The Beloved Woman

by Deborah Smith

  “Was Justis lashed badly?” Rebecca asked in a choked whisper.

  Sam nodded again. “But flogging’s meant to humiliate a man more than it hurts him.” He rubbed his eyes. “There was a good-size crowd. Men, women, even some children. The judge came to watch his sentence being carried out.” He raised his head slowly to look at her. “Amarintha watched too.”

  Rebecca gasped. “What kind of heart does that creature own?”

  “I don’t know.” He stared at the floor again, swallowing roughly. “She cried the whole time—but she never took her eyes away. It was almost as if the pain and blood fascinated her.”

  Rebecca covered her mouth in horror. “How did Justis get through it?”

  Sam sighed. “Without a sound. They took his shirt off and chained his arms up—” He stopped abruptly, hearing her gag. “Forgive me.”

  She took a deep breath. “He just stood there silently through it all?”

  “Yes. And he managed to walk back to the jail without help. A lot of people cheered him.”

  She made a small, broken sound. “What will become of him, Sam? He’s gone to wrack and ruin.”

  “I don’t know.” His voice was a rough croak. “Thirty lashes and sixty days—maybe it’s the only way to make him change.”

  She shook her head and said tearfully, “There’s only one way to do that. Get Katherine to come back. And that won’t happen.”

  * * *

  AMARINTHA CREPT INTO the austere bedroom and padded to the massive bed that was its focus. The lamp beside it cast dancing shadows on the rumpled covers.

  “Daddy?” she said sweetly.

  The judge put his book down and looked at her in pleased surprise, his expression showing how rarely she visited his room. Usually she forced him to go to hers.

  “Are you lonely, sweet baby?”

  She pouted girlishly. “Yes.” Settling beside him, she curled her feet under the hem of her pink robe. “I have to ask you a favor, Daddy.”

  His hand stretched out and idly stroked her arm. “Yes, baby?”

  “I want you to let Mr. Gallatin out of jail.”

  “Sweet baby! He nearly killed a man.”

  “But everyone says it was self-defense, Daddy.”

  The judge chuckled. “But ’twas a senator’s brother.”

  She laid a hand on his stomach and tugged playfully at his nightshirt. “People are saying that Mr. Gallatin is like an Indian. That he’ll die if he’s kept locked up.”

  “Bombast.”

  “Daddy? Couldn’t you just … umm, order him to leave town for sixty days, until the gossip cools down?”

  The judge snorted. “Justis Gallatin would rather die than skulk off like a whipped dog.”

  “I could talk to him.” She crawled upward on the bed, pulled the covers back, and slid under them. Snuggling to the judge’s side, she put her head on his shoulder. “I bet I could talk him into leaving town. Would you let me try?”

  “Well, well,” the judge murmured as her hand began raising his nightshirt. “This is a pleasant change of routine.”

  “Yes, Daddy? Please?”

  He drew a soft, groaning breath. “I suppose I can’t fault you for being an angel of mercy. All right, sweet baby, if you can talk sense into that sinner, I’ll have him set free.”

  As her hand began its well-trained work, she smiled.

  WIND SIFTED THROUGH spots in the cell’s log walls where the chinking was poor. Justis shifted painfully on the rough straw mattress of his cot and cursed in disgust. Why didn’t somebody just cut a window in this drafty grave and be done with it? At least he’d be able to see out while his arse froze off.

  Two days gone. Fifty-eight left. Christmas, two weeks away, would find him here with nothing but the rats and a mean-tempered sheriff’s deputy for company. Not that he was eager to celebrate the holiday. It would only make him wonder where Katherine was celebrating it. Probably in Philadelphia.

  He hoped she’d been forced to go to the dandy for money. He hoped the dandy had made her suffer to get it. That’d be a right proper revenge—Katie Blue Song, who’d been too proud to accept a backwoods miner, forced to spread her legs for a dandy who wouldn’t treat her half as well. He hoped she regretted what she’d given up. He hoped she choked on her Christmas pudding.

  “Visitor,” the deputy called. He swung the heavy plank door open and quickly peered inside to make sure Justis’s booted foot was still chained to the wall.

  At the sound of soft crying, Justis raised his head. Amarintha swept into the tiny cell, her voluminous pink skirt making her look like a human bell. She dabbed a handkerchief to her nose, and one gloved hand plucked nervously at a fur-trimmed cloak.

  “I have fretted so because of you!” she exclaimed.

  He sat up slowly, his back throbbing, and removed his hat. “I appreciate your worries, but I think you’d best go. If the judge—”

  “He knows that I’m here. He agreed to it. I … I have a negotiation to make.” She came to him and laid a folded sheet of paper on the bed, then stepped back and clasped her hands together. “You know how deeply I hold you in my affections.”

  He cleared his throat. The last thing he wanted was crazy Amarintha mooning over him. “I’ve given up on bein’ respectable. I’m done with it. You better look elsewhere for a husband.”

  “Oh, no, I won’t do it! You can be saved, I’m certain.” She shifted awkwardly. “If you’ll demonstrate that you have a humble spirit, my father will reconsider your sentence.”

  Justis looked at her warily. “How so?”

  “Would you agree to leave town? To be, in effect, banished for sixty days?”

  “Hell, no!”

  She shook her clasped hands at him. “I implore you. That paper I gave you is a decree written by my father. It says that you’re to be released from jail if you agree to leave town temporarily. Go to Auraria. Or go down to Terminus and watch people build the railroads. In two months you can come back.”

  “And have every man in town say that I was too soft to serve my time in jail? No.”

  “But—but you’ll not be fit for anything if you stay in this place!” She flung her hands about her. “You’ll just keep moping until bitterness ruins you for decent pursuits! You might even die!”

  He settled back on the mattress. “Good-bye, Amarintha. Come see me again sometime. Bring me some Christmas cookies. Don’t put no poison in ’em.”

  Her frustration exploded. “You still lust after that Indian squaw! Oh, don’t look mean-eyed at me. I know it’s true!”

  “Go home.”

  “You’ll do anything to have her back, even if she despises you. You still want her!”

  He slammed a fist into the mattress. “I’ll not talk about her. Now, get on home.”

  “You wouldn’t be ruining yourself over her if you thought every man between here and the Mississippi had used her by now! You’d forget her if you figured that she was walking the trail like all the other filthy Indians, taking handouts and lying on her back to barter for more!”

  The stillness that settled within Justis simmered with a raw energy waiting to rip it apart. His heart pounded, but he leveled a quiet, killing gaze at Amarintha, whose mouth opened in speechless horror at what she’d revealed.

  “Do you know where Katie went?” he asked, his voice soft and deadly. “Have you known all along?”

  “She—she made me promise not to tell! She said awful, ugly things about you! She hates you!” Amarintha gulped for breath. “She said she’d rather die than be with a stupid white man such as you!”

  He rose, his hands clenched. “Did she go west? Is she on the trail with the other Cherokees?”

  Amarintha made a high-pitched sound of utter fury. “Yes!”

  Justis turned toward the door and bellowed, “Deputy!”

  “I’ll tell my father! He’ll change his mind about your sentence!”

  Justis swiped the decree into a hand that trembled with impatience.
“I’ll be halfway to Indian territory ’fore he gets the chance.”

  “MOTHER, MOTHER,” Katherine heard Squirrel whimpering as she awoke. He tugged at Katherine’s hand. “Mother.”

  Katherine thought he was half asleep and confused about her identity. After all, she and her blankets were covered with a soft layer of snow that had fallen during the night. “Come here, sleepy cousin. I love you. Snuggle and be quiet.”

  “Mother,” he insisted. She frowned when she noticed that he wore no blanket. His thin body was shivering fiercely with nothing but a ragged woolen shirt and pants to cover it.

  “Squirrel!” She lifted her blankets with one arm. “Come here!” She gritted her teeth as a blast of frigid air made her own shivering more violent. The snow beneath her put ice in her veins.

  Squirrel threw himself into the frail warmth of her embrace. A hard, racking cough spasmed his body. Fear surged through Katherine and she stared blankly at the cold blue Illinois sky. This little one won’t go to the Dark Land, God. Please.

  “M-Mother,” he whimpered again.

  “Shhh. Go back to sleep.”

  “She has f-flown away.”

  Katherine sat up quickly, pain stabbing her stiff muscles, and looked behind her at Walks Smiling. She lay on her side, her blankets half off, one hand frozen to the snow in a grasping gesture. Frost jeweled her eyelashes. The first rays of morning sun glimmered on the frozen pool of blood near her mouth.

  “M-Mother has flown to the Dark Land,” Squirrel whispered, wheezing. “I want to g-go too.”

  “No!” Katherine pulled her top blanket over them like a hood so that she and Squirrel were hidden from the horror beside them. “No!” she wailed this time, a hysterical tightness in her chest. “It’s Christmas morning!”

  She hunched forward, rocking both Squirrel and herself in silent desperation. How much longer before dignity and hope were gone?

  TRUE TO CHEROKEE custom, the young woman standing before Justis didn’t raise her eyes to meet his. He watched snowflakes settle on her filthy black hair and the blanket she held around her emaciated body. Behind him, Watchman and a pack horse stamped their hooves, frustrated by the never-ending delays and the cold.

  The Cherokee man who’d brought the woman from the line of people and wagons seemed to sense that Justis’s patience was as short as the horses’. He shook her arm.

  “This one is the Beloved Woman,” he told Justis. “You pay me now.”

  “To hell with you. This is a scarecrow.”

  “All women on the trail look like her.”

  “This isn’t Katlanicha.”

  “You pay,” the man repeated. “Or else.” The army had taken most of the Cherokees’ weapons and wouldn’t return them until the tribe had crossed the Mississippi, but this man was a member of the tribal patrol. He had a rusty pistol in his belt, and Justis saw his hand twitch toward it.

  Justis grabbed him by the throat and almost lifted him from the ground. “Get outta my sight, you sneaky bastard.”

  The man stumbled away, clutching his neck. Justis turned his gaze to the woman again. She backed away, terror in her eyes. “Here,” he said quickly. “Take a gift.”

  “You want me to lay with you?”

  “Nah. It’s just a gift.” He reached inside one of his coat’s big pockets, fumbled with the leather pouch there, and retrieved a gold coin. He held it out on the palm of his hand.

  She snatched the coin away. “You are kind. Thank you.”

  “Go on now. Before you get left behind.”

  As she limped off, Justis cursed wearily. A week earlier he’d arrived in Kentucky on a cramped keelboat. Watchman and the pack horse had been sore from constantly fighting the boat’s pitch and roll. He’d had to push them hard to catch up with the Cherokees this quickly.

  “Wait! Wait!” Justis heard a frail voice calling as he started to mount Watchman. He saw an old man hobbling across the snowy ground toward him. The elder stopped and stared up at him shrewdly, his dark eyes nearly hidden in folds of skin.

  “You search for the Beloved Woman? I remember you from the stockade. You put medicine on my leg. You looked at her with sad eyes. I told her that she stands in your soul.”

  Excitement made Justis want to grab the old man roughly. He jammed his fists into his coat pockets. “Have you seen her on the trail?”

  The elder’s jaw clenched tight. “What do you want with her?”

  “I mean to make sure she’s safe. But no one will tell me how to find her.”

  The old man ruminated on this information for several minutes. Finally he pointed a bony finger at Justis. “She is in a group far ahead of this one. But I have heard stories of her. When her own back is cold, she refuses a blanket so that someone else will have it. She goes hungry so children may eat. You find her. You make sure the Beloved Woman lives. She deserves to live.”

  Justis fought the sickness rising in his stomach. The scarecrow woman, gaunt and filthy, flashed through his mind. He remembered all the graves he’d seen in the past week, some of them no more than piles of rocks that barely covered the bodies. What kind of hell had Katie suffered while he lolled in Gold Ridge, drinking himself into a stupor and cursing her?

  “Good,” the elder said sharply. “I see the sorrow in your eyes. Now even a white man understands.”

  Justis gave him a blanket from the pack horse’s bundle. “Thank you for helpin’ me. What is it I understand?”

  The elder wrapped himself in the gift and shut his eyes. “What we call this journey. Nuna-da-ut-sun-yi. The trail where they cried.”

  THE PEDDLER WAS pop-eyed with terror. “I traded for it! I swear! When I met up with a tribe of Cherokees ’bout a week ago!”

  Justis pushed the tip of his knife closer to the man’s Adam’s apple. With his other hand he jerked the man’s leather necklace across the blade. Justis wound the leather into his fist and held it so that the gold nugget dangled in front of the peddler’s eyes. “ ’Fore I cut your windpipe, you best tell me who sold my gold piece to you.”

  “A woman with a sick youngun! She was desperate for medicine!”

  “What’d she look like?”

  “Dirty, half starved, half crazy! Hell, all I remember is that she spoke fine English and knew how to barter!”

  Justis gave an evil smile that made the peddler sway noticeably. “Where was her group headed?”

  “Toward G-Golgonda! On the Mississippi! They’re likely camped there by now! Can’t ferry across the Miss too easy in January! Have to wait for the ice to bust a little. You could catch ’em if you hurry!”

  Justis lowered the knife. “Peddler,” he whispered, “you just rescued your windpipe.”

  KATHERINE KNEW WITHOUT looking up that a crowd had gathered around her. A man squatted and shook her gently by one shoulder. “You gave your word.”

  “Yes,” she admitted dully.

  “We have made camp. Now it is time to rest.”

  She pulled her blanket tighter around herself and Squirrel. “I am sitting down. I am resting.”

  “Does the Beloved Woman break her word?”

  Katherine dipped her head close to Squirrel’s. “He is no trouble. I will keep him here.”

  “He does not need you anymore. And you are no longer strong enough to take care of others.”

  “Then it is time to die.”

  He stroked her hair slowly. “Keep your word, Beloved Woman. Rest.”

  She felt someone tugging her blankets open. “Let go,” the person murmured. “You have carried him all day. Let us bury him now.”

  With a soft sound of despair she allowed Squirrel’s body to drape into another’s hands. An owl hooed softly in a nearby thicket, then crossed the twilight sky with a startling flutter of wings. People gasped.

  “His spirit is leaving,” someone said in awe. “It waited until the Beloved Woman let go of him.”

  Katherine touched the spot on her chest where Justis’s gold nugget had lain. “I will die soon,�
� she murmured. Everything that had given her strength was gone now. She watched the owl as it faded from sight on the western horizon. She knew, in the peculiar way she sometimes dreamed, that she would never reach the Indian territory there.

  “HER NAME IS Katlanicha,” Justis told the grim-faced Cherokee matron. “But she goes by the name Katherine too. I just want to find her. I don’t mean the gal no harm.”

  He squatted by the campfire and pushed his wide-brimmed hat back so that the woman could study the honesty in his eyes. She stared hard into their green depths, then cast a scowl at the luxury of his heavy fur coat and warm wool scarf. Without hesitation he pulled the scarf off and handed it to her. She ignored the gift.

  “You call her Beloved Woman,” he said, speaking slowly so that she’d understand his poor Cherokee. “Everyone on the trail has heard of her. She knows white medicine and white ways.”

  “I hear nothing of such a one. Go away.”

  Justis stood wearily, his shoulders slumped. Tonight he was nearly beaten by frustration and worry. Dully he noticed a lanky young man hurrying toward the campfire.

  “Mother! The Beloved Woman won’t eat! And she’s gone to sit beside the big river alone!”

  The woman gasped. “Be quiet!”

  Justis ran for his horses. Behind him he heard the woman yelling for help.

  KATHERINE SWAYED AS a gust of wind swept off the wide, ice-choked river. She leaned forward, placed both hands on her blanket, and braced her arms. Her hair floated behind her as she tilted her face up toward the high, cold moon. She felt its silver fingers running over her.

  This same moon was shining on Georgia, blessing her family’s graves and the Blue Song land. Katherine’s head swam and she shook it groggily. Always mine, she told herself. Home.

  She cried out sadly. Justis. They were one and the same.

  Staring blindly across the water, she at first didn’t hear the thudding of horses’ hooves racing up the river bluff. When she did, she lurched to her feet, staggered, then caught her balance and looked wildly toward the sound.