Beverly Jenkins (2 page)

A stunned Cara watched Jefferson bring his men to a halt beneath the banner tied across Main Street that read:
WELCOME TENTH CAVALRY.
Cara’s students had contributed the banner, and the letters were a bit lopsided. The troopers dismounted before the newly built dais upon which sat assembled dignitaries and members of the press. Chase Jefferson accepted the town’s generosity on behalf of his regiment and the United States government. The mention of the government drew a few hearty boos from the crowd, but the sergeant went on with his short remarks as if he hadn’t heard. When he finished, the town elders presented the company with a ceremonial key to the town hall, and the mayor read a proclamation declaring it Tenth Cavalry Day. With the official welcome concluded, the crowd capped off the brief ceremony with more thunderous applause and flag waving.

Chase marveled at the size of the crowd. He and the other troopers spent the next twenty minutes shaking hands, exchanging pleasantries, and graciously accepting an appreciation not shown the
Black cavalry in many places. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined they would be met with such an outpouring of enthusiasm. A fortunate few of his men had relatives either in town or in the surrounding area and would be spending this ten-day furlough in the bosom of family. Those not so fortunate would be quartered at Sophie Reynolds’s boardinghouse and at other generously offered homes.

Thinking of Sophie made Chase smile. He hadn’t seen her in the decade of chaos following the war, but time and absence hadn’t diminished his affection and regard for the woman who had positively influenced his life in so many ways.

Making his way through the crowd, Chase spied one of his men, Euclid Tate, talking with a sweet young thing who was twirling a pink parasol. Chase made a mental note to remind the men that the women were off limits. He did not want the town’s generosity repaid with even a hint of scandal.

Chase continued to wade through the sea of well-wishers, stopping to receive a congratulatory word from a teary-eyed matron or a firm handshake from a cattleman. He had to find Sophie’s; he needed a long hot soak in a large tub, and a drink. He knew she ran a legitimate business now, and he was proud of her for it, but still he had the fleeting wish that she was still in the old trade. He and his men had been on the trail for weeks. Proprieties and uniform aside, he could certainly use the companionship of a willing woman.

The A.M.E. ladies provided Chase with the directions he sought and a chilled glass of their lemonade. A quick talk with his second-in-command, Trooper Lorenzo Veal, on accommodations for the men and stabling of the horses concluded the last
of Chase’s official duties. He returned Veal’s salute, rehoisted his saddle, and set out for Sophie’s.

The crowd had thinned as people drifted off to attend the other afternoon activities, and to rest up for the night’s big doings. Quite a few folks still clustered in groups, large and small, talking, laughing, and visiting with their neighbors. Some hailed Chase as he passed, and he responded in kind.

Sophie’s place turned out to be only a short walk up the busy street. As he looked over the big, freshly painted structure, he wondered, smiling, if she still kept that brandy she’d been so fond of.

Chase lowered his gaze to take in the wide, welcoming porch with its large sparkin’ swing in front of big gleaming windows. Two women stood by the door. One he’d never seen before, but the other—a dark, honey-skinned beauty with an abundance of shining hair pulled back in a style too severe for such a face—he’d thought far too much about during the past twenty-four months. Cara Henson. He smiled. Well, well, well. Did she remember him? Her sass alone made her unforgettable. Sassy, educated, and opinionated, she’d called herself. He’d been sorry they hadn’t been able to get to know each other back in Topeka. He’d been even sorrier when Laura Pope had interrupted them that last day.

Cara looked up from her conversation with Reverend Whitfield’s wife, Sybil, and found herself the subject of Chase Jefferson’s attention. For a moment the world narrowed to hold only his eyes; she didn’t hear one more word Sybil said. He bowed gallantly, flourishing his blue Stetson, his gaze never leaving hers. When he righted himself, Cara’s heart was pounding.

“My, my,” said Sybil. “I believe you’ve gained
someone’s attention.” Sybil frowned thoughtfully. “Cara Lee Henson, do you know that handsome man?”

Two years ago, Cara had been closely following reports in the Black press on the fate of the more than forty thousand former slaves who’d pulled up stakes and migrated to Kansas. Called Exodusters, ’dusters for short, the migrants were successfully making new lives in little settlements all over Kansas.

Historically, members of the race had been settling in the West since before the nation’s independence. But this present-day journeying, which some newspapers were calling Kansas Fever and others the Great Exodus, began in earnest in 1879 as thousands of Blacks began fleeing the Southern states to escape the violence that followed the Civil War.

Cara, having grown up in the South, knew that after the Civil War the government withdrew the last Federal troops and returned to power the very people who’d split apart the country in the first place. The new elected Democrats gutted Reconstruction, then ushered in the dark, terror-filled era of Redemption. She remembered the fearful nights she and the other children in the orphanage where she lived were hidden high up in the trees behind the house to escape the midnight visitations of the Kluxers. Schools newly opened to Black children were burned, both Black and white teachers were killed. People who spoke out or advocated meeting the violence with violence were also murdered, victims of what the adults then called “bulldozin’.” And despite the one hundred and eighty thousand Blacks who’d served on the Union side of the Civil War, and the twenty-nine
thousand who’d manned Union vessels, the government did not intervene.

By the mid-1870s the country’s newly freed citizens had had enough. They began to heed the calls of young men like Union veteran and former slave Henry Adams to leave the South and head West. By the end of 1879, over forty thousand Black men, women, and children had uprooted for Kansas, in the largest mass migration of the race the nation had ever seen. The excitement of starting fresh and creating a new town had teased Cara to throw her fate in with the bold adventurers, but it wasn’t until she was fired for a second time from a teaching job that she developed a full-blown case of Exodusters’ Fever. Unmarried at the age of twenty-four, with no kin and only thirty-three dollars to her name, Cara bought passage on the Kansas Pacific for Topeka, the point of departure for caravans heading out to the new Black settlements. She hadn’t dreamed when she was preparing to leave Blessed, Ohio, that she would be part of such a very large number of migrants.

Debarking at Topeka, Cara followed in the footsteps of numerous ‘dusters before her and went to Floral Hall. There she got shelter and food until she could hook up with a group heading for the town of her choice—Henry Adams, which lay two hundred forty miles north, and whose school board was advertising for a teacher. Optimistic and eager, she waited at Floral Hall, working at a volunteer activity as all residents were required to do. Hers was the food detail. At every meal Cara dished up creamed beef for what seemed a near-endless line of people. On the second night of serving supper, she spotted the army private from Fort Leavenworth she’d met the evening she had arrived at Floral Hall. He had been one of the
party that had brought beef donated by millionaire Phillip D. Armour to supply the Exodusters. Private Worth had asked her to marry him—as had two dozen other strangers in the previous twenty-four hours. The aid ladies who ran Floral Hall had reassured Cara on the matter, pointing out that men who were aiming to build towns needed wives, and many women, alone or widowed with children, jumped at the chance to marry one of them.

Worth finally moved up in line to Cara’s spot. “Look,” he said quickly because so many waited behind him, “can we talk, after you’re done here?”

“Yes, Private, but it will be a while before I’m finished, and”—she smiled to soften her next words—“I will not be changing my mind about marrying you. Understood?”

He grinned. “I do understand Miss Cara. I’ll see you after your shift.”

Cara shook her head at the young man’s joy, then turned her attention to the next ‘duster in line.

While attending Oberlin, Cara had served in the dinning hall to help pay her tuition, but she never remembered those days to be so tiring. Her shift had ended thirty minutes before, and she was seated outside on a crate under the light of the waning moon. A breeze blew against her hot temples and sweat-dampened shirtwaist.

“Are you Cara Henson?”

Startled, she looked up at the mounted man in uniform looming above her in the dark. She’d been so tired, she hadn’t even heard him ride up. For a moment she almost succumbed to panic; for in the dark and because of her fatigue, the blue uniform brought back the terror when she was nine, terror that had plagued her in nightmares
ever since. “Yes, I am,” she said warily. She hoped this wasn’t another marriage prospect. Another six men had offered for her this night.

“Do you know a soldier named Benson Worth?”

For the first time Cara realized this soldier, whoever he was, was extremely angry. She sat up straighter, curious. “I met Private Worth a few nights ago, but I don’t know if his first name is Benson.”

“You don’t even know his first name?”

The man’s voice crackled with incredulity that made Cara even more confused and a bit irritated. “No, I don’t.”

“A man is about to be court-martialed because of you, and you don’t even know his name?”

Her eyes widened. “Because of—wait.” She stood and held up her hand. “Who are you?”

“Sergeant Chase Jefferson, United States Cavalry.”

Cara wondered if he considered his position justification for his attitude. “And?”

“And Benson Worth is facing court-martial because of you.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Is it? Why?”

“Because—” Cara didn’t know why. She shrugged. “Well, I don’t know why, but I do know I can’t be responsible.”

“Spoken like a true lady.”

“Excuse me?”

“Benson Worth deserted his post tonight.”

“And that’s my fault?”

“Yes!”

“How?”

“Are you denying he had an assignation with you tonight?”

“Yes, Private Worth asked to see me this evening,
but it was no assignation—at least not in the way you’re thinking. I met him two nights ago over a plate of creamed beef, for heaven’s sake.” Cara did not like this man at all.

“He says you were considering marrying him.”

“What?”

“Are you hard of hearing, ma’am?”

“No. I’m not. Private Worth asked me to marry him, yes. But I declined.”

“So you admit you were supposed to meet him tonight?”

“Well, yes, but—” How would she explain the extenuating circumstances to someone who obviously considered himself both judge and jury? She decided she owned him no explanation at all. “Sergeant, I am sorry if one of your men took it into his head that I’d marry him. Private Worth seemed to be a nice young man. I’m sure his superiors will see his actions as those of an impressionable young man and be lenient. Good night.”

“Wait just a minute.”

Cara grabbed what remained of her patience and turned back. “Yes.”

“You have nothing more to say than good night?”

He guided the horse closer but she held her ground. Horses didn’t scare her, but she wasn’t so sure about the rider. He’d maneuvered himself into the faint light cast by the lantern hanging above the kitchen door, giving her her first full view of his face. His mahogany jaw looked as if it had been chiseled from stone. The lips were stern beneath a full mustache, and his eyes blazed beneath a Stetson. “That impressionable young man may be in danger of losing his career.”

“Sergeant, what would you have me do?” she asked, at wit’s end.

“I want you on the next train out of here.”

Cara had never like ultimatums. “Oh, really? And if I’m not?”

She thought he would explode. “You always this sassy?”

“Always, Sergeant. My guardians called it my gift.”

“Be on that train or I’ll put you on it myself. I don’t want your kind around my men.”

“What kind is that?”

“The kind that takes advantage of impressionable men by offering them—”

“What? Creamed beef? You know nothing about what kind of woman I am.
Good night!”

The next morning Cara awakened before dawn. She’d always been an early riser, but that morning she got up even earlier than usual. She attributed it to the excitement of her pending departure. She rose, shook out her skirts, and rolled up the borrowed pallet. Walking very quietly so as not to disturb those ‘dusters still asleep, Cara crossed the hall to deposit the pallet in its spot in the corner. She waved greetings to some of the workers setting up the stations for the morning meal.

Outside, Cara saw that it had rained during the night. She pulled her shawl closer to ward off the damp. The rain had turned the well-traveled area around the hall into a sea of ankle-deep mud. The privies and the well pump were on the other side of the mud, but someone had thoughtfully laid down planks to cover the distance. Cara blessed the person as she walked on the wood.

When she finished in the privy, she crossed over to the pump, worked the handle, and splashed cool cleansing water over her sleepy face and rinsed her teeth. She dried her damp hands on her skirt and was preparing to return to the hall when
she saw a buckboard making its way down the mud-clogged road. The horses were having trouble, balking as the mud oozed high around their forelocks, exhibiting a reaction that struck Cara as amazingly human. The driver of the board was impatient and brought out his whip. Three sounds—the man’s vile curses, the whinnies of the terrified horses, and the crack of the whip—tore at Cara’s soft heart. She hastily glanced around the yard for someone with the authority to make the man stop his cruelty. She noticed a few people watching the scene, but none seemed inclined to intervene.