by Janet Dailey
“I knows how to keep John T. happy,” Cimmy Lou insisted softly, and laughed when he looked away. She rested the stick against the side of the big iron kettle and moved away from the fire, wiping her hands on her skirt. “Best be fetchin’ yore laundry for you. That is what you came fo’, ain’t it, Cap’n?”
“Yes.” He watched her start toward the large tent with its door flap tied open. She had a natural way of moving that always pulled a man’s glance to her hips—the same way that, when she talked, his eyes were drawn to her lips.
Stopping short of the door, she turned to look back at him. “Ain’t you gonna get off that horse and come with me?”
“I don’t mind waiting.” Cutter refused the invitation as she’d known he would. It was a game she played— she liked playing with men. Marriage hadn’t changed that about her. She knew what she did to them, and she liked doing it. At times, Cutter wasn’t sure whether he envied John T. or pitied him.
“Are you afraid of comin’ inside this tent with me, Cap’n?” she taunted. “Maybe you think you might not be man enough?”
“Is any one man enough for you?” he countered, unsmiling.
Anger flashed in her eyes at the implied insult, and Cimmy Lou swept inside the tent. Cutter’s horse stamped at the flies buzzing incessantly about its legs, the brown hide on its withers shuddering to shake them off. She was gone only a matter of seconds, then reappeared at the tent’s opening with a bundle of fresh laundry in her arms. She crossed to him, her bandanna-wrapped head tilted at a proud angle. He took the clothes from her.
“Reckon yore goin’ to that party Miz Wade’s havin’ tonight. I gotta go dress her hair fo’ her—and Miz Bettendorf, too,” she informed him importantly. “My mama taught me all ‘bout such things. She used to be Miz Devereaux’s personal maid. ‘Course, that was b’fore the war.” She lifted her hand, turning up her rose-brown palm. “You owe me five dollahs, Cap’n Cutter.”
He reached inside his pocket for the money and flipped her a five-dollar gold piece. She caught it with one hand and slipped it inside her blouse, finding a place for it in the crevice between her full breasts. Those dark, knowing eyes watched him turn his horse away.
At sundown the bugle called retreat and the flag was lowered with all the accompanying pomp and ceremony the two meager companies of the Ninth could muster. Afterward the columns of mounted troops rode to the respective stables of their companies while orderlies collected the officers’ horses and led them away. The day was at an end, and the white officers drifted toward their quarters.
In the Wades’ bedroom, Hannah leaned close to the mirror to fasten her earbobs. She wore a brown dress, with sleeves and bodice streaked with gold thread that caught and reflected the light. Its shining darkness and the darkness of her hair drawn up on top of her head made the creamy white of her throat and neck appear all the more fragile. With the pair of glittering earbobs fastened, Hannah straightened away from the vanity mirror above the dressing table.
“I do admire that gown on you, Miz Wade,” Cimmy Lou declared, and wistfully eyed the finery.
“Thank you, Cimmy Lou.”
“Hannah?” The muffled summons was followed by a knock on the bedroom door. “Are you ready yet?”
“That will be all, Cimmy Lou,” she said, dismissing the colored girl hovering behind her. Her skirts rustled as she turned to face the door the laundress-turned-maid opened.
Outside, Stephen Wade stood in the narrow hallway, garbed in his full-dress uniform complete with gold epaulets, sash, and regimental cord. Tall, nearly six feet, he cut a dashing figure, with his smoothly handsome features and brown-shaded mustache. The coiled energy and restlessness that were so much a part of him swept Stephen into the room. He barely noticed the young, dark-skinned woman who eyed him before she stepped past him to leave.
The dark pupils of his eyes were shot with flecks of gold. They glittered now with admiration as his encompassing glance took in his wife. “You look beautiful in that dress, Hannah,” he said with force.
“You always say that.” She held out her hands to him. He took them and drew her close, raising both of them to his lips in courtly adoration.
“That’s because it’s true,” Stephen Wade insisted. “Brown is such a drab color, yet you make it come alive.”
“Flattery comes too easily to your tongue.” But Hannah loved it. “You are a handsome devil, and you know it.”
His hands shifted to span her waist, leaving her fingers to rest on the front of his uniform. Pride and confidence settled onto his strongly chiseled features. “Everyone talks about what a beautiful couple we make.” Possession was in, his face, mixed with, love and passion—but not too much of the latter. It wouldn’t be seemly for an officer and a gentleman to reveal such a coarse side to his lady.
“That’s because I love you more than I did five years ago when we married.” The instant the words were out, Hannah regretted them, wishing she hadn’t emphasized the passage of time.
Five years. Stephen had hoped for so much to happen in that time. Hannah recalled their first meeting at her father’s silversmith shop in Philadelphia, and the lifting of her heart at the sight of this dashingly handsome officer. She had learned he was on leave, visiting friends in the city. They had met again at a soiree given by the Van Camps, old and valued patrons of her father. His reputation as an artist in silver and the wealth he’d accumulated, plus her mother’s socially prominent but impoverished family background, gave Hannah an entree into Philadelphia society. And on that night, they had gained her a formal introduction to Major Stephen Wade. The attraction between them had been instantaneous. Hannah had been drawn as much by his intelligence and sureness of purpose as she had been by the striking figure he made in his uniform. She had noted, too, the ambition-riddled restlessness that caused him to chafe at his martial duty in the Reconstructed South. He had applied for a transfer to another regiment, preferably one posted on the frontier.
His leave had been short, so their courtship had been fast. His orders, assigning him to the Ninth Cavalry in Texas, had arrived the day before their wedding. There had been no time for a honeymoon.
Initially Stephen had attempted to discourage her from accompanying him to the western outpost, but his warnings of adverse conditions, hardship, and danger had made Hannah all the more determined to go with him and provide a cultural oasis for him in the harsh environs of the frontier.
It had been a challenge from the beginning. Over the last five years, they had moved three times, sold and set up three households, but there had been no promotions, no advancements, no permanent assignments. Living in this uncertainty, never knowing where he might be posted next, to what dregs of the frontier outposts the army would assign the Ninth or when, they had postponed starting a family. Out here in these Godforsaken frontier outposts civilization was at its barest—few schools, even fewer churches and hospitals except what the army provided. Babies, a family, they had decided, would wait. Only time was slipping away.
Stephen’s Jaw hardened for an instant after her comment, that gnawing frustration surfacing briefly before he broke away from her, turning so she couldn’t see his expression. But his reaction was evident in the tension that showed in his body, in the muscles held taut and stiff.
“Custer has been summoned to Washington to testify at the congressional hearings about all those accusations he made against Belknap this past winter in New York.” W. W. Belknap was President Grant’s secretary of war. “Some are speculating that he won’t be back in time to lead the Seventh on its summer campaign.”
“I hadn’t heard.” Hannah was careful not to comment on the news, aware that he was sensitive to any discussion of the Seventh Cavalry.
“I should have accepted that transfer to the Seventh four years ago and gotten away from these damn niggers. But the promotions were coming faster for the officers in the colored regiments,” Stephen said, reiterating the arguments that had convinced him to stay with the Ninth. �
�And I didn’t fancy serving under that glory-hunting boy general. Maybe I was wrong.”
Wisely she said nothing, merely slipping her hand inside the grip of his fingers. “We need to check to be sure everything is in readiness for our guests.”
The living quarters were austere, the lamp flames reflecting on the dull adobe walls. The drabness and severity of form were part of the army stricture that no habitation should be better than any other save that of the commanding officer. So all of them had colorless adobe walls, plank floors, and green shades at the windows.
Only Hannah’s personal and prized possessions, brought with them from outpost to outpost, relieved the severity of their quarters. A green and gold Turkish carpet, a wedding gift that she had insisted on shipping all the way from Philadelphia with their china and silver service packed inside its roll, gave the parlor its color, and the hues were repeated in the sofa throw and finely embroidered pillows that Hannah had stitched by hand over the long, lonely hours when Stephen had been away from the fort on patrol. Lace curtains, remnants of an heirloom tablecloth from her mother’s family that had been destroyed by bugs, relieved the starkness of the windows, while family pictures and framed samplers, more of Hannah’s handiwork, adorned the blankness of the earth-bricked walls.
The dining room held a small buffet table with a punch bowl of lemonade as well as platters of canapés and dainty cakes. Hannah inspected every item. Everything had been prepared by their striker, the army term for a soldier hired to be an officer’s servant. It was a coveted job, since it meant additional wages besides a soldier’s regular pay, as well as relief from routine duty. The practice had been officially outlawed six years ago, but it continued. It was too difficult to find and keep good help. Private Delancy was a superb cook, trained in one of the finest New Orleans restaurants. Rumor said he’d killed a man over a beautiful octoroon. He was a very quiet man. Hannah would never have thought their excellent soldier-servant was capable of violence.
“Have you heard of an Apache called Juh?” she asked, repositioning the silverware to a more precise angle, her thoughts running back over the afternoon’s incident and her subsequent conversation with Captain Jake Cutter.
“A leader of one of the Chiricahua bands,” Stephen recalled. “Why?”
“Captain Cutter believed he was with those Apaches this afternoon.” Hannah paused. “Do you think it means anything?”
“The bands are moving. I don’t think the quiet is going to last,” was the most he was willing to venture. “The Tucson ring has gotten too strong. Too many people—from government contractors to miners, ranchers, and lumbermen—want to see the Apaches concentrated on one reservation. In Arizona, they’ve already transferred all the Indians from the Camp Verde and White Mountain reservations to San Carlos. It’s only a matter of time before they decide the Mimbres—the Warm Springs Apaches—have to be moved from their New Mexico reserve at Ojo Caliente, and the Chiricahuas from their desert mountains. The Apaches will fight.” His lips thinned into a long, straight line. “And here we are—undermanned, at half company strength, mounted on inferior horses—and no one cares.”
Hannah understood the bitterness Stephen felt. For five years, he had played the political games of currying favor to gain the attention of the right people, his company distinguishing itself in all its engagements with the enemy. During the Civil War, Stephen had legitimately possessed a major’s title, and he would never be satisfied until he was no longer addressed as “major” out of courtesy, but because he had earned the title back.
“Then you expect there will be trouble.” Hannah turned from the buffet table to study him fully.
“I hope there is. I’d hate to be stuck out here and forgotten.” A wry smile slanted his mouth as he lifted his punch glass.
She picked up a glass and filled it, keeping her private fears out of her expression. “To the victor, Major Wade.” She toasted him, inwardly knowing what his assertion meant. Making war on the Apaches meant taking chances—calculated risks, Stephen called them. It meant fighting and killing—things a soldier’s wife should understand. But hers was the waiting game, the sitting at home and worrying while smiling bravely.
The hollow tramp of footsteps on the packed earth outside their door signaled the arrival of their first guest. “It must be poor Lieutenant Delvecchio,” Stephen guessed in advance of the knock at the door. “I feel sorry for him.”
“Why?” Hannah set down her lemonade glass.
“Because he’s in love with you, and you’re mine.” He smiled as a hand rapped at the door, and she was charmed by his possessive affection and that sense of being so very special to him.
Together they went to answer the door. Lieutenant Delvecchio stood outside and the Sloanes, the guests of honor, were coming up the walk. The atmosphere took on a social air, one of flirtatious fun and good company.
Cimmy Lou strolled along the path that circled the parade ground, which was outlined with rocks. Oblivious to her surroundings, she daydreamed about all she had seen in the private quarters of Officers’ Row: the beautiful clothes, the satins and laces, the bright baubles and beads, the gilded hairbrushes and combs, and the pretty food. She’d snitched one of the cakes and now she sucked at her fingers to get the last sugary bit of the icing’s taste while her long skirts swayed with the sauntering rhythm of her walk. Molasses was about the sweetest thing she’d had lately.
Ahead of her, a trooper leaned against a rough cedar post that supported the ramada roof attached to the fort’s bakery. Long and slim, he was half hidden by the purpling shadows of twilight. At Cimmy Lou’s approach, he kicked leisurely away from the post and intercepted her. There was something catlike about him, with his small face and shiny-dark eyes, his pencil-thin mustache and pointy chin, and he had a cleverness about him, the scheming slyness of a cat, too.
“You shouldn’t be walkin’ by yo’ self afteh dark, Miz Hooker. I’ll make shore you get safely home.”
She pulled her fingers from her mouth with a small, smacking sound and studied Private Leroy Bitterman with a considering look. Her strong sexual instincts made her always aware of the maneuverings between a man and a woman, the planned setting up of a seemingly happenstance meeting. And this man, who had long shown indifference to her, now was casually offering to walk her home.
“I don’t need protection,” Cimmy Lou asserted, losing interest in him now that he’d come around like all the others.
“I’ll walk with you just the same.” He smiled and matched his stride to her slow stroll.
“Do as you please.”
“I’ll always do that.” He walked along. “You don’t like me much, do you?”
“You ain’t very nice.” She eyed him. “I think you could be cruel sometimes.”
“I’m a full-blooded tomcat. I sure as hell ain’t as tame as the men you been toyin’ with.” He spoke with an arrogance and sureness that Cimmy Lou didn’t like.
“You don’t know what I do,” she retorted.
“You like to get a man all hot an’ excited, then throw cold water on him Makes ya feel big.”
“Then don’t get excited.”
“Cold water won’t stop me.”
“There ain’t gonna be no startin’, so there won’t be no stoppin’ neither.” Cimmy Lou kept her voice down as they came to the tent housing of Suds Row, but her tone was firm.
“Then why you been walkin’ with me and talkin’ with me? Why you been watchin’ me all these months?” Several yards short of her tent, his steps slowed. “You don’t know me. But you will.”
Bitterman left before she could order him to go, and that angered her. She liked to control such things. Like all men, he had eventually come sniffing after her, but he’d backed off on his own. First Captain Cutter, now Leroy Bitterman, two in one day. It worried her, made her restless and edgy as she entered the tent.
John T. was standing at the cookstove, stirring a pot. A pair of suspenders stretched up over his bare torso, h
is dark skin rippling with lean muscles. He was handsome, the handsomest man she’d ever seen, with his proudly ridged features and darkly brilliant eyes. Cimmy Lou knew he’d cooked supper for her. He was always doing kind things for her, she realized with a flash of irritation.
“What’s that I smell?” she demanded, catching an odd scent mixed in with the familiar aroma of stew made from potatoes, onions, tinned tomatoes, and stringy beef.
“I put some of them Mexican peppers in it. Really livened up the taste.” He held out a spoonful for her to test and watched her pouty lips graze the spoon’s edge as she drank the tomato broth.
“It’s hot,” Cimmy Lou ventured hesitantly, and John T, smiled at her dubious response. “It’s a change, that’s for shore.”
Later when the stew had been dished into metal bowls and they sat at the homemade table and spread butter made from suet on sour bread, Cimmy Lou reflected on the stark differences between the dainty repast at the Wades’ quarters, the buffet arranged on china and silverware, and her own dinner. She described the bite-sized sandwiches and sweet cakes and the beautiful finery to her husband.
While she talked, John T. watched her. He could see the hunger in her face, the intense wanting, the great needs that never seemed to get filled. She’d always been a hungry woman. It troubled him.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be goin’ and workin’ for the officers’ ladies,” he said at last.
“But they pay me. Look at all the extra money I make fixin’ their hair an’ doin’ for ’em,” Cimmy Lou protested.
“It ain’t good to cross over and see how they live. Yore always upset when you come home. I see the wantin’ in yore eyes.” Many things he could give her—the prestige of his top rank, the status and respectability, and a sergeant’s pay—and every ounce of his love. She was the kind of woman who drained a man dry. Even in bed, she kept coming back for more. God, how he loved her.
“Sometimes, John T. . . . sometimes I get to feelin’ so hungry for things” —the intensity of her feelings was present in her voice and expression, a mixture of fierce impatience and frustration—“that I get to hurtin’ inside.” The admission turned her petulant and she pushed the half-empty bowl of stew away from her. “An’ sometimes I get to wishin’ Lincoln’d never freed us. If I was a slave, I’d be livin’ in the Devereaux’s fine big house, wearin’ nice dresses an’ eatin’ good food. I wouldn’t be boilin’ clothes an’ ironin’ all day, an’ sweatin’ like a field hand.”
