifle, loaded it, and walked with it back to the window, carrying a box of shells.

  By then there were already shouts coming from outside.

  SHOOT-OUT

  42

  JEREMIAH HAD BEEN SURPRISED AND RELIEVED TO SEE Katie’s uncle ride into the yard. He watched him disappear into the house. Things were quiet for a few minutes. So quiet that Jeremiah was just starting to think about heading back into the house himself when the pounding of horse hooves filled his ears. He peered through a crack in the barn door and watched tensely as four riders galloped up to the house, sending dust flying in all directions.

  “Hey in there . . . you Clairbornes!” yelled the lead rider. “Time’s up. We’re back like we said we’d be. We’re here for what belongs to us.”

  “All right,” a voice shouted back through the window. “We’ve got the gold and we’re not going to put up a fight.”

  It was Katie’s uncle’s voice. A voice the men clearly hadn’t expected. The rider seemed momentarily puzzled as two of his partners rode up alongside him.

  “That you, Daniels?” he finally called out.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Jeb.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here. That’s all that matters.”

  “I figured you’d be back for the gold one day. Now I can settle my score with you for that money you cheated me out of.”

  “I never cheated you, Jeb. You’re just a bad poker player, that’s all. You should never have called, holding just a pair of sevens.”

  “We’ll see about that, Daniels,” the man shouted back. “The way I figure it, I got the winning hand now.”

  “You’re right, Jeb—no argument there. You got me dead to rights. That’s why, like I told you, I’m just going to fold and let you walk away with the gold.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe it ain’t that simple, Daniels. You ever think of that? Maybe it’s gone too far. Maybe it ain’t only the gold we want.”

  “What else could you want, Jeb? We’ve got nothing else.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe we’re just gonna take the gold and that pretty little girl in there for Hal here. And maybe I’ll just kill you to boot.”

  “No need for all that, Jeb. I told you, you can have the gold. You don’t want to get yourself into even more trouble than you’re already in.”

  “Why should we trust you, Daniels? Ward lied to us. The woman lied to us. The kid lied to us. And you’re all kin. We’re going to take it . . . all of it.”

  Another man rode up alongside the fellow called Jeb—the fourth rider who hadn’t been with them when they’d come before.

  “They’re all cut out of the same lying cloth,” he now said. “If the rest of you want to keep talking, that’s fine. But I say we get this done and get it done the quickest way to make sure nobody lives to talk about it.”

  His voice was harsh and cold and cruel.

  Upstairs, inside the house, Katie couldn’t stand it anymore, whatever her uncle had said about staying out of sight. She was so worried about him that she couldn’t stay put. All at once she got up from where she sat on the floor beside me and dashed for the stairs. Henry tried to stop her, but by then Katie was out of sight.

  “Emma, you stay here with Henry,” I said. “He’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”

  I jumped up and hurried after Katie. The two of us crept downstairs where Mr. Daniels stood just to the side of one of the open windows.

  “What in blazes!” he said. “What are you two doing here?”

  “I was afraid for you, Uncle Templeton,” said Katie. “I wanted to be with you.”

  “Just keep your heads down.”

  We crouched beside him. But soon my curiosity got the best of me. I raised myself up and snuck a peek out the bottom of the window.

  “Something about that voice seems mighty familiar . . .” said Mr. Daniels, more to himself than to us. Then he glanced over at me. “Keep your head down, Mary Ann!” he said. “What are you trying to do, get yourself shot?”

  But I had seen enough.

  It wasn’t only the man’s voice that made me start shaking.

  Through the window I had seen a face I knew I’d never forget, with reddish hair and a thick mustache, and those horrible huge eyes of white. It was the man who had killed my family and trampled my grandpapa under his horse’s hooves. A chill seized me and I began to tremble in terror.

  Almost the same instant, I heard Mr. Daniels say his name. The sound of it filled me with dread.

  “It’s Bilsby!” said Mr. Daniels. “What is he doing here!”

  “Who is he?” asked Katie.

  “He’s the meanest cuss I ever knew,” he replied. “I didn’t know he was hooked up with the rest of them, but I should have figured it. He’ll kill us all even if we do give him the gold. I may not be able to talk my way out of this.”

  Suddenly a shot exploded and sent the glass from the shattered window above our heads tinkling all over the floor.

  “You girls get outta here!” said Mr. Daniels. “Bilsby’s a guy who plays for keeps!”

  He knelt below the windowsill, stuck the barrel of the rifle out of the broken window, and fired back two or three shots. A rapid volley of gunfire came back and broke several more windows. Mr. Daniels fired back again and the room filled with the echo of loud shots coming from everywhere.


  Katie was yelling and crying in panic—horrified to see the house she loved being shot up, yelling at everyone and terrified that someone was going to get hurt.

  “Stop . . . stop!” she yelled. “Stop it!” But her voice was drowned out by the blast of gunfire and shattering glass and splintering wood and ricocheting bullets all around us.

  Suddenly she jumped up from the floor, ran to the table, and grabbed the bag of gold. Then she darted for the door.

  “Katie!” I cried.

  “Kathleen, get back—” shouted Mr. Daniels.

  But it was too late. Katie flew straight out toward the yard and into the middle of the gunfire.

  “Stop . . . stop!” she cried in desperation, running toward the men. “Here’s the gold, you can have it! There’s no more . . . this is all there is! Just take it and stop shooting and leave us alone!”

  Beside me, the rifle Mr. Daniels had been using crashed to the floor. Katie’s uncle jumped to his feet and tore through the door after her.

  I stood and looked outside. One man was already down. Then I looked at Bilsby and watched in terror as an evil grin came to his lips and he raised his pistol.

  I screamed in terror and dashed after them.

  Running as fast as he could, Mr. Daniels threw himself in front of Katie and knocked her to the ground. The same instant a puff of white smoke burst from Bilsby’s gun and a deafening roar filled the air.

  Bilsby turned and saw me running from the house. I glanced toward him and saw the same wild look in his eyes that had paralyzed me with fear more than a year before. He lifted his gun and pointed it straight at me. But then a second shot exploded from behind me. The same instant a huge splotch of red burst from the middle of Bilsby’s chest. I saw the light of life instantly go out of his face, and he crumbled from his horse onto the dirt.

  “Katie, Katie!” I cried, running to where she lay partially covered by her uncle’s body. I was in such a panic at the sight of blood splattered all over Katie’s dress that I thought nothing of where the second shot could have come from.