Heart's Surrender

by Rosanne Bittner

  “It is too late,” she said quietly, hanging her head.

  “It is never too late! Ask my sister. She was raped, too, but she is married now and has three children. And it is not too late for my wife! I will find her and take her away from that horror!”

  The girl wrung her hands. “I do not even know if she still lives. Mary said as far as she knew, Andrea Chandler was still alive. She asked me to come and tell you…so you could go and get her. She was being kept in Chihuahua…at a place called Rosa’s. It is—was—very popular. I do not know if anything happened to it in the war.”

  Adam looked at Jonas. “The war! Troops have been coming through here on their way to Mexico for a year now.”

  “General Scott is riding into Mexico right now, Father, to take Mexico City. This is a bad time for Americans to be riding into Mexico. We are officially at war.”

  Adam’s eyes lit up. “War or no war, we’re going down there to get your mother. Bring your brothers here right away.”

  Jonas smiled a little. “You didn’t need to tell me. I’ll be back within the hour.” Their eyes held a moment, both wanting to weep from the combination of joy and sorrow. Andrea might still be alive, but how would they find her?

  Adam studied his three sons, all tall, strong, brave young men. Stephen, engaged to be married, was doing well at the supply store, and was soon to be part owner. But that would not stop him from going to Mexico. It was his mother he was going after, the mother he had never seen, and his heart raced with anticipation.

  Jonas would forgo returning to the university until he knew his mother was safe, and John Ross would do the same.

  “David will take care of my affairs while I’m gone and will find others to fill in for me,” Adam declared. “You all know why you’re here. I’m sure Jonas explained on the way.”

  “When do we leave?” Stephen asked anxiously.

  “Tomorrow, if possible. We need supplies. Stephen, I’ve made up a list. I want you to take it and fill it at your store. We all have good, sturdy mounts, but we should have a couple of pack mules. Jonas, see to it.”

  “I will.”

  Adam leaned back, eying each of them. “We might have problems. Mexico is in turmoil right now. But you all know how to use rifles and handguns, and when it comes to using your fists, just do what comes naturally. You’re all strong men.”

  “It’s our mother we’re going after. We can handle anything that comes along,” Jonas replied.

  “I would fight an army to get her,” John Ross added.

  Adam smiled sadly, his eyes filling with tears. “I know you would. We all would. Just let them try to stop the Chandler men, right?”

  “Right.” Stephen lit a thin cigar. He’d fit in right away, all Chandler, learning quickly. He was good with numbers and had helped the owner of the supply store bring himself back from near bankruptcy. With a generous loan from Adam, he was now going to buy into the store, and he was in love with the owner’s daughter. He was turning into a confident, proud young man.

  Adam sighed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk. “You had all better think about how we might find your mother. She might be so doped up she won’t even know us. God only knows what she looks like or what she’s been through. It won’t be a pretty picture. And when we get her out of there and into safer country, I want you three to leave us alone. I’ll pick a remote place where I can be alone with her and stay with her until the drugs are out of her system. It will be very painful for her, and not something she’d want you three to watch. I know Andrea. She’ll want to be well and cleaned up before seeing her sons again.” He turned his eyes to Stephen. “Especially you. The way I figure it, she won’t want to come back at all at first, She’ll feel worthless. Maybe she won’t even want to live. You’re my trump card. When I tell her you’re with us now, she won’t be able to resist.”

  The young man smiled. “I hope you’re right. All I dreamed about when I was being raised in that orphanage was someday seeing my mother.”

  Adam nodded. “I know.” His eyes went to his other two sons. “Both of you know Spanish and so do I. And we all have dark skin, but you, John Ross. You have that light hair and blue eyes. I’ll just have to say that this Mexican—me—had a white slave once and you are the result.”

  “Mexican?”

  Adam grinned. “What safer way to travel in Mexico than as Mexicans? We’ll dress like Mexicans, we’re dark like Mexicans, and three of us know Spanish. Stephen will just have to keep quiet.”

  They all laughed. “That’s a good idea, Father. I never thought of that,” Jonas put in. “Sure we’d look Mexican.”

  “If anyone comments about our American saddle gear, or our rifles, we’ll just say we stole them. Why not? Mexicans do it all the time. And this is war. A man can do anything in war, right?”

  “Sí, amigo,” John Ross answered.

  “Very good, son,” Adam answered with a smile. “We might as well get used to talking in Spanish. I want no slip-ups. Everybody get plenty of rest tonight. You’ll need it. Tomorrow we’ll take a steamboat down the Mississippi to Louisiana, then ride straight west through Louisiana and Texas. Chihuahua is just a little south and west of the western edge of Texas, almost directly south of El Paso.” He stood up. “Stephen, take John Ross with you to help you with the supplies.” He handed a list to his son. “I’ll meet you back at the house. Right now I’m going to a church to pray that we find your mother alive and well. And I’m telling all of you that no matter how we find her, I love her just as much as I ever did. I’ve loved her since she was fourteen years old, and nothing that has happened to her can change that. I expect all of you to love and respect her as your mother, no matter what.”

  “Did you think we wouldn’t?” Jonas asked. “You don’t know us very well if you did.”

  Adam’s eyes teared. “I didn’t really think you wouldn’t. Let’s get going. Mexico is a hell of a long way from here.” He moved around the desk, and the four men hugged each other quietly. None of them had dry eyes. They were going to Mexico, and woe to any man who tried to stop them from coming back with Andrea Chandler.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  All three Chandler sons were surprised by their father’s relentless push onward. He never seemed to tire. His strength and determination were undying, and they were seeing a side of him that had not come to the fore since his vicious struggle to save Andrea the day the militia came. But Jonas and John Ross had been much younger then, their memory of that day and of their father’s animallike fighting vague now. Stephen had never seen his father this way—determined, hard, untiring. Adam’s years as a successful attorney had not softened him, and the three of them sometimes had a hard time keeping up. He rode until they thought they would fall out of their saddles. Saddle sores plagued them for the first few days, but when they thought they should be making camp, Adam kept going, until well after dark.

  Adam seemed undaunted by the rigorous schedule, and none of the boys complained. Their father was going after the woman he loved, and he could not let age or weariness stop him. Every day was important. And in spite of the sad purpose of their journey, they all knew it was good for them. This was the first time all four Chandler men had come together in one cause, the first time in many months they had been able to be together for any length of time.

  A closeness began to develop; it ran much deeper than anything they had experienced before. There was something about the silent, lonely Texas prairie that drew them together as brothers, sons, and father in a new and special way. They were four against the elements, against the wolves, against the night and its dangers—four men with one purpose, to find a special woman and take her home. They were together, even the first-born that the others had thought they would never see. The family must be complete now. Someone was missing—a woman, a mother, a wife.

  On and on they rode, over mile after mile of open territory, past red rock canyons and dried up arroyos, avoiding towns and keeping to t
he back country. Each morning they checked their boots for lizards and snakes, and always they watched for Indians, especially Comanches, who might try to kill them and steal their horses.

  They were well armed, wearing crossed leather belts of ammunition and carrying pistols. Adam and Jonas preferred Paterson Walker Colts; John Ross and Stephen preferred the “Texas Arm,” a different type of Paterson Colt. All four carried two repeating rifles and large hunting knives. Two pack mules toted plenty of water and the supplies, and they had to be carefully guarded. Each man took a turn standing night guard on a two-hour shift, and no one complained about this or any other assigned duty.

  “We’ll have to be extra careful on the way back,” Adam told them one quiet night. Millions of stars glittered in a black sky, and wolves howled in the distance. “We’re strong bait with these horses and guns, and having a woman along will make us even more tempting.” He lit a thin cigar. “Once I get your mother out of that place, I’ll be damned if any Comanche renegades or white trash are going to get their hands on her. I’ll shoot her myself before I let another man touch her or let any more harm come to her.”

  They all sat around a crackling campfire, smoking, watching the shadows. Stephen swallowed a lump in his throat. “How did you meet her, Father? You never really told me, except that she was fourteen.”

  Adam sipped at coffee from a tin cup. “I met her in a special place—a secret place I used to call my own. There was a ridge on the border of my father’s farm, and at the top of that ridge there was an oak tree, the biggest oak you’ll ever see. I used to go there a lot, called the tree my own. Then one day your mother came riding up there on her pony. She lived on the other side of the ridge. That ridge was kind of a divider between Cherokee country and the whites’ farms. Her father had just moved there, and she was exploring. She saw the tree and walked up and touched it.” Adam smiled. “She asked it how old it was, talking to it like the little girl she was. I was hiding in the tree, and I answered in a deep voice, as though the tree were talking. You should have seen the look on her face.”

  Stephen laughed lightly and the others grinned. “She jumped back and stared up,” Adam continued. “I swung down like a monkey, scared her to death. She just stared at me with those wide, blue eyes. The sun shone just right on her yellow hair, and a sixteen-year-old Cherokee boy was instantly in love. I wanted that girl to be my very own and nobody else’s, but she looked at this Indian boy like I was some kind of creature from another world. ‘Are you Cherokee?’ she asked, like I was something rare or perhaps extinct.” He sighed deeply and puffed on the cigar. “But she started meeting me up there on the ridge, under the oak tree. We were good friends at first, but before long we were more than that…two kids in love. We didn’t care that she was white and I was Indian, or that we had to keep our meetings secret because her parents would disapprove. We were going to wait for the right time to tell them…but some things can’t wait when you’re that age and in love and people are trying to keep you apart. Before I could stop myself I was making love to her. I just wanted her to be mine…to be her first.” He threw the cigar into the flames. “And I was not just her first; I was the only man she ever loved, the only man she willingly gave herself to. Douglas Means never really touched her. And neither have those men in Mexico.” His voice died off. “Andrea Sanders belongs to me,” he said in a quiet, broken voice. “To Adam Chandler, and no one else. She suffered many things because of her love for me. Her parents sent her to an awful place where she was whipped and forced to work long hours. It was there they took you from her, Stephen. She stayed with me while we went from riches to poverty, through a militia rape, the Trail of Tears—even during the time when I was drunk more than I was sober and I was involved in vengeful killings.” He laid back against his saddle. “Those vengeful killings have come around to haunt me. If I hadn’t been involved in them, Mary Means wouldn’t have done what she did to get back at me. Killing for vengeance never really ends, my sons. Remember that. It just goes on and on, and now Andrea has suffered for what I did. I’ll never forgive myself for all she’s been through.”

  “You can’t blame yourself, Father,” Jonas declared. “It all started with the white man’s injustice, the government’s underhanded methods of getting us out of Georgia. A lot of people learned to hate them. You weren’t the only one. Many suffered. And you suffered. I remember how badly they beat you. And I remember you were gone a lot when we still lived in Georgia, helping John Ross fight the legal battle so we could stay.”

  Adam closed his eyes. “I used to believe we really would win, Jonas. So did thousands of others. That’s the sad part. We all thought we would win. We couldn’t believe they would really make us go, especially in the hideous way it finally happened. What the government did to the Cherokees, the Creek, the Choctaws, and the Seminoles—it will remain with this land. The government will be plagued by Indian problems for hundreds of years because what they did was wrong, plain wrong. But it will be done again—to these wild Plains Indians. You mark my words. The white man will do it again, and the question of Indian rights will never really be solved, because everything the government does to the Indian will go against all conscience, against all the white man’s religious beliefs. And when a man defies his own deepest beliefs, he never quite gets over it. Don’t ever go against what you know is right, not any of you. We all suffered because I fought for what I knew was right, but I don’t have to live with the memory of going against my beliefs, of turning tail and running without even trying to keep what was rightfully mine. Now I’ve come full circle. That land is mine again, and someday we’re all going back there. I’ll show you that oak tree, where Stephen was conceived…out of love, not lust. And when we go there your mother will be with us, I promise. And don’t ever think your mother was bad for meeting me there under that tree. She was just a sweet little girl in love. She put all her trust in me.” He rubbed at his eyes. “I’ve betrayed that trust so many times.”

  “You never betrayed her, Father,” John Ross said quickly. “It was outside forces that made everything happen. You never betrayed her.” He stood up. “It’s my turn to keep watch. You’d better get some sleep, Father.”

  “That’s not always an easy thing to do.”

  “Not for any of us,” Stephen put in. He lay back against his saddle.

  “Keep your eyes and ears open, John Ross,” Adam called out. “Draw on those Indian instincts we civilized redmen have kept buried for too long. They’re still there, somewhere. Just concentrate on the night sounds and let the Indian in you take over. We can’t let any wild Comanches outdo a Cherokee.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” the young man answered from the dark. “What about our white blood?”

  Adam pulled a blanket over himself. “Seeing as how it’s from your mother, I wouldn’t worry. She’s a strong woman. Her white blood can’t do you any harm. By the way, in the morning we’d better put on our Mexican clothing. We’re getting close to the Rio Grande. We’ve been through hell’s furnace, snake country, Comanche country—every bitchy kind of country you can name. But in a few days we’ll be in Mexico, and soon after Chihuahua. Let’s be real careful. We don’t want anything to go wrong now.”

  He rubbed at his lips. They were dry and cracked. This land was certainly a far cry from the warm, moist green of Georgia. How he missed it! The blue mountains and the big, hardwood trees…and Andrea. Did he dare think he could have it all again—Andrea, his three sons, Georgia? He was afraid to dream about it, but could not help doing so. He fell asleep and envisioned the oak tree, all five of them standing under it and looking up into its glorious golden branches.

  They rode down the dusty street, watched from beneath sombreros, chickens clucking and scattering before their oncoming horses. One man sat near a well in the center of town, playing a guitar and humming to himself, and a buxom young woman sauntered across the street in front of them so that they had to slow their horses. She looked up at the handsome me
n on the fine steeds and gave them a coy smile.

  Adam nodded. “Señorita, where can a man get a cold drink in this town,” he asked in Spanish.

  She pointed to a saloon farther down the street and giggled.

  Adam flashed her a handsome smile. “Muchas gracias, señorita.”

  She watched as they rode on, walking beside them for a ways and smiling at Jonas, who took great pleasure in viewing the huge breasts revealed by her low-cut dress. If it were not for the gravity of their purpose, he would have struck up an acquaintance with the eager-looking Mexican girl.

  They approached the saloon, eying every building on the way but seeing nothing called Rosa’s. Adam dismounted and tied his horse. “Wait out here,” he told his sons. He adjusted his poncho so that access to his handgun was unhindered by it, then walked inside. A sea of dark eyes turned to this stranger, as Adam walked up to the bar and ordered whiskey in Spanish. The bartender eyed him cautiously, then poured him a shot. Adam paid for it with Mexican coins, then leaned closer.

  “I am looking for a place called Rosa’s. Do you know of it?”

  The bartender looked around warily, before studying Adam’s dark eyes. “Why do you want to know of this place?”

  Adam grinned. “Why do you think? Any Mexican with money knows he can get a white woman there, no?” He spoke in perfect Spanish. The bartender grinned.

  “I have been there myself. Blue eyes, green eyes, red hair, gold hair.” He rolled his eyes. “It is like being in heaven, señor.”

  Adam nodded, forcing himself to hide his horror. Perhaps this very man had…No. He must stay calm. “I have heard the same. I am a rich man, and I am here with my sons. They need to learn about women. It would be exciting for them to learn with white women. It is my gift to them for coming into manhood. Where can I find this place?”