by John Jakes
He picked up the satchel and handed it to Cooper. “Before leaving home, I wasn’t able to get reliable information about the banking situation in this state. I imagined it was still chaotic, however—”
Cooper nodded.
“Well, I am majority stockholder in the Bank of Lehigh Station, which I formed at the start of the war. Inside the satchel is a letter of credit drawn on my bank. The initial amount is forty thousand dollars”—Madeline gasped—“but there’s more available. As much as you need. Now—”
He reddened unexpectedly. “I wonder if I might have some of that delicious berry punch you served this afternoon? I find my throat very dry all at once.”
For a prolonged moment, nothing interrupted the twilight quiet but the rasp and hum of insects. Suddenly, with a swirl of sun-faded skirt, Madeline ran to him. She threw her arms around his neck. “I love you, George Hazard.” He felt her tears as she pressed her cheek to his and hugged him. “And don’t misconstrue the reason. If you were penniless, I would love you just as much.”
Then they were all moving forward, closing around the two visitors. Judith kissed each of them twice. Andy spoke a few words of admiration and gratitude. Jane said a soft thank you to both. Brett embraced them in turn. Last of all, Cooper shook George’s hand, so overcome he could barely speak.
“God bless you, George.”
Shamefully, George wished it were Orry standing there instead. He turned away so none of them would see his eyes.
138
SANTA FE WAS FLY-INFESTED and revoltingly Latin-Catholic. Ashton was sure the caverns of hell, if they existed, could be no hotter.
She had a clean but cramped second-floor room on a narrow street of yellow walls, just a few steps from a cantina and the cathedral square beyond. Three weeks of waiting, mostly in that room, made her feel old as a crone. The parched air created new wrinkles, especially around her eyes. At least twice daily she examined her wrecked face in a triangle of broken mirror hanging on the adobe wall beside the hard bed. Would Lamar be displeased by her dry, sun-reddened skin? The possibility agitated her every day and spoiled her rest every night. But no more than the waiting.
Even now she found it unbelievable that a woman of her background and breeding had endured all that was necessary to reach this benighted place. The unspeakably long, occasionally terrifying coach trip. Poor sleep. Foul food at filthy way stations. Crude Westerners for traveling companions. An escort of scruffy Yankee cavalry for a couple of hundred miles because of the Indian threat. Mercifully, there had been no incidents.
When she reached Santa Fe, she found Powell’s letter and thus expected his two wagons within a week. The week passed, and so did another, then a third. Her optimism began to dwindle along with her funds. Only a few dollars remained in her reticule—barely enough for another week’s lodging and the barbarically spicy food the owner’s wife brought up from the cantina.
On Saturday at the end of the third week, a commotion drew her to the spacious, sunlit plaza along with several dozen other people. A cavalry patrol had arrived, causing great excitement because the blue-clad troopers brought the body of a young man stabbed three times before he died.
“Picked him up at Winslow’s trading station, west of here on the Rio Puerco,” explained the Yankee lieutenant in response to the questions of a paunchy, self-important man Ashton presumed to be some town official. Mighty pompous for a greaser, she thought as the lieutenant went on: “He crawled that far—two, three miles—with these wounds after the Jicarillas massacred the rest of his party.”
Ashton’s flesh froze. Above a great roaring in her ears, she heard the lieutenant’s voice continuing faintly.
“Winslow cleaned and dressed the stab wounds, but even so, the lad didn’t last twelve hours.” No, Ashton thought, queasy. Surely it couldn’t be Powell’s party.
She was wild to ask questions but feared the troopers would be suspicious of her accent. They were the sorriest, most villainous-looking soldiers she had ever seen, far worse than those who had escorted the stage. There was a private with only one thumb. A corporal wearing an eye patch. One bearded man sounded like an Irish comic from a variety hall, and two others jabbered in some foreign tongue—Hungarian, perhaps. On the coach trip, a passenger had told her the hard-pressed Union government was having trouble filling the ranks of its Western army, hence would take the physically handicapped, immigrants who knew little or no English—even Confederates.
Finally, unable to contain her curiosity, she approached the cleanest of the lot, a sergeant. She asked the question of greatest importance to her.
“Can you tell me whether there were wagons with this party?”
The sergeant was from Indiana, but he was courteous and helpful in spite of that. “Yes, ma’am, the trader did say the dead boy mentioned wagons. Two, burned and pushed into a gully where the massacre took place.”
She swayed, dizzy. The sergeant’s eyes narrowed. What did it matter if he were suspicious? The questions must be answered; she asked the second most important one.
“Was the leader of the party a man named Powell?”
“That’s right. Some reb.”
“And he’s—?”
A nod. Only then did Ashton think of her husband.
“The rest, too?”
“Every one. Did you know any of them?”
“Mr. Powell—by reputation, not personally.”
The answer clearly bothered the sergeant. If she had no connection with the victims, why had she asked about wagons? She knew it was a blunder and turned away before he could interrogate her. The lieutenant was talking to others about the wagons. She listened, haughtily ignoring the sergeant’s scrutiny.
“After the young man died, Winslow and his two sons armed themselves and rode to the site. The ’Paches were long gone. Winslow saw pieces of a wagon wheel and a lot of ashes at the bottom of the gully, but that’s all. The birds and the big cats got the other bodies.”
She wheeled and set off up the street to her room, increasingly weak from shock. The Hoosier trooper watched her, asking himself questions about the puzzling behavior of the beautiful young woman in the gray summer dress. One thing sure; she obviously didn’t hail from this part of the country. In her room, Ashton sat on the bed, trembling. Two wagons containing three hundred thousand in gold—gone. And Powell, too. She had cared for Lamar Powell more than she had ever cared for any man. Her affection derived in part from his amazing sexual prowess, in part from his implacable ambition and where it could take both of—
No. That was over, and she had to face it. She was alone and abandoned in a wilderness, with no funds except those on deposit in Nassau. Her money and her dead husband’s. All hers now.
A lot of good that would do her for the next two or three months. It would take at least that much time to supply the Bahamian bankers with evidence of Huntoon’s death and proof of her right to the money. Could the funds be sent to her in Santa Fe? She couldn’t answer all the questions arising from this newest, cruel turn.
But she knew one thing. She would live on that Bahamian money for as long as it took to locate the gully containing what was left of the wagons. The trader and his son hadn’t investigated the wreckage, probably because it would never occur to any ordinary person that the ashes might conceal gold ingots.
What if the savages had carried the ingots away? It was a disturbing possibility, but not one that would alter her course. A fortune in gold that would double her personal worth could be waiting in that gully to the west, unknown to anyone except herself. The prospect helped soften her sadness about Powell. And the more she thought of the treasure, the faster her grief dwindled.
Concerning James, she could summon no grief at all. He had always been spineless, only marginally a man. Thinking of him did jog her memory. She dug in the bottom of her reticule for the sealed letter. Presuming it to be filled with sentimental twaddle, she had put it away in St. Louis and hadn’t thought of it until this moment.
I joined Mr. Powell’s adventure not only out of loyalty to the founding principles of the first Confederacy and the hope of reestablishing them as the keystones of a second one, but also to regain your respect and those favors which were always mine by right as your legal husband.
You have continually and cruelly refused me those rights, Ashton. You have repeatedly humiliated me despite my great love for you, and ruined me, both professionally and as a man. I admire Mr. Powell’s view of Southern rights and ideals, though I here confess that I have come to despise him personally because of what I suspect about him and you. Although I lack evidentiary proof, I am sure the two of you are, and have been for some time, lovers.
So in case some untimely fate should befall me, the least I can do is make certain you are not rewarded for harlotry. To this end, before leaving Richmond, I directed a duly witnessed letter to my old partner at the firm of Thomas & Huntoon, Charleston. In Detroit I received word of its arrival and confirmation of its legality as a will replacing my earlier one drawn in your favor. Now your ill-gotten Water Witch money, wholly mine under existing marital law, will be disbursed in the event of my death to such cousins and other distant relatives of mine as can be located. The balance will go to charitable causes. You will not have a pennyworth of it.
This is my small retribution for the many wrongs you have done me.
James
Ashton staggered up, crushing the letter between her clammy palms. “Not true,” she whispered.
She seized her reticule and flung it against the slats of the shutters. “Not true.” She overturned the bed. Hurled the chair against the wall. The landlady ran upstairs and pounded on the door, which was secured on the inside by a metal hook and eye.
“¿Señora, qué pasa ahí adentro?”
The chair broke. She smashed the clay wash bowl—pieces flew like shrapnel—and the drinking gourd, then dashed the scrap of mirror on top of them, screaming now.
“Not true—not true—NOT TRUE!”
“¿Señora, está enferma? ¡Conteste o tumbaré la puerta!”
The last words went whirling into a windy void as Ashton’s eyes rolled up in her head and she fainted.
The landlady pushed until the hook broke away from the door. She shook and slapped Ashton awake. Gasping, Ashton explained her behavior in terms of a vaguely described seizure. She promised to pay for all the damages—a lie—if just the woman would help her into bed; she was ill. Muttering, the landlady did so.
Wearing only her chemise, Ashton lay rigid throughout the afternoon and into the hot hours of the night. Her brain was a cauldron of fear, anxiety, speculation. Finally, toward early morning, the air began to cool. She fell asleep and woke shortly before noon. The mariachi, which seemed to inhabit the cantina on a permanent basis, had resumed its dolorous violin and guitar music.
She sat up and held her head. There wasn’t a dollar to be had from Nassau. But there was gold out here. She was not defeated. Far from it. She rummaged in her luggage until she found the lacquered Japanese box, which hadn’t been opened since she deposited her memento from Powell. She lifted the lid slowly, gazed at the happily copulating couple and studied the assortment of buttons. After nearly four years, it was time to resume her collecting. And not merely for pleasure. She lowered the lid, confident that survival lay in what her box represented.
She put on her best cool dress, mauve lawn. It was in sorry condition after so much traveling, but a tiny triangle of mirror retrieved from the floor showed her that it would pass, especially with her bosom made prominent by her corset. In this heat the stays felt like implements of torture, but no matter. The effect was everything.
She left the room, descended the squeaky stairs with a regal air, and walked the short distance to the cantina entrance. She had been told the landlord was a Yankee, a former fur trapper who had left Kit Carson’s company for a more settled existence.
When she pushed the doors back and entered the cool blue place, the mariachi men stopped in mid-squeak and mid-twang. Their mustaches went up as their jaws went down. Some elderly customers, Mexicans or Spaniards or whatever they were, clearly disapproved of her presence, but she didn’t give a damn. Neither did the fellow in the apron behind the bar. He was a burly, strong-looking sort, with plenty of white in his blond hair.
Ashton smiled at him. “You are an American, I understand?”
“That’s right.”
“So am I.” She worked to minimize her accent. “Unexpectedly stranded here by circumstance.”
“I noticed you on the street. Wondered about your situation—”
“Might I ask you a question? In confidence?”
“Sure.” She didn’t miss the way his eyes touched her breast a moment.
“I would like to know the names of the two or three wealthiest men in the area.”
“The two or three—?”
“Wealthiest.”
“I thought I heard right.” Amused, he added, “Hitched or single?”
Damn him. He thinks I’m nothing but a feather-headed female, to be made sport of. He’ll find out. I’ll come through this, survive this, the way I’ve survived everything else. And when I do, I’ll have every man in this part of the country groveling for two minutes of my time.
“Ma’am? Hitched or single?”
Ashton’s smile was dazzling.
“That really doesn’t matter.”
139
IN THE CALM, STARRY hour after sunset, Andy and Jane walked along the Ashley, talking quietly and searching for their answer to a question Madeline had posed.
Of Cicero’s future, there was no doubt. He was too old, too lacking in skills to do anything except stay on. He actually seemed displeased with the outcome of the war, complaining that the liberty Father Abraham had bestowed on him was unwanted, because it upset the routine of his life. Jane had started to reprove him on one occasion, but held back. Cicero was past seventy; she understood that any change was a threat.
Not so with her or with Andy. So they talked, their arms around each other’s waist. The conversation was occasionally interrupted by some kissing and affectionate touching. After an hour, holding hands, they returned to the pine house where the lamps gleamed.
Everyone was still up because George and Constance were leaving tomorrow when Osprey came downriver again. As Jane and Andy entered the large, plain room that was a parlor in name only, they heard George saying he was anxious to get back to Lehigh Station and resume the role of full-time parent. Madeline smiled at the black couple from a barrel chair Cooper had made the week before. “Hello, Andy—Jane. Come in.”
Jane began, “If this is a bad time to speak to you—”
“Not at all. Join us.”
Andy cleared his throat. “We just wanted to answer your question about our plans.”
Not a sound followed those words; they had everyone’s attention. Jane spoke for both of them.
“We thought we’d stay a little longer in South Carolina.”
“As free people,” Andy added.
“It’s our state now, too,” Jane said. “Our land as much as it is the white man’s.”
Her words carried a faint challenge. Perhaps that was why Cooper hesitated a moment before he said, “Of course it is. I’m pleased by your decision. I’d be glad to have you stay here, unless you have something else in mind.”
Jane shook her head, then glanced at the strong, proud man standing beside her. “Mont Royal’s been good to me. Better than I ever expected.”
“But we can’t work without wages,” Andy said. “Not now.”
Cooper and Madeline exchanged looks signifying mutual consent. “I agree,” Cooper said. “It’s possible now, thanks to George.”
“Then we’ll stay,” Andy said. “If we decide we made the wrong choice—if either of us
decides that—we’ll tell you and go. We don’t answer to anyone but each other anymore.”
Cooper responded with a small, quick nod of agreement. “I hope you won’t ever reach that decision. I need you both very much.”
Jane smiled. Relieved expressions showed on the faces of the others. Andy stepped forward.
“One other thing—”
“Yes?” Judith said.
“We want to get married.”
There was a burst of congratulations, abruptly stilled when Andy went right on in a level voice. “But not the old way. Not by jumping over brooms. And we’re both going to change our names. Jane and Andy are slave names. They were given to us. We want to pick our own.”
Tense silence. Then Cooper simply raised his hand.
“Fine.”
Madeline smoothed her skirt as she rose. “Can’t we find something for a toast to the engaged couple?”
Smiling broadly, Andy put his arm around Jane again. “I’m so happy I’d settle for water out of the well.”
“I think I remember something better,” Judith said, raising the curtain that screened the kitchen. “Yes, here it is,” she called from the attached pantry closet. She emerged smiling. “You gentlemen didn’t finish Wade Hampton’s peach brandy—thank goodness.”
She poured a tiny amount for each of them as they fell into relaxed, companionable conversation. George, who had drawn the fruit jar, raised it to salute Andy and Jane.
“I wish you both the best. It won’t be easy for you down here, at least not in the immediate future. But I’m not certain it would be much better up North.”
With a touch of sadness, Jane said, “I know. Black faces do threaten people somehow. Scare them. Well, I can’t help that. We’ll come through just fine. You fought to free us, Major Hazard, so now we must take up the fight. I do expect many more battles before white people even start to accept us.”