Kendall turned again and kept walking into the darkness, now more puzzled than frightened. How could this Indian possibly know her name? It was as if the Michelle had been attacked with the sole purpose of taking her hostage.
There was more than sand on the tiny island. She came at last to a straggly mangrove stump and ducked behind it. Her confusion increased further as she opened the leather satchel. She had expected to find Indian clothing inside, a dress like the colorful shirts the men had donned.
There was a dress in the satchel, yes. But it was not Indian. It was a cotton day dress, not unlike the damp one she began to remove in jerky, thoughtless motions as her head spun in bewilderment. What was happening?
Kendall began to hurry, determined to return quickly to the warmth of the fire—and to Red Fox. She was becoming more and more convinced that the Indians intended her no harm—not at this time, anyway. She was for the Night Hawk. And apparently the Night Hawk wielded at least as much power as Red Fox—and he had ordered that she was not to be molested. That thought could give her courage for the moment.
So thinking, Kendall fastened the last of the buttons on her dry dress, gathered up the soaked one, and stalked back to the camp.
Blankets were strewn about the fire. Some of the men were eating, chewing strips of meat they held in their hands. Three of the warriors were already curled into their blankets.
Red Fox sat cross-legged exactly where she had left him. The only surprise was the coffeepot that sat on a chunk of coral in the center of the fire.
Kendall emitted a little cry of joy and boldly sat cross-legged before Red Fox. “Coffee! How nice. However, I would like some water first.”
Red Fox was willing to extend only so much hospitality to his captive. He tossed her a tin cup and a flask. She opened the flask and poured herself a generous amount of water, drank it thirstily in what seemed a single gulp, and then repeated the procedure. She suddenly felt the heat of his hand on her arm. “Not so fast. You will cramp your belly.”
The dark eyes were enigmatic. Kendall nodded, and slowly sipped the rest of the water, bluntly staring at him. He grunted with impatience when she finished the last of the water, and poured her coffee with obvious annoyance. When she had accepted the tin once more, he waved a piece of the dried meat beneath her nose. She accepted that, too, biting into it hungrily while she continued to survey him. “Thank you,” she murmured with sweet sarcasm after she swallowed her first bite of the meat, which was not at all bad tasting. “You’re ever so kind. Southern hospitality—southern Indian style, that is.”
Red Fox grunted again. “Eat, white woman.”
“Mrs. Moore.”
The only reply was another grunt.
“Are you a chief, Red Fox?”
“Yes.”
“Of what?”
His dark eyes now narrowed suspiciously. “I am a chief of my tribe.”
“Yes, yes, I gathered that,” Kendall said impatiently. “I mean, are you a Seminole?”
“No, and yes. I am a son of the great Osceola. Who was English—and Seminole. But my mother is Mikasuki. And you are too talkative. Eat your food, white woman. I want to sleep.”
Kendall glanced about her. She had sensed a quiet, and she noticed now that all the warriors had curled into their blankets. She exhaled a little breath, surprised by these strange bronze men with their dark eyes and fathomless expressions. They truly ignored her and left her care entirely to their chief.
“We are not beasts, white woman. Nor are we savages. No more than any man when his land is attacked.”
Kendall flushed as her eyes returned to those of Red Fox. Then she asked softly but bluntly, “Then why did you attack us? Why did you kidnap me?”
“The Night Hawk wishes to see you,” Red Fox replied.
“But that is insane!” Kendall exclaimed. “I have never seen a Florida Indian before in my life! I have never harmed an Indian!”
Red Fox stood and picked up her blanket and tossed it over her. “Be quiet and go to sleep. And don’t think to stab us in the night. We awake at the smallest rustle of the breeze, and if you disturb me, I will tie you for the rest of the journey.”
Kendall tossed the blanket from her head and sipped her coffee aware that the irate Indian stood over her. “I hardly think little old me could stab seven braves in the night,” she replied dryly. She did not look at Red Fox, but somehow sensed delightedly, that he stared at her with confusion and discomfort. At last he emitted another of his very impatient grunts, and picked up his own blanket. He did not move far away, and when he lay down—his back to her in challenge—she continued to sip her coffee. But at last she, too, felt the weariness that gripped the Indian. Her words had been true. It would be suicide to steal a knife and try to stab seven healthy, husky braves in the night. And there was only the eternity of the black night sea and the brief span of sand and stumps to escape to.
Sighing tiredly and fighting tears of despair, Kendall stretched out, trying to find comfort on the hard-packed sand. She could never sleep on such hardness.
But she did. Her eyes closed even as her weary body gave out, and she didn’t feel discomfort at all as she laid her cheek on the rough blanket. She sank into a sweet oblivion almost instantly.
Dawn broke with pink-streaked sunlight. Kendall felt the growing heat on her eyelids, and as she blinked awake, she became aware of pleasant aromas and the still strange sound of Indian voices.
Shielding her eyes as she sat up warily, she looked around her. The fire still burned. And once again, it heated a battered tin coffeepot. But a cast-iron skillet also sat over the heat, and the smell of fresh fish cooking brought a growl of hunger to her stomach. One brave tended the skillet while another was busy with a knife, carving more neat fillets to place on the fire.
“You slept well, white woman.”
Kendall turned with a start. Red Fox stood behind her. She hadn’t heard a sound, and the fact that he could come upon her so silently was disconcerting. She scowled up at him.
“Not badly,” she agreed, adding a sarcastic, “considering the circumstances, brown man.”
She was pleased to see the Indian’s features tighten—for him, a stark expression of anger. She smiled sweetly, and deepened her rich Charleston accent until her voice was as syrupy as maple sugar. “I do declare! More coffee! May I impose upon you, brown man? I do just adore my mornin’ coffee.”
Red Fox at last emitted a sharp growl of irritation. “All right, Kendall Moore. I will call you by your name.” He lifted his finger toward the fire. “Jimmy Emathla will see that you have food. Go to him.”
Kendall smiled and did as she was told. Jimmy Emathla was apparently the brave cooking, and so she approached him. He wasn’t half bad, she thought, once he smiled. Like Red Fox, he was all muscle and athletic grace, but he didn’t appear forbidding this morning. She knew that the other warriors, pouring coffee and preparing tin plates of fish, eyed her and whispered about her, but they offered her no menace now that she seemed reconciled to her situation.
Kendall wondered what they would think if they knew that, so far, she was actually finding her situation more palatable than it often was among her own people.
Seeing Red Fox standing on the shore where the waves broke in ripples of foam, Kendall gripped her plate and cup and hurried after him. He turned with a scowl as she approached, as if his captive were a bad penny that kept reappearing to plague him. Kendall actually laughed.
“If you would just release me, Red Fox, I would not annoy you so,” she told him with both humor and a pleading sincerity.
He stared at her, neither smiling nor scowling. “You will not be released, Kendall Moore.”
The quiet conviction in his voice frightened her far more thoroughly than any threat could have done. Swiftly determining that he would not see how badly his words had shaken her, she raised her cup to him. “This is really delicious. It surprises me. I didn’t know that Seminoles were morning coffee drinkers.”
“The coffee is good,” Red Fox agreed stoically. “It is Colombian.” He twirled the word on his tongue, as if he had a natural curiosity about the place with such a name. He shrugged, and his next sentence chilled her further. “We have much coffee. It is a gift from the Night Hawk.”
He turned, calling to his men and leaving her standing on the shore with the waves breaking and the coffee churning in her stomach.
“Eat, Kendall Moore,” Red Fox called back to her. “We leave now. We have far to go this day.”
Kendall sank to the sand with her back to him and ate the fish. It was good; not the tiniest bone remained in the fillet. These Seminoles, she decided, knew how to wield their knives.
The camp was broken in a matter of minutes. Two braves departed in the dugouts, while Red Fox rather rudely escorted Kendall back aboard the Michelle with the rest of his warriors. He made no attempt to tie her today; perhaps he had decided she was not the suicidal type, and a plunge overboard now, away from anything familiar, would surely be suicidal.
Her worst torture of the day was provided by her own mind. Left alone as the Indians sailed, she asked herself the same questions over and over. Where were they taking her? Why? Who was the Night Hawk? How could she possibly have offended a Seminole Indian when she had never even seen one before?
By late afternoon they were traveling through an area where small mangrove-fringed islands dotted the sea, becoming more and more numerous. She feared somewhat for the safety of the Michelle, yet it appeared that her Indian navigators did know these waters well. The hull struck none of the reefs that seemed so prevalent in the water.
Where were they? Kendall wondered. Close to the Florida mainland? Yes, surely, for soon they were entering a river, and to both port and starboard all she could see was mile after mile of thick long grass and swamp and mud.
Panic seized her heart. Dear God, she should have chosen the ocean. Now there was nothing, nowhere to go. From the muddy banks of the river she saw a log move, and then as it neared, she saw that it was not a log at all. It appeared to be an immense and grotesque monster from another age. The creature made a plopping sound as it moved into the water, but then its body became sleek and quick with movement; only the eyes and tip of the snout visible above the surface.
“Alligator.”
Kendall jumped and swallowed quickly at the sound of the voice whispering in her ear.
Red Fox appeared quite pleased to have frightened her. “He is hungry. It is dusk, and he seeks his dinner. An egret. Gulp. One bite. Wild boar. Two bites. A man . . . or a woman. Four or five bites. Maybe six.”
Kendall searched out the Indian’s eyes. They were dark and fathomless in the waning light, yet she was sure she still offered him amusement. She turned to stare at the bank of the river once more. “How very interesting,” she murmured.
She felt the Indian’s whisper close to her ear. “Interesting, Kendall Moore? Are you not frightened?”
She turned to stare at him again, her spine stiffened, her shoulders squared. “No.”
“Do not be stupid. You should be frightened.”
“Do you intend to feed me to the alligators?”
“I intend to do nothing—except give you to the Night Hawk. I tell you only that the land does not welcome the white man. There is mud that will suck you under. Alligators that will eat you. Snakes that can give you a poison with such strength that you die where you stand.”
Despite herself, Kendall shivered. Red Fox spun around to face the stern, about to leave her. Impulsively Kendall clutched at his arm, drawing him back around to face her. “Please! What have I done to this Night Hawk?” she demanded. “I swear to you I have harmed no Indians! I’ve never been on the Florida mainland.”
Red Fox stared at her a long time. Kendall stood tense as she waited, certain her plea had touched whatever heart lurked beneath the strength of his bronzed chest. But at last he shook his arm free. “The Night Hawk is not a murderer of women. I tell you these things because you are brave and possibly stupid. Do not try to escape. Whatever the Night Hawk decides about your punishment, it will not be as cruel as the fangs of the moccasin.”
Kendall clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out as Red Fox strode to the helm. Dear God! He was telling her her choices. The vengeance of the Night Hawk, or the fangs of a snake. Or the jaws of an alligator. Or quicksand.
“What could I have done?” she whispered pathetically. From the port side a bird whooped out a sharp and lonely call, sending a wave of cold terror through her. Night was falling fast, and darkness was bringing horrid shadows to the swamp. A mosquito buzzed about her face, and she slapped at it furiously. Something crashed into the water from the bank, but the dusk was so murky that she could not see the creature. Another alligator? “Sweet Jesus!” she whispered in a soft plea. Then she spun about on the deck and passed two of the braves to hurry down the few steps to the small cabin. She heard Red Fox’s pleased laughter follow her, but she didn’t give a damn.
Tears filled her eyes when she was alone. Somewhere far away, there was beauty. A beauty she had survived this far to return to someday. A manor with tall Georgian columns reaching clean and white to the sky where meals were served on a long oak table polished with beeswax until it gleamed. Where men read in the library and smoked small cheroots as they consumed their brandy. Where beautiful women chatted and gossiped, where the cotton fields grew as far as the eye could see and the manner of living was as gracious as the soft clouds of a summer’s day . . .
Cresthaven.
And men were fighting for that way of life now, far away, and not so far away. She had been imprisoned within a Union barracks, and now she was being dragged into a swamp . . .
The Confederacy, she thought with a dry bitterness that almost brought hysterical laughter to her lips. She was at last within the Confederacy. This dismal swamp was part of Florida, part of the Confederate States of America . . . Men were dying for saw grass and quicksand and alligators. Men were fighting . . .
John! Oh, dear God. This was all John Moore’s fault. She knew her husband to be a cruel man—and he hated Indians. Perhaps on one of his trips he had run into Indians, and perhaps he had done something to this Night Hawk. What? Slain his family? John considered all Indians savages; he would shoot a Seminole child as easily as he would a wolf.
Kendall clasped her hands together, unaware that her fingernails had dug so deeply into her flesh that they drew blood.
The fangs of a snake were beginning to seem preferable to the treatment she would receive at the hands of the Night Hawk.
Kendall remained in the cabin until she heard shouting on deck. From the movements of the braves, she knew that the anchor was being cast. She moved to the companionway, but tripped on the hem of her dress. Struggling to her feet, she started when the area was suddenly illuminated. Glancing up, she saw that Red Fox held a lantern for her. “Come,” he said. “We can go ashore in the dugouts.”
With no other choice available, Kendall followed him. The other braves awaited them in the dugouts. “Take this.” Red Fox gave Kendall the lantern, then grabbed the rail and jackknifed over the side. His body splashed water high, but Kendall saw that he stood in the river, which was very shallow. She felt the blood drain from her face as she remembered the alligators they had passed, but Red Fox showed no fear. “Come,” he told her impatiently.
He wanted her to walk in the swamp river in the darkness. She started to back away, shaking her head.
“Come!” Red Fox persisted. He held out his arms. “Hold the lantern high. I will carry you.”
She bit her lip, but then hurried to the rail. If she aggravated him now, he might change his mind, and she might find herself dumped into the swamp.
She held the lantern high as he lifted her from the boat, and into the hold of his strong arms. Kendall held the lantern with her left hand; her right arm instinctively curled around his shoulder and neck so that she would not fall.
&
nbsp; His body was warm, his flesh smooth and brown and slightly oiled. Studying at close range his strongly chiseled features, Kendall blushed, aware of her intimacy with the strange Indian. His eyes fell on hers, barely inches away. Nervously, Kendall began to talk. “Your English is excellent.”
He grunted. Red Fox offered information, it seemed, only when it was in his interest to do so.
“Where did you learn to speak the language so well?”
His eyes fell on her again, and the dark, brooding depths within them warned her she wouldn’t like the answer.
“I spoke the white man’s language as a boy. I was but a small child when the white men tricked my father with a white flag of truce. I was eight years old when Osceola died in the walls of their prison. Osceola warned us all that it was well to understand the English words spoken, for always a trap lay behind them.”
Kendall fell silent as Red Fox walked through the waist-deep water. Osceola had died at Fort Moultrie. She hadn’t been born until two years after the chief’s death, but the story of Osceola had become popular among Charleston’s children. It seemed strange to her now that Osceola should have died in the same city where the first shots had been fired in the Civil War that now raged.
Another of the infernal night birds shrieked, and she tightened her hold around Red Fox’s neck. She saw the snicker on his lips and snapped at him in anger. “I do not know the swamp, Red Fox. But as the Indian has learned it, so can the white man—or woman.”
He twisted his head and smiled at her, ignoring her comment. “It is thanks to the Night Hawk that my English improves with the years.”
Their eyes locked in combat as Red Fox at last reached a dugout. Kendall realized that he parried each of her thinly veiled threats with one of his own.
He set her down hard on her rear in the dugout, and then climbed in himself, waving a go-ahead to the braves who waited. They began to pull through the shallow, grass-flanked water with long poles.
“We are not far,” Red Fox said.
Tomorrow the Glory Page 6
