Firebrand's Woman

by Vanessa Royall

  She stood for a while, holding Andrew, taking in the dismal scene, then did all that she could do. She walked through the smouldering village and quietly set down next to the rest of the dead the beautiful, eerily unmoving body of her dead son.

  “Jason?” was her first word.

  People moved about her, lugging bodies. White men and women were laid out neatly along Main Street. Indians—and there were more than a few-were unceremoniously dumped in a heap at the edge of the village.

  “Jason?” she asked again.

  “If you’re quick you might get to say good-bye.” A drawl.

  Delia whirled around. Fes Farson, grinning.

  “Surprised to see me?” he said goadingly.

  She couldn’t answer. Fes looked the same as ever, half-drunk, arrogant, oddly triumphant. He grinned, and the grin went away, as it always did, a reflex that signaled not humor but danger.

  Then Rupert Harris came slouching out of the livery.

  “Phil Foley just went to his great reward,” he said to a few women who were standing around, dazed and shocked. “Liver. Arrow in the liver. But better’n being scalped like Gale, an’ now—Delia!” he exclaimed, seeing her. “Where you been?”

  She told him. She told him of her son’s death.

  “Now is that the truth?” Fes Farson drawled. “Is that the real truth now—redskin?”

  “Shut up, Fes,” grunted Harris. “Not now.”

  “Jason?” Delia managed.

  “Yup. C’mere with me. We got the wounded on straw in the livery. Best we could do.”

  He took her hand and led her toward the stables, practically pulling her along. “Lucky we drove off them Chickasaw bastards,” he was saying. “’Course, you might not see it that way.”

  “What…what do you mean?”

  “Yer Chickasaw, ain’t ya? We know. Melody told us about that leather pouch.”

  With effort Delia managed not to touch between her breasts, where the leather pouch was concealed beneath the folds of her wet clothing.

  “Melody!” she snapped, showing open contempt.

  “Uppity, too, ain’t ya?” Harris grinned, unperturbed, and all but pushed her into the livery stable. “How come you ain’t showing more sorrow? I know. ’Cause killin’ by Chickasaw don’t bother you none, ain’t that right?”

  “They weren’t Chickasaw,” she replied.

  But Rupert did not hear how, calmly, coldly she said this. He did not read her will. He heard her words but did not believe them.

  Jason lay on a pallet of bloody straw, very pale. But the light of life and love was still upon him.

  “Delia…”

  She knelt down beside him. “Don’t talk.” She could see that he’d been badly wounded—not the clean wound of an arrow, but rather that of a tomahawk, a wicked blow that had almost severed his arm from his shoulder. There was blood all over.

  “Now that indeed do look like the same man who run me off his farm once,” said Fes Farson, coming up and standing there, looking down at Jason.

  “Get away from here,” Delia told him.

  Paul, the big, one-eared freedman, appeared, and Tanya. They looked terrified.

  “You got to help us, Miz!” Tanya began.

  Paul put a hand on her shoulder. “If Mista Randolph dies, Mista Harris an’ Mista Farson done tole us—”

  “You been needin’ some real larnin’, Paul,” drawled Farson, “an’ I reckon I can give it to you.”

  “Delia!” Jason gasped. She bent down close to his lips so that she could hear. “Andrew?”

  She looked at his pale, lovely face, made blank by the absence of blood. Death trembled behind his eyes.

  “He is all right,” she told him. “Andrew is…he is out of danger.”

  “He’s dead, Randolph,” interrupted Fes Farson.

  “Stop it!” Delia cried.

  Farson looked sheepish, then defiant.

  “Oh, Miz Randolph!” mourned Tanya. “What’s to become of us?”

  Down on the bloody straw Jason was sinking fast. Delia told him of the flight from the schoolhouse, of the ride in the river, the cold, the fall. “It is true,” she said, holding his hand, watching him go far away from her, watching his eyes go far. “Our son is dead. I did as well as I could, and at least he did not suffer much.”

  Seeing the look in Delia’s eyes, Jason accepted Andrew’s death. With difficulty he moved his good hand and touched hers. “Try not to blame yourself,” he gasped. “It seems that nothing has turned out as we had hoped.”

  Delia remembered the meeting at the school. Whatever might have been accomplished there would not come to pass. How could it? The men who wished to challenge Harris were dead, and the legal papers prepared so painstakingly by Phil Foley had been consumed in the holocaust.

  “How many were left alive?” she asked, stroking Jason’s white cheek, watching him drift away.

  “Oh, enough,” Harris grunted. “With the slaves we got left, and the people we got left, I reckon we can start over. And this time around I’ll avoid some mistakes I made in the first try. Like bringin’ in nigger lovers and half-breeds an’ such.”

  “Harris,” Jason managed, his breath coming thin and keen, “Tanya and Paul, and the other Negroes working for me, are free people. Their papers are on file in Lexington.”

  “Is that right?” Harris asked, grinning.

  “They are free to go…” Jason said, his voice trailing off in weakness.

  Big Paul took those words as an indication that his service to Jason was concluded, and he turned to leave the livery.

  “Hold it, nigger!” Fes Farson stood there, pistol in his hand. Tanya pressed herself against a harness rack.

  “I done heard Mista Randolph say—”

  “I didn’t done heard him say nothin’,” Farson smirked. “Get your hands up. You too,” he told Tanya. “What’ll we do with ’em, Rupert?”

  “Ah, well, there’s a backroom to the general store. Ought to hold ’em for now, I’d say. Yeah, run ’em over there.”

  “Mista Randolph!” Paul was pleading, and Tanya was speechless with horror. Back to slavery now, and with a master as cruel as Harris, a driver as brutal as Fes Farson? Tanya did not know how to react, and so she did nothing, but Paul had vowed never to return to bondage, no matter what the price. He lunged forward, his big arm moving powerfully, and caught Fes Farson a massive blow on the side of the head. Farson spun around and went crashing into the harness rack, buried in horse collars and falling leather. Paul spun, too, and moved for the door.

  Then the shot rang out like a whip crack in the livery, and big Paul plunged to the floor like a great black tree, rolled over once, and lay still. His eyes were open. He was bleeding from the mouth. But he had kept his vow; he would be a slave no more.

  “What…happened?” gasped Jason, who was too weak to raise his head and see.

  “Done lost us a prospective worker,” Harris grunted, holstering his revolver.

  “Don’t speak, darling,” Delia told him, cradling his head.

  “Yep, Fes, we lost us one out of his own stupidity and because Randolph here didn’t know how to make ’em obey a white man’s orders. Who we goin’ to get to replace Paul anyway, hey?”

  Fes Farson’s eyes flickered malevolently, icy and cunning. “How ’bout we get us a half-breed, Rupert?”

  Tanya was crying. Delia heard “half-breed” and tensed, wondering how she might flee.

  “Well, a half-breed ain’t all one thing and she ain’t all the other, but I expect we can figure out a few things for her to do.”

  “You seen any half-breeds around here lately, Rupert?”

  Then Jason gave a vast, unearthly groan, and it was evident that his time had come. Delia forgot all about her plight and rushed to him again, kneeling down beside him. Even Harris and Fes Farson quieted in the presence of death, and stood away so that husband and wife might exchange last words.

  “I’m…sorry…” he gasped, with the f
licker of a wan grimace. “It’s all come to…nothing…”

  A bubble of blood appeared in one nostril, expanding and diminishing as he breathed his last.

  Delia cradled his head in her hands and held him to her breasts. Harris and Fes were forgotten, Tanya, too, and she was alone with Jason in a strange, terrible world where years were measured in heartbeats, hours in the blink of an eye.

  “Nothing…” he repeated, with the tears of death already seeping from his eyes.

  “No, no,” Delia soothed, pressing her cheek to his. “Everything! You have loved me, cared for me, protected me. We have had so much together.”

  “It… is gone…”

  No, she thought defiantly. He cannot go into death with this on his mind. And so thinking, she began to speak.

  “Nothing is ever gone!” she said to him, looking deeply into his eyes now, speaking a bit more forcefully so that he might hear every word and sense belief behind them. “Nothing good is ever lost. You gave me the best things in life, freely and with love, and however long I shall live, those gifts will not be just a part of me, they will be me.” She stroked his face and wiped away the flooding tears. “Yes, yes,” she whispered now, smiling down at him. “In the darkest hours, one loving memory is enough to keep the spirit alive, and you have given me so many such memories, so many gifts…”

  Jason heard her, understood, and believed. His lips moved slightly, a last smile. Then he died.

  “Jason!” Delia cried then, her composure spent in the effort of easing his death. “Jason! No!”

  But he was gone from her now forever.

  She held Jason’s body to herself for a long time. To their credit, Harris and Fes Farson permitted her at least a short time in which to grieve. But night was coming on, and there was much to be done. At length, when Delia stood up and stepped away from the body, the two men coughed, kicked at the floor, and got back to business.

  “Them was your people today, wasn’t they?” Harris asked, after a cold, momentary glance that effectively measured Jason’s recent departure from life. “Chickasaw, wasn’t they?”

  With a shock she recalled the Choctaw in the war canoes, and their disguises. Odd. She had seen them hours before, and yet it seemed that years had passed since then.

  Excitedly, grieving, she explained to Harris and Fes Farson how the Choctaw had practiced their malicious deceit, how they were trying to stir white men against the Chickasaw nation. Surely Harris would realize the meaning of such a trick.

  But his look grew darker and darker as she spoke.

  “Come now,” she urged him. “Let us look at some of the bodies of the Indians who were killed. Beneath the Chickasaw war paint we shall see Choctaw braves.”

  “Is that right? How can you tell?”

  “There is one sure way. The Choctaw do not mark kill-cuts by slashing their arms with knives. Rather they tattoo an eagle upon their biceps, and for each death they have dealt, an additional feather is added to the eagle’s tail.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Harris asked, looking worried.

  She nodded, and started outside to inspect a fallen brave.

  “Hold it. You ain’t goin’ nowhere,” Harris said.

  “But-”

  “Fes, we got to bury them Indians. When Jackson comes down here, he’s got to think it was Firebrand and them Chickasaw responsible. There ain’t no coal on Choctaw land, and if he wipes them out, that ain’t gonna do us no good.”

  It was no use. Harris was poised to act now. The attack upon the village was provocation sufficient to even the most judicious militia commander. Chula Harjo would at last go into the mountains and deal the death that had been so long stayed. That was what Harris had always wanted.

  That, and coal.

  “Fes, take that black wench and Miz Randolph here, an’ lock ’em up in the general store. We got to get to work an’ bury them Indians.”

  “Might be we ought to burn ’em, if this kill-cut business is like Miz Randolph says.”

  “Good idea, Fes. Good idea. I always knew you were a good man, an’ maybe when the work’s done I’ll think of a little something to offer you as a reward.”

  He gave Delia a long, ugly look, taking her in from head to toe, then shoved her along in front of him, out the livery and toward the general store. Fes grabbed Tanya and pushed her along.

  They left Jason on the straw.

  Delia was unaware of time, locked in numbness and grief. She could hear survivors burying the dead-Jason and little Andrew would be among their number. And just at nightfall there came a sudden flash, as lantern oil was poured and ignited. Not long thereafter, the thick smell of burnt flesh came into the air, and Delia covered her nose with the sleeve of her dress.

  “Lordy!” choked Tanya, coming for a moment out of her own panicky torpor. “What on earth is that bodacious stink?”

  “Evidence being burned,” murmured Delia, but Tanya did not understand. She asked again for an explanation, but Delia was too dispirited to give further interpretation.

  Then it was nightfall, and the storeroom in which they were incarcerated became gloomy, then dark. The heavy plank door was locked securely. There was no escape, at least none that presented itself, but the two women were fortunate in that cider and foodstuffs, as well as other materials, were stored within. Delia did not know, then, why she did not want to die, as her husband and son had died. Perhaps it was that she knew they had not been killed by Harris or Farson, in which case being held in captivity by those men would have immeasurably increased her sorrow. Yes, perhaps it was because she knew that the Choctaw had—directly and indirectly—killed her loved ones that she did not succumb to grief. Oh, yes, she had already dealt a death in her short life, and a cunning, canny Choctaw had died beneath her hand. More would die, too, when she got free of here…

  Imagining freedom, and enjoying the thought of it, Delia rallied.

  “Tanya. Let us eat. Did you see tallow here? We ought to have paid attention before nightfall. Did you see candles? Here, can you find the cider jug? We must keep up our strength.”

  Her words served to encourage the poor girl, whose every thought was now given to conditions of enslavement, the tragedy of which she well knew.

  “Was over here, Miz, I think,” she said, and soon they had a lantern lighted, and were eating hardtack and beef jerky and drinking cider on the floor of the storeroom. They had also found heavy blankets piled on a shelf in the corner, and these served to hold off the chill. Delia chewed the hardtack, thinking. There seemed to be no way out of this room, and yet it was made of wood, and they had fire. If, somehow, they might burn their way out…

  And be burned alive in the bargain?

  But might it not work? If they splashed a little lantern oil on a small portion of wall?

  No, that was insane.

  Footsteps, getting louder. Delia doused the lantern. For the first time since midday, she had been feeling warm, and faintly safe, in spite of her predicament. Now she tensed again in the darkness. Tanya’s fright was palpable. Delia felt the leather pouch between her breasts.

  The footsteps ceased outside the plank door.

  “Get ready, ladies,” grunted a voice. Fes Farson? Rupert Harris? Delia couldn’t be sure.

  The door crashed open, and, a torch, held high in the doorway, cast the storeroom into wavering lights and shadows. Two big figures behind the torch.

  “Take the nigger an’ haul her back out to the plantation,” Harris told Farson. “I’m too tired to ride just now. Ride a horse, that is. I’ll be spendin’ the night in the livery hayloft.”

  Delia, crouching on the floor, began to move slowly toward the back of the room. Her eyes had adjusted to the torch now, and she saw the marks of blood and sweat and grime on Harris’s clothes, the gun and the knife in his belt, and his knotted, bedraggled beard.

  “Don’t you move a muscle,” he ordered her. “I’ve had a hard day, an’ I don’t aim to put up with any more. Fes! Go ahead.�
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  Farson’s eerie grin flickered in torchlight, then he came forward and seized the shuddering Tanya.

  “Miz Randolph, help me!” the servant begged.

  “She can’t even help herself,” Farson chortled. “Looks like we got things turned around in this town. ’Bout time, too.”

  Tanya whined and keened and cried as Farson dragged her out. In moments Delia heard the sound of hoofbeats.

  “Ain’t these niggers somethin’?” Harris drawled. “Fes’s got a nice job for her an’ a place for her to sleep an’ even some secret delights, an’ she’s bawlin’ like a sick calf. Oh, well”—his tone grew measurably harsher—“Get up now.”

  “Where?”

  “Nice soft bed of hay. Only thing that Torch fellow didn’t burn, practically. Guess he knew you’d be put-tin’ your talents to good use, an’ would need a place to do it.”

  Delia stood up. “I’m not coming with you. Stand aside, and let me go.”

  The next instant she was on her back on the floor, pain exploding in her jaw. Harris had swung out from behind the torch, knocked her down. His voice was menacing.

  “You got two seconds to get on your feet. When I want you off of ’em, you’ll sure as hell know.”

  Trying to decide what to do, knowing that to let herself be beaten by Rupert was folly, Delia struggled to her feet.

  “That’s better,” he grunted, standing aside to let her pass through the door.

  The town—what was left of it—was dark and quiet. A lantern hung at the livery doorway, casting a gloomy light inside. No Paul. No Jason.

  “Where—?” she began.

  “Buried ’em all, just like I said. An’ burned them Choctaw bastards. Guess they were Chickasaw, after all,” he cackled.

  He doused the torch in a horse trough and slipped the lantern off the nail on which it hung. “Up the ladder to the loft, little lady,” he said. “You know, I’ve been lookin’ forward to havin’ some of you since—”

  “Where are the graves?” she demanded.

  “Up the ladder, now. Don’t be thinkin’ about graves.”