Firebrand's Woman

by Vanessa Royall

Lastly, she told them of the coal. “The soft black rock,” she told them, “that comes outcropping from the earth, and which often dirties our clothing when we chance to brush against it. That chalky blackness is, to the white men, worth countless and innumerable and boundless caches of wampum, and for the black rock they will make these high hills red with Chickasaw blood.”

  Everyone was staring at her. She looked back at them, she turned slowly to look at all of them, and to meet the eyes of each.

  “Do what you will,” she said quietly. “I have done my duty by you, as once you did yours for me, and I shall trouble you no more.”

  With that, she turned—not herself aware of what she might do now, where she might go—and began to walk back toward the forest. Her head was high and her shoulders squared—a princess and ruler in every respect—and the knife and the gun accentuated the pride of her carriage, and the decisiveness of her stride.

  “No!” growled the witch-woman.

  “No!” cried Torch.

  “No!” roared the tribe, as if all of their separate voices had been combined into one vast voice, a call of the Chickasaw nation.

  Beloved-of-Earth, granddaughter of Four Bears, stopped in her tracks. She had not expected this moment, because she had not imagined it. But it was there, and it was hers.

  Old Teva hobbled forward, the blood pulsing scarlet beneath her sacred mark.

  “Stay,” she muttered. “You are ours. You have always been ours. Do not worry. It is true. Those who knew it not before know it now. And Chula Harjo is coming. I sense it.”

  “I know it,” Delia said, thinking, This time, one or the other of us will die.

  Chapter VII

  Early April, grass growing, green buds of leaves thick and down-soft on the branches of trees, moss thick and rich on rocks and trunks of trees, crocus and violet alive on the earth. Underbrush shivered with the passage of small animals released from winter in den or burrow or hutch, and snow upon the Twin Mountains gleamed diamondlike in the newborn sun.

  All of the sparkling blue air—all of the world—was filled with the sound of Chickasaw drums.

  In the pass between the Twin Mountains Andrew Jackson raised his arm; and behind him, in fits and starts, the long, long column of well-armed men pulled the reins of their horses and halted.

  “What is it, Ginral?” asked Fes Farson, who had, by claim to familiarity with these regions, secured a place in the lead party. He was afraid, truth to tell, but he would not admit it. Ol’ Festus had not experienced direct warfare before, although he had told Jackson of many an imaginary battle. He thought that the thrill of approaching battle would be like the feeling he enjoyed just before laying lash upon the back of some bound slave. But it was not at all like that. Fes Farson was scared.

  “What is it, Ginral?” he asked again, after clearing his throat.

  Ba-roooom, br-oom-boom, the drums resounded, rolling down among the mountains, above and within the very trees. Ba-roooom, br-ooom-boom.

  Torch clung easily to the high branches of a hickory tree, looking far off toward the pass. There were many who had counseled him: “Attack them while they are in the pass; they will have no room for maneuver, and we shall destroy them then.” “No,” he had grunted, “no.”

  Now he watched the distant thread of Chula Harjo and his men snaking between the Twin Mountains. The tree shook slightly in the wind, and then quivered a bit more as someone climbed up to a branch beside him.

  “Now that they are in the pass,” said Gyva, with a questioning note in her voice, “why not attack?”

  “Because there are too many of them,” Torch said. “We are outnumbered at least two to one.”

  The column halted, and Gyva saw what he meant. The head rider was barely through the pass leading toward the Indian village, but the jackals spread back between Twin Mountains as far as she could see, and, quite likely, far back down onto the plains, and perhaps even into the valley where Harrisville had been. Ambushing Jackson’s militia when they were partially through the pass would, at best, incapacitate but a small number of them. She tried to gauge the numbers and measure them against the Chickasaw braves. Her heart grew cold, and her spirit sank.

  “They are coming,” she said.

  “They are coming indeed,” Torch replied, “prepared for the last battle against us. And our nearest neighbors, the Choctaw, are now seated around sage old Red Dagger, laughing at our fate.”

  “It will soon be theirs,” Gyva said, watching the head of the column, knowing Chula Harjo was there. “That is what you have been saying for all of the time since you have been chieftain.”

  “Few have listened to me.”

  She reached out to touch him, stopped. She had no right to touch him. He belonged to Bright Flower.

  Sensing the movement, he turned to see her hand outstretched in empty air. In his eyes was tenderness, regret. He turned back to watch Jackson’s advance, and Gyva dropped her hand. Neither spoke.

  “Ever been up there?” Jackson demanded of Fes.

  The former overseer, greedy for all the land around Harrisville, forgot himself.

  “Yep, Ginral, I sure have.”

  Jackson’s eyes were cold. “When?” he snapped.

  Farson caught himself. He had been about to brag of the time he and ol’ Rupert’d sneaked up here and abducted that little Indian kid, the one who’d later escaped or been let loose from Gale Foley’s place. But such an admission would open a whole ’nother jar of night crawlers, as his daddy’d used to say, not to mention compromising Fes’s rectitude. So he improvised with the wit God’d—in His infinite wisdom—given him.

  “Ginral, I ain’t a bad hunter,” Fes lied.

  Jackson grunted. Farson was a fairly regular-looking fellow, and the light in his eyes proved he wasn’t dumb, whatever else he might be. Perhaps he even was less crude than Harris had been, but still Jackson didn’t like that quick grin that went on and off. He didn’t know exactly what to make of Fes—hadn’t known him that long—but the guy had asked for duty at the head of the column, and any solider had to respect guts like that.

  So, in the end, Jackson attributed his misgivings about Fes Farson to his own feelings about the impending battle: excitement, hot blood, desire and regret. And ambivalence. He was getting too old for this. Yet how could he back out of it? These westerners were his people, and they expected protection. Harrisville was smoking like a grass fire after a rainstorm.

  “Know how the village lies?” he grunted.

  Farson was waiting and ready.

  “We was out after deer once,” the man replied, cleverly embellishing upon his previous lie, “an’ we got a little closer than we had intended to. That was Rupert an’ me, ’course. Nobody else would’ve—” he was about to say “had the guts,” but instead he said “—allowed themselves to get that caught up in the hunt. You know how it is. Anyway, I did manage to get me a look at the lie of the land. Here,” he said, “I’ll draw ’er for you in the dirt.”

  So, while the soldiers waited, Fes and Jackson dismounted and squatted down at the side of the trail. Fes broke a stick off a bush and began to draw a sketch of the layout of the Chickasaw village.

  “Now, Ginral, here’s the way it is. Straight south of these mountains, there’s woods and trails and wild country. Won’t be too bad, this time of year. Underbrush hasn’t grown in full, not yet. Likewise, wilderness east and west of the red devils. Trails seem to run into the village, but nothing like a road, nothing big. Now”—he began to sketch with more detail—“here’s the village itself.”

  “You got awful close,” said Jackson, squinting at Fes. Initially skeptical, he realized that the man knew what he was talking about.

  Farson cackled. “Mighty close, an’ ain’t it lucky, too. I might be the only white man ever was that close.” He conveniently omitted Jason Randolph, who was dead anyway. “At least was that close and then got out with my ass intact,” he chuckled. “But as I was saying, here’s how the village i
s situated, with forest on three sides. Now right about here there is a sort of big playing field, an’ that gives way to a meadow, which runs us on down”—he drew with his stick—“to a river here. Cross the river, an’ there’s more woods, and that’s about the size of ’er.”

  “The river?” Jackson wanted to know. “How wide? How deep?”

  “Not much of either. I figure it might get a little swollen in spring, but nothin’ near like the one that just washed us out back in Harrisville.”

  “I was thinking—if they see us coming, they might easily retreat across that river and get lost in the woods, and we could spend from now to October looking for ’em and not find a one.”

  Jackson glanced up at the cliffs and peaks of the Twin Mountains. God, this was beautiful country, way back up here in these hills. He was thinking of that, and thinking how the Chickasaw must love it, and how they would hate to lose it, and with what ferocity they would fight to keep it. Jackson appreciated the magnificence of earth; and above the rattle of harness and hoof, above the tense murmuring of his soldiers, he heard the whisper of wind such as it is heard only in the high country, a ghost trying to say something that can almost be heard, but not quite. And Jackson heard, too, the sounds that were not there: the cry of the hawk, the bleat of the mountain goat, the rustle of wing, the scratch of claw, even the sudden, reflexive chittering of a living thing asleep in nest or burrow. These things he did not hear, which meant that everything in the forest was awake and waiting.

  Involuntarily Jackson shivered. Farson did not notice.

  “Tell me, Festus,” Old Hickory asked. “What do you know, personal, about this Firebrand?”

  Fes’s eyes narrowed. “Tricky. Tricky and ruthless. Don’t give a damn. Would scalp a kid just like he’d scalp old grandpa—and for women, scalpin’ is the least of what Firebrand would do.”

  Jackson brushed off the implications of atrocity; those things were common enough. Frontiersmen would be disappointed to hear of an Indian who did not rape or scalp or burn.

  “Tricky,” he said, considering. “How tricky?”

  “Oh, terrible tricky, Ginral. There probably ain’t no feint or ruse he wouldn’t think up to do.”

  Jackson looked up once again at the rising land, the enfoliaged hills, the cliffs on either side. Perfect ambush country. Without telling his men, who would have been either too reckless or too cautious had they known, Jackson had led his tremendous column directly into this pass, knowing that not even the best of ambushes could pin down more than a third of his number. Thus the rest of his forces could fan out, occupy positions on ground even higher than that held by the Chickasaw, and force them down into the pass to be killed. It was a perfect plan.

  But there had been no ambush.

  Jackson remounted, looked back at his troops, lifted his arm and swung it forward. The long column lurched ahead, gathered momentum, and began to move out of the pass and into the Tennessee forest. Jackson rode, considering his next moves, trying to hear the wind-words of the ghost of the high country.

  Beneath the hickory from which Torch and Gyva watched the jackals come, several braves stood ready. These were messengers, poised to carry Torch’s word to numerous battle parties waiting in the village and scattered throughout the forest. Torch planned to gauge the white men’s advance, judge from it their possible plan of action, and then respond with the necessary commands of his own. Gyva, who had lived among the white men and knew something of their methods and ways of thinking, was to aid Torch in the interpretation of the enemy’s movements. Her manner of return to the Chickasaw, her strength and bearing, and the fact she had survived so long in alien places, had immeasurably increased her standing in the tribe. There were still, of course, those who watched her with less than complete trust. Bright Flower was one such.

  “Torch, my husband,” she had said, on the night of Gyva’s return, “am I not everything to you?”

  They were alone in the darkness of the chieftain’s wigwam, preparing for sleep. Bright Flower let fall her raiment, pressed her breasts against his bare chest, and worked her body skillfully against him, feeling his hardness grow. “Am I not everything a wife should be, my darling?”

  Ah, yes, she had been, and she was again that night. Torch knew Bright Flower felt threatened by the reappearance of Gyva. He knew, too, his responsibilities as husband, as chieftain. But having seen Gyva again, having felt his heart jump and tremble when he gazed upon her face, Torch also knew that the higher the happiness, the greater the pain.

  He treated Gyva, after that, with gentleness and respect, and fought his own nature, which seemed to demand that he possess her again, as so often, and in such splendor, he had possessed her before. But the cost to him was great. Lying at night in the wigwam beside his sleeping wife, Torch remained awake, his body tossing and his mind turning, his entire being bereft of both sleep and peace. Flower’s soft nakedness was against him, and on her fine skin dried the sweet beads of perspiration raised by the ferocity of their lovemaking. Even now his essence seeped from her body, which—however joyously she received him, however enchanting the pleasure she gave—had not yet produced a child. Lying there beside his wife, Torch could think of nothing and no one but Gyva, who slept across the village in the wigwam of Teva. Torch remembered how it was—not so long ago, but seemingly forever—when Gyva would come to him in openness and joy beneath the willows, and how she felt trembling in his arms, and how her lips hungered for him; and he knew in his mind, even these years afterward, the shudder of sudden quickening in her body that meant she wanted him, that she could wait no longer. Most of all Torch remembered—with his mind, his heart, his body, remembered with every nerve and fiber of his being—how it felt to move upon Gyva, how it felt to move into her, a slide into silken honey that held his body as a sweet lake holds the swimmer, and rocked against his body in forever-rippling waves…

  Now the wind eased through the branches of the hickory tree. Torch and Gyva rode the high branches, swayed gently to the wind, not touching. They watched as, once more, Jackson’s column advanced.

  “Why do you think he stopped?” she asked.

  “Has he stopped?” called a brave from below.

  “He is moving again,” Torch called down. To Gyva he said, “Chula Harjo was making calculations, that is all.”

  “What do you think he decided?”

  The wind ebbed slightly, and the branches to which they clung became still, so that they were momentarily side by side.

  “He was listening for the words in the wind,” Torch said.

  Gyva was shocked. “He is a jackal,” she protested. “He does not know the earth or the sky. He cannot hear the wind, as we can, or the words in it.”

  “Do you hear those words?” he asked her sharply.

  Among the people it had long been a tradition that, as dream-visions gifted their possessors with portents of the future, the force and timbre of the mountain wind could bring its hearer advice and wisdom during hours of crisis.

  Gyva met his eyes, then looked away from him. “We do not hear because there is no need. We shall triumph.”

  “What is happening?” prodded a messenger at the base of the great tree. “What are your orders, Torch?”

  Torch looked once more at the place on the horizon where Chula Harjo’s men were melting into the forest, making their ceaseless progress toward the Chickasaw village. There were but two choices: one, to stand and fight once and for all, with the rich earth, the mountains, the lakes, and the rivers prizes in the contest; and two, to flee, to melt away into the forest, into darker country—to wait. But Torch knew the second choice was no choice at all. His people would not run. They had been running now for too many circlings of the sun, and there was nowhere else to go, no refuge their pride would let them accept. The fact, too, that the Choctaw had conspired to put them in this humiliating position served further to gird up their courage, their defiance. Torch could only fight, unless Jackson called off the attack. Torc
h had hoped—albeit with small heart, knowing how difficult it is to call back a tide of men—that Jackson would interpret the absence of ambush in the pass as a sign of peace. Small hope, indeed. For such hopes there was little recompense.

  “Saddle my horse,” he said, calling down. “Place upon it the great saddle Four Bears took from Chula at Roaring Gorge.”

  Gyva knew the saddle to. which Torch referred; it was kept in the room of ceremonial garments, sacred accoutrements. The saddle was marked with the white man’s symbols: A. J.

  “And,” Torch continued, telling the braves, “pass the word that all warriors are now to pick up their Red Sticks and take up their bows. The time for the great battle draws near and the Great Spirit shall be with us in our endeavor.”

  On the ground below the tree the braves greeted his commands eagerly. At last, battle, blood, kill-cuts, and glory. But Gyva, in the tree beside the young chief, could not but hear in his voice a sadness, and a premonition that some delicate, unspeakable fate lay concealed in the sound of the wind, words they could not hear.

  When Andrew Jackson came through the pass and rode down into the forest, he had decided. He had decided to call together the captains of the various companies of his militia and give them orders for the battle. Everything would have been so simple had this Firebrand chosen ambush. Now it would be more complicated, and there would be more deaths. Women and children would not have participated in the ambush. But assuming the Chickasaw did not flee their village, which Jackson doubted anyway, women and children would be there, would be fighting. And it was inevitable that in the heat of battle some of them would die.

  Jackson remembered Talking Rock again, the village where the battle had gotten totally out of hand. He thought, with both respect and sadness, of the beautiful half-breed whose mother he had killed, who had let him live in her own house. Dead now, too, he supposed, like all the rest of them—most of the rest of them—in Harrisville. It was well-known that a full-blooded warrior thought scornfully of the mixed-bloods. Mrs. Randolph would have been recognized and killed.