by Janet Dailey
Four days ago—the end of October—he had been mustered out of the army. He had come home to see his mother, but he was none too sure of his welcome. He rode around to the kitchen at the rear of the house. Smoke curled from the chimney. Ike dismounted and looped the reins around the branch of a bush, leaving the horse to crop at the tall grass.
He stepped inside and saw a woman standing at a worktable, her back to him. Then she turned, wiping her hands on her apron. It was his mother—older, heavier, grayer, but she still possessed full cheeks and big doe eyes. She stared at him in shock.
Hastily, Ike removed his hat and held it uncertainly in front of him, nervously fingering the brim. "Hello, Momma."
"Ike?" Phoebe took a step toward him, still with a look of doubt. "It is you," she cried and ran to embrace him, then tearfully framed his face in her hands. "I thought I was dreaming, but you're here. You're truly here."
"I wasn't sure you'd want to see me. I . . ." He fumbled over the words, fighting the blur of tears in his own eyes and the happiness that choked his throat.
"Not want to see my own boy? I'm your mother." She drew back to look at him, still holding his arms as if he might slip away. She smiled, almost teasingly. "At least, you're not wearing that awful blue uniform anymore." She clutched at him again, unable to contain her happiness. "Just wait 'til Miss Temple sees you. And Miss Eliza." Taking him by the hand, like he was a little boy again, Phoebe led him into the main house and called loudly, "Miss Temple! Ike's here. He's come home!"
Within minutes he was engulfed in more welcomes as Temple, Eliza, Susannah, and Sorrel swarmed around him. None of this was what he had expected, not after the way he had run away to join the army. Before he knew it, he was sitting at the table with a plate of food in front of him.
The knife and fork were in his hands, but he couldn't take that first bite. "Momma, I have to tell you about Uncle Shad. He—"
"We know," Eliza inserted. "Jed—Major Parmelee told us about him . . . about his bravery."
"He was brave, Momma. He was about the bravest man I know."
"He always was. Gracious, when I think of the way he used to sneak into that school to get the lessons you left for him, Miss Eliza ..." Phoebe shuddered expressively, then smiled. "Our mammy would have whipped him within an inch of his life if she had found out. But that didn't stop him. He was determined to get an education."
"I know," Ike murmured.
She reached over and affectionately squeezed his hand. "I wish your father were here."
"They'll be home soon, Phoebe," Temple assured her.
Ike hesitated. "I . . . wouldn't count on that, Miss Temple."
"Why?" Her look of alarm bordered on fear.
"They're fine," he said quickly. "I saw them last month in Fort Smith when they attended that meeting with the Federal commissioners. I didn't get to talk to them, though, but they were all right."
"Why won't they come home? The war is over."
"Miss Temple, you have to know there's a lot of bad feelings between the Cherokees who fought for the Union and the ones who fought for the South . . . especially after the commissioners told the delegates from all the Indian Nations that they had forfeited all rights to their tribal lands and annuities when they joined the Confederacy. The whole Cherokee Nation is being held accountable for the actions of Stand Watie and his rebels, even though half the Nation remained loyal to the Union cause. They have to make a new treaty, give up some of their land and their rights, and guarantee Cherokee citizenship to former slaves."
"You're saying that . . . it's not safe for them to come back—that there might be reprisals?"
Ike nodded, wondering if she knew how devastating the war had been to the Nation. Within the boundaries of the Indian Territory, most of it had been fought on Cherokee soil. Practically anywhere a man rode, he would find charred ruins, fields choked with weeds, and abject poverty where there had once been prosperity. From what Ike heard, only one other area had suffered more damage than the Cherokee Nation, and that was the swath of burned ground Sherman had left behind him in his march to the sea. Ironically, much of that burned ground included the Cherokee's former homeland in Georgia.
"Temple, it isn't that they don't want to come home—" Eliza began.
"I know," she retorted crisply, fighting against the despair she felt. It seemed the feuding was never going to end. Never.
"Maybe I shouldn't have said anything," Ike murmured.
"Nonsense. It is always better to know these things.," Eliza declared, clasping her hands together and resting them on the tabletop in an attitude that dispensed with the subject. "You haven't said what your plans are, Ike, now that the army has discharged you."
"I don't know. I'm not sure." He shrugged, then glanced at his mother. "I met this girl in Fort Smith. Her name is Ginny. I think you'd like her. She's almost as pretty as you."
"Now you sound like your father with all that sweet talk." But Phoebe beamed at him just the same.
"I thought I'd go back, maybe find me a job, save up some money to go along with what I've got left of my army pay, and get a place of our own somewhere."
"Why don't you bring her here?"
"No, Momma. I'm a free man now. I want to work my own land, have my own place. I have to. I know you don't understand that, but I promised Uncle Shad."
Part III
The houses and cabins had been burned. Fields had grown up into thickets of underbrush. The hogs and cattle, which the soldiers had not killed, had gone wild in the woods and canebrakes. People had to start life anew—build log cabins, clear ground, plant crops, build fences.
—Mrs. Mary Cobb Agnew
Cherokee
27
Grand View
Cherokee Nation
August 1866
Sorrel wrestled another ear of corn off its stalk and tossed it into the cart with the others. Her whole body pricked with sweat as she paused and lifted the hot weight of her long red hair off her neck. It gave her little relief. There wasn't a breath of air stirring anywhere.
"How can you stand it, Susannah?" There was her aunt, methodically moving down the adjacent corn row, pulling brown-silked ears off the stalks, completely oblivious to the heat. "I am positively melting."
Susannah smiled at her sympathetically. "We're almost done. Only two more rows."
"I think I hate corn." Sorrel gazed at the mound of ears in the cart, certain if she never looked at corn again, it would be too soon.
"Think about how good a cool bath will feel when we're finished here," Susannah suggested.
"If I can last that long." With a heavy sigh, Sorrel turned back to the com row, only to be distracted by the steady clip-clopping of a horse's hooves. "Someone's coming." She stepped out of the corn rows to look down the lane. The air shimmered like liquid glass, blurring the rider on the black horse. The instant Sorrel spied the white star on the horse's forehead, she knew who it was. "It's Alex!"
She ran to meet him, her bonnet slipping off and dangling down her back, held only by the loosely tied ribbons around her neck. When she stopped beside the mare, she was out of breath and smiling widely.
"You're home. You're finally home." Sorrel waited for him to dismount. At almost fourteen, she was much too grown up to hurl herself at him in a childish hug, but she had to touch him, so she rested her hands on his shoulders and raised up to give him a quick kiss on the cheek, then stepped back. "I'm so glad you're back. I've missed you."
"I've missed you, too."
"I'm still wearing the locket you gave me." She reached inside the neck of her dress and lifted it out to show him. "I wear it all the time."
Alex glanced at it and remembered the trove of gold coins and jewelry he'd taken with it. They had not been the last items of value that he'd "confiscated" from someone, rebel or otherwise. In one way or another, he had managed to get and spend a considerable amount of money during his time in the army. One of his more profitable schemes had been to force local
farmers to sell him their corn at a fraction of its value, then sell it to the army himself. He'd made a tidy sum for a while, but all of it was gone now.
"The locket looks good around your neck. Does your father know you wear it?" It amused, him to think how irritated the sight of it would be to The Blade, knowing that Alex had given it to her.
"No." She tucked it back inside her dress. "He and Lije haven't come home yet, although Mother expects them back anytime now that a new treaty has been signed. Did you hear that Chief John Ross died in Washington?"
"I heard."
"Everyone says his nephew William Potter Ross will be elected principal chief when the National Council meets in November."
"Probably." Unlike his father, Alex had no interest in the Nation's politics. All he knew was that if The Blade was for it, he was against it.
"Have you been to your farm yet? Someone told Mother that the cabin is in awful shape, all the windows broken out, a hole in the roof. If you want, I'll come help you fix it up."
"Thanks, but I plan on selling the place if I can find somebody to buy it."
"Why would you do that? I know it's too late to plant anything this year, but next spring—"
"I'm not cut out to be a planter, Sorrel," he told her. "I am not about to spend most of my life staring at the back end of a mule. It isn't me. It never was. If I had to sit around and watch crops grow, I'd go crazy."
"But, if you sell the farm, what will you do? Where will you live?"
"I haven't decided." He reached out and stroked the mare's neck. "I still haven't seen any horse than can outrun this little lady. I thought I might head up to Kansas or Missouri, someplace where her reputation isn't known, and pick up some money racing her."
Sorrel gave him a long, thoughtful look. "I know why you're leaving. You don't have to pretend with me, Alex. It's because of my father, isn't it?" she stated with grim conviction. "You think that when he comes back, he'll come after you, that he'll try to kill you the same way he killed your father."
"I don't think it—I know he wants me dead." But Alex had plans of his own for The Blade. He had thought long and hard about avenging his father's death. In retrospect, Alex was glad The Blade hadn't died when he shot him. It would have been too quick, too easy, especially when he remembered the years his father had spent waiting and wondering when The Blade was going to make his try for him. It had eaten Kipp like a cancer. Alex had decided it would be poetic justice if The Blade had to do some waiting and wondering of his own. The day would come, though, when Alex would kill him—as cold-bloodedly as The Blade had killed Kipp. But he would pick the day, not The Blade.
"But that has nothing to do with me leaving," he told Sorrel. "Your father isn't driving me away. I'll be back. You can count on that. I just need to get some money in my pockets first."
"I don't care whether you have money."
He tipped his head back and laughed. "But I care. You take care of yourself, Sorrel, and you keep wearing that locket."
He climbed back into the saddle, tossed Sorrel a salute, and reined the black mare around to head up the lane to the Texas Road. He felt good inside, so good that he wanted to throw his head back and laugh.
Seeing the open road before them, the mare pushed at the bit. "Feel like running, do you?" Alex chuckled and eased the restraining pressure. The mare broke into a canter.
A mile farther, the mare lifted her head and pricked her ears at the dust haze ahead of them. Alex eyed it curiously, then caught the low, steady rumble of sound. At first he thought it was a supply train, then he heard the bellow of a steer and knew it was a trail herd. The drives to northern markets had begun again.
He traveled another quarter mile before he spotted the point men riding in advance of the lead steers. He was close enough now to hear the drum of hooves and the clatter of the steers' long horns cracking against each other. He swung the mare off the road and pulled up to let the herd pass.
One of the point riders split off from the other two and cantered up the road. But it was the cattle Alex watched, an idea forming. In Kansas City, Sedalia, or Saint Louis, a steer would sell for twenty or thirty dollars. That river of horns represented a fortune.
Up along the Kansas border, some less-than-scrupulous "cattle brokers" would pay eighteen dollars a head, no questions asked. During the last couple of years of the war, stealing cattle and selling them to the Kansas brokers had been a lucrative operation, and the authorities had looked the other way. The last Alex had heard, it was still going on. A man could make a lot of money at it. A helluva lot of money. And he'd been planning to head for Kansas anyway.
With the last ear of corn picked, Susannah headed for the house. There was time enough to shuck it later in the evening when it would be cooler. Right now, she wanted a bath and change of clothes. Using the front of her apron, she blotted the perspiration from her face and neck. Tired as well as hot, she tried not to think how much quicker she might have finished if Sorrel hadn't run off to see Alex, then not come back when he left. Fourteen was a difficult age.
She glanced down the lane and saw another rider approaching. "This is certainly our morning for visitors," she murmured.
The dancing heat waves distorted the shape of the horse and rider, concealing his identity. Then Susannah heard the whistling and stopped.
The horse broke into a canter. She stood stock still, unconsciously holding her breath, waiting for the image to either disappear or break through the heat ripples. Suddenly there was no more doubt in her mind. It was Rans!
She ran to meet him. He vaulted from the saddle and caught her up in his arms, swinging her around and bringing his lips down to crush hers. When her feet were back on the ground again, she wrapped her arms tightly around him as she kissed him with hungry ardor.
Even after they both came up for air, she couldn't seem to get enough of him, greedily running her hands over his face and into his hair, letting her lips taste and explore the saltiness of his jaw and neck. He smelled of dust, sweat, and cattle, but Susannah knew she had never breathed an aroma more wonderful.
"You are here," she whispered shakily against his skin. "I was beginning to think I would never see you again."
"Didn't you get my letter?" His hands moved up and down her back, stroking, kneading, and caressing her.
"The one telling me your father was in trouble and you were going home?" It was the only letter she had received from him.
"Yes."
"That was last year, right after the war ended."
"I guess it was. So much has happened I lost track of time." He rubbed his mouth across her forehead, his breath running moist and warm into her hair. "The ranch was sold for back taxes. My father died right after that. I think losing the place killed him."
"I am sorry," she murmured.
"Dear God, I've missed you, Susannah." His arms tightened around her.
"I missed you, too. But you're here now. Nothing else matters."
"I can't stay," Rans told her. "I'm taking a herd up the trail to Iowa. It'll be the end of November or the first of December before I make it back. It seems like I'm always asking you to wait, but will you?"
"I don't know why you even bother to ask. You know I will."
He kissed her long and hard.
28
Grand View
Cherokee Nation
December 1866
Outside the parlor window, white flakes swirled and sparkled in the bright sunlight, an illusion of falling snow created by the wind blowing away crystals from the frost-crusted trees on the lawn. Diane concentrated on a new flurry of flakes that danced and whirled beyond the glass panes and worked to block the feelings of envy that knifed through her.
"Shall we drink a toast to the newly engaged couple?" Jed Parmelee's question was met with a chorus of agreements.
Drawing in a quick, steadying breath, Diane turned back to the group and raised her glass of sherry, conscious that her smile was a little too bright. "To Rans and S
usannah." The tightness in her voice was thankfully masked by the others.
She took a sip of wine, her glance straying to the couple on the sofa, sitting as close together as propriety would allow. Diane remembered too well when she and Lije had acted like that—in this very room. She remembered, too, the heady excitement she'd felt whenever he was near.
When the laughter and clamor of congratulations were over, Jed asked, "How did your cattle drive go, Rans?"
"Not as well as I'd hoped," he admitted with a sigh. "I did get top dollar in Iowa, but I lost almost two hundred head to raiders. They jumped the herd a few miles south of the Kansas border. By the time I paid all the costs on the drive, I didn't make as much money as I'd hoped." Rans swirled the sherry in his glass and briefly met Susannah's smiling look. "What we need is closer markets.
"The East is crying for beef, and longhorns are running wild in Texas by the hundreds of thousands. Those steers represent the only money we have. Hard cash is scarcer than angels' wings in Texas. I don't have any choice but to try to make another drive next year." His gaze shifted to and moved soberly over Susannah's face once again. "It's going to take a couple more drives before I can afford a place of my own— our own."
"Have you considered building a ranch here in the Nations, Rans?" Although Eliza tried, her question sounded anything but casual in its interest. "I know it is terribly selfish of me, but I am not looking forward to traipsing all the way to Texas to see my grandchildren."
"Truthfully, I hadn't, Mrs. Gordon."
Diane didn't want to listen to more talk that spoke of home, husbands, and family. As unobtrusively as possible, she wandered over to the marble-fronted fireplace to stare into the crackling flames. She knew it wasn't the talk that bothered her nearly as much as witnessing the intimacy between the young couple.