“Has it?” Teela murmured.
Katy stared at her.
Teela shrugged. “Well, I understand that there are a number of abolitionists giving speeches now in the North.” She hesitated. “Katy, you can’t blame these people for wanting to be free.”
Katy sniffed. “The Seminoles keep slaves themselves!”
“That’s true, but most often their slaves become free men.”
“And most often they live apart. Teela, you must see that the soldiers are not all vicious, and that the Seminoles are not all humanitarians!”
“Katy, I do see it. No good men, no bad men.”
“Well, you must realize this. The blacks most often form their own bands. And they have suffered at the hands of the Seminoles as well. Many have come to the forts, turning themselves in.”
“And often because they were starving, just as the Seminoles are starving!” Teela retaliated.
“No good men, no bad men,” Katy said, then sighed and asked Teela, “Have I come here for a political debate?”
Teela shook her head, taking a seat cross-legged on her cot and extending a hand. “No, please. You came here to be a friend, and I appreciate it.”
Katy sat opposite her, accepted a cup of tea, then shook her head. “Teela, I didn’t come here to be a friend. I came here because I keep feeling that we’ve lost you somehow. Oh, Teela, you’re not the only one who feels for the very savages we fight! Many of the military men have befriended certain chiefs—why, it was true that Osceola and Wiley Thompson were friends before Wiley so stupidly chained him and lost his fool life! But, Teela, don’t lose sight of which side you are on.”
“I can’t help but be against the murder of innocents.”
“Yes, I’m against the murder of innocents as well, including myself,” Katy told her.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Teela said.
She thought that Katy was merely smoothing back her hair, but then Teela realized that she was removing a small hairpiece that blended in perfectly with her own rich brown hair.
Teela gasped in shock, covered her mouth with her hands, and felt tears spring to her eyes. She tried not to stare. She tried to apologize.
“Oh, Katy, I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to stare. I, oh, my God, I can’t imagine, I—”
“It’s quite all right,” Katy said, fitting the hairpiece back on her head. “I thought I was going to die. I nearly did. It happened very soon after the massacre of Major Dade and his men. I was visiting friends at a fine, working plantation just southwest of St. Augustine—the ruins aren’t far from where we are now—and a band of Mika-sukees attacked. They killed my friends, Jean instantly, Herb more slowly. And then they came for me. I was shot, but amazingly, the ball was deflected by a medallion I was wearing. They thought I was dying. I’ll never forget the face on the man who ripped up my hair and head and took that swatch of scalp from me. His eyes were cold as ice, Stygian dark. Perhaps the saddest thing about the attack was the fact that Herb was a fine and well-read Jewish man who had known persecution himself from ‘civilized’ folk. He’d come to the territory for a new life on the frontier. He believed that he owed the Indians for what we had taken from them, and that they should be left in peace. But when they came in for the kill, they didn’t bother to ask what kind of man Herb was. Because it is war. The whites against the Seminoles.”
“Oh, Katy!” Teela whispered in horror.
Katy smiled. “I lived, Teela. That’s what matters. I never wished ill to any man, white, red, or black. But this is a war, and I know now which side I am on.”
Teela sat her cup down on the tray. Her hands were shaking, and she was afraid her tea would spill.
Katy set her own cup down and turned to leave the room. “Maybe you’ll understand a lot of the men much better,” she said hopefully. “Even your father.”
Teela looked up at her. “Stepfather,” she said softly, and she shook her head. “I do understand many of the men. I’m coming to understand war and fear and sometimes even courage, but I shall never understand Michael Warren.”
“Pray for him then anyway, and for me.” Katy stood, smiling. “Teela! You’re an idealist, and if not a perfect world, you want a good one.”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Katy said. “But not everyone wants to see the good in others. I’m glad that you do. It’s refreshing. And brave. You speak your mind to any man, and do it with dignity.”
“Oh, Katy, you do show such tremendous courage yourself! I’m not always dignified, and I know I infuriate some of the men who have fought long and hard. It’s just that I’ve seen what they’ve done to children! But now … Katy, now I’ve seen what you’ve suffered. And I don’t know how I would feel if I had been so cruelly injured and left for dead … it’s bitter, spiteful, absolutely hateful! But I do believe with my whole heart that there are many Indians just desperate to survive, and many more desperate to survive with some kind of honor. I know, too, that for every vicious monster Michael Warren has created in the ranks, there are dozens of good men in the army just doing their best to obey orders and protect our women and children.”
“It’s miserable to see both sides, isn’t it?” Katy said.
Teela nodded. She smiled. “Absolutely wretched!” she exclaimed.
Katy rose and came around and sat beside Teela then, offering her a warm hug. Teela returned it with a deep surge of warmth and affection.
“Katy, where will it end?” Teela asked, shivering.
“I don’t know. I truly don’t know.”
“How can you stand staying here? In the fort, so close to where you were nearly killed?” Teela asked her softly. ”You could be risking your life again.”
“I stay here because my husband is here, because I love him. Because he is my life.”
“Oh, Katy—”
“Besides, the risk is minimal. More warriors than whites are killed with each skirmish. They estimate that there are really only perhaps three or four hundred fighting men left among the Seminoles and their allies. We’ve hundreds of soldiers right here. The fort itself will not be attacked.”
“I suppose not.”
“Well, I’m going to go and rest and bathe and then prepare for the night’s festivities!” Katy said cheerfully. She rose again and walked to the door, then turned back. “If you haven’t found your good or perfect world, Teela, you should be content in knowing that you are a good person, and only people like you will ever create such a world.”
“Katy, if there ever is such a world, you will definitely be part of it!” Teela told her.
Katy shook her head and winked. “Promise me, now. No trouble tonight. I don’t want your stepfather angry with you.”
“I promise, I’ll behave, I’ll be charming. But for your sake, and not for Michael Warren!” Teela said.
“For my sake,” Katy said. “That will be fine.”
Teela smiled. Katy grinned in return, waved a hand in the air, and left, closing the door behind her. Teela moved the tea tray to the floor and stretched out on her bed. She closed her eyes and wondered where James McKenzie would be that night. It seemed like a lifetime since she had seen him. Sometimes it even seemed as if knowing him had been nothing more than a dream.
Then sometimes the memories were so vivid they made her writhe, made her heart ache. She could see him so clearly in her mind’s eye that she could almost reach out and touch him. She could see his eyes, feel their heat. Remember his hands, his long fingers. The way they had looked upon her pale flesh.
Then again, it seemed like forever …
Not quite two months had passed.
She closed her eyes and wondered with a mixture of anguish and bitterness how he could have closed her out of his life so completely when emotions had raged so fiercely between them. Unless her emotion had been fierce while his had not. He grieved for his wife; she knew that. His war came first; his brother had told her so. He had disappeared into the wilde
rness. He might even have another wife, perhaps even another two wives, since Seminole men often did so. Especially in times of war, when eligible young men became scarce.
She tossed, jealous, angry with herself for being so. She tried to put him from her mind without success. She was so tired, and tired of being tired, tired of worrying. At last that weariness seemed to steal upon her, and she dozed.
And dreamed.
She was running. Thrashing through underbrush, through swampland, over hammocks and pine barrens. Egrets shrieked and flew from the wetlands in front of her, filling the sky with sheets of white wings. They were coming for her. She could hear the horses, their hooves pounding the earth. She was heavy. She carried something, grasped it before her. It was hard to run, so hard. The ground sucked at her, threatened her. Saw grass scratched her flesh. She could hear her breath coming quick and ragged. Oh, God! It was so hard to run! But they were coming. They meant to cut her down with a bullet, or a knife.
She looked down, wondering what it was she carried that was so heavy, that weighed her down, and yet seemed such a precious burden.
It was just … herself. Her hands were clasped around her own abdomen. She carried a child, one nearly due. She carried it while she ran and ran, desperate to save her own life and that of the child.
Ran because they were after her. Ran because they would not care about the life of a woman or a child.
She gasped for breath. Turned back.
She could see them. The heat was rising off the ground in waves, distorting them, but she could see them, riding hard, coming en masse. She knew they meant to hunt her down. She inhaled with another deep, desperate gasp, and she started to run again. Sobbing, crying out …
She awoke with a start, bolting to a sitting position on her bed.
Her face was flushed, sheened with sweat. Her heart was still racing.
She was safe, of course. Quite safe. Nothing in the room had changed. The tea tray remained on the floor. Very little time had passed, and yet the dream had seemed so terribly real. Her heart was still pounding, she was shaking. She could remember it so vividly, see it!
Except that, awake or asleep, for the life of her, she could not see exactly who had chased her, seeking her death.
The Seminoles …
Or the soldiers.
Chapter 16
There were no more than forty members of the small Alachua band remaining. They had found their way to a high hammock on a small peninsula leading from the eastern side of the lake. There was only one trail that led to the encampment, and that same one trail led away from it.
James came upon the difficulty there because he had been riding away from Fort Deliverance with Wildcat when a scared Indian boy had found them. He barely spoke coherently.
“The soldiers are outside the trees. Near … too near. The bad soldiers. They ride with one who kills. There are too many of them. We can’t fight them. Ten men can maybe fight. Ten are old. Two are already dying. The babies might cry and lead them to us. We will all die.”
“We will have to fight,” Wildcat said.
James shook his head slowly. “Two of us cannot kill a company of soldiers. We must go closer and study the situation. Boy, leap up here!” He reached down and caught the boy’s arm, dragging him up in front on the saddle. “Lead us closer.”
It was as the boy had warned. The soldiers were on a trail that led dangerously close to the Alachuas. They rode, then stopped, listening.
“The mico’s second young wife has a baby who cries,” the boy said. “They will make her suffocate it, or else they will all die,” he said flatly.
“Maybe,” James said.
They had come around behind the soldiers. They were as silent as the breeze when the soldiers went still, and talked only when the soldiers started to ride through the brush again.
“And maybe not.” James jumped from his horse, leaving the boy atop it. “I’m going across the water. I’ll move those I can across to the copse there, where they can escape into the bush. When that is done, I will meet you back here exactly, and we must make a diversion to draw the soldiers in the other direction. They will ride forever without coming across another band in the forest.”
Wildcat dismounted. “I am coming with you. The boy is young but bright. He will watch the young soldiers until we return.”
“Wildcat, we are risking death if the soldiers move before we—”
“We can move people far more quickly if I come with you.”
James didn’t argue.
He and Wildcat swam the distance to the peninsula. Once there, they moved very quickly, speaking with the old war chief and arranging first to move his young wife and her half-starved and mewling infant across the water on a hastily fashioned raft.
James swam back to the glen, dragging the raft. He cautioned the girl again and again to stop the babe from crying. She tried.
When they reached the shore, silent tears streamed down the girl’s pretty young face. The baby was quiet. She stared at James.
He felt a chill in his heart and wondered if she had succumbed to shame and smothered the infant.
She shook her head. “She sleeps. My baby sleeps.”
He swallowed hard and nodded. “Take her swiftly into the woods. Go as deeply as you can and wait. If we can make the soldiers move on, it will be safe for you to go home.”
She nodded and did as she had been bidden. James swam back.
Wildcat had enlisted the help of the five young boys in the small village. Between them all, the old chief was moved next with his first wife and two very old warriors. By the time they made a fourth trip with the hastily fashioned and very crude rafts, most of the village had been moved. As they were so good at doing, the Indians melted into the woods.
James returned one last time to make sure that no one had been deserted.
As he stood in the center of the now ghostly village, he heard a noise in the brush. He ducked swiftly behind one of the cabins, then followed the others around as he realized that a single young soldier was coming closer and closer to the cabins, scouting them out.
His heart sank. If he didn’t kill the soldier, the man would sound an alarm. The hideout would be discovered. The Alachuas would have no homes to return to. No food to eat. They wouldn’t be murdered in their own homes, but they might well die slowly of starvation when winter came again.
He hardened his jaw and his heart and skirted the cabins carefully, moving into the trees. If he went much farther, he would be in shouting distance of the entire company of men.
He saw the young soldier before him.
A very young soldier. Freckle-faced. He had barely ever shaved. He had wide, frightened green eyes and a few pimples on his chin.
It was evident that the soldier wanted to turn back. Evident that he wanted to live, but that he knew he was supposed to be brave as well and not fear death. The soldier kept walking, his back now to James. James moved silently in on him, damning himself. He slipped a knife from his waistband, knowing he dared not take a shot at the soldier with the others so close.
When he was about to strike, the soldier turned. He didn’t cry out. He stared at James, at the knife above him, and he crossed himself. “Sweet Jesus!” he said softly, and closed his eyes.
James hesitated just briefly. Then he lowered his knife and raised his fist, slugging the boy with a force that sent him crashing with a thud to the ground. Then he hefted him up over his shoulders and started quietly through the brush.
He came as close as he dared to the soldiers, then went around and in front of them, carrying his burden until he had taken the young man in uniform far from the trail to the village. When he was certain he had taken him far enough, he laid him down. The soldier started to stir. His eyes opened and he stared at James with alarm, groaning, gasping, and trying to inch away at the same time. James hunched down beside him. “I’m not going to kill you.”
“You’re not?”
James shook his he
ad.
“But I am going to knock you out again. Don’t worry. They’ll find you before dark.”
The young soldier nodded emphatically. “Bless you. God bless you! Oh, but you don’t believe in God right? Maybe I’m dead already, I think I’m talkin’ English to an injun with blue eyes. You must have some kind of god up there, and he’ll bless you. My ma will pray for you forever, honest!”
“How old are you, soldier?” James asked.
“Seventeen next month.”
“You’re too young to be in the army.”
“I reckon so. We just needed the money back home, that’s all.”
“Go back home, boy,” James said.
Then he took aim again, cracking the boy good in the jaw. He went out without a whimper. James left him beneath an oak.
He returned to Wildcat and the Alachua boy. They waited in the woods until the soldiers had passed on by.
The village had remained silent and undiscovered with everyone vacated from it.
The Alachuas would be able to return. The day had passed without bloodshed. James should have felt good. But he felt wretched.
He had been to the fort with Wildcat.
And he had seen her.
Osceola stood in front of the communal cooking fire, stretching his hands before it, closing his eyes. The fire was kept burning through the night, a task for the slaves the Indians kept. A pot of sofkee with a large spoon remained hot over the fire, ready for a warrior whenever he was hungry.
But it was late, and Osceola stood alone.
He was a man of medium height, slim, wiry, with a well-muscled build. Except that the muscles were sometimes failing him now. And he was far slimmer than he should be. His wives knew that his strength sometimes left him, and when he looked at the moon at night and heard wolves howl, he sometimes felt a strange sense of destiny himself, as if his time was limited.
It was strange, but so often now he would remember the past. Think back to his boyhood.
Things had been so much different then.
He had been born a Creek, in the Upper Creek town of Tallahassee. He had first been known as Billy Powell, for his father, an Englishman. A white man.