Perhaps it had been because she was still so beautiful. In the swamp she stood out like a perfect red rose. In seconds he had taken in again the perfection of her lithe form, the fullness of breasts and hips, the slender tuck of her waist, the leanness of flanks that were not concealed by the thin cotton of her dress.
And the innocence! The guileless plea in her voice when she had thought she could wrap a “gallant” Confederate officer around her sweet little finger! She deserved the spanking. He had never intended to take his revenge in that manner, but she definitely deserved the punishment he had meted out.
Besides, he thought grimly, his eyes darkening with remembrance, he had done nothing to her compared with what she had wrought upon him. As long as he lived, he would never forget that night. Thrown overboard to die in the winter cold water of Charleston harbor. Struggling desperately to hold his breath when to inhale would be to fill his lungs with seawater. Sinking, fighting, struggling to free his wrists, which had been bound together. Had it not been for the Yankee officer who had dived into the sea and pulled him to the docks . . .
Brent shuddered suddenly in the heat with the memory of the terrible cold. He ground his teeth together. How he had longed for revenge! A chance to stare into Kendall Moore’s bluer than blue eyes again and harshly decry their bold beauty and innocence . . . and treachery.
He had made inquiries. And he had discovered who she was. He had sworn that he would find her—and her husband, John Moore.
Moore . . . Brent had believed he would find Moore one day. The man roamed the Florida coast with near reckless insanity. With more than normal Yankee loyalty and devotion to Abe Lincoln’s war.
But he hadn’t believed he would ever again get his hands on the blue-eyed seductress who had lured him into the trap. No matter what his personal dreams of vengeance, he was a captain in the Confederate States’ weak navy. It would be folly to attack the Union fort on Key West. He couldn’t lead his men to certain suicide or capture and incarceration in one of the prisons that were reputed to kill more men than they held.
But now Red Fox, with a tiny band of braves, had accomplished a feat he would never have dreamed of executing. Brent was still somewhat amazed by the turn of events. He had not told Red Fox exactly what had happened in Charleston. But Red Fox knew him well, and when Brent had come to the swamp to ask the Seminole chiefs help in keeping supplies running to the small Confederate outposts in the lower portion of the state, Red Fox had quietly demanded to know what troubled his white brother. Brent told him only that he had a score to settle with a certain Yankee—and a bigger score to settle with the Yankee’s woman. Brent’s dreams of vengeance had been vague at that time, something he would deal with when the war was over. He had never imagined that Red Fox would be so determined to please his “brother” with the gift of revenge.
The chief was laughing now as Brent climbed the ladder to his chickee. Brent grinned in return as he hoisted his frame up on the platform. He hadn’t seen such an expression on Red Fox’s face since they were youths and Red Fox presented him with a hunting knife that had been Osceola’s and which Brent had coveted as only a small boy could covet such a treasure.
“My friend,” Red Fox said, “you have not yet won the war with that one. The battle, yes; the war, no. I have come to know her well, and she is a fighter. She is like the Seminole. We can be bested by strength, but never beaten.”
Brent sat crossed-legged before Red Fox and smiled at Apolka as she handed him a steaming mug of coffee. He waited until Apolka had left them to give his full attention to his friend and speak. “I am amazed, Red Fox, that you have managed to present her to me. Now that I have got her, I’m not really sure what to do with her.”
Red Fox lifted a skeptical brow. He found it difficult to believe that a strong white warrior like his brother Brent didn’t know what to do with a difficult woman—especially when the woman was young and pleasingly curved and stunningly beautiful, even to the astute Seminole eye.
Brent laughed, but his voice was grim when he spoke. “Don’t worry, Red Fox, I intend to finish a few things we started, but what then? In a way I’d like to wring her neck and beat her black and blue, but—”
Red Fox snorted out a taunting interruption. “But you cannot do that to a woman, my friend. All your breeding and culture are against it. Tell me, what would happen if you turned her over to your generals?”
Brent took a sip of his hot chicory coffee and shrugged. “Not much, Red Fox. Female spies have been caught on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Seems the Yanks can be as gallant as the Rebs. Worst that has happened to any woman has been a short stint in a prison, although I guess that can be pretty rough. Wounded men die like flies in prison camps, in both the North and the South.”
“It is better to die in the field,” Red Fox said softly. Brent was silent for a moment. They could both remember how Osceola had sickened and died at Fort Moultrie. The proud chief—dying in prison. Red Fox hadn’t even been able to join his father’s family at the time; he was not the son of a legitimate wife, and therefore the government had ignored him. Brent had begged his father to intervene, but Justin McClain had been able to do nothing. The anti-Indian sentiment had been too high at the time. And Justin had tried hard. He had never forgotten that Osceola had spared his son, and cared for him like a member of his own family until he had been returned to the plantation house at South Seas.
Brent would never forget Osceola himself. The chief’s strong, handsome features were forever imbedded in his memory. He could see Osceola now just as he had all those years ago, riding up to where Brent stood staring at the desolation that had once been a settlement of planters south of Micanopy. The planter he had visited lay dead, and the elaborate manor house that had been the planter’s home had been burned to the ground.
Brent had been only five years old on that day in 1835; he hadn’t known that the United States government had broken every treaty it had ever made with the Indians in the Florida Territory. He didn’t know that the whites didn’t intend to honor any treaties; they wanted the Indians removed to the reservations in the distant west. He didn’t know that the Indian agents and the men from the Bureau of Indian Affairs lied and cheated, and that many settlers moving into the territory regarded Indians as fair game for the hunt.
He knew only that a man with grave, intelligent dark eyes approached him on a pinto pony. A dark man wearing a band that held a single feather about his brow. An Indian. Brent drew his pocket knife and stood ready to do battle.
Osceola paused before him, and for a long moment they stared at each other, the frightened child, and the chief already old in wisdom though young in years. Osceola at last spoke.
“Put the knife down, boy. You have stood with the courage of a warrior. But Osceola does not make war with children.”
Brent had ridden in front of Osceola on the pinto pony to the Seminoles’ central Florida camp. Osceola had seen that messages were sent to Brent’s parents, but Brent had lived with the Indians for many months before Justin McClain came to claim his son.
That had been over twenty-five years ago. The Wars of Indian Removal had gone on; Osceola had died. The Seminoles and Mikasukis who had fought relocation to western reservations had been pushed ever southward until now, here in the Everglades, they made a stand. They had never surrendered, and they had never been conquered. They had learned to eke out a living in the forbidding swamp. They knew it as the white man never would.
“How does your war go?” Red Fox queried, drawing Brent from his reminiscences.
Brent finished his coffee in a gulp and stood, pacing the platform as he searched for an answer to the question.
“It goes like any war, Red Fox. Men die. Many of the great battles are taking place in Virginia. Thousands die, mown down like corn in a field. There was a battle at Manassas, at a little creek called Bull Run. Young men from both sides dropped like flies. They called it a southern victory. The Union troops broke and ran back to
Washington. But it taught everyone that the war wouldn’t be quickly ended. Right now the southern armies are doing well. Our generals think and see more clearly. Why not? The majority of them were West Pointers, men trained at the U.S. Military Academy. They were in the Union Army until their states seceded. And now, it seems that their battle strategy is superior. But I am afraid, Red Fox. The North has many men. They die, they are replaced. They are like a tide that cannot be held back.”
Red Fox watched his old friend’s face as Brent at last stopped pacing and stared out upon the peace of the coming dusk. The Everglades could be very beautiful as twilight approached. The sun set, a great flaming ball of orange and crimson, and the moss-covered trees and high grasses swayed beneath a breeze that cooled the humid heat of day. Egrets and cranes formed graceful dark silhouettes against the golden backdrop of the sky.
“You do not like this war,” Red Fox said. “Why do you fight it?”
Brent shrugged. “St. Augustine is far north of this swamp, Red Fox, but they are both Florida, and my home is here, as is yours. Florida is a Confederate state, but it is raped to serve the Confederacy. Its troops fight and die in faraway places. The land is left scarcely protected while the Union soldiers and sailors raid the coastline. I fight as you have always done, Red Fox. To preserve what is mine.” He fell silent, and then shrugged again, meeting Red Fox’s eyes. “And maybe I do fight to preserve a way of life. I don’t really know. Sometimes I fight only to bring medicine to those who are old and sick. To bring food to the children. And sometimes I carry arms so that men may continue to butcher one another. I don’t always know what I feel, Red Fox. I know only that a man must follow what he is, choose his side, and fight and give his total loyalty where he is committed.”
Red Fox was silent as he digested the words. Then he eyed Brent squarely once more. “The slavery of blacks is wrong. We have harbored runaways here whose backs appear like butchered meat.”
Brent did not look away from Red Fox. “I do not own any slaves, Red Fox. But my father does. Those he owns he cares for gently. They are well fed and clothed, and even taught to read and write.”
“Justin McClain is a good man. Not many of your planters are like him.”
Brent shrugged. “Not many men own slaves, Red Fox. More than half the soldiers in the Confederacy never owned anything but a few feet of dirt. Slaves are expensive. Rich men own them. Rich men fight, of course, for honor. But some rich men pay others to fight for them, and most of an army is composed of poor men. But the Indians have practiced forms of slavery.”
“Yes, but like you, I do not believe that a man can be owned. He is not a beast to be whipped and shackled and sold.”
“Yet you support me,” Brent said quietly.
“I fight the blue uniform, blood brother. I fight the cavalry and infantry that my people have always fought. The Seminoles have learned to hate the blue Federal uniform. When the war is over, we shall see whether I wage battle with the white man again or not.” Red Fox watched his friend, but Brent said nothing. They both prayed that the Seminole would be left to live peaceably in the Everglades when the whites at last stopped fighting one another. “But explain to me, please, what is this you call a navy? You sail in your own ship with your own men. How is this a navy?”
Brent laughed dryly, and the sound was bitter. “When the Confederacy formed, it had an instant army. Men left the Union Army for the Confederate Army. The Confederacy even had some naval officers. But it had no ships. And so it called upon its citizens.” Brent shrugged. “It is best the way it is. My schooner is seaworthy, better than what I might be given. I can take to the ocean with speed, and I can slip into narrow rivers at will. We have just begun this war, yet food and clothing supplies already begin to tighten all through the South.”
Red Fox began to speak, but he broke off as Apolka’s head appeared at the top of the ladder. She climbed gracefully with one hand, carrying in the other a tray laden with food for her husband and his guest, the handsome white warrior to whom the Indians had given the name Night Hawk—a name that was spreading among the Confederate ports where Brent daringly ran Union blockades.
“My wife brings us our evening meal,” Red Fox said. “We will speak of pleasant things.”
Brent returned to his position in front of Red Fox and crossed his ankles to sink to a sitting position. He smiled at Apolka, and thanked her for the dish she handed him. Venison stew, Brent noted with appreciation, inhaling the rich, appetizing aroma. The warriors had been out hunting to provide for him and his men.
“As always, Red Fox, I thank you for your hospitality.”
“She is a fine cook, my Apolka, is she not?”
“The finest,” Brent agreed, smiling at the chief’s wife. He could not really carry on a conversation with Apolka, for although whites often grouped the Florida Indians together under the term “Seminole,” the Seminole and Mikasuki languages were different. Both tribes hailed from the Georgia Creek, but from different factions. Brent was well versed in the Muskogee tongue, but the Mikasukis spoke a dialect of the Hitichi language, and Apolka was a Mikasuki. The customs of the Indians were very similar, however, and intermarriage among the few hundred Indians left in the vast Florida wilderness was not at all unusual. Apolka’s command of the Muskogee language grew constantly, however, and despite the slight language barrier between her and Brent, they were fond of each other—warm friends through the language of the heart.
Women ate apart from men in the tribal society, and so after Apolka gave them their food, she started to descend the ladder once more, but then paused. She whispered in Red Fox’s ear, and the Seminole chief gave a hearty laugh and his dark eyes twinkled with brilliant humor as he looked at Brent.
“Apolka tells me that Kendall Moore has been bathed and fed and secured within the cabin.”
“Thank you,” Brent said quietly. He lowered his eyes to his food and began to eat, not really tasting the savory food. What was the revenge he really wanted? he wondered.
He had come incredibly close to death at her hands a year ago, but he flirted with death now each time he sailed.
The woman had wounded his pride. His ship had been the victim of her stealthy attack.
But something more than a desire for revenge had kept him determined to find the woman. Something that had made it a torture to watch her today as the quicksand sucked her into the earth.
He still wanted her. And not just for vengeance. He wanted her because he could seldom remove her completely from his mind. He could remember the silken touch of her flesh, the warmth of her slender body, the look in her eyes when he had made love to her.
Fraud! he reminded himself. Her part in the fiasco had been to keep him occupied. Oh, she had done that. He had lost himself in her, in the need to touch and feel and know her...
But, he thought grimly, she had also responded to him. No one could act out such a trembling physical reaction. He had felt her heartbeat, the swell of her breast to the caress of his palms, the quivering hunger of her lips. The arch of her sweetly curved body to his . . . Or was even that sweet piece of heady seduction practiced and learned?
Maybe that was it, he thought with a sigh. Part vengeance, yes. By God, she had seduced him, and she was going to finish out what she had so boldly started. A man didn’t go through what he had endured and forget what had happened. But beyond the desire for vengeance he felt a deep longing. A need to know what it was about her that still clouded his memory. If he could at last have her, he might be exorcised of the spirit that haunted him. A blue-eyed spirit with golden hair.
Brent glanced up to see that Red Fox hadn’t yet touched his food; he stared at Brent. “I’ve a suggestion to make, Night Hawk.”
“Oh?” Brent queried, a tawny brow rising curiously.
“Leave her in my care.”
“Kendall?”
Red Fox nodded. “What would you do with her? Send her back to the Yankee you despise?”
Brent paused, surp
rised at the pain that seemed to constrict his gut. “It sounds as if she has seduced the red man as well as the white man.”
Red Fox shrugged. “I admit that I like this woman. She is a fighter; she is proud. She does not know the meaning of defeat. I do not know what she has done to you, but she is a valuable prize. Were she not yours, brother, I would keep her.”
“Might as well keep a pit of ’gators,” Brent said dryly.
Red Fox laughed. “True, Brent McClain. But taming any creature is a task that must be done with care. No man wants to ride into battle on a steed that has been broken in spirit. Neither does he crave a cowed and sullen woman in his bed. This one, this Yankee’s woman, she will not be broken. Her spirit is strong. She has the heart of a great warrior. If gently tamed, she could give to a man what few receive beneath the sun.”
“Umm, a knife in the back,” Brent muttered.
Red Fox lifted a brow, but said no more. Brent chewed his last piece of meat and set his plate down. “She is your captive, Red Fox.”
“No, she is mine no longer. I have given her to you, and therefore she is yours. I offer only to keep her for you when you must sail again.”
Brent mulled the words over. He stood. He had waited long enough, searching his own soul. Talking about Kendall Moore was affecting him more than he cared to admit. Flashes of heat seemed to tear at him, bringing a growing ache to his groin. It was time to discover what he did want, why the memory of her gnawed at him still.
“Thank you again, friend,” he told Red Fox. “I will decide what to do with her in the morning.”
Red Fox laughed, a chuckle that was low and insinuating. “Sleep pleasantly, Night Hawk. You will not be disturbed.”
Tomorrow the Glory Page 9