Broken Feather

by Jeanie P Johnson

  Vanessa dissolved into tears, knowing her future was in even more peril than it had been before she ever came out to Texas. Now she feared what her father would do. She had ended up falling in love with a man she couldn’t have, and the man she could have was now turning her out. It was all her father’s fault, she blamed. He should never have arranged for her to marry Jason in the first place!

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  As Fort Clark came into view, Vanessa hugged her daughter closer to her, rubbing her cheek against the infant’s soft, downy, dark hair. She decided to name her daughter Glenda, after her own mother. Now it would be up to her father to decide her fate. She hoped he did not send her away to a convent to raise her baby.

  After Jason had stormed from her room that night, he left the ranch house and went to stay in the branding cabin, Morton told her. Morton said Jason did not want to risk seeing her face again before she left, and the thought of his words pierced her soul. She had finally accepted her marriage to Jason and now she had nothing. As they headed away from the ranch, she did not look back. She wanted to erase it and all memory of Jason out of her mind forever. Regardless of what her life brought, this life would remain behind her buried the same way Bradford had been buried, holding the secrets of her life while she was at the ranch.

  Vanessa was surprised when she saw not only her father, but Broken Feather coming out to greet her when Morton pulled the wagon up in front of the barracks. Her heart took a sudden leap. Broken Feather was still there, and she wondered if he knew she had given birth to his daughter.

  Captain Renton helped Vanessa down from the wagon but did not speak to her. Instead, he told Morton to go inside to the bath area and get cleaned up, and then he could eat with the soldiers before he returned to the ranch. He would be riding his own horse back to the ranch, which he had tied behind the wagon, since the wagon contained all of Vanessa’s belongings and would be needed to take her to her next destination.

  “As for you, young lady, you need to come with me to my room,” her father instructed.

  Broken Feather followed behind. He hadn’t looked at Vanessa or asked to see the baby. Maybe he didn’t know about the baby belonging to him, Vanessa thought.

  When they reached her father’s room, he indicated that she be seated, and then he looked at her casting his gaze back and forth between her and Broken Feather, as though he wasn’t certain what to say.

  Finally, he cleared his throat. “Broken Feather is not aware of what is going on,” her father said at last. “I didn’t want him jumping to any conclusions before I had a chance to speak to both of you. All he knows is that you have come here with your child for a very short visit.” He looked at Vanessa knowingly and she knew he intended to send her away as soon as possible.

  Sam turned to Broken Feather and smiled. “You don’t have to pretend that you are merely a causal friend to my daughter any longer,” he stated, causing Broken Feather’s face to turn pale. “Perhaps you should take a look at her new baby,” he said, pushing Broken Feather towards her.

  Vanessa held her breath, as she slowly pulled the shawl aside so Broken Feather could look at Glenda’s olive-colored face. In an instant, his face broke out in surprise, and then he looked a little frightened, but reached out a finger and ran it across the infant’s cheek.

  “Yes, Broken Feather, this is your daughter which speaks volumes about your conduct with my daughter. However, I have been informed that while Jason was livid when he discovered his wife’s infidelity, he also claimed you had saved everyone’s life from the Comanche and he owed you something for that. Therefore, he is not going to press charges against you, which he could well do, since you are an Indian and it is forbidden for Indians to handle white women, especially when they are someone else’s wife!”.

  Broken Feather glanced up at Sam. “Funny how I am considered an Indian, unless I wish to be part of the Seminole tribe,” he mumbled.

  “Well the same goes for black men too,” Sam muttered. “However, rather than punish you, I have decided to put you in a position to be responsible for your actions. I do not wish to take your child from you, and my daughter needs to be taken care of. Therefore, I am sending you both back to the plantation. You will be considered Vanessa’s servant, whose wife has died in childbirth, and is hired to run the plantation. Vanessa has been generous enough to give you a position at our plantation, because you once saved her life, and she is willing to take your daughter under her wing.

  “You will allow sharecroppers to work the land, and I will put you in charge of running the plantation. Sugarcane is still in demand and other farmers in the area are taking advantage of it. Hopefully, Vanessa can salvage her good name, and find her a husband of her own choosing, since it is clear she cannot marry you, considering it is against the law for white women to marry either blacks or Indians, and she detested the fact when I chose a husband for her.

  “You will remain in her service until she finds that husband, and later, if you wish to tell your daughter the truth about her birth, it is up to you. However, once Vanessa is safely returned to the plantation again, you must not make future mistakes that may destroy her good reputation. If she ends up having a second child with you, I will take measures to have you punished to the fullest. I hope you understand me.”

  Sam turned and glared at his daughter. “I had never intended to tell you this, Vanessa, but considering the circumstances, I think I now have no choice. You have too much of your mother’s blood in you and I can see you are just like her. You used to always ask me where you got your curly hair, and I told you the angels gave you those curls. The truth is I don’t know where you got them because, like you, your mother was unfaithful to me at the beginning of our marriage. As a result, she gave birth to you, but would never divulge who she had the love affair with. Since I had never touched her, I knew you were not my child.

  “I don’t know who your father is, and I don’t wish to know. That is why I could never bear to stay with you and your mother. You were never my daughter, even though I took on the responsibility of you, but every time I looked at you, it reminded me of what your mother had done. It ruined our marriage and what little love we could have gained for each other.

  “I abandoned your mother because she had abandoned me first, and I couldn’t forgive her any more than Jason can forgive you. At least, he was wise enough to send you away and have done with it. I chose to remain, only to protect our good name, and everyone ended up suffering for it in the end.

  “Therefore, you must face up to your actions, but I believe your child needs both of you to raise her, and even if she doesn’t know you are her true mother, she will end up loving you just the same. It is the only gift I can give you and your daughter to make up for the lack of love I had for you growing up.

  “Once you come to your senses, you will find yourself a suitable husband, never speak of your past, and claim to be a widow. Until then, Broken Feather will remain in Louisiana with you. Once you find a suitable husband, the two of you can decide what you wish to do, whether Broken Feather will continue to work on the plantation, to be near his daughter, or go back and join his tribe in Mexico. If he goes to Mexico, he will have to leave both you and his daughter behind, though.

  “The two of you have created this curse and now you must live with it. I have Broken Feather’s release papers from the army, and he is free to take you back to Louisiana as soon as you are able to leave, which will be in the morning. You can spend the night in Brackettville again. After that, you are on your own. ”

  Both Vanessa and Broken Feather merely stared at Captain Renton in disbelief. They both knew they had no other choice, and whether Broken Feather was happy about it, Vanessa couldn’t tell. His face was a stoic mask and she was afraid to look into his eyes to discover the answer. Her eyes were too filled with tears anyway.

  Everything had suddenly fallen into place for her about why her father had treated her mother the way he had. She vowed never to let her daugh
ter feel the way her father had made her feel. At least he was giving their child the opportunity to have the love of both of her parents. She didn’t believe she would ever marry some suitable man, even if she had to live in sin with Broken Feather until their daughter was grown, she told herself.

  She just didn’t know how Broken Feather felt. She knew he wanted to go back to Mexico, and he may not like working on the plantation pretending to be her servant like she had asked him to do when she ran away from Jason. She knew how much pride he had, and the very act would end up coming between them, she feared. And then there was the risk of Broken Feather being punished if they ever had another child together. Once again, her future looked bleak.

  It seemed like everything was repeating itself as Vanessa watched Broken Feather packing up the wagon, preparing for their trip to Louisiana. But instead of traveling towards her future marriage, they were preparing for a charade that would demean Broken Feather by taking away his pride and ability to direct his own life. Her heart was sinking fast. She would be with Broken Feather, but he would resent it, even if he could be with his daughter and be put in charge of running the plantation. He would always have to appear as her servant, rather than her partner in love or any other capacity.

  As they sat in the wagon preparing to leave the fort, to go to Brackettville, Vanessa’s father didn’t even come out to bid them farewell. Vanessa had to admit to herself, that her father had never loved her, and was now happy that she knew she was not his daughter so he wouldn’t have to pretend to love her any longer. She felt lonelier than she had ever felt before. Even with Broken Feather sitting beside her, she was nothing more than an outcast, not worthy for anyone to love, and now it looked like Broken Feather didn’t love her any longer either.

  He whipped up the horses and she turned to look at him with scorn in her eyes. “Don’t pretend like this is all my fault,” she grumbled at him. “It takes two to make a baby, and you are just as much to blame as I am.”

  “The difference is, you could have come away to Mexico with me from the very beginning, but you chose to remain with Jason. Had you not ended up having my child, you would have stayed with Jason and made a life with him. Now you are forced to be with me, not as my wife, or even the mother of my child. Our child will grow up being confused the same as you were, growing up. This is not going to have a happy ending, Vanessa, and I don’t expect it to.”

  “Are you saying you don’t love me any longer?” she murmured, looking sideways at him.

  “How can love grow between us when the whole purpose of this pretense is to put you in a position to become someone else’s wife? I can’t touch you, for fear of you having another child. You will have to deny any love you ever had for me and deny our daughter as well. The only reason I am doing this is because of the love I have always felt for you, and the fact that I have a daughter to be responsible for now. However, I am not going to torture myself by hoping anything is going to get any better where we are concerned. It would have been better if you had Jason’s child, and then you could have pretended you loved him instead of me.”

  “I don’t intend to look for a suitable husband, if that is what you are worried about. Somehow he would end up discovering the truth and I am not going to put myself through that. You may not love me any longer, but I am not going to let our daughter feel she is not loved.”

  Broken Feather shrugged. “It won’t change anything, Vanessa, I will still be considered your servant running the plantation, and you can never claim our daughter as your own if you do not want to be punished by society for going against their own prejudice. You are just fooling yourself if you think there is hope for the two of us. Like your father said, you certainly can’t marry me, and I refuse to be your ‘kept lover’, and risk losing everything. I still have a little bit of pride left.”

  “Your very attitude is what is going to ruin everything,” she accused.

  “Everything is already ruined. I was a fool to have ever touched you in the first place. Now all three of us are going to have to suffer for it, so you might as well face the fact, Vanessa, from this pointing on I am a mere servant and you are a widow, hoping to find a new husband. It is better if we just leave it at that!”

  “My father is in Texas, and we will be in Louisiana. How will he even know what is going on at the plantation?”

  “Didn’t he tell you? He has made arrangements to hire an overseer who will be staying at the Plantation to make sure everything runs smoothly. The man will be reporting back to your father on a regular basis. Your father is efficient in making sure his orders will be followed to the letter and our lives are not our own any longer.”

  “My life never was my own, and neither was yours!” Vanessa hissed.

  “It would have been different if you had come with me to Mexico in the first place. You could still do it, and then all of this would be behind us and we could start out a new life together.”

  “Living like Indians,” Vanessa pointed out. “As much as I love you, Broken Feather, I was not cut out to live in the wild. Living on the ranch was almost too much of a challenge.”

  “Then, apparently, you don’t love me enough,” Broken Feather muttered, and slapped the reins on the rump of the horse to hasten its pace.

  The next morning, they left Brackettville. The mood between them had not changed, and Vanessa realized that she would never be able to recapture what she and Broken Feather had shared in the past. He had not shared her room in the hotel and hadn’t spoken to her since they arrived at Brackettville. The very lack of him reaching out to her told her all she needed to know. They would have to see each other every day, raising their daughter together, knowing that was the only future they had together, as the love that once consumed them shriveled up and died. Yet even that realization could not persuade Vanessa to go to Mexico with Broken Feather.

  At least they would be together, Vanessa soothed herself, and maybe that would be enough to keep her contented, along with raising her daughter with Broken Feather. She looked forward to being at the plantation again, encouraging their old slaves to sharecrop the land since they would know how to raise the sugarcane. One of them may have to teach Broken Feather how it was done, but she knew how capable Broken Feather was and was certain he would be up to the challenge of running the plantation. She only worried about the overseer that her father had hired and whether he would create problems for them.

  Of course, her so called father would never wash his hands of her completely since the plantation, by right, belonged to him, considering she wasn’t even related to him after all. So he had a vested interest in how successful it became and whether she followed his instructions or not. He could still find a way to force her to get married whether she wished to or not, she feared. The only upside would be that she could choose her husband if that happened. For now, though, she pushed the thought aside. Maybe Broken Feather would grow to like plantation life, and he wouldn’t be so indifferent to her in the future. They could still salvage their friendship on some level, she hoped. Only time would tell.

  She could distract herself by picking up her social life where she left off, acting the bereaved widow who would morn for her husband’s death indefinitely and never bring herself to choose a new husband. There were ways to get around her father’s demands, she decided, and in the end, she was certain she could find a way to live her life as she pleased.

  The journey back to Louisiana took them through Texas and all the way across Louisiana to the Mississippi River. Until they reached Louisiana, it was rough country and sparsely traveled roads, except for the stage that came through on occasion, which they passed along the way. They were able to stop at stage stations to refresh themselves and sometimes buy a meal, and then it was long stretches of desolate countryside, as beautiful as it may be, yet always presenting dangers in the form of marauding Indians, snakes, and sun-scorched desolation where water was hard to come by.

  The railroad from California through Texas and
on to New Orleans was still in the process of being built, and all other railroads only connected certain cities within the more populated part of various States. The stockyards, where Jason had taken his cattle to be loaded on the train, were located in Kansas, clear in the other direction from where they were headed, which was the closest railroad coming through from the east. Building the railroad through the west was hard going, because irate Indian tribes were constantly destroying tracks and attacking workers, to try and keep the railroads from crossing their land, which requested the protection of the military at times. Therefore, Vanessa and Broken Feather’s only choices were to travel by wagon or take a stage.

  Vanessa preferred the wagon, over riding the stage, even though it was not covered from the hot rays of the sun, but her parasol helped a bit. She had hated being stuffed in with other people in a compartment that had a lot to be desired for comfort, and only able to stretch her legs when the stage stopped along the way at the stations for the passengers to eat, and to water or change the horses. However, there were occasions when the passengers were expected to get out and walk, going up steep grades, and sometimes even helping to push the stage over rough roads to get it up over a hill. She hoped this was the last time she would have to travel cross-country and could remain at the plantation for the rest of her days.

  Once they came across the border into Louisiana, the scenery took a gradual change, turning into woods, rivers, swampland, greenery and moss-covered trees. Farms and Plantations came into view surrounded by rolling hills and lush, fertile, fields… a welcome sight to Vanessa’s eyes. They passed through small towns that connected the plantation land together, and when they finally came in sight of the Mississippi River, with its paddleboats, flat-bottom barges pushed along by long poles, rowboats, and even sailboats, congesting the water, Vanessa knew she was finally home. It was just a few more miles to where the Renton Plantation was situated, right off the river.