“That could describe a lot of people.”
“Th’ Injun’s nothing special, true,” he said derisively, “but that black horse is a humdinger. Couldn’t miss that good-lookin’ sucker in a coal mine at midnight.”
Suddenly it struck her. He hadn’t had Nick thrown in jail and then hailed her on the street to taunt her for revenge. He wanted something.
Callie’s heart soared. In the middle of the night, she had realized that he probably could be bribed. Of course he could! He had all those children to support, didn’t he?
This was the reason he had falsely accused Nick. He’d seen Nick’s fine horse twice, he’d seen his nice saddle last week in town, and he’d decided he was tired of riding a mule. The Baxters had nothing as a result of the Run, and he believed Nick had staked two claims …
Panic trailed cold fingers down the length of her spine. No. Surely not. Surely something smaller would do.
Chapter 13
Baxter must have very little money. Surely he would take something much smaller than a claim.
“Perhaps I could offer you some compensation for your time to think again about what you saw yesterday,” she said softly, grateful that her voice held steady. “It’s such a gross injustice that Mr. Smith is sitting in jail when he is innocent and the real robber outlaw is running free.”
He stroked his beard with a slow gesture that seemed somehow both insolent and menacing.
“If that’s true, it’s a shame,” he said. “And it might be that I have possibly misspoke about him. In what way do you think to compensate me?”
She did a quick calculation in her head.
“You understand that I’m limited to my own resources only,” she said. “If Mr. Smith knew about this conversation, he would be out for your blood rather than your good will.”
A little threat couldn’t hurt; maybe it would even help keep the price down.
“Maybe so,” he said, “but I ain’t worried about losing my hair.”
So. Here was a second threat. Nick would never be able to register his claim if the government found out he was a member of the Cherokee Nation.
“What are you offering, lady?”
His voice had gone cold as stone.
“Twenty-five dollars,” she said. “It’s all I have.”
That wasn’t quite true, but it was close enough. Without that amount, she’d be on Nick’s charity for food this winter.
He laughed. He threw back his shaggy head and laughed long and loud. Then his laughter stopped.
“Your claim,” he said.
Even though she had expected those words, Callie cringed.
“I have to have a place to live,” she said. “We must come to some other agreement.”
He watched her silently with his shrewd, malevolent gaze. When she had held her breath forever, he spoke.
“No deal.”
“Thirty dollars.”
“Your claim.”
In the middle of the night, she had worked out a whole list of possible bribes. She’d have to bring out her best offer because she could not, would not, give up her land.
“Mr. Baxter, I will be teaching the Chikaskia Valley School when it opens,” she said, amazed that she could speak so calmly. “And for the first few years at least, the parents will have to pay a subscription. The first time we met, you mentioned that you have several children and so does your brother. I could give a reduced rate to your and your brothers’ children.”
If he bargained with her and asked for free subscriptions, she would give them. Surely that and thirty dollars would persuade him to withdraw his false accusation.
Instead, Baxter roared out an oath. “All them children may go to school or they may not, but they are gonna work a farm for me,” he said tightly. “They’ve got to pay for their raising somehow.”
“They can do more for you if I teach them to read and cipher …”
“Your claim,” he roared. “That’s the end of it.”
And it was. Her heart sank and she wanted desperately to try again, but she knew that he would take nothing less.
She had to give him her claim.
Suddenly the sky felt huge above her and the land stretching beneath it even more vast, while, small and pitiably weak, she stood in Baxter’s trap giving in to his highway robbery. The town seemed to close around her, close enough to choke her.
No one could help her, and she couldn’t help herself.
Never, not even when she’d left the mountains, knowing that she wouldn’t see her family again as long as she lived, had she felt so helpless.
It ain’t jist a feelin’, girl, it’s the hard-down truth. Ain’t nothin’ you kin do.
It was Granny’s voice speaking in her ear: all-seeing, all-knowing Granny, who never failed to get to the heart of any matter. Once again, Granny was right.
Fury at the injustice of it came surging into her soul, mixed with fear. A terrible fear of what might happen to her and her baby.
A terrible shaking came over her inside and she fought not to let it show on the outside.
They would have no place to live! She’d have no place to be when the baby came!
Oh, and all her whole week of hot, miserable drudgery cutting and stacking sod bricks—all her four, hard won half-walls that were going to be her home—would go to Baxter! He would come with all his kin and live on her land.
And with this one tiny baby who was now her only kin, where would she go?
Granny would tell her to take it one day at a time and trust to the Lord to provide. And both Granny and the Lord would stand behind her in doing anything to get Nick out of jail. After all he’d done for her, she’d never sleep well again if she left him there in order to keep her land.
“Baxter, you listen to me,” she said, clenching her teeth so that her chin wouldn’t tremble, “you had better not mention the word Indian or make any reference to it ever again.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” he purred, with an evil grin that she longed to slap right off his face.
But there, too, she was helpless. If only she were a man! Then she’d …
Callie forced herself to turn her back on the despicable Baxter and to turn her thoughts, too. No sense working herself up into a froth over him; this was the way it was and it couldn’t be helped.
She must calm down and think this through.
While they stood in line waiting to get into the Land Office door, she wracked her brain for something, anything, she could do so as not to feel so helpless. That feeling was dragging her down toward real despair and she had to fight it. She also had to deal with this horrid fear that Baxter still would make trouble about Nick’s being Cherokee once they stood in front of the clerk. That way, he might end up with her claim and Nick’s, too.
As a few more claimants left the small building, some more crowded in, and she and Baxter moved a few steps forward. She turned to him.
“When it’s our turn, if you breathe a word about Indians or Cherokees or even hint at it, I’ll not sign my claim over to you, understand?” she said. “I’m registering Nick’s claim for him first. Then when that’s done, and if you’ve made no trouble, I’ll sign mine over to you. Only then.”
“If you refuse to sign it over, your big red-skinned buck will still be sitting in jail. He might even hang. Have you thought of that?”
“It won’t matter,” she said, willing the calm authority to hold firm in her voice. “If he loses his claim, he’d rather be in jail or dead.”
He scowled.
“Think about it,” she said. “Call him an Indian in there, make him lose his land, and I won’t sign mine over to you. The only way you’ll ever get it is through the law, and that would cost you a fortune.”
Baxter thought about it.
“All right,” he growled. “Let’s just get this done.”
Callie still felt shaky, but at least she had some bit of leverage, which comforted her a little.
When she saw a
man going up and down the line handing out sheets of newspaper, a faint hope rose in her heart. Ned Adams, the publisher of Santa Fe’s new newspaper, The Prairie Fire, was giving away sample sheets of that day’s edition. While Baxter stood breathing down her neck like some greedy, malevolent monster, Callie asked Mr. Adams if he had investigated the story he had printed about the bank robbery. He assured her that he had done so very thoroughly, and that no one, not even those coming and going from the busy restaurant tent next to the bank yesterday, had claimed to have seen the robber’s escape.
The bank’s tent was jammed onto a small lot that people frequently cut across to avoid the traffic in the street, so all the robber needed to do was let the bandanna used as his mask fall from his face to his neck, and he would’ve looked like anyone else hurrying about his noontime business, carrying a bag of possessions in hand.
The clerk, too, had described him as black-hatted, tall, and well-built. He had ducked into the bank from beneath one canvas wall and had departed the same way.
Callie’s heart sank as Adams tipped his hat and moved on, calling out his headline about the bank robber. He had only one or two takers in the line; most people were too wrapped up in trying to get registered to want to read.
Almost everyone there had his life hanging by a thread, with no money in the bank, and had more interest in his own survival than the bank’s.
And now she was one of the ones hanging by a thread, as if she hadn’t been before. She would have to move into this teeming town with its ugly Hell’s Acre and try to find a job she could hold until the baby began to show. Or stay at Nick’s place.
Quickly, she closed her mind to all the visions that came to mind. The brave, reckless part of her wanted that more than she wanted air to breathe—which scared her half to death.
She couldn’t even think now. All she could do was feel, and all she could feel was a bone-wrenching regret that her baby would have no homeplace after all, no land to roam and to call his own and pass on to his children, no big space to run and play, no creeks to splash in or rocks to climb. That was how it would be if she moved to town.
The sun was high now and heating up the prairie with a vengeance, and from time to time her stomach roiled. Once or twice she thought she might even faint. She closed her mind to everything but Nick sitting behind bars. In only a few minutes she’d be able to see the terrible despair disappear from his eyes.
Suddenly, she just couldn’t stand there any longer. She turned to Baxter.
“We could walk quickly up to the jail before our turn comes, and you could tell Sheriff Williams that you’ve made a mistake with the identification …”
“Yore nowhere near wily enough to fool this old possum,” he said coldly. “Don’t even try. Sign the claim to me first, and then I’ll get your lover out of jail.”
She looked at him, letting the cold blade of her fury shine sharp in her eyes.
“If you know what’s good for your health, you will do exactly that,” she said. “If you try to walk away from me after my claim is in your name, I will see to it that you die. I don’t care if you have a hundred children to feed.”
Her heartfelt words astonished her as much as they did him—for the first time ever she saw his narrow eyes widen in surprise.
“I’m a man of my word,” he said, with a gruff defensiveness that was almost laughable.
She kept looking him straight in the eye.
“Yes,” she said sarcastically, “except when you’re a witness to a robbery.”
“I am,” he said, taking a step forward as the line moved again. “Didn’t I tell you the first time I ever seen you that I’d have my name on that there piece of land you was claimin’? And ain’t that what we’re gittin’ done right now?”
The truth of that made her sick to her stomach but she marched on, climbing the steps of the Land Office with the triumphant Baxter right beside her. The blisters tingled in the palms of her hands. She had worked like a man, day after day, to build a shelter for her baby, only to give it to him. There wasn’t a blessed thing she could do.
“And my word has held up in another way, too: when I said you and that Injun is a pair,” he said, with a disgusting smugness. “You wouldn’t be doin’ this for him if you wasn’t his woman.”
The phrase sent a waterfall of fear cascading through her. Any woman who became Nick’s woman would be placing her heart in reckless jeopardy. Nick Smith didn’t want any lasting companionship or sharing of his life.
“His name is Smith,” she snapped. “And you’d better not refer to him as ‘the Injun’ again, if you don’t want to be branded a liar right there in this Land Office, because then I’ll have nothing to lose. Be quiet and you can walk out of here in ten minutes’ time with a claim of your own.”
They arrived at the door and stepped inside the shack. Baxter stepped right in behind her, breathing down her neck, but at least he was silent, thank God. The air inside the building was sweltering and too thick to breathe. There were four clerks and at least one customer in front of each one.
Callie squared her shoulders and held her thoughts to the moment, to this one instant and then to the next, so that she wouldn’t make any mistakes. The rest of Nick’s whole life, maybe even his life itself, depended on her doing this right.
Then it was her turn and, as luck would have it, the bald government clerk beckoned to her. She pulled out and unfolded Nick’s registration permit.
“I’m registering this claim,” she said. “And then I have another to sign off on a sale to this man behind me, Mr. Baxter.”
“Very well,” the clerk said, and took the paper from her. “Your full legal name?”
“Mrs. Calladonia Sloane.”
The clerk wrote that down, then looked at Nick’s permit.
“There’s a note on the back,” Callie murmured.
He turned it over and read what Nick had written.
“Hmmn, Nick Smith,” he said heartily. “I remember Mr. Smith.”
“Maybe that’s because his skin’s a little bit redder than usual,” said a man’s voice.
Callie’s blood froze in her veins. She stiffened, then whirled to look for the speaker as she realized it wasn’t Baxter.
It was a man she didn’t recognize who was in line across from her at the next clerk’s table. When their eyes met, he spoke directly to her.
“I seen you last week with a man they said was named Nick-a-jack Smith who nearly got hit by a flying board,” he said flatly. “I’d say they was right calling him a Cherokee.”
Silence fell in the little room.
The interfering busybody held her gaze and said vehemently, “From the looks of him, I’d say he is.”
Several people had turned to look at her, and a burly man just inside the door spoke out loudly. “You mean you’re in here registering a claim for a Indian? I thought th’ U. S. Government paid the Indians good money to get this land away from them so godfearing white men could farm it.”
Callie’s heart stopped. What could she do? How could she offer this clerk another bribe, right here in front of everyone? How had Nick done it? Oh, Lord, what could she do?
“Damn straight that’s what she’s doing,” the man at the next table said. “I seen her with him. Redskin blanket’s what I’m talkin’ about—I seen ‘im with my own eyes and I’ve seen a passel of Indians in my time.”
“My grown son didn’t get no claim,” the burly man roared. “And he was in the Run. He’s a white man, too.”
Another man stepped out of line. “My brother lost out, too,” he said.
“Now let’s just see about this,” another one said, stepping out of line and moving toward Callie. His hard gaze was fixed on the clerk who was helping her.
A general muttering began to rise.
The bald clerk raised both hands as a peacemaking gesture toward the men who were advancing on him now from three directions.
“Calm down now, folks, calm down. There’s no conflict
here,” he said smoothly. “Mrs. Sloane did not say that she was registering the claim for Mr. Smith.”
He rustled the paper in front of him.
“According to these records, Mr. Smith’s claim has already been contested by her, Mrs. Calladonia Sloane, and she has won. The land in question will be registered to her, in her name, and, as you can all plainly see, she is white as a lily.”
His tone and assured way of speaking soothed the protesters instantly. Callie stood stunned—and silent—as his pen began to scratch across the page of his ledger.
He was putting Nick’s claim in her name—and she dared not stop him! She could say nothing, absolutely nothing, or she would lose his claim forever.
She took a deep breath to steady herself and realized that it was all right. A few months from now, when all the furor died down, she could sign it over to him.
The clerk seemed to take a year to finish with his notations in the ledgers, but finally he handed her a deed made out in her name. Then she gave him her own certificate.
“And what is your full legal name, sir?” the clerk asked Baxter, starting the whole process all over again.
It took only seconds, it seemed, to sign away what had taken her months of dreaming, weeks of hard traveling, and days of unspeakable work to achieve. Her mind skittered away from that, and from the thought of her baby growing up in town in rented quarters.
Right now, she had to concentrate on the present. She had to pray that Baxter would keep his word so she wouldn’t have to kill him with her bare hands, and go to jail with Nick instead of getting him out.
“You should know that I carry a purse gun,” Callie said to Baxter, as they left the Land Office. “And that I’m a dead shot. Don’t try to get away from me and don’t try to tell that Cap Williams again that he’s got the right man locked up.”
Baxter cast her a scornful, sidelong glance.
“Ain’t I done told you my word is good? Ain’t I kept ever’ promise I ever made to you, girl? I got my name on that claim like I said that first day, didn’t I?”
Callie walked faster, practically running, wondering how quickly she could get the gun out of her purse if Baxter tried to slip away into the dusty, crowded street. He walked beside her like the honorable man he claimed to be, however, and gave no sign of any troublesome intentions.
The Renegades: Nick Page 18
