American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  “Hi, Daddy!” she said beaming.

  “Veronica!” exclaimed Denton Beaumont, standing and hurrying around his desk and embracing her. “What are you doing here?”

  Veronica thought it best not to mention that Richard did not know she was in Richmond, and that the man behind the whole arrangement was none other than Cecil Hirsch, whom she knew her father would remember, and probably not altogether fondly.

  Riding beside William White, a disheartened Aaron Steddings was not looking forward to what he knew was coming as they approached the White farm. He knew that as much as Zaphorah might be anxious to see him again after a month, the one thing she would most be looking for was whether Deanna was with them.

  Moses saw them from a distance and ran inside with the news that the two men had returned. Moments later, Zaphorah hurried out, with Mary and Hannah and Suzane on her heels. She ran down the porch and toward the two approaching horses, but came to a stop and already stood weeping in grief by the time Aaron was able to dismount and take her in his arms.

  “We looked everywhere,” he said softly. “We went to every plantation for a hundred miles. Mr. White spoke to every farmer we could find and offered good money for information. But nobody had seen anything of her. Whoever that was who took her must have sold her somewhere else.”

  “Oh, Aaron… what are we going to do!”

  “I don’t know what we can do but either go back and keep looking, or go ahead and get back on that railroad and get home.”

  “But how can we go on without her?” sobbed Zaphorah.

  “We have to hope she finds her own way there eventually.”

  Aaron had had time to accustom himself to not being able to find their daughter. But Zaphorah’s month of hope was shattered in a moment, and it turned into the heartwrenching grief of a mother’s greatest loss. It was some days before they could begin to think seriously about moving on.

  Finally the time came, however, and they were ready. Aaron still had the old and faded map that had guided their movements thus far. Of far more help, however, were William White’s instructions. He had been a stationmaster long enough that he knew exactly where to tell them to go. Many of the old methods had changed since the war, he said. They would need no conductor. If they traveled at night, in two days they would be well able to find their way to the next station, and there receive reliable instructions to the next.

  But they had to watch out for Confederate troops. That had become the most worrisome unknown. There were more renegade and runaway soldiers roaming about all the time. They were probably more dangerous than the bounty hunters had been before.

  They could take their three horses, if they wanted, William added. However, he recommended travel by foot, though slower, as safer. He would pay them fifty dollars apiece for the three.

  The offer reminded Aaron that they were not his horses at all and that, besides being runaways, technically they were also horse thieves. He therefore left the three horses with William White with the request to have them returned to the Locke plantation in whatever manner White deemed most prudent that would not bring danger to themselves.

  With a few final instructions, many handshakes and hugs and Godspeeds, the family of Aaron Steddings, now numbering five, again found themselves alone… and on their way north.

  Thirteen

  A young man of sun-weathered skin, some would have called it red, but which in reality was a deep bronze, stole quietly into the village of Wauhillou in the Cherokee Indian Territory of Oklahoma. He did not particularly care if he was seen, but secrecy by now was so deeply part of his nature that it was almost by instinct that he kept to the shadows. He lifted the flap that covered the doorway into the small rundown house he called home and quietly stole inside.

  He had been born a year before the infamous removal known as the Trail of Tears. He and his father and mother had been among the lucky ones to survive it. Thousands hadn’t. Through the bitter reminiscences of his father he had learned whom to blame for the tragedy even more than Andrew Jackson—those among their own who had betrayed their people.

  He had just been gone for two days, north into Kansas and the plains where his acquaintances and comrades among the Sioux, the Chiricahua, the Kiowa, and the Pawnee were now being driven from their lands as his own people had been driven from Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee three decades earlier. He knew the tales from the old times. A warrior’s spirit had resided in his bosom since earliest boyhood, implanted by his father, along with a hatred for the white man who was consuming Indian land inch by inch in a relentless march westward. Within his heart had awakened the fervor of old chief of the red feather Oconostota and Dragging Canoe. And now the new plight of his northern plains native cousins gave opportunity for that hatred to vent itself in the spilling of white blood.

  Even before his twentieth birthday, unknown to those of his own village, he had been involved in several wagon-train massacres in Sioux territory. And with a half dozen Kiowa youths whose brains were soaked with alcohol they had stolen from the trading post, he had helped set fire to a settler’s farmhouse in southeast Kansas and killed the entire family. He had a memory for vengeance which he nurtured in private ways—a vengeance fueled by reminders of Cherokee betrayal from long before.

  He came from a family of Cherokee hard-liners. His father and grandfather before him had resisted with all their might against the gradual infusion of white culture into their Indian heritage. Prowling Bear, his father, had been one of those invited to the secret council of Cherokee leaders in June of 1839 in Takotoka in which the leaders of the Treaty Group—Major and John Ridge, and Buck and Stand Watie—were condemned to death for making a treaty with the U.S. government and selling Cherokee lands in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. They had violated tribal law, and the decree of the council vowed vengeance.

  Prowling Bear along with several others had volunteered for the Elias Boudinot assassination at Park Hill on the following morning. How many times had he repeated the story to his growing son, with pride in his voice and fire in his eyes, how as his comrades distracted the man born as Buck Watie he had crept behind him and then, with a vicious downward slice, how he had split Boudinot’s skull in a single blow and watched him crumple dead at his feet.

  Visions of splattering blood and wild war cries of revenge still rang in Black Wolf’s head after all these years, along with his father’s words, “We killed three of them that day, though the traitor Watie fled like a coward. But the hour of retribution will fall on him in time. He will not escape the justice of blood. Neither he nor all those who betrayed our people.”

  Again Cherity Waters set out for a ride up the ridge.

  On her mind as she went, however, were neither Seth nor her father as on her ride of a month or two earlier. On this day, Mr. Brown and his secrets occupied her thoughts.

  A brief errand took her first into Dove’s Landing. Leaving the town to scale the ascent to the Brown tract, she had no idea that a second horse had picked up her trail and was following behind her.

  Cherity rode to the house, dismounted, and walked inside. She went straight to the fireplace. There she stood studying the patterns at the bottom of the skin that Chigua had replaced over the mantel. A minute later, with its images fixed in her mind, she returned outside. Leaving her horse tied at the house, she walked across the open field to the edge of a small wood where she had encountered the runaways. In front of her stood the large pine just as she remembered it. And there was the curious carving she had seen.

  She walked toward the tree just as she had on that earlier day. Her thoughts were consumed with what the design—appearing in both places, on the tree and the skin—could possibly mean. If it was indeed a Cherokee image, who but Brown himself could have made it?

  And why? For whom was it intended? As a sign… of what?

  She stopped in front of the pine. Slowly she reached out and ran her fingers over the lines and dots, gnarled and bumpy with time.


  A thrill of excitement surged through her. It was exactly the same pattern as that on the skin!

  What could it mean!

  A sound and a movement startled her.

  Cherity turned. Twenty feet away among the trees stood the most enormous black man she had ever seen.

  He looked too well fed for a runaway. Much too well fed. And she wasn’t sure she liked that gleam in his eye.

  “What… is there something you want?” she asked hesitantly.

  The man took several steps forward, a cunning smile forming on his lips.

  “Do you need help?” asked Cherity, still not fully aware of her danger. Yet she could not prevent a tremor creeping into her tone.

  Still the man did not speak but walked straight toward her. Unconsciously Cherity stepped back. The movement triggered the man’s predatory instinct. He lunged forward with the stride of a giant. His hand shot out with the lightning strike of an uncoiling snake and his fingers closed on Cherity’s tiny wrist.

  She screamed, both in fright and pain, and yanked away her arm. Her strength was far greater than he had anticipated in one so small. Before he knew it, Elias Slade stood watching his quarry sprint away from him. Surprised by the girl’s pluck, yet enlivened all the more by the challenge to conquer this little vixen, he broke into a run and lumbered after her.

  But even with legs half as long, Cherity in her blue dungarees could have outrun him in a dead sprint. She was in the saddle before he had covered three quarters of the distance. She spun her horse’s head around and dug in her heels.

  There was Slade charging straight for her.

  As her mount burst into motion, Cherity’s hand went to the whip tied to the saddle. Though she rarely used it, and never on a horse’s back, it proved an effective weapon to ward off a startled Elias Slade. Her quick blows slowed him enough to prevent him grabbing her leg and twisting her out of the saddle.

  As the leather came crashing down over his shoulders and head, Slade swore angrily and fought against it, grappling frantically to lay hold of the leather cord. Finally he managed to yank it from Cherity’s hand. As she released the handle, Slade stumbled momentarily backward. Seizing her brief advantage, Cherity kicked and shouted wildly and flew off down the hill.

  Slade recovered quickly, but found himself left watching four retreating hooves sending up great clods of earth as horse and rider disappeared along the trail among the trees. A great roar of impotent fury echoed after them.

  His voice slowly died away and Elias Slade stood alone, vowing that whoever the girl was, he would subdue her and have his way with her in the end.

  Somewhat calmed, but perspiring and breathing hard, Cherity galloped into Greenwood in a flurry of hooves and dust and jumped to the ground. Alexander was just coming from the barn. He stopped and looked up in surprise.

  Cherity tossed him the reins, said she would be back in a few minutes, and ran toward the house. She found Richmond in his wood shop at the back of the house.

  He glanced up from the board being planed beneath his hand as she burst in.

  “Cherity!” he exclaimed. “You look like you’ve… well, not seen a ghost exactly, but seen something that frightened you.”

  “I went for a ride… I was up on the ridge near Mr. Brown’s house,” Cherity began, then paused to take several deep breaths. Gradually she began to breathe more easily.

  “There was a man out there… a black man,” she added.

  “Another runaway?”

  “I am sure he wasn’t. He was alone and didn’t look like he had been traveling.”

  “What happened?”

  “He tried to get me, Mr. Davidson. He grabbed me. The look in his eyes… it was terrible. I shudder to think what might have happened if I hadn’t gotten away.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was the biggest man I have ever seen. He was twice my size. My head didn’t come higher than his chest. He had big eyes that looked at me with an expression that I… I don’t know what to call it but mean… menacing… frightening.”

  “Elias Slade!” sighed Richmond. “It couldn’t be anyone else.”

  “I don’t know why I didn’t run away the instant I saw him. But right at first I thought maybe he was someone who needed help.”

  “But you did get away—that is the important thing.”

  “What should I do, Mr. Davidson? I don’t want to be afraid every time I go out for a ride.”

  “We shall have to give the matter some careful thought.”

  “Who is he, Mr. Davidson?”

  “A freedman,” replied Richmond. “He works at Oakbriar. Seth tangled with him once and it cost him a broken arm and several broken ribs. It was rather terrifying. He could have been killed.”

  “My goodness!”

  “He is a very dangerous man. He is also the man who killed Nancy’s husband. So my very strong advice—no, it is more than mere advice… if you ever see him again, you must never let him near you.”

  Richmond paused and thought a moment. He set down the tool in his hand and walked to a cabinet on the other side of the workroom. He opened the door and reached inside. He returned a moment later with a small pistol in his hand.

  “Mr. Davidson… what is that?” exclaimed Cherity. “I didn’t know you had a handgun.”

  “I only keep it here in case of an emergency,” Richmond said. “I am going to give it to you to take with you when you go riding out in the hills. I want you to take it from now on, even if you are not alone, or if you and Cynthia go for a ride together. I think I may have a belt and holster somewhere in the house, though we will probably have to add a few more holes for the buckle to make it fit.”

  “I don’t know how to use a gun!” said Cherity.

  “I will teach you.”

  “But I could never shoot anyone.”

  “I don’t want you to shoot anyone. I only want you to know how to use it if you have to, at least well enough to scare Elias Slade if he tries anything again. I told you, he is extremely dangerous. But as long as Denton Beaumont continues to keep him on at Oakbriar, we have to be wary. He prowls the hills and is often on our land too. We have to take precautions.”

  He paused and a smile came to his lips.

  “I would like to ask you not to go out riding alone,” he said slowly. “But I think I know you well enough by now to realize that I had better not press my luck.”

  “If you did tell me not to,” smiled Cherity, “I would try to obey. But I hope you won’t. I will promise to be more careful.”

  Cynthia Verdon was startled two afternoons later to hear the sound of gunfire suddenly exploding from behind the house. It sounded close!

  She ran to the window of her room. Some distance out near the wood to the west stood Cherity holding a pistol with Richmond at her side giving her instructions on its use.

  Cynthia ran from her room, downstairs, and outside.

  “What is going on!” she asked as she hurried toward them.

  “The first time I met Cherity,” replied Richmond, glancing toward his daughter as she approached, “she was a great fan of the Wild West.”

  “I always dreamed of being a cowgirl,” laughed Cherity.

  “So now I am making a gunslinger of her,” said Richmond. He quickly became serious. “Actually, Cynthia,” he went on, “there was a little trouble with a fellow from Oakbriar. I asked Cherity to carry this gun when she rides. So I am showing her how to use it and giving her a little target practice… There you go, Cherity,” he said, “see what you can do with those bottles lined up there.”

  Cherity held the gun up, extended her arm, squinted one eye along the barrel and pulled the trigger. A shot fired as the gun popped upward in her grasp, but no sound of glass breaking followed.

  “Try again,” said Richmond.

  Again Cherity fired… then again, and a fourth time. All the bottles remained undisturbed.

  “I can’t do it!” moaned Cherity.

 
“Practice, Cherity… everything comes with practice,” said Richmond. “Keep at it. I will leave you this box of shells. I’ve shown you how to reload. Shoot another three or four rounds until your hand and arm get tired.”

  He and Cynthia turned and walked back toward the house together.

  “Is it safe?” Cynthia asked when they were a little way off. “I mean… is she—”

  “She will be fine,” said Richmond.

  Another shot sounded behind them, followed by a squeal of excitement.

  “I hit one, Mr. Davidson!” exclaimed Cherity as he glanced back.

  “Good for you!” he said over his shoulder, then turned back to Cynthia. “You see,” he said. “My worry isn’t Cherity. She will be careful enough. My worry is Elias Slade.”

  When Veronica Fitzpatrick arrived back in Washington, she immediately went again to Garabaldi’s and asked to see the restaurant owner, who was out visiting with the luncheon crowd.

  He received her warmly, took her back again to his private office, and received the bottle of wine from Wyler with gratitude. The two chatted for five or ten minutes, the restaurant owner showing particular interest in Veronica’s father and his connections throughout Virginia and the South, about which Veronica shared freely. The visit concluded with his expressed hope that they would meet again.

  Veronica all but forgot Cecil Hirsch when summer came and then another two months went by and she saw nothing more of him. She heard, of course, how General Robert E. Lee had beaten back McClellan’s troops from Richmond and sent them back toward the coast in wholesale retreat. But she little dreamed the role she had played in the Confederate victory by the information Wyler had managed to get to Lee about McClellan’s plans.

  Veronica had just begun again to rue the boredom of her life when a messenger appeared at her door midway through the morning. The handwritten note was brief:

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick,

  I wonder if you would do the honor of coming to see me as soon as possible. I am afraid I have another favor to ask. I would be forever in your debt if you would consider helping me once again.