Paxton and the Lone Star (17 page)

Texas. A new land, a new life.

The muted sound of a shout floated upriver, brought him back to reality.

“But not alone,” he said aloud to Firetail. The whole earth was alive and vibrant, pulsing beneath him. There was nothing he couldn't do. No thing was denied him. He was as strong as a giant, capable of great feats. The sensation was startling and exhilarating, one he had never encountered. New though it was, it gave him added strength and confidence. And strangely enough, peace, for he saw his direction laid out before him. Elizabeth would fight him as she had from the day they had first met, but the end was preordained. Never in his life had he been more sure of anything. Laughing with pure joy, he turned Firetail's head and started back toward the landing. “She doesn't know it yet,” he whispered in Firetail's ear as the great horse thundered through the shallows and around the bend, “but not alone.”

“First camp in Texas!” Scott Campbell exclaimed. The chunky, lantern-jawed farmer handed a tin cupful of whiskey to Kevin Thatche. “Which means your little one will be a native, by God. The only real Texan among us. And that's something worth toastin'.”

Kevin laughed nervously, held up his cup, and clanked it against Scott's before drinking.

“And best you quit frettin' about that child, my lad. It's a waste of time and energy, I can tell you from experience. The first is no worse than the fourth. It only seems so. In any case, there's nothing better to still a quaking stomach than fine Scotch whiskey.”

Kevin drank and made a face. It felt as if the whiskey were eating through the walls of his stomach. “It ain't my quakin' stomach I'm worried about. It's Millie's, and what may drop before we reach San Antonio,” he replied, trying his best to manufacture humor where none was felt.

Nels Matlan and Mackenzie Campbell entered the circle of light. Each carried a pistol that he was busily cleaning. The clean-cut, bespectacled, one-time schoolteacher looked incongruous with a gun in his hands.

“That's the third weapon I've seen you with tonight, teacher,” Scott said to Matlan. “And now my own son is following your suit and tending to a weapon I saw to myself but a week ago.”

“Mr. Leakey and Mr. Jones said we couldn't be too careful, Pa,” Mackenzie replied.

“And seeing as that barn-sized lunker who calls himself Joseph Paxton has made off with Lottie Michaelson, you and Dennis have nothing better to do, I suppose,” Scott observed dryly. “Well, maybe so. If Leakey and Jones say so, it's fine with me.” He poured a cupful of whiskey and offered it to Matlan. “But you, now, Nels. I thought you were a teacher, not a soldier.”

“Not according to Leakey,” Matlan said, accepting the drink. “Thanks.” He gestured around the circle with the cup, then drank it off in one gulp. “God!” he croaked, paling.

“Every man's a soldier in the howling wilderness,” Scott said, mimicking Hogjaw. “Well, maybe so, maybe not. Maybe he's just exaggerating to keep us on our toes, and things won't be as bad as he says. Hell, I haven't fired a weapon in anger since the war, and even then I had to work it up some to bloody those pretty British jackets.”

“Say what you will, Pa,” Mackenzie blurted enthusiastically. “Whatever happens, I'll be ready. I hope we do have a run in with the Comanches.”

“And I hope I'm upwind of you at the time,” Thaddeus Jones said, emerging from the darkness. “I heard my first Comanche war whoop when I was just about your age. And as cocksure, too. By golly, but it left my britches sour for a week.”

Mackenzie's cheeks turned red to match his hair. “Laugh if you want,” he said. “We'll see what happens when the shooting starts. One thing you can bet on. I won't run.”

“Neither did I,” Jones replied. He crabbed his legs, pulled out the seat of his britches, and duck-walked around the fire. “I couldn't.”

The men roared with laughter. Jones held out a cup for his share of the whiskey Scott had promised everyone to celebrate their arrival in Texas. “Cheers, gents,” he said. “We're closer than we were when we started. Always an upliftin' feeling, crossin' that river.”

Coming from rural Pennsylvania, none of the men around the fire had ever had much to do with black people until they reached the Mississippi. Mostly they had been told that blacks were naturally inferior to whites, and that slavery, though onerous, was a condition that fit them well. That being the case, learning that their wagon train master was a black man had been a surprise that they hadn't quite known how to handle. Many hours had been spent discussing the matter and there had even been a secret vote taken before the wagon train left Natchez to determine if they wanted a black man leading them. Jones had won—who else was there, after all?—but the questions still lingered. Only now, after nearly three weeks of travel and seeing a man like Leakey accept Jones's leadership, had they begun to feel at ease with him. “Tell us, Mr. Jones,” Nels said. The rest of the men quieted, as if they knew what was coming. “We been curious how you … That is, how come a, well, a—”

“How does a black man from slave stock come to be a wagon master?” Jones chuckled. “Don't worry, Matlan. No offense taken. You're not the first to wonder, nor will you be the last. My father was a slave in what's now Louisiana back when it still belonged to Spain. If you think this is wild now, it was a far sight wilder then when they had an insurrection, razed that plantation, and headed this same way.” Thoughtful, he paused and sipped his whiskey. “I was borned not too far from here, and like your babe to come—” He nodded in Thatche's direction. “—that made me a Mexican citizen.

“Well, my folks got away with it, and made it all the way to San Antonio where my daddy took up workin' for Medina's daddy. I grew up with his family and learned to speak better Mex than most whites. Even got me a Mex wife, now, an' four little ones to boot, all livin' in the old señor's house down in Santa Catarina, where I'll probably go after I get you folks to your land.”

“Fascinating,” Matlan said, thoroughly intrigued.

“Calls for another round,” Scott added enthusiastically. He held the bottle to the light before refilling Jones's cup. “Still plenty left, but let's take it easy. Leakey and the Paxtons haven't had theirs yet.”

Mackenzie grunted. “What do you make of them Paxtons?” he asked, obviously put out by the attention Lottie had been receiving.

“Well,” Jones began, not wanting to blow too hard on a smoldering fire, “they do their share. I ain't seen 'em shirk a job yet. An' Hogjaw says they'll do.”

“Leakey?” Kevin Thatche asked. It was said that if a pregnant woman looked too often at a disfigured face, her child would be born with a similar disfigurement. Consequently, both he and Mildred were afraid of the mountain man and bore the man a certain animosity. “You take his word?”

“That's the way it is out here, son-o. You know a man or you don't.”

“Still—”

“Still nothin',” Jones snapped. “Let me tell you about Hogjaw, but don't you call him that, for—no offense meant—you're not man enough yet to do so. Why, the first time I seen him he'd just got his new pate, and the top of his head was so swole up with infection he couldn't put on a hat. Even so, he went chargin' through a Comanche war party like it was a bunch of Sunday School teachers on a picnic. That was back in twenty-two, as I recall.”

His voice droned on, a low murmur barely heard at the Matlan wagon where the women were gathered about the weekly sewing. Socks, shirts, skirts, and blouses lay piled about on split logs to keep them off the damp ground. Most of the work had been completed, except for some wagon covers, not a one of which had failed to sustain at least one rip. They were just starting on the worst, the Kanias'. Joan Campbell and Eustacia Matlan took the largest tear where a tree limb had fallen through the canvas cover. Mildred Thatche and Helen Kemper took smaller holes and set to work. Still not finished with the lapel on Buckland's frock coat, Mila sat good-naturedly to one side, licked the blood off her left ring finger, and tried again. She'd had little practice at the womanly art of sewing, but was determinedly learning to become adept in order to better know and work with her husband's flock.

“Oh!” Mildred Thatche exclaimed, catching her breath. The fifteen year old came from a large family and was right at home with needle and thread.

“Did he kick?” Mila asked.

Mildred nodded. “I still don't understand how you can be so sure it's a boy, though.”

“I have learned,” Mila said with a bright laugh, “to trust Joan's judgment in such matters.”

“It has to be a boy,” Joan said, threading a new piece of waxed cotton through her needle. “My own two kicked just that way. Dennis and Mackenzie. Such a time they gave me. And still do.” She chuckled with the memory. “The girls, now, were content to lie quietly. So comfortable. But boys? Oh, me. Always anxious to leave before their time.”

“Joan is right,” Eustacia chimed in, adjusting her brown hair, tightly drawn into a bun that Joan had helped pin in place. “Tommy was just like that. All the energy of a storm. I was exhausted when I had him, and I've been tired ever since.”

“One simply has to learn, is all,” Joan said with an emphatic shake of her head.

Mildred waited. “Well, what?” she finally asked, exasperated. “Learn what?”

Joan's eyes twinkled merrily. “Why, to sleep standing up, dear.”

Laughter floated above the dull white cloud of canvas. Outside the light, Elizabeth paused on her way back from watering the roses she was carefully nurturing and checking on Hester, then turned and walked quietly away. She was filled with a restless energy that no sewing or idle banter could discharge. She passed the wagon Hogjaw had bought in Natchez. Jack Kemper, down with a bad back after trying to push his wagon out of a mudhole without help, was asleep and snoring in his wagon. The least sociable of the group, Elizabeth thought, immediately adding herself to that short list as she sneaked away to be alone. One more fire lay ahead, and that was her own, where Lottie and Joseph sat talking languidly. Silently, Elizabeth detoured around them and headed for the river.

Alone.

Ah, there was a word she had thought much on. She resisted the idea, but maybe it was better to be like Lottie and seek out warm caresses and muttered endearments, no matter how insincere they were. To feel arms warm in the dark, to experience release, to yearn and be fulfilled. To toy with words and play the game of smiles and teases. But oh, by all that was holy, she had neither the strength nor desire nor urge to be anything more than what she was and who she was.

The unavoidable problem, then, came racing to mind. Who was she? Who was Elizabeth Michaelson?

A woman, a girl: she who had come in the place of a son. She stared down at her clothes. Work clothes, they were. Men's clothes. So? They adapted well to the myriad daily tasks. Someone had to do those jobs, after all, and she was damned if she'd let any of the Paxtons rise to the role. She was willing to let them be responsible for what she couldn't physically accomplish, and equally willing to cook for them as agreed upon, but no more. Their alliance was one of convenience only, and should never go beyond that. And for one single unforgivable reason: True Paxton had prevented her from avenging her father's death.

But the argument was assailable, as well she knew. The past three weeks had tempered her grief and anger with understanding. The incontrovertible truth was that True had probably saved her life. Then why did she resent him so, with his bold bronzed face and unkempt, wind-curled hair and pale azure eyes set in that serious face? Why did she turn her back on him, answer him grudgingly if at all, refuse even his thanks at the end of each meal? Why did she find it so uncommonly difficult just to be civil? True hadn't sought her out, after all. He had simply been nearby during her moment of foolishness. Fortune, not he, had thrown them together. It was childish to blame him for all her troubles.

Nor was there anyone else to blame, she thought, emerging from the trees and finding herself on a bluff overlooking the river. Not her father, though temptation was great, or her mother or sister or even herself. Nudged hither and yon by unseen and unforeseeable forces, events unfolded willy-nilly. People were people, met and interacted according to rules so complex as to be incomprehensible. As well to blame the wind for bending the tree or the cat for eating the robin. Exhaling softly and overcome by the enormity of life, Elizabeth leaned against the trunk of a lightning-blasted tree and, in the same instant, realized she shared her solitude with another. True Paxton had preceded her to this very spot and stood but a few feet from her. The sigh froze on her lips. She forced herself to look straight ahead across the river, and to ignore him.
See. The moon is nearly full.
A gentle breeze tugged at her hair.
That cloud churning through Cassiopeia looks remarkably like a tiny dog.
The long grass rustled underfoot.
I
wish I'd put on one of my dresses. The yellow one, I think.
She caught herself and frowned.
Now why should I think a thing like that? For him? Really …

Suddenly the night turned emerald. Startled, Elizabeth looked up to see a glob of green fire arc across the sky like a miniature sun racing to violent extinction. She cried out involuntarily and, in the lingering afterglow of the shooting star, found herself in True's arms. Frightened by his touch, yet somehow not wanting him to let her go, she tilted her head and tried to say his name, only to be stopped as his lips met hers.
Impossible. Impossible!
Her breasts crushed against his chest. Her arms rose of their own volition to wrap around him. Her fingers dug into the bunched muscles beneath his shirt. Her soul, soaring, searched among the stars. Far, far below, the tiny world hung suspended and motionless in space. Elizabeth fought for control, surrendered, fought again, and thought she must have won, for the kiss had ended and True was looking down at her intently.