But why, then—after he wrote to her that he was coming—was she not here? What was he to do now? Wait for her until he grew old and his days ran out?
He could not do that. He would not live his life that way. Better to walk away now than to be sent away later.
Fury burned away the chill. But it also awakened that part of him too stubborn to give up . . . not even when he hung in agony from the ropes during the Sun Dance Ceremony . . . or when he saw his chief killed and the People driven from their lands onto government reservations . . . or when he searched tirelessly, despite his wounds, to find Prudence after Lone Tree took her.
He would not walk away this time. He would go to this other place—this Indianapolis. He would find Prudence Lincoln and tell her what was in his heart. Then he would go back to his mountains. If she chose to stay here, that would be the end of it. He would put her from his life forever.
If he could.
He looked down at the girl staring blankly across the yard, her thin fingers tugging at a loose thread on her worn cuff. “Where is this place called Indianapolis?”
She looked up.
Her eyes might be blank, but he sensed a sharp intelligence hidden behind them. This girl was not stupid.
“You go after her? ’Cause I tell you how to get there. I even get you a map.” She leaned closer to whisper at his jacket. “But you gots to take me with you. Miss Pru need both us to get her away from Mistuh Marsh.”
Thomas almost smiled, amused that she thought he needed help from a blind girl who probably weighed little more than his pouch of extra clothes. “I cannot take you with me.”
Chin jutting, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Then I ain’t helping.”
“Good-bye, Lillian.” He picked up his leather bag.
“Where you goin’?”
Ignoring the panic in her voice, he started down the steps into the yard.
“You cain’t jist leave me!” She stumbled forward, hands clutching at air. “A po’ blind black girl who ain’t got nobody to look out for her, not even a dog to lick away her tears!”
“Go inside, Lillian,” he called over his shoulder.
“Don’t go!” She flung herself toward him.
With a curse, he dropped the bag and caught her before she flew headfirst down the steps. “You foolish katse’e,” he scolded, setting her back on her feet. “You could have hurt yourself!”
Behind him, the door swung open. A man in a dark collarless coat over a plain white shirt stepped onto the porch. “What’s going on out here? Lillie, what mischief have thee done this time?”
When she tucked her head without answering, the Quaker turned his attention to Thomas. “I’m Joseph Matthews,” the older man said. “Administrator of the school. Who might thee be?”
“Thomas Redstone.”
“The man seeking Miss Lincoln?”
Thomas nodded.
“Didn’t Friend Laudner tell thee she was in Indianapolis?”
“Yes, but she did not tell me when she would be back.”
“We don’t know when she’ll be back.”
Thomas thought for a moment. “She knew I would come. She left no message for me?”
“None that I’m aware of. I’m sorry, friend.” Turning to the girl, he held out his hand. “Come along, child,” he said, gently.
“No.” The girl fumbled until she found Thomas’s hand. Taking it in both of hers, she grinned at the Quaker’s stomach. “I’m going with Daddy.”
• • •
Ten minutes later, Thomas walked back toward the Schuler train station, this time with two bags of clothes and a beaming little black girl by his side.
“I know’d you catch me ’afore I fall down the steps,” the girl said, clinging to his arm as they walked along the rutted road. “You a good daddy. Gots any other chilrin ’sides me?”
“No. And I am not your father.” He had spoken those words many times . . . to her, the Quaker, and anyone else who would listen before they shoved them both out the door of the school. They all seemed eager to send the girl away with him. He could guess why.
“I knows you ain’t.”
“Then why did you tell them I was?”
“’Cause I need a daddy and they wouldn’t let me go with you if you wasn’t. Slow down. I’m just a po’ little blind girl, ’member?”
More like heavoheso—a devil—in pigtails. Reining in his temper, Thomas slowed his pace. He did not know what to do with this strange child. He was not a nursemaid. “Where are your parents?”
“You mean ’sides you?”
“I am not your father.”
“Don’t know where my other daddy is. He sold off ’fore I born. Mama gone to Jesus. Drowned. Up and walk out the field one day, straight into the river. Overseer find her floatin’ in the weeds. You know skin turn white and come off you stay in the water too long?”
Thomas kept walking, not sure what to say. The girl had lied about him being her father. Maybe she lied about this, as well. He hoped so.
“Mama always want to be white,” she said after a while. “Guess she got her wish. She make a pretty white lady, sho’ ’nuff. Miss Pru pretty?”
“Yes.”
“That probably ’cause she half white.”
Thomas smirked at the notion. “It is not the color of her skin that makes her pretty. It is the goodness in her heart.” And her smile. And the way she looked at him when he touched her. Would he ever hold her against him again?
“After your mother died, who took care of you, Lillian?”
“Whoever around. Then after the fightin’ stop, the Friends come and bring us to freedom land. Been here since. They nice, even if they talk funny.”
They talk funny? Thomas wondered what Prudence Lincoln thought about the way this girl spoke. He remembered how she had sat beside him, pointing out the letters in her book and teaching him to speak in the proper way. He had not been a good student. It was hard to think about words when she sat so close.
“Hey,” the girl said, giving his hand a yank to get his attention. “Since I be your little girl, my name Lillie Redstone now?”
Thomas did not answer.
After a while, they turned onto a side road that ran along the tracks. Up ahead, the depot squatted like a beetle beside a water tower balanced on eight skinny wooden legs. A beetle and a hungry spider. He felt caught in a web, too. He still was not sure what to do when the train came. He could not leave the girl by the tracks. And he could not take her back to the school. Maybe when he found Prudence Lincoln . . .
“She not forget.”
He looked down at her. “What?”
“Miss Pru. She not forget you comin’. She leave a note for you, but Mistuh Marsh don’t give it to Friend Matthews like he say he do.”
Thomas felt a warmth spread through his chest. She had remembered.
“And he mean to Miss Pru. Take her to Indianapolis when she want to wait for you. Say she better behave. He a mean one, make Miss Pru cry like that.”
Cry? Thomas’s steps slowed. Eho’nehevehohtse never cried. Not even after he freed her from Lone Tree. Or when she tended him after he was shot, and he heard her awake from night terrors. Who was this man and why did he warn her to behave? Prudence Lincoln always behaved. When Thomas was with her, that was his hardest task—to convince her not to behave. But maybe the girl was lying about this, too.
He stopped and looked down at her bent head. “How do you know all this?”
“I listen. A shadow on the wall, that me. And I hear Miss Pru say, ‘Here the note.’ And he say, ‘I take it to Friend Matthews right now.’ But he don’t. And he don’t tell him you comin’, neither. Mistuh Marsh, he a damn liar.”
“Like you, okom?”
“No, I better’n him.” She frowned. “What okom mean?”
/> “Coyote.”
Lost in thought, Thomas resumed walking, the girl close at his side, her hand on his arm. If Prudence was in trouble, he would help her. But if he had to take this strange child with him, she must obey him so he could keep her safe.
Stopping again, he hunkered onto his heels and gripped her thin shoulders. “Listen well, katse’e.”
“Cat see what?”
“Kat-se’-e. It is the Cheyenne word for little girl.”
She frowned, her gaze fixed on a distant horizon her eyes could not see. “Cats is sneaky. I like dogs better. And horses. Chickens, they—”
“Never mind that,” he said more harshly than he should have. “Heed my words. From this day, there will be no more lies. You will speak only the truth to me, Lillian, or I will send you back to the school.”
“They not take me.”
“Then I will leave you by the tracks with your bag of clothes.”
“Would you really?”
“I would,” he lied. “Do you understand?”
“I ’pose.” A sniff. “But you not being a very nice daddy.”
The quaver in her voice left him unmoved. And unconvinced. “Now you will make your promise to me. You will tell no more lies.”
She huffed out a deep breath. “All right. No more lies.”
“And you will do what I say.”
“That two promises.”
“And you will do what I say,” he repeated through gritted teeth.
“All right! But we ain’t got time for no more promises, Daddy. The train coming.”
Behind him, a locomotive whistle blew. With a sigh, Thomas rose. If Prudence Lincoln sent him away again, he would leave this devil-child with her. It would serve them both right.
• • •
Several hours later when the sun began to slip behind the trees, their train reached Indianapolis. The girl had been talking when Thomas dozed off, and was still talking when he awoke. She had strong lungs.
And she was right. Indianapolis was a big place. Not as big as the city where the English queen lived and people spoke with a strange accent. But bigger than Schuler. With the girl anchored in one hand, and their bags of clothes gripped in the other, Thomas stepped outside the depot and looked around.
People rushed along the street as if they had someplace important to be. Many stared at them as they went by. Thomas wished he had brought his war axe instead of sending it on to Heartbreak Creek with Rayford Jessup. But he had his long knife under his jacket, tucked into his belt at his back. That would be enough if danger came.
“We just stand here all day?” the girl complained.
Probably hungry after so much talking. He was, too.
“I will find food,” he announced, and led her in the direction most of the people were headed. Before they had walked far, they came to a place that had a strong smell of cooking meat. He led the girl inside.
A worried-looking woman with fox-red hair rushed to meet them. “Coloreds ain’t allowed,” she whispered, looking around at the other tables and the white people sitting there.
“Allowed to do what?” he asked.
“Eat here. Roy, you better come.”
A big man with hair on his face and angry eyes came around from behind a counter where a brass moneybox sat. “Look here, mister—”
“Don’t hurt him!” Lillian shrieked in a loud voice, pressing against Thomas’s arm. “He only tryin’ to find my mama ’cause I a poor little blind girl and cain’t find my way! He mean no harm!”
The man called Roy looked at her in surprise. Thomas did, too. The white people watching from the tables muttered to each other.
“We leavin’,” Lillian cried, almost yanking Thomas off balance and into the branches of a plant in a pot beside the door. “Please don’t hurt us, mistuh. We just hungry, is all. Don’t mean no harm.”
“Roy, let me take them around back,” the woman whispered. “Cook can give them something and send them on their way.” When the man hesitated, she gave his arm a shake. “For heaven’s sake, Roy, the child is blind, and people are looking.”
“I can pay,” Thomas said.
A few minutes later, he was carrying the girl with her box of food across the tracks toward a grassy field.
“You promised no more lies,” he reminded her.
“Somebody gotta do something. You just stand there like a big lump while my belly scream for food.”
Setting her down beside a stump, he dropped the clothes bags and looked around. In the distance, a big white tipi stood in the middle of a grassy meadow. People went inside. Others hurried to follow.
Perched on the stump, the girl dug through the box of food. “’Sides, it not a lie. We lookin’ for my mama, sho ’nuff.”
“You said your mother was dead.”
“That my other mama. You hungry?” She pulled a chicken leg out of the box, sniffed it, then took a bite. “Mm. Tasty. Got biscuits in here, too. Want some?”
Taking a share of the food, Thomas settled beside the stump. While he ate, he watched people go into the big tipi. None came out.
The girl finished eating, then wiped her hands on the rock. “Where we sleep? Not outside. Chilrin ain’t ’posed sleep outside. Specially blind ones.”
Thomas took a bite of chicken.
From inside the tent came the sound of singing.
“You Injuns not talk much.”
Voices drifted across the field. Thomas recognized the tune as one he had heard in the Come All You Sinners of Heartbreak Creek Church.
“How long we sit here, Daddy? I gots to pee. And it cold.” With a shiver, the girl pulled her coat tight around her thin body. “I liable freeze dead we don’t find Miss Pru soon.”
Tossing his chicken bone into the brush, Thomas smiled. “We just did.”
Heroes of Heartbreak Creek 02 Page 38
