“We brought far too much,” said Dane negligently. “The housekeeper was sure we’d famish ‘amongst the savages’ and ordered in prodigious supplies from Fortnum’s in Piccadilly. We took as little as we dared without causing her apoplexy, but we still have enough to open a shop.”
“I wish you’d give away all of that miserable canned Australian beef!” called Rolf from the next room. “Stringy, tasteless stuff! Fresh rabbit’s much better.”
“Do you feel up to having some for dinner?” Mother asked, crossing to the bedroom door. “I’ve dredged it in meal and soaked it for a bit in vinegar water to make it tender.”
“Any food you or Miss Deborah bring will taste like ambrosia.”
Snorting at Rolf’s melting reply, Dane went to stand by his hostess. “And what about the food I bring you, my boy? The ladies must perforce give you breakfast and tend to you when I’m not here, but while I am, I’ll see to your needs.”
Rolf groaned. “And I thought this to be one invalidism I’d enjoy!”
“If you’ll give me his plate, Mrs. Whitlaw?” Dane suggested.
“It’s mighty ramshackle of you!” grumbled Rolf. And then, craftily he said, “Didn’t you engage to go paint that Delaware guide this week—the one who brought back those gold nuggets from the South Platte last year?”
“I’ve sent my excuses to Fall Leaf. There’s plenty of time. Don’t fret about my painting, youngling. My first concern is to get you back on your feet.”
“You’re too good to me by half!” Rolf growled. “But there it is; you’ve bullied me from the nursery and will probably keep it up till we’re in the family vault!”
Dane thanked Leticia for the plate of rabbit and potatoes, then disappeared with it into the bedroom. She followed with a steaming cup of tea and the china sugar bowl, also brought out for this occasion. Returning, she began putting away Dane’s offerings, lingering over each small treasure with such delight that Deborah was shaken, glimpsing for the first time what a wrench it had been for Leticia to leave New Hampshire, how valiant she was in cheerfully bearing the grinding everyday drudgeries and harshness of frontier life.
“Real coffee!” she said, sniffing the aroma of fresh-ground beans. “I can hardly wait to see how surprised your father will be when we serve him some of this tonight!” A frown creased her brow, and she paused with a jar of marmalade, glowing rich gold in her hand. “We can’t take it all, though. It really is too much.”
With short, vengeful jabs, Deborah forked the meat onto a platter and dished up the potatoes, then set the teakettle on to heat. “I’m sure Mr. Hunter was telling the truth, Mother.” Her tone was so acid that even she was startled at its sound. “Their housekeeper sent so much of this kind of frippery that we’re doing them a favor to lighten their supply load.”
“Exactly so.” Dane, behind her, put down Rolf’s emptied plate and cup. “Apart from that, we can’t both of us eat you out of house and home, as we’re in the way of doing, without replenishing the larder.”
He seated Mother, then Deborah, and sat down facing them—just as if, Deborah thought resentfully, he were the master of the house!
“Will you ask the blessing?” Mother requested.
“I don’t believe in God,” he said gently. “But I’m glad you do, Mrs. Whitlaw. It will bless me to hear you pray.”
After a horrified stare that dimmed to sadness, Mother bowed her head. So did Dane. Deborah scarcely heard her mother’s soft voice.
Dane was kind and considerate of Leticia even when admitting atheism, an almost unimaginable thing. Why, then, was he so ready to mock her—Deborah? And why, oh, why, did he have to appear when some outrage of Rolf’s had put her in an unexplainable position?
She resolved to ignore him. But the tea, which Mother poured out after grace, was so delicious, especially sweetened with real sugar, that Deborah was compelled to express appreciation.
“Your pleasure is doubly mine,” Dane said. His gray eyes touched her in a way that made her heart leap.
Wildly, in a tumult of conflicting desires, she thought that his kiss would never have the taste of blood, that he could sear away that branding of Rolf’s.
If he would …
v
A battalion of Free Staters had invaded Missouri and searched West Point for Hambleton and his men, who were not found, but James Montgomery, the black-bearded Campbellite preacher from Ohio who’d made a log fortress of his home in southeastern Kansas and who was that region’s acknowledged Free State leader, had raided north, within fifteen miles of Lecompton, the pro-slavery capital.
Free Staters, especially neighbors of the murdered men, wanted blood for that spilled May 19 at Marais des Cygnes. That part of the Territory seethed, and so did Thos, eager to get into the fray. Deborah feared that at the next crisis, he couldn’t be held back, a fear shared by Sara, though Johnny seemed to think it was inevitable.
“There’s war coming,” he told them after Deborah and Thos had survived their first knife lesson since the day they’d met the Hunters and Rolf had been wounded by the night riders. “It’s been fated since the first slave was brought to these shores; that was the wind we planted and the whirlwind we’ll reap.”
Rolf’s eyes shone. He’d been moved to Melissa Eden’s house a few days ago in the buggy, but this was his first horseback outing and a bandage was still bulked beneath his fine linen shirt. He and Dane had been invited by Thos to meet the twins at the blacksmith’s so that Dane could ask permission to sketch, and, of course, the English brothers had been asked to stay for dinner.
Johnny seemed to trust Dane, but his smoky eyes went hard when he looked at Rolf, probably because Rolf’s gaze rested familiarly on Sara, as if she’d been a mare he was thinking of buying. He laughed now and said, “A real war? I envy you!”
“I don’t.” Dane’s quiet tone was taut with controlled anger and something else—horror? Pity?
“Maybe this excitement over gold in the Rockies will drain off the worst hotheads,” said Deborah hopefully.
“Cesli tatanka!” scoffed Johnny.
“Unfortunately,” said Dane, “the mostly young men who’ll do the fighting won’t be the ones to declare war. The split between agricultural and industrial interests, deepened by the hatchets of abolitionists and pro-slavers, are bound to crack this nation apart. The only question is: Will the South be allowed to separate, or will the North fight to hold it?”
“Going to be war soon or late.” Johnny scowled as he cut off a bite of tough beef and the edge of his hunting knife grated on the delft plate. “Tatanka wakan, even if the North let the South go, which it won’t, there’d be a fuss over the western lands just opening up, and slaves would be running away north whilst the abolitionists would be helping them. The whole border’d be the way Kansas is right now. No, this boil’s coming to a head! Cain’t be no real peace till it’s lanced and the poison’s drained and the wound can heal clean instead of growin’ a thin scab over a putrefying abscess.”
Violently, Sara pushed back her chair. “No matter which side wins, it won’t help my people!” Her eyes gleamed and in that moment she was hostile to them all, even Thos. “If only Tecumseh had been able to get the other tribes to join those of the Northwest who fought on the British side in 1812! He journeyed south and west, telling chiefs the white tide would soon be lapping against them, but they didn’t believe! Tucumseh fell in battle, and with him died the spirit of the Shawnee.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Dane said. “The British commissioned him a brigadier general. He was a military genius.”
“Which the British commander wasn’t,” rejoined Sara, though obviously surprised and pleased that the great leader of her tribe had been heard of in England.
“But would it have made a difference to the Indians if the British had won?” Deborah asked.
“Who knows? In return for Tecumseh’s help against the Americans, the British were ready to promise that they’d prohibit further taking of In
dian lands. The point is that if, right then, the Indians east of the Rockies had united, they might have had some chance of holding their lands, which instead have been nibbled away as the tide crumbles the sand.”
Springing up, she began clearing away the dishes. Deborah helped, wishing to comfort her friend but not knowing what she could truthfully say.
It hadn’t been only settlement from the East, but the time of the free-ranging Indian had been numbered from when Coronado, seeking for golden Quivira, had written to the king of Spain that though he found no gold, the soil was “rich and black … well watered by arroyos, springs, and rivers … the most suitable that has been found for growing all the products of Spain.”
He spoke of the plums, nuts, sweet grapes, and mulberries, doubtless in an effort to assuage the disappointment of his gold-hungry sovereign. Spain never colonized Quivira but though she’d had to surrender her claim, first to Mexico, then to the United States, to the region north of the Rio Grande and her settlements in Texas, California, and that vast area in between, those lands were lost to the Indians as surely as was New England and the East Coast. Here on the plains in the heart of the country, proud Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Sioux would challenge the white man for a little while, but they were few and scattered.
Thos said in a strained voice, “I guess you’d be glad, Sara, if all of us whites killed each other off!”
She turned on him in a swirl of yellow skirts. “How could I want you or your family dead? Or Johnny?”
“Whoa!” Johnny, too, rose and stretched, went over to tilt up Sara’s flower face, gaze down at her in stern tenderness. “Listen, honey! Weren’t the Shawnee driven from Ohio by the Iroquois and later from the Cumberland Valley by the Cherokee and Chickasaw? Did they pay you for the land or help you settle elsewhere?”
She gave him a mutinous stare, lovely and small in his gnarled brown hands. “If one must be robbed, better by one of the same color!”
“Maybe. But the Lakotah who now watch the Holy Road, the Overland Trail, and see thousands of wagons use up the game and grass and firewood, ruin the hunting and wintering grounds so that Nebraska comes from “Nablaska”—trampled flat—those Lakotah whipped Mandans and Arikara on the Missouri and got their lands, took the Black Hills from the Kiowa, fought Crow and Cheyenne for their hunting grounds. Red, white, yellow, or black, when human’s can take, they generally do. Ain’t right, ain’t fair, ain’t good, maybe. But it’s so.”
Sara stood still beneath his touch, but resistance was clear in every line of her body. “Why do you say these things, Johnny? They’re true, but this can’t make me glad that the whites devour land like prairie fire.”
“Not glad,” Johnny said carefully. “Not ever glad. But not so bitter that your food’s poisoned on your tongue and your soul withers. Then for sure would you be destroyed, little Sara. You can defeat the whites in this, not letting them ruin your joy in the sun.”
He let her go then and went out to the forge, flanked by Laddie and Maccabee. Dane followed. He had permission to draw and paint to his heart’s content; in fact, to Deborah’s chagrin, he’d made swift impressions of her and Thos as they dueled. Probably he’d show them to his highborn friends, who’d conclude that Americans were so barbarous that even their women fought!
Rolf lounged against the wall, dark green eyes as contemplative as a cat’s, but Thos looked so miserable that Deborah caught his hand, closed it over Sara’s, and gave them a shove.
“Isn’t there enough war without you two starting one?” she demanded. “Go for a walk and don’t come back till you’ve made friends with one another!”
“But the dishes—” protested Sara, hanging back.
“I’ll do them. Just get along with you! We’ll have to start home soon.”
Thos linked his arm with Sara’s, drew her toward the door, shooting his twin a grateful look. Deborah, too late aware that she’d left herself alone with Rolf, attacked the delft soaking in the pan.
Why was it that his caressing gaze made a strange, half-sweet, half-frightening warmth tingle through her? Thanks to Dane’s nursing of him, Deborah had seldom been alone with Rolf during the week he spent at the Whitlaws’, and then, warned by his previous tricks, she’d kept out of reach, though his lifted eyebrows and aggravating smile said that he noticed her avoidance but could wait.
Now he strolled across the room and took the dish towel off a peg. “I don’t have my full strength back, Miss Deborah, but I think I can wipe up for you.”
“Thanks.”
“What a stiff and starchy tone!” he chided. “Why so unkind, Miss Deborah? I vow I can feel your artillery swinging toward me the instant I approach!”
“You very well know why!”
“I was only trying to treat the bites you’d gotten from my hounds.”
“Indeed!” She clanged down a soapy kettle, giving it such a vigorous swish in the rinse water that he was well besprinkled. “I wasn’t bitten on the mouth, sir!”
Why had she blurted that out, let him know how well she remembered? He laughed softly, so close beside her that she moved away. “Have you no charity at all, my sweet, for a poor, bedeviled man? How wild you were in my arms! I dream of it still—your writhing that pressed you against me till I swear on any martyr’s bones you please that only a statue could have kept from doing as I did!”
Made weak by his urgent voice recreating that afternoon, Deborah swallowed hard and grimly told herself this must be how he’d laid successful siege to many women. If he thought it’d work with her, he was due for a surprise.
“Mr. Hunter,” she said icily, “while you were an invalid, I could understand, if not appreciate, your attempts to … to inject a bit of interest into your monotonous days. But now you’re in town, able to fare about and seek diversion. Seek it elsewhere!”
“You’re not forbidding me your house?”
“Not so long as you behave yourself.”
He worked silently a moment. “How can I convince you that I’m not just seeking ‘diversion’?”
“Respectful behavior would be a start.”
“That’s so dull,” he said with such scapegrace mournfulness that she had to force back a smile. “What if I proposed to you?”
“Your proposals could earn you a knife in the ribs! Johnny’s making one especially for me that I’ll carry when I leave the house.” She gave her head an emphatic nod. “Next time you or your dogs come at me, Mr. Hunter, you’d best beware!”
He chuckled. “Don’t I already go in awe and dread of you, Artemis?”
“I’m not a huntress. If you’ll remember, that was precisely the reason of our first … difference of opinion.”
“Prim prunes and petunias! Is that what you call it—you in my arms, soft hair in my eyes, your blood on my mouth as I found yours? Difference of opinion? Deborah—”
He shook with laughter, winced as his shoulder pained him, sobered abruptly as she turned her back on him, close to mortified tears, as she wiped out the big cast-iron skillet.
“The kind of proposal I had in mind is made from bended knee,” he said. “But I don’t want to get into that absurd posture, Deborah unless you give me some encouragement.”
Astounded, she whirled on him. “Your words are more absurd than any posture, sir!”
“I must agree with you.” Dane stood in the doorway. His tone had a lash-like sting. “I’m glad, Miss Whitlaw, that you put no credence in my brother’s impetuous statements. If he married without Father’s approval, I doubt that either he or his bride would have much joy of it.”
“That’s an insulting remark!” Deborah flamed. “If my feelings for your brother, sir, were such that I’d marry him, then I do assure you that a cut-off of your father’s money wouldn’t matter a bit!”
“Perhaps not to you,” said Dane, unruffled. “But it would to Rolf.”
“Now plague take you, Dane. I—”
“Seem to be running a fever which has impaired your judgment.�
� Dane turned from his brother. “I came to tell your Miss Whitlaw, that Mr. Chaudoin says your knife is ready. Rolf, we should be starting for town.”
“Go when you’re ready, and so will I.” Rolf set his back to Dane, but the gesture was lost. Dane was already disappearing. “Absurd or no, Deborah, I’ll ask my question another time.” Rolf dried the last pan and hung up the towel, good humor returning. “How will you carry your Bowie, love? In a sheath at your belt? Around your neck on a thong, strapped above your knee?” Sunlight made his eyes like green glass. “To glimpse its hiding place would be worth a stabbing!”
“You may get one if you keep on like that,” Deborah retorted, but she was too excited about finally having her own knife to be really annoyed. She hung up the dishpan and hurried out to the forge.
Maccabee was shaping what looked to be a hinge, and Johnny sat on a stump, whittling away at a block of wood with a Bowie Deborah thought to be her own.
“Oh, you’ll blunt it!” she cried.
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“But, Johnny—”
“My gal, if Black couldn’t whittle on hickory for an hour and still shave the hair off his arm, he wouldn’t sell the knife. I’ve whittled the hour, so now let’s see.”
Lifting his brawny arm, he smoothed the gleaming blade along it, leaving a bare swath beside an earlier testing patch.
“So here you are.”
Rising, Johnny twanged the tip of the knife with his thumb. It gave out a bell-like crystalline sound. While it was still singing, Johnny put it into her hands.
Sun dazzled off the ten-inch-long blade, razor-honed on both sides of the last two inches, where the tip curved wickedly. The broad back of the blade had a brass guard for parrying. The crossguard at the hilt was almost three inches long.
From the curve, beginning as roots and following the back of the blade, where it tendriled into leaves and fruit at the hilt, was worked a grapevine of gold and silver, a pattern repeated in the seasoned black walnut handle through which the shank of the blade ran, ending in a knob.
Daughter of the Sword Page 8
