Firebrand's Woman

by Vanessa Royall

  Sometime in the future, Jason had decided, he would challenge this system, possibly in Knoxville. But he would make no challenge now. He had two reasons. One, he wanted the river-bend land, which, he saw, would be ideally located for taking crops to market by barge. Two, he did not wish to wake up some morning with a big gash in his throat. The frontier was not a gentle place, and law—stable, deliberate, civilized law—was far away.

  “Well, it is pretty good land,” he admitted to Harris bargaining himself now, “but I expect it has a tendency to flood.”

  “Flood? What are you saying? That there land ain’t never flooded since that there guy in the big barge with two animals of every kind. Besides, it’s a choice piece of property. Prob’ly the best we got here.”

  “It’s good, but not the best,” Jason lied, sticking to his guns.

  “Why dontcha try for something else then?”

  “The river bend is all I can afford, I’m afraid.”

  “I ain’t even named my price yet. Anyway, you’re a Randolph. You got plenty.”

  “No reason to strike a bad bargain,” Jason said.

  Harris took another long draught of whiskey. He was clearly showing the effects of alcohol now, one of which is that the duller the brain becomes, the shrewder it thinks it is. He passed the jug to Jason, who mouthed it eagerly, but didn’t swallow any of the booze.

  “So what are you asking?” said Jason, making a show of wiping his mouth.

  Harris added more tobacco juice to the dark, spreading pool on the plank floor. “For the river-bend property? I’ll hold you to a thirda yer crop, to be turned over to the community granary, acourse.”

  Slowly, and with somber gravity, Jason shook his head. “A third is too much. A third wouldn’t be worth my making the effort.”

  “Suit yerself.”

  “Well, how about the strip of land up there by the ridge.”

  “That land? That land is prime,” pronounced Harris.

  “That land is mediocre at best,” Jason countered, and in truth he was right, but he was using it merely as a bargaining device.

  “I’ll parcel out that there land to you—” he hiccuped—“for…ah…let’s say…quarter of yer crop. Give me that there jug.”

  “A quarter of the crop?” protested Jason, as Harris slopped back the jug yet again. “A quarter of the crop along the ridge land won’t yield a full half of the crop down by the river.”

  “Yeah, but the river land is the best property.”

  “If it is, why hasn’t it been claimed yet? Why hasn’t it been cleared?”

  Harris considered that, squinting owlishly. “Too many trees down there,” he said. “Land’s rich, but it’ll take too much work to clear.”

  There were many trees, Jason knew, but the earth was softer than it was in areas away from the river, and the task of removal would not be as arduous as it appeared. He did not tell this to Harris, though.

  “All right,” Jason slurred, pretending to take another jolt of the corn liquor, and thinking that it was time to try for a deal. “Tell you what, let’s put it this way; clearing’s going to be hard work, and the land is only average.”

  “Only average!” Harris snorted.

  “But the crop will be far better than I could get on the ridge. Just like I told you. A fifth of the river-bend crop would equal a half of the ridge crop. Take it or leave it. A fifth!”

  He leaned forward across the table and attempted to approximate the fish-eyed, bleary look Rupert Harris was sending back to him. “A fifth!” he repeated with emphasis, striking the table.

  “Not good enough.”

  “Thass my las’ offer,” coughed Jason, leaning back suddenly in his chair, blinking dully.

  “Can’t handle the juice, eh?” glowed Harris triumphantly, his booze-ridden brain run riot now on an opinion of itself as a masterful negotiator. “Okay, a fifth of the drop it is. But there’s one more thing.

  Jason went immediately on guard. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Slaves!” Harris growled.

  “Slaves,” said Jason noncommittally.

  “Right. When we start makin’ money in this place, an’ clearin’ more land, there’s gonna be a lot of us gonna go down to N’orlins an’ Baton Rouge an’ buy us up some. We worked hard enough. Now when that day comes, I got to know you ain’t goin’ to give us no Tilly Titmouse routine about them niggers bein’ people just like us, are you? ’Cause they ain’t halfways people just like us!”

  “How soon will that be? This slave-purchasing business?”

  Harris winked drunkenly. “Boy, I got me the money now. I’m jes’ watin’ for a few others to get ready. Don’t want to be the only aristocrat, see what I mean? Share and share alike, I say. Ain’t that right? Hate to pay for ’em, though. I thought for a bit Indians might work out, but, hell, you can’t even do anything with the bastards when they’re little, like that kid was. The hell with the red bastards, we’ll kill ’em off in due course. But right now we got to have black nigger slaves…”

  So Harris raved on. He had grown up in “Cah’lina,” an’ his daddy was a dirt farmer, didn’t even own his land. Up the road a piece was the big house, an’ fer God sure you better believe it there was nigger slaves livin’ in that house eatin’ more than Harris’s whole family, an’ owned ’em two shirts each, an’ some of them niggers even looked down on Harris’s daddy and little Rupert, so he swore when he got big he was gonna go way out west an’ build him up the biggest plantation anybody did evah see, an’ there would come a time when he wouldn’t even lift a finger, not even his little pinkie finger, without a nigger there to help him do it!

  “If a man works for me, I’ll pay him,” Jason said, truthfully, but trying to avoid arousing Harris any further.

  But Harris barely heard him. The man was off on a long drunken recital of wrongs done him, blows delivered unjustly, promises unkept. Finally Jason got him back on track. They shook hands on the river-bend property, and they shook again on an annual payment of one fifth of the crop yield. With that, Harris’s mood seemed to improve somewhat, at least enough for him to stand in the doorway of his shack when Jason left, to stand there swaying, and to say, “Hey! You say hello from me to that Delia lady now, y’hear? One of these days I might just slip her something she might like!”

  There was a raucous burst of laughter and, moments later, a resounding crash, as Rupert Harris missed his bed, hit the floor, found he didn’t care, and went to sleep.

  But not before thinking, I won’t file Randolph’s claim in Knoxville, either.

  Chapter IX

  Torch-of-the-Sun, chief of the Chickasaw, rode out early from his village that morning, and he rode alone. Many things were on his mind, and he had to think them through. Councils had their place in the grand scheme of things, and certainly they were useful in debating and deciding tribal policy; but in the land of a man’s heart solitude is often the best seeress.

  The tribe—its women especially, but many men as well—were beginning to wonder aloud when their chief would take a maiden to wife. It must be done, it was expected, because the chieftain, even more than the common brave, must be strong in the loins as well as fierce in battle.

  Winter had passed, and it was spring again—almost a year since Gyva had been cast out. During the course of that year, Torch was pleased to reflect, he had presided over no battles, no wars, no deaths.

  Had his interpretation of the intents of the white jackals been accurate? Did they truly wish peace, or was this pause in the pursuit of hostility only a temporary respite, a time during which the settlers in Harrisville girded themselves for greater conflict?

  Torch had to know.

  Scouts had been sent out many times, to the town and its environs, but their reports had been contradictory, often unsettling. So he rode out that morning alone, to see for himself. War and peace were great issues, not to be decided on the basis of information handed down by others.

  And there was another m
atter too.

  “Torch, I have seen her,” confided Fast River, one day after a general council meeting disbanded. “I thought you would wish to know that she is still safe.”

  Torch did not have to inquire about the object of Fast River’s words. The brave had just returned from reconnoitering Harrisville.

  “I saw her in the fields, working,” Fast River continued.

  “Like a slave? Like Bright Badger?” Torch had ’ demanded angrily. Late last summer, when the Indian boy had stumbled back into the village with his terrible tale, the entire tribe had wished for war. But Bright Badger had reported that a white man had helped him, had freed him. And he had reported that Gyva was alive and well. From his descriptions of the man’s appearance, it became clear that he was the one whose life Gyva had spoken for, the man Randolph, whom Torch himself had set free. So Torch had spoken against war—that time.

  “We gave him his life, and he has repaid us by freeing Bright Badger. So unless they mount an attack against us, my decision is to hold to our peace.”

  The decision seemed to have been a good one; but now, if Gyva was being forced to work as a slave in the fields…

  “No, it seems she does it of her own accord. She works alone,” Fast River said.

  “Alone?”

  “Perhaps not totally alone,” the brave amended. “She works with the sun-haired one.”

  At this news, something deep within Torch’s breast turned over. He had to see it for himself. He had to know the conditions and surroundings, the life and the health and the changings, of his secretly mourned, unforgotten beloved.

  And so he rode forth that spring day.

  The sun beat down on the fields, and waves of heat shimmered dreamlike above the black and furrowed earth. This great field, river watered, river drained, was almost cleared of trees and brush. When it was cleared, crops would be planted, and it would be what Jason already called it: Riverbend Farm.

  “Stop!” he ordered Delia. “You’ll hurt yourself. Please, give me the axe.”

  “No!” she cried, panting with exertion, “I almost have it.” And with those words she took another mighty swinging whack at the half-buried root, felt the tingling solid thock of the blow through her fingertips and up her arms to her shoulders. The last root was sliced through.

  “Now get the horses,” she commanded, smiling in triumph, “and we can pull away the stump.”

  “You did it!” he cried.

  “I told you,” she said, still panting, but happy. “Come. Get the horse. Two more trees and the field is done.”

  “Our field,” Jason said, pointedly. He searched her with his eyes.

  Delia did not respond.

  The help she had given him in clearing land for his farm had been as valuable as it had been honestly proffered, and Delia’s delight in the accomplishment was no less than Jason’s. But the long days of working together had intensified their relationship. There were times when they joked and laughed, pausing in their work to rest beneath the shade of the trees and lunch on fried chicken or cold roast pork, with brown bread and butter and a tin of cold, pale beer. These times were glorious, and she all but forgot her past life amongst her tribespeople. But then there were other times, times marked by currents of tension, a tension all the more difficult to bear because Delia knew exactly what gave rise to it.

  In one instance, several days previous, she and Jason had been working down near the river, dragging stumps and torn, rotten logs from the mud at the place where Jason intended to build a dock. The day was abnormally hot, even for this humid summer along the river; but suddenly a chill passed into the air, and black clouds massed and piled and rolled above the mountains, soon to be crowned by a purple thunderhead that advanced across the valley, blotting out the sun and plunging the earth into shadow. In moments the first cold spatter of raindrops began to fall.

  “Hurry,” Jason had said, grabbing the reins of the horses, slapping their rumps and driving them into the forest. Only among dense trees would there be safety from lightning; to remain out under the few scattered trees still standing on the farm site would be to invite disaster. Delia threw a shawl over her head and raced after him. By the time they reached woods thick enough to keep some of the rain off them, she was already half-soaked.

  The horses stamped and chomped green foliage with big stained teeth, their huge work-sweated bodies steaming in the sudden coolness. Jason tied their reins to the trunk of an ash tree, and leaned against it, fanning himself with the brim of his hat, lifting his face to the tender rain that filtered down through the leaves.

  Delia stood under the shelter of the shielding branches, receiving immediately a flurry of potent images and impressions: closeness; Jason’s loving eyes on her; sharp, tingling air; and a burning memory of having been beneath other branches, other times. A jagged streak of power passed from heaven to earth, rending a tree to kindling with a blasting crack of horror, and a long dread roll of thunder echoed beneath the clouds.

  Delia huddled against the tree trunk beside Jason, and the rain that poured from the leaves of the ash shut them away from the storm, and from all of the world that waited beneath the rain. They were not comrades here. She was aware of every nerve in her body, and a few of them flashed as brilliantly as the second lance of lightning that now cracked down upon a hillock just to the west. She started at the sound, and Jason turned toward her, his eyes filled with wanting and concern. She saw the need in his eyes, saw, too, the readiness of desire in his body. She did not know what to do, that moment; and had the moment not been broken, she truly did not know what she might have done, how she might have responded. The tension was left unresolved, because Rupert Harris and Phil Foley came crashing into the underbrush, leading their dripping mounts by the reins. Harris was cursing a storm of goddamns and Holy-Mother-soaked-through-to-my-gutstrings when he saw Jason and Delia there under the big tree.

  “Hey, now,” Rupert Harris said, his eyes passing from Delia to Jason and back to Delia again. “Nice little spot you’ve found for yourselves.”

  She felt his eyes pass down over her breasts, to linger where her legs met, a concavity clearly outlined beneath the wet buckskin skirt.

  Phil Foley stumbled beneath the branches, leading his horse. More sensitive than Harris, he seemed to discern that he had somehow intruded upon a private, unresolved exchange. But he had the good sense not to mention it.

  Harris pulled a yellow bottle from his saddlebag, dropped to his meaty haunches under the tree, and took himself a healthy drink. He held it out. The bottle passed from one to another, Delia, too.

  “Yer goin’ real good on this here land,” Harris complimented. “When you reckon to have ’er cleared?”

  “Couple more days.”

  “What then?”

  “Put up a house. Put up a barn.”

  “This far from town? That’s bold, ain’t it? Redskins can creep up here in the night and take your scalp off before you can blink an eye.”

  “They’ve been pretty quiet lately.”

  Harris took another drink. “Don’t you believe it. That Firebrand is just a lot trickier and meaner than old Four Bears, that’s all. He’s just a’lyin’ up there in the mountains, waitin’ till we drop our guard, an’ then he’ll be down here burnin’ and killin’ like it’s in his blood, which it is. You can’t trust a redskin, let me tell you.”

  Delia looked away. Jason showed no emotion. Phil Foley wore a pained expression. Why? thought Delia. Did he know she was a Chickasaw?

  “Only good redskin is a dead redskin,” Harris guffawed. “Where you goin’ to situate the house an’ barn?”

  Jason told him.

  “Too close to the river,” Harris pronounced. “You’ll get flooded out.”

  “You said there haven’t been any floods.”

  “Law of averages. Got to be, sometime, right?”

  “I want the place to be near the dock.”

  “Dock, hey? Big plans? Glad to hear it.” An acquis
itive gleam came into his eyes, the cause of which Delia did not then understand, and which the men apparently did not see. Why would Harris display such mercantile enthusiasm over property that clearly belonged to another man?

  “Yep,” he was saying in a self-satisfied way, “looks to me like you’re plannin’ what might become the biggest plantation in these parts. You just build ’er up, hear, an’ get you a mess of horses and a mess of niggers an’ a heavy whip, an’ you’re in business, all right.”

  There was a moment of silence as the storm pounded down, and thunder rolled away toward the mountains. “Get you a wife, too,” Harris added in quite another tone, with his eyes hard on Delia’s body. He was not a man given to diplomatic exchange.

  “You know,” he said, “I swear you look like you got some Indian blood in you.”

  Phil Foley coughed. Delia faltered, but did not have time to reply. Nor did she have to, because Harris talked on.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean t’offend you. How could you be an Indian, skin like you got, so…”

  She did not like the way his eyes were, or the husky tone in his throat as his voice died out.

  “Oh, I expect I’ll marry sometime,” Jason said, too casually, “but a man’s got to offer a wife more than a half-cleared field full of tree stumps.”

  “Right you are,” grunted Harris. He eyed Delia hungrily. “You know what I think? I think there comes a time when a man has to fish or cut bait, know what I mean?” He was speaking to Jason, but his eyes never left Delia, never ceased sweeping slowly up and down her body.

  “Let me put it another way,” he drawled, wetting his lips a time or two. “A man’s got to make a decision or let it be known that he’s not goin’ to make a decision. Got to do it or get off the pot, ain’t that right?”