Firebrand's Woman

by Vanessa Royall

  “Now? At this time of the evening? I shall never be able to walk back to the village before nightfall.”

  “Then wait in the barn and ride with Gale and Phil in their buggy. I believe you are in Gale’s employ, is that not correct?”

  Melody thought first to respond with arrogance, but she faltered. And because she did, Delia knew the truth.

  Gale was hunting for revenge, and she had decided that to reveal Delia as Indian would cause great harm. She was right. And she knew where to strike Delia where she was most vulnerable.

  Outside, the guests were looking about, wondering when mealtime would arrive. Delia wondered, too; and when she went to check on Festus Farson’s progress at the barbecue spit, she discovered that no such progress had been made. Instead she found Farson drinking with the hired hands behind the house. While it was improper in the best of times for a supervisor to socialize with his subordinates, Fes had chosen the worst of times.

  “Fes, why aren’t you carving the meat?”

  He was squatting against the house, in chortling conversation with a huge, one-eared, whip-scarred freedman and two Kentucky hill people whom Jason had hired. He turned his head slowly, regarded Delia with red eyes, and grinned his disquieting grin.

  “You said to carve it when the people was ready to eat.”

  “I told you to start carving half an hour ago.”

  Grin. “Nope, you din’.”

  He was drunk! It was hopeless. Jason would have to do something about him. The man was looking at her, wondering what she would do.

  Well, there was nothing to do here now. Without another word she sought out Jason. He was deep in discussion with three local farmers, who were explaining something to him. They seemed distressed.

  “What is it?” he asked distractedly when she touched his sleeve. Whatever they had been saying had had a most sobering effect upon him.

  She explained about Fes Farson. “Drinking with the help?” he asked, confounded.

  Then, with Phil Foley and Felix Wohl, who had set up a general store in the village, Jason went down to the barbecue spits. The three men set to work, and soon guests were at the table, feasting on the meat, enjoying the succulent sauce. Tanya and the three village girls served, and the meal proceeded efficiently.

  “Why, where’s my Melody?” Gale Foley asked.

  “In the barn, I think,” Delia whispered, leaning down.

  Gale was startled. “What?”

  “Yes. I found her rummaging through my closets. Did you know she was that kind of a girl?”

  Gale Foley paled so suddenly that it seemed as if all blood in her face had drained away to some distant spring, and her eyes showed alarm, fear. Gale knew that Delia had guessed what Melody had been instructed to do: to look for something incriminating in the Randolph household. There was no doubt, either, that Delia knew who had put Melody up to it.

  Gale recovered, though. “Well, if what you tell me is true, I wouldn’t have her in your house, either. Of course, one must be fair. She’s never given me cause for complaint.”

  “I suppose not,” Delia rejoined.

  The tables had been set up in the long dining room and also on the adjacent verandah, where the French doors had been opened to give the effect of one vast room. Delia took her place opposite Jason at the main table and found, to her chagrin, that Rupert Harris had seated himself on her right.

  “There you be,” he grunted, barbecue sauce dribbling down his chin. “Been waiting’ fer yuh. I got tired of jawing with the men.”

  She smiled.

  “Hey, I sure like it when you show them teeth,” he grinned. “You’re the best-lookin’ woman Harrisville’s got, by God, if I do say so. Ain’t that right?” he demanded of those nearest him. “I would’ve married her myself, if Jason’d waited any longer.” He gave her a wet kiss on the cheek.

  Then Harris decided to stand up. Mopping his mouth with the sleeve of his scarlet coat, he held a beer stein high and called for attention.

  “All of us genteel folks know that fine dinners like this here one got to have a toast!”

  People quieted and turned toward him. When Harris spoke, he was listened to. He had power. And knew how to use it. With his size, ruthlessness, and crude but keen intelligence, he was feared.

  “First of all I’d just like to say this here farm is a fine place…”

  A chorus of assents.

  “…an’ that this here new house is a real wonderful place.”

  More agreement.

  “It goes to show you what a man can make of himself in a well-run community. Now, we got our whiners, true, and our yellow-bellies. We got our fainthearts, and even a nigger-lover or two…”

  There were some murmurs of assent to this, but most of the guests looked on quietly, hoping he wasn’t referring to them.

  “But I will say this,” he continued, punctuating his main point with an energetic gesture that caused a small tide of beer to wash over the top of his stein. “I will say that, when the big battle comes, the chaff will be separated from the wheat, as the preacher says, and by God you better believe it.”

  Then he sat down, his lower lip thrust out pugnaciously, and took a long swallow of beer, banging the stein down on the oaken table to signal that his speech was over.

  “Hear, hear!” some said, and there was a small round of applause. Many of the guests—and Delia herself—seemed confused about the meaning of “separating the chaff from the wheat.” All knew that Harris was quite capable of rough trade, hard practice, and it was unsettling to hear him speak of “battle.” Aside from a tavern brawl now and again in the village, or a dispute over fence lines or access to the river, the community had been quite peaceful. Nor had there been any incidents with Indians, save for an occasional alarm when a “redskin war party” was said to have been sighted in the hills.

  The people returned to their meal, wondering whether they were chaff or wheat in Harris’s estimation, and Delia asked him what he had meant by “battle.”

  “Coal,” he said, chewing.

  “Coal?”

  “Them mountains south of here is chock full of coal,” he expanded, as if that explained everything.

  The mountains to the south sheltered Delia’s people, and many other Indian villages.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  He had some more beer and gave her a shrewd wink. “You didn’t think a big operator like me’d be satisfied for long with just a plantation and a town, did yuh? Nope, I aim to branch out. Coal is goin’ to be the comin’ thing in America, and everybody who knows anything knows that, too. Them big cities a’growin’ out east is goin’ to be the biggest and richest market you ever dreamed of. An’, why, when I was up to Lexington t’other week, I heard talk that, by and by, ships ain’t goin’ to run on sails and wind no more, but big smoky engines. An’ you know what them engines is goin’ to need to run on?”

  “Coal?”

  “Coal,” he repeated, triumphantly. “You bet your—you can bet on it. There’s only one little problem.”

  Delia knew what was coming.

  “Them Indians still living up there have got to be kicked out!”

  She tried not to appear alarmed, and sipped some tea, not looking at him.

  “Bothers you, don’t it?” he pressed.

  “Why should it bother me?”

  He chuckled. “You’re too much like old Jason, down there t’other end of the table.”

  Wheat and chaff? “In what way?” Delia asked.

  “Too much heart. You got too much heart, both of you. Now look, I know all about how you went to that there fancy school in Georgia. Gale told me all about that. And I know a woman with looks like yours is generally protected and don’t get to see much of the seamier side of life. And then your husband comes from that there fine family in Virginia, never had to sweat for a dime, and nose points northward from the time of poking out of his mama. But I been raised different. I know what the world’s like from
firsthand experience. There’s plenty for the taking, an’ I sure as hell—pardon my language—aim to get my share.”

  “I just wonder where the Indians will go,” said Delia, trying to stay calm.

  “Hell, who cares where they go? They could die for all I care. But I’m goin’ to have those mountains an’ the coal that’s in ’em. I got my sights set on bein’ the biggest man in the state of Tennessee, an’ maybe, down the road a piece, I might even branch out.”

  “Branch out?”

  “Sure,” he boomed expansively. “Washington. If Andy Jackson can do it, so can I.”

  Delia nodded. Jason had told her that the man who murdered her parents was seeking what was called a “nomination” in this year of 1824. But Jason didn’t think Jackson would win it yet. “We westerners aren’t strong enough to put him over yet,” Jason had said, “and God knows we’re not united enough.” She had been pleased to learn that her nemesis did not have a good chance, and now, in her desire to refute Harris’s bombastic certainty, she spoke too quickly.

  “Chula Harjo will not win,” she said, using the Indian epithet that had been burned into her brain since girlhood.

  He stopped chewing, his mouth open, and looked at her. “What was that you said?”

  “I said I don’t think Jackson will win this year.” Her voice was lower. She sensed danger.

  “No, there was something you said. Those words.”

  “I’m sorry, but you must be mistaken. Perhaps I did not speak clearly.”

  He looked at her with an odd expression, but decided not to pursue the matter further. I have made a bad mistake, Delia reflected.

  “How’re them hired men of your’n working out?” Harris wanted to know.

  “Oh, quite well, thank you.”

  “That ain’t what I hear.”

  She found nothing to reply, especially since she did not believe they were working out as well as they might.

  Harris laughed. “Don’t let me bother you none,” he said. “I’m just needlin’ a little bit. I already warned Jason about it. That’s what I meant when I said before that you two got too much heart. You don’t know how the world goes. Oh, sure, them ex-slaves and hillbillies will work for you, but how much? I told old Jason he could get twice the crop twice as quick with a bunch of niggers and a good driver. An’ how’s this Fes Farson coming along? He get the work out of those men?”

  Before she had a chance to respond with some agreeable vagary, Harris read her thoughts.

  “Now, come on. Fes is a good man. He’s—like I was sayin’ before, wheat and chaff. Fes is all wheat.”

  Harris considered Fes Farson part of the wheat?

  “It’s just he’s into a bad situation here. That boy could drive niggers real good, give him a chance to do it. He’d get the work out of them or they’d be hangin’ from a tree. You just can’t waste a good hand like old Festus on hired help.”

  “Jason has decided how he wants the farm run, and certainly he’s prospering. As are you,” she added.

  He drew back a bit and looked at her. “Loyalty,” he cried. “I can tell you I sure as hell—pardon my language—like to see that in a woman. But don’t worry, Jason is young yet. He’ll come round yet to my way of thinking. He’ll see the light. And so will you.”

  Harris seemed very certain of this, and dropped the subject.

  “Anybody hear the rumor that Ginral Jackson’ll be comin’ down this way pretty soon?” called Felix Rafferty, who owned the village livery.

  “Ain’t no rumor,” Harris shouted back. “He’s comin’, all right.”

  Delia felt a chill creeping around the walls of her heart.

  “What for?” she asked.

  “Hell, it’s a political year, ain’t you heard?” Harris chortled. “An’ if you all will listen to me, I think we can make that fact work to our advantage.”

  At the other end of the table, Delia saw, a certain wariness appeared in Jason’s eyes. He quickly masked it.

  “I been thinkin’,” Harris drawled, giving the assembly the benefit of his cunning. “If we was all to get together an’ make sure Old Hickory knows he can count on us to the last man, politically and in any other way he wants—well, I think that’d be to our advantage.”

  “Do you have anything specific in mind?” Jason asked.

  “Well, I might have, and then I might not have,” Harris replied. “But you all know by now that if I have something in mind, it’s goin’ to be to everybody’s benefit.”

  Delia heard something like a derisory snort midway down the table. Reuben Sills, a farmer who was not doing very well, seemed angry.

  “How’d you all like to get rich?” Harris was asking. “An’ I mean real rich.”

  Reuben Sills squirmed in his chair, his face growing red.

  Everybody was listening, though. “What you got in mind this time, Rupert?”

  “Oh, a little something,” Harris said cagily.

  But Delia believed she already knew what it was. Harris would not tell them about his coal scheme, though. He would keep that to himself, and maneuver the people of the community into a position where they would unknowingly help him. She knew Harris all too well. A few years ago he’d gone up to the Hermitage to try to get Jackson’s militia to wipe the Chickasaw out of the mountains. He had failed, that time. But now conditions were altered. If Jackson needed support badly enough, and if he could now be persuaded to attack the Chickasaw, Harris would have access to the mountains and the coal.

  If the Chickasaw were defeated!

  Then and there, she vowed that if the white men decided to make war, she would warn her people somehow. Even if it meant trekking through the forest, taking the news herself. They would not be surprised by ambush; they would be warned.

  “Seems to me,” drawled Reuben Sills, in a manner that was at once obsequious and disrespectful, “that a lot of us been hearin’ about gettin’ rich for an awful long time, an’ ain’t too many actually been doin’ it but a couple people I could name.”

  Harris laughed, too heartily. “Come on now, Reuben. Stop this here bellyachin’. Everybody in the whole valley knows you’d rather wrap your hand around a whiskey jug than a plow handle.”

  “That—that ain’t the truth.”

  “Yeah, an’ we all know you got your crop in late three years running, an’ so you got a paltry little harvest. That ain’t nobody’s fault but—”

  “That ain’t the real reason!” Reuben cried, leaping up, knocking over his chair.

  Momentarily Harris looked stunned. He knew people muttered about the shares he took from each crop—hell, wouldn’t be human if they didn’t complain, right? But open defiance was quite another thing.

  “Sit down, Reuben,” advised Jason quietly. “It’s neither the time nor the place…”

  He said it in such a way that those listening closely received the distinct impression that there was a time and place for some sort of complaint. But no one wanted a scene, least of all at a party celebrating a proud new farm. Reuben sat down again, and everyone conspired to forget the incident.

  The hired men were none too quick about getting the guests’ horses and buggies ready for the homeward trip, and Fes Farson wasn’t much help. He stood in the lantern-lighted yard, trying to direct things, trying not to stagger, and saying as little as possible. Whenever he did have to issue an order, such as “Zeke, hitch the horse to the buggy” or “No, Paul, the dapple and the roan go to the hay wagon, not the charabanc,” his words emerged like a pool of slurry consonants.

  Jason, saying farewell to his guests, and recalling Delia’s comment about Festus drinking with the men, walked over to him.

  “What’s the trouble, Farson?”

  “Huh? Aw, ev’thing…ev’thin’s fiiinnne…”

  “I don’t think so. You’re embarrassing yourself, and the rest of us. Go to your quarters, and we’ll discuss this when you sober up.”

  “Ain’gon’ ’scuse nthnng, you—”

 
“This isn’t the first time, either, is it? I’ve had reports that you’ve been drinking in the barn when you ought to have been out in the fields.”

  Farson crinkled up his eyes, his alcohol-riddled brain working on the problem. Reports? Reports could have reached Jason from only one person, an’ that was—

  “Miz Randolph! The…I’ll…” and he made an ineffectual punching gesture that threw him off balance. He swayed, almost fell, recovered, and weaved his way across the yard, disappearing into the barn.

  Rupert Harris, waiting for his carriage to be brought round, watched Farson go.

  “Too bad. You’re wastin’ that boy’s talents.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to let him go,” Jason replied. “You can’t have the respect of your workers if you sit around drinking with them. Not only that, Fes is disgracefully drunk.”

  “Don’t bother me none,” Harris grinned. “He’s out of his element, that’s all. Like I was tellin’ you, get darkies. Get about fifty darkies and give ol’ Fes a whip, an’ you won’t ever see no happier or more productive man in your life. ’Cept me an’ you, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “But then, it is your farm.”

  “Is it?”

  Something flickered in Harris’s eyes, something quick and knowing, but he grinned readily and threw his big arm around Jason’s shoulders. “Maybe you’d like to renegotiate that share of the crop you’ve been giving me. It is a little steep, I know, and I can afford to ease off on you some, on account of how big your harvests’ve been.”

  “I wouldn’t turn that offer down,” Jason said, not warmly.

  “Heh heh. All right, couple of days or so, I’ll drive out an’ we’ll jaw on it. Want to keep you happy. You’re one of the best men in the community, an’ I think that truly.”

  “Nice to know,” Jason said.

  Then Harris’s big slave, gold buttons gleaming on his red coat, held open the carriage door, and the community’s leading citizen got in. “Great dinner,” he said, “great party. An’ once again, say thanks to the Missus. An’ by the way,” he grinned, leaning out, his big, red-bearded face right in front of Jason’s, “what do the words Chula Harjo mean to you?”