“Ahhh . . .” He nodded, as if they were carrying on a pleasant conversation, and sat beside her on the bed. “Tell me, Kendall,” he murmured, reaching out to trail stiff, cold fingers along her cheekbone to her breast, causing her to flinch. “Tell me,” he repeated, smiling at her reaction, “what it was like. Did you jump like that when the savages touched you? Or did you welcome them? Was there one special brave that you slept with? I’m so very interested in hearing their customs. I understand there were six or seven men in the party that attacked you and Travis. Did they all have a go at you, my sweet wife? Or were you clever enough to know from the beginning who the leader was and charm your way into his graces?”
She was a fool, but she couldn’t help herself. She smiled at him, her eyes glittering with a deep hatred. “Oh, no, John. I didn’t select one Indian. I loved all of them. I spent every night going from chickee to chickee, and right from the very beginning I loved it—”
Her words were cut off by the sound of her own scream as his hand caught her viciously across the cheek. She sprang to fight him, but his fingers clamped around her wrists.
“Liar,” he told her calmly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“You never touched any braves.”
A gnawing apprehension began to tear at her stomach, but she tried to keep staring at him and speak without faltering. “Of course I’m lying. I despise you, John Moore. I’d say anything. There was only one brave—”
Again she cut off her own sentence with a startled and pained cry as he jerked so hard on her wrists that she was certain they would snap.
“Liar,” he repeated softly. “And you know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“No—”
“You were never touched by any Indian, and you know it. Captain Brannen has informed me of an intelligence report that just came in. The Rebs have been running arms all over south Florida. And a number of the Seminoles a little north of your swampland, around the Okeechobee area, have been raising cattle that mysteriously wind up in Georgia and Louisiana. Do you know why that’s happening, Kendall? Sure you do. Because the chief of that particular tribe we just wiped out is a savage called Red Fox. And he’s bosom buddies with an Injun-loving Confederate named Brent McClain.”
Kendall tried not to move, not to give away any emotion with so much as a flicker of an eyelash.
“You’re insane—”
“No. But you’re dead, Kendall, if he ever comes near you again. He’s a dead man already, Kendall. Marked. I’ll find him. And I’ll bring him to you on a platter.”
She felt the blood drain from her face, but she answered him in a steady whisper. “No, John, you’re wrong. You are the dead man. When he discovers what you’ve done, there won’t be a place in the entire world where you’ll be able to hide.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Kendall?” He was so pleasantly conversational that Kendall’s apprehension quickly escalated to a fevered dread. “You have always wished me dead,” he said.
“No, you’re wrong again. I didn’t want to marry you, but I didn’t despise you—”
“Until you discovered that you were dealing with half a husband?”
“No, until I discovered that your cruelty is a sickness you don’t even attempt to curb.”
He smiled again, with frost in the eyes that never appeared warmer than ice. “Cheer up, Kendall. There’s a good chance my sickness is about to be cured. We’ve a new man among us. A doctor who has studied the swamp fluxes and poxes. He has given me medicaments he’s been experimenting with for many years—with astounding results. He thinks I have a very good chance of regaining my full health in less than a month, with your help and cooperation, of course.”
Kendall shook her head. “It’s too late, John. I could never touch you after what happened. All I can see when I look at you is the blood of innocents, of children—”
He laughed and the sound was shattering to her. “Oh, you’ll touch me, all right. And soon. You’re my wife.”
He released her wrists and smiled coldly once more, then stood and deliberately unbuckled his belt. Kendall watched him, once more feeling as if her blood were being drained, sucked away as in a pool of quicksand.
He laughed as he watched her. “Not tonight, my love. Too soon. Tonight you learn a lesson.”
His meaning was clear. Knowing she could increase his anger, she spoke in cool fury anyway. “You’d be a fool to beat me here, John. What would your navy friends think?”
“Not a thing, madam. There’s not a man out there who wouldn’t kill his wife for harboring a Rebel between her thighs.”
Kendall stared at him and slowly lifted her chin. “You’re sick, John. Really sick. But do you know something? You can’t hurt me anymore. And that’s part of it, isn’t it? You know you can’t hurt me so you just keep trying harder.”
She gasped and tried to ward him off, flailing and clawing, when he gripped her shoulders and wrenched her over to her stomach.
And she learned that he could hurt her. She screamed when the leather cracked against her flesh for the first time. And she was barely coherent by the time he finished with the tenth whack.
Dimly she heard his satisfied warning as he crawled into the bed beside her. “I promise you, beloved wife, that when the time comes, you will touch me. And give me more than you ever gave the Reb.”
“Never!”
She was certain he hadn’t heard her. She was turned away from him, and her parched lips could barely form a word.
But she had never meant anything so vehemently in her life.
He could do anything in the world to her, but he would never receive anything from her. Beat her black and blue, break every bone in her body.
And still she would win. Still she would best him.
Because he could never have what she so freely gave Brent. She gave him her love.
But the knowledge of her victory was scant comfort as she wondered how she could ever manage to escape again.
Chapter Ten
He’d had a sense of running ever since he began the journey south.
If he could just run fast enough, he could get there. And if he could get there, he could stop whatever horror was coming . . .
And he could find her. Hold her. Protect her . . .
Looking very much like a great caged cat, he paced the deck of the Jenni-Lyn as it followed the coastline. Paced and paced. Wanting to hurry, wanting to run. That sense of running held a grip on his body. His muscles were taut and tense and bunched to race.
He knew that Federal ships lined the coast. He didn’t care. He would be pleased to blast them clear out of the water. And he knew that he could do so. His determination to reach the swamp was so strong that he had indeed become invincible. The Jenni-Lyn had encountered one Union ship three times her size and had maneuvered around her with guns blazing so fiercely that it had been the Union vessel that foundered rather than the smaller Confederate craft.
At long last the Jenni-Lyn came to the mouth of the river and cast anchor. Brent and ten of his crewmen set out into the winding maze of the swamp in the dinghies.
But long before they reached the patch of sturdy pine shore that led to the Seminole encampment, Brent had leapt over the side of his dinghy. The sense had become too strong. He swam swiftly through the waist-high water until he reached the land.
And at last he could run. And he did.
Straining muscles that ached to be tested, feeling the beat of dread in his heart.
He ran until he came upon the camp center, and then he stopped short; closing his eyes, opening them again—and discovering that the horror he had found was not an illusion to be blinked away.
The lifeless bodies were strewn everywhere. A brave’s arms dangled from a partly leveled chickee. A little girl lay by a now cold fire, her arms clutched around a straw doll with pumpkin-seed eyes.
The eyes of the doll seemed to stare at Brent, as did those of the dead child. Brent force
d his feet to move toward the little girl; he stooped and touched the rigid coldness of her face tenderly, closing the lids over dark, sightless eyes.
“Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. Cap’n, look here.”
Brent tore his gaze from the child and saw that Charlie had come up behind him and moved onward into the camp. He was kneeling beside the corpse of a woman. Charlie shuddered; his weathered features contorted into a mask of sorrow. He looked at Brent. “It’s Apolka, Cap’n. And her little kid.”
Brent rose on leaden legs and approached Charlie. He knelt down beside Apolka and the child.
Flies infested the corpses. That seemed the greatest crime; the greatest indignity.
“I want a burial detail put together, quickly,” Brent rasped, barely able to give his voice substance. It felt as if wires were being twisted within him. Tighter and tighter. Restricting his breath. Stabbing him, strangling him. Apolka. Lovely and gentle and soft as a young doe. Her life spent in tenderly loving her children, in adoring her husband . . .
Why? It was the most ungodly waste. A sacrilege. What man could kill a creature whose one quest was to love?
Brent barely felt Charlie move away from him to form a work detail as requested. Despite the flies, despite the foul smell of death, he reached down for Apolka and her son, embracing them in his arms as tears suddenly shook his frame. Tears of outrage, of loss, of horror, and of rage. The agony of betrayal. His own. Against Red Fox. Against his friend.
Night was beginning to fall. Beautiful twilight. The time of day that bathed the earth in shades of gold and crimson, yet faded fast to indigo and mauve. The sailors of the Jenni-Lyn stood about in the compound silently, paying homage to their captain’s grief before attempting to approach him to take away the bodies of Apolka and Hadjo.
His massive shoulders shook as he cradled the bodies. But after the searing cries that had torn from him and ricocheted and echoed throughout pine and cypress, sky and swamp, there had been no sound.
The sun crept ever farther toward the west, yet still he didn’t move. Neither did the sailors.
At last there was something upon the breeze; something, for it was not a sound. Charlie McPherson turned first, then one by one the others.
Red Fox stood behind them with a band of braves. They carried not arms, but shovels. Charlie realized with a sickness in his gut that the chief had already been to his camp; that he had returned now to perform the very service Brent had requested of his men.
It would not be a customary burial for the Seminoles. Usually, loved ones were placed within wooden coffins, taken deep into the shade of hammock, and there left with belongings to hasten with them on the journey to the next world. A warrior’s sword would rest beside a hunter’s bow and arrows. A child’s toy. A woman’s shawl.
These beloved dead must be buried within the ground. Protected from wild creatures and the flies. The living had to be protected as well as the dead. Red Fox knew this. He had come back to find his family savaged by the white men, and he knew that he would have to bury his wife and child in the white man’s way.
For long moments Red Fox stood still on the outskirts of the clearing, staring ahead at the tawny head and bowed, shuddering back of Brent McClain. The Seminole’s features were hard, so hard. A sculpture in rock. Bronzed and rigid, they betrayed no pain, and no anger. Time and life and indomitable, inbred pride had given Red Fox a strength and stamina that not even death and agony could break.
It was Red Fox who approached Brent at last. He knelt beside him, easing his son from the white man’s grasp. The Seminole stood with the small corpse clutched to his chest, as if the child were only sleeping. Brent at last turned his glazed gray eyes to the dark, fathomless depths of Red Fox.
“I have shed my tears, my friend, as even the strongest man must. Yet they have dried. I have cried out my vengeance to the wind, yet the echo has ceased. In the lonely nights ahead it might be that I shed tears again; and it is a certainty that in time I will seek revenge for this injustice upon my people and life itself. But now, I will give my loved ones to the earth. I will not allow them to remain any longer as carrion for the flies. As storms brew, so will the vengeance of Red Fox. And as they strike with swiftness and cunning, so shall I. Stand up, my friend. And help me with this act for the son of my loins and for Apolka, who held my heart in gentle hands. You loved them, too. This I know well, and the tears of the man who does not cry are comfort to my soul.”
Silently Brent stood. Red Fox stretched out his arms, and Brent accepted the cold, still body of the child. Red Fox knelt beside his wife. He laid his knuckles beside her cheek, then traced the still beautiful contours of her face with steady fingers. Then he balanced her body in his arms and stood with smooth grace.
“Come,” he told Brent. “We must say goodbye to them.”
* * *
They buried Apolka with her child in her arms. According to custom, her household items were buried with her.
The high pine hammock became nothing but an encampment for the dead. The Seminole laid their dead loved ones to rest with proper ceremony, and then set the chickees afire. The hammock burned into the night, creating an orange glow in the darkness when the Indians and Rebels at last rowed away.
Red Fox had deserted his encampment to take his people to the nearby encampment of Mikasuki cousins. The high hammock where his cousin’s tribe had hewn homes from the swampland was north and east of the blaze that had once been a community of life and laughter for the Seminoles. Red Fox and Brent led their combined men through the river and inlets in the chief’s dugout.
For some time they were silent in the night. Then Brent at last spoke his misery. “I have cost you everything. Your home, your wife, your child—”
“You have cost me nothing, Night Hawk,” Red Fox interrupted quietly. “Not you, nor your Confederacy. Always we have fought. Always we have died. You did not bring this down upon us. And always, Night Hawk, I have made my own choices. I will choose to fight again.”
Brent fell morosely silent again. Then in the near total darkness of the night, he sought out his friend’s eyes. “What of Chicola? I did not see . . .”
“His body? No. He lives. He escaped into the woods. Now, my friend, ask me the question that must gnaw at your belly like worms.”
Brent didn’t hedge. He met the Indian’s eyes openly.
“What happened to her . . . to Kendall?” He could barely force a whisper.
“She fought,” Red Fox said with a soft pride and satisfaction. “Not with a pistol or knife, but with her will. Chicola has told me how she tried to protect him. And Jimmy Emathla—who lives now but will probably not see the morning sun—as he lay upon the ground with his mortal wound, heard the words that passed between her and the bluecoat.”
Brent felt as if his entire body had become as stiff and rigidly cold as those of the corpses. “What was said?” he asked tensely.
“Jimmy Emathla must tell you himself.”
Red Fox was right. Jimmy Emathla would not see another sun. His eyes were already glazed with death when Red Fox brought Brent to the high chickee where the Seminole awaited his demise with courage and certainty.
He appeared glad, however, to welcome Brent. The women who attended him scurried away when Brent knelt beside his pallet.
“Night Hawk,” Jimmy Emathla said, closing his eyes as he clutched Brent’s hand with a surprisingly powerful grip.
“Emathla,” Brent returned, squeezing the hand he held. Pain etched its way into the Indian’s features. “Perhaps you should not try to talk,” Brent said. “You should preserve your strength.”
Emathla shook his head and wet his parched lips. “I die with the night, my friend. This I know. I thank the gods that I have lived to see you. I failed you, Night Hawk. I ask your forgiveness.”
“You never failed me—”
“Yes, in my arrogance, I promised to protect the women. But the men came like the waves of the sea. I was as useless as an old woman.”
&n
bsp; “No man can combat twenty times his number.”
Emathla shrugged his shoulders, hardly able to summon the strength to go on. Eyes that had closed with the strain of movement opened and met Brent’s. “You must fight twenty times your number, Night Hawk. She proved herself the equal of any brave in courage. She sought not to save herself, but to save the children of Red Fox. And those who lived did so because she escaped the clutch of a stronger male to race back into the camp and touch upon whatever mercy lay in the souls of those who came. But the one who claimed her . . . she told him that she would kill him. A doe against a panther. There was murder about him. He will kill her, or make her wish that she were dead each day that she lives.”
Brent inhaled a ragged breath. “Thank you for telling me these things, Jimmy Emathla.”
Emathla inclined his head in a weak nod. His voice was fading so badly when he spoke again that Brent had to place his ear close to the Indian’s lips. “There was one among them . . . a white man in blue . . . who did not kill. He might have wept. He raged against the death. And—”
“And?” Brent nodded, his fingers convulsively clutching the light blanket that protected Jimmy Emathla against the evening air.
“Travis . . . they called him Travis. He would . . .”
“Would what, Emathla? Jimmy, think. Talk to me. The man named Travis would what?”
“Help you. I think that he . . . loves the woman. Kendall. She ran for me. She trusted me. Kendall . . .”
Her name was a soft sigh. And the last word that Jimmy Emathla would utter. The sun was encroaching upon the eastern sky when a rattle of death sounded from within the Indian’s chest. He shuddered and lay still. Peace composed itself over his features. A troubled world was left behind.
* * *
“You pulled off some pretty stunts in Jacksonville, Brent McClain,” Charlie McPherson said, shaking a finger at Brent. “But that sure don’t mean you can go dancing into Fort Taylor as if you were about to lead the Virginia Reel! That place is tighter than a drum!”
“I wasn’t planning on raising a flag and sailing into port!” Brent exploded, running his fingers impatiently through his hair. “And you’re forgetting, Charlie—the fort may be held by the Union, but that doesn’t mean Key West isn’t harboring a number of Confederate citizens!”
Tomorrow the Glory Page 19