“It’s all right, Travis,” Kendall interrupted tonelessly. “You did what you felt you had to do.”
“No, it’s not all right.” Travis hesitated again, noting that she had half closed her eyes, shielding them against him with the thick fringe of her lashes. “Kendall, I . . . Oh, hell! I just kept thinking that John was going to be all right one day. But he isn’t. John’s like a wounded animal, Kendall. When you shoot a wildcat, you might as well kill it. Otherwise, it will suffer for the rest of its life, dying a bit at a time. John should have died. The pain isn’t in his body; it’s in his mind. His spirit is poisoned and twisted.”
Kendall at last opened her eyes and stared into Travis’s warm brown gaze, dark now with the heartache he bore for two people. Poor Travis!
“Travis,” she said quietly. “I admire your loyalty to John. He was your friend, and you loved him. And you’ve been a good friend to me. You’ve made my life bearable. You’ve . . . you’ve kept John from killing me, and you’ve kept me from wanting to die.”
Travis cleared his throat, and glanced quickly aft to assure himself that the seamen were still talking among themselves and keeping their lookout.
“Kendall, I don’t think you understand. I believe John has gone over the brink. His own men think him mad. I . . . I want to help you escape from him.”
Kendall straightened and gazed at him eagerly. “Oh, Travis! Bless you! I’ll go anywhere, do anything! Charleston, maybe! I’d be careful. I’d go to Lolly’s, and I wouldn’t travel anywhere near town. No, maybe not Charleston. My stepfather would give me back to John if he caught me. Unless I could get a divorce! Oh, yes, Travis! That’s it. I could plead to a South Carolina court! They wouldn’t make me go back, not when my husband is a Yankee!”
“Kendall, Kendall!” Travis warned. “Even during a war, maybe especially during a war, a divorce isn’t easy to get. And your stepfather is so afraid for his money that he’d ship you back to John. Don’t . . . don’t count on a divorce, Kendall. We have to plan for you to disappear entirely.”
“Commander! Commander Deland!”
Travis’s speech was halted by a sharp cry from Seaman Jones. Travis frowned and pulled Kendall’s hands to the wheel. “Excuse me, Kendall,” he said, as confusion and worry filtered into his gaunt features.
Kendall held the wheel, and watched with knitted brows as Travis nimbly scurried aft. She pulled the brim of her straw hat lower to shield her eyes against the glare of the sun. Seaman Jones, a boy of about eighteen, was pointing excitedly behind them. Squinting, Kendall felt her heart beat harder as she saw that they were being followed by three long, slender vessels, all with only one mast and one sail. Dugouts, she thought instantly, each about fifteen feet long. Dugouts with sails, bearing down upon them swiftly . . .
“Jesus Christ, preserve us!” She uttered the prayer tensely as Travis scrambled back to push her from the helm.
Tremors of ice-cold fear fanned up and down Kendall’s spine. “What is it?” she demanded, her voice shaky as Travis turned to face her, his expression one of amazement—and a panic he couldn’t quite hide.
“Indians,” he told her briefly. He turned around again. “Jones! Hoist the jib! We have to pick up knots!”
“Indians!” Kendall repeated incredulously, the cold fear that had touched her developing into raw panic. “What Indians? Why?”
Travis shook his head impatiently. “I . . . I don’t know why. Seminoles, or maybe Mikasukis. There’s been some isolated violence since the last war. They hate the Union.” Travis twisted around to see that the dugouts were gaining on them. “Of all the days for me to bring you along. Goddamn the U.S. government! They cheated and lied all those years and pushed the Seminole into the swamp, and now they’re attacking my boat. On the Keys no less!”
“It’s not your fault I’m here,” Kendall said swiftly, but she couldn’t keep the sick terror from her voice. Horror tales about the Indians in Florida had reached her when she was a girl. They had burned out Florida plantations, killed the white planters, butchered women and little children . . .
“Load your pieces!” Travis yelled out. “Take the wheel again, Kendall.”
Kendall grabbed the wheel with sweaty palms. She glanced back and saw the dugouts surrounding them. The three seamen were hurriedly loading their weapons, ripping their powder packets open with their teeth. The men would be able to get off only one shot apiece. Then they’d have to battle with bayonets.
Travis was loading his own rifle. “Travis!” Kendall pleaded shakily. “Give me a knife! Give me something!”
He glanced at her uncertainly, then at the dugout coming up on their port side. A scantily clad brave, his knife between his teeth, was about to leap from the dugout to the Michelle. Travis hastily snatched the knife strapped to his calf and handed it to Kendall. Then he aimed his rifle.
Kendall flinched at the first report. One brave went crashing into the water in midleap; another leapt onto the deck with the grace of a cat, squatting low to spring into an attack. Kendall sprang to her feet, holding her knife in a death grip and stumbling toward the stern of the Michelle. The second dugout had come up along the starboard side; three browned and well-muscled braves, clad only in loincloths, were making agile jumps from their vessels to the deck, crying out in bloodcurdling war whoops as they did so. Kendall watched in horror as Seaman Jones caught a knife in his neck and plunged into the foaming sea. And then, clear above the burst of powder and shouts of men in hand-to-hand combat, came a harsh voice, speaking flawless English.
“Surrender, Yankees! Your lives will be spared!”
Travis, as stunned as Kendall, made the mistake of freezing in astonishment. The Indian who had spoken butted Travis’s rifle from his grasp and sent it flying over the side into the sea.
Leaning against the mainmast and holding on to it as a support, Kendall watched sickly as Travis straightened to face the warrior brave. “Who are you?” Travis demanded.
“Red Fox,” the Indian said, turning toward the stern where the two remaining seamen had gone ghastly pale as four Indians surrounded them. Red Fox jerked his head, and his braves grabbed the struggling men to hurl them overboard.
“Just a minute!” Travis cried out. “You said our lives would be spared.”
His voice broke off as Red Fox turned to stare at him once more, his dark eyes hard and seemingly amused. “You are a brave man, my friend. And I do spare your lives. A dugout is yours. And now, brave man, you, too, will jump overboard and swim to a dugout. And hope that no hungry shark is in between.”
Travis stood tall. Kendall saw that he shook a bit before the tall brave with his sleek, well-muscled brown body, but he did not back down. “I will go after the woman.”
“The woman stays,” Red Fox said determinedly. “You go. Or else you die.”
“I cannot—” Travis began, but that was as far as he got. Red Fox laughed picked Travis up as if he were feather-light, and tossed him into the sea. Kendall heard a long, high-pitched scream—and realized it was her own.
Red Fox was approaching her.
In panic she let go of the mast and brandished her knife menacingly. Several Indians scrambled over the decks, as silent as cats in the night. Kendall darted her eyes from left to right, ready to plunge her weapon with desperate intent in either direction. But low laughter rang out again—that of Red Fox. He said something sharply in his own language, and the other Indians backed off one of them taking the wheel of the Michelle.
Red Fox kept coming—alone. Kendall stared at the Indian as he approached her, fear making the blood rush furiously through her system. His black hair fell shining and straight to his shoulders, his face was an arresting sculpture made of granite. Only the sneer on his lip, and the cunning sparkle in his wide, dark eyes betrayed the presence of emotion. She knew now what it was to be a mouse cornered by a cat.
“Woman, give me the knife,” he demanded.
“Never!” Kendall vowed. Fear, more than courage, ma
de her do so.
Red Fox placed his hands on his lean hips and laughed loud and heartily. “Fire lady!” he said, admiration touching the rough edges of his voice. “I would much like to deal with you, but”—he shrugged, his amusement evident—“the Night Hawk has claimed you for himself. I bow to his wishes.”
Kendall had no idea what he was talking about. She had never encountered an Indian before in her life. And it didn’t matter which heathen thought she was some prize, because she was going to fight until . . .
Until what? The only avenue of escape seemed to be the water . . .
Red Fox took another step toward her, and she lashed out desperately with the knife. He hopped back a step and began to circle her. She turned with him, lunging, drawing back. Warily they eyed each other. Then Kendall leapt at him with a vengeance, gratified to hear him curse softly as she drew a line of blood on his chest with her knife. But his arm snaked out before she could retreat. He caught her wrist in an iron vise and snapped the knife from her hand. She screamed out in pain and fury, and wrenched her wrist fiercely, managing to escape from his hold.
The water probably offered only death. She couldn’t swim, and she was hampered by the length of her skirt. They were at least a mile from land.
Nevertheless, she lunged for the port side and threw herself overboard with a fury. Into the crystal depths she sank and sank, her lungs becoming heavy, the pressure of her held breath pounding against them. But then her limbs sprang into life; instinctively she gave a ferocious kick and propelled her body toward the surface.
Even as her head broke the water and she sucked in a huge gulp of air, she felt a talonlike grip on her shoulder.
She turned and saw it was Red Fox, his handsome features irritated.
Kendall tried to strike him. He placed his hand on her head and dunked her, holding her under the water so long that she struggled fiercely, her only thought to breathe again. Suddenly he jerked her back to the surface by the hair.
This time she didn’t have the strength to fight him. Black spots before her eyes threatened to become an all-encompassing curtain. She was barely coherent when he began to swim with her in tow. She was drawn back to consciousness by the pain in her scalp as he pulled her by the hair.
Two of the braves caught her limp form as Red Fox let go of her and heaved himself aboard with his powerful arms.
The two braves dragged her aboard and dropped her on the deck, and for moments she just lay there, her eyes closed as the heat of the sun bore down on her drenched body, drying the sea salt on her skin. At last her mind began to function again.
The Indians were speaking among themselves quietly. The Michelle was moving now, picking up speed.
Kendall’s eyes flew open, and she prepared to leap to her feet and spring into the sea once more. But even as her muscles tensed, a large, bare brown foot balanced threateningly on her abdomen. She stared furiously into Red Fox’s dark eyes.
“Get your filthy foot off me.”
Red Fox grunted and reached down to grip her arm and jerk her none too gently around so that she lay on her stomach. She tried to struggle, but it was useless. He tied her wrists together with little effort, using a leather band from about his neck. And then he tied a piece of rigging rope to that, like a leash, so that she couldn’t go far.
Left with no other recourse, Kendall began to curse at him viciously, rolling to kick and thrash with the remainder of her failing strength.
Red Fox grunted as she landed a sharp kick on his shin. He jerked on the rope so that her arms were pulled back roughly. The pain was searing.
“Woman!” he told her fiercely. “You are more trouble than the soldiers in blue. Cease! Or I will forget that you are for my brother the Night Hawk and I will extract his vengeance for him.”
Beaten for the moment, Kendall closed her eyes and lay still. She felt the soft pad of footsteps as he walked away from her, and then the light jerk of the rope, a firm reminder that she was still tied to him.
Dripping and miserable as she lay in sodden dishevelment on the hard planks of the deck, Kendall tried not to think of her situation. She had to rest, to regain some strength.
But the Michelle was sailing ever northward. And she couldn’t stop herself from thinking . . . from feeling terror wash over her again and again . . . Who in God’s name was the Night Hawk? And why would he seek vengeance on her?
Chapter Two
The sun did not stay out long enough to dry Kendall’s clothing. With the approaching darkness, the hot winter day became a cool night. Cramped and miserably cold, Kendall wondered dismally just where the Indians were taking her.
Northward was all she could really tell. They had passed a number of islands, but that seemed to mean little, because it was ridiculous that Indians had come as far southwest as Key West to stage a surprise attack . . .
Her captors did not molest her in any way. They had talked among themselves in their native tongue as the long afternoon had waned. Except for the abundance of naked bronze flesh they displayed, and their long, jet-black hair, they might have been any sailors out for a pleasant sail. And for all the attention they gave her, she might have been just a sheet of canvas or a coil of rope. She had been grateful for that fact.
But it was strange what a human being could bear, and what one could not. She had managed to keep her pride and not fall weeping to her knees when she had first faced Red Fox with a dagger, certain that she would shortly die. Now . . . now she was not so sure she could maintain her pride much longer. She was so cold. So damp. And the leather about her wrists was drying tightly; it was slow and constant torture against her flesh. She hadn’t eaten for hours, and salt seemed to have become a permanent taste in her mouth.
Constant, nagging pain could drive one crazy, she thought. Drive one to plead for release, like a sobbing child. Kendall swallowed, almost emitting a cry at the terrible dryness that wracked her throat. There was water aboard the Michelle, Kendall knew. In the small cabin there were dozens of jugs filled with crystal-clear drinking water.
Red Fox had seemed almost civilized. Not quite the complete savage that had always been her vision of an Indian. The complete savage would have killed all the men aboard the Michelle, raped her, cut her throat and tossed her carcass to the sharks.
She was being saved for the vengeance of the Night Hawk, she reminded herself, and a quiver like a tide swept through her. But if she was being saved, then she could ask for water and a blanket so that she would not catch pneumonia and die, thereby denying the Night Hawk his vengeance.
Kendall opened her mouth to call Red Fox, but just as she did so, a light flared suddenly in the darkness. In eerie shadow she saw the face of an Indian in another vessel about twenty feet away. One of the dugouts had drawn up next to the Michelle. A spatter of their Indian language rang out in the night, and then the warriors aboard the Michelle began hurriedly lowering the sails. She heard the huge plop as they heaved the anchor overboard, and then, without a sound, Red Fox seized her and, despite a vicious verbal protest on her part, tossed her over his shoulder. A cry escaped her as he carried her over the port side with a jarring leap into the sea. The water rushed over her trailing arms and hair and the shock, when she was already shivering with dampness, made the temperate water seem as cold as the arctic seas.
Red Fox hauled her ashore and set her down beside the warmth of a fire that blazed on a spit of white sand. His dark eyes registered a certain concern as they stared down at her. “You are cold?” he demanded.
Kendall could only nod.
He dropped the rope when he left her. Kendall assumed he did so because he thought it unnecessary to keep her on a leash any longer; there was nowhere for her to go. All she could see was sand—and beyond that the dangerous black sea.
Kendall stared into the flame of the fire, then narrowed her eyes again to search out the shoreline. Four of the braves were pulling the dugouts high onto the sand. They talked as they worked, but their conversations were
low and subdued. Two other braves spoke quietly to Red Fox; then they joined the others at the dugouts. They took from the dugouts colorful shirts and woven blankets as well as a number of leather satchels. Kendall watched as Red Fox slipped a long-sleeved shirt over his head, then clutched a satchel and a blanket and returned to her.
He tossed the satchel down to her. “Clothing,” he told her briefly.
She kept staring at him and he lowered himself to face her closely, a sneer touching the fullness of his lip. “Do you tremble, tremble, white woman? Do you fear a glimpse of your pallid flesh will make my warriors like stallions at stud to a mare in heat?”
Kendall wanted to laugh and to cry. This Indian knew nothing about her life; she had endured humiliation so long that there was little he could do to her in that quarter.
She smiled. “If I tremble, Red Fox, it is with cold. And I do not rush to accept your gift of dry clothing because my hands are tied!”
She was glad to see that Red Fox was at first taken aback. But then the Indian chuckled, and that strange glint of admiration returned to his eyes. He slipped his knife from his belt and walked behind her. She felt the jagged rasp of the knife as he slit the leather.
“Your hands are no longer tied, white woman. You may go to the trees and change and take care of your needs. Do not try to run. There is nowhere to go. This island is small with no fresh water. It is fringed by reefs where the sharks prowl hungry in the night.”
Kendall rose painfully, rubbing her chafed wrists. She grabbed the leather satchel she had been given, and smiled bitterly at her captor once again. “I’m not going to run, Red Fox. I wouldn’t dream of quitting myself of your benign hospitality.” She started walking off past the amber glow of the fire and then suddenly spun back. “I have a name, Red Fox, and I do not like being called ‘white woman.’ My name is Mrs. Moore. You may so address me if you wish me to respond.”
Red Fox crossed his arms over his chest. “I know your name, Kendall Moore. Now go, change quickly. I am growing weary and will not wait long to give you food and water for the night.”
Tomorrow the Glory Page 5