Firebrand's Woman

by Vanessa Royall

  “No harm will come to Chula,” she told her husband.

  He gave her a long, searching look, with something else in his glance that she did not immediately recognize. She remembered that time in bed, when she was certain he had guessed the full truth behind the battle of Talking Rock. “All right,” he said, “I’ll see you in bed.”

  After he had left the room, Delia realized with a sense of guilt that what she had seen in his eyes was trust. But she banished the guilt. No time for it now. She was in the kitchen. Chula Harjo was splashing in the four-clawed tub. Now was the moment that had, since Talking Rock, waited to raise up and strike, like some patient beast of vengeance, concealed behind dark trees in the forests of time. Delia was ready for the moment. The butcher knife would be best, and it was in the kitchen drawer. She had had Paul sharpen it for her yesterday. The glow of the kitchen lamp glinted on the instruments, and light flickered on the blades. Delia saw her hand reach out and take up the horn handle of the chosen knife, fully as long as a white man’s killing-knife, and just as deadly.

  Without a sound, precisely as she had been taught, Delia moved to the bathroom door, and without a sound she turned the handle and eased the door open.

  Chula Harjo was bathing, slowly, drowsily soaping himself, using a small dipper now and then to spill water over his head and shoulders. Without clothes he looked even leaner, and in the dim light of the lantern, Delia saw mark after mark, scar after scar. All those wounds! All those battles! And he had not been felled.

  For just a quiver of an instant her heart faltered. Was this animal before her of mere flesh or of some other substance, more divine?

  Then he brushed back his hair, and she saw the scar inflicted by her grandfather, and it was a great scar indeed. The only problem was that Four Bears had weakened, had experienced compassion at the ultimate moment. Death. Four Bears ought to have dealt death on that last moment.

  Delia eased the door open a few inches more, enough for her to squeeze inside. The general’s back was half turned toward her, and she saw one strong, flat shoulder, the other being obscured by the tub. Then she stopped. On the table next to the tub, which held the fluffy towels, she saw something else—Jackson’s knife.

  He left nothing to dunce.

  She felt at once both contempt and respect for him. He left nothing to chance, and that was why he had outlived his wounds. That was why he was alive.

  Pressed closely but not rigidly next to the wall, Delia ceased to move. She was fully inside the room now, and the door closed of its own weight, making no sound. The flame from the lantern, encased by isinglass, was not disturbed and did. not flicker.

  Delia felt the knife in her hand. Her heart was beating slowly, and her soul was very still. She was ready.

  But inexplicably, out of the past, she saw another man before her, a Choctaw brave, lying in the dust. “Scalp him!” the people were howling at her, “scalp him!”

  A feeling of depression mingled with the righteousness in her heart, and for just a moment she floundered.

  “Mrs. Randolph?” Andrew Jackson asked, turning slowly toward her. He was not surprised, nor was he afraid. He did not even reach for his knife.

  “Talking Rock,” she said, not moving.

  “I know,” he replied. And, lifting his leg, he showed her the puncture marks that Delia’s mother had inflicted with the pitchfork.

  They looked at each other.

  “I wish to God I had not had to do it,” he said, his eyes not leaving hers. “The day has never left me, and the day is with me still. You are the child?”

  “I am… I was.” She had not moved, but the distance between them was not great. If she leapt and struck, he would have time to reach for his knife. It would be a fair fight.

  “Why,” she heard herself asking, “were you taking me to Florida? Did you plan to sell me into slavery?”

  “No,” he said, quite calmly. “The only thing I could think to do, after the folly of Talking Rock, was to find Seminole who would take you in.”

  Another long moment passed. Against her will, in spite of all her planning and resolve, Delia believed him.

  “Did you come to kill me?” he asked then.

  She nodded.

  “Four Bears didn’t when he had the chance.”

  “Perhaps he should have.”

  “Perhaps, but he didn’t.”

  The fact was there in the room with them. Four Bears was there in the room with them.

  “Don’t do it,” he said, not pleading, simply advising. “You’ll gain nothing, and bring a lot of pain to everybody.”

  “Your pain will be short.”

  “But yours will be long. Very long.”

  Their eyes were locked together. Delia saw no fear in his, and he none in hers. Then he reached out, very slowly, and pushed his knife to the floor, where it skidded across the boards, out of immediate reach.

  “I bear you no malice of any kind,” he said, and waited.

  All of the past, every one of the stories, came back to her. The long hatred of Chula Harjo, every twinge of it, was with her in the room. But also with her was his presence, and the knowledge—which she could no longer deny or misinterpret—that he had once done the best he could for her, and tried to bring her to safety.

  Delia nodded to him and went from the room. But it was Gyva who had let him live when she could have killed him with the knife. And it was Gyva who knew that Jackson was a warrior, and a worthy one. He was, as Jason had said, a great man.

  “And the general?” asked Jason, as she came into bed beside him.

  “He is safe,” she said.

  They both knew what she meant.

  Chapter XVI

  “Well, Jason, what are we going to do?” Phil Foley asked again. “We’ve been waiting on this Harris thing since last summer. If we don’t get together and act soon, we might as well forget about it.”

  “No one is more aware of it than I am,” Jason responded wearily. “After Jackson’s visit, I had hoped we could get most of the nervous nellies together for a united stand. But Harris was smart. He went around the county and talked to them one at a time. Making deals and telling lies. He told Otto Ronsky, for example, that the two of us were troublemakers, and then increased Otto’s share of the crop by 10 percent. The funny thing—if you’d call it funny—is that the whole crop was Otto’s in the first place—Harris had rooked him out of his land, the same as everyone else.”

  “If people don’t want to believe, they won’t.”

  “They’ve got to.”

  It was evening, mid-March, at Riverbend farm. A cold wind howled down from the mountains, and rain battered against the farmhouse, gusting sheets of rain that moved like ghostly curtains in the air, Phil and Jason were drinking coffee at the kitchen fireplace, talking over community matters, when Delia entered, having just put little Andrew to bed.

  “Phil, I think you’d better spend the night. You’ll catch your death, riding back to Harrisville in this rain. Let me have Tanya make up a bed for you.”

  Phil went to the window and looked out. The final effect of twilight was nothing more than a dull patch of gray behind black, wind-driven clouds. Sheets of rain slanted in toward the window, blasting the pane.

  “Atrocious weather,” he said. “All right, Delia, thanks. I’ll take that offer of bed. I don’t need any more convincing.”

  Jason, too, observed the progress of the storm. “Three days now,” he was saying.

  Further words were unnecessary. The river was rising, and everybody knew it.

  “Maybe we ought to get some sleep now,” Phil said, letting his voice trail off. They might have to flee by night.

  “Not a bad idea. But first let’s check the situation.”

  The two men pulled on hip boots and oilcloths, which gave some protection from the storm, and made their way outside. Riverbend farm, its house and barns and outbuildings, was an assortment of dark gray shapes outlined against the sky. The yard was a quag
mire, and it took ten minutes to advance as far as the bunkhouse. It took the strength of both men to open the door in the face of the slashing wind.

  Inside, cold and dark—and no one there.

  “What the…?” Phil exclaimed.

  “Let’s try the barn.”

  The distance was not great, but by the time they reached the big, rambling structure of stables, stalls, and hayloft, both men were soaked to the skin, and cursing. The heavy, warm smell of sheltered animals was not at all unpleasant, but most of the hired hands huddled there in the barn wore expressions that belied the apparent security of the place. Some of them seemed a bit abashed, caught by their employer in such a situation.

  “Bunkhouse was a little too close to the river,” boomed big Paul, the freedman, in his resonant bass.

  “You have a point there,” Jason said.

  “What are we gonna do, boss?”

  “First I’m going to try to check the river. If it’s over, the pilings on the dock, we’d better do some quick thinking.”

  “We gonna have to get out, boss? If so, ain’t it better to go now than wait around and have to wrestle with the horses at midnight?”

  The other hands were nodding, and not a few of them looked fearful. They were good fellows, hard workers. Since the departure of Fes Farson, whose very presence had been a bad example, Jason had had few problems with any of the men. And he could understand their desire to leave before the river rose any further, before the access roads were flooded, too.

  “Let me make one last check of the river before it gets full dark,” he told them. “In the meantime, it probably wouldn’t hurt any to get the horses harnessed.”

  “I sure as hell hope we’re not too late,” he told Phil when they were back outside again, struggling through the storm.

  There was no answer. Phil had trouble enough stepping from one sticky patch of mud to another.

  Jason had built the main section of the farmstead close to the river because, with the big dock he had also erected, crops could more easily be transported to Harrisville, downriver, or on to larger market towns. Supplies needed for the house or the farm could be delivered readily, too, quickly unloaded and used. One of the reasons the farm had been so expeditiously built was the fact that lumber from the sawmill did not have to be hauled long distances overland, merely taken from the river barge and used as required.

  Jason stood on the slight promontory—it seemed slight indeed—and listened to the thunder of the river. Last summer, when the river had been low, this little rise of land behind the barn had seemed an immense cliff; it had been inconceivable that the river might ever rise so high. Jason watched the water, gray and white and black and roaring, and recalled Harris’s original piece of advice: “Build that close to the river, you might get flooded out.” Well, Harris had never been stupid, no matter what else he might be.

  “My God, will you look at that!” exclaimed Phil Foley, howling into the wind. There was fear, as well as awe in his voice. From the east, where the valley lay wide and easy, to the west, where the river swept into a bend and disappeared into the forest, there seemed to be nothing but water, a vast, sweeping channel of thunder. By the last rays of light, the men saw whole trees washed along like pieces of tinder, unmanned boats washed from their moorings upriver, and flat, dark shapes that could only have been parts of buildings, battered down by the river and carried along.

  Jason said nothing for a long time, just stood there watching the colossal tide of destruction rip and rip and rip his earth away. Finally Phil nudged him. “It’s not getting any lighter,” he said.

  Whether there were tears in Jason’s eyes, he could not say. It was too dark to tell, and there was too much rain.

  “See that bend down there?” he called into the smashing roar of the wind and water. “Where the river turns?”

  Phil nodded.

  “I named the farm for that bend. Delia told me once about a certain place on a river, and a sacred stick buried in the sand—” He broke off, shrugged. “I guess it’s just an In—I guess it’s just a story.”

  They abandoned the farm that night, reached high ground safely, and were in Harrisville by dawn. They were guests at Gale Foley’s inn, exactly as they had been several years before. Days later, when the rain ceased, they rode back out to the farm. Everything had been swept away. All was as it had once been, except that the trees were gone now, too.

  Even the lone pin oak Delia had convinced Jason to spare.

  An evil omen, she thought, but she said nothing.

  The Book of Exodus

  Chapter I

  The Choctaw chieftain, slashes of war-paint crimson on his blunt forehead and high cheekbones, leaned forward. The council fire danced in his canny, eager eyes, and he even allowed himself a flicker of a grimace that might have been a smile, had he ever learned how to smile.

  “Torch,” he said. “What malady has entered into the heart of the Chickasaw people?”

  Torch held the other’s eyes and frowned. “We suffer no malady of which I am aware.”

  Around them, squatting upon their haunches or sitting crosslegged in the dust, were many braves of both tribes, watching one another with wary malice. The Chickasaw recalled very well the Choctaw raid in the year of Four Bears’ death, and the Choctaw had not forgotten the warriors who had fallen in that raid. Thus this meeting between Torch and Red Dagger, the Choctaw chief, attracted uncommon interest. Red Dagger had sought the meeting; Torch had agreed.

  “Let him come to us and speak what is in him,” Teva had counseled. “Be well armed and vigilant. There seems little danger in listening.”

  So the Choctaw had made their way from forest strongholds in the West, and the first council in many years had commenced between the two peoples.

  “Harrisville has been allowed to grow unmolested,” grunted Red Dagger. “Is that not a malady?”

  “The village has not harmed us, and I do not believe we are in any danger from them. The weary, devastating times of battle upon battle, with nothing to show for effort but death, has ended.” He stared boldly at the Choctaw. “Once we had among us a brave who often said, ‘The path of war is dearer than the path of plenty.’ We had war then, much war, but little else. Now we have peace and plenty.”

  Slowly, ceremoniously, he filled a great hooked pipe with fragrant tobacco and lit it. Still watching Red Dagger, Torch drew deeply on the stem and blew a cloud of smoke from his mouth.

  “He was a fine brave,” said Torch, “the man who spoke so endearingly of war. But he is dead now.”

  Then he passed the pipe to Red Dagger, who took it, scowling. Red Dagger puffed slowly and long, mindful that his braves were waiting for a reply that would surpass the eloquence of this big, young Chickasaw. Red Dagger puffed for a long time. He was, in fact, impressed and a little startled by the bearing and authority of Torch. Red Dagger had long believed that the strange absence of the Chickasaw from the battlefields of Tennessee was due to this new chief, whom he had never met, and to the new chief’s timidity and unmanliness. On the journey here Red Dagger had been in high spirits, eager to sit down and make a fool of Torch before his own people. But now, smoking the pipe much longer than was required, Red Dagger had the sensation of a man who has allowed overconfidence to outplay wisdom, and suspects it might be too late to rectify the judgment.

  “There are those who die in the glory of battle for their people,” he said at length, “and there are those who die ingloriously, with full bellies.”

  Choctaw braves grunted in admiration, and not a few Chickasaw nodded with respect. Red Dagger had been a fiery presence in these mountains for almost thirty circlings of the sun; he was one of those rare men who, still living, had already bequeathed to their people the vibrant stuff of legend and wonder.

  “It may also be rendered thus,” Torch commented slowly. “Tragedy lies in wasteful death. The Great Spirit did not provide us with rich lands in order that we live in hunger and want.”

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p; Another chorus of respectful grunts rose in the council wigwam, and the pipe began to make its rounds among the braves.

  “He-Who-Dwells-in-the-Clear-Sky,” retorted Red Dagger, the very quickness of his reply betraying some heat, “has not deeded us this land that it be taken from us by the jackals.”

  Torch looked at the older man for a long time. Red Dagger had come here for some kind of showdown, that was clear. Exactly what was on the old chief’s mind, Torch did not yet know. But judging from Red Dagger’s opening thrusts, he meant to put Torch on the defensive, to make him seem weak, and thus to force him, in the end, to prove strength by supporting Red Dagger’s position.

  Torch decided upon an approach that might smoke out whatever Dagger’s position was. If successful, such a ploy would conserve many words, and not a few tempers.

  “Did Ababinili create the white man, too?” he asked bluntly.

  He phrased the thought as a question; thus he could not be accused of entertaining base, ignoble, heretical beliefs. But, as he had expected, the question itself was enough to stun listeners to an attention all the more keen for its utter silence. Well did Torch know, too, that this question had never been answered, not by any of the wise ones who had shared fate with the Indian nations.

  There was a legend to explain the existence of white men, of course. It said that once, before there were red braves and maidens upon the face of the earth, before the sun was old and easy, Ababinili himself had lived in the mountains of Tennessee. There had he planned the universe he was to create, and there did he ponder all of the things he would quicken with life and beauty. One afternoon, in the midst of euphoric contemplation, he drifted into sleep, and while he slept, the wind grew chill. In his mind Ababinili imagined wondrous things, and saw himself creating them. But the cold wind chilled his blood, sullied his dream; and from his brain sprang a terrible serpent that glittered like ice, and his eyes were the eyes of death, and his forked tongue was cold fire that would freeze anything it touched. Ababinili felt the cold then, both the cold of the wind and that of the serpent, and awakened. Realizing what had transpired, he drove the serpent northward, ever northward, and on the top of the world itself he created for the serpent a prison of ice from which the beast was never to depart. The primeval serpent of evil remained locked beneath the top of the sky, but it had possessed powers of its own, and from its pale body had come eggs to hatch in the ice of the north. And when they were hatched, the offspring of the cold serpent spread out through the world to defile everything the Great Spirit had created, and to kill his true red children.