That was something else that never changed. Iola wasn’t really anybody’s aunt except Tay’s, but that was her title of respect and she loved it. She also loved ordering everybody around. Cotannah smiled and started toward her.
“Have you picked some winners yet, Auntie?”
Iola nodded vigorously.
“I’ve made my wagers, and I bet the most on Tay’s bay mare, of course,” she said, holding out her arms without bothering to heave herself up out of her chair.
Cotannah bent and embraced her, then sat down in one of several empty chairs placed in a half circle in the shade of a big oak tree.
“Where are all your friends? Where’s Hattie?”
“Not here yet. Hattie’s getting lazy in her old age. Where’s the rest of your bunch?”
“Packing the food and getting the baby ready. I came on ahead to have a quiet ride by myself.”
To have a chance to see what young men are here. To look them over and decide who my new conquest might be. To see if Jacob is here. To see if Walks-With-Spirits is coming to look over Tay’s mare as Emily promised.
Iola gave a raspy chuckle.
“A quiet ride? Don’t sound much like the Cotannah I know,” she said, narrowing her beady eyes. “You can tell me the truth, girl. You’re a’wantin’ first pick of the young warriors, I’m a-thinking.”
How could one old woman know everything?
She didn’t say it to Auntie Iola, however. It would only puff her up and make her even more difficult to deal with.
“Just like you when you were my age,” Cotannah said lightly.
“No, from what I hear, you’re a bit bolder than the girl I was.”
So. Iola did have the second sight. Or she’d had a letter from Cade.
But she said it in a tone so full of curiosity that Cotannah took no offense.
“What makes you say that?”
“Watchin’ you makin’ eyes at Jacob Charley. I was standing in the window of Brown’s store the other day while you and him acted like Emily and Ancie and Jumper wasn’t even there.”
“I was not!” Cotannah exclaimed. “Jacob was the one making eyes at me!”
Then she remembered and who was flirting with whom seemed completely unimportant.
“The baby was there, too,” Cotannah said, her heart sinking again as she remembered the sight of Sophia running beneath the tottering pile of bricks. “I tell you, Auntie, I nearly let Sophia get killed right in front of my eyes.”
“I couldn’t see you and her after y’all went behind the new mercantile,” Iola said. “But I hurried over there when the screamin’ started and got there in time to see Jacob pull his pistol on the alikchi.”
She made a derogatory clucking sound and shook her head in disapproval.
“Jacob’s just asking to be struck dead,” she said. “For somebody who’s suppose to be so clever he sure acts stupid sometimes.”
“Walks-With-Spirits told me I was stupid for even going back there by the scaffolding,” Cotannah said, and began to grow angry just remembering it. “He talked to me as if I were a backward child.”
But mixed with her anger was the stinging admiration she’d felt when he’d stood up to Jacob so coolly. Jacob and his gun. She fought it off. She was not going to let herself feel drawn to him anymore.
“He made me so mad I don’t care if I never speak to him again,” she declared stoutly.
Iola turned quickly and looked at her.
“Underneath those words, your voice is telling me something different.”
“No! It’s true. I don’t need anybody else picking me to pieces and telling me I’m wrong all the time. Cade did enough of that this spring to last me for years.”
“Did you ever think that maybe you should listen?”
“No! He’s unreasonable and bossy and so is Walks-With-Spirits!”
Iola looked at her sharply, but then Hattie’s wagon came rattling down the incline in front of them and drew Iola’s attention away. Once they’d both greeted Hattie and helped her settle into her accustomed place, Cotannah sat with the two of them only long enough to be polite. If she knew Iola—and she did—in a very short while she would go back to her original topic of conversation and there’d be two old women lecturing instead of one.
“I’ll find you both again later,” she said. “I want to go look at the horses before the first race and Emily sent a message to Tay.”
Cade, darn his hide, did write to Iola, too, Cotannah decided, as she wandered off into the sunny field. Of course he had. He had mentioned Iola when he’d announced that she was going to learn to be a “real woman in the old Choctaw way,” and he had written to Iola about every single one of Cotannah’s sins and indiscretions.
Her face grew warm and her blood rose. No, she told herself, just for today, for one nice day, she was not going to think about anything unpleasant. She wasn’t going to care if Cade had told the whole world that she was a wild, heartless, shameless user of men.
She would just find some new man and use him, she thought with a mischievous grin.
Or she’d ignore all the men and pretend that she was a young girl again, saved from the white man’s boarding school and its evil, perverted headmaster by her hero, her big brother, Cade. The old Cade, who would do anything for her and take her side on any issue; the old Cade who loved his little sister and thought she could do no wrong.
The ancient, constantly hovering question attacked without warning. As a young girl she had done no wrong. She had been shy and quiet with everyone except people she knew very well. So what had caused bad men, strangers, to manhandle her and abuse her? If none of the horror and humiliation with the headmaster, Haynes, and none of the terror and shame at the hands of the bandidos was her fault, if she was completely innocent, then why had such awful things happened to her in two different states at two different times in her life? They didn’t happen to most women even once.
Cotannah stared out at the festive scene as she walked blindly across the browning grass. That chain of thoughts fell into the rut they’d worn in her brain over the years and started going around and around, dragging their load of guilt and regret and infuriating, unsolvable mystery. What was it that was wrong with her?
She pushed the question away. She could forget it if she tried, so she made herself truly look at, really see her surroundings and think about that.
The whole scene was still the same as it had always been. The running horses dotted the landscape, each one the center of a swirl of activity by a whole gaggle of people: owner, rider, handler, stableboy, friends, family, and lookers-on, each group ensconced in a different spot of shade. Over there, halfway across the field beneath two huge sweet gum trees, stood Tay’s tall bay mare surrounded by her people.
Cotannah started in that direction. Iola would be watching for her to find Tay as she’d said she intended to do.
On her way, she waved to Hattie’s daughter, Tulla, and to Molly Leflore but luckily she was too far from them to get caught in conversation. The restlessness was coming upon her, now, bad, and she couldn’t stand still, couldn’t force herself to listen to their chatter. No, she needed stronger distractions than that to drown out the nagging question in her head.
Distractions like the two young men standing straddle-legged up ahead of her, their hats pushed carefully to the backs of their heads while they shot blowdarts at a target tacked to a stack of hay bales. As she watched, the taller one blew into his gun, but when the dart came out, the breeze caught it and carried it to the very edge of the bales where, fortunately, it did enter and stick.
“You all be careful, now,” Cotannah said in a teasing tone, slowing her steps and swishing her skirts as she strolled over to them. “My horse is out there somewhere, and I’d surely hate for you to miss that great big target completely and hit her instead.”
They both lowered the hollow canes they were shooting through and turned to her. She didn’t know either of them, but that didn’t matt
er. Soon she would.
She met the gaze of one and then the other with a saucy grin. They both grinned back at her. Didn’t they always? Men always smiled at her whether she was smiling at them or not.
Except for Walks-With-Spirits.
“You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of our marksmanship, Miss …” the taller one drawled.
His sparkling brown eyes looked her up and down. The other one did the same, but less obviously. She stopped, waited for them to come a few steps closer.
“I’m Cotannah Chisk-Ko. And, well, I don’t mean to insult your aim …” she said, glancing flirtatiously from one to the other, “… either one of you, but I couldn’t help noticing that all the animals are in danger for miles around, not to mention people.”
They were both taken aback by this honey-voiced criticism, but only for a moment.
“I’d say some people are in more danger than others,” one of them said, matching her flirtatious tone exactly.
“So, Miss Chisk-Ko,” the taller one said. “Looks like you’re in need of our protection.”
“I was thinking much the same thing,” she said, with a flashing glance from one to the other.
“Perhaps we might be so bold as to offer to escort you around the grounds today?”
“Might we take you over to the track to watch the races?” the other chimed in.
The restlessness in her heart, in her body and soul, eased just a little bit. These two would be the perfect distractions for the day. They were young and handsome and taken with her and within a few minutes she would have one or both of them swearing he was hopelessly in love with her. Yes, she would let them escort her over to look at Tay’s horse and soon she’d feel much, much better about everything.
“You might,” she said, “if you don’t require me to choose between you. I’m afraid that would prove completely impossible.”
They looked at each other, clearly startled and pleased.
“Miss Chisk-Ko,” the taller one said with a grin, “you now have escorts for the races. Would you care for some exhibition shooting until the horses begin to run?”
So they vied for her approval with the blowdarts and with silly remarks and with offers of candies and lemonade, and a few minutes later she slipped one hand into the bent elbow of each young man and they all began to walk across the race grounds in step, laughing and talking like old friends. They were cousins, Daniel and Robert Bonham, prosperous mixed bloods of a prominent family, she knew that by their name. Although they both appeared to be younger than she, they would do very nicely to amuse her today.
“Let’s go see my friend Tay Nashoba’s running mare,” she suggested, smiling sweetly at each Bonham in turn. “You gentlemen may want to place a wager on her—I hear she’s fast.”
“She is,” Daniel said. “She won a saddle and a knife and ten dollars for me the last time she ran.”
They continued laughing and talking until they reached the two sweetgum trees, but as soon as the Bonhams escorted her into the loose knot of people working around the horse, she fell silent. He was here. Walks-With-Spirits was here. She could feel his presence.
Then she saw him. The others all faded back, and she didn’t note their faces or who they were—he was all she could see.
He stood at the side of the magnificent bay mare, bent over, looking at her near hock. All the group went still, then, too, to hear his verdict on whether or not she was sound to run.
After a long moment, he straightened his tall body with the fluid grace that was his only, the grace that looked so slow and easy but that really moved faster than the eye could follow. He stood for a moment, his head tilted toward the mare as if he were listening, or thinking, then he began murmuring to her in Choctaw, patted her rump and slid his hand down over the curve of her hip and her silky leg to the hock.
A trembling ran through Cotannah, a yearning to feel his hand move on her body in that very same way, a terrible need to know that sure, slow stroking of his palm on her skin. He did it again, and her breathing stopped.
The blood in her body stopped. The sun came warm through the moving leaves above them, the birds twittered and chattered high in the branches, the smells of frying bread and roasting meat floated on the breeze, and she stood there waiting with the others—not for his judgment of the mare’s condition, though—but for him to turn and look at her.
Maybe to smile at her as he had done when he held her in his ironbound arms.
But he dropped to his haunches and held the hock in both hands, feeling it gently all over with his long, brown fingers while he talked to the mare, and she replied, “Huh-huh, huh-huh,” from deep in her throat.
“She’s sound,” he pronounced. “Let her run. That’s what she loves.”
Immediately, the whole bunch of them sprang into action. Someone ran a brush over the already sleek hide, someone else picked up the pad and saddle and placed them on the mare’s back.
Walks-With-Spirits stood up and turned around. His fierce, bright gaze seized Cotannah’s so fast that she knew he had already known she was there. He had already seen her and had given no sign.
But now he stared at her as if she were at the center of his universe. A great clutch of fear took her heart.
He was glaring straight into the center of her soul again, and he did not like what he could see there.
“Daniel! Robert!” Tay called. “Come here and see how she’s shod this time. I hired your Uncle Peck to be my farrier.”
Vaguely, Cotannah was aware that the boys said something to her and she nodded. Walks-With-Spirits flicked his light-colored eyes to one of them and then the other as they left her to go to Tay, then he fixed her again with his unrelenting gaze.
Finally, he bent and scooped up his skin bag of medicines that lay on the ground, stood up and stepped directly in front of her, once more looking straight through her with his burning topaz eyes.
“You degrade yourself by going from one man to another,” he said, “or I should say to two at one time.”
A cold shock raced through her like no other agitation she had ever felt, a shock that struck her to the very soul.
“You’re as bad as my brother, Cade,” she snapped.
He didn’t answer, only watched her for one more heartbeat with his eyes blazing pale in his hard, flat face. Then he stepped past her and was gone.
Chapter 6
The next thing Cotannah knew, she was alone and wandering in the trees along the Kiamichi River, holding branches back from whipping into her face, pushing blindly through the brush with no idea where she was going. Sweat was running down the sides of her neck and her breath came hard and shallow, her legs felt tired and trembly and the agonizing stitch in her side was paining her so much that she wanted to cry out.
Except that her mouth felt so dry she’d never make another sound.
She’d never take another step, either. She burst out of the trees onto the low bank of the river and let her knees buckle; she sank to the ground into a nest of dying grass.
Something was wrong with her, she thought, as she stared dully out over the slow-moving river. Walks-With-Spirits had seen it.
Hot anger flared in her again, in spite of the state she was in. He was as bad as Cade—criticizing her, judging her! But that had been a truly weak retort to fling at him, since he didn’t even know who Cade was. He destroyed her ability to think, that was what Walks-With-Spirits did, because he had such unsettling powers.
Yet he thought she could do better in the way she behaved, that she was making bad choices.
The anger rose higher in her, brought a bitter bile into her throat. But now it was anger at herself instead of at him, unforgiving anger because she had let his remark cut her so deep.
He didn’t even know what he was talking about. Headmaster Haynes and his abuse hadn’t been a bad choice on her part—she had been a completely innocent child at the time, and she had never chosen to go to his office alone.
And s
he had not made a choice for the bandidos to kidnap her and strip off her clothes and run their rough hands over her body and press their stinking mouths to hers. None of that was her fault.
So Walks-With-Spirits could just come down here and jump in the river. He didn’t have the foggiest notion of what he was talking about.
She tried to blank the memory of his terrible face and of his awful, slashing words out of her mind.
You degrade yourself by going from one man to another …
Oh, just remembering what he’d said and the way he’d looked at her hurt so much that even her skin felt as raw as her heart. Why hadn’t she defended herself, why hadn’t she told him to mind his own business? He certainly didn’t want her, so why shouldn’t she go from one man to another as she pleased?
Degraded, he’d said. And he had, no doubt, meant depraved and disgusting, too. Well, that was just too bad; it was nothing more than his narrow-minded opinion. Besides, he didn’t know her; he’d never spent time with her or talked with her enough to have the thinnest notion of what she thought, what she was really like.
That inexplicable sense of safety in his arms and closeness with him afterward had been an illusion, some kind of hallucination caused by the danger. He was not only a stranger to her but a strange person, a peculiar eccentric whom no one really knew. A misfit, a crazy person, perhaps. She did not have to explain her behavior to him or to anyone else. The next time she saw him she’d show him for certain that his opinion meant nothing to her. He couldn’t tell her what to do, Cade couldn’t tell her what to do, and neither could anyone else.
Jacob leaned back against one of the huge trees and watched Cotannah in her rose-colored dress flitting from tree to tree and person to person in the dusky pecan orchard, talking and laughing with everyone, including those obnoxious young pups, the Bonham cousins. She hadn’t seen him yet, she had no idea that he had arrived or else she would be making her way toward him this minute—hadn’t she come running into town to see him the very morning after they’d met for the first time?
Of course, he had fouled up that day by letting the false medicine man be the hero.
After the Thunder Page 9
