by Henke, Shirl
Afterward, they strolled away from the muddy track toward where Mathias stood with Midnight Reiver. The lad was beaming from ear to ear. Although only fifteen and small for his age, his mentor, the great racing genius Mr. St. John, had trusted him as jockey for the first time. And he had not let them down. “I tole him I cud do it, didn't I, Major?” he asked Brand.
“That you did, and you were right.”
“He eased up on the reins too much around the first turn. The inattentiveness of youth,” Sin said with a world-weary sigh that belied his own pride in his charge.
“In-tent-what?” Mathias asked. “Whatever that means, it must be good.”
“You haven't been keeping up with your studies,” Sin scolded.
“Considering how busy we've kept him on the racing circuit this spring, that's hardly his fault,” Brand said. Turning to the young jockey, he warned, “Just don't start thinking that you can make your way as a jockey without an education, or the grifters who hang around racetracks will steal you blind.”
“I knows—er, know, Major,” Mathias corrected himself. “And I promise to finish that primer before we head on home to River Trails.”
“See that you do. I shall quiz you on it,” Sin interjected sternly, but he allowed Mathias one of his rarely seen genuine smiles.
“Lord, after the past six weeks I've all but lost track of the states, not to mention the towns, we’ve been through,” Brand said as they walked the spent horse slowly toward the barn where Mathias and Sin would cool him down. “It’ll be good to put my feet back on Kentucky bluegrass.”
Sin snorted. “You just have an aversion to Federals, that's all.”
“Don't have an aversion to taking their money. None at all,” Brand replied with a chuckle. Then his expression turned grim. “Damnation, what's she doing here?”
“Intent on making trouble, that I can predict,” Sin murmured.
Reba Wilcox sashayed toward them, twirling a frilly pink parasol. One gloved hand held up her skirts daintily so the hem did not touch the muddy grass. Her golden curls were piled high beneath a straw bonnet trimmed with pale pink roses that matched her gown. For daytime, it was cut scandalously low, revealing more creamy flesh than current fashion approved. But Reba had never wanted social approval. Only money…and Brandon Caruthers.
“Why, imagine finding you here, Brand,” she exclaimed ingenuously, batting thick golden lashes against her subtly rouged cheeks. “I was visiting my second cousin once removed—you do recall me mentioning the Cincinnati Cunninghams, don't you? Well,” she continued without giving him a chance to reply, “Cousin Stephan suggested we come to the race and you know how horse-mad I've always been. However could I resist?”
“Ladies don’t attend this sort of race, Reba,” Brand said, crossing his arms over his chest and giving her a look that clearly indicated what he thought about her presence at the track.
“Now don’t be rude,” she scolded with a mock pout, reaching up to take his arm, tugging it to indicate that they should walk. When he did not move, she said, “We need to speak privately, away from your darkies.” The moment she said it, she could feel Brand's muscles stiffen beneath her fingers, but she ignored his anger and bestowed a blinding smile. “Please, Brand?”
Darkies! Not half as dark as the space between your ears! But Sin's face remained expressionless. Since returning to America from Britain where his English father had taken him to be educated, St. John had learned to curb his bold tongue around the flower of Southern womanhood—even if this particular flower was actually a weed.
“Why don't you and Mathias see that Reiver is cooled down? I'll be along directly,” Brand asked his friend with a weary sigh.
Wordlessly, Sin nodded. He and the young jockey led the horse away. Brand turned back to Reba, making no attempt to stroll with her or allow her to put her hands on him again. “Say what you have to say and be done with it.”
“Don't be cross,” she wheedled. “After all we meant to each other—”
“We no longer mean anything to each other, Mrs. Wilcox. You made your bed with Earl. Now lie in it—if there's room enough after he flops onto it.”
Reba stamped her foot, then looked up at him with crystalline tears gleaming prettily in her cornflower-blue eyes. “What would you have had me do, Brand? Sleep in a dirt-floor cabin with slaves?”
“River Trails never owned a slave, Reba.” His voice was flat. “But as to your sleeping in a rude cabin, I can’t imagine it under any circumstances. That’s why you chose your banker. Quite a fancy big house he has in town. Hear his daddy in Frankfort has one even bigger he'll inherit one day. You should be overjoyed.”
She twisted the handle of her parasol and let several plump teardrops trickle down her cheeks. “I'm not. I'm utterly miserable because I still love you, Brand. Earl is just a boy.” She gave a delicate shiver. “And he's fat!”
Brand laughed, realizing that his misplaced affection for this girl-woman was completely gone. He thanked whatever powers were in charge of the firmaments that he had not married her before going off to war. He could well imagine the living hell he'd have faced upon returning to a wife forced to endure the hardships of rebuilding River Trails with him. “Earl's been fat ever since we were children, Reba. I'd think you could get him frisky enough in bed to shake off forty pounds.”
She raised her hand to slap him but he caught it, holding her wrist as she hissed at him, “The war's made you crude and cruel, Brand. How dare you say such a thing to me after I've bared my heart to you! You're going to be sorry.” She yanked her hand free and massaged her wrist, looking up at him with a crafty expression on her small, catlike face. “Maybe I'll forgive you one day…or maybe I won't.”
The next two weeks passed in a blur as they moved from track to track on the racing circuit. Reiver faced the best and fastest horses everywhere, from rural outposts in southern Indiana to prosperous sporting events in St. Louis. Everywhere they went, they won. Sin kept control of the money and hid it in Mathias’s shabby knapsack. Any racetrack sharpies looking to steal from them would never think to examine a black youth’s meager possessions—even if they got past Brand’s .45 caliber Remington.
As they sat around a campfire after their last race before heading home, Sin wrote in his precise script, recording the day's receipts.
“If only we have enough to satisfy that damnable vulture Wilcox,” Brand said, sipping from a tin cup of bitter chicory coffee.
Sin added the day's winnings to the running tally he'd kept in his head over the past months. “We're within a few hundred dollars. When we win in Lexington, we'll have the whole of it.”
“We'd better,” Brand replied grimly.
Rebuilding the burned-out stud farm and purchasing new stock had taken longer than either Brand or Sin had realized it would. Much of the backbreaking work of cutting timber and erecting stables and corrals they had done themselves. Brand had hired freedmen who knew horses and were willing to pitch in doing what horse trainers normally considered menial labor. But if the major himself was willing to grow calluses with a hammer and saw, they were willing to join him.
Midnight Reiver won almost every time he raced, but the purses in these hardscrabble times after the war were frequently meager. If not for their heavy winnings in St. Louis, they would not have found the trip worthwhile.
His biggest problem was paying his taxes. Brand had been expecting his taxes to reflect how much less his land was worth because of the destruction of the war. Instead they were higher than ever. And back taxes kept compounding interest, making it almost impossible to pay off the debts. The Kentucky Unionists were as guilty of squeezing every penny out of former Confederates as were the carpetbaggers in those states that had seceded. Kentucky had remained in the Union, but her people had been evenly divided in their loyalties. Now those who had been Federal supporters sat in the catbird seat. In Fayette County their leader was his former fiancée’s husband, Earl Wilcox.
Brand had
been forced to endure the double humiliation of seeking a loan from a Union bank and from the man to whom Reba had sold herself. The terms were usurious but the only ones he was going to get, and Brand had taken them. So far, he’d kept up with payments. Barely.
* * * *
They arrived at River Trails on a warm afternoon, tired but happy to be home. Before Brand could dismount, Ulysses, their cook, came running out of the log cabin the men were sharing, skillet in his hand, forgotten in the excitement. “Major, sir! They're fixin’ to sell the place. Right this afternoon! The old man continued babbling, practically in tears as Brand strode toward him.
“Whoa, Uly, who's fixing to sell what?” Brand asked, with a hot knot of dread tightening in his gut. “Slow down and start at the beginning.”
In moments he was riding hell-bent for Lexington. Sin followed at a no less dangerous pace. Within an hour Brand galloped up to the steps of the courthouse and pushed his way through the noisy crowd toward a wooden podium obviously brought from inside.
Judge Harkins was banging a gavel, trying to quiet the men and women as they yelled boisterously. This was the most excitement in Fayette County since the last time Colonel John Hunt Morgan had ridden home with his infamous raiders. Dogs barked and men spit great lobs of tobacco while jugs of corn whiskey were upended all around. Some were celebrating, others consoling themselves over the end of an era. Gradually the noise level subsided as people recognized Major Brandon Caruthers. Mostly, they stepped back respectfully. A quiet hum of whispering filled the late afternoon air.
“What's he gonna do now?”
“Whut kin he do?” a companion responded.
“Crock of shit if'n yew ask me.”
“Aw, Billie, who'd ever ask yew anythin', even ‘bout shit?”
That sally was greeted with a bit of laughter, which quickly died as Brand stood in front of Judge Harkins. Every eye in the assembly stared at them with a mixture of horror and fascination.
“I understand you intend to auction off my land without so much as a by-your-leave, Judge,” Brand said.
The judge tried to meet the fierce gaze of Colonel John Hunt Morgan's favorite officer, but could not. At the moment he was damn grateful the ‘Thunderbolt of the South” was cold in his grave, although he felt some trepidation about Morgan's ghost rising up to smite him. “Now, Major Caruthers, you know you've been delinquent with your taxes—”
“I've got the money, Judge. Right here.” Brand raised his fist, filled with Federal currency.
“It's too late, son,” the judge said, casting a nervous glance toward where Earl Wilcox stood with a smirk wreathing his plump features.
“The deadline for making a tax payment isn't for another two weeks,” Brand said, stepping closer to the judge, who seemed to shrink inside his fancy new black suit.
Beads of perspiration broke out on Asa Harkins's leathery face, dripping into his heavy eyebrows and beard. “That's not strictly true, Major.”
“Oh, and what is ‘strictly true,’ then?” Brand asked through gritted teeth. He could feel Wilcox's eyes on him.
Harkins swallowed hard and tried not to look at the banker. ‘The regular deadline applies only to current taxes. You're paying on back taxes.”
“Me and half the folks in Kentucky! Damn, Judge, most of the folks in Fayette County are behind in their taxes. We were off fighting a war.”
“A war that you unfortunately lost.” A clear, high-pitched voice rang across the wide stone steps leading up to the courthouse. As if waiting for the most dramatic moment to make his appearance, Earl Wilcox strolled toward the podium. He was a short man, running—no, dashing—to fat. His skin was soft and as pale as buttermilk, owing to the hours he spent inside the marble interior of his father's bank, the only one in the Bluegrass to remain solvent after the war.
“I might’ve known you'd be behind this, Wilcox,” Brand said tightly, crossing his arms over his chest to keep from seizing that flabby white neck and wringing it like Uly would a chicken's. “What does the war—whatever goddamn side I was on—have to do with my taxes?” The dangerous light in his eyes dampened Wilcox's smirk a bit.
“Why, nothing at all. It's just that you borrowed quite a sizable amount from my bank. Our investors have the right to worry about recovering that loan when you can't pay your back taxes.” He paused to lick his thick lips in nervous anticipation.
“So you went crying to the judge here. Just to ‘protect your investors.’ ”
“By putting River Trails up for public auction, the county recovers what it's owed and the bank loan is repaid by the new owner,” Wilcox replied with a pompous smirk.
“Oh, and just precisely who is that new owner?” With a twisting gut, he knew. He also knew he was going to choke the life out of Earl Wilcox.
Casting a furtive glance around to see that the sheriff was nearby, Wilcox replied, “My wife has always fancied being mistress of River Trails. Now she will be.”
When Brand lunged at him, Wilcox squealed like a pig hoisted for slaughter. But St. John slipped through the crowd and jumped on his far larger friend's back as he would leap atop a large thoroughbred. He whispered, “Easy, old chap. Squeeze him too hard and we'll drown in grease.” By the time he pried Brand's hand from Wilcox's throat, the elderly sheriff had placed himself between the two men and faced Caruthers while Earl's clerk thumped the banker on his back until he quit coughing.
Sheriff Cy McCracken's rheumy eyes gazed sadly on the younger man, whose father had been a close friend. “Sorry as kin be ‘bout this here mess, Brand, but law's on his side—even if he is a fat lazy hawg,” he added in a low voice, eliciting sniggers from the crowd, most of whom thoroughly disliked the Wilcox family but also owed its bank money. “They ain't a thang I kin do. Damn shame.”
By now Sin had released his hold on Brand. “We'd better go before there's more trouble.” He waited to see what would happen next, praying Earl Wilcox had enough sense to keep his mouth shut while he was still breathing.
Fortunately, Wilcox backed away in silence, a petulant look of triumph written all over his face. The sheriff kept an uneasy watch on the two antagonists as Sin steered his friend down the steps.
I wonder if he knows his wife still fancies Brand.
As if giving voice to Sin's thought, Brand said, “She told me I'd be sorry. We should've headed straight home from Cincinnati.”
“Without the money we made in St. Louis, we could not have paid the taxes in any case. The land is gone, but you still have Reiver, the mares and colts.” Weak words of consolation, even to Sin's own ears. He knew that losing the Caruthers birthright, land that had been in his family for generations, was a stunning blow to Brand.
“We'd best get back to River Trails and round up the stock before Wilcox takes it into his mind to have my broodmares held for ransom with the land,” Brand said.
As they made their way through the crowd, many well-wishers offered the major condolences, even places where he could stable his horses free of charge until he got back on his feet.
St. John followed Brand, remaining silent as his companion thanked friends and neighbors for their kindness. They did not acknowledge the small man of mixed race.
In this class-conscious society, much as it had been in England, Sin was a man no one understood. Few felt easy around him. To the Kentuckians he was a foreigner, his father an Englishman and his mother a Jamaican.
The two men mounted wearily and rode up Main Street at a far slower pace than they'd ridden down it earlier. Just as they were turning the corner onto Broadway, Asa Harkins's voice echoed after them. Brand reined in and waited as the old judge, riding in his little black buggy, approached. He clutched a letter in one hand, which he was waving at Caruthers.
“In the excitement earlier, I almost forgot this. It came while you were away. Since...” Harkins's voice faded awkwardly for a moment before he regained his composure. “What I mean to say is that since there was no way to leave it at River Trails, the
new postmaster asked me to hold it until you returned. It came all the way from London, England.”
Sin watched as Brand bent down and took the dog-eared missive from the judge, who watched in rapt fascination as the major began to open it. It might as well have come from the moon, Sin thought, silently amused at the older man's provincial curiosity.
As Brand read, a look of bemusement replaced the weary resignation of moments earlier. “Well, I'll be damned,” he said softly to himself, passing the letter along to Sin.
As he started to read, he knew the judge was irritated that he could do so and that a white man had been willing to share such a confidence with a man of color. But that consideration was pushed to the back of his mind by the time he'd skimmed the second paragraph. Sin whistled low and gave Brand a mock bow.
“Well, Rushcroft, I suppose congratulations are in order. Mr. Gideon H. St. John, your obedient servant, m'lord.”
Chapter Two
“Isn't he quite the dashing one?” Mrs. Horton whispered behind her fan.
Miranda, preoccupied in watching Lorilee dancing with Geoffrey Winters, had not taken note. She scanned the crowded ballroom as the elderly widow blathered on while beating the stuffy air with her fan.
“The scandal sheets call him the Rebel Baron. He was one of those Confederate Cavaliers during their recent war, you know. Inherited the Rushcroft title, but little else is known about him.”
Miranda's gaze fixed on the subject of Elvira Horton's discourse. “My, a mere American and he received an invitation to the Moreland ball. Of course, he is a peer and we're but commoners,” Miranda said dryly. The way society segregated people had always offended her sense of fairness. She knew that if she had not been wealthy enough, Lady Moreland would never have deigned to invite her. Nor would she have come in any case if not for Lori.
“At least we're of good solid English blood. Heaven only knows how his might have been contaminated,” Elvira said. Her eyes remained fixed on the tall stranger standing at the opposite edge of the large room. “He is a handsome devil, I'll give him that.”
