It was nice, in a way, to worry about her brother-in-law and yet know at the same time that he was actually safe for once—even if he was behind bars.
He couldn’t get into mortal danger where he was.
“You’ve studied the layout as I have?” Wildcat demanded anxiously. He spoke in a whisper, though none of the guards near them knew a word of Muskogee.
James, walking in the yard of the fort, nodded, gazing to the southwest. That angle of the coquina fortress was considered to be escape-proof. Because of that fact there were no guards posted there. On a dark night silent figures could reach the parapet walk unaccosted, and slip downward over the side of the wall.
They could escape. The small opening they sought was a good fifteen feet above the ground. It was five feet high but only eight inches wide, cut through the six-foot thickness of the walls. There were two iron bars across the opening, but James, Wildcat, and another of the warriors, Coweta, had determined that they could break the shell around the one bar and remove it while using the other as the anchor they would need to reach the opening. They could then drop down into the ditch behind the walls and from there disappear into either the ocean or the land.
“We’ll take turns each night, chipping at the shell to loosen the bar,” James said.
Wildcat nodded. “It’s very high. We’ve nothing to use to reach the wall—”
Coweta, a strong Indian with Negro blood, entered the discussion. “We have one another. We will manage the task.”
Four days later, they were nearly ready to lift the bar, though they would not do so until the time of escape arrived, lest they alert someone to their intentions.
Warriors had made a human pyramid, and James was atop them, chipping the last little bit of the wall away to clear the bar. He was startled when Wildcat’s husky whisper suddenly urged him from his task.
“Running Bear!”
“What?”
“We must talk. Quickly.”
He had pressed against the bar. It moved. The task was done.
He climbed down the ladder of bodies in silence. One by one the Seminoles leaped from their perches atop one another. James, hands on his hips, stared at Wildcat, frowning.
“It’s done.”
“And none too soon.”
“Why? What has happened.”
“Come with me.”
James quickly followed Wildcat through an archway to the adjoining cell. Osceola was there with his family. He motioned to his first wife, Morning Dew, to leave them in peace. James sat before Osceola while Wildcat hovered behind him.
“They have been fairly free with old Riley here, you are aware of that?” Osceola said.
James nodded, frowning. “Yes, why?”
“He is able to give the white soldiers our requests, to ask them questions for us. They have used him in return, making more of a servant of him.”
“They often seek to return black men to their evil masters, you know that.”
Osceola waved a hand. “Riley is among us,” he said dismissively. “The point is that he hears the soldiers talking often. One of the soldiers who works with the papers in this place was talking to another.”
“And?”
“This soldier once rode with Michael Warren.”
“Yes?”
Osceola lifted his shoulders as if he had already explained things fully. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Papers … letters. This man has sent out a rtlessage to Major Warren. To let him know that you are imprisoned here. Where Warren is, he didn’t exactly know. How long it might take a letter to reach Warren, the soldier didn’t know. But a man on a good, fast horse can travel fifty miles a day at least, eh?”
James nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, you are right.”
“So, though you worry about me and the others, though you let yourself be taken for me and the others, you must now go. Your heart has been soaring over these walls many days now. Your spirit has been gone while your mind has fought to remain for the good of the people here. Now there can be no war within you. I am not afraid. I am resigned. What will come, will come. But you must go.”
“Osceola, Warren cannot just walk into this place and shoot me down—”
“My friend, both of us know that he would not even need to do so! Guards could come in the night, food could be poisoned. Who knows? You could kill yourself with a rope that happened to be in your cell. A tragic suicide. A half-breed, battling all his worlds. Many will suspect. None will be able to prove anything. James, you must go.”
James nodded slowly. “As you say, great mico.”
Osceola smiled, drawing his blanket more closely around him. “Warrior. I was a great warrior, eh?”
“You are a great warrior.”
Osceola nodded, not arguing the point.
That night, James stood with Wildcat beneath the opening, studying it.
“Will we make it through that little space? There lies our challenge,” James said.
“It will be easy for me, more difficult for you. But you are determined. We will slick our bodies with grease and twist and turn until we are free. We have starved often enough because we haven’t had food, and now we have starved to make ourselves smaller. It is still your desire to do so? You could most probably call upon your white brother and be free.”
“I have asked my brother not to interfere. I will not put him or his family in jeopardy for helping me. I will be coming with you,” James said. He knelt down by Osceola, who sat against the wall, ready to tell them good-bye. “Perhaps I can be a better friend from the outside.”
There was no question of Osceola joining the escape. He hadn’t allowed the whites to realize how sick he often felt. Some of the warriors had tried to talk him into coming. His escape would be a just revenge for the whites who had behaved so treacherously bringing them all in. But Osceola had made his decision. He was, as he had told James, resigned.
Now he placed a hand on James’s. “I am proud that you will keep fighting. I will tell my captors that I could have gone with you, but that I chose not to do so.” He lowered his voice. “You, James, know that I cannot go. I will slow you down, bring disaster upon you. I will pray to the Great Father for us all.”
James clasped his arm. “I will never be far from you. I will seek to help you from the outside when I am cleared of Otter’s guilt in the massacre of the soldiers. And …”
“When you have settled that fire in your heart, eh, my good friend?”
“Yes, great mico. When I have settled the flames that eat upon my soul.”
He stood again, very tired yet grateful for his own health. There had been so much sickness. Yuchi Billy had died just four nights ago and been buried under the supervision of the medicine men and priests. Others had already perished as well. James was now ready to leave. His way. With no outside help.
It was very late, and the sky darkened even further as a cloud slipped across the moon. It was time to go.
Eighteen of them had determined to risk the escape, sixteen men and two women. They worked together in unison and in silence. The chiseled-out bar was removed. A rope was cast and anchored over the remaining bar.
The hardest part of the escape was slipping through the narrow opening. For the women it was easy. They were very small and slim. James knew that with the size of his shoulders and torso, it was going to be most difficult for him. He had been aware of that fact from the beginning.
He forced himself to think of Teela. Her face, her form—and the way she had walked away from him, leaving him to be tackled by the soldiers. His skin was well greased. He twisted and strained harder, then sought to make his muscles and bulk smaller, all but shearing the flesh from his body. He clamped down hard on his jaw, knowing that he could not let out a sound.
And at last he was through. He joined the others.
Wraiths, they stood in the darkness and the breeze. Free.
They knew how to move in silence, all of them. One by one they shinnied down the
ir stolen line the twenty-one feet to the ditch below.
It was there that he parted with Wildcat and the others.
“I must go my own way now,” James told him.
“The white way.”
James shook his head, though he knew full well that he was not going to become a part of the war against the whites, no matter what accusations Warren conjured to throw against him. He had never fought willingly; he had only fought for the survival of those around him.
“I have always tried to remain at peace with my father’s people and my mother’s. I want to find peace again.”
“Perhaps it cannot be found when there is a war being fought.”
“Peace is something we may have to find in our own hearts,” James told him. “But I promise you this, I will never betray my Seminole brothers.”
Wildcat smiled. “Neither of your peoples, eh? The Great Spirit be with you. When you tire of the pasty-skins, find me. I will fight the war again, by our lives and blood!”
They embraced briefly.
Wildcat went his way, raising a hand to indicate that the rest should follow him. He was there a moment, a dark shadow barely visible in the dark night, then he was gone, silently disappearing with his people. James scampered through the darkness until he reached the water of the inlet. He plunged in. Thanks to Dr. Weedon’s interest in half-breeds and talking, he knew where his brother’s family was lodged, even though he’d yet to see Jarrett since his capture.
It was well past midnight when he found the house. Yet he was in luck. As he stood dripping on the wood-planked sidewalk before it, staring up at the second floor, Teela sat at a dressing table. He could just make out her form through the filmy white curtains in the flickering glow of her candlelight.
She blew out the flame.
He smiled.
He was naked save for a breech clout. His body had been greased down to allow for his escape, but the salt water had washed away the grease. His hair was queued at his nape with a leather band. Dressed so, he could move with the same ease of any creature who preyed in the forest.
He climbed the wall with the help of a trellis and slipped onto the balcony, then through those telltale flimsy curtains and into the darkened room. He made his way to the bed, kneeling swiftly down by the woman there and clamping his hand over her mouth. He lowered his mouth to her ear even as he heard her muffled squeaks of protest, and cast his weight against her to keep her still.
“All right, now, my love, just whose child is it?”
To his amazement, a large, dark shadow moved on the side of the bed by the woman.
“Mine!” snapped the shadow.
Chapter 25
James leapt back from the bed, stunned but instantly wary, prepared to fight. But no one attacked him, and he was startled to hear the shadow speaking and to recognize the voice.
“Mine—and there’s no damned question about it. And what the hell are you doing in my bedroom at this time of night?”
A match was struck, a candle lit. James found himself staring at his brother and sister-in-law, both seated in their bed with the covers drawn up around them and looking at him expectantly.
“I—” he began, then lifted his hands. “I’m sorry, Tara.”
“I think you’ve got the wrong room,” his sister-in-law said smoothly. “You want to be down the hall and to the left,” she informed him.
“Of course, you could have just knocked on the front door,” Jarrett said, studying his appearance critically.
“I can’t stay long,” James said simply.
“Maybe you should stay long enough to talk,” Jarrett suggested.
“He doesn’t need to talk to us. He needs to talk to Teela, as is evidenced here,” Tara said.
“Yes,” Jarrett said, “and no matter what your circumstances, I want to know what’s going on before you leave.”
“Fair enough,” James said, turning to leave their room.
“There was an escape, I take it?” Jarrett said.
“Yes.”
“And you led it?”
James paused, shaking his head. “I did not. I merely joined it.” He hesitated. “I had no choice. I’ve had word that Michael Warren was informed of my presence at the Castillo. It was suggested to me that I might not survive imprisonment if I didn’t leave quickly.”
“Warren knows you were imprisoned?”
“If he does not know now, he will soon.”
“You know, then, that you don’t dare stay here long?”
“I’ll be gone by dawn, before it’s discovered that there has been an escape.”
“So has Jesup lost Osceola?”
James shook his head again. “Osceola is dying,” he said quietly. “He may have some time left. Weeks, months, I don’t know.” He started out of the room and then paused. “Jesup thinks that this will win the war for him. But it won’t.”
“I know,” Jarrett told him.
James nodded, stepped out, and quietly closed the door behind him.
Jarrett looked sternly at his wife. “Should we have allowed him to do that? He’s liable to give the poor girl a heart attack.”
“She’s stronger than that, but she will be ready to kill him,” Tara said complacently. Her husband was staring at her as if she’d gone mad. “He will deserve it, definitely, and as you know, they must solve their own problems.”
“The problems may be greater now than ever. He has just escaped from a military prison!”
“They had no right to hold him, and James was right. Warren probably would have had him murdered within the Castillo. James is not just an innocent man. He has saved the lives of both white men and Seminoles.”
“That’s your feeling on the matter.”
“He should just stay here—” Jarrett groaned softly, “Tara, don’t you see? He can’t possibly stay. This is the first place they’ll come to look for him!”
“But—”
“Tara, leave it be.”
“But—”
“Tara!”
“Jarrett—”
He sighed, and kissed his wife. It was the only way to silence her, he had long ago discovered.
She was having the dream again.
She knew that she was somewhere deep in the interior of the territory. It was no place she knew well. The trails were narrow, nearly nonexistent. She could hear the constant buzzing of flies and mosquitoes. She could hear something else as well. Her own breathing.
She was running.
Running so hard. And she was carrying the weight in her arms. Desperate to reach safety, desperate to hide. She was being chased.
The footsteps kept falling and falling. She couldn’t run fast enough. The green trees were overshadowing her. She heard a hissing sound and nearly cried out, startled as a snake nearly struck out at her from a low-hanging branch.
The runner was gaining on her. Coming closer and closer. She looked down at the weight in her arms. It was a babe. Dark-haired, so tiny. Newborn, helpless.
The footsteps, pounding against the earth, were almost upon her. She turned, opening her mouth to scream. Someone was coming to kill her. Her and the babe.
She couldn’t see her pursuer through the trees.
She didn’t know if she was being chased by a white man or a red man, a soldier or a Seminole. She only knew one thing.
He wanted her—and the baby—dead.
James hurried down the hallway, finding the door on the left and stepping through it.
The windows were open from the balcony. Soft white linen curtains floated with ghostlike grace, allowing in more moonlight than his brother’s room. Halfway across the room he could see her, and knew that this time he had come to the right place. The waves of her hair spilled against the white sheets like tendrils of the deepest, darkest fire in the night. She slept restlessly, her breathing shallow. She wore a gown of frilled white cotton, absurdly chaste—other than the fact that her breasts, definitely enlarged, strained against the lacy bodice. He w
alked closer to the bed, standing very still as he stared down at her, oddly at war within himself. He discovered he was as fascinated with her as he had been that very first time he had seen her in his brother’s house. She was exceptionally beautiful, and knowing her made her even more so, because the fire that filled her spirit was even greater than the vibrant glow of her hair and eyes, the marble perfection of her flesh. He felt his heart hammering against his chest, and he wanted to touch her in the most tender way, and he wanted to shake her because he was afraid. Perhaps because he had no right to doubt her; and yet perhaps because he did. He knew her so well, so intimately, and yet he didn’t really know her at all. He had sent her away so many times.
With no choice, he reminded himself.
And what now? he silently mocked. What now? He was more the renegade than ever. It hadn’t occurred to him until Jarrett had asked him about the escape that he might be accused of masterminding it, and that Jesup himself would want his head.
Should he walk away without waking her? Leave her in her restless sleep without ever touching her, speaking to her? Go on the run once more, this time forever?
She stirred as he watched her; her eyes suddenly flew open. It seemed that she had been alarmed before she even awakened. She jumped up to a sitting position, inched to the headboard, and flattened herself against it.
She was about to scream, he realized, while remembering his own appearance, deeply bronzed, half naked.
She had nearly been stabbed to death once by a man with a very similar appearance, he remembered. Otter. Any second she might start shrieking, waking not just the household but the entire neighborhood. He dared not let her cry out.
He took the step to the bed before she could scream, leaping upon it, silencing her with his hand. Her eyes widened with greater alarm, then shock, then fury.
“You son of a bitch—” she began with a hiss.
Anger bred anger. “Whose child is it?” he interrupted just as heatedly.
She inhaled sharply and tried to slap him. He caught her hand, but didn’t deter her wrath. Her teeth sank into his wrist, and he cried out softly with surprise. She wasn’t done. He had met men in battle without half her furious strength. Coming to her knees against him, she pummeled his shoulders and chest wildly. She came at him with such a force that he fell back, and she glared at him. “Wretched, pompous, despicable ass!”
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