He pulled her close again, shuddering fiercely, holding her. He held her for the longest time, and she was grateful for the river, glad of the water that drenched them both, for it would hide the silent, damp tears that streamed down her face.
“You can and must survive without me.”
“What is survival if the soul perishes?”
“I had thought my soul had perished long ago,” he informed her very softly.
“James—”
“Have you ever made love in the water?” he whispered to her suddenly.
His words angered her, shattering the closeness of the past moments. She felt as if she was choking. She tried to free herself from his hold. “My God, James, you would know!” she cried. “You would know!”
“Shh! Shh!” he whispered, and he was laughing again, she realized, and when she met his gaze, there was a tenderness in his eyes unlike any he had offered her before.
“Damn you!” she hissed, but with no conviction.
“Since we’ve not shared the pleasure …” he murmured. He kissed her. Long and deeply. The water felt chill. Her body seemed ablaze.
He began to make love to her in the water.
They drank the strong, hickory coffee. He clothed her in one of his large cotton shirts.
He caught fish for their dinner. She learned to skin and debone it, and cook it over the open fire. He talked about being a boy and visiting Charleston, where Jarrett’s mother’s family had hailed from. She told him how the city had changed.
Night began to fall. They sat on the riverbank and watched the sunset. Watched the colors in silence, felt the breeze touch them while the golden orb of sun flattened and stretched out, spreading tenacles in bright red, orange, yellow … then a softer crimson, a mauve.
Darkness blanketed the landscape. Coolness seeped in along the river. He built up the fire, and they sat before it. He taught her a few words in Muskogee and then Hitichi, explaining how the languages differed, how white men had labeled the Creeks for the bodies of water they lived along. She told him how she had come to love medicine, what a thrill it was to treat a man and see him heal. She caught him watching her intently over the campfire, and she flushed and told him, “Any man, James. I love to see any man heal, be he white, red, or black.”
He nodded, reached across the campfire, and kissed her. Then he rose, sweeping her up, carrying her to their makeshift bed within the crude hootie. He made love to her again, his desire never sated, just newly awakened as he learned each new smile she could offer him.
There was a war on. Hundreds had died, she had nearly perished. She hadn’t even the clothes that had been on her back. She lay in the wilderness, without even solid walls around her.
She had never been happier in all her life.
In the middle of the night she awoke slowly. So slowly. He had been arousing her, awaking her, his finger stroking down her spine. His lips, tongue, following it its wake. He rolled her swiftly, his kiss suddenly searingly intimate. She caught her breath, crying out a soft plea, shuddering with the hot sweetness that soared through her as he entered her. Moving. Oh, Lord. Moving slowly, more swiftly …
Dimly, she heard the cry of a bird, and realized that dawn was nearly upon them.
Again, the bird.
“What’s that?” she whispered, suddenly pressing against him.
“Nothing!” he muttered, but he paused. He hesitated, then stood. The moon had risen. Naked, slick, shimmering in its glow, he walked down to the water. He stood there for a moment, as striking as some pagan god in the mystical light of moon with the sun just beginning to touch the horizon. Then he turned, disappearing into the brush.
Teela shivered, pulling the furs around her. Birds cried again. She listened intently, frightened that she would hear some rustling in the brush. She heard nothing.
She gasped as she felt a hand upon her shoulder, spinning with alarm. It was James. She hadn’t begun to hear him return from behind her.
“What is it?” she demanded anxiously.
“Nothing,” he told her.
“But what—”
“Nothing!” he repeated firmly, pressing her down. Covering her with his body and warmth and strength. Sexuality and seduction.
When he moved again within her, something was different. He made love with an even greater passion. Reckless, almost ruthless. He held her with a greater fervor. A greater urgency.
It seemed that he would never let her go.
* * *
Major General Joseph M. Hernandez stood quietly by his tent. A hundred and seventy men had set up bivouac in the ruins of Dunlawton Plantation. Night was falling. Peaceful time, pretty time. He loved dusk, the soft coating of shadow that added a muted beauty to his surroundings.
He was a Floridian, and did not mind his duty here in the territory. Of Hispanic descent, he had a fine, subtle sense of humor and a liking for humanity in general. He had befriended many of the Indians, and was often torn with pity for them. He knew the enemy he fought, and often wondered if the war could possibly ever end.
“General!”
John, a young aide-de-camp, approached him quickly across the overgrown lawn of the once beautiful plantation. He saluted quickly, and Hernandez saluted in return.
“We’ve gone with the Negro, sir, and spotted the Indian camp. It appears easily assailable now that it is discovered.”
“Ah!” Hernandez nodded. Well, if the Seminoles did not suffer enough from the whites, they had their own numbers and rebellious Negroes to deal with as well. They were here tonight because a servant to the Mikasukee chief, King Philip, had grown weary of life in the scrub. Actually, it was the man’s wife who had grown weary. Life was increasingly burdensome among the Indians. They were constantly on the run. Seeking poorer and poorer shelter. Seeking more and more desperately for any food to still their hunger, that of their children, their servants.
King Philip’s man had promised to lead the whites to the chief’s camp. And now he had done so.
“Sir?” John said.
Hernandez sighed deeply. “Ready the men. We will surround the camp, watch our enemy, attack by first light.”
“Sir!” John acknowledged.
The order to march was sounded.
The dusk was too quickly gone. They marched by darkness, finding their positions around the Indian camp by midnight. He split his troops, ordering groups of volunteers to encircle the encampment on three sides. His regulars remained mounted, ready to ride in at first light.
No dog barked, no guard called out. Deep in the hammocks, too often the Indians slept with no guard. It had long been their way. The battle tactics of the whites were not easily accepted or realized, even when it brought terrible destruction upon the Indians.
By the first faint light of dawn, Hernandez gave the order for the troops to attack.
No alarm ever sounded. The soldiers ran over the encampment.
There was no battle. None of the Indians was slain, only one escaped, the rest were captured. There had been no chance to fight under the circumstances, and the Indians had known it. They were scarcely dressed; they’d scant time to pick up weapons.
“Royalty!” a soldier called, guffawing loudly. Shouts went up. Hostile cries from the Indians, jeers from some of the men.
Hernandez came forward, brushing past an army surgeon, Dr. Motte, who seemed ready as well to snicker at the sight of the man before him.
The Indian was not large in stature; indeed, he was covered in dirt, for he had run, probably for his weapons, and been dragged down. He was naked as a jaybird, except for the small breech clout covering his loins.
“A dirty king at that, eh, General?”
Hernandez, a striking, imposing man, turned with distaste to see who had called out. He didn’t judge the Seminoles; he didn’t judge his own men. They’d seen too much of disease and grisly death. He turned back to the man who, naked and dirty and not large at all, still managed to stand with tremendous pride before him. ?
??King Philip?” Hernandez said. The Indian nodded in acknowledgment. Interpreters stood by, but the mico had apparently understood his name.
“You are my prisoner, sir. Perhaps things will go better for you if you send out for your followers. Have them come in. Talk with us.”
The interpreter repeated his words. Philip stared at him. Hernandez thought he smiled. Philip spoke in his own tongue to one of his people at his side.
“King Philip will send out runners for his allies.”
“Tell him to bring in his son, Coacoochee. Known to the white men as Wildcat.”
Philip again appeared to be smiling. He said something to a man at his side.
“What was it?” Hernandez asked John softly. He had learned many words himself in the Indian tongues, but John had a gift for language and spoke Philip’s language fluently.
“He said, sir, indeed, he will send for the ‘Wildcat.’ And he says that white men should take grave care. He cannot know what manner of creature will come once a wildcat is summoned.”
Hernandez nodded, acknowledging Philip’s importance. He turned on his heel, aware that the night wasn’t over. Another captive, called Tomoka Jon, had promised to lead them to another camp.
He should have been glad, proud of his leadership, proud of his troops. In all the time they had battled so far, he had just made one of the most important captures ever, that of King Philip. The more leaders they brought in, the more they would break the resistance.
He had Philip. And Philip could bring him Wildcat. And other wild denizens of the forest as well perhaps. Smart, dangerous creatures. Like an Alligator—or a Running Bear.
He felt weary, not elated.
The Indians, it seemed, were far wiser than many of their white enemies realized.
Wildcats and other creatures of the forest simply could not be kept in captivity. They couldn’t be tamed, and they couldn’t be chained.
God alone knew what blood and fur might fly when they were accosted.
Chapter 20
The days passed strangely for Teela and James, as if time had somehow stopped within the copse, gone still. It had not, of course. Beyond the green shade of their hammock, the world, and the war, were going on. But here, for the time, it didn’t touch them.
At first James seemed somewhat subdued, brooding. And almost determined to make Teela see that she couldn’t endure the hardships of life in the hammock.
He told her that they had nothing to eat; she said that she wasn’t hungry. He found roots that could be ground for a starch stew or porridge; she learned to grind roots. He told her that the Seminoles always kept a sofkee pot going, so that any visitor or man or woman within the tribe might eat when he or she was hungry. He told her Seminole women served their men.
She told him she wasn’t Seminole.
Two mornings she was wretchedly sick, and determined he wouldn’t realize it. He did see it, damned himself, and collected some wild berries and some squash and potatoes from an abandoned plantation. He killed a rabbit, which she annoyingly and expertly prepared over a spit, according to his directions.
His temper eased. His brooding gave way to a simple thoughtfulness.
And finally, in the privacy of the copse, they managed to cease being white and Indian, and simply be.
James didn’t mention what he was going to do with her; Teela didn’t ask. They swam, they fished, they lay in the sun, they slept beneath the moonlight. They made love at any hour. They saw no one, they wished to see no one.
The best times, Teela thought, were those when the sun was setting. When the sky was etched in magenta, when cranes and egrets streaked across the heavens and came to rest upon gnarled roots by the water. Sometimes then James lay propped against the trunk of a fallen cypress, and she lay curled within his arms, and they both watched the sky and talked. One day when they had spent nearly a week in their haven, there had been rain, and the sun was just beginning to fall with an extraordinary beauty. Teela told him about Lilly, about how her mother had thought that marriage to Michael Warren would be so wonderful, fitting, and proper. Lilly believed with her dying breath that Warren had been a fine father for Teela. “I don’t think she ever loved him. I think she loved my real father, but then …”
“Then?” James queried.
Teela shrugged. “Well, marriages are often arranged in Charleston. She’d known most of her life she was going to marry my father. I used to love to dream about them, though. To imagine that he had been the great love of my mother’s life, that they’d shared a passion beyond bounds. Children want to believe those things, though, don’t you think?”
“Sometimes they’re true. In that, I was lucky. I know that my father adored my mother.” He hesitated a moment. “He was willing to give up everything for her, not that she asked him to.”
“She must miss him.”
“She has missed him a long time,” he said softly, his hand moving gently over her arm as he spoke. “He was quite a man, my father. When Jarrett’s mother died, he grieved terribly until he found a new interest in life. Indian culture. He was intrigued, fascinated, by other cultures and people. He was twice blessed. He met my mother, and she adored him, and Jarrett.” He smiled ruefully. “At times, I believe, she is actually more fond of Jarrett than me. I accused her so once, in good humor, really, and she told me that she’d had Jarrett longer than me.”
Teela laughed. “Jealous little ruffian, eh?”
He smiled, shaking his head. “Mary has a tremendous capacity for love. She might still marry again, who can say? She was sixteen when I was born, and gives the appearance of a young woman even now. She has mourned Father a long time and I imagine—” He broke off suddenly.
“What?”
“She might indeed marry again. If any men are left alive to marry when this is over.”
Teela drew slightly away from him. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
He hiked his weight up, half leaning over her. His eyes were grave. “Eventually, we’re going to have to talk about what we’re going to do.”
“We could stay here,” she said stubbornly.
“Not forever.”
“Why not forever?”
“Warren will hunt us down and you know it. And though I honestly wouldn’t mind a chance to rip him to shreds, he’d kill so many others in the process of rinding you that their lives would be on our conscience.”
“So what will you do?” she demanded.
“I don’t know yet,” he said evasively.
“Go back to war,” she accused him.
“And have you a better suggestion?”
“Yes! Quit fighting, live at Cimarron with your brother and your daughter, and—”
“Trade my life for my honor and the debt I owe my mother and her people?”
“What about the debt you owe your father, your brother, your friends?”
“They are not threatened with extermination.”
“You’ve said you will not raid plantations—”
“And I will not, you know that.”
“Then walk away from the war!”
“Do you think it will be so simple now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind.”
“Damn it, James—”
“Never mind!”
“You need to explain yourself and listen to me in return. The war will eventually be lost. The army will come, and come again in droves.”
“Mark my words, Teela, you are wrong. This war will not be lost. One Indian standing firm can defeat a dozen exhausted soldiers, hungry, weary, and riddled with disease.”
“The Seminoles are hungry, and many have died of malaria and measles.”
“Teela—”
“James, if you just—”
“Stop.”
“But I—”
“Enough!”
Enough, enough! He spoke, and she was supposed to obey.
She startled him by leaping up, her hands on her hips, looking
like a very feminine pirate in his white cotton shirt, tied at her waist with a dyed red band of rawhide. She glared at him through narrowed eyes. “Enough! Enough! What is that, Mr. McKenzie, your favorite word? Order? Command, rather, I should say! Well then, you’re damned right. I’ve had enough!”
She spun away from him, the wild length of her hair flying behind her. Shoulders straight, head high, her posture suddenly again that of the well-bred southern lady she was, she stalked away from him.
He watched her for a moment, vexed. Then he smiled slowly, because her appearance was so at odds with her bearing. His shirt chastely covered her shoulders, back, and rump, but there stopped, revealing the slim and delicious length of her legs. Her carriage was prim; her movement was unbearably evocative. He watched her another moment, making her barefoot way a good distance from him along the water. Where she was going he didn’t know. That she was never going to reach her point of destination was a dead certainty.
He closed his eyes briefly. Their time was limited. He knew it well. It seemed they’d found a hidden paradise. But Wildcat had always known this place. Jarrett knew it as well; they had sometimes come across the territory as children; they had come for conferences; they had celebrated the Green Corn Dance with other tribes and factions. They had played here, a refuge for them then, a refuge for them now. Luckily, only those he trusted completely—whites and Seminoles—did know of this place.