“Come with me.” His voice was cold, as hard edged as she had ever heard it.
Saint Perpetua help me. Let it finally be over.
They walked through the parlor, through the overflowing noise, the heavy scent of cloying perfumes, the sound of frolicking piano music and enthusiastic off-key singing. Together, they stepped out into the night air.
Tonight there was a little more moon in a heavy canopy of stars. Kate took a deep breath, wondered what could be on his mind.
“Have you found a housekeeper?” She folded her arms tightly around her middle.
“Yeah. Believe it or not, one of the cowhands got his thumb torn off roping, but it turns out Ben likes to cook. He cleans like the devil. On top of that, he’s fussy as an old hen, too. I never see him without a rag in his hand.”
She half smiled, thinking of the piles of clothes and the dirty pans she had left behind.
“I came to see you last week,” he said.
She should have known he wouldn’t waste time with idle chat. Unskilled at coyness, she admitted, “Charm just told me you were in town.”
“Did your preacher propose?”
“Yes. Yes he did, but that happened long before I left the ranch.”
Reed shoved his thumbs in his waistband, paced a few feet away, turned, and headed back. “Did you say yes?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern, Reed.”
“Is that why you turned me down? Is that why you signed the papers? So you could marry him?”
“No, it’s not. I turned Preston down, too.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
I don’t love him.
I love you.
“You sure you aren’t marrying him?”
“Yes. I’m sure. Why?”
“I saw you kiss him.” He was simmering now, waiting for her to explain herself, as if she owed it to him. As if she owed him anything.
She pressed her hand to the base of her throat. “Have you been spying on me?”
“Last Saturday I came in to town to talk to you, but as I neared your place, I saw the two of you standing by the front porch. You kissed him.”
“He’s my friend.”
He barked out a sharp laugh. “You kiss all your friends like that?”
“This is ridiculous. You have absolutely no right to question me.” She turned and had not taken six steps before he grabbed her by the upper arm and spun her around.
“Don’t touch me, Reed.”
“I miss you, Kate.”
I can’t bear this.
“The house is too big for just Daniel and me. It’s too quiet. All the life has gone out of the place. All I can think of are the empty rooms and the empty years ahead of me.”
“What are you saying?” She trembled despite the heat.
“I love you, Kate.”
“How do you know?” She was afraid to hope anymore.
He let go of her arm and shoved his fingers through his hair. “I ache for you at night. I long to hear your voice. I wonder what you are doing all day long and wish you were there to talk to. I keep wanting to tell you about all the little things Daniel has done. I’ve had to stop myself a hundred times a day from coming to see you. If all that doesn’t mean that I’m in love, then I don’t know what does.”
Kate closed her eyes. Her lips were trembling so much, she was forced to press her fingers to her mouth.
“I want you to have what you want, Kate. I want to give you the whole damn dream. I love you.”
Before she could say a word, before she even let herself believe, the back door slammed. Both of them started, looked over to see Daniel come barreling out of the Social Club. He ran straight into Kate and grabbed her around the knees so hard that he sent her reeling into Reed, whose arms gently closed around her before she could fall.
Kate was sandwiched between them, the boy and the man. Daniel started jumping up and down, tugging on Reed’s pant leg.
Before Kate realized what was happening, Reed went down on one knee and took hold of her hand right there in the dirt behind Dolly’s Social Club and Entertainment Emporium. Daniel grabbed hold of her other hand with both of his.
“Will you marry us?” Reed asked.
Kate glanced up at the heavens and the stars blurred. When she looked down at Reed and Daniel, tears spilled over her lashes. Identical pairs of Benton eyes stared up at her.
“I told him that he would have to do his part if we were going to get you back.” Reed nodded to Daniel and said, “Now.”
Daniel squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. “Come home now, Mama? Come home?”
“Will you marry us, Kate?” Reed asked again.
Then right there in the dirt behind Dolly’s Social Club, Kate sank to her knees, hooked an arm around each of them, and held them tight. She kissed Daniel on the cheek and then looked into Reed’s eyes. Her every dream was waiting there.
With her future shining as bright as any star, she told them, “Yes, I’ll marry you. I’ll come home.”
Epilogue
Dallas, Texas. October 1890.
Kate listened to the hushed murmur of many voices in one place—a sound not unlike the prairie wind moving through tall summer grass—and gazed from her front-row seat at the standing-room-only crowd packed into the Dallas Opera House. Ladies and gentlemen in their Sunday best, some with older children in tow, filled every seat, crowded the aisles, and oozed through the doorways.
On her left, Reed shifted uncomfortably and tugged at his thin black tie. She laced her gloved hands together and placed them squarely on top of the two-page program in her lap, then leaned over and whispered to him.
“Darling, if you tug on that tie any harder, it’s going to come undone.”
His new black suit, complete with a matching wool vest sporting tiny, real gold buttons showed off his deeply tanned skin and sky blue eyes to perfection. There were touches of silver at his temples now, creases in the corners of his eyes and permanent smile lines around his full mouth, but to her the changes made him even more handsome.
She wasn’t without more than a touch of gray hair of her own. Thinking of her hair, she resisted the urge to reach up and see if any of the pins had escaped the elegant twist her daughter had created for her not an hour ago in their hotel room.
“Mama, please.” The fifteen-year-old had started pestering Kate the moment she sat down at the dressing table in their suite of rooms. “You simply must let me do something a bit more modern with your hair. You have worn it in that topknot for years.”
Now, as she looked down at Allison, her heart swelled with pride. As if she sensed her mother watching her, the girl turned and smiled up at her.
“Your hair looks lovely, Mama. I told you it would. Daddy likes it, too.”
“I think he does,” Kate said, keeping her voice low.
“He does what?” Reed wanted to know. He leaned over Kate, smiled at Allison. “What are you up to now, darlin’? Is it going to cost me anything?”
“Nothing, Daddy. I just told Mama that you liked the way I styled her hair.”
“I like it any way she chooses to wear it, you know that.” He pulled his watch out of his vest pocket, flipped the gold piece open, checked the time, and then snapped it shut. “How many more people are they going to crowd in here? It’s five minutes past seven.”
The room was stifling already. Hushed conversation had given way to a louder din as folks tried to hear each other over the low roar.
Allison looked around. “Do you think Daniel’s nervous?”
Kate was the first to assure her. “Of course not. He’s a gifted orator.”
“And a fine teacher,” Reed added proudly. “Did you know your mother taught elocution?” He reached for Kate’s hand. She looked around the room and blushed but didn’t let go.
“Of course. You’ve told me a hundred times already.” Then Allison groaned, “Oh, no. Here comes that obnoxious reporter from the Dallas
Herald again.”
A spare young man in a full checkered suit, his oiled hair neatly parted in the center, was making his way between the occupants of the front-row seats and the stage, carefully easing past gents’ crossed legs and ladies’ skirt hems.
“Mr. Benton!” The reporter smiled and waved from down the row. There was a hush from those seated nearest them as the man propelled himself along, hastily apologizing as he pushed on through. Winded, he stopped before the Bentons and pulled a wrinkled wad of paper out of his sagging coat pocket.
“Thomas Barkley, reporter for the Dallas Herald.” He reintroduced himself as if they could forget anyone so obnoxiously tenacious. “I hope you folks don’t mind a few more questions.” Barkley licked the nub of a pencil and scribbled the date at the top of the page.
Allison groaned again and started fanning herself with her program. Kate patted the back of Reed’s hand in a soothing fashion, praying he would be patient.
“The presentation is about to begin,” Reed said coolly, keeping his voice even, setting Kate at ease.
“Is it true, sir, that you were a Texas Ranger during the seventies, at the height of the Indian wars?”
“Yes, it is.”
The reporter wasn’t dismayed by the curt brevity of Reed’s answer. Kate wished the crimson curtain would rise. Around them, more and more folks were beginning to fall quiet and began to turn their way, hanging on every word of the exchange.
“Your son is beginning a world tour, speaking out for Indian rights, talking about what he calls atrocious conditions on the reservations, even appealing to folks to try and understand the Comanche and why they fought for so long. Did he ever ask you why you did what you did? How do you explain your part in killing off the people he is trying to help today?”
“My son knows what I did and why I did it. At the time, I fought for what I believed in, just as the Comanche fought for their way of life. Men start wars, Mr. Barkley, and at the time they make sense. I think that if you look back through history, you’ll find that public opinion changes like the wind. I’m not the same man I was then. Times change, people change. We didn’t honor our treaties with the Comanche any more than they did the ones they made with us.”
“Are you saying all the killing and raiding that went on back then should be forgotten?”
“I’m saying we need to understand why it went on in the first place. Maybe we need to forgive, even if we can’t forget. Listen to what Daniel has to say tonight. He’s able to put it into words a lot better than I.”
“Can I quote you on what you’ve said?” Barkley didn’t look up as he scribbled frantically.
“Just as long as you get it right,” Reed said.
The gaslights dimmed. The packed house fell silent. The only illumination came from the footlights on the stage. Barkley tipped his hat and hurried down the aisle, leaving an outburst of oofs and ouches in his wake.
Kate looked over at her husband in the semidarkness. Their eyes met and held. He squeezed her hand and, as the curtain opened, Kate felt the same swell of pride she had already experienced the previous two nights when the curtain opened to reveal a podium at center stage. From the wings on the right, a tall, well-built young man came striding out to face the crowd.
He was secure in himself, at ease as he paused to smile and acknowledge the swell of applause.
Beside Kate, Allison scooted to the edge of her seat. “Don’t I have the handsomest big brother in the world?” She turned around to whisper, “I think that new mustache he’s grown makes him look even older than twenty-eight.”
Kate couldn’t do anything but nod, unable to squeeze a word past the lump in her throat. She watched him through a haze of tears, her son, comparing him to the child she had met that first day when he had kicked and spat and tried to lash out at her in such fear and desperation.
He had grown tall and firm, the image of Reed. Intelligent and inquisitive, Daniel had attended the university and become an accomplished teacher. Tonight was the last night he would appear in Dallas. Tomorrow they would see him off at the train, and he would start on a tour in hopes of teaching the world about a dying civilization, one he believed every bit as important as any of the others already lost to the tide of history, a people who once roamed the plains in countless numbers now reduced to fewer than fifteen hundred souls.
The applause continued, although he had yet to say a word. Many of those in the audience had been here on both previous evenings, and yet they had come to hear him again, to listen to his tale, to laugh, to cry, to wonder.
Finally Daniel raised both hands for silence, and the crowd quieted. Beside Kate, Reed sat as still as a statue, except that his hand was nearly squeezing the life out of hers while a smile as wide as the acres of Lone Star spread across his face.
She concentrated on Daniel again, amazed at his confidence. He scanned the crowd, looked down at where he knew his family was to be sitting and nodded to them.
Then he began. “I’d like to dedicate my speech tonight to my family—my father, Reed Benton, my mother, Katherine Benton, and of course, my sister, Allison Benton. I’m here tonight to tell you a story, the story of the years I spent living among the Comanche and what I learned from them.”
He paused dramatically, slowly stared into the footlights again. He had no notes, no written speech. Kate wiped away a tear that was heading for her chin, glanced down at her hand in Reed’s, and then looked over at Allison, who was hanging on her brother’s every word although she had heard the story many, many times before.
Daniel took a deep breath, drew back his shoulders. His strong, clear voice sounded throughout the hall.
“I remember living on the prairie, riding before I could walk. Back then, I was not Daniel Benton. I was Fast Pony, adopted son of Many Horses. . . .”
Read on for a preview of
Magnolia Creek
the latest novel from Jill Marie Landis Available in hardcover in August 2002
Southern Kentucky May 1866
A young woman clothed in widow’s weeds rode in the back of a crude farm wagon and watched the landscape roll by through a cascading ebony veil draped over the wide brim of her black hat. The misty veil not only cast the world in an ominous dark pall, but hid her auburn hair, finely drawn features, clear blue eyes, and the swelling bruise that marred her left cheek.
Her arms were wrapped around her daughter, a toddler with golden cherub curls who was bundled in a thick black shawl to protect her from a brisk afternoon breeze. Sound asleep with her head on her mother’s shoulder, the little girl was as oblivious to the chill on the late spring air as she was to the utter desperation in her mother’s heart.
Sara Collier Talbot had traveled for days. She had walked south from Ohio along roads shredded by war, circumvented byways stalled by downed bridges and trails clogged with foot traffic, carts full of soldiers going home and liberated Negroes heading north. Carrying her child, Sara had begged rides in carts, on the backs of crowded wagons, atop piles of straw, wedged herself between barrels of dry goods. She had sold her other clothing to help pay for the mourning ensemble.
She had no place to call home, no money, no pride, nothing but an old weathered satchel that held a fresh petticoat, two gowns for the child, a dozen saltine crackers, and the heel end of a stale loaf of bread. Her love child, Elizabeth, a child born of shame, was the only treasure she could claim.
She shifted her precious daughter higher on her shoulder, stunned that fate had brought her home to Magnolia Creek.
An unexpected breeze skimmed across the open farm-land, teasing the edge of her veil as the sun raked the tops of the trees bordering the road. Behind the protective anonymity of the black veil, Sara contemplated the only other passenger besides herself and Lissybeth riding in the farmer’s wagon.
An ex-soldier still dressed in tattered gray wool, the remnants of a uniform of the once proud Confederate States of America, lay curled up in the far corner of the wagon bed. Sad-eyed, defeat
ed, he was so thin that he resembled a skeleton far more than a man. With no more than a nod to Sara when she first climbed aboard, he had promptly fallen asleep. Thankfully there would be no small talk to suffer.
A pair of scarred crutches padded with rags lay on the wagon bed beside him. He was missing his right foot. His cheeks were covered with sparse salt-and-pepper stubble, his sunken eyes surrounded by violet smudges.
Sara sighed. In one way or another, the war had made invalids of them all.
Looking away from the soldier, she stared out across the surrounding landscape: gentle rolling hills, yellow poplar, sycamore, oak, chestnut, walnut trees all gathered into woods between open fields now lying fallow. Here and there, trails of chimney smoke snaked up from the treetops, signs of cabins hidden in the wood.
The Kentucky countryside had changed very little since she saw it last, but not so the look of the travelers along its byways.
Before the war, back roads pilgrims were mostly farmers, a few tinkers and merchants, or families on their way across the state. The majority were war refugees—many of them Confederate soldiers hailing from Kentucky, men banished and marked as traitors after the state legislature voted to side with the Union. Now, a long year after surrender, those men were still making their way back home.
There were far more Negroes on the roads now. Former slaves who had feasted on the first heady rush of freedom, but now wearing the same disoriented look as the white casualties of war. They wandered the rural countryside searching for a way to survive the unaccustomed liberty that had left so many displaced and starving in a world turned upside down.
Sara had spent nearly all she had to buy the black ensemble to wear while she was on the road. The South was full of widows; the North, too, if the papers were to be believed. The sight of a woman alone in drab black garb was not all that unusual and she blended in, one more casualty of the war between the states.
On the outskirts of town the wagon rattled past the old painted sign that read, Welcome to Magnolia Creek, Home of Talbot Mills, Population three hundred and eighty-one. Obviously no one had bothered to change the sign. Sara knew, painfully well, that there was at least one who would not be coming home.
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