Page 5 of Comanche Magic

  Hunter gazed off into the darkness, saying nothing. His silence encouraged Chase to continue.

  "Indigo says I'm hard. You and Ma haven't openly criticized me, but I've seen it in your eyes. You disap­prove of what I've become, and don't deny it."

  "I will not deny it, for to say we don't disapprove of some of the things you think and do would be a lie. That does not mean we have stopped loving you, Chase, or that we cannot still find much about you to admire."

  Despite the gentle delivery, the criticism stung. Chase swallowed the hurt with another mouthful of whiskey. "Well, understand something. I didn't get hard because it sounded like a fine idea."

  "No? Then explain to me why."

  "I'm a breed, in case you've forgotten, a quarter Comanche."

  "Yes. A breed. My blood flows in your veins."

  "No offense, but according to white folks, that makes me not quite human."

  The words hung like a pall between them. Chase no sooner said them than he wished he could call them back. "I'm sorry, my father. I didn't mean that."

  "Yes, I think you did," Hunter said softly. "And it lays my heart upon the ground to know you feel that way."

  Chase tightened his fist around the neck of the bot­tle. "It's not how I feel. You know that. But it's a truth we can't escape, nonetheless. Beyond these mountains, folks take one look at me and know there was a red­skin in my mama's woodpile somewhere. That auto­matically makes me dirt under their feet. I'm not con­sidered to be as good as a white man on all counts. The only way I can ever overcome that is to have power. Money is power."

  "I see."

  "No, you don't see, more's the pity, and you never will. You and Ma created your own little world here, a safe place where you're pretty much sheltered. You've never faced what I've had to, not to the same extent. Maybe I have become hard, but to survive, I had to."

  Hunter sighed. "Chase, if your mother was out here, she would say you are sitting on the great pot of pity."

  "The pity pot," Chase corrected. Then it struck him what his father had said. "Jesus. Do I have to listen to this?"

  "No, you can close your ears."

  "You think I'm feeling sorry for myself, do you?" Chase hesitated a moment, wondering if perhaps he was. "Well, if anyone ever had reason, I do."

  "Tell me of these reasons."

  That was a request Chase could deliver on. "When I first went to the camps, I tried to live by all your pure ideals, doing unto others as I wanted them to do unto me."

  "Oh, yes? That makes me very proud."

  "Yeah, well unproud yourself. I got shit on in every conceivable way, and when the bastards weren't shit­ting on me, they were beating the hell out of me."

  Hunter shook his head. "And you such a little fel­low?"

  The unveiled sarcasm forced Chase to back up a few sentences. Maybe he was on the pity pot. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he was crying in his whiskey. Leave it to his father to point that out in such a way that he couldn't get mad. He narrowed an eye. "Do you want to hear this story or not?"

  "I will need a blanket to sop up my tears. But, yes, I want to hear your story."

  Chase frowned. "Where the hell was I?"

  "You were at the part about getting the hell beaten out of you all the time."

  "Ah, that's right. Anyway, they kept it up until I fought back, until I got as mean or meaner than they were." He gave his parent a mock toast with the half empty jug. "And now here I am, metamorphosed, a person you can't stand."

  "I love you, Chase. With every breath I take."

  "Right. But you don't like me much." Chase punctu­ated that with another swig of whiskey. "Funny, that. You're all so determined not to judge that little whore. But what about me?"

  "Franny is a victim."

  "And I gather I'm not?"

  "Only if you choose to be." His father turned to regard him. "By your own words, the men in the camps were cruel to you only until you fought back. I trained you to fight, if you will remember. I know that when you finally struck back, you did so with great vengeance, as is the way of the People."

  In that, at least, Chase had to admit he was his father's son; he fought to win and usually did, even if it took his last ounce of strength. Surrender was not a word Hunter Wolf included in his vocabulary and had never taught it to his children.

  "The Frannies of this world have no weapons," his father went on huskily, "and no strong arm with which to wield a weapon if they had one. Heartless men use them, and in order to survive, they must yield. It is their only choice and their greatest shame. One from which there is no escape. Victims, Chase, one and all."

  "I disagree. If that were true, they'd accept help when it was offered, and I know from experience they don't. You can't help a person who won't help herself."

  Silence settled again, a pained, uncomfortable silence. He supposed that was a bitter dose for his father to swallow, he who had so selflessly shared all that he believed in hopes that his son would embrace the same values. Now they had come to a fork in the road.

  As if his father read his thoughts, he said, "I know you walk a path toward dreams, Chase."

  "Yes."

  "Do not lose your way."

  The gentle warning made Chase's heart catch.

  "These dreams of yours. Are they worth all that you must sacrifice to attain them?"

  "Owning timberland, it's what I've always wanted for as long as I can remember. Even'as a boy, I had these plans. You know that."

  "But not for the same reasons. And in the end, what will you have? Full pockets, great power, and an empty heart?"

  "Sneer if you like, but power is the only way I'll ever amount to anything. I already own one sizable tract of land, and I've saved nearly enough to buy another. One day soon, I'll be richer than anybody you've ever known. So rich that nobody—nobody anywhere—will be able to look down on me."

  "Ah, yes. And you will have this power you speak of." Hunter spread his hands palms upward and gazed at the lines etched there, "just remember that money isn't everything. Look at all Jake gave up to be here with Indigo, to raise his children here."

  "What're you asking, that I give up my dreams and settle for a petered-out mine here in Wolf's Landing?"

  "The mine still provides a steady yield."

  "You barely eke out an existence for two families. And when it's all panned out? Then what? Will we dig another tunnel and pray we find color? Maybe you can live that way, not knowing where your next meal will come from, but I want more than that out of life."

  "More? I do not think so." Hunter gestured toward the rambling log house behind them, then swept out his arm to indicate the surrounding property. "How can any man have more, Chase? There is love here, and peace. Those things cannot be bought with coin."

  "I'm not a miner. You love it, and so does Indigo. But it's not for me, never has been. You know that." Chase rubbed at the toe of his boot. Never mind that he couldn't see the damned thing. "You've always known that."

  "I do not ask you to be a miner, just the best man that you can be. I worry about your dreams, not because I disapprove of them, but because of who you are becoming while you follow them. You are Chase Wolf, my son, and you are forsaking that."

  "To be your son, I have to be perfect?"

  "A little bit perfect would be very good."

  "A little bit? Surely I'm not that bad." Bleary-eyed, Chase focused on the dark woods at the other side of the creek. He tried to take stock of his faults, which in his opinion were damned few. "I cuss a little. So shoot me."

  Hunter fixed him with an exasperated look.

  "What else? I suppose you think I drink too much? Excuse me all to hell. I keep forgetting I'm back home, living with a bunch of puritans."

  "Do you?"

  "Do I what? Live with a bunch of puritans?"

  "No, drink too much."

  "Hell, no." Chase stabbed the cork at the mouth of the jug. It took him two tries to hit his mark. Hunter snorted in
disgust. Chase snorted back. "So, I've had a little too much tonight."

  "Yes, I'd say you have."

  "But I don't make a habit of it."

  "That is good."

  After a lengthy silence, Chase relented. "Okay, if you want the unvarnished truth, I suppose I could make do with a little less whiskey."

  "I always want the truth, Chase. If we speak in lies, why bother to talk?"

  Chase supposed that observation had merit. But sometimes it was a lot easier to lie. "On Saturday nights in the camps, there isn't much else to do but drink and play cards. Practically all the loggers are heavy drinkers. I'm no worse than the rest."

  "But no better."

  "Damn it. I can't win, can I? Why in hell do I have to be better than everyone else? Answer me that? Why can't you be satisfied with my being just as good?"

  "Because most of the men in this world are not good, and to stand only as tall as they makes you a man of small stature."

  "I stand tall enough to suit me."

  "No, you do not. Which is why you drink."

  Chase gave a bitter laugh and lifted the jug in a mock toast. "You brought that back around full circle. Back to my drinking, are we? All right, let's address that. As a general rule, I buy a jug on Saturdays and no other time. Sometimes I drink it all, sometimes I don't, and during the week, I can take it or leave it. Is that what you call overindulgence?"

  "It is not what goes into your mouth that worries me."

  "What then?"

  "What I hear coming out of it."

  "My cussing, you mean?"

  "Cussing means nothing to me. Your angry words do. Sometimes my heart is laid upon the ground at the things you say. And when I look into your eyes? Ah, Chase, I die a little."

  "And sometimes I die a little when I look into yours," Chase blurted. Another well of hurt rose inside him. "After all my work to make something of myself, how do you think I feel when I see how disappointed you are in me? When you find fault with me every time I so much as turn around?"

  "I do that?"

  "Yes, you do that."

  Hunter smiled slightly. "I think you are looking in a pool of water at your own reflection."

  "Don't start. It never fails, you always turn every­thing I say all around."

  "Why do I do that?"

  "I suppose you're trying to make me search for answers."

  "That is bad?"

  "It is when I don't have any."

  Hunter grasped Chase's shoulder. Feeling the warm heaviness of his hand nearly brought tears to Chase's eyes. He had an unsettling urge to press his face against his father's chest and cry like a kid. The most awful part was, he didn't know why. He only knew he felt incredi­bly lost. And lonelier than he ever had in his life.

  "Sometimes I'm not sure what it's all about," he whispered raggedly. He didn't really expect his father to understand what he meant by that because he wasn't sure he knew himself. "Nothing you taught me counts for shit out there."

  Hunter gave him a kindly pat. "No," he agreed. "The things I taught you count for nothing anywhere, Chase. Only in your heart."

  "The standards you set—only a saint could live by them, and I'm no saint. Not anything close."

  "They are a map I drew for you, Chase, nothing more. I tried to mark the way clearly, but as with all maps, there is more than one route. You must choose the way you will go."

  Taking a deep breath, Chase said, "Yeah, well. . . I've done my choosing. I guess I'm making a hell of a mess of it, aren't I?"

  "Are you?"

  "You know damned well you think so. If not, you wouldn't be talking to me."

  "What I think doesn't matter. What do you think?"

  "That I'm making a hell of a mess of it."

  "Perhaps it is time that you set your feet in another direction."

  "And give up everything I've ever dreamed of?"

  "Not away from your dreams. But toward them by another path."

  "Maybe." Chase grew quiet for a moment, thinking. "You know, the funny thing is, I felt perfectly content with myself before I came home. Now I'm suddenly turning every damned thing inside out and upside down. I'm not sure I even like myself anymore, let alone any of you. In fact, if we're dealing in the brutal truth, sometimes I think I actually hate all of you."

  At that admission, Hunter chuckled and gave him a slight shake. "You do not hate us, my son. When you look at us, you see a reflection of yourself, and it is a self you would deny if you could. That is all."

  Chase didn't see what was so damned amusing about that.

  "It is an odd thing that happens when a man returns to the place of his childhood. Instead of looking always at others, he is forced to look carefully at himself. It is an unsettling thing when he discovers he has traveled a great distance, only to go nowhere."

  Since that observation made little sense to Chase, he sidestepped it. "I feel trapped in the middle between the life I have now and the way things used to be," he whispered. "And I'm being pulled both ways. A part of me wishes things could be as simple for me as they seem to be for you. But another part of me knows they can't."

  "Life is like a blanket you draw around yourself. You make your own weave."

  "That's easy for you to say."

  "You think all that I have has come to me on the wind?" Hunter shook his head. "I set out from Texas with a pregnant woman and traveled over two thousand miles, more than half on foot because we lost one horse. I didn't know where I was going or what I might find when I got here, only that it had been spoken in the prophecy that I should go west to find a new place where the tabeboh and Comanche could live in harmony."

  Chase had heard this tale before—so many times he knew it by heart.

  "Right after we got here, you were born, the fulfill­ment of that promise. My son, part Comanche, part tabeboh. Since the first time I held you, I have sung to you the songs of my people so you could sing them to your own son someday, and he to his. I did the same with Indigo."

  "And now I'm turning away from those songs, is that what you're saying?"

  "I'm just asking you not to forget the words. You were born to pass them on, Chase. Through you and Indigo, the People will continue to live even though their bones have turned to dust."

  "I can't sing words to songs I no longer believe in."

  "If not the songs of your ancestors, what do you believe in?"

  "Nothing," he whispered raggedly. "Not a goddamned thing."

  After another long silence, Hunter said, "Perhaps you should uncork your jug then and have another drink. With nothing left to believe in, liquor will be your only solace."

  Lord, how true that was. "Sometimes, my father, you can draw blood with that tongue of yours."

  "So you came by your vicious tongue naturally?"

  Chase huffed at that. "I knew you'd get around to it eventually."

  "Around to what?"

  "You came out here to ask me to go apologize to Fanny or Franny or whatever in hell her name is."

  Hunter nodded. "I told Indigo I would speak to you about that, yes. You choose to walk your own way. Yet you feel Indigo should not? Her friends are her con­cern, not yours, not mine."

  "Point taken."

  "Your anger about her friendship with Franny wor­ries me."

  "I'm not angry. At least that wasn't what prompted me at the start. I was just trying to protect my sister. Was that so wrong?"

  "Protect her from what?"

  "Open your eyes! The woman is after something. Why else would she be hanging around Indigo?"

  "You are so bitter. Why, Chase?"

  The temptation was great to tell his father why, but the old hurts ran too deep to exhume them. "I'm not bitter, I just know her kind, and trust me, she's pure poison. Don't believe she's all that she pretends to be, not for a minute."

  "What is it she pretends to be?"

  Chase wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Hell, I don't know. Innocent! She pretends to be inno­cent, and I know da
mned well she can't be."

  "Has she said this to you? That she is innocent?"

  "No, of course not. It's just a look she has. You know, all wide-eyed and—" He broke off. "She has the act so per­fected, you'd swear she was fresh out of the schoolroom."

  "And you say you saw this in her eyes?"

  Chase sensed where this was heading and stiffened.

  "There was a time," Hunter said softly, "when you put more stock in the things you read in a person's eyes than you did all else."

  That had been before he had looked into lying eyes. "Yeah, well, I learned the hard way not to be a fool."

  "And you fear that what you see in Franny's eyes will make a fool of you?"

  The question gave Chase pause. If he were honest, perhaps what he saw in her eyes did frighten him. And for damned good reason. There was something about her that drew him, haunted him, and no matter how he tried, he couldn't erase her from his mind.

  His father clasped his shoulder again. Then he pushed to his feet. "When your head tells you one thing and your heart another, listen to your heart. It tells no lies."

  Chase squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Damn him. Damn him to hell. "I'll go over and apologize to her," he whispered hoarsely. "I won't mean a damned word of it, but I'll do it. I hope that'll satisfy you. Tell Indigo it's as good as done."

  "Tonight?"

  "Yes, damnit, tonight."

  Chase heard the guffaws and whistles before he drew close enough to the saloon to see what all the ruckus was about. When he did get close enough, he couldn't believe his eyes. He had seen a number of strange things while under the influence of whiskey, but never a pair of shapely legs dangling off the edge of a roof.

  He reeled to a stop and blinked, convinced he had to be imagining things. But if he was, two other men were conjuring the same vision. By the way they were stag­gering, Chase knew they must be as drunk as he was.