Bloody Trail (11 page)

“
Are you certain?” Munro
asked.

“
Positive,” Derrick assured
him.

“
All right. You know where we’ve
set up camp,” Satterlee said. “Meet us there.”

Ben Tolliver never awakened when Derrick
lifted him to Cholla’s back and tied him in the saddle, nor when
Derrick pulled him off his horse, laid him gently on the ground,
and wrapped him in blankets. When he finally did regain
consciousness, it was full dark. The sound of a harmonica drifted
through the still air.

“
Must be Jimmy Spotted Owl,” the
injured man mused. “Always did like the way he plays that mouth
harp.”

He didn’t recognize the melody Jimmy was
playing, a refrain so mournful it was almost a dirge. All he knew
was that tune certainly fit the occasion. He fell back to sleep
with the notes echoing through his fogged mind.

CHAPTER FIVE

Derrick McCain sat on a rock at the edge of
their impromptu camp, rifle across his knees. The campfire was too
far away to provide any warmth, but close enough for its flames to
send flickers dancing among the shadows. Derrick focused all his
attention on his ears, alert for any suspicious noise from the
darkness that surrounded them. He heard soft breathing, and a few
light snores, coming from his sleeping comrades—dark bundles
burrowed beneath protective blankets. Sometimes one of the wounded
would moan in pain. Five of those bundles made neither motion nor
noise, and never would again.

He could not help but start when he suddenly
realized that someone was sitting on the rock beside him. The man
was no more than a shadow at first, but then the firelight revealed
him to be the Seminole scout.

“
Damn, Charley,” Derrick said in a
hoarse whisper. “I never heard you come up, you scared the hell out
of me. Where’d you come from?”

“
I been pokin’ around some,”
Charley answered. “Tryin’ to find somethin’ to tie some blankets to
and rig up a travois in case the doc needs one or two when he sets
out in the mornin’. Torrance and that deputy was hurt pretty bad,
might not can ride.”

“
Out there in the
dark?”

Charley shrugged. “Too dark to track, and too
dark for most in this outfit to ride. But not too dark for a
Seminole to look around a mite.”

“
I guess not. What did you
find?”

“
This and that.”

Derrick waited, thinking the scout would
elaborate, but he did not. They sat for awhile in
silence.

Charley Blackfeather could tell that the white
man was uncomfortable. He’d have been a lot more than
uncomfortable, Charley mused, if I had been an enemy intent on
slipping into the camp. He’d be choking on his own blood, trying to
breathe through a windpipe that had been sliced open. Charley had
done just that to many a sentry, starting when he was a boy in
Florida.

Derrick shifted his weight, nervous, almost
like he could read Charley’s thoughts. Charley did not move, he
only stared into the darkness. After a couple of minutes, Derrick
broke the silence.

“
Gallagher handled himself well in
that ambush. Surprised us all, didn’t he? And Torrance—I don’t
reckon I ever even seen him with a gun before today.”

“
Yep,” Charley said. This time
Derrick thought he would say no more, but then the scout turned to
look directly at him and continued. “Seems like our hostler been
carryin’ a secret.”

“
I reckon so.”

Charley grunted. “I just been bringin’ my
pelts in to Wolf Creek for a few months. But I already figured out,
most ever’body in that town is carryin’ a secret of one kind or
another.”

Derrick nodded. “I guess that’s how it is, out
here on the frontier. Especially with all the folks that have moved
into town since the railroad came. Probably not so much with the
ones that’ve been here since it was first settled,
though.”

“
I heard some folks talkin’, back
before the ambush,” Charley said. “Talkin’ low among their selves
when we slowed down for a bit, probably didn’t know I could hear
‘em. Red Myers, it was, and them deputies.”

“
Talking about what?”

“
About Danby’s gang bein’ Johnny
Rebs, same as some in this posse. How they wasn’t sure who to
trust. Mostly they meant Spike Sweeney, seems like, but they
mentioned you, too. Said you was brung up in their town, but when
the war come, you rode off to join the Rebels.”

Derrick sighed. “I’ve been back home for
years. Seems like they’d let that go. I’m not some drifter that
followed the railroad here. My folks helped found the
town.”

“
But you was Secesh.”

“
My family was from the
South—Tennessee, originally. My pa brought us here on account of
‘popular sovereignty.’ He used to go on about it all the
time.”

“
Popular sovereignty,” Charley
repeated. “You mean votin’ on slavery.”

Derrick’s discomfort had been fading, since
his companion had started conversing with him instead of sitting in
stoic silence. Now, it returned tenfold.

“
Well, yeah,” Derrick said. “A lot
of people who came to Kansas in those days came because they were
on one side of that argument or the other.”

“
And your pa was for
slavery.”

“
Yeah.”

Charley chuckled, and a genuine smile lit his
face. “I was agin it,” he said.

Derrick could not help chuckling as well—the
smile put him at ease a little. “I reckon that makes sense,”
Derrick said.

“
Uh-huh,” Charley agreed. “My pa
had strong feelin’s about slavery, too. On account of he was born
one, back in Georgia. But he run off, and made it to the swamps.
The Seminoles took him in, like they did a lot of others. He got
adopted, took a Seminole wife. I was born in the Everglades. I been
a free man my whole life.”

Charley chuckled again, but this one was
tinged with bitterness.

“
Well, almost my whole life,” he
continued. “Until the end of the last Seminole war. I was in John
Horse’s band, and we was slow to give up. We was lucky we didn’t
get put in one of them filthy prisons, like Osceola died in.
Instead they marched us out west to Indian Territory. We didn’t
even have our own land there at first, we had to live in the Creek
Nation. And a lot of us had broke off from the Creeks, way back
yonder in the Red Stick War.”

“
Sounds like your people have seen
a lot of wars,” Derrick said.

Charley nodded. “They kinda blend together,
after awhile. Life is war, I reckon, for a lot of us,
anyways.”

“
I wish that when a war ended it
would stay ended,” Derrick said.

Charley stared at him again. “So you rode
Secesh on account of your pa.”

“
More than anything, I reckon,”
Derrick said. “And my brothers. They both rode east and joined the
Confederate Army. They told me to stay home and help out on the
farm, that I was too young to fight—but I followed after them
anyway, and I joined up too.”

“
But you came back,” Charley
said.

“
Yeah, when the war was over I
came back. My brothers died in Tennessee.”

“
Not when the war was over,”
Charley said, his voice suddenly cold. “When the war was still
goin’ on. You came back to this neck of the woods—or at least this
side of the Mississippi.”

Derrick stiffened, and his grip on the rifle
tightened.

“
For somebody that’s been so quiet
all day,” Derrick said, “you sure have a lot to say all of a
sudden.”

“
You think I been talkin’ to pass
the time?” Charley said. “I come over here to let you
know.”

“
Know what?”

Charley produced his Bowie knife—seemingly
from thin air—and waved it before Derrick’s face.

“
Loosen your holt on that rifle,
son,” Charley said. “Don’t make no sudden motions.”

Derrick reluctantly did as he was told, and
Charley took the weapon away from him.

“
Now, you just set there,” Charley
said. “I got some more talkin’ to do.”

“
Let me know about what,” Derrick
repeated.

“
Who I am, and who you
are.”

Charley set the rifle down and took the knife
away from Derrick’s face.

“
I know you didn’t spend the whole
war back East,” Charley said. “You was in Centralia, Missouri, in
September of 1864 with Bloody Bill Anderson and a bunch of others
that rode with Quantrill. Danby was there, too. And me. I was
there.”

Derrick shook his head slowly, closing his
eyes briefly and sighing. Charley kept talking.

“
I’ve seen you around town a time
or two, comin’ and goin’, but I never got a good look at you. Not
till today, when Danby’s bunch hit town. I seen him takin’ shots at
you and Torrance—I reckon it was seein’ you and Danby together that
done it. But I remembered. I won’t never forget that
day.”

Charley pushed his face close to Derrick’s.
“Look close, boy. You remember me now?”

Derrick’s eyes widened. “Damn,” he said
softly.

“
I reckon we all look alike to you
Rebs,” Charley said. “But you stuck in my mind right off that day,
on account of at first I thought you was a Cherokee. You favor one.
I was wearin’ this same hat, if that helps—though we was all
wearin’ blue on my side.”

“
No—I remember. I remember you
now.”

Derrick McCain put his head in his
hands.

****

Charley Blackfeather had been reliving his
memories all day. He had kept a close eye on Derrick McCain the
whole time the posse was on the outlaws’ trail, and hung on the
snatches of conversation coming from Red, the tanner’s helper,
about McCain’s past.

Charley figured he had more reason to distrust
ex-Confederates than anyone else on the posse—and not just because
of his black skin. In his youth, his people had fought the U.S.
Army—not only to resist forcible removal from their homeland to an
unknown country west of the Mississippi, but to resist demands that
they turn over their black members to be sent into slavery. Osceola
himself had a black wife—he and many other Seminoles were willing
to risk their lives to keep their black brothers and sisters
free.

The Black Seminoles had their own fighting
bands, with leaders like John Horse and John Caesar. Charley
accompanied his father to war when he was only twelve years old—and
continued in that struggle when he was a man, long after his father
had fallen. John Horse surrendered to the Army only after they had
promised his band freedom if they agreed to accompany the other
captured Seminoles to Indian Territory. Then came the long
walk—countless Seminoles perished along the way.

Once in Indian Territory, the Seminoles were
forced for many years to live in the Creek Nation. The Seminoles
had broken away from the Creeks many years before—and after the Red
Stick War ended in 1814, Seminole numbers had been swelled by
traditionalist Creeks fleeing Alabama.

Many of their Creek neighbors in Indian
Territory had slaves—as did many Cherokees, Choctaws and
Chickasaws. Black Seminoles, many of whom had lived their whole
lives as free warriors, became the frequent targets of
slave-catchers who were as likely to be Indian as white. The unwary
black Indian could find himself kidnapped and sold into
slavery—sometimes even by the red Seminoles who had been their
battle comrades. John Horse led a large group of Black Seminoles to
Mexico, where there was no slavery, and offered their services to
the Mexican army.

Charley Blackfeather had not gone with them.
There were communities of free black Indians in the Creek Nation,
and a large number of full blood Creeks and Seminoles who held onto
the old ways and opposed slavery. Charley had cast his lot among
them. Eventually, like his father before him, he took a full blood
Seminole woman as his wife. Her name was Hachi, and she bore him
three children, two sons and a daughter.

But life, it seemed to Charley, meant war—and
peace was only the brief interlude between battles. War came once
more to the Seminoles, and once more, slavery was a
factor.

The United States was divided by a great Civil
War. Both sides sought the Indian Nations as allies. The leaders of
all five of the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes”—Cherokees,
Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Seminoles—allied with the
Confederacy. Many of those leaders had established plantations
along the Red and Arkansas Rivers, and owned slaves. But some
citizens of those tribes—especially Seminoles and Creeks—opposed
both slavery and the Confederacy.

Indian Territory, too, was divided by Civil
War.

Feeling threatened by their pro-Confederate
governments, thousands of pro-Union Indians flocked to the camp of
the old Creek warrior Opothloyahola. With their women and children,
they marched north toward Kansas, where the Union Army had promised
to give them sanctuary. Charley and his family were among
them.

It was not to be a peaceful exodus.
Confederate forces—including Cherokee and Choctaw troops, as well
as some Texas Rangers—attacked the emigrants. The journey to Kansas
became a running battle. Of nine thousand Opothleyahola followers,
two thousand died. Charley’s sons, aged sixteen and fourteen,
fought valiantly. The youngest, named Billy for his grandfather,
fell at Round Mountain. The eldest, Jack, was killed at
Chustenahlah.