After the Thunder

by Genell Dellin

  Nothing. The stone of a man made no response whatsoever.

  Cotannah glanced down at the paper, unfolded it and pretended to read.

  “Jacob Charley,” she said, and looked up again, hopefully, into Millard Sheets’s narrow eyes. “Have you, by any chance, heard anything about him?”

  A slight flicker of … interest? Disgust? She couldn’t name it, she couldn’t even say whether it was positive or negative, but the first emotion she had seen in him flashed across his narrow face at the mention of Jacob’s name.

  “I’ve heard he’s dead,” he said, in that same flat tone.

  A true shock ran through her that he should know that fact, even though logic told her that, in spite of the storms and the floods, everyone in the boundaries of the Choctaw Nation and all the other Indian Nations had heard it by now, no doubt. But she pretended that she was surprised at the news.

  “Don’t tell me that!” she cried, putting her hand over her heart.

  He leaned toward her, this time.

  “Fell dead in the street without a mark on him!” he thundered. “They tell me the whole Nation believes it was a curse of death that killed him—one of them Choctaw medicine men slapped the bad word on old Jacob Charley.”

  “Oh?” she managed to say. “Is that so?”

  “Now can you imagine the sane, white, God-fearing citizens of the United States letting such superstitious red savage riffraff control all that good grassland and coal and timber and water?”

  She searched his reddening face.

  “No-o-o.”

  “Damn right you can’t,” he roared. “Read the Star. I’ve written the best editorial calling for the destruction of the Indian so-called Nations that ever saw print.”

  Then, with no warning at all that he was about to change the subject of the conversation, he reached under the counter and pulled out a dog-eared ledger book, threw it down in front of her with a resounding thump.

  “Little lady, let’s find you a Choctaw with a shred of sense,” he said, throwing it open and starting to thumb through. “If there is such an animal. We need to get some more intruder cattle onto that Choctaw grass.”

  He gave a loud snort of derision as he thumbed through the pages, then glanced up to glare at her again.

  “Can you feature that they call them intruder cattle if they belong to a white person?” he demanded. “When, from the dawn of recorded time, it’s been the goddamned red Indians who’re intruding on a white man’s world?”

  Stunned, Cotannah stared at him.

  “Pardon my French, ma’am. But I can see you agree with me, and I’m gonna do all I can to help you.”

  He wet his finger and went through some more pages.

  “Here,” he said finally, “we’ve got one Choctaw who thinks he can read English, I reckon—he’s a bona fide subscriber to the Star. If he’s willing to pay real money for a Boomer newspaper, I’m thinking he’s smart enough to know the Nation’s days are numbered, and he’s trying to learn how to act like a white man.”

  He turned the ledger around so she could read it and marked the name with his long, pale finger.

  “Folsom Greentree.”

  Cotannah looked at the name and the mailing address, Greentree Crossing, both listed in a clerk’s fine script.

  The name was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it at the moment.

  “I’m thinking this redskin might lease you some land, or he’d know somebody who will,” Sheets said.

  She took a deep breath to try to calm the sudden sickness in her stomach and accepted the pencil he offered. She noted the information on the piece of paper that supposedly carried Jacob’s name on the other side.

  Dear God in Heaven, how had any Indian survived this long with people like Sheets stirring up the land-hungry white people?

  “Thank you,” she finally managed to say, and stuffed the paper back into her bag.

  “You’re welcome and good luck to you. The more white holdings and white settlers we can get in here, the quicker these Indians’ll have to become Americans and abide by the laws like the rest of us do.”

  She turned around and walked out, sick now for another reason, too.

  Finding any information about Jacob was going to be a lot harder than she’d thought.

  Walks-With-Spirits saw Cotannah’s face clearly as she came out of the newspaper office. She looked stricken. And she let the door bang shut behind her as if she didn’t have the strength to reach back and close it.

  His stomach tightened to a cold knot. Was this the meaning of that strange portent he’d felt the first time he ever saw a copy of this newspaper? Had she been harmed in there? But how?

  The white man hadn’t touched her, he had watched him carefully. And if he had insulted her with words, surely her face would have had that fiery look of flashing fury or the quiet one of seething anger, the one where her fine-boned jaw went tight and set and she spoke in a slow, disdainful drawl.

  He turned his head slightly so he could see her walk all the way to her horse and mount up. She moved with the same supple grace as usual, but it was as if she had drawn her body in onto itself, and she shivered once after she was in the saddle. The day had turned out to be one of those capricious ones that he’d found typical of the New Nation in the fall—a frosty morning followed by a summerlike afternoon—so she couldn’t be physically cold.

  The shudder made him wish he could go and put his arms around her to comfort her, but he folded the knife and put it in his pocket, stood away from the post, and walked toward his horse instead, resisting even a glance back. More and more, he wanted to touch her, and he had to gather all his strength to fight the desire. Comfort as it would be to him, it would only make her anguish worse one moon from now.

  He set his jaw and looked in upon himself. The thing to do was to remember why he had come with her in the first place, the two reasons. One, the portent. He had come to protect her in case it had been a foreboding of danger to her. Two, because his honor demanded that he accompany a woman who was risking her own safety to try—impossible as it was—to save him from execution. Wanting to touch her, wanting to be with her were temptations he’d known in advance.

  So. Now he must think about his purpose here. What could have hurt her so much in the newspaper office? Was it something she’d read in that book the man had put out on the counter? Or was it that she found nothing at all to help her in her quest? His heart went out to her, but maybe such a disappointment would make her give up the search before it brought her even more pain.

  He reached his horse, threw himself onto it without putting his foot into the stirrup, and, as soon as he gained the extra height, turned his head to see her through the crowd moving in the street. Why couldn’t she know that she couldn’t change his fate when so many of the Nation had heard him put the curse on Jacob? Trying to explain that to her was the same as letting a leaf drift from his fingers to blow away on the wind. Now he must make her believe it, or she would wear her body down and make herself sick.

  Her horse was so brightly colored with bay and white spots that he picked it out immediately from among the other animals near the west end of the street. A mule-drawn wagon pulled to the side to let a horse and buggy pass it by and then he could see Cotannah on the paint horse. He gave a little sigh of relief. Already, she had recovered a little—she held her shoulders square and her head at that splendid angle that gave her such a proud air.

  That air was what made men like Jacob so determined to conquer her, but her real pride wasn’t strong enough to keep her from needing their attentions. If only she would be able to keep her resolve to behave differently, to take responsibility for protecting herself!

  For a moment he sat still and watched her moving away from him, wending her quick way in and out among the animals and vehicles and people, all of whom looked drab compared to Cotannah. Drab and hurried. How could they live in this crowded place, with its constant noises of squeaking wheels and human voices
? Why people ever made towns, he did not understand.

  He turned his horse and started moving in the other direction toward their meeting place, the grove of red oak trees outside of town. Staying apart seemed an unnecessary precaution now, considering that no one in this whole noisy town was paying him the slightest notice at all and no one seemed interested in Cotannah. If she wanted to go back to the newspaper office, though, for more information, it was good he hadn’t given her any Choctaw connection.

  But she mustn’t go back, not to a place that had affected her so badly. On this trip, while they had so many hours together, he must make her see the truth, so she wouldn’t return to any part of this pursuit anymore.

  Chapter 11

  While she waited for Walks-With-Spirits, Cotannah slumped in her saddle and, on its horn, smoothed out the piece of paper she still held crumpled in her hand. Folsom Greentree.

  The name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place him. Was it possible that he was reading the Star to learn the white man’s ways, as Millard Sheets said? Or was Sheets working with the Boomers in some way?

  Or had Folsom Greentree subscribed to the Star in order to read, as Tay did, the plans of the white settlers greedy for the land belonging to the Choctaw Nation and to the Cherokee Nation to the north and the Chickasaw to the west? Was Greentree plotting to counter those plans? Was he a strong Choctaw patriot or a man who would break Choctaw law?

  Would he be courteous to her when she rode onto his place or would he run her off?

  Millard Sheets was a horrible man. How could he hate Indians so much?

  “You’re staring a hole into that paper,” Walks-With-Spirits said. “Does it have a secret written on the other side?”

  Her heart leapt and started thudding against her ribs, she whipped around in the saddle to look at him. He sat his horse just a stone’s throw from her inside the little grove of whispering trees.

  “Why in the world did you sneak up on me like that?” she cried. “Even Pretty Feather didn’t hear you coming.”

  “To put the color back into your cheeks. When you came out of that newspaper office your face was the color of eggshells.”

  “Eggshells?”

  “Not birds’ eggs—chickens’,” he said.

  “Some chickens lay brown eggs. Brown is a color.”

  “I’m talking about white chicken eggs. Thin-shelled ones ready to crack into pieces at the slightest touch of a fox’s teeth.”

  Her heart was slowing and tears were threatening, but she smiled at him, he was trying so hard to distract her.

  “That Millard Sheets is so vile I can’t tell you—he’s a fox in the Nations’ henhouse, all right. Oh, Walks-With-Spirits, I felt ready to crack into pieces when I came out of there, cold all over and about to throw up.”

  His face hardened.

  “But now you’re all right? How is he vile, in what way? What did he say to you?”

  “That Indians are savages, intruders on the land intended for white people, all the old insults.”

  His shoulders relaxed, as if in relief.

  “Nothing you haven’t heard before?”

  That made her laugh a little.

  “No,” she said, “nothing new to my ears.”

  Her anger began to return.

  “Just infuriating, humiliating …”

  “Now, now!” he interrupted. “Let’s not give him that power over us. He can’t take it if we won’t give it.”

  The thought stopped her.

  Walks-With-Spirits rode closer, his eyes warm and bright, almost smiling now.

  “Who is he that we should take to heart his opinion?” he said. “He is no one to us, he is nothing but a scavenger with a withered spirit, who has no harmony with the earth.”

  She felt warm inside for the first time since arriving at the office of the Star and the tension began to leave her. She smiled at him.

  “Let’s ride through the woods and up along the ridges,” he said, “where we can see the mountains stretching blue and far and smell fall coming on the wind.”

  “Oh, I wish we could,” she said, “but no.” She looked at him, straight and without a smile. “Don’t try to distract me,” she said. “Just because I didn’t find out very much from Sheets doesn’t mean I’m giving up, and you volunteered to come with me, so you can’t go riding the ridges, either.”

  “I came because I’d never forgive myself if you got into danger on my account.”

  “Well! You’re already in danger on my account, and I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t get you out.”

  He nudged his horse and rode closer still. Peeved as she was that he was trying to stop her search for the truth, she still wanted to reach out and touch him, to lay her hand on his smooth, heavily muscled forearm beneath his rolled-up shirtsleeve.

  “Cotannah. Don’t do this to yourself. It’s bad for you.”

  She gathered her reins and pulled Pretty Feather’s head around, turned her back on him and started trotting out of the trees.

  “I’m going. You can come with me or not.”

  From the corner of her eye she saw him begin to follow.

  “This isn’t good for you,” he said.

  “Don’t repeat yourself,” she said. “We’re going to see a man named Folsom Greentree, but it’s too far to get there before midnight. Tonight we’ll go as far as my old homeplace.”

  He rode up beside her, his jaw tight and his eyes hard. He was angry. Really angry.

  “All right, then. We’ll lie upon the ground when we get there and let the Earth Mother speak to you since you won’t listen to me.”

  The hopeless fury she’d felt at the Star swirled up inside her again.

  “Stop it! Just stop it! Nothing’s going to make me quit, can’t you see that? This is one time I’m not going to let them win, not if it kills me, too!”

  “Let who win?”

  “The wicked ones, the ones with the power! Fate, or destiny, or whatever it is that’s always making innocent people suffer. I’m sick to death of it!”

  He stared at her and then gave an abrupt nod, agreement or understanding or acquiescence, she couldn’t tell. And she didn’t care.

  “My cousin Robert lives in our old cabin now, but he’s gone to Muskogee to the Indian International Fair,” she said quickly. “Let’s get going so we can reach it before dark.”

  She set her jaw and put her heels to Pretty Feather. Walks-With-Spirits followed.

  Then, after only a mile or so, he was riding at her side, not looking at her, not saying a word. His huge Shoulders were relaxed beneath the white cotton shirt, his body barely moved and only in keeping with the rhythm of the horse.

  His presence began to soothe her.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said finally.

  He glanced at her and nodded.

  “I think I’m so upset because Sheets reminded me so much of Headmaster Haynes,” she said. “He despises our people—he thinks we’re savages who have no right being in the white man’s way to claiming every square inch of the earth and fencing it in. Like Haynes, he could, without a twinge of his conscience, take out a whip and use it to strip an Indian girl naked.”

  He made a sound between a grunt and a growl, and she turned to see his eyes blazing and his face hard again.

  “I want to protect you,” he said suddenly, fiercely. “Now. Forever. I want to protect you from ever again breathing the same air as men like Haynes and Millard Sheets.”

  She gaped at him.

  “I’ve had such angry, fighting thoughts of Haynes every time he crossed my mind since you told me about him,” he admitted, and then when he looked at her again, his eyes held as much surprise as she felt.

  “What happened to the advice you just handed to me,” she said, gently teasing him. “Why do you give him that much power over you?”

  He laughed, and her blood raced with delight. He cared about her. He really cared! That was why she felt she had come home when she was
with him.

  “I cannot tell you,” he said slowly, searching her face with his fierce topaz eyes. “All I know is that you have unbalanced my harmony, Cotannah Chisk-Ko, as no one else has ever done. Before I saw you, I never had such thoughts of fighting other men.”

  She smiled, but she didn’t know whether she wanted to or not. She felt elation and sadness for destroying his peace and guilt and happiness all rushing around in her heart.

  “Nor did you have thoughts of putting death curses on them,” she said wryly. “It is all my fault, after all. Now you admit it.”

  She grinned at him and asked, “Why do you give me that much power over you?”

  He looked at her for a long, long moment, his eyes warm as amber sunshine.

  “I never intended to give it,” he said. “You took it the first time I saw you, Cotannah.”

  That melted her heart.

  “I want to keep that power,” she said softly, through lips gone stiff with unshed tears. “And I want to keep you in this world. Don’t you understand? I could not bear it if the Court carried out your sentence.”

  She held his gaze while she drew a deep, ragged breath.

  “Cotannah,” he said, “you are breaking my heart.”

  “Don’t worry about me. But tell me: what if I can’t prove that your curse didn’t kill Jacob before this next moon is past?”

  “Then I’ll know that my passage to the next world is part of the harmony of earth and sky.”

  He gave her a smile that stopped her breath.

  “The Great Spirit and the Earth Mother, they have the power, Cotannah. The powerful people only think they do.”

  She ignored that.

  “How can it be part of the natural harmony for you to die because the Judges mistakenly think you killed Jacob? That makes no sense!”