Despair settled coldly in Katherine’s chest. “My eldest sons fought for the Union,” she told him. “One is dead and the other is in a Confederate prison.”
“Your husband is a Reb and your sons enlisted for the Union side?” he asked, amazed.
“Yes. They went East and joined a regiment there so there’d be no chance of them fighting their own father one day.” She paused, her throat aching. “It was an act of conscience and honor.”
She and Chatham traded awkward, almost sympathetic looks. Katherine wondered if he had a kind-hearted soul beneath the bittemess war had brought him.
“Please, Colonel,” she whispered. “I beg you to let my husband go.”
He looked away wearily. “I’m a man of duty, madam. I can’t turn a prisoner loose.”
“Duty,” she repeated with disdain. “You destroy my family and my home for duty.” She raised one hand and pointed at the colonel, then murmured an incantation in Cherokee.
He glowered at her. “Madam, I’ve heard stories about your witchcraft. I’m not swayed by it.”
“I’m a seer, not a tsgili. I cast no spells. I see what God intends. There will be a bond of darkness between my family and yours. Only God can change that.”
She turned and glided from his tent, leaving him spellbound.
IN HIS MIND Justis relived his memories—the first time Katlanicha Blue Song, wary and full of fight, had shared his bed; the day she had admitted that she loved him as much as he loved her; the marriage that had produced four fine children.
They had shared all the happiness that came from living da-nitaka, so close in spirit that they stood in each other’s souls, and he loved her more now than he had the day they’d met.
“Osiyo, Father,” a voice whispered behind him.
Justis turned slowly, all his senses alert. In the moonlight beyond the tree crouched a lanky, handsome boy dressed in buckskins, his black hair streaming down his back.
Pride and love mingled with fear in Justis. “Holt. Get out of here, Son. There’s nothing you can do.”
But Holt slipped soundlessly forward and fiddled with the manacles. With a sharp click they fell open. “Mother bribed a soldier to get the key.”
Justis clasped his son’s arm. “Your mother—”
“Is waiting for us.” Holt’s teeth flashed white in the darkness. “Put your good arm around my shoulder. Father, and let’s leave this place behind.”
SHE HELD JUSTIS’s head in her lap as Holt drove the wagon through the darkness. Crying silently, Katherine stroked a wet cloth across her husband’s face.
He reached up and grasped her hand. “You weren’t worried that those Yanks would hang an old buzzard like me, were you, Katie gal?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Sir, you gave me a fright.” She bent over him, kissed him tenderly, and whispered, “How would I live without you?”
They were silent for a long moment, their lips not quite touching, his hand squeezing hers more tightly as he struggled for composure. Finally he asked, “Where’d you get enough money to bribe somebody for the key?”
“I traded the medallions to one of Chatham’s men.”
“Katie.”
She shook her head. “Saving you was more important than saving some gold pieces from the old homeland. They were just a silly notion of mine, anyway.” She slipped her hand inside his shirt, then gasped.
“I gave the nugget to Chatham,” Justis told her. “He was supposed to send it to you after I was dead.”
She stroked his chest. “Oh, husband. Then we have nothing left of the land but memories.”
He drew her closer with his good hand. “The land will always be there waiting for us,” he promised gently. “We’ll go back.”
Katherine rested her forehead on his and laid her hand over his heart, her fingers as light as a spirit.
Someday.
Deborah Smith told the compelling love story of Katherine Blue Song and Justis Gallatin in BELOVED WOMAN, a Bantam Fanfare novel published in April 1991. If you missed it, be sure to ask your bookseller for this unforgettable historical novel
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