Runaway

by Donna Cooner

  She suddenly wanted to touch it too.

  She went diving under, stroking hard to catch up with Jarrett and the creature, but they made a half turn that brought them back to her. She reached out. She stroked its somewhat rough hide. It was so much bigger than she, and yet so very gentle.

  She suddenly realized that she was about to die for lack of air. She shot back to the surface, gasping. Jarrett shot up next to her, inhaling deeply, black eyes on hers.

  “A sea cow, huh?” she said.

  “A sea cow. They like those water hyacinths over there,” he said, indicating a flower-weed that seemed to grow in the water.

  Tara turned and kicked hard, capturing some of the weed. She dived again with her offering. The animal swam straight toward her. It had a face like a walrus, she thought. Whiskers.

  It very gently took the weed from her hand and surfaced. It dived again, coming around her legs. Rubbing against her. She stroked it again.

  She hadn’t realized just how involved she had become with the creature until she saw that she was in the water alone with it. Jarrett had climbed up the bank and sat beneath a cypress on a bed of cabbage palms watching her.

  The setting sun now seemed to bathe the entire earth in shades of red. The birds had returned to the edges of the stream. Even the white egrets now seemed shaded with twilight pink.

  Tara gave the sea cow one last pat and kicked out, swimming toward the embankment. When her feet touched the muddy bottom, she felt uneasy again, afraid to fully step down, afraid of what might be in that mud.

  Her unease must have shown on her face. With a grin Jarrett stood, entirely undisturbed by the mud, and strode the few steps into the shallow water to sweep her up into his arms. She shivered slightly, staring into his dark eyes. His flesh was warm; it had dried in the dying sunlight.

  “You—shouldn’t have touched me. You were dry. And I’m all wet.”

  “I’ll dry again.”

  “But I am drenched.”

  “Then I will dry you as well,” he told her, and he laid her down upon the cabbage palms, coming down beside her.

  “The creature was not such a monster,” she told him. “It was so docile!”

  “Ah! Well, you see, all things just like to be … stroked,” he told her.

  “Indeed?” she whispered. She should have been cold; she was afire again. She should have been sated; she was amazed at the hunger that filled her. She cleared her throat, trying very hard to think clearly.

  “It will grow so cold soon!” she said.

  “No. I will warm you.”

  “I am doused.”

  “I will lick you dry.”

  She trembled, and wondered if there wasn’t something in this Eden that whispered of wild, sweet pleasure. And again, perhaps it was not so bad to be so wanted by the rock-hewn stranger who had married her, rescued her from danger, challenged her so fiercely with life.

  The breeze passed over her body. She felt deliciously sensitive to its touch. To him.

  A smile teased her lips. Her lashes lowered to sweep her cheeks seductively. She met his ebony gaze. “And you … do you just want to be stroked?” she whispered.

  He groaned, moving over her, burying his face against the sleek wetness of her belly.

  “Yes, my love. I just want to be … stroked.”

  She set her fingers upon his ebony hair. She felt his lips, his hands, moving over her flesh. She gasped aloud herself, and she reached out.

  Touching him.

  Stroking him.

  And the sun fell completely, shadows filling the land. The moon rose in the night sky before they dressed and made their way back to the camp.

  Chapter 16

  Three days later they were back by the stream. The weather had taken a very sudden and vicious snap, becoming quite cold, so they were not in the water, but seated upon the bank, Jarrett leaning up against a tree, Tara leaning with her back to his chest, their legs stretched out before them. They were quiet, and a multitude of birds had come to the stream. Tara watched them with absolute fascination.

  They were heading back in the morning, and to her astonishment she was almost sorry to be doing so. “They seem so peaceful here,” she murmured to Jarrett.

  “They? The birds?”

  “The Indians,” she said.

  He was silent for a few minutes, then sighed. “It is a different life, Tara. Some things much like the white world, some things not. They are very fair, and the humblest man in the village is welcome to give his opinion on any matter. But murder is punished almost instantly by death; if the murderer escapes, then some member of his family must pay the price. The mico—or chief—is usually the eldest son of the chief’s sister, but in these days things sometimes change. James is mico here because much of Naomi’s family is dead. Osceola is no hereditary chief, but has gained his power through his exceptional determination and ability at warfare.” He hesitated a minute. “They love their children and are very good to them, but sometimes, when a child might starve to death otherwise, or when the crying of a child might cause an entire tribe to be attacked or killed, infanticide is practiced, and it is accepted.”

  “Oh, God!” Tara breathed, shivering. How horrible! She could not imagine any parent killing a child, especially some of the little brown-skinned urchins she had met here.

  Yet, she thought with a deeper chill, she should know, more than others, that blood ties were not necessarily strong ones, and that perhaps the Seminoles acted with much more compassion than certain white men she had come to know.

  “Men and women are punished for adultery. The ears of a woman and her lover are cut off. And if the husband chooses, the lover must take his straying wife off his hands. At a second offense the lips and the nose are cut. When a woman’s husband dies, she is bound to mourn for him for four years with wildly disheveled hair. If she dishonors his memory by marrying or sleeping with another man during that time, her dead husband’s kin are free to kill her.”

  “I saw no one in the village with sliced ears!” Tara told him.

  “Wives tend to be well behaved,” he said lightly.

  “Hmm,” she murmured.

  His arms tightened around her. “They believe in good and evil, in a supreme being. He is the Great Spirit, and he rules both heaven and earth. He is master of all life. They try to do good, and believe when they die there will be a future state of reward in the place of ‘heaven,’ where the sun rises, or else they will go to where the sun sets and there be punished in a fiery ‘hell.’ ”

  “That is not so different,” Tara murmured.

  “Have you forgiven me?” he asked her suddenly.

  “Forgiven you?”

  “For your first day here,” he said, a twinkling light in his eyes when she twisted to see his face.

  She shook her head after a moment. “Ah, there is forgiving, and then there is forgetting. I shall certainly not forget!” she assured him.

  “Ah, be honest! What would you have said had I tried to tell you that my brother was among the heathen who so terrified everyone?”

  She shrugged. “I still have blisters.”

  “But think of it this way—you are now growing familiar with our marshes and wilderness. Right?”

  “Ah! So I am free to wander where I will now?” she inquired in return.

  He leaned back, smiling. “I don’t think I could ever clip your ears. But rest assured—I could quite easily redden your backside.”

  “And you, sir—”

  “I know. You are unwilling to let me keep my scalp!”

  She was about to respond but he sighed suddenly, slipping his arms around her middle so that they rose together. “I want to be back to spend time with Mary tonight, since I have to get back to Cimarron before the army comes for me again,” he added, and there was a touch of bitterness to his voice.

  She nodded. She didn’t fight him when he took her hand, but she was not uncomfortable when they went back to camp. The people had grown accust
omed to her; she had grown accustomed to the people.

  He dined with a number of the warriors while Tara ate with Mary, Naomi, and the children. Soon after, the little girls were asleep on their fur pallets, warm and cozy and comfortable. Mary and Naomi conversed softly in the center of the cabin, and from the door, which Tara had left purposely ajar, she watched Jarrett with the warriors. She watched his earnest conversations, the emotional flow of his hands as he spoke. He sat next to his brother. The “black drink” was shared that night between them, and as time passed, Jarrett and James—or White Tiger and Running Bear—were arm in arm.

  “They are very close. It is amazing,” Naomi told her.

  Tara, who had been sitting cross-legged with her elbows on her knees and her chin balanced on her knuckles, looked up. “In all honesty,” she admitted, “I know nothing about Jarrett.”

  Naomi smiled, sitting beside her. “Maybe you know enough.”

  “He still misses Lisa.”

  “He finds great pleasure in you.”

  Tara arched a reproachful brow. “Do you think so? And what of the night when I arrived?”

  Naomi merely laughed. “That! Well, he was angry. He thought that you were running again.”

  “I wasn’t running—I was on my way to see Mr. Treat.”

  “Robert?” Naomi inquired, eyes sparkling.

  “So Robert knows everything about Jarrett and everyone here as well!” she said mournfully, and Naomi laughed.

  “Of course we know Robert. He is Jarrett’s best friend, after his brother, and is frequently a visitor. He brings the children sweets from New Orleans, and they love him very much.”

  “I like him as well.”

  “Careful! If you were a Seminole woman, you might be risking your ears.”

  “Well, I’m not a Seminole woman—and I’m not risking my ears. Robert is a friend to me as well. He’s not …”

  “Not what?” Naomi asked.

  “Not Jarrett,” Tara said softly, and Naomi smiled. After a minute Tara smiled as well, then told her sister-in-law, “You speak English very well.”

  She shrugged. “Because I speak it constantly.”

  Tara shook her head. “But I have been listening to your language for days now.”

  “Three days. I’ve been around English all of my life; James does not even have a ‘first’ language; he learned his Muskogee and his English together as a child, and even now, sometimes, with me, he puts the two together. Jarrett does the same thing. If you wish, in time, you will learn. You already know a few words.”

  Tara arched a brow.

  “Mico,” Naomi said.

  “Well, I’ve heard that enough. It means chief.”

  Naomi picked up an orange.

  Tara shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

  “Yalaha,” Naomi said.

  “Chief and orange! That will get me far!”

  Naomi laughed. “The rest of it will be as easy in time.” She motioned out the door. “They are coming,” she said, and turned to the center of the cabin where Mary was sewing patiently upon a shirt. She started to repeat her words, but Mary was nodding. “My sons are coming,” she said.

  The evening was exceptionally pleasant for Tara. Mary was determined to tell Tara tales from Jarrett’s past, about his initiation as a warrior, and how he had painted his body blue, drunk the black drink, and taken on his adult name, White Tiger. James, translating, would change a story here and there, making Tara laugh. Naomi would correct him. Jarrett would sigh and correct them all with great patience.

  “You should have seen the time he caught the cottonmouth!” James said.

  “A poisonous snake?”

  James nodded. “I was barely toddling. Jarrett shouldn’t have been playing with the snake, but it had crawled up onshore with us, and he was going to be the great warrior, looking out for the rest of us.”

  Jarrett groaned. “James, this story—”

  “Well, he caught the snake. But then he was afraid to let it go. He sat on the bank of the river and waited forever, and finally Father came and rescued him.”

  “I must have held it for five hours,” Jarrett admitted.

  “Two,” Mary said, smiling shyly, two fingers up.

  “Felt like five!”

  Soon after, they returned to their own cabin. Tara, very sleepy and contented, lay down on the furs. “I still don’t understand rank here. James will not fight the white man. Osceola had Charley Emathla killed for saying that he would go west, yet he and James—and you?—seem willing enough to leave one another alone.”

  Jarrett, shrugging out of his shirt, didn’t reply at first.

  Tara sat up again, frowning. “Jarrett, Osceola was here the day I arrived. I haven’t seen him since. Where is he?”

  Jarrett shrugged. “This isn’t his home. He is distantly related to Mary, and so to James, but he lives with his own family.”

  Tara hesitated a moment. “He came here for warriors, didn’t he? To attack white settlements.”

  “How do I know, Tara!” he said impatiently.

  “But you do know!” she accused him.

  “Osceola is at war. He does not share his whereabouts with me under such circumstances.”

  “But if he needed you, he’d find you.”

  “And if I needed him, I’d find him!”

  Tara lay down again, her back to him, her heart beating. A minute later he was stretched out beside her. She felt the warmth of his bare flesh, but kept her back stiffly to him.

  She had been right. Osceola had come for more men to go on his raids with him. James and Jarrett McKenzie were living in a fool’s paradise, and they could not go on doing so forever.

  She thought that he had forgotten her, or that he was aggravated enough with her to want nothing more to do with her that night. But she was wrong. In a moment she felt his arm pulling her close and tugging on her clothing. “What is this?” he demanded.

  “A dress,” she said flatly.

  “Amazing. But it doesn’t belong in bed.”

  She let out a long, aggravated sigh. “Jarrett, you seem to think that—”

  “I think that a dress does not belong in bed where we sleep, and that is all.”

  She hesitated a moment, chewing on her bottom lip. Then she sat up and shed her clothing, drawing a fur warmly around her. He watched her with his ink-dark eyes, fingers laced behind his head.

  “Satisfied?” she asked.

  “Wrong question!” he told her, but when she lay at his side again, still stiff, he didn’t touch her.

  And in the night she grew cold. She inched closer to him and wondered why it hurt that he seemed able to keep his distance so easily when she had discovered all too quickly that she didn’t like the distance at all.

  Still, when she came close to him, he curved his body to hers, slipping an arm around her. She lay awake for a while, wondering again about the man she had married, and the wife he had buried. Naomi had said that Jarrett seemed pleased enough with her. Yet she couldn’t help wondering anew if she was simply filling a physical void.

  Or if he felt the difference in the woman he held through the night.

  Since her mare had run home days ago, Tara seated herself on Charlemagne in front of Jarrett, and the huge horse did not seem to notice the added weight. She had hugged the children, Naomi, Mary—and even James—but it had surprised her to see the way that the others in the village had smiled and waved to her as well as to Jarrett. She had smiled and waved in return, and felt a strange surge within her heart. For a moment she wondered how Jarrett could stand the crossfire in which he stood. She prayed that he would stand fast through the bitter bloodshed.

  They didn’t speak much as they headed out. Tara remained weary from the night before, and leaning against her husband’s chest, she found that she kept dozing. But late in the morning she awoke as he eased her up. Puzzled, she realized that they had stopped by a stream for water.

  She bathed her face and drank deepl
y, shivering slightly, for the day had remained chill. She heard the noisy gulping of Charlemagne close by and rose, then noted that Jarrett had walked off a short distance and was staring into a copse. She came behind him quietly and looked past him.

  A covered, hollowed-out tree lay there with a pole arranged above it like a spit. Clothing lay upon it, furs rested by it. Gourds and plates of rotting food were set by it; flies buzzed all around.

  It was a burial ground, she realized. The hollowed-out tree looked exactly like a casket.

  Jarrett didn’t take a step closer. “Little Wild One,” he said after a moment.

  “A friend?” she inquired.

  “Someone I knew. Once.”

  “Perhaps he died of illness.”

  “There lie his rifle and his spear, both ready for the spirit world,” he told her, pointing out the weapons that lay over the coffin itself. “He was killed in battle.”

  She hesitated. “A warrior would rather die in battle than suffer through illness, wouldn’t he?”

  Jarrett shrugged. “Perhaps.” He looked at her. “He was only about fifteen. A hard time to die. Come on. Let’s get on home.”

  He lifted her back on Charlemagne. It wasn’t too much later that they came to the cypress forest where she had first found herself lost—and accosted by Osceola. In no time they were riding onto the lawn of Cimarron, and Tara was amazed to realize how happy she was to see the house again. When she had left, it had still seemed like Lisa’s house.

  Lisa was no longer her enemy. It remained Lisa’s house, yet was hers now as well.

  “There’s Jeeves. Anxious to have us home,” Jarrett commented. “He’ll be eager for a dinner meal.”

  “I’m eager for a very hot bath,” Tara murmured.

  “Then you shall have it,” Jarrett said, slipping from Charlemagne’s back first and reaching up his arms to her as members of the household quickly appeared, Peter running out to take care of Charlemagne, Jeeves hurrying forward with a snow-white smile cutting a clean swath across his handsome black face. “Welcome home, Mrs. McKenzie, welcome home! We missed you sorely.”