Kaylene could hardly stand there so cold and impersonal in the presence of this lady. Her very heart seemed to be wrenched from inside her. For no matter how much Anna had deceived her, Kaylene knew now, as she stood so close to her, that a part of her would always love her.
And pity overwhelmed Kaylene, pity for a woman who had always been forced to bend to the will of her husband.
Yet Kaylene still didn’t embrace her, even though she wanted to with every fiber of her being.
“I know that you are not my mother,” Kaylene finally blurted out. Anna’s whole body lurched as though she had been slapped.
In order to trick this woman into being truthful to her, Kaylene chose to use a tactic that might draw a quick reaction from Anna and, inevitably, the truth. “John Shelton, the man who professed to being my father as far back as I can remember, told me that you aren’t my parents,” Kaylene said, her voice drawn as she watched Anna cover a wild, disbelieving gasp behind one of her hands.
John stepped up next to Anna, his eyes wide.
Then he looked slowly down at Anna, whose eyes were on him, condemning him for having told such a truth. “I d-didn’t tell her,” John stammered out. “Anna, I swear it. I never told her anything of the kind. I have no idea where she got the idea!”
A dark scowl covered John’s face and he turned glaring eyes toward Fire Thunder. He started to say that this was all Fire Thunder’s fault, but stumbled over the words, knowing that anything he said now could mean life or death to him. John’s fate was all up to Fire Thunder. So not to antagonize him, he stopped in midsentence and gave his wife a wavering, apologetic stare.
Then what happened next was so fast, no one had any chance to stop it.
Anna grabbed the derringer from Kaylene’s hand. She aimed it at John. She pulled the trigger and shot John. Then she cried softly when he clutched his chest and fell to the ground, writhing at her feet.
As he gazed wildly up at Anna, she dropped the derringer and covered her mouth with a hand. “Why did you have to tell her?” she sobbed. “She’d have never known! She . . . was . . . all I had in life. I lost you long ago. All I was to you was something to beat on and berate when you were angry. Well, John Shelton, I’ve just changed that. Die then! Rot in hell!”
John shifted his gaze toward Kaylene. He reached a hand out for her, his eyes pleading. Then he rolled over in spasms, and lay quietly in his own pool of blood.
“Lord . . .” Kaylene said, numb from what had happened. She looked quickly over at Anna. “You . . . killed . . . him.”
“Yes, and I should have done it long ago,” Anna cried. She turned and ran from Kaylene, then fell in a heap as she fainted just outside her personal tent.
“I’m so stunned by all of this,” Kaylene murmured as Fire Thunder placed a gentle, comforting arm around her waist. “I never thought my tricking my mother into telling me the truth, herself, would cause this. She killed him, Fire Thunder. She actually killed him.”
“Her rage has built up inside her through the years against this man who was cruel to her,” Fire Thunder said. “A person can take just so much abuse, so much badgering. Then when she thought that he had told you the truth about your birthright, that was all it needed to make her snap. This man had taken from her something precious. You were all that she had left. And now she doesn’t even have you.”
“It’s so sad,” Kaylene said, wiping tears from her eyes. Her tears were not for John, but for the way it had turned out. It had started the day they had taken her to raise as theirs.
“Go to your mother,” Fire Thunder said thickly.
“Mother . . . ?” Kaylene said, giving him a startled, questioning glance.
“In a sense she is,” Fire Thunder said. “She loves you, Kaylene. She has sacrificed for you. Go to her. She is a woman in need.”
“But she is also a murderess,” Kaylene said, an involuntary shiver racing across her flesh.
Fire Thunder clasped her shoulders with his hands. “She has done everyone a good deed by ridding the world of that vile man,” he said. “Go to her. Hold her. Then question her. Perhaps now she will tell you the full truth.”
Kaylene gave Fire Thunder a soft kiss on his lips, then turned and went to Anna.
Several women were caring for her, wiping her brow with a cloth, trying to awaken her. Kaylene nodded to the women and they stepped aside.
She knelt down beside Anna and she placed a gentle hand to her brow. “Mother,” she murmured, “please wake up. I’m sorry if I hurt you. I do love you, but . . . but . . . I want to know my true mother.”
Anna slowly opened her eyes. Tears filled them again when she found Kaylene there, being so sweet, so gentle, so caring. As she had awakened, she had heard Kaylene call her mother.
She reached a hand out for Kaylene. “I do love you so,” she murmured. “Kaylene, you are my life.”
“And I love you,” Kaylene said, trying desperately to brush aside the fact that this woman had deceived her for so long. “But that doesn’t keep me from wanting to know my true mother. Please tell me. It’s not fair keeping it from me any longer.”
Trembling, Anna moved to a sitting position. She hugged herself as she gazed at Kaylene. “Yes, I will tell you,” she murmured. “Then you will know that it is not as bad as it seems, your being here, raised as my child.”
“Please tell me everything,” Kaylene said, as Fire Thunder came and stood over her and Anna, listening.
“One day, long ago, while giving a show at Laredo, an ailing lady named Eloisa Soriano, came to me with her six-month-old baby,” Anna said, her voice drawn. “The woman explained that she was ill and that she was unwed. She was from Gypsy stock, but had been cast away when it was discovered that she was in the first stages of leprosy.”
Kaylene paled and gasped. “Leprosy?” she said, in barely a whisper.
“With my husband’s consent, I took the child, a precious tiny girl,” Anna said softly. “Before the woman left, she told me that if I ever wanted to bring the child by on occasions, for her to see from a distance, so as not to give the child leprosy, she would be living in Laredo.”
“Did you?” Kaylene asked, her eyes wide, her heart thumping wildly to know the truth, troubling though it was. And it was wonderful, it was a relief, to know that she hadn’t been stolen, and that she had been taken in to raise as a daughter, not as a slave. Knowing that meant a lot to her.
“No,” Anna said, slowly shaking her head. “Never. I feared the leprosy. And I feared that she might change her mind and want you back.”
“Do you think she is alive?” Kaylene asked, hardly able to envision what the lady might look like with the leprosy. She knew little about the disease. It terribly disfigured a person. And no one would go near anyone with it. They were usually outcast from the community.
“I’m not certain if she is or isn’t,” Anna said, then reached over and placed a gentle hand on Kaylene’s face. “Through the years, Kaylene, John for the most part behaved kindly toward you. When he became greedy and loved tequila too much, he totally changed. He beat me whenever he chose to. And he saw you as a draw for the carnival, especially when you found the baby panther and raised it into a tame adult. That’s when John started seeing you more as an object for making money, than as a daughter.”
Anna hung her head in her hands. “You don’t know how often I begged him not to treat you like the other children he stole and placed into slavery,” she cried. “But he would never listen. He was blinded by so many things. I’m . . . glad that I shot him.”
“So Father did abduct other children,” Kaylene said, shivering at the thought of how many she had seen working in the carnival.
“Yes, they were abducted,” Anna said, lifting desperate eyes to Kaylene. “That is why we had to keep on moving so often, from town to town, from state to state. He was always afraid of being caught. In the end, he became too smug . . . too careless.”
Anna flung herself into Kaylene’s arms. “I
have always loved you,” she cried. “I love you now, as though you are my true child. Do not forsake me, Kaylene. Not now, not when I need you so much.”
Kaylene looked up at Fire Thunder. “Can she go back to the village with us?” she asked hoarsely. “Fire Thunder, I just can’t abandon her. Please? Can I take her with me?”
Fire Thunder hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, if that is what you wish,” he said, clasping his hands tightly behind him.
Kaylene framed her mother’s face between her hands. “Mother, will you take me to my true mother?” she asked warily.
“Kaylene, is it not enough that you know who your true mother was?” Fire Thunder said, bending to a knee beside her. “Leprosy. It is a bad disease. Do not chance getting it.”
“I will keep my distance, Fire Thunder,” she said in a rush of words. “I have come this close to knowing my true mother. How can you expect me not to go all of the way?”
Then a thought came to Kaylene. “Mother, who is my true father?” she asked softly.
“I have no idea,” Anna murmured. “Your mother would not confess such a truth to me. Perhaps she doesn’t even know herself who impregnated her.”
“I must find out everything I can,” Kaylene said determinedly.
She looked up at Fire Thunder again. “You will take me to search for my true mother in Laredo, won’t you?” she asked softly. “It is important for me to see her at least just this once. And to allow her to see me, the daughter she gave away. I want her to see the man I am going to marry!”
Fire Thunder rose to his full height. He took Kaylene’s hands and urged her to her feet. He wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her into his embrace. “My woman, I will do anything for you, you know that,” he said thickly. “Yes, we will go to Laredo. But if your mother is no longer there, the search stops there. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” Kaylene murmured, hugging him. “Thank you, darling. Thank you for giving me this chance.”
“But we must leave now,” Fire Thunder said, easing her from his arms. He turned to Anna. “If you are going with us, you must leave now. You must leave all of this behind you. You will start a new life among my people.” He glanced over at John. “And you cannot stay even long enough to bury your husband.”
Anna looked down at John, shuddered, then reached a hand out for Kaylene. “I am ready,” she said, proudly lifting her chin.
Kaylene took Anna’s hand. She squeezed it affectionately, then walked away forever from the life that she had known since she was a child.
A horse was brought for Anna. She mounted it. She looked around her at the men, women, and children who stared up at her. “This is all yours,” she said softly. “Do with it what you wish. I gladly rid my life of it.”
Kaylene smiled, then rode off with her mother at her left side, Fire Thunder at her right.
She looked straight ahead, her heart anxious for what lay waiting in Laredo.
Chapter 26
Her lovely yielding form I pressed,
Sweet maddening kisses stole.
—ROBERT DODSLEY
They had made camp for one night and headed out again for Laredo the next day. It was growing dusk when they saw Laredo not that far ahead in the distance.
Fire Thunder drew a tight rein. He wheeled his horse around and faced his faithful warriors. “Make camp here,” he said. “Only Kaylene and I will ride on into Laredo. We shall return after our mission is complete.”
Kaylene turned to Anna, whose shoulders were slumped with weariness from the long travel on horseback. “Mother,” she said softly. It did still seem right to call Anna mother. She had been Kaylene’s mother for too long now, to address her by anything else. It would seem disrespectful, somehow. “You will be safe here with the Kickapoo warriors. Rest. Eat. Then sleep. I am not certain if we will even return tonight. It’s according to what we find out about . . . about my true mother.”
Tears filled Anna’s eyes. “I wish you hadn’t found out,” she murmured.
“Knowing isn’t going to change all that much in my life now,” Kaylene tried to reassure her. “I am going to marry Fire Thunder. No matter whether or not I had found out the truth about my parents, I would have still stayed with Fire Thunder as his wife.”
Anna cast Fire Thunder a shy glance, then looked over at Kaylene. “I will never understand how you could fall in love with a man who took you captive,” she said softly, so that Fire Thunder wouldn’t hear.
“You will soon understand why I could have never hated him,” Kaylene said. She gazed at Fire Thunder, as taken now with him as the first time she had seen him on his horse with his warriors as they had passed by the carnival. She smiled at her mother. “I would wager a bet that you will soon be as smitten with Fire Thunder as I,” she said, laughing softly.
Fire Thunder rode up next to Kaylene. He eyed Anna, seeing her weariness, then dismounted. He went to her and placed gentle hands to her waist and lifted her from the saddle. “You need rest,” he said. “Take advantage of my and Kaylene’s absence. When Kaylene and I are through with our mission, we will have a long travel ahead of us again to reach my mountain.”
Anna gave him a nervous smile as she stepped away from him. She stared up at him, his height so much more than most men she had ever known. “Thank you,” she murmured. “I do appreciate your kindness.”
Kaylene’s insides warmed when Fire Thunder gave Anna a gentle hug, so glad that he was showing Anna the sort of man that he was. She could tell by Anna’s expression that she was surprised by Fire Thunder’s gentleness. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks flushed pink as he turned and went back to his horse.
“Wish me luck, Mother?” Kaylene said, her voice breaking when Anna came quickly to her and reached her arms up for her.
“May God be with you,” Anna said, hugging Kaylene as Kaylene leaned down low enough for the embrace.
Swallowing back the urge to cry, Kaylene gave her mother one last hug, brushed a kiss across her cheek. Then she sat straight in the saddle and rode off with Fire Thunder.
As the sunset splashed Laredo the color of sin, the brilliant red color reflecting from the windows, Fire Thunder and Kaylene rode slowly down the main street. The town had a reputation for scenes of violence.
Kaylene now recalled having been to Laredo one time, when the carnival had set their tents on the far edge of town. She had been frightened by the gunmen who came and saw her show. It was so vivid in her memory that it was as though she were there now, performing on her panther. She could hear their bawdy talk as they shouted at her and tormented her with lewd teasings. If ever she had been afraid in her life, it had been then.
Even now, she tensed as she looked on both sides of her. There were mainly saloons and bawdy houses. She could hear the drunken laughter wafting from the saloons, the batwing doors swinging in the haze as drunks staggered from the establishments.
The voice of a barker for a street show, inviting cowhands to see the freak pig or watch the performance of “The Armless Lady,” caused Kaylene’s thoughts to return to her years at the carnival. Oh, she was so relieved to no longer be a part of that life.
She breathed more easily when they left that part of town and rode past adobe houses, church buildings, and plazas.
Kaylene glanced over at Fire Thunder. He seemed to know where he was going, as though he had been in Laredo many times before.
“You are familiar with this town?” Kaylene blurted out.
“Yes, I have been here many times to speak with the sheriff when my people lived close by, on land we never truly felt comfortable on,” Fire Thunder said, his voice drawn. “When our cattle were stolen, I reported it.” He gave her a half glance. “But the white sheriff scoffed and did nothing about it.”
“Then do you truly feel comfortable being here now?” Kaylene asked, seeing out of the corner of her eye a large adobe building that Fire Thunder was now directing his horse toward.
“That was many years ago,” Fire Thunder
said, drawing a tight rein beside a hitching rail. “There will be a different sheriff. Let us go and inquire about this woman named Eloisa Soriano, your mother.”
“Part of this town is lovely,” Kaylene said, dismounting. “The other part is ugly in its unpleasantness.”
“This town that sits on the Rio Grande, across from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, has had many faces,” Fire Thunder said, slinging his reins about the hitching rail. “It was established as a ferry crossing to Mexico.”
“You know so much about Laredo,” Kaylene said, flipping her horse’s reins around the rail, beside Fire Thunder’s. Her heart pounded to know she was in the very town where she might find her true mother. This small talk that she was making with Fire Thunder was helping her keep down her excitement.
“Living near it, as my people did, its history became familiar to us,” Fire Thunder said. He glanced over his shoulder as two horsemen rode past, their eyes on him and Kaylene. “After the revolt against Mexico in 1836, Laredo became the seat of the ‘Republic of the Rio Grande.’ Now it is just another town.”
Fire Thunder nodded toward the large adobe building, where above the door hung a plaque on which was painted in bold black letters the word JAIL. “Let us go inside and speak with the sheriff,” he said. “Perhaps he can direct us to your mother.”
“What if he can’t?” Kaylene said, stepping up on the wide porch beside Fire Thunder.
“Then we will go elsewhere in town for answers,” Fire Thunder said. He gave Kaylene a wavering glance. “But, Kaylene, if we do not find your mother in or near Laredo, we must give up the search. I have been gone from my village much longer than I had planned.”
“I understand,” Kaylene said softly, nodding. She said a prayer to herself that she would be given this one chance to see her true mother. If not, she despaired, what in life was fair?
Wild Whispers Page 27