Tess nodded. “At least that’s what everyone thought. It couldn’t be proved. But it’s why Holt was accused of ambushing him, a few years after the war. The Chatham family started a campaign to have Holt arrested and tried—”
“And for a Cherokee, that meant automatic death,” Erica explained. “So Holt became an outlaw. He had to.”
Kat looked at her askance. “So he did go around blasting people?”
“No, he went around robbing every business the Chathams owned. Dove said he never shot anyone except in self-defense, not in all the years he tormented the Chathams.”
“Until finally they sent a small army of U.S. marshals after him,” Tess interjected. “Holt had a log fortress hidden in the hills. The marshals found it, and when Holt refused to surrender, they burned the place to the ground.”
Kat felt Erica’s and Tess’s hands squeezing hers tighter. Erica looked at her sympathetically. “But the horrible thing was, Holt wasn’t there. His wife was there, and his five children, and they’d lied to the marshals to throw them off Holt’s track.”
Kat winced. “So that’s why Dove and my grandfather Joshua were born so late in Holt’s life. They were his second family. Poor Great-Grandfather.”
Tess nodded. “Right. And after that. Holt waged war on the marshals and the Chathams.”
“Finally, thirty years after Nathaniel was shot, a witness came forward and said that Holt wasn’t responsible.”
“So Great-Grandpa was cleared of the murder charge, and he turned peaceful?” Kat asked.
Both cousins nodded. “But he never forgot that the Chathams had his mother’s medallions,” Erica said. “When he was an old man he and Eli, Nathaniel’s son, tried to call a truce. Eli said he’d give the medallions back if Holt would sign over the mining rights to the Blue Song land in Georgia.”
“So that’s why Great-Grandpa did it,” Kat said softly. “But why’d he and Eli have a gunfight years later?”
“They just plain couldn’t stand each other,” Tess said, imitating Kat’s sideways twang.
“So they killed each other. Dove inherited the Blue Song land and the medallions.”
Kat sighed. “She got Eli’s married son, Micah, too.”
Erica straightened proudly. “Well, I believe in Dove. I live in her house now, you know, and I think that she told the truth about everything, including Micah.”
“So what’d she say?”
“Oh, they were having an affair, all right,” Tess admitted. “But they’d been in love for years before Micah married someone else. Eli wouldn’t let his son marry a Gallatin—he threatened to disinherit him, and apparently Micah was not gallant enough to forgo money to marry Dove.”
“Dove made the mistake of still loving him,” Erica noted. “But I think we can forgive her for loving too deeply, can’t we?”
Kat nodded. “Then she got pregnant—”
“And she went to England to save everyone some grief.”
“But Micah’s wife learned the truth, anyway. End of story.”
Kat looked at her cousins with tears that matched their own. “But what happened after Dove’s baby and her English husband died?”
“Dove came back to the States and settled on the reservation in North Carolina.”
“Did Dove say anything about Justis and Katherine? I guess they’d passed on before she was born.”
“Yes, but she wrote down what Holt told her,” Tess said softly. “The only reason Justis had to have a white wife was to keep Katherine’s land for her. In the state of Georgia any man who married a Cherokee was considered a Cherokee, too. He would have lost everything, including the Blue Song land.”
“And Amarintha Parnell needed a respectable husband,” Erica said, “who was willing to give a respectable name to a baby that wasn’t his.”
Kat sank her head in her hands. “So Justis kept up a show for Katlanicha’s sake.”
There was a knock at the door. “Must be the pot of tea I ordered,” Tess murmured, as she crossed the room. “We can certainly use it.”
The waiter tromped inside, loaded with a full tray, and immediately tripped over Kat’s duffel bag. As everyone tried to help him up, he grimaced.
“Are you hurt?” Tess inquired.
“My foot hit something hard in that bag. I think I broke it.”
“Your foot?” Erica asked.
“No. Whatever’s in the end of the bag.”
“My sash weight!” Kat cried. She pulled the bag open and dug clothes out of it desperately. “It was so rusty and frail. And it’s hollow, Nathan said. If it’s broken—not today, please, not today, I can’t take it-”
Kat stuck one hand into the bag and hit a pile of metal fragments. Swallowing tightly, she finally managed to say, “It’s broken into about a hundred little pieces.”
“There are two dozen more of those weights back at the homeplace,” Tess said gently.
Erica hugged Kat’s shoulders. “That’s right.”
But this is the first one Nathan and I found together. Crying silently, Kat pulled a handful of broken metal out of the bag.
The coins caught the light and held it—golden, ageless, and shimmering with dreams that had finally come true.
KAT HAD A quarter of a million dollars, her share of the modern market value for 850 gold coins minted before 1810. Hidden inside twenty-five hollow iron sash weights, the rare coins were expected to send collectors all over the world into a frenzy. There were an additional thirty coins, but each of the Gallatin cousins kept ten for sentimental reasons.
Nathan put the newspaper down and wished he hadn’t gotten this news on his first day back from Surador. He’d lived for this day, hoping that time and restored mining rights had helped Kat forget that he’d tried to manipulate her into staying with him.
And that he had every intention of manipulating her again.
Nathan smiled grimly. The medallion would help him win her. He was the only person who knew what it said, who knew what great-great-grandmother Katlanicha had been waiting all these years to tell them.
“LISTEN! his name is Tahchee. He is adopted of the Deer clan. His body, I take it. His flesh, I take it. His heart, I take it. Bind his soul to mine, never to turn away. I am da-nitaka, standing in his soul. It was decided long ago.”
She’d said those words several times a day for the past three weeks. If anything could make Nathan come here on her terms, they would. The conniving rogue was home from Surador, and if he wanted his gold nugget back, he’d have to beg for it—and bring her medallion to trade.
If he didn’t, she’d have to think of another way to get him to come to her.
The brisk September air made her glad she’d donned a long-sleeved work shirt, plus knee-high socks under her jeans and Reeboks. A breeze carried whispers of fall through the trees, and a hawk swung overhead, black against a deep blue sky. Kat watched it quietly.
The hawk floated for a moment as if suspended in time, and then glided out of sight.
Carrying rough sketches of her house, Kat shut the door of the camper she’d rented and walked along the ridge to the old homesite. It was cleared now, the crumbling fieldstone foundation showing where the Blue Song house had stood and also showing, with the blackened rocks, that it had burned the day the soldiers came.
She, Tess, and Erica figured that even Katlanicha and Justis hadn’t known about the sash weights full of gold coins. Justis would have had plenty of opportunity to gather them during his trips back to Georgia to visit Amarintha Parnell, and he surely wouldn’t have left the sash weights lying around on open ground, thinking that no one would steal them.
Obviously Katlanicha’s parents had hidden the gold coins when they built their house, before their children were born.
So the land was a legacy from Katlanicha Blue Song, who became Katherine Gallatin but never forgot her Cherokee homeplace; and the coins were a legacy from the Blue Song family.
Kat stood in the center of the old homesite, th
inking how the house was going to rise from the ashes like a phoenix, restored as close to the way it’d looked” before as she could determine, though maybe it’d be a little bigger—there had to be plenty of room for Tess and Erica to visit with their families. They expected to build places here someday, but for now she’d be the only Gallatin on the property.
Well, not the only one, but the only flesh-and-blood one. Okay, so she really didn’t believe in ghosts—she simply liked to think she wasn’t alone here. Nothing odd about that.
Kat shut her eyes and pictured the house finished before Christmas. Her first Christmas in her old home. Her old home?
“Osiyo, Katlanicha.”
She dropped her sketches and whirled, searching the woods. Nathan, dressed in his buckskin breeches, moccasins, and a light gray sweater the color of his eyes, was leaning against an oak, his arms crossed nonchalantly over his chest as he watched her.
Her medallion gleamed on the end of the long gold chain he wore.
Her heart racing, Kat pulled the chain with the gold nugget out of her shirt. “Osiyo, you sly-footed hellion.”
He smiled slowly and walked toward her, every step a measured enticement telling her that he read the welcome in her eyes. But this feud wasn’t over.
Nathan stopped too close for her comfort and said in a droll voice, “You’re a rich little hummingbird now. You’ve got money, you’ve got your land, you’ve got your home—and nobody can ever hurt it again. That’s what Katherine and Justis intended. You don’t need to know what your medallion says. Everything’s settled.”
Kat shook her head sadly. “You and me aren’t settled. You left me. You didn’t want me anymore. And now I don’t know what I expected when I saw you again, but it looks like you came here only to make me feel bad.”
“Nope. I gave you freedom so you’d forget what I’d done to you. Then I came here today to tell you that you can’t forget me.”
Feeling a little dazed by the way he was looking at her, she took a step back. “You wanted me to forget.”
He stepped forward. “Nope. You can’t forget. You’ll never forget.” Suddenly he was touching her, slipping one arm around her, pulling her to him while he nestled a hand into her hair. “You’ll always need me, Katie.”
Katie. His hand. Her hair. Oh no. Kat shut her eyes and put her arms around his neck, then raised her mouth and caught his in a long, spellbound kiss.
She rested her forehead against his shoulder and felt the swift movement of his chest, the harsh grip of his hands on her, her own body trembling. “Needing and having are two different things,” she whispered.
“No.”
Tilting her head back, she looked at him wretchedly. “I’m going to college. I’ve already talked to the people at the one in Gold Ridge. They say all I have to do is take some catch-up courses first.”
“Yeah? So?”
Kat frowned. Was he dense? “So maybe I’ll be educated enough for you.”
“Good God, who said you weren’t?”
She studied him closely. “Are you ashamed of me for being so low-rent? Tell the truth.”
With a soft groan of dismay he took her face between his hands. “You’re not low-rent, sweetheart. And if I were any prouder of you, I’d be hard to live with.”
Giddy and confused, she said solemnly, “You were hard to live with in Atlanta. I didn’t know you anymore.”
“Is that why you stopped wanting me?”
She cried out sadly. “I didn’t know how to treat you. All those gifts, all that fancy stuff … I just wanted my old Nathan back, the one who roamed the woods and took buck-naked baths outdoors.”
“I can manage that for you.”
She pulled away, shaking her head and sweeping a hand around her. “You’d have to live here with me.”
“Best invitation I’ve heard in years. I accept.”
His eyes gleamed like old silver as he grabbed her hand. Without a word he pulled her along beside him as he headed for the front of the ridge.
Openmouthed, Kat stared at him, wondering what gave his eyes such a compelling purpose and set his mouth in a knowing little smile.
He stopped at the edge of the ridge, gazed out over the valley as if mesmerized by its beauty, then rested his fingertips on her medallion and looked at her the same way he’d looked at the valley.
“Do you want to know what your medallion says?” he asked softly.
Kat caught her breath. “Oh yes.”
He shut his eyes for a moment, then locked his gaze to hers. His fingertips caressed the Cherokee symbols. “Taken from the land, given back to the land, this gold will bring us home.”
His eyes never leaving Kat’s, Nathan turned the medallion and touched the symbols on the other side. “I will know him by the gold over his heart.”
Kat shook her head, puzzled. Nathan lifted the gold nugget from her chest. “This belonged to Justis.”
She gasped lightly and clung to him with both hands. Kat looked down at the nugget he cupped reverently in his palm. “This belonged to Justis? This is the nugget your great-great-grandpa took from him?”
“Not ‘took from him,”“ Nathan corrected gently. “Justis gave it to him to send to Katie after he was executed. Justis didn’t expect to escape.” Nathan paused. “This nugget’s stayed in my family over a hundred years. I’ve worn it all my life.”
Kat looked up at him and asked in a small, awed voice, “I will know him by the gold over his heart. Are you asking me to believe—”
“I’m asking you to marry me, Katie.”
She quivered with emotion, took his face between her hands, and searched his face until she knew she wasn’t imagining what she saw there. “That night when I asked you to make a deal on the mining rights, I said that I loved you,” Kat whispered. “You didn’t believe me. Will you believe me now?”
His voice was gruff. “I’ll believe you. Say it again for me, Katie.”
“I love you, Nathan.” She swayed against him, and he held her tightly. “And I’ll marry you.”
“Good. I love you, too.” He kissed her, then murmured against her lips, “That sounds so right I know I’ve said it before.” He chuckled hoarsely. “Maybe I’ve just thought it a lot.”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “But I’ve been waiting forever to hear it.”
SOMEDAY …
HE HAD LOVED Katherine Blue Song Gallatin for twenty-five years, and when he died tomorrow he would love her for eternity.
Justis Gallatin squinted both from the hot Arkansas sun and the blinding pain in his left arm, shattered by a Yankee bullet. His head aching with fatigue, briny sweat slipping through his mustache and into his mouth, he settled closer to the trunk of the aged pecan tree. The tree was his salvation and his tormentor; he was bound to it by six feet of thick iron chain which led to tight shackles around his booted ankles.
A shadow fell across Justis’s face. He lifted his head wearily and met a sympathetic gaze. Justis smiled thinly. “A hot day in hell. Good work. Colonel.”
“You ought to know.”
The blue-coated colonel squatted by him, handed him a canteen, and accepted a nod as thanks. Justis filled his stomach with the cool liquid.
“Major Gallatin, if there’s any message you want sent to your family, you best tell me today.”
Justis slid his good hand inside the neck of his shirt and, ignoring the agony every movement sent through his body, lifted a chain with a gold nugget on it over his graying hair. He handed it to the officer.
“That came from my wife’s land in Georgia.” Justis shut his eyes for a moment, picturing the old Blue Song place, thinking of all it meant to Katie and all he’d done over the years to keep it for her.
He gazed intently into the colonel’s eyes and said simply, “Tell her I’ll be waiting there.”
SHE HAD LOVED Justis Gallatin for twenty-five years, and she would love him for an eternity more. She would not let him step into that eternity alone and before his time. br />
Her pulse hammering with fear, Katherine entered the army tent and stood before the makeshift desk of a bearded, grim-faced Union officer. Colonel Nathaniel Chatham of the 1st Arkansas Cavalry stood and bowed slightly; he was obviously surprised as he took in her regal demeanor.
“I’d heard that you were beautiful and refined for a Cherokee woman,” he said. “But the rumors don’t do you enough credit, madam.”
Katherine ignored the compliment. “You have no right to hold my husband prisoner here in Arkansas. He’s a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.”
“He’s a white man. Living in the Oklahoma Injun lands doesn’t change that.”
“He’s a citizen by marriage. He has sons who are half Cherokee. He served in the tribal government before the war.” She paused, struggling to keep her dignity despite the growing terror for Justis’s safety. “We’re not part of your war, sir. Let him go.”
Chatham stroked his graying-brown beard and gave her a hard look. “Madam, there’s no use in trying to protect him or yourself. I know you were both born in Georgia. I know you’ve got Southern sentiments.”
The colonel arched a brow. “And I know that your husband is secretly an officer in the Confederate army. He and his Injuns spent the past two years bushwhacking Union troops all over Indian Territory.”
“Because those troops didn’t belong there.”
“No. Because you Gallatins wanted to save your way of life. You owned fifty slaves. That showplace of yours over at Tahlequah was one of the biggest farms in the territory.”
Katherine glared at him. “We’ve never owned slaves. Colonel. Those were freemen who worked for hire.”
Looking stunned, Chatham studied her. Then he grimaced. “Doesn’t matter. Major Gallatin is going to hang.”
A rush of queasiness made lights dance in front of Katherine’s eyes. She took a steadying breath. “Your troops have confiscated everything we owned. You ordered them to burn our house. My youngest son is in hiding because he shot a soldier who was trying to harm me. He’s only thirteen years old, just a child. Haven’t we suffered enough?”
“Madam, last month Injun soldiers killed my two eldest sons at the battle of Honey Springs.” He paused. “And they scalped them.”