Longshadow's Woman
Bronwyn Williams
Jonah Longshadow had never walked an easy road. Now the hands of destiny had yanked him from a white man's prison and set him down on a hardscrabble farm, paired with a woman whose quiet courage and gentle kindness filled him with dreams that a man like him had no business dreaming.….Two dollars' worth of trouble–that's what Carrie Adams had probably bought herself when she paid Jonah Longshadow's freedom. But she needed strong hands to help her tend her land, and this mountain of a man seemed made to order. The only thing she hadn't counted on was her heart entering into the bargain.
She could actually hear the quiet sound of his breathing
as they watched the mare nuzzle her baby.
Jonah was obviously exhausted. Light from the lantern emphasized lines of weariness in his face, cast shadows into the hollows beneath his high cheekbones.
What was it, Carrie wondered, that made this man, with his dark skin and his black hair, look more magnificent than the yellow-haired heroes in all the storybooks?
Unconsciously she moved her hand closer to his. And then suddenly she leaned forward. “Oh, look—Jonah, it’s trying to get up!”
“Watch.” Jonah didn’t move a muscle. His voice remained unemotional, as if he had not just participated in a miracle.
Inside the stall, Carrie watched the long-legged creature stand shakily and begin nudging his mother’s belly. “Oh, my,” she whispered. Jonah’s hand closed over hers, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world….
Praise for Bronwyn Williams’s previous books
Beholden
“…as welcome as a cool breeze on a scorching day.
I can’t resist a fast-paced, well-written story.”
—Rendezvous
Entwined
“Her intricately woven story is deftly done,
and her depiction of her hero and heroine is masterful.”
—Affaire de Coeur
Seaspell
“A terrific read. I loved it!”
—Author Pamela Morsi
Longshadow’s Woman
Harlequin Historical #553
#551 THE HIGHLAND WIFE
Lyn Stone
#552 ANNE’S PERFECT HUSBAND
Gayle Wilson
#554 LILY GETS HER MAN
Charlene Sands
Longshadow’s Woman
Bronwyn Williams
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Available from Harlequin Historicals and BRONWYN WILLIAMS
White Witch #3
Dandelion #23
Stormwalker #47
Gideon’s Fall #67
The Mariner’s Bride #99
The Paper Marriage #524
Longshadow’s Woman #553
Contents
Chapter One (#ueb871466-2369-5d5a-9462-eb06712cdf4b)
Chapter Two (#udfe0aac8-282f-5242-90ea-5005eb3e240d)
Chapter Three (#u45c600ba-e1fc-581c-96a0-18826942a2bb)
Chapter Four (#u4e44049c-514f-5aa8-a9d7-4f9239b0595f)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
With a graceful gesture, Carrie resettled her best straw hat, angling the brim against the sun. Sighing, she once more addressed the mule in the only language the beast understood. “Move along there, you lop-eared son of a bitch!”
If there was one thing Sorry hated more than pulling a plow, it was pulling a cart. It had cost Carrie more in time and aggravation than she could afford just to get the wretched old bag of bones hitched up. At this stop-and-go speed they wouldn’t make it to the jailhouse until tomorrow, and she didn’t have a day to waste.
Her husband was going to pitch a fit if he got home and saw the damage Sorry had done to Peck’s paddock gate before she had time to mend it. Nothing was too good for that ugly gelding of his. His own private paddock, a fancy new stall, the very best oats, not to mention fresh water that had to be hauled all the way up from the creek daily, and Darther wasn’t one to do the hauling himself. That’s what he had her for, as he delighted in reminding her.
As for Carrie, the mule and the chickens, they could starve as long as that damned racehorse of his didn’t suffer the least discomfort.
Blessed horse. She was going to have to shed the habit of swearing. Emma said it wasn’t ladylike, but it was hard not to fall into bad habits when every other word out of her husband’s mouth was foul. Nor had her uncle been any better. Carrie had a vague memory of a softer voice with a far different accent, but it was wedged so far back in her mind that sometimes she thought she must have dreamed it.
“Step it up, Sorry, we’re never going to get there at this rate,” she pleaded.
But pleading didn’t work. Reasoning didn’t work. The damn-blasted mule just stood there, ignoring the heat, the flies—ignoring Carrie. The only thing that got through his thick skull was the language he was used to hearing from Darther.
“Listen here, you wall-eyed bastard, either you start walking or I’m going to carve your dumb ass into a thousand pieces and feed every scrap to the crows!” Bishop Whittle would be scandalized if he could hear her now.
Sighing, she slapped the reins across the mule’s thick, dusty hide, causing him to lurch into motion. Her feet flew up, the straw hat slipped over her face again and she nearly lost her grip on the reins. “That’s better,” she grumbled, shoving her hat back on her sweating head.
Within minutes they had settled back to a torpid stroll. Where Sorry was concerned, locomotion came in fits and jerks, or not at all. “Come on, sweetheart,” she cajoled, “we have a long way to go, and the slower you move, the longer it’ll be before you can get shed of this old cart. I’ll give you a turnip if we make it back before dark.”
Which would never happen at the rate they were going. Not that she was afraid to be out after dark. Still, she didn’t like the prospect of driving home alone at night with a prisoner. By the time darkness fell she intended to be secure in her own home, with the chickens shut up for the night, the mule fed and watered, and her prisoner, if she managed to rent one, safely locked inside the barn.
Twitching away the flies, Sorry continued to amble along the dusty wagon road. Carrie managed to curb her impatience. At least they were moving. It could be worse. According to Darther, all mules hated all females. Something to do with what he referred to as their half-ass breeding.
If anyone should know about jackasses, it was Darther. Theirs was not a match made in heaven. The first time she had suggested hitching that ugly gelding of his to the plow and clearing the cut-over field, he’d given her a wallop that had landed her on her backside. She had been new to marriage at the time, and hadn’t known what to expect.
Now she did.
From the top of a tall, dead pine, a red-tailed hawk watched her progress. Dust rose in pale drifts behind the cart, overtaking it as a fresh breeze sprang up from the cloudless sky. It hadn’t rained since early July. All that was left of her kitchen garden, of which she had been so proud only a few weeks ago, were a few leathery beans no longer than her little finger, despite all the buckets of water she had toted up from the creek. She’d felt like giving up when the deer and rabbits had got to her cabbages, leaving only two rows of green stalks.
But giving up wasn’t in her, because Carrie had another dream. And this time she had the grit and determination to make it come true. As a child she’d had those same qualities, but back then they’d been called stubbornness, and no one had wanted to adopt a stubborn, headstrong little girl who was neither smart nor pretty, even though she had tried her very best to be quiet and obedient.
One thing had never changed, though. Once she made up her mind to do something, she refused to give up. And Carrie had set her mind on making her husband’s land prosperous again. The first step was to grow herself a cash crop. With the seed money she would get from that, she would clear more land and grow more corn, until not one square foot of dirt was wasted. One field had been cut over by a previous owner years before, but the job had never been finished. The stumps were still there, and now the underbrush had grown back again, but it was conveniently close to the creek. Come spring, once she got it cleared and turned, she could hill it and plant it by herself, and tote water during the dry spells. That was the first part of her dream. She couldn’t allow herself to look farther into the future.
During Darther’s absence she’d been making good progress. A gambling man, her husband was seldom home if there was a horse race, a dog race, a cockfight or a card game anywhere within a three-day ride. He would come home, more often drunk than sober, and stay just long enough for her to sponge and air his fancy suits and launder his shirts and smallclothes, and then he’d be off again. As the racing season neared, he’d be gone sometimes for weeks at a time.
Once he left home again, Carrie was in the field every day at cock-crow, digging and prying, playing tug-of-war by pitting that stubborn mule against equally stubborn stumps. It was backbreaking work, even with two good hands, but she was determined to have every damned stump—every blessed stump—dug up, dragged off to the side and burned. She’d been whacking away at gum roots when she’d missed and nearly chopped her thumb off. The fact that her hand had been filthy at the time hadn’t helped, but one way or another she intended to be ready to plant come spring, and nothing as puny as a bad hatchet cut that refused to heal was going to keep her from doing it, either.
It was Emma, her elderly widowed neighbor, who had told her about the prisoners who were sometimes leased out for farm labor. “County allows so much a day for feed. As long as a man’s not wanted for murder, you can take him out on parole and save the county his keep. I don’t think it’s on the books that way, but as long as you sign papers saying you’ll return him in as good condition as when you took him out, they’ll look the other way. Let him escape, and I reckon they can lay a claim against you for misuse of county property.”
They’d been idly discussing ways of getting the job done, seeing as how Carrie’s hand was so slow to heal. She couldn’t afford to hire anyone, even if she could have found someone willing to work on her husband’s farm. “Darther left me a little money last time he was home, but I spent it on meal and sugar and cracked corn. Wonder what kind of prisoner I could rent for the price of three dresses, two straw hats and a pair of shoes with holes in the bottom?”
She’d been half teasing, and Emma had laughed. Thank goodness one of them was able to laugh. “You’ll manage,” the older woman had said. “I’ve got some money laid by. You can pay me back from your first crop. For interest you can give me half a bushel of corn for my chickens.”
Carrie had thought about it all the way home that day last week when she’d gone to take her friend a basket of fried rabbit and turnips. It had been Emma who had befriended her nearly three years ago when Darther had first brought her to this godforsaken place to cook and clean and service his needs whenever he was sober enough to attempt the marriage act.
It had been Emma who had told her all she knew about that particular part of a wife’s duties. More importantly, she’d taught her all she knew about planting. Carrie still had much to learn, but driven by dreams, desperation and determination, she refused to waste another planting season. By now she knew better than to expect any help from her husband. Even if he was home long enough, and remained sober enough, he was hardly inclined to soil his hands with honest labor. Racing and gambling were all the man ever thought about. He was convinced that Peck, half Arabian, but so ugly no one ever suspected him of being a runner, would one day make him a fortune.
Peck was fast, all right. Carrie had watched him being put through his paces out on the road, but even if the big, ugly gelding won a fortune, Carrie would never see a penny of it. Darther would plop it all down on the next race or cockfight or hand of cards, and lose every last penny. Not only was he a loser, he was a stingy loser. He might come home sporting a new silk vest with his fancy frock coat and checkered trousers, but just let her ask for money to buy something useful, like a new cow, or a plow that wouldn’t fall apart at the first use, and she’d end up on her backside with a swollen jaw. Drunk or sober, her husband had a treacherous temper.
When Darther had accepted her in payment of a debt he was owed by her uncle, she had been so eager to escape her uncle that she’d allowed herself to be used that way. She had even begun to dream all over again. She had seen him around the store a time or two before that, and noticed his fine fancy clothes. He’d boasted a lot, too, only back then she hadn’t known it was only boasting.
“Darther has racing interests,” her uncle had said, making it sound terribly important, as if he owned a track, or at least a flock of Thoroughbreds. “The man knows more about horseflesh than he knows about his own family.”
If he even had a family, he’d never admitted it. “Raised up in New York,” he’d once boasted. “Been to every racetrack on the Eastern Seaboard.” She had later learned that he was what was called a carpetbagger, a species not well respected in the South. But that was long after she’d married the man. When they had crossed the border into North Carolina after the hasty marriage ceremony, she’d been picturing a fine house surrounded by green fields where elegant, long-legged horses gamboled with their foals.
Oh, yes, Carrie was good at dreaming. It was all that had kept her going in the years since the Indian raid. She had learned to create a separate reality inside her head that made life more bearable.
Things would get better. Someone would adopt her and take her into their home. The uncle who finally sent for her would come to love her, and she would be a comfort to him in his old age.
None of her early dreams had worked out, of course. Her uncle, a storekeeper in Virginia, had turned out to be a mean, slovenly man without an ounce of kindness in him. And Darther, so dapper with his well-fed body and his fancy clothes, had turned out to be more nightmare than dream. The lovely plantation she had visualized on the ride south had been the last straw. She had taken one heart-stricken look at the pigsty her bridegroom called home and felt the last of her dreams crumble around her feet.
Her honeymoon had been no better. The painful, embarrassing experience that even now she couldn’t bear to think about, had ended the next day when a weasel-faced man called Liam had turned up with the news that some breeders were coming down from New York to look over the crop of two-year-olds, and that there might be some action up in Suffolk.
The dust hadn’t even settled behind them before Carrie had braced her shoulders, set her jaw and gone to work. She now had a roof over her head that didn’t leak, a chimney that hardly smoked at all, a real iron range big enough for a kettle and a stew pot, and a kitchen garden, never mind that it fed mostly deer and rabbits.
Best of all, she had a good friend and enough rich, flat land, if she could ever manage to get it cultivated, to grow herself a fine cash crop. Last year’s hog was gone but for a side of bacon hanging in the smokehouse. Her cow was gone, too, and she really missed fresh milk and butter. She’d had a nanny goat briefly, but the thing had butted her off the stool one too many times. Carrie had sold her when she’d eaten the bottom off a whole line of laundry. Now she had only a flock of chickens, but she managed to snare enough squirrels and rabbits for meat, which she shared with Emma.
She’d have herself some fine, collard-fed venison, too, if she could ever locate the ammunition for her husband’s Springfield rifle. The gun rested proudly on a rack of antlers over the door. He’d told her more than once that he’d skin her alive if she ever touched it, and she had to believe him. His pappy’s Springfield, a fancy gold watch fob, and Peck, that ugly old gelding, were the only three things in the world her husband valued.
When he’d left home this last time she’d watched him out of sight, then deliberately climbed up on a chair and lifted the gun down from the wall. Staggering under the unexpected weight, she had propped it beside the door. Living more than a mile from the nearest neighbor, and that neighbor only Emma, who could scarcely do for herself, much less for anyone else, she felt better having protection at hand—or at least the appearance of protection. Now and again someone would wander in, looking for Darther. She always told them he was away, but because she didn’t want strangers hanging around waiting for him to come home, she made sure they saw the rifle and tried to look like the kind of woman who knew how to use it.
And now, here she was, getting ready to take a prisoner home with her. What she needed was a big, mean dog, only she didn’t know where to get one. Wouldn’t much trust him if she did. Still, even empty, the rifle should be enough to keep her prisoner in line. He would have no way of knowing the thing wasn’t loaded. Emma said he’d be wearing leg irons, too, so if he gave her any trouble, she’d just club him with the barrel.
Catching a glimpse of a brick building, which could only mean they were nearing Currituck Courthouse, Carrie dealt with her misgivings one at a time. The county wouldn’t allow a dangerous criminal out on parole. Besides, he’d be in irons. As for what Darther would say when he found out, she would think of something. She could tell him she intended to plant a pasture for Peck; that should do the trick. Until it was knee-high, he probably wouldn’t know the difference between corn and pasture grass.
Meanwhile, she had her own future to see to.
To pass the time, he counted. Counted the fleas crushed between a grimy thumbnail and forefinger. Counted the bricks in the wall, the bars on the window, the number of times the jailhouse dog yapped outside the door.
Counted the years of his age, that numbered twenty-nine—not as many as he would have liked, but as many as he was apt to see.
Counted the ships that had sunk beneath him, which, unfortunately, totaled three. Counted the shipmates lost at sea, too great a number to recount without pain, even though he had had no friends among them.
With a mixture of grief, anger and resignation, Jonah Longshadow counted the years it had taken him to save enough money to buy his land, fence it and stock it with a blooded stallion and a few good brood mares. He counted the number of foals he would never live to see and wondered who would eventually claim all that was his.
And when he was done counting all that, and counting the days his body could go without food, he turned to counting his chances of escaping the hangman’s noose.
The number was less than the number of hairs on a goose egg—less than the number of legs on a fish.
Hearing footsteps approaching his cell, Jonah suffered the indignity of eagerness. There might even be more than a crust of stale cornbread today. Yesterday’s chunk, no bigger than his thumb, had been soaked with something that hinted of ham and cabbage. He suspected either the caretaker or the jailer himself ate most of the food prepared for the prisoners, allowing them only enough to keep them alive for a trial.
The water he could abide. Even with a few wiggling worms, the kind that would turn into mosquitoes, it filled his belly. A man could live for a long time without food as long as he had water.
It was the jailer this time, not the young caretaker. He came empty-handed, and Jonah’s belly growled in protest. He sank back onto the matted straw that smelled of dog and crawled with fleas and waited to be told that the judge had finally arrived, had tried him without a hearing and sentenced him to hang for the crime of being a stranger, a half-breed. For being a survivor. With a streak of bitter amusement, he hoped it would be today, while he still had the strength to stand and face his executioner.
“On yer feet, Injun, got some good news fer ye.”
The sun was at its hottest by the time Carrie finished her business and turned toward home, her prisoner following along behind. Hobbled by leg irons, he couldn’t walk fast, but then, Sorry was in no great rush. She only hoped the poor wretch would be worth the two dollars he had cost her.
An Indian. She still couldn’t believe she had rented herself an Indian, after what had happened to her parents. But he’d been the only prisoner at the time, and she was determined not to go back empty-handed.
The jailer, a potbellied man with a drooping moustache and eyes that seemed to weigh her and find her wanting—which was nothing new in her life—had given her a small key, but warned her to keep the leg irons in place at all times. He’d told her to shoot the thieving bastard if he tried to escape, to feed him once a day and to keep a close eye on him. “Injuns are a tricky bunch, breeds are even worse. If I didn’t have to be gone all next week, I wouldn’t let you take him, but Noah’d likely end up either starving the poor devil or letting him escape.”
Carrie didn’t know who Noah was, nor did she care. All she wanted to do was get home before dark. Before she changed her mind. She had expected a prisoner to look meek and subdued, not like a wild animal, ferocious and furious at being held in captivity.
She had every intention of feeding her beast—her prisoner. Wild or not, she had paid two whole dollars for him and she fully intended to get her money’s worth, even if it meant breaking him to the harness herself. She might be a dreamer, but she was also a realist. She fed her chickens so they’d lay eggs. She fed Sorry, hoping to get a few hours of work out of the lazy beast. A man, even a miserable, flea-ridden creature like the one trailing behind the cart, his ankles hobbled by a short, heavy chain, wrists bound by a lead rope, would need food to keep up his strength.
According to the jailer, he had been imprisoned for robbery, but for all anyone knew, he could be a killer, too. She might have been smarter to put off clearing her field for another year, or at least to wait until her hand healed and she could do it all herself. But she’d already started the task, and it wasn’t in her to give up. Another year and the brush would be even thicker. If this was what it took, why then, she’d do it, second thoughts or not.
He was filthy. When he’d gotten close enough for her to get a whiff, she’d been reminded of the hides she’d nailed to the side of the barn to cure. Not that she was much cleaner herself after a day on the dusty road, but at least she’d started out the day with a washbowl and a chunk of lye soap.
It occurred to her that she didn’t know his name, didn’t even know if he had one. Well, of course he had a name—everyone had a name, but she hadn’t dared look him directly in the face, much less ask for an introduction. When it came right down to actually handing over money to rent a human being, with him not having any say in the matter, she’d been unexpectedly embarrassed. It was too much like buying a cow, or a horse.
Even so, she’d seen enough to know he looked mean and arrogant, as if being filthy and imprisoned was something to be proud of. Touching the rifle for reassurance, she tried to ignore the hatred she could practically feel burning into her back through layers of faded calico and coarse muslin.
Passing the small farmhouses between Currituck Courthouse and her turnoff in Shingle Landing, people stared and whispered at the sight of a man being led behind the cart like a cow. One little boy threw a rock and yelled something hateful. A woman taking wash off the line stopped to stare and call out a warning. “You be careful, there, girl—he don’t look none too trustable to me.”
He didn’t to Carrie, either. All the same, she cringed at hearing him discussed as if he were a dumb animal. She knew what it felt like to be passed around like an unwanted parcel, discussed as if her ears were no more than handles on a pitcher. She’d been only a child when it had happened to her. Her prisoner was a full-grown man—a thief, possibly worse. The jailer had let on that he was no better than a savage, didn’t even speak the King’s English. She’d heard the poor wretch muttering something under his breath in some heathen tongue while the jailer was tying him to the back of the cart and testing his knots by jerking them as hard as he could.
Carrie slapped the reins across Sorry’s rump, wiped the sweat from her eyes and wished she hadn’t already finished the jar of water she’d brought with her. There’d been creeks along the way where Sorry could drink, but Carrie wasn’t about to get down on her hands and knees and drink beside her mule. She could wait.
But what about her prisoner? She peered over her shoulder to make sure he was still following along behind the cart. It wouldn’t do either of them much good if he passed out from thirst without her noticing and she dragged him all the way home.
Sweat trickled between her breasts. August was so blessed hot! She was worn to a frazzle just from riding. She couldn’t imagine how he must feel, having to walk, especially with those heavy chains around his ankles. If his back itched, he wouldn’t even be able to scratch with his wrists bound together with the lead rope.
Once her conscience started to nag at her, it refused to let up. Finally, when she could bear it no longer, she hauled short on the reins and climbed stiffly down off the high seat. Her left hand was throbbing, her bottom sore as a boil from the oak bench seat, but it was her conscience that bothered her most. It simply wasn’t in her to be cruel to anything, man or beast. The man might be a filthy, thieving heathen, but she hadn’t forgotten what the missionaries had taught her about being a Good Samaritan and doing unto others. She had to admit that even with a sore bottom, she’d sooner ride than have to walk all the way home, swallowing dust.
With a reassuring glance at the rifle, she signaled the man to come forward. Bishop Whittle would have been proud of her. He’d been real big on doing unto the least of them, and all that. A criminal would probably rank pretty far down on his list of leasts, but all the same…
“I reckon it won’t hurt if you ride the rest of the way on the back of the cart.”
If gray eyes could be said to blaze, his did. The words hung there between them, like that long, frayed lead rope. And then the man turned his back on her.
Carrie couldn’t believe it—the arrogant bastard actually turned his back! Indignant at having her good deed thrown back in her face, she snatched up the lead rope and gave it a hard yank. “Don’t you turn your back on me, you sorry, thieving—”
Jonah called on the pride that had brought him so far. The pride that was now battered almost beyond resurrection. Raising his manacled wrists, he jerked on his end of the rope, catching the stupid woman off guard. When she fell forward, landing face down in the dirt, he felt a fierce stab of satisfaction.
Which might be the last thing he felt, he told himself as she lunged up from the road and reached for her rifle. Furious at having been dragged along a public road, he was in a vengeful mood. From under a thatch of matted, vermin-infested hair, he glared at her, making no effort to hide his hatred. This small, drab creature with her sun-reddened nose was not responsible for a single stroke of his ill fortune, but he was in no mood to be reasonable, much less charitable.
They were evenly matched. His hands were bound, his legs in irons, but he was taller, stronger, and far craftier. She was a small woman with one hand wrapped in rags, but she had two distinct advantages. White skin and a Springfield rifle—even though the gun was almost too heavy for her to lift. Braced against the side of the wagon, she could hardly manage to hold it steady, but her eyes never left his. Grudgingly, he allowed her credit for a measure of pride, no matter how foolish.
He was a Kiowa warrior. She was merely a woman.
In the torpid heat of a late summer afternoon, they stood there for one endless moment, linked by misery, frustration and the birth of an awareness neither of them was willing to acknowledge. The mule, as pathetic a creature as Jonah could recall seeing, even here in the east—began to graze on the dried grass at the edge of the road. Jonah told himself he could stand in the middle of the road as long as she could. Unfortunately, he hadn’t eaten in far too long and he needed to make water.
So he did something to break the stalemate. Lifting his head, he closed his eyes and loosed the fierce, wild war cry that had once echoed across the plains.
Startled, the mule threw back its head and brayed, adding to the cacophony. A pair of crows erupted from the top of a dead pine. Jonah had the pleasure of seeing the woman’s face grow pale as milk from a starving cow.
It had been more than ten years since Carrie had heard such a cry. She had almost managed to block it out, to the point of renting a man who was part Indian. Now it came roaring back like a relentless nightmare. On that dreadful night so long ago she had barely escaped with her life. Hundreds of others, including both her parents, had been slaughtered, victims of the Minnesota Massacre, a wild rampage that had lasted more than a week.
Taking two steps forward, she jabbed him hard in the belly with the rifle barrel. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she hissed, as wild color rushed up to replace her pallor. “You can walk till you drop in your tracks for all I care, then I’ll drag you the rest of the way and feed what’s left of your miserable carcass to the hogs!”
Carry didn’t have a hog, but as a threat, it was about the worst she could think of. She only hoped he believed her. Having seen him up close—seen his eyes, which didn’t match the rest of him, even as they simmered with hatred—she was even more conflicted than when she’d stopped to offer him a ride.
The man was a prisoner, she reminded herself. An Indian, no different from the ones who had murdered nearly an entire settlement. He might not have been a part of that particular event, but he’d done something awful, else he wouldn’t have been in jail. Given half a chance, he’d probably wrap the rope around her neck and strangle her.
Just as well she’d had second thoughts about letting him ride with her. She was sorely tempted to turn around and drag him back to the jail. He could rot there for all she cared. The trouble was, she needed him—needed someone, at least, and he was the best she could do. Unless she was willing to wait another year to get her first field planted, it was this man or nothing.
With a show of boldness she was far from feeling, she tested the knot, nodded, and climbed back up in the cart, wincing as she settled her tender backside onto the hard, splintery seat. Her hand throbbed all the way up to her shoulder—she had a hardened criminal on the other end of a rope, and she was just now starting to wonder if she’d have the courage to let him off the leash long enough to do any work.
This might not have been one of her better ideas.
Just before she slapped Sorry into motion again, she turned and glared over her shoulder. “Out of the kindness of my heart, I was willing to let you ride. Well, you flat out used up any kindness I had to offer, so you can just damned well crawl, for all I care.”
As if he could understand a word she was saying. All the same, she said it because it needed saying. At least God, if He happened to be listening, would know her heart was in the right place.
Over her shoulder, she spoke again in a loud voice, enunciating each word clearly. “And just so you don’t go getting any crazy notions, I can shoot the toenail off a one-legged crow at a hundred yards. I’ll shoot you dead if you try to run away, you understand me?”
Jonah understood every word the woman spoke, but he had long since learned the advantage of keeping such knowledge to himself. The woman was weak and foolish. She lied. She was also afraid of him, but Jonah did not make war on women.
Uttering not a word, he weighed his options. He had been away from his farm for twelve days. His horses were pastured. There was grass. There was a creek for water. One of his mares was due to foal soon. He needed to be with her, for she was a foolish animal, but first he must retrieve the deed to his property and the bill of sale for his stock before his parole ended, which would be when the circuit judge arrived. Even then, his chances of convincing a judge of his honesty were low. He had paid for everything he possessed, but there was no way he could prove the money he had used had not been stolen.
Overpowering his captor would be easy, but would accomplish nothing. They’d been traveling somewhat west of north. By now he was beginning to recognize a few familiar landmarks. When they passed the one-lane road that led to his own property, he focused his mind on the thought that one way or another he would reclaim his freedom. He had not come this far and survived this much to give up now. He had no way of knowing where the woman was taking him, but he knew it could not be too much farther. She had not brought along food.
So he walked behind the cart, breathing in the sweet, dusty air of freedom. While his mind turned over various ways he might prove his innocence, his gaze rested on the straight, narrow back of the woman. When she lifted her ugly straw hat he saw that her hair was thick and pale and shorter than his own. Only children had hair so short. She was not a child, but she was young. Even with two good hands she would be no match for the willful mule. The mule knew it. The woman still held onto her illusions.
He studied her bandaged hand and wondered how grave the injury was. Though her arms were pink, he thought it was from the sun, not the telltale signs of an inflammation streaking up from under her wound. He had seen people die from such an inflammation.
Jonah didn’t particularly want his captor to die. He had heard the jailer tell her she must feed him. By remaining her prisoner now, he could build his strength and have a far better chance of escaping.
Shortly before they turned off the main road, she stopped to allow the mule to drink from a broad creek, beckoning for him to do likewise. He refused to be grateful, even when he was able to use the opportunity to step behind a massive gum tree and relieve himself. When the rope between them pulled even tighter so that he could barely lift his hands, he muttered under his breath. His trousers securely buttoned again, he moved back into the clearing just as the woman emerged from behind another tree, adjusting her skirt. For reasons he didn’t even try to understand, Jonah felt like laughing.
She had turned off the main road a mile back, following a smaller road until they turned off once more. Jonah fixed in his mind the landmarks. Eventually they came into a clearing. Passing by a cabin that was scarcely larger than his jail cell, she stopped outside a barn that looked as if it would take only one hard wind to collapse.
“You’ll sleep in there.” She pointed first at the prisoner and then at the gaunt, tin-roofed structure with a collapsed shed at one end.
Jonah could have told her he would be far more comfortable sleeping out under the stars, but that would require speaking her language. Silence could work to his advantage. He was still attached to the cart, though he could easily have freed himself, but to what end?
Instead, he waited for the woman to unhitch the mule. When she turned to look at him, a frown on her face, he saw that she was even younger than he had first thought. Turning abruptly, she picked up a stick, marched across the clearing and drew a line in the dirt surrounding the house. Turning back, she said, “I’m going to untie you now, but you’re not to step over this line, you hear?”
To emphasize her words, she pointed to him, then to the house, and shook her head vigorously. “Not go to house? Do—you—understand?”
He understood lines. The U.S. Government drew lines in the earth and called them reservations. Jonah would not cross her line. Wooden houses stifled him. They were ugly and drafty and too often smelled of unwashed bodies. Bitterness coloring reluctant amusement, he nodded solemnly.
“Then I reckon we’d better get you settled first and then see about cleaning you up. I don’t hold with fleas and lice, not even in the barn.”
Jonah would rather not “hold with” them, either, given a choice. He could feel the miserable devils crawling on his scalp and the skin of his groin. At this moment, he couldn’t have said who he hated more, the man he’d been forced to become, or the woman who reminded him of it.
Chapter Two
Carrie led her prisoner to the barn holding her rifle under one arm, with the lead rope wrapped around the wrist of her bandaged hand. Inside, it was barely light enough to see, but she didn’t dare put down the rope or the rifle in order to light the lantern. The man glanced around, his gaze going immediately to the new stall Darther had had built for his gelding. There was a cot just outside the slat wall where Liam slept when they were here. According to Darther, Liam, who usually reeked of whiskey and lineament, was both jockey and trainer. So far as Carrie was concerned, he was just another mouth to feed. She liked him no better than she did her husband, but evidently, he was part of the bargain.
So when the prisoner moved toward the cot, she jerked on his rope. “Not there,” she said, and then swore because talking to a heathen was like talking to that blasted mule. Neither of them understood a word she said.
Grabbing a hoe, she scratched a line in the earthen floor, dragging him with her as she moved. Then she pointed to the line and shook her head, indicating that he was not to go beyond the mark.
When he nodded his head she decided the poor wretch was not entirely without understanding. Next she would have to fix it so he could go outside to relieve himself without being able to run away. The privy would have to wait until she could think of a way to give him more slack. Rope was no solution. Even without a knife he could hack through it the minute her back was turned, using any of several rusted, broken implements lying around the barn.
He could simply jerk the end from her grasp, come to that. The rifle was all that kept him from freeing himself and taking off into the woods. Which meant that she was going to have to keep it nearby at all times.
Selecting a length of chain from among several hanging on the wall—hoping there were no weak links—she secured her prisoner by padlocking one end to his leg irons and the other to the hasp on the open barn door. Having to hold the heavy rifle and work with her good hand was an awkward, not to mention painful, process, but at least he had the freedom to step outside when he needed to.
“There now, I reckon that ought to do it, long’s you don’t trip over the chain,” she said, and then shook her head because it was useless, trying to talk to him. Which reminded her that she still had Sorry to deal with.
Throughout the entire process the man hadn’t uttered a sound, but his eyes had followed her every move. She almost wished he would complain, even if she couldn’t understand what he was saying. He was beginning to remind her a little too much of the starving pup that had turned up at her back door one day last winter. One look and she’d lost her heart. Shaggy tan fur, big golden eyes, just begging to be loved.
Begging to be fed, more likely, but she’d taken him in and made a fool of herself, crooning, whipping up the eggs and buttermilk she’d been saving for a big pan of cornbread. The miserable mutt had lapped the bowl clean, spattering goo all over her floor. Then he’d peed, snapped at her hand, and run right between her legs and out the door, leaving fleas, dog hair, and a mess for her to clean up.
That poor wretch in her barn looked as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. If anything, he was even dirtier than the pup had been, and while his eyes were gray, not yellow, they sure as shooting weren’t begging for love. She couldn’t afford to get softhearted, not when she was dealing with a hardened criminal.
Chained to the wall, Jonah watched her leave. Then he lifted his head, closed his eyes and swore fluently in three languages. He’d have done better to have gone back to the damned reservation instead of trying to make a new life for himself here in the East.
Closing his mind to the weight of the heavy leg irons, he tested the extent of his freedom, moving around the cluttered barn, studying the selection of tools available. All were rusted. Most were broken, but useful enough for his purposes. The woman was a fool. Perhaps he’d been a bigger fool not to have tied her up with her own rope, dug the key from her pocket and escaped.
Choosing a short length of baling wire, he set to work sharpening it to a fine point on the grindstone. The locks were ancient. Two twists of the sharpened wire and the first popped open, and then the second. He removed the hinged iron bands from his ankles and examined the raw and bleeding flesh. She had offered to let him ride on the back of the cart. Proudly, he had refused, but pride would be poor comfort if his feet rotted and fell off.
When he heard the cabin door open and close, he moved swiftly. By the time the woman appeared, he was back in irons, sitting meekly on a pile of straw. At least it was clean straw. Dusty, but with the sweet smell of the meadow, not like the straw pallet in his jail cell that had reeked of things he’d rather not think about.
“I brought you something to eat and a blanket.” Her voice sounded more hesitant now that she’d left her rifle behind. From the open doorway she eyed him warily before kneeling to place a thin woolen blanket and a plate of cornbread glistening with drippings just inside the door. “And here’s a bucket of water.” She reached behind her and swung the rusted pail inside. “You can drink your fill and wash with what’s left. Tomorrow I’ll take you down to the creek and you can scrub.”
She’d forgotten to mime and speak in those insultingly loud, single-syllable words. Not that she didn’t still treat him as if he were of somewhat lesser intelligence than that miserable mule of hers. Which, he thought with bitter amusement, was probably true.
Without moving, he continued to stare back at her through the fast fading light. She was small for a woman, lacking the soft layer of flesh most women kept even in the starving times. Under the shapeless garment that hung from her shoulders, she appeared more child than woman. Either way, it made little difference, as both were capable of inflicting cruelty on anyone they perceived as being different.
The smell of fresh cornbread and bacon drippings knotted his gut painfully. His belly hadn’t been filled since he’d been taken from his own land, but he’d be damned before he would shame himself by crawling in the dirt and falling on her bread like a starving animal.
“Well.” She hesitated, as if reluctant to leave. He wanted to shout, Go, woman! Leave me one small shred of dignity! “We’ll start pulling stumps come morning. I’ll bring you more food and show you where the creek is so you can bathe first. Um…the blanket. I know it’s hot now, but it gets cool just before morning.”
He made a sound in his throat that was something between a curse and a growl. It served the purpose. The woman fled, and he felt like laughing. Only, he felt more like weeping.
She had not brought him a cup. He scooped water from the bucket with his hands, then gave up and drank directly from the pail and poured the rest over his head. The bread was good, almost as good as that he remembered from his youth.
His youth…
Lying back on the bed of straw, his belly uncomfortably full, Jonah Longshadow stared up at the hayloft overhead and wondered at the curious pathways that had led him so far from his lodge on the banks of the Red River. He had come into this world a part of two distinct cultures, unwanted by his father, a white soldier who had raped his Kiowa mother. As a child he had often been taunted by other children for his white blood. As a youth he’d been watched by his elders. He had felt compelled to prove himself by counting coup on the enemies of his mother’s people. Increasingly bold, he had cheated death many times, for as a warrior, he was fearless, having little to lose.
But as a horse gatherer, he excelled most of all. By the age of eighteen, he was spending most of his time raiding the wild herds that roamed the area. Four years later, in the spring of 1875, he had just returned to his lodge after a week spent stalking a notorious ridge runner, a magnificent stallion that kept watch over his mares from the high ground. That night soldiers from Fort Sill had swept through, rounding up every warrior in the territory. Jonah, whose name had not been Jonah then, had been taken along with more than seventy others.
Pride had kept him from pleading his case, for as a warrior, he had worn the red cloth sash of the tribe’s elite Koitsenga—the Society of the Ten Bravest. Along with the other men, he had been put in chains and dispatched to Fort Sill. There, they had been placed in an unfinished icehouse and thrown chunks of raw meat once a day until they were eventually transported by way of wagon and railroad to Saint Augustine in Florida. Expecting to be executed once he reached his destination, Longshadow had instead been sentenced to indefinite imprisonment. The difference had seemed slight at the time, but that was before he met Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt.
Pratt was like no other white soldier in Longshadow’s experience. The man had fought against the Kiowa, yet he bore no malice, choosing to educate his prisoners rather than punish them for defending their homeland. He’d had the prisoners construct their own barracks, then moved them out of Fort Marion’s dungeons. Putting them to work as bakers, sailors, fishermen and field laborers, he had even allowed them to keep their small wages. During the time when they were working on their barracks, he’d enlisted the help of a few white women to teach them to read, write and speak English.
Warily at first, but with increasing eagerness, Longshadow had allowed himself to be taught. Somewhat to his astonishment he’d discovered that he was a fair scholar, partly because of an insatiable curiosity, and partly because he had recognized education as a powerful tool. With the world around him changing so rapidly, a man needed all the knowledge he could absorb in order to survive.
After three years, Lieutenant Pratt had persuaded his superiors that the prisoners were firmly reconciled to the white man’s way. They had been granted their freedom. Most had returned to the reservation, but a few of the once-fierce warriors had elected to stay in the East.
Longshadow had been among those who elected to stay. His mother was dead. If he went back, he’d be expected to live on the reservation with its invisible borders. The Kiowa way of life was finished. From his tutors he had learned about the Jesus Road and the Plow Road. The first he hadn’t understood; the second held no appeal. Instead, he had chosen the sea. Over the next few years he had saved the money he earned as a seaman, recognizing the power of the white man’s gold, for even then a dream had been growing inside him. A dream of one day breeding fine horses. But it would take more gold than he possessed, which meant more years of work until he could save up enough to buy breeding stock and the land on which to keep them.
As a prisoner he had sailed for a company that traded in the West Indies. Upon receiving his full pardon, he had returned to the sea, for of all the options, that one was most acceptable. Life at sea reminded him of the past, when his world had been wild, free and vast. And although he read, wrote and spoke English, he kept that knowledge to himself, having quickly discovered that most of his crewmates resented an Indian who spoke their language more precisely than they did. Although he liked Pratt, and would trust the man with his life—had done as much—he found it hard to trust other whites.
So after promising to return the favor by helping some white person in need, he arranged with Pratt to collect his pay directly from the ship owner and deposit it into an account in Longshadow’s name. Each time he returned to port, Pratt gave him an accounting, congratulating him on his good sense. While other members of the crew drank and gambled away their pay almost as quickly as they earned it, Jonah watched his savings grow. He studied the written account from the bank, visualizing the horses he would one day buy—a good stallion and two, possibly three sturdy mares.
For four years he had carried the dream, as one after another, three ships had foundered in the fierce storms called hurricanes and gone down. Each time, Longshadow, along with at least a part of the crew, had survived. That was when his mates had taken to calling him Jonah, saying that no ship he sailed on was safe.
Jonah recognized the name. It had come from the Jesus Book. He had rejected that path, but he accepted the name as a reminder that, just as the Feather Dance had not brought back the buffalo, neither his own god, who was called Tiame, nor the white man’s Jesus, had kept him from being punished for sins he had not committed.
Carrie braced herself to confront her surly prisoner and herd him to the creek. If she had to work with the man, he was going to have to scrub himself clean. She put up with her husband’s stench because she had to, else he’d knock her to kingdom come. For all his love of fancy clothes, Darther hated bathing. He always reeked of whiskey, sweat and cigars.
But she didn’t have to put up with a blessed thing from her prisoner. She’d paid her two dollars—he was hers to do with as she saw fit. And as long as she was going to be working at his side, she saw fit to clean him up. Once he knew how good it felt to be rid of his own stench and the vermin that infested his hair and his body, he would likely insist on bathing at least once a week.
She herself bathed every single day from either a bowl or a washtub. Once a week in the summertime she dunked herself all over in the creek and scrubbed, hair and all, with her best soap that had crushed bayberries added to the fat, ashes and lye to sweeten the scent. She did her best dreaming sitting in water, letting it lap around her, washing away the cares of the day.
With a towel over her shoulder, the Springfield under her arm and a chunk of plain soap—not the scented kind—in her apron pocket, Carrie let herself out early the next morning. The fog lay heavy across the clearing, sucking around the pines and gum trees. By the time it burned off, she intended to have at least five of the biggest stumps dragged out of the ground and all the way over to her burn pile. It would take more than a sore hand to slow her down, she told herself, setting her jaw in determination.
Scattering a handful of cracked corn to the chickens along the way, she sang out a greeting. “Rise an’ shine!”
Rise an’ shine… Carrie had been hearing those words in her head for as long as she could remember, saying them aloud even when there was no one to hear but the chickens and that aggravating mule. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember if they’d come from her own family or from one of the missionaries who had given her a home after the massacre. All she knew was that saying them made her feel better. As if she weren’t entirely alone.
Besides, “Rise an’ shine” sounded far better than her uncle’s, “Git your lazy ass down here and git to work, gal!”
Darther didn’t even bother with that much. If he was awake at daybreak, which was rare, because he usually stayed up half the night when he was home, drinking with Liam and planning ways to win the next race, he would kick her out of bed onto the floor. Kick her hard, too.
“Oh, how I hate that man,” she muttered. She tossed out the last of the corn, dusted her hands off and yelled toward the barn. “Rise an’ shine in there! Come on, time’s a-wasting!” He might not know what she was talking about, but at least he would know he couldn’t sleep all day.
Jonah was awake. He’d been awake for hours, lying on his back on the itchy blanket for no better reason than that he liked the oily wool smell of it. It reminded him of the blanket he had slept under as a boy before he had left his mother’s lodge.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he clamped his leg irons on, reattached the long chain, and stood, shaking straw from the blanket and folding it neatly. If he didn’t present himself, she would come in after him, armed with that damned Springfield, no doubt. He’d like to grab the thing and—
No, he wouldn’t. No scrawny, ignorant white female with colorless hair and the brain of a rock was worth losing his last hope for freedom. Clearing himself was going to be risky enough as it was, without the added offense of murder.
When she appeared in the open doorway, they eyed one another silently for a moment. She was not quite as shapeless as he’d first thought. Her hair was pale, not colorless. Looking as though it had been hacked off with a dull knife, it curled about her face, at odds with the firm set of her jaw, which was at odds with her small nose and large, wary eyes.
Jonah waited for her to speak, wondering if she would forget that he was only an ignorant savage and speak to him as if he were a man. He thought perhaps she was not cruel, only fearful.
She said, “Mornin’. Looks like another day with no rain in sight,” and unhooked the other end of the chain from the door frame. And then, as if remembering who he was, she said loudly, “Bath. Creek. You come now.”
And you go to your white man’s hell, he wanted to say, but didn’t. His time would come. He had learned patience in a hard school.
The creek was broad, but shallow, the water dark and clear. Judging by tracks on the worn bank, it served as a watering hole for deer and smaller animals. Some-one—the woman, most likely—had knelt there to wash, or to draw buckets of water. Trees overhung the banks, shedding a few yellowing leaves to drift slowly downstream.
Jonah turned to her and lifted a brow before it occurred to him that such a gesture might indicate a thinking being rather than a slow-witted half-breed.
“Here. It’s soap.” She handed him the chunk she had been holding. “You’re supposed to wet yourself all over and rub with this.” She mimed the action, which he found both irritating and amusing. “And don’t try to run away, because I’ve got ears like a bat.”
And the intelligence of an earthworm, he thought, letting amusement overcome his anger. With the lead chain wrapped around the wrist of her bandaged hand, she struggled to hold the heavy rifle in the other. Would she actually shoot him in the back if he waded across and climbed up the other side? Somehow, he didn’t think so. He wasn’t at all certain she could lift the weapon to take aim.
Awkwardly, she looped the chain around a hanging branch. She did not release her hold on the gun, neither did she release his leg irons. He could easily have freed the chain, but what good would it have done? Hobbled, he could hardly escape. There was still the Springfield, but even if she managed to take aim, he had a feeling it might not be loaded.
It was because he craved it, not because she forced him to do it, that he stayed, Jonah told himself. He eased down the muddy bank into ankle-deep water, closing his eyes as the abrasions under his irons caught fire. The pain burned right down to the bone.
“Well, get at it,” she snapped. “We don’t have all day.”
Pain and pleasure, pleasure and pain. Either of which, Jonah reminded himself, was better than merely existing as he’d been forced to do in that miserable hole of a jail.
“Use that soap,” she called out.
He looked at the ungainly chunk in his hand. As much as he hated the smell of it, he needed it to wash away the worse stench of the jail. Still dressed in the thread-bare shirt and canvas trousers he’d been wearing twelve days earlier when the sheriff’s men had come to take him away, he thought of how he must look. A once-proud warrior, a member of the Ten Most Brave—prisoner now to a small, witless woman.
He turned away, facing the direction where the winding creek disappeared in the woods. How far away was his own property? If he followed the creek, would it take him there?
He could sense her uneasiness, almost feel her eyes boring into his back. Did she truly expect him to scrub the places where he needed it most with her looking on? Was she so shameless?
His battered pride stung at being seen in this condition by an enemy, he wanted to strike out. To see her grovel, this miserable woman with her pale hair and her pale, sun-speckled face and her damned rifle. Clearly, she trusted him no more than he trusted her, but there was not one thing he could do about it for the moment.
Still standing only ankle-deep, he turned to face her. Crossing his arms, he smiled. It was not a nice smile. He watched her face grow red with anger. Saw her lift the heavy rifle and brace her feet apart as she tried to balance the barrel across her forearm. Jonah knew the woman was afraid of him. The thought pleased him enormously. Without lowering his gaze, he slowly uncrossed his arms, caught the back of his shirt in both hands and tugged it over his head.
Her eyes widened. The rifle barrel wavered. Still holding her wary gaze, he dropped his hands to the buttons of his canvas trousers. Deftly unfastening the top three, he allowed his trousers to slip over his narrow hips.
The barrel of the gun struck the dirt a moment before his trousers crumpled about his ankles. Jonah felt like laughing aloud. Didn’t the foolish woman realize that he could not remove them as long as his legs were bound together by this damnable iron bracelet?
She gasped and turned her back, but not before he had seen her eyes widen on his body. He might have enjoyed the small triumph even more had it not been for his burning ankles and various itches that made him want to shed his skin like a snake.
Bending, he scooped a handful of mud and gravel from the creek bottom and began to scour his belly. The woman had quickly turned away after one horrified look at his nakedness. Now, enjoying his brief moment of privacy, he scrubbed and scratched and nearly purred with the pleasurable sensations.
“Hurry up, you’re taking too long,” she called without turning around.
He had taken as long as he dared, but nowhere near as long as he wished. Reluctant to dress in the same filthy clothing, Jonah grunted to gain her attention. When she cast a quick glance over her shoulder, he held his bundled shirt in front of his privates and gestured with the remnant of soap that was left.
Grudgingly, Carrie nodded. There was no point in putting buggy clothes on a clean body, so she told him to go ahead and scrub his clothing, but to be damned quick about it. She added the swear word to be sure he knew she meant business, the same as she did with the mule.
Turning away to avoid catching another glimpse, she pretended a great interest in the few remaining blossoms on a honeysuckle vine, but she couldn’t dispel the image of that magnificent male body. Merciful heavens, the man was a—he looked like a—and his skin wasn’t red, it was sort of almond-colored. Or maybe butternut.
He was so taut, not flabby like Darther. What would it be like to—
Stop it, Carrie Adams, don’t even think about such things!
Sensing when it was safe to turn around, she noted that he was fully dressed again, although the wet clothing clung to his body in a way that looked uncomfortable. Realizing that she was staring, she nodded abruptly toward the path and they set out once more, the prisoner going first, Carrie and the Springfield marching along behind. She tried to concentrate on a mental list of all the things she intended to accomplish before day’s end, but her gaze kept lingering on his wet hair, glistening like coal under the early morning sun. Even in chains the man was arrogant. The way he moved—the way he held his head. Those wet clothes…
He’s just another mule, Carrie, no more, no less! Five stumps. Think about those, not about the way he looked standing there in his bare skin.
And she tried, she really did. All the way back from the creek she focused her mind on the task ahead. At the rate of five stumps a day, the field would soon be cleared, and once the stumps were gone, her hand would be healed, and she could hitch up the plow and turn under the brush, allowing the roots and grubs to die over the winter months.
Think about that, Carrie, not about—
But oh, my mercy, he was so pretty to look at. It wasn’t the first time she had seen a man’s body. She had seen her uncle once when she’d barged into the kitchen while he was in the tub. At least she’d seen his knees, his bald head and his bony shoulders.
And Darther, she thought with a shudder, who was pale as whey, with rolls of flab, with his little bitty thing hanging down like a dead worm.
She shifted the rifle to a more comfortable position, wishing she could trade it for something smaller, and tried not to think about male bodies, naked or clothed.
Back at the barn, she gestured to the mule, and then to the harness she had devised for pulling stumps from the ground. Her prisoner nodded, made a few minor adjustments, and then hitched up the mule. Sorry, the miserable traitor, didn’t once attempt to kick or bite, and Sorry purely hated being hitched up to anything.
At least he did when it was Carrie doing the hitching.
Damn-blasted mule. Damn-blasted sneaky Indian.
She glared at her prisoner, and because she was later than usual getting started—or because she hadn’t taken time to eat her usual breakfast of black coffee and cold biscuits, her mind began to wander once more.
Behave yourself, Carrie! He’s a prisoner, a thief and probably worse. You need him because with only one good hand, there’s no way you’re going to get that field cleared, so don’t even think about his—about the way—about his thing!
Pointing to the lane that led off behind the cabin to the cut-over field, she gestured for him and the mule to go first. Without a word spoken, the blasted mule picked up and walked, sweet as pie, trailing the makeshift harness behind. Carrie kept her gaze focussed on the distant trees and forced herself to concentrate on how to direct a man who didn’t speak English. Didn’t speak anything, so far as she could tell.
Even if he wasn’t all that bright, he probably understood a few words, a few simple commands. So she took a deep breath and spoke aloud, hoping the sound of her voice could drown out the image of a beautiful naked man standing ankle-deep in her creek. “Best way I know is to dig out under the spreading roots enough to saw through the biggest ones,” she said gruffly. “Once Sorry pulls the thing over, we can saw off the taproot and haul the stump out of the ground. Oh, lordy, you don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?”
Shaking her head in frustration, she pointed to the biggest of the five stumps she intended to tackle today. “Dig,” she commanded, and pointed at the spade she had left in the field the last day she’d worked, too weary even to drag her tools back to the barn.
They were so late getting started that the heat was already miserable, making her think longingly of the cool, clear creek. The one thing she truly liked about summer was that the days were long enough to include a soak in the creek. With no close neighbors, it was safe enough as long as she kept an eye out for snakes. It was a chance to scrub all over without having to haul and heat water, bail out the washtub and then mop up the kitchen floor afterward. A chance to sit and dream for a few peaceful moments—to try to remember the stories she had read when she’d gone to the missionary school. She did like reading stories. Over those early years she’d been well schooled, although she’d since forgotten most of what she’d been taught.
Now even the pleasure of sitting in the creek and trying to remember her favorite stories was ruined. She wouldn’t dare linger knowing her prisoner was nearby, even if he was locked in the barn. From now on, she wouldn’t even be able to go near the place without picturing him standing in the edge of the water, with his smooth, muscular body, his mocking gray eyes, and those dark, mysterious places that made her bones feel weak as tallow.
And damn-blast it all, her hand ached! Every three days she poured turpentine on it and packed it with sugar again, the way Emma had showed her, but bandaging one hand with the other was difficult. If her prisoner had been an ordinary criminal instead of a savage heathen—if she hadn’t seen him naked—she might even have asked him to help her, but that was out of the question.
“Git to it,” she snarled, much as she would have addressed Sorry.
By the time the sun had passed overhead she intended to have three of the five stumps out of the ground. Using gestures and a few simple words, she explained how they would go about it, then propped the rifle against a nearby stump within easy reach. While her prisoner sawed through the first of the newly exposed roots, she dug out around the next one. When the roots were all cut through, she cussed Sorry into position, fastened the harness to the stump and whapped him on the behind. “Pay attention,” she said when the mule set his weight against the heavy stump. “This is the way we do it.”
With the first stump hauled to the edge of the field, they moved on to the next. The mule was powerful, she’d grant the miserable bastard that much. It took a lot of swearing to get him to moving, but once he did, things happened fast. Small roots popped and snapped, earth broke, and one stump after another surrendered.
Once, in a moment of triumph when a deep taproot gave way, she glanced up and grinned at her prisoner. He looked startled, then embarrassed. And then, of course, she was embarrassed, too, and so she swore at the mule. Snatching up his lead chain, she led her prisoner to the next stump.
Jonah was used to hard work. Back on the reservation it had been the women who had done most of it, freeing the men to hunt and trap and make war and ponder on the changes that were coming to their world and how best to deal with them. But he’d worked, even then. Mostly with horses. He understood horses far better than he understood men, either red or white. Both as a prisoner and as an ordinary seaman, he had worked, but he’d worked hardest of all after retrieving his money from the bank and buying his own land here in the East.
Breeding horses was a noble thing. It was not drudgery. His people were convinced that if a man followed the plow, the drudgery would take away his manhood and he would become like an old woman, withered and good for nothing.
Jonah feared the yellow-haired woman might force him to follow the plow. So far she had not. He did as she directed, but he did no more than that. He could have made things far easier for her, but he did not.
The second day, she drew another of her lines in the earth, outlining the section she intended to clear of stumps and eventually plant. He told himself that she would have to do most of it without his help, for by the time winter passed and the earth grew warm again, he would have long since cleared his name and returned to his own land.
Or failed in his attempt and been returned to jail, to be tried or hanged without benefit of judgment. The white man’s justice was not always logical, or even just.
Sawing through the thick, damp roots, he thought about what he must do, and knew he could not wait much longer. Soon he must escape long enough to retrieve the papers he had hidden on his horse farm and return before he was found missing. If he was caught trying to escape before his work parole was over, he would be shot down before he had a chance to prove his innocence.
Timing, Jonah told himself, was important. Meanwhile, he must allay the woman’s suspicions and allow his ankles more time to heal. When the time was right, he would set out as soon as darkness fell, running hard for as long as it took, uncovering his papers and running all the way back before the sky grew pale again. Once he had proof of his innocence in his possession, he might even work in her damned field one more day. She had fed him well. She had even forgotten herself so far as to give him one of her rare smiles.
As tired as she was by the end of each day, Carrie felt like celebrating, seeing the progress they were making. Even Sorry was easier to manage with the prisoner nearby. It was almost as if the two of them spoke a silent common language. As if they had some secret understanding. Like to like, she told herself, unwilling to admit she could possibly envy a mule, just for having someone to talk to.
Carrie hadn’t been able to visit Emma since she’d brought her prisoner home. She could hardly leave him behind, but she didn’t dare take him with her. Poor Emma had seen enough misery over the years, having outlived a husband and a whole slew of children. Living alone, with the rheumatism so bad she could hardly hobble around on damp days, the last thing she needed was to come face to face with a wild Indian in her own home, even though renting him had been her idea in the first place.
Although Carrie had to admit that cleaned up, he didn’t look quite so fierce. He still wore those same old ragged clothes, but then, her own weren’t much better. His hair, the color of polished mahogany, was long enough to be tied back with a piece of string, while hers had been hacked off with a butcher knife back in the spring, when she’d caught a fever and Emma had said she had to stay cool. Instead of the neat braids she had always worn, her hair had grown in thick and curly, reached a certain length and stopped growing. Emma said it was because of what she ate—or rather, what she didn’t eat.
She ate as well as she could when half the time Darther forgot to leave her enough money even to buy salt, much less bacon and flour. She needed a damn-blasted cow, was what she needed. She’d taken her nanny goat to Shingle Landing and traded her for a supply of tinned milk, but tinned milk didn’t make butter.
Once her corn crop came in, she vowed, she would get herself a fresh cow and six more hens, and maybe a pig. Maybe even two pigs.
She got through the day without cursing more than once, when Sorry deliberately stepped on her foot. It was something she was working on—not cursing. Something else she was working on, she amended. Today they had cleared out all but the last few stumps and dragged them over to the edge of the field to burn. Carrie watched the sky, unwilling to risk setting a fire unless rain was in the offing. According to Emma, her cabin had once been a tenant house, the big house having been burned when Colonel Draper and General Wild had led their Union forces on a rampage though Camden and Currituck counties, burning more than a dozen homesteads.
Carrie thought it must have been something like the Indian raid that had taken her own family. Years had passed, the sharpest pain had faded, but the memories would be with her until the day she died. Looking back, the home she remembered as a child had seemed large, but it couldn’t have been too much larger than Darther’s small cabin.
At any rate, a small cabin was enough for her needs, as long as the land was still fertile. Emma said it had once grown cotton, the bolls as big and as white as snowballs. Carrie didn’t want to grow cotton. She couldn’t eat cotton, wouldn’t know how to harvest it even if she could grow it. But corn…
It was going to be so beautiful. Row after row of tall, green stalks. Enough to grind for meal, to save for seed, to feed her stock and still have some left over to trade for cloth, salt, side-meat and calico. And then, she would clear more land and grow still more corn.
The air was lavender with dusk as they headed home from the field. Sorry plodded along behind her prisoner like a faithful hound. Carrie could have chosen to be jealous, but instead she felt only satisfaction with the amount they had accomplished. It would have taken her until Christmas to get this much done alone, even with two good hands.
She was smiling when she happened to notice the way her prisoner was walking. He was exhausted. They both were. His stride was hampered by the heavy irons, but it was more than that. Her smile gave way to a look of concern. He was limping. If he was injured—if he could no longer work, she would have to return him, and then she’d be right back where she’d been before, only now she owed Emma two dollars which she was fairly certain the jailer would refuse to refund.
Biting her lip, she shifted the heavy rifle to her other shoulder. She no longer even attempted to keep it turned on him. It was almost impossible to manage when they were working together, anyway. They both knew that.
He was definitely limping. It had to be the leg irons. The heavy things allowed him to walk, but not to run. If the jailer hadn’t warned her not to remove them, she’d have been tempted to unlock them before this. He could work twice as hard if he could clamber in and out of stump holes more easily. But in that case, she’d be the one who was handicapped, with the gun in one hand and a bandage on the other. Besides, she suspected he knew she would never shoot him.
By then they had reached the yard. Uncertain how to proceed, Carrie came to a dead halt. “Whoa, there—you, too, Sorry.”
Jonah winced from the indignity of being addressed in the same manner as she addressed her mule. At least she hadn’t sworn at him the way she did Sorry. The mule was neither deaf nor stupid, but somewhat slow to make up his mind whether or not it suited his interests to obey.
Scowling, she stared down at his feet. Pride would not allow him to acknowledge his pain, just as pride would not let him reveal his understanding of her language. Caught in a trap of his own making, he had endured days of pain and humiliation, wondering why the stubborn woman couldn’t see the truth before her eyes—that a man couldn’t work in irons. That if she wanted to get her money’s worth before his parole ended, she’d do better to release him, sit on a stump with her rifle pointed at his head, and let him get on with clearing her field. If he had to follow the Plow Road, he’d as soon get it done as quickly as possible.
“Leg, um—hurt?” She pointed to his ankle, her pale eyebrows knotted in concern. Jonah had heard the jailer tell her she must return him in good condition. She was obviously worried about her investment.
He knew she carried the key in her pocket, along with the napkin in which she had wrapped two chunks of bacon and cornbread, which they had devoured at noon, sitting in almost companionable silence in the shade of the hedgerow. For a few moments he had felt almost as if they might be…not friends, yet not quite enemies.
To his astonishment, she dropped to her knees before him. When he felt her hand on his foot he stopped breathing, but he couldn’t restrain a soft oath when the irons dug into his raw flesh as she folded the two halves back on their hinges.
Seeing the blood caked with dust until it looked like mud, she crooned in dismay. “Oh, my mercy, oh, sweet Jesus, you’re torn all ragged.”
Closing his eyes against the fresh pain, he willed his mind to escape to another place, another time. For once, it didn’t help. With harsh, shallow gasps, he waited for the pain to recede. Yesterday he had torn strips from his shirt and tied them around his ankles to pad the irons, but the cloth had only stuck to his blood and dried, tearing away still more flesh when he moved. Crossing her line in the dirt floor of the barn, he had found a jar of hoof dressing and plastered both ankles with that.
“You’ll have to let me wash it and dress it with turpentine and sugar. Emma—that is, my friend who knows about these things, says that’s the best medicine.”
Still on her knees, she gazed up at him, her eyes dark with concern. Jonah felt as if he’d swallowed a fish bone. It had not yet pierced his gullet, but he was afraid something irreversible had just happened.
Her hand was still resting on the top of his dusty bare foot. Her own feet were bare, too. He had seen her wearing boots but once. They were worn through on the bottoms, good only for trapping rocks and sharp pine seeds against her naked feet.
His own feet were bare because the men who had come to arrest him had not allowed him to take away anything, not the papers that would prove his innocence, not his boots, not even the freedom papers he had received from Lieutenant Pratt.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I know you can’t understand me, but I’d never have had this happen, not even to a wild animal. I saw a wolf once that chewed his foot off to get free of a trap, and…”
A wolf. He was no more than a wild animal, caught in a trap. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but he did know that if she didn’t take her hand off his foot, he might do something they would both come to regret.
Leading the mule into the small fenced paddock, Carrie forked him a ration of hay and then led her prisoner toward the cabin. He was no longer shackled or chained, which meant that if he were going to escape, it would be now. He could knock her on the head, grab the rifle from her hands and take off through the woods.
Yet, something she’d seen—or fancied she’d seen—in those clear gray eyes of his, told her he wouldn’t try to escape. Not yet, at any rate. Without thinking, she had knelt in the middle of the lane to examine his injuries, just as she would have stopped to examine any wounded creature in her care. But the instant she’d touched his warm flesh, the strangest sensation had come over her. She had looked up—he had looked down—and for one brief moment something tangible had passed between them. Her only comfort was that he’d been as startled as she was.
Now she tried to think of a way to make him understand what needed to be done. “Now listen carefully,” she said in slow, measured tones. “I will help you.” She placed her hand over her heart. “You must not try to escape.” She pointed to the road and shook her head vigorously. “If you run away, you’ll die.” And then, all in a rush, she blurted out the fearful consequences. “You’ll end up with the blood poisoning and die out there in the woods all by yourself, and then the jailer will come after me and hold me responsible, and I’ll end up in jail in your place.”
But of course he couldn’t understand a word she said. Shaking her head, she said, “You sit.” She pointed to the three-legged milking stool she’d brought inside when the cow had gone dry and she’d traded her to a farmer in Snowden for a rooster, two hams and a side of bacon, and said, “You sit.”
He sat. They were both dirty after a day in the field, but he had rid himself of vermin. She’d broken off branches of wax myrtle and told him in words a child of three could understand how to use them to keep the fleas from his straw bedding. Evidently, he had taken her meaning.
“This is going to hurt,” she muttered. Lifting his foot in her hand, she felt again that peculiar awareness—like the quivery feeling of the air just before a lightning storm. Embarrassed, she glanced up to see if he had noticed anything.
He felt something, all right. His lips were clamped together and his eyes had the strangest expression. Maybe this was the way Indians looked when they were hurting. She’d never seen one up close before, not since the night they had come a-whooping and a-hollering into the settlement near Redwood Falls. Those had been Sioux. The sheriff had called this one a Kie-oh-way heathen. It had been more than ten years, but he looked different from the Indians she remembered. He was taller, for one thing, and his features were…
“Well. Enough about that,” she said decisively, earning a puzzled look from the man whose ankles she had just cleaned, treated and wrapped with strips of an old bed sheet. She was tempted to see what he would do if she asked him to help her rebandage her hand. Some things were hard to do one-handed, and the old bandage was in tatters after a day’s work. “I don’t reckon you could…?” Shaking her head, she answered her own question, “No, I reckon not.”
Jonah had learned long ago to lock away all emotion. He could not afford to think of the woman as anything more than a means of escape. A means of eventually clearing his name so that he could return to his land and his horses. She made it difficult, however, first by treating him with such disdain he wanted to shake her until her teeth flew in all directions—then by treating him not only with kindness, but with sympathy. It was enough to undermine his determination.
He told himself she was crazy. For all she knew he could be a murderer, yet she had brought him into her house and tortured him with her careless kindness. She had stared at his naked body that first day. She knew well that he was a man. She had scrubbed his wounds with her lye soap and mopped them with turpentine until his eyes watered with the pain. She had shared her food and water with him, sat beside him to share a patch of shade, yet she considered him less than an animal. A wolf caught in a trap. Not only deaf, but stupid.
The woman was crazy.
Chapter Three
Together the next morning they set fire to the pile of stumps, some of which were dry, a few still damp from the earth. When flames whipped through the heap and spread to the bigger stumps in the middle, they turned to one another with a look of shared triumph. Then, almost as if they were embarrassed, Jonah began gathering dead branches to toss on the fire, and Carrie began stepping off the length and breadth of the clearing for perhaps the hundredth time. The ground was hard, baked dry by weeks without rain. Scrubby vegetation had flourished once the tall trees had been cut down, allowing the sun to reach the ground. Those would have to be cleared next. Even as they worked, they both watched the burn pile carefully to see that the flames didn’t spread. When a finger of flames spilled out and began creeping through the dry grass, they both rushed to beat it out with tote sacks wet from the nearby creek.
With the fire once more under control, they stared at each other, sweaty, sooty, and triumphant. And there it was again. That shimmering awareness that made the world go utterly silent for one endless moment.
Silently, Jonah called himself a fool for staying as long as he had. He had meant to slip away at the first opportunity, but here he still was. Now, in exchange for food, a clean place to sleep and the occasional smile when the woman forgot herself, he was going to have to follow that damned plow and turn the earth so that she could plant her corn. He had not meant to linger so long.
She didn’t even know how he was called. The sheriff had called him Kie-oh-way. He had heard him call her Adams. Miss or Mrs. Adams? There was no man in her bed or at her table, but a man’s coat and shirt hung from a hook on the wall. Perhaps she had once had a man and he had died. Or perhaps he had thrown her away, as a Kiowa did if one of his wives displeased him. He could easily see how this woman could displease a man.
Yet he could also see how she might please a man….
“Now this,” Carrie informed him the next morning, “is what we call a plow.”
“It is also what I call a plow,” he wanted to say, but held his tongue. It had angered him at first when she forgot he was only an ignorant savage and spoke to him as if he were slightly more intelligent than her mule. Now it amused him.
Using pantomime to illustrate her words, she said, “What I aim to do is harness it to Sorry so that he can do the pulling, the way he did with the stumps.” Placing the worn straps over her own shoulders, she mimicked pulling the plow. “But you’ll have to steady it, else it’ll skitter over the top of the ground and fall over. I’d do it myself, but the thing’s got two handles and I’ve only got one good hand.”
He was curious about that. Her hand was still bundled up in a grimy rag, reeking of the turpentine she had used on his ankle that had burned down to the bone. She held it against her breasts now and then, as if it pained her. More than likely what pained her was holding that damned Springfield, which she insisted on carrying with her into the field, even though they both knew he could have easily escaped many times.
“I don’t reckon you know what the devil I’m saying, but I was ever one for talking, and you’re all I’ve got to talk to.” She pointed to the rusty plow. “Plow. Now, you try saying it. Plow.”
It was all he could not to laugh, but soberly, he repeated the word. “Plow.”
“Oh, that’s real good! We’ll have you talking in no time, you see if we don’t.” Her smile was as warm and encouraging as a pat on the head, as if he’d just retrieved the stick she had thrown.
So he followed her into the field, appreciating the way she walked in spite of his irritation, amused at the way she squared her hat on her head, then lifted it to fork her flyaway hair from her eyes. It was a man’s straw hat, ugly, but useful for one with skin so fair it reddened each day from the sun and faded by nightfall, leaving behind light brown speckles. She began each day with the sleeves of her dress covering her arms, but before the day was half over, she would turn up the sleeves and unfasten the buttons at her throat.
Gazing past the mule’s bony haunches, Jonah watched the way she moved, fascinated at how much a man could learn about a woman from the way she walked, the way she bent to chop at a stubborn shrub. Buoyed by hope and determination, she strode into the field each morning like a warrior riding into battle. Although he had to admit there was nothing at all warrior-like in the movement of her hips or the way her bosoms bounced under the thin covering of calico.
By the end of each day she drooped like a flower that had been plucked and cast aside. Plodding in from the field, it was all she could do to keep the rifle from dragging on the ground. He would have offered to carry it for her, but he suspected she might misunderstand his motives.
Irritating woman. Were all white women so contrary, or was it only this one small individual? The women of St. Augustine who had taught him to read and write had not affected him this way.
The problem, Jonah told himself, was not this particular woman. He would have reacted the same way toward any woman between the ages of fifteen and fifty, having been without the comfort of a woman’s body for so long. His blood still grew heated when he thought of the way he had dropped his clothes before her, standing ankle-deep in her creek. He had done it out of anger, out of resentment, wanting to shock her, to frighten her.
Instead, he had been the one who was affected. He’d had to turn away quickly and lower himself into the water.
Steering the white man’s plow, he told himself that evening, was not as bad as he’d feared. He understood the mule. The mule understood him. They worked well together. As for the woman, that was another matter. She walked beside him every step of the way, from one end of the clearing to the other, sometimes moving ahead to chop down a bush, or falling behind to crumble a handful of freshly turned earth in her hand. They would stop at the far end, drink from the jar of water she’d left there in the shade, then set out again.
“This is the first time I’ve tried planting a cash crop,” she confided. “Corn—well, everybody needs corn. Last year I had to buy corn. There’s still some left in the crib, but it’s old and buggy, and I have to grind it, and the grinder’s gone to blazes. It’s good enough for Sorry and the chickens, but with a decent harvest, I can take my corn to the mill and get it ground, and pay the miller with part of the crop. That’s the way we do it,” she said gravely, as if imparting a valuable tenet of her white man’s wisdom.
Jonah reminded himself of his promise to Lieutenant Pratt, that he would help the first white person in need he encountered. The Adams woman needed help all right. She was weak, injured and alone, yet no one came to her aid. There were houses within a few miles of her cabin, yet no one visited. She had mentioned a friend, but the friend had not come to help her plow her field. It was becoming increasingly obvious that she was an outcast. Jonah knew what it felt like to be an outcast.
“You might have noticed, I’ve been raking up leaves and piling them up out behind the chicken house.” She had fallen into the habit of conversing with him as if he were an ordinary, reasonably intelligent man. He had already learned two things about her. She was kind-hearted…and she was lonely. “Emma says if I can get me some oyster shells and dump them on the heap and then set it afire with some trash wood on top, it’ll make the sweetest kind of fertilizer. She says the land hereabouts is sour. It needs shelling, if I can find a Currituck fisherman willing to trade me a load of shells for corn or a few jars of wild honey.”
She chattered the way he sometimes talked to his horses, only he rarely used words. His horses understood his thoughts, and he theirs. It was a gift he’d been given as if to make up for being two halves and never a whole.
Soon he must leave, he promised himself, not for the first time. The hardest work was finished. She would use a planting stick in the month of the dogwood, and her corn would flourish. The land was rich, some of it was boggy, but all was fertile. He had read books on such matters once he had decided what he would do with his life.
“Lordy, I’m starvin’, aren’t you?” she said, mopping her damp, sunburned face.
“Lordy,” Jonah echoed solemnly, wondering why it was the white man called Indians redskins, when it was the white men themselves who turned red as his old Koitsenga sash from sunlight and whiskey. His own skin was more the color of a freshly tanned hide. Sun only deepened the color. Whiskey, he never touched, having seen what it did to his shipmates and too many of his own people.
They had taken to sharing the evening meal. She had not allowed him inside her house again since treating his ankles, but when she came outside to lock up her chickens and bring him his supper, she would often bring her own and join him, sitting on a plank bench outside the barn while he squatted on the ground nearby. Now and then she would speak, and he would nod and grunt in response, or lift his shoulders as if he didn’t understand, and she would shake her head and sigh her impatience with him. He had come to enjoy the game, even though he was beginning to feel guilty, yet how could he break the silence now? It had gone on too long. She would be angry with him for tricking her.
Angry enough to shoot him? He was all but certain the rifle was not loaded. Even loaded, it wasn’t much of a threat, for the barrel was so heavy she could hardly support it with her one good hand. She might shoot out one of her precious glass windows, but he no longer feared she would kill him, no matter what he did.
So why didn’t he simply walk away?
Jonah couldn’t answer. It was not the accommodations. The barracks in St. Augustine had been newer, cleaner and more comfortable, except for the mosquitoes. The food she provided, usually beans, sometimes greens, sometimes only cornbread soaked with bacon grease or honey, and on special occasions, a strip of fried side meat, was obviously the best she could offer, for she ate the same thing. It was filling and satisfying, but he would have enjoyed a meal of buffalo or venison, or even fish.
“Moon. See, coming up over yonder woods? It’s called a moon.”
The woman was not an idiot. Why did she insist on sounding like one?
But he knew why, of course. It was because she thought he had less intelligence than one of those stumps he had cut free of the earth and burned. It made him angry, and that very anger was a reminder that he had stayed too long. He had given the woman her money’s worth. The sooner he retrieved his papers, the sooner he could clear his name and get back to his own land.
And perhaps someday before he was too old, the gods willing, he could find a woman of his own. Another outcast, perhaps, who would not look down on him for his mixed blood.
The Adams woman had not gone to a church-house since he had been with her, yet he knew she had a day of the week when work was forbidden. A day to rest, according to the Jesus Rules. She had used her last Rest Day to pull up the withered bean vines outside her door and scrub the privy. While she raked the dirt around her house, with the chickens following after to peck at any bugs uncovered, Jonah had worked on repairing the barn and enlarging the fenced paddock. Then he had propped his feet on a tussock under a giant oak tree and allowed the warm, sweet air to flow over his body. Freedom had a taste—a flavor and a scent all its own.
Increasingly worried about his horses, Jonah knew he could not wait much longer. The mystery was why he had waited this long. He made up his mind to go on her next Jesus Day. He had fallen out of the habit of running since his imprisonment and his sailing days, but his ankles were nearly healed now. He was fairly certain he could run at least half a day, maybe longer, without needing to stop. He could take the mule, but stealing a mule was a hanging offense.
On the other hand, he would rather hang for something he did than for something he didn’t. Either way, he concluded, he would be back with his papers before she brought his supper.
When her Jesus Day came around, the woman was up before sunrise, harnessing Sorry to the cart. She set a napkin-covered basket in the cart, handed him a plate of bread, side meat and greens, and explained that she was going to visit her friend. “I’m going to trust you,” she said, her small, pink face so earnest he wanted to take it between his hands and reassure her. “I’m not going to lock you up, because I can’t think of a way to do it without using those miserable old irons, and I wouldn’t do that to a mad dog. But I cooked you some greens last night because a body needs greens to stay healthy, and I’ll bring back a jar of Emma’s peach preserves. You can have that to look forward to.”
Wearing a different dress from the one she wore every day—a faded yellow that bared her arms and throat, she stared at him as if waiting for a response.
He was tempted. By Daw-k’hee, the good mother earth, he was tempted.
But he only nodded his agreement. Watching her drive away a few minutes later, he set aside his conflicted feelings and concentrated on fixing directions in his mind. He had noted certain landmarks on his way north from the jailhouse. His sense of direction was well honed, both from instinct and from experience, but he had never traveled from this place to his own land. Asking directions would be risky.
Carrie’s hand was not healing. “Honey, I’m going to have to open it up again,” the old woman said, shaking her head. Carrie knew the procedure. Dreaded it like a bad toothache, but she knew it had to be done. So she washed Emma’s butcher knife, sharpened it on the stone, then held it in the candle flame until the edge glowed red.
She cried. Couldn’t help herself, and with Emma, she didn’t even try to pretend. She cried not only from the pain, but for what her life had become, for what it had been before, which was both better and worse—and for the glimpse of something more wonderful than anything she could have imagined.
Something she would never have.
While she sat with the basin on her lap, allowing the blood and pus to flow from her ragged hatchet wound, she told the old woman about her prisoner. “I know it’s only because I’m there alone so much, but it’s almost like having another friend. I don’t even know his name, but he’s got the clearest gray eyes. I’ve seen him smile, mostly when he doesn’t know I’m watching. And Emma, he’s got the whitest teeth.”
“Mmm-hmm. A woman can’t help but think, as long as that’s as far as it goes.” It was clearly a warning, and Carrie took it in the spirit in which it had been offered. Her own mother would have probably done the same.
Emma Tamplin was a small woman, barely four and a half feet tall. Having once been wed to a successful farmer who had gone to war when the Yankees had invaded the south, she had lost everything—husband, home, children—everything except for her dignity, her wisdom and her kind heart.
All of which Carrie had come to value enormously. Trying hard to ignore the throbbing of her hand that went all the way up to her shoulder, she said, “I know, I know—I’m being foolish. But Emma, following him in the field every day, watching the way he works so hard—Why, if Darther ever put in a single day’s work, I swear, I’d fall over in a dead heap, but my prisoner works like it was his corn we’d be planting come spring.”
“Any man worth his salt would rather be outside in the fresh air than rotting away in jail.” Emma’s husband had died in a Yankee prison. To this day she couldn’t bear to see things penned up if she could possibly help it. “I’m going to poultice you with my special salve, if you’ll hand me that there jar over there on the dresser.”
Carrie happened to know the greasy salve was made of ground mouse dung and butter, with a few herbs mixed in, but if Emma believed in it, then Carrie did, too. An hour later, her arm no longer throbbing quite so fearfully, they sat on the tiny front porch and talked about this and that. Emma never complained, which made Carrie ashamed of all her own complaints.
“I know it’s not right, but sometimes I wish he would forget where he lived and not come home at all,” she said, cradling her hand in her lap. She’d been airing her latest grievance against Darther, who’d refused to give her money to buy a cow because he had a chance to buy into a certain surefire winner.
“Racetrack trash, that’s what he is. I heard all about racetrack trash when I was at Uncle Henry’s. That’s all they ever talked about—who was losing his shirt, and who was winning big, and where the next race was going to be. They weren’t even real races, not the kind where ladies go and wear nice gowns and fancy hats.”
“I don’t know your husband personally, child. I do know he’s not made a single friend in these parts in all the years he’s been here, but there’s bound to be some good in him somewhere, even if he is a Yankee. He had the good sense to marry you, didn’t he?”
Carrie didn’t bother to reply. Emma knew how hopeless things were. She had seen Carrie’s bruises too many times to believe they were all caused by her own carelessness. Besides, they almost always coincided with one of Darther’s infrequent visits home.
“Living alone can be peaceful, I’ll not deny that. Still, I’d give anything in the world to hear my Luther ranting and raving over the fools who’re running our government now, or fussing because I can’t make bread the way his mother used to do. Sometimes even harsh words are better than no words at all.”
Carrie couldn’t think of a thing to say to that. Harsh words were about all she’d heard ever since her Uncle Henry had sent for her, and Mrs. Robinson had put her on the train with a change of clothes in a paper sack and a dollar bill pinned inside her pinafore pocket.
A little while later, pleasantly full from the biscuits she’d baked and brought with her, served with Emma’s wild peach preserves, Carrie hitched Sorry to the cart and set out along the narrow road. There was a shortcut through the woods she took when she was afoot, but today she’d felt like riding. She had actually expected that blasted mule to behave, seeing as how her Kie-oh-way had him trained now. The man didn’t even have to swear at him, he just looked him in the eye before they set out to do a job, and the mule turned sweet as pie.
As if sensing her inattention, Sorry came to an abrupt stop, laid back his ears and brayed. Startled, Carrie nearly dropped the reins. “You stubborn, no-account crazy bastard, you do that again and I’m going to whomp your hide till it’s raw, you hear me? Now, git to movin’!” She cracked the whip in the air, and the mule moved another few steps, then halted again.
The man was a witch. Carrie didn’t know if mules and witches spoke the same language, she only knew that her hand was hurting again from being cut open, drained and poulticed, and then having to drive a contrary mule. What’s more, she was starting to get that crampy feeling in the pit of her belly, which meant drinking a slug of whiskey, which she despised, and going to bed with a hot brick wrapped in a towel.
She finally gave up and let the beast have his head. He knew the way home as well as she did. He also knew he wouldn’t be fed or watered until he got her there. She was in no mood to put up with stubborn animals, four-legged or two-legged. “No wonder Darther calls you Sorry,” she muttered. “You’re the sorriest son of a bitch ever to suck air.”
She was going to have to stop swearing. Emma didn’t like it. Mrs. Robinson would be shocked. All the missionaries would be shocked. Her own parents would have been shocked. Sometimes Carrie even shocked herself, and not always with the words that came out of her mouth.
But dammit, things were different now. If she had to deal with a stubborn mule who knew when she was feeling miserable and went out of his way to aggravate her—with a drunken sot of a husband who cared far more for his horse than he did for his wife, and an Indian prisoner who couldn’t speak the language, she had to make up her own rules.
Bumping over the rutted cart trail at a snail’s pace gave her time to think, time to wonder about things such as whether or not her Indian had a wife waiting for him at home, wherever his home was. Wondering if he had a name. Well, of course he had a name. It was probably one of those heathen-sounding names no white man could wrap his tongue around. She felt guilty for not having asked, and guilt, added to all the rest, made her feel even more miserable. Every now and then, usually when she had her monthly bellyache, she would get to feeling this way. Out of sorts. Weepy for no reason at all.
By the time she pulled into her yard, she was close to tears again. What if she lost her hand? It happened more often than not when a wound refused to heal, and hers had refused for weeks, probably because she kept flexing it and breaking it open again and again.
What was she going to do when her prisoner had to leave? In spite of Darther, she had come so far, encouraged by Emma and by her own dreams. In spite of everything that had happened in the past, she was doing so well, with her own home and a field almost ready for planting come spring.
Not even the familiar sight of her neatly raked yard and her snug little cabin could cheer her as she neared the end of the road. Home. Her first real home in so long, with the water-oaks turning gold and the gum trees turning purple. Emerging into the clearing, she braced herself to do what needed doing before she could rest. The chickens still had to be fed. The mule had to be unhitched, watered, fed, rubbed down and penned up.
Her prisoner would probably want to be fed, too, with whatever she could scratch together for a meal.
He wasn’t outside. He wasn’t in the barn. She knew very well he wasn’t in the house, because she’d warned him the very first day that she’d shoot him if he came messing around.
But since then she’d taken him inside to dress his ankles. Maybe he thought that meant he could come and go at will. “Well, we’ll just see about that,” she muttered, glaring at the chain he used to wear, which was neatly coiled on a nail on the inside of the barn door. “If that damned heathen has run out on me, I’ll shoot his sorry ass,” she swore, feeling tearful and oddly discouraged, considering all they’d accomplished. Here she was so close to getting her field ready so that all she would have to do come spring was spread manure, poke holes in the ground and drop in her seeds, four in each hill. One for the soil, one for the crow, one for the mole and one to grow. Emma had told her everything she would need to know about planting and laying by food for the winter, and curing everything from mites on her chickens to bugs on her vegetables. She had even tried to explain away these monthly miseries, but knowing they would pass didn’t make her feel any better when her belly hurt and her hand hurt and she felt so discouraged she could cry.
Carrie had just hung the harness on a nail inside the barn when she heard a noise overhead in the hayloft. Dust sifted down through the cracks, drifting through the shaft of late afternoon sunlight that slanted in through the wide opening. There wasn’t a single thing in that loft but hay left over from last year and Darther’s store of whiskey.
“Oh, lordy, I don’t need this,” she muttered. Bracing her fists on her hips, she tipped back her head and yelled, “You up there—Kie-o-way, or whatever your blasted name is, you just get yourself down here right this minute, you hear me?”
She felt like crying. She felt like kicking something. Blast it all to blazes, she knew her emotions were all over the road, but she had trusted the man! And then, the minute her back was turned, he’d had to go snooping around until he’d found Darther’s jugs that Liam had toted up there last April when they’d won that big pot and spent every red cent of it on Buffalo City moonshine instead of the fresh cow she’d been begging for.
Since then, every time they came home from a successful trip, the two of them would bring down a few jugs and spend the first night celebrating. She would hear them all the way over to the house, laughing and singing and carrying on—shouting and whoo-hawing at one another. It got so she’d find herself wishing the next time one of them climbed up after another jug he would fall off the edge of the hayloft and break his miserable neck, and then she’d have to go and pray over her own wicked thoughts.
Hearing a rustling sound overhead, she set her foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. It might be rats. Usually they got to the grain and left the hay alone, but maybe they were holing up for the winter.
It wasn’t rats. She’d have seen signs of them, because she watched diligently for such things. Besides, she had two good rat snakes that kept the barn pretty well clear of rodents. Either her prisoner was up there, drunk as a crow in a barrel of mash, or Darther and Liam had come back and chased him off.
Or worse.
Carrie didn’t dare think of what worse might mean, she only knew she had another mess to deal with when all in the world she felt like doing was falling into bed and sleeping her miseries away.
There was no sound coming from Peck’s stall. No saddlebags tossed down on Liam’s cot. Liam’s mare wasn’t out back in the paddock, which meant it couldn’t be Liam and Darther up in the hayloft drinking themselves sick.
Which meant…
Well, shoot. She almost wished Darther had come back home. And that said something about her state of mind that didn’t bear close examination, she told herself as she began to climb the steep, narrow ladder to the loft.
Chapter Four
It was dark as pitch in the hayloft. And dusty. Carrie sneezed, swore, and sneezed again. “All right, you might as well show yourself, I know you’re up here.”
She waited. No response. But of course, if he was sprawled out in a corner, dead drunk, he wouldn’t answer. Couldn’t answer even if by some miracle he was sober enough, as he barely understood plain English. “Speak up, else I’ll go off and leave you here to fall down and break your miserable neck!”
For two beans and a straight pin she would do just that. Save the county the cost of hanging him. Save herself the aggravation of watching him walk behind her plow, with his dark hair shining in the sun, pulled back so that it was neater than her own. With his narrow little behind and his wide shoulders and his hands, so square and steady on the splintered wooden handles.
She should never have peeked that first day at the creek. She had tried so hard not to think about the way he’d looked standing there in the morning sun, strip, stark naked. But the harder she tried not to think about it, the more she thought about it, the image stuck in her mind like a cocklebur in a sheep’s pelt. The only other man she had ever seen naked from head to toe was her husband. It was hard to believe they were the same species.
Evidently, they had something in common after all. Drink.
Disgusted, disappointed and thoroughly out of sorts, Carrie stood there, uncertain of what to do next. She told herself that soon he’d be going back to jail, where they would probably hang him. She couldn’t allow herself to think about him as a man—as a real person. It hurt too much. “Then stay there,” she muttered, turning back to the ladder. “Drink yourself into an early grave. Fall down the ladder and break your fool neck, see if I care!”
“Aah-choo!” The loud sneeze was quickly followed by three more. One hand on the ladder, Carrie froze. Hearing a brief scuffling sound, she squinted in the darkness and saw—or at least thought she saw—something moving in the small pile of hay that had been scraped into a corner to make room for Darther’s jugs of moonshine.
Whispering.
Whispering? He was talking to himself when he couldn’t even spare her so much as a single word?
“Damn your sorry hide, if you can still crawl, then you’d better get yourself down this ladder! If I have to come after you—!” She’d give him one more last chance, and then she was leaving him to his fate. She had run plumb out of patience. And bellyache or not, she had a full day’s work planned for tomorrow. “You listen here, I don’t care how sick you are come morning, you’re going to be out in that field at first light, you hear me? I paid for your services, and I’m damned well going to have them!”
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