The Wildes had arrived several days earlier for the judge to hear a backlog of cases. Honor, as she often liked to do, had accompanied Whip as his driver. Her beloved daddy was always saying that he should have one of the ranch hands driving him, but, whenever it was possible, Honor liked to go along. Whip had been the best father any child could have asked for, and she had a deep, abiding love for him and their bond was deep. The other five Wilde children always suspected that Honor was Whip's favorite, but it had never caused any conflict within the family because Whip had more than enough love to go around for all his children.
Honor attended the trials, but each day she always went to the livery to check on the coach and horses, and it had been there that she had struck up a flirtation with the attractive colored man who tended to the animals. He had an easy smile and a voice that always carried good-natured laughter with it. The man's broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms weren't lost on her either. Scoring even more points, the man's beard was neatly trimmed, not an unruly mess that frequently put her off with other men. At the end of the day, he reminded her a lot of …
Quillan Dodge! It seemed he would never fully be out of Honor’s soul. They had met years ago when she and her sisters had saved not only the man’s stagecoach business but his life as well. It hadn’t lasted despite their love because their two paths were different and try as they might they wouldn’t converge. This, however, never stopped the two of them engaging in their old and familiar trysts when they met up with each other if both were unattached at the same time.
Now it seemed as if every man she always automatically compared to Quillan, and she knew that it wasn’t fair. Honor resolved that tonight was going to be strictly about Josiah, as the afternoon had been on the edge of the mesa that gave the town its name. After a couple days of flirting he had asked her to take a picnic lunch with him the following day.
It had been the most wonderful time as they sat on the checkered blanket under a tree enjoying the view of the mountain ranges to the west. A pair of eagles had soared above before veering off to parts unknowing, riveting Honor by their flight that seemed more like an intricate aerial ballet. However, even more, enthralling to her was when she took the first bite of the food Josiah had served up out of the picnic basket. With a smile, the man had promised a treat.
Honor could scarcely believe it. She was expecting a run of the mill chicken but the meal proved to a cornucopia of flavor due to his preparation and the herbs and spices that he had employed. In short order, she had demanded to know how this was possible, especially after she sampled the delicious side dishes and desserts he had packed.
Asking that had been the key that unlocked a Josiah Daniels that she couldn’t have even dreamed lay beneath the congenial man’s exterior. He had grown silent, and his brown eyes searched her hazel ones as he had asked if she really wanted to hear his story. Honor Elizabeth had snuggled close to him as they lay back propped up by the tree trunk and she glided her hand on his thigh and told him he could tell her anything.
Josiah had done just that.
CHAPTER 2
* * *
DUMONT PLANTATION
CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA
MARCH 1865
As rain fell in sheets cascading from the sky over the Dumont plantation, known far and wide as Cottonwood, from the back of his covered carriage Meriwether Dumont was shouting at the top of his lungs!
“Faster, blast it! There isn’t a moment to lose! Faster!”
“Yes, suh, Massah!” the driver called back over his shoulder as the elements pounded him from his exposed bench seat. Whipping the reins as hard as he could the driver brought up the speed. The carriage whipsawed back and forth down the muddy road heading for the gates of Cottonwood to the cries of “Goddamn you!” coming from Dumont.
Passing through the gates and surging up the driveway, the carriage obtained momentary shelter from the overhanging branches of the cypress trees. Dumont was relieved to see the wagon parked in front of the grand two-story white mansion nestled at the end of the driveway. The overseer Silas Branch was barking orders at several slaves who were frantically loading the wagon.
As Dumont leaped from the carriage, a booming sound filled his ears but this was not thunder, as this storm unleashed no lightening. He knew full well what it was, the reason now for his frantic flight. Branch charged over to him wiping the water from his face.
"We're all set, Mr. Dumont. I had the strongest of the bucks loading up everything on your list that had the most value!"
“Splendid! Splendid! Good work, Branch! We haven’t much time!”
Branch nodded his head in the direction of the slave quarters set to the side of the main property.
“What about the nig-”
“Leave ‘em for the Yankees!” Dumont cut him off, spit flying from his mouth to mix with the rain. “They’re right behind me. Cottonwood is lost!” he shouted as his eyes swept over to a distant corner of the property where the mausoleum stood. His mother, struck down by tuberculosis, rested there alongside his older sister, a suicide that had shocked the family. His younger brother, God rest his soul, lay moldering at Gettysburg. The one he wished was inside that tomb was his younger sister who had fled the South years ago to become a lousy, stinking abolitionist in the cesspool folks called New York City.
“Goodbye, Mama, Bessie J,” he said so quietly he wasn’t even sure if he had actually said the words or they were in his mind. He knew he would never see this place again. The blue coats would see to that. Cutting through his morose reverie, he suddenly became aware that Branch had been shouting something over the cannon fire from the approaching Grand Army of the Republic.
“What do you mean there is a problem?!”
“It’s your pappy! The colonel. I told him that we had to leave, but I can’t get through to him. He’s in one of those states again. He has no idea what’s going on around him!”
Dumont drove his foot down with such force that a huge splash of water shot up coating the boots and pant legs of the nearby Branch. A white-hot fury swept over him. He knew that the Union forces under the command of General Aloysius Flint were closing in on them, and Flint was well known for his hatred of Southern aristocracy. He would destroy Cottonwood and chock his death off as collateral damage. He needed to flee this place, and he was not to be held up!
“That goddamn senile old fool!” This time there was no question if he had indeed said the words, as he had shouted them so loud that the two nervous looking slaves that had been helping load the wagon stepped back. With a stern sweep of his hand, Branch commanded them to head back to the miserable shacks that passed for their homes.
Balling up his fists, all Dumont could think about was his hatred of the old man. He had run the plantation into the ground before the war had even started. Everything bad that had ever happened to his family had been because of that stupid old man. He had taken his mother on that vacation in the Caribbean where she had contracted the disease that killed her. His father had been the one to forbid Bessie J’s marriage to the man she loved leading to her suicide, and he had failed at raising his sister whose name he could not even speak to the point where she had run off to take up the cause of these negroes!
Only Meriwether’s tireless work had kept them from losing everything and keeping Cottonwood afloat. Now this; he would not have his father holding up his chance to escape the clutches of the Union Army. His thoughts went to that life insurance policy residing in a safe in London. One he had secretly taken out on his father several years before. Gritting his teeth before drawing back his lips in a smile he knew the time had come at last
He gazed over at his trusted man, Branch. The two had planned it out that Branch would be the corroborating witness to the “accidental death” of his father in order to collect the money the policy would pay out for just such an unfortunate happenstance. This forced evacuation would make the perfect cover.
“Listen up, Silas! My father is going t
o die falling down the stairs fleeing the Yankees! Do you understand?”
“Fully, sir!” Branch didn’t hesitate in saying; the small smile on his face Dumont knew masked an inner glee at how much money he would be paid for his role in the fraud.
“Good now. Let’s do this thing and be on our way!”
Two minutes later the pair burst into the bedroom where Colonel Kingsford Dumont sat propped up against the headboard with two pillows between him and the oak wood that made it up. Thinning strands of gray hair that clung to the side of the man’s head gently moved from a partially open window. Of course it was, Meriwether thought. His father always told the stories of his love for listening to the rain when he was a child.
Kingsford looked at his son with only the vaguest of recognition before he spoke, finally recalling the name he was searching for.
“Meriwether … where, where is my jambalaya?”
Meriwether ignored him and strode over to him. More of the old man’s senile ramblings. They had gotten worse over the last year. He looked down at the man for a moment. His carriage ride before had been the return from town where he had cleaned out every last penny the Dumont family had held in the bank. It was rightfully his money, Meriwether figured; he had been the one to save it. Not this husk of a man lying before him. Now the time was at hand.
He took a quick look over his shoulder at Branch, who remained silent but nodded, and then he reached over, seized his father's head by placing his hands on either side of it and jerked them. Colonel Kingsford Dumont departed the world with a cry that died in his throat. It was a small and faint sound that was quickly followed by a much larger one, that of a tray full of plates, glasses, and silverware tumbling to the ground.
Dumont and Branch spun around to see Henry, the young Negro chef, standing in mute shock, the contents of the tray scattered in front of him on the floor. Meriwether looked down and saw the mess on the floor was jambalaya. For a long moment, the three men looked at each other in silence.
“He saw me do it,” Meriwether said slowly.
“Don’t matter. Henry’s just some house slave.”
“Dead men tell no tales. We shall not take a chance. Bury him, Mister Branch!”
“No, massuh I won’t say nothin’!” Henry shouted in terror.
“Damn, right you won’t, boy!” Branch was shouting just as he went for the gun he had under his rain poncho.
At that moment a pronounced boom shook the room as the gates of Cottonwood were blown open under the volley of cannon fire. Branch and Dumont dashed to the window. Seeing the gate was impossible as it lay hidden beyond the cypress trees. Dumont looked at Branch wildly.
“It’s Aloysius Flint’s troops! They must have blown the gate!”
“We can still get out the back of the property on the supply road!”
They spun around and found they were alone in the room. Dashing out into the hallway they saw Henry barely touching the steps as he flew down the stairs. The barrel of Branch’s gun bucked with fire but his moving target vanished out the front doors of Cottonwood.
Branch moved to pursue, but Dumont clamped his hand down on his shoulder!
“Forget about Henry for now! If we don’t leave right now we never will!”
CHAPTER 3
* * *
Honor Elizabeth sat up and touched Josiah’s cheek softly, still in awe at what she had just heard. Josiah’s eyes were now looking out at the vista, but she knew they weren’t seeing the Arizona landscape, but instead a cotton plantation in the Deep South.
“I hid, Miss Honor, and I watched them flee just as the blue coats came down that driveway. They torched Cottonwood just like Mister Meriwether feared they would someday do. I didn’t care a lick about that, though. Once I figured it was safe to start running, that just what I done. Ain’t ever really stopped running ever since.”
“And you changed your name to Josiah … but why are you running? You haven’t done anything wrong?”
There was still humor in his voice when he spoke, but she could tell it was forced. “Josiah! Shoot ma’am … that’s just who I am since I got to Mesa Verde. I done been near half a dozen other names. Luther Cade. Now that was my favorite. Yes, ma’am, I enjoyed being ol’ Luther Cade! Done grown this beard too. Never would have had it on the plantation. No, ma’am. Massah Dumont said I needed to look presentable when he would bring me out and show me off at the one who made all-”
In a move that startled the liveryman, she suddenly swung around and straddled him and put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his widened eyes. He, of course, had no idea that the Wildes did as the Wildes pleased.
“Why are you running Henry, Josiah, Luther … whoever you are? I wish to know, and I wish to know now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said pausing for a moment, mesmerized by those intense hazel eyes.
“Dumont. He done made it out of the South. After the war, he went north with the money he escaped with. He may have hated it, but he made a name for himself there. Money, I will do that, I guess. Eventually, he landed in Washington. Made some kind of big name for himself there. A real important man these days.”
“I have surely never heard of him,” Honor sniffed.
“Be that as it may, he’s worried that I am still out here somewhere. If I was ever to turn up and tell what I know, his political career would be done for. Who is gonna listen to some nigrah, I’ve always thought, but Mister Meriwether. He be not one to take any chance of this chicken coming home to roost!”
“The word of a colored person is just as good as …” her voice trailed off. There was no point in going on. Honor knew that her circumstances had been special. She had a loving white father that had embraced her and offered her a way of life that others like Josiah had been denied since birth.
“Don’t think I wouldn’t like to tell what I know. As far as massahs go Massah Dumont always did right by me. He knew I could cook like nobody’s business. He would throw such parties when the mistress was still alive and the family was still whole. It was my skills with the food that he impressed his guests with at those parties. I just come natural, too, it but it gave me the best life one could have as a slave, you understand. Lived in the big house, had my own room off the kitchen. Then that night came. Massuh Dumont rang the bell and I went up. He was craving some jambalaya, so I done put it together for him just the way he liked it, then I had to go and walk in with it as his own son was murdering him. Justice be overdue. Yes, ma’am.
Honor remained quiet. In principle he was right she knew, but she had no sympathy for a man who had owned slaves being murdered. Yes, slaves, she thought, like the mother she had never met. A mother who would have remained in bondage had circumstances not brought her into the path of a young naval lieutenant William Henry Wilde. Suddenly her eyes narrowed as a thought occurred to her.
“How do you come to know all about Dumont’s life after his escape from the Union forces?”
“Easy, Miss Honor. I was a loose end is what Branch called me when he caught up to me in New Orleans two years after the war. Dumont had sent him to find me. They didn’t get to collect their blood money because Massah Dumont’s body done burned up in Cottonwood. That murder, though, bound the two together, and he became Mister Meriwether’s bodyguard. Branch, he cornered me out behind the hotel where I was working as a chef. Spilled it all out for me, yes, he did.”
Honor nodded in understanding. In the past four years, as she and her sisters had been helping Cassie on many occasions in her role as a special lawman for their uncle, the governor of the territory, this was something they had encountered from time to time. Some of these bad guys just loved to hear themselves talk when they thought they had the upper hand. Always to their own detriment it seemed, especially the time Lijuan had pulled out a hidden gun and blasted their foe in the middle of his monologue. None of the other three chastised her in that instance, as the man had been a lowlife child murderer.
“How did you get out of it?
Sounds like he had the drop on you.”
“Dunno if you ever been to New Orleans, ma’am, but it’s one festive place. Suddenly a bunch of drunks who had a little too much white lightning came stumbling out of the back of the hotel at that moment, distracting Branch. I was lucky that time; been lucky ever since.”
“What do you mean?”
"He's caught up with me on at least two occasions since then, but luck always allowed me to escape. Finally, I done wised up that one of the ways he was tracking me was to be on the lookout for a first-rate Negro cook working at hotels. Cooking was all I knew, Miss Honor, but I realized I had to give it up and do something else to make it harder for him to find me. So, now you is looking at Josiah … stable hand."
A flush of anger swept over Honor that a man had to turn his back on his true talents simply to stay alive and out of the clutches of a pair of men who had spent the years since the Civil War hounding him. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, and she told him so.
"Ain't nothing I can do about it, ma'am. Ain't seen hide nor hair of Branch for nearly three years now. Perhaps them jaspers done give up the chase." He had fallen silent after that and Honor Elizabeth sensed that he didn’t wish to speak of it any longer.
The silence was easily filled as she opened her lips and leaned in. Her tongue searched for his as she left one of her hands on his shoulder and used the other to run her fingers through his short, wiry hair. As they kissed in the sunlight, Honor felt a surge of excitement run through her body as she felt a hardness forming under her where she continued to sit on his lap. A very large hardness. Reluctantly she knew here was not the time and place.
To his disappointment, she had broken things off, but moments later pleased him when she asked to be invited to his house for the evening with the promise of him preparing a grand meal to rival any that he used to make back in Cottonwood.
The Forbidden Ranch: Honor Elizabeth Wilde Tale 0f Suspense (Half Breed Haven Book 5) Page 2