Firebrand's Woman

by Vanessa Royall

  Everyone waited. The thunder of the falls echoed in the gorge. A horse nickered anxiously.

  “We bring you this blood,” Four Bears said, standing over his victim, “to avenge the slaughter of Talking Rock.”

  Jackson did not move, nor did his eyes leave the chief.

  “I had my orders,” he said. “I was to move the Indians from that village before the buckskinners came.” He took his hand away from his wound for a moment and stared at the blood. There was much of it, but Jackson had seen much more. Four Bears saw in the jackal’s eyes a knowledge of possible death; but he saw, too, that there was no fear of death in Jacksa.

  Against his will Four Bears was impressed. He had never given the white men much credit for courage. He considered what Chula Harjo had said. The buckskinners were wild backwoodsmen, coarser and crueler even than other white men, who killed Indians for the mere sport of it, killed them with long and lingering delight.

  “It is true,” Jacksa was saying. “If they had come to Talking Rock and carried away your people, every nation from the Blue Ridge to the Tennessee River would have gone to war.”

  “What does it matter?” grunted Four Bears, uncertain now. “The village is destroyed anyway, and my son and his wife along with it.”

  Curiosity flickered in Jackson’s hard, gelid eyes.

  The child whimpered from her blankets.

  “Kill him now,” muttered one of the braves. “We have many streams to ford before the sun descends.”

  “It was my men who were first attacked at Talking Rock,” Jackson said, glancing from the bloodthirsty brave back to Four Bears. “In a village of mixed-bloods, always there are some who are hostile. To buckskinners or—to soldiers. Truthfully, I do not know who flung the first torch.”

  Four Bears gave a bitter laugh. “And I suppose you would deny the death of my son, Dark Wing, at your very hands? The word has reached me, and I believe it to be true. And also you pierced with your blade the heart of my son’s wife.”

  Jackson looked startled.

  Four Bears nodded gravely. “It was seen. I have heard. And I believe.” He stepped forward, flicking his knife, and bent toward the bloody white man.

  Jackson asked no mercy, no quarter. “She attacked me,” he said to the chief. “She would have killed me.”

  Four Bears hesitated. His son’s wife? Fighting white soldiers? The idea pleased him, even though she had been white herself, or perhaps because of it. But he remained untrusting.

  “It is true,” Chula Harjo said, seizing the moment. “You, who have known so many battles, must also know how wild they become. After the first torch was flung, and the village began to burn, there was no stopping the fight. In the heat of it, I was set upon by the man who must have been your son. He fought bravely and well, but…” Jackson supplied a gesture to indicate an acceptance of fate. “But I triumphed, and immediately a white woman set upon me with a pitchfork. I did not realize at first that she was white, for her cry was that of an Indian brave. Nor was I proud of what I had to do to save myself. It was an instinct. It was over in a moment.”

  “You lie,” accused the chief, and gripped hard the handle of his knife.

  Once again Jacksa did not flinch. If he is a liar, Four Bears thought, he is a colder one than I have ever known.

  Jackson moved slightly on the ground, and Four Bears readied himself for the killing thrust.

  “Remove my boot,” the white man said.

  Four Bears was suspicious.

  “I offer you proof of my words,” Jackson said, “if you wish to see it. You will do with me what you will, for you have felled me here today, and felled me fairly. But we are both, in our own manner, warriors, and, I trust, just and honorable men. Or do you deny it?”

  Ah, but the jackal was clever! So now the battleground was one of honor. But what was this business of “proof”?

  “Which boot?”

  “The left.”

  Four Bears gestured, and one of the braves approached. Jackson wore very high black boots, the tops of them floppy and loose about his knees, which were bony and prominent beneath tight leather breeches. Four Bears gestured again, and the brave bent down, cutting the boot from top to toe in one swift motion, yet not touching Jackson’s leg with the blade. He flung the ruined boot aside. A dirty bandage encircled Jackson’s leg, high on the calf.

  “That, too,” Jackson said.

  Again the brave flicked the knife deftly, and the cloth bandage fell away. The marks of four punctures, evenly spaced, were visible on his flesh, the wounds barely beginning to heal, and the skin around them blue and unhealthy.

  Four Bears was pleased. His son’s wife had done this? But he concealed his pleasure. “I wish that her aim had been truer,” he said.

  Jackson grinned icily, but did not speak.

  Dey-Lor-Gyva began to cry again, in sporadic, breathless bursts.

  “She is hungry,” Jackson said.

  “She is also my granddaughter,” responded Four Bears. “It is she for whom we have come.”

  Jackson nodded. He had already made this calculation. “I took her from the burning house. The house of the woman who attacked me with the pitchfork.”

  This was the thing that puzzled the chieftain. He had heard many, many things about this violent Chula Harjo; and the tales of all the tribes west of the Carolinas attested to his rapacity in every respect but one—Jackson was supposedly gentle toward women. Were female children also included in this aspect of odd tenderness? Or did the white soldier have other plans? Dey-Lor-Gyva would not have been the first Indian maiden sold into slavery, or into bondage for, in due course, the sensual pleasure of the jackals.

  “Why?” he asked. “Where did you intend to take her?”

  Jackson’s reply came readily enough. “To Pensacola. There are Seminole villages near the town, and—”

  “You are lying. You meant to sell her into slavery.”

  For the first time, and in spite of his condition, Jackson showed real anger. “We both know,” he said coldly, “that the offspring of warriors make poor slaves. I do not question your word, and I ask that you not question mine. Your grandchild is safe, only hungry. Now complete your work here, and take her with you.”

  It was, in its way, a challenge. Still losing blood steadily, and badly fatigued from talking, Jackson lay back down on the bloody grass, hand over his wound, and closed his eyes. Instinctively Four Bears moved toward him, knife poised. But the white man did not open his eyes. Dey-Lor-Gyva was crying. The braves were watching, and the white soldiers, too. No longer did Four Bears feel as young as he had felt during the descent from the rim of the gorge, during the battle. No, he felt again as he had at the moment he had heard the child’s cry: tender and confused. It was what old age could do to a man, altering all the pure imperatives necessary to the warrior’s calling. The blood ran from Chula Harjo like the thick, sweet wine of red berries prepared by Chickasaw women in autumn while the sun watched, old and cool and gentle above the high smoky mountains of home.

  He stood up and stepped away from Jackson. “I leave it to Ababinili whether you die or not,” he spoke. “It is the thanks of one man to another.”

  Jackson wet his lips. “These are your lands. For the time being. I will accept whatever your Great Spirit decides.” He appeared too weak to open his eyes, or was indisposed to do so. Four Bears, who had seen much death, was certain that he would see another if he remained in Roaring Gorge. And this morning he had lost his taste for blood.

  “Bind the living,” he ordered his braves, and with rope and thongs his warriors tied the white soldiers hand and foot, leaving them along the river. The Indians were confused and slightly disappointed; they had expected the taking of scalps and the delights of tormenting, with fire and hungry knife, those whom they had vanquished. But Four Bears was chieftain; and only a crazy man, or a man bent on death, would disobey him.

  Four Bears strode to the tiny huddle of blankets in which the child lay crying
, beating her arms against the swaddling cloth in hunger and frustration and, probably, fear. Four Bears himself was unnerved. Among his people all young children, both male and female, were almost exclusively the responsibility of the women in the tribe. Even menchildren had to be old enough to learn the ways of the nation, the skills of the forest and the hunt, before any measure of attention was paid them by the braves. So it was with trepidation and a totally unfamiliar sense of his own clumsiness, as well as with love, that Four Bears bent down and gathered up the screaming bundle that was his son’s child. He had come many forests and fords to rescue her. He had killed men and was himself wounded, the blood drying now on his cheekbones but the pain still there. Yet in spite of his efforts the sheer physical fact of this baby in his arms—the braves were staring; they had seldom seen a chief cradling a child—was as disconcerting as it was joyous. And the little girl was still crying!

  “Get the horses ready!” he ordered curtly, in a voice of great authority. “We must go west toward home.”

  And as he said it, the baby stopped crying and turned to look at him, to study the great, strange face above her, with its colored stripes of war paint, the glittering beads upon the headband, and the blood. Four Bears looked at her as well, and he was stunned to wonderment. Until this moment she had been an abstraction; but now, in his very arms, he saw a thing of incomparable beauty. Her hair was shining like the black waters of a mountain lake beneath moonlight. Her eyes were large, black as onyx, both curious and knowing. Yet how could that be? Her tiny features were perfect. Her complexion was like alabaster, like ivory.

  Four Bears was astounded. This child, a product of mixed blood, seemed more beautiful than either white or red, and better than both. He did not know what to think. She was still studying him, as if trying to measure him, to judge him for what he was, for what he meant to her. Those gem-black eyes unsettled him even as he came into their spell, and he had the uncanny feeling that he was her servant even though he was her grandfather and chieftain. It was a sensation he received sometimes when he counseled with the old woman Teva, Mark-of-the-Cave, the Chickasaw seeress. Gently Four Bears turned the child’s head slightly, but there was no hand-shaped birthmark on that pure skin. No, the child’s power, and hence her destiny, were of quite another kind.

  But he did not know what it was.

  The horses were ready now, and the braves restless to be off. They would ride out of the gorge along the Speaking River until the pass was reached, then thread through the pass, far back into the hills of Tennessee. Four Bears was just about to swing upon a horse he had chosen for himself, a silver-gray beast, proud and dancing, bearing a saddle with strange gold figures: A.J. Then he remembered that the child must be hungry, even though she had not cried out since first they had looked at one another. But he did not know what to feed a baby.

  “She must eat,” he muttered to the braves, rather gruffly. He hoped that one of them would know what to do. None did.

  It has been three days since Jacksa took her from Talking Rock, he thought. Jacksa must have fed her something.

  The white leader lay quiet and motionless. But his blood was still flowing, more slowly now, and he was still alive.

  “Chula Harjo!” demanded Four Bears. “Chula!”

  No response.

  “Jacksa!” Four Bears cried.

  Jackson stirred, and seemed to come back from a far place. His eyes opened slightly.

  “The child must eat. What do you give her?”

  Jackson’s dry lips parted. “Honey,” he said. “Honey and water. And bread. It was all I…”

  Then he drifted off.

  “You have done your last favor on this earth,” Four Bears told him, “and devil though you be, it is a good one.” He had no doubt whatsoever that this act of kindness toward Dey-Lor-Gyva was random and inexplicable on Chula Harjo’s part. And yet, after he had given the baby drink and a crust from a white man’s leftover loaf, and even honey dolloped on the tip of his strong finger, even after he and his braves were riding down along the river, bound for home, Four Bears could not. help but remember that the white jackal had wrapped the little girl well against the chill of night, and had placed her near enough to the campfire for warmth, yet far enough away for safety. He was puzzled for a time, riding with the child in his arms. He did not know why Jacksa would have done such things. He reached the only conclusion that made any sense to him: It had been some sort of trick after all. Perhaps Jacksa had planned to use the Indian princess for ransom. Or, as Four Bears had first surmised, he had intended to sell her into slavery. Certainly he had not meant to find her a home with the Seminole. Whatever the reasons, they no longer mattered. Andrew Jackson was a dead man, and that was very good.

  Two days later, toward evening, the Chickasaw band, led by its chief and including its youngest princess—if with her mixed blood she could be so called—turned their captured horses from the forest trail and entered the final pass. Beyond it lay the villages of home; and as they rode along, Four Bears could hear the throb of the drums heralding their approach. Smoke by day; drums by night. Smoke and drums served not only to alert the Indians, but also to terrify the outlanders.

  Four Bears rode, still holding the exhausted child in his cradled right arm—the reins were in his left hand—and deciphered the signals. First, as always, the travelers were numbered. Eleven. That meant five had been lost—five who had been, according to tradition, buried with weapons, moccasins, and a proximity to blue mountains, with the sound of water moving near their graves. Second, was the chief among the survivors? Yes, he was. Third, there were horses, which must have been captured from the white devils. Four Bears smiled. He knew what benefit the taking of horses would bring to his people. Unlike certain tribes and nations far to the west, where the level land rolled on forever beyond the Father of Waters, the mountain Indians had few horses. But they had learned well the benefit of mounts: to attack the white man, or to escape him.

  And finally, when the travelers came in closer sight of the hidden brave and his signal drum, the drum beat out a last message: the child is with them.

  There would be joy in the home village. That was true. But Four Bears knew another thing, too. Many there were, and Mark-of-the-Cave among them, who would ask whether one child, even the halfbreed daughter of a chief, was worth so many braves. But at that moment the little girl stirred and came awake and looked up at him again. The heart of Four Bears overflowed with love.

  In the village night had fallen, and torches flashed upon the wet flanks of horses and the tired, drawn faces of the riders. Fire glinted, too, in the jewel-black eyes of Dey-Lor-Gyva, who was wide-awake and entranced by the flames, the movement, the many people. Braves and squaws alike gathered around, coming out of the wigwams in which they had been eating the evening meal of roasted hare and turnips, and young boys fought over the honor of caring for the captured horses. The braves dismounted with an attitude of prideful self-possession that was as much a part of a warrior’s armor as his bow. Yet in spite of their fierce calm most of them quickly sought—and just as quickly found—the eyes of their wives or favorite women in the crowd. For their part the women gave sign of neither affection nor relief; an open display of passionate attachment between the sexes was not approved. Such a thing was meant for the night.

  Four Bears was still on the gray horse, holding the child. Several of the women stepped forward, and the chief leaned down, intending to place Dey-Lor-Gyva in the arms of one of them. But just as he was about to do so, the child let out a wail.

  “Uh!” he grunted, mostly for the benefit of the onlookers, some of whom were struggling not to display a certain amusement at this unfamiliar aspect of their gruff and powerful leader. The squaw reached again to accept the baby, but an abrasive, peremptory voice intervened.

  “Do not touch her yet!”

  The Indians turned toward the sound, then parted and made way for the woman who spoke. One did not do otherwise for Lo-Teva-Wishi, Mark-of-
the-Cave. She was the village seeress, the witch; and this small, gnarled, tough old lady, with wispy, braided hair and dark, deep-socketed eyes, might do strange and terrible things to those who were foolhardy enough to hinder her passage. The woman pushed through, squinting toward the chief and the baby he held, her old lips twisted in suspicion. Torchlight glowed on her ancient skin, which had the color of a russet fox. And from a place low on her scrawny neck, where she wore a string of black beads, spreading across her throat and upward onto the side of her face, was the pale, dim outline of what might have been the print of a human hand.

  The Indians knew otherwise. There was nothing human about that mark, save that it lived upon the skin of a human being. If Mark-of-the-Cave was indeed human.

  “Teva,” said the chief. “It is my son’s daughter.”

  “I know,” she said, “and you ride the horse of Jacksa Chula.”

  The crowd hushed, and the old woman traced with bony fingertip the A. J. figures embossed upon the leather of the saddle.

  “He is dead,” pronounced Four Bears, with no little pride. “I have slain him.”

  The gathered tribesmen let out a sound of awe and satisfaction.

  “He is not dead,” muttered Mark-of-the-Cave.

  Had he been a younger man, Four Bears would have been crestfallen. He would perhaps have protested the veracity of his claim, proclaimed his prowess. But Four Bears was too wise for that, and he knew too well the powers of the seeress, who now stood on tiptoe to have a look at the little girl. Dey-Lor-Gyva, who had begun to cry when Four Bears sought to hand her over to the squaw, now looked into the old woman’s eyes, but made no sound. To those who stood close by, it seemed a bond had been struck between the tiny girl and the ancient crone, or as if some knowledge had been shared, some bargain concluded. But it was Four Bears alone who saw the expression of startled astonishment on the seeress’s old face. Mark-of-the-Cave, who must have thought she had seen everything, now saw one thing more. She was amazed, and surprised at her capacity still to be amazed, after all the things she had seen that were in the past, and all those that were still to be. Four Bears watched, too, as the old woman gently turned the child’s head aside.