Gyva and Torch had ridden at the head of their party, from the scarred banks of the river where the battle had taken place, and now they were approaching the village. “Jackson’s already attacking,” she heard Torch say, and she spurred her horse to keep up with him. They flashed past the place of the willows, clattered up over the smooth white stones, and then galloped up the meadow, across the playing field toward the village.
Jackson’s men were already fighting in the village, and the melée spilled over into forest, onto field. The original plan—to lure the jackals onto the playing field so that they would become prey to archers in the woods—was not working, as so many things planned for battle do not succeed. Delia felt the surging power of the horse between her thighs, felt the wind in her face. Oddly, in spite of the fact that she was riding toward what might be death, she felt free. Torch was riding at her side, Chula Harjo waited in the village; she had the feeling of completion, of all things coming to pass. It was as if destiny had planned these things for her, aeons ago.
Chula was on a big gray, and Gyva knew that Torch would go for him. Then she saw the man at Chula’s side, and the blood of hate boiled hot. From the belt at her waist she pulled the knife—she held Red Stick and reins in her other hand—and at that moment decided to remove the life from Fes Farson, if she could. The entire village, the forest, the very sky—all were pandemonium. A wall of shouting sound rose above, and the battle ebbed and flowed. She saw Torch leap from his horse onto Jackson, and then she saw Farson’s hand coming up at her, with a gun in it. The black, empty barrel of the gun reminded her of the Choctaw riding toward her in the raid upon the village long ago; and, as she had then, Gyva reacted, twisting sideways in her saddle. A puff of smoke appeared at the muzzle of Farson’s gun—the report of the weapon was drowned out by the howls of battle—and Gyva felt something whistle past her head. She regretted having lost her own pistol during the river battle.
Farson’s face seemed to hang there against the sky, his mouth opening in astonishment that he should have missed hitting her at such close range, and already his eyes starting to show fear as she brought her knife around toward his throat. Her horse collided with Farson’s mount, which reared, and Gyva’s knife slashed empty air. Farson fell from his horse into the dirt.
A long, lean man with white hair wrestled a brave in the nearby dust, and Gyva saw the flash of serpent bracelet. But she had no time to think of that. She leaped onto Fes Farson as he struggled to his feet; she smelled the sweat of fear on him, the essence of him, a slippery veneer of grease and ooze, like his smile, which came now as a grimace of effort and desperation.
“Die!” she gritted, and sent the knife upward toward his pumping heart. The knife touched bone, but he fell backward, rolling in the dust. The horses were rearing. Farson was trying to bring up his pistol for another shot. Torch had his Red Stick lifted to club Jacksa. Gyva dived forward, too eagerly, too quickly. With a movement that was more luck than anything else, Farson sidestepped, Gyva tripped and fell; and then the four of them—Gyva, Farson, Jackson, Torch—seemed caught in a terrible frieze, all movement suspended, all time stopped. Torch’s arm was raised to strike a blow; and Jackson, pinned beneath the chief, was lifting one arm to ward it off, bringing up the other, which held a knife. Farson’s gun was up, ready, his mouth half-open in a guttural cry of panic and decision. Gyva was on the ground, half-turned, braced upon one arm, trying to rise. She saw, as if all movement were frozen, the trampling hooves of frenzied horses, the dust rising in the murky air, the green leaves of the forest flashing beyond.
Then time began again. Fes Farson’s arm swung to the side, and he squeezed the trigger. Torch jerked once, and a thin spume of blood burst from the back of hit head. Jackson’s eyes widened in sudden astonishment, and he drove his knife upward between Torch’s’ ribs. Gyva screamed and leaped toward Jackson, felt his forearm deflect the thrust of her knife, heard Torch roar in pain, twitching in the dust. Then Jackson was beneath her, and her knife was flashing down. She knew where his heart was, and her knife sought it; and even with the tears in her eyes there would be no missing, no missing this time.
Her entire body was struck a blow then, and she was knocked off Chula, rolling once more into the dirt, and this time Fes Farson had the upper hand. Diving toward her, he had knocked Gyva from the general’s body, prevented Gyva from striking her blow, and in so doing had saved Jackson’s life. Later Fes would not remember having done this; but he did remember, with considerable pleasure, sticking the black barrel of his gun in Gyva’s panting mouth, and squeezing the trigger tighter, tighter—
“Hold it!” Jackson ordered.
Fes did not pull the trigger. In her mouth Gyva felt the barrel hot and hard. Torch was moaning on the ground next to her, and everywhere the battle raged. She saw Fes Farson’s obscene, vengeful sneer, the twisted grin of an evil conqueror, and she saw Andrew Jackson tall and gaunt against the sky.
“Let me,” Fes pleaded. “Let me blow the bitch’s brains out.”
“No,” said Jackson. “I might need her.”
Perhaps Jackson would not have needed Gyva—old Teva spoke English, too—but out of some involved combination of motive and impulse, he stayed Fes’s trigger finger. Their leader’s struggle with the Indian had brought a dozen men toward Jackson, and these now fought in a circle around him, keeping away those Chickasaw who might try for the scalp of the old and fierce one.
“We got their chief right here,” Jackson shouted.
“He’s near dead, I think. If we can just show him to the rest of these red bastards, it might drop their morale a little.”
Suggestion became command, and in a few rough moments Torch’s bleeding body was hoisted aloft on the arms of several horsemen. Blood spilled down on Gyva, still pinned beneath Fes Farson; and beyond his leering face she saw the blank, unconscious face of her beloved. The soldiers lifted him like the carcass of an animal dead and doomed, and immediately a howl of sadness, rage, and woe rose from the fighting Chickasaw. They did not cease to fight—not then, not at that moment—but Gyva, lying in the dirt, gauged the sound and knew that the battle was ended, knowing, too, that an age had ended for her people, that the blue, smoky mountains would be home no more.
“Pretty sight, eh?” grunted Farson, glancing up at Torch, then back down at Gyva. “That your Indian lover, eh?”
She glared at him and did not answer.
He slapped her hard across the face. “I astya a question.”
She did not answer.
He slapped her again. Her ears rang. Her eyes were filled. Her face was on fire.
“That your Indian lover?”
She spat at him, struggling to free her arms, which were pinned to the earth beneath his knees.
“Why you…” she heard him grunt, “I’ll…” and she waited for the next blow.
But it did not come. Jackson was giving a series of quick orders. “Okay, boys,” he was yelling, “we got ’em on the run. Fes, get the woman over there to that big wigwam. You boys get the chief over there, too. In a couple of minutes I’m goin’ to try and organize a push from here to the meadow.”
The meadow I Gyva thought, with one last hope that the women in the trees would be able to turn the tide with their arrows. But this hope was dashed as Jackson went on. “That river party coming from the east took a whole lot of women prisoners. Got ’em pinned down by the river now. All right, let’s get the job done. One last big push and we got ’er licked.”
Chula was right. (Ah, but was Chula ever wrong?) By dusk the battle was over, and an age was done. The jackals heaped Indian dead in the center of the village, laid their own dead out in a row along the wall of the forest, covering each with a saddle blanket or a poncho until burial plans were decided. Those braves who had survived were tied hand and foot, their ankles and wrists bound together behind their backs, and made to lie facedown on the playing field, where the spring earth grew cold, where the new grass dampened with dew. Now and again
a jackal guard ’ would walk over to give some helpless brave an indolent kick. “That’s fer Howie Regis,” the jackal would say, and you could hear the thud of the kick and the Indian’s grunt of pain. “Howie was a friend of mine. He died today.” And then another kick. The Chickasaw were symbolized by that bound brave; the Chickasaw were defeated, vanquished, whipped and helpless. Just before nightfall, the women who had been keeping watch over the infants and small children began to drift in from the woods across the river, and the holocaust was complete.
Jackson, as soon as the battle was decided, had set up headquarters in the big council wigwam, and from there made the decisions as to the disposal of the dead, the treatment of the survivors, and the provisioning of the village. Squaws would be allowed to prepare the meals, and thus would not be bound, although, of course, they were restricted to the village. Children would be kept together, under guard, in the wigwams, because a redskin of even four or five years could be dangerous.
Gyva’s face showed disdain when she heard Jackson give the order to keep children under guard. She and Teva were in the wigwam with victorious Chula Harjo, translating for him, and passing his orders along to the defeated Indians. Neither had wanted such a task, but Jackson minced no words. “Now, I don’t speak Chickasaw, an’ you do. The Chickasaw don’t speak English, ’ceptin’ you two. The battle’s over and I don’t want no more people to get hurt, but that’s what’s goin’ to happen if the Chickasaw can’t understand what it is I want them to do. My men are goin’ to be none too gentle if their orders ain’t carried out real quick.”
And so Gyva had served as translator, but the order regarding the children infuriated her.
“I said somethin’ wrong, Miz Randolph?” Jackson inquired.
Gyva met his eyes. “It is not my place to speak,” she said.
“That’s absolutely right,” he agreed. “You tied up your lot with the redskins, an’ you got whipped. It’s not your place to speak.” Then his eyes softened, and in them she saw herself not as an Indian enemy but as a woman. “But what do you want to say?” he asked gently.
“The children need not be confined,” she said. “It is unnecessary.” Beside her the old seeress nodded vigorously.
“Miz Randolph, Miz Randolph,” Jackson said. “You got to understand. It’s for their own safety. Let’s say they’re runnin’ around the village, an’ run into some frontiersman who’s been tryin’ all day to keep from gettin’ killed. Now, Miz Randolph, bad as battle is, it’s not the time atrocities take place. Atrocities take place after the battle is over. That’s what I’m trying to prevent.”
Gyva understood. In old times, after a Chickasaw victory, the captives of other tribes would be brought back into the village, to be killed slowly, lingeringly. Gyva passed along the order to keep the children under guard, and explained it to her people. They understood. The entire population could be massacred in minutes, with the braves hogtied in the meadow and only women and children walking about. They understood.
Gyva also cooperated because she had to be in the council wigwam, because there Torch lay on a pallet, dying. Farson’s bullet had gouged the lower back of his head, dangerously near the spinal column; and in spite of Teva’s ointments and bandages, the knife wound in his chest was still bleeding. He was unconscious and breathing in short, ragged gasps; and when Gyva bent down to touch his face, she felt with her fingertips the hot flush of his fever. The witch-woman examined Torch for a long time; then looked at Gyva and shook her head.
Jackson, who had just sent Fes Farson out of the wigwam with instructions for tethering the horses, saw Teva’s gesture and came over. Kneeling down, he, too, looked at Torch.
“So this is the one they call Firebrand?” he asked, not without sympathy.
“A lie!” Gyva retorted. “It was always a lie.” She explained how Rupert Harris had originally, unjustifiably, pinned the name on Torch-of-the-Sun.
“So that’s his real name, eh? Sounds like the name of a fine man.”
“He is, and—”
“What’s yours?”
“What?”
“I don’t suppose you’re Miz Randolph up here in thee mountains, now, are you?”
“I am Dey-Lor-Gyva. It means Beloved-of-Earth.”
Jackson nodded. “Now what was it you called yourself down in the flatlands?”
“Delia. My name was Delia.”
“This Torch here—he your husband?”
Teva snorted.
“No, he is our chief.”
“I know that. But you was sure fightin’ next to him like he was more than—”
The sound of an angry confrontation began outside the wigwam, and a woman’s voice pleading, in Chickasaw, to be permitted entrance. Bright Flower. “I must see my husband!” she was saying, over and over, but the soldiers did not understand.
“What the hell is that?” asked Jackson, getting up.
Gyva felt impotent, and hurt. And surprised. She had forgotten all about Flower. She had every right to be here, and yet to Gyva she seemed an intruder.
“It is the woman of our chief,” the seeress told Jackson.
The general stuck his head out the entrance and barked a few curt orders. Bright Flower came inside, proud, but afraid. She looked at neither the witch-woman nor Gyva, not even at Harjo, but went straight to Torch and knelt down beside him. She listened to his breathing, examined his wounds, felt his hot skin, and kissed his face. She did not weep. She, too, was a Chickasaw.
“And who shall lead us now?” Bright Flower asked no one in particular, as she stood up.
“It is an improper question,” said the old woman. “We cannot name a new chieftain until the present leader is dead.”
The comment served to brace Gyva, who had for the past moments, watching Flower with Torch, let her mind give way to sorrow and feelings of helplessness. Now was the time, now was precisely the time, that such feelings must not be entertained.
“What is to happen to us?” she demanded of Jackson in English.
“Let’s eat,” he said. “We got a lot of talking to do.”
Bright Flower tried to spoon broth into Torch’s mouth, failed, and then kept his lips moist with a wet cloth. She had little interest in political matters. Her husband was dying.
Gyva longed to be next to Torch, but she knew it was unseemly. She sat beside the witch-woman, eating chunks of horsemeat, mopping gravy with bread and eating it, too, waiting for Jackson to tell them what the fate of the Chickasaw was to be. He was in no hurry to do so, but whether from reluctance or anticipation Gyva could not tell.
“What does that mark on your face mean?” Jackson asked Teva. Sitting there comfortably around the wigwam fire, he might have been chief himself, or a wise elder. Gyva watched him, listened to him, judged the manner in which he acted, and ate, and spoke. She had vowed to kill him, and had not. She had tried to kill him, and had failed. She bore a great share of the responsibility for her people’s misfortune at his hands. How might she redeem her failure? Could she ever do so? Her life was so inextricably linked with that of Jackson, and because it was, she hated him and yet she did not hate him.
The seeress was explaining the significance of her birthmark.
“Interesting,” Jackson said. “Interesting. So you already know what is going to happen?”
“There is a great river,” Teva grunted.
“And?” prodded Jackson, as if he doubted her powers.
“And we cross it,” said Teva.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you jackals are going to possess our homeland,” accused the old woman heatedly. “It means we will be sent somewhere else.”
For an instant Jackson looked away. Then he was hard again, and so were his words.
“The law is the law,” he said. “You’re goin’ to have to go.”
“Not our law!” cried Gyva.
“Your law don’t count no more.”
“Why not?”
“Because
you lost,” Jackson said, with dread finality.
“This here it the United States of America, in case you didn’t know, an’ Indians that go makin’ war against peaceful settlers got to take the consequences.”
“But there are treaties,” Teva began.
“That’s true, that’s true. I checked all this out before I brought the militia down here. If you Indians run amuck, like you did over to Harrisville, you don’t have your treaty rights anymore. You got to go. It’s in the treaty, too. The law is the law.”
“But the Choctaw were responsible for Harrisville!” Gyva explained, her voice quivering. “It was Red Dagger and his people. They disguised themselves, and-”
Jackson was shaking his head. “No use,” he said, “no use.”
On his pallet Torch groaned, long and painfully.
“His time is coming!” exclaimed Bright Flower, shrinking back a little. “Teva?”
“Why is it no use?” Gyva demanded, torn between a desire to rush to Torch and a need to do something to save her people’s homeland.
“Because to Washington, D.C., to white settlers here in Tennessee, to my men out there, and, frankly, to me, I don’t care what tribe or nation done it, I just know Indians done it. That’s the entire point of the Indian removals program. You got to go.”
Torch moaned once more.
“Teva!” cried Bright Flower, down on the pallet next to her husband now, as if clinging to him might hold life imprisoned inside his body.
“Don’t you understand? You lost!” Jackson was explaining to Gyva.
“But—”
“If you don’t go peaceful, you’ll all be killed,” Jackson said, the tension of truth in his voice. “You haven’t any choice, don’t you understand?”
“Where will we go? How?”
“I’ll check on that. I’m sure there’s a place for you Chickasaw somewhere—like over the river, like she said.”
Teva had scurried over to Torch and was studying him closely, gauging the nearness of death. Now Jackson and Gyva knelt beside her. Bright Flower still embraced him, more desperately than before. The young chief stirred and seemed to make a sound. Gyva felt her heart would burst, would break, seeing him there before her, unable even to touch him. Life was a trick, a snare, a series of deceptions. Behind every promise of joy lurked a savage truth. After the death of Jason and Andrew she had vowed that nothing similar would ever again happen to those whom she loved. Her heart had been pure, her vow holy. And now Torch lay dying and her people were about to be visited with an exodus to unknown regions. She had come back after so long to know Torch’s love once more; and as soon as it had been given, it had been snatched away.
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