Ride the Panther (26 page)

“All alone. Mama’s gone and left you. Poor babies,” she sighed, kneeling. “Poor babies.” The adventuresome puppy chewed on her finger with his milk teeth when she picked him up in her hands. The pup’s eyes were black slits and its bark defiant but pitifully weak. Lorelei admired the animal’s brave gesture and gently lowered the struggling animal to the plate. The puppy lost no time in wedging himself between his siblings and resumed eating.

“I like this side of you. Why do you hide it?” Pacer said from the ladder as he climbed the few remaining rungs to the hayloft. He stood and was careful to duck beneath the roof beams as he approached the young woman and her pups. Dust and tiny dry twigs filtered to the packed earth floor below, a rain that fell with his every step. The floorboards creaked beneath his weight.

Lorelei blushed and turned away. The old anger was quick to return.

“Don’t make a mistake and think me soft because I feel sorry for these little ones,” Lorelei said.

“I saw you earlier today, in the doorway with my grandfather’s guns. Soft? No. Anything but that,” Pacer replied.

“You helped me once. I was ready to do the same for you.” Lorelei looked up into Pacer’s gold-flecked eyes.

“Ah. So you are a woman who pays her debts.”

“Now you’re making fun of me,” Lorelei said, frowning.

“No. Well, yes, maybe I am. But I do not mean to.” Pacer lifted a pup in his big right hand. The animal nipped at his fingers and batted his thumb with its velvet brown paw. After a few moments, Pacer gently returned the struggling puppy to the false security of its box. The spotted one continually escaped to freedom and bravely set off across the loft, making a few paces on its own before Lorelei scooped the pup in her arms and deposited it in the box.

“They’re like you…anxious to be on your way. For them it’s the other side of the barn. With you, only California will do.”

Lorelei shrugged. “Alike? We’ll see. Anyway, I think I may stay on.”

“Why?”

“Your mother has asked me to help her with the quilt.”

“I think you should leave,” Pacer forcefully suggested. “Perhaps you should go to St. Louis and hook up with a wagon train and make your way west.” He could tell instantly he had bruised the young woman’s feelings, and was tempted to leave things as they were. Her features froze, and she stood and walked away from him.

“Oh, I see,” she muttered.

He stood and caught her arm and turned her around.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “I’ve enemies on all sides. A man like me is the last person you should be around. What happened in the yard this afternoon is a pale shadow of what’s about to come.”

Lorelei lowered her gaze to his restraining hand. He released his hold but she did not pull away.

“I’ll stay,” Lorelei said. “I’ve never known a man like you, Pacer Wolf McQueen,” Lorelei said. “So I’ll stay here. I want to see what happens to a man like you.”

“I’ll try to make it interesting,” Pacer said. She was pretty in the lanternlight. The gentleness he glimpsed made her all the more attractive.

“In that case, I’ll keep my powder dry. And when the struggle’s over, if you’re still alive, I might give you one last chance to kiss me.” She hurried off then before Pacer could reply and descended to the center aisle of the barn. A few seconds later Pacer was completely alone save for the puppies, the horses in the stalls, and noble Hecuba, scratching in the dust near the tack room.

Lorelei was an enigma, all right, but then weren’t all women? He glanced down at the puppies. He couldn’t rid himself of a single troubling notion. The defenseless creatures had found a haven smack dab in the middle of a battlefield. He didn’t envy them—or himself. When the shooting started, guns were apt to be aimed at him. By rights he ought to be plenty worried.

But then again—there was the matter of that kiss.

J
ESSE HAD ALLOWED HIMSELF
an extra couple of days on the family farm. He’d spent the time in the good company of his grandmother and worked as best he could, alongside Si Reaves, the Tellicos, and his own younger brother, in replacing the roof of the barn which had suffered considerable damage from a hailstorm well over four months ago. Taking care not to overextend himself, Jesse hoped to speed the healing process. He wanted to be as well as possible for the council on Sunday night.

Jesse ate heartily and involved himself in the easy camaraderie of the men he worked alongside, and for two days politics and the brutal realities of war seemed far away. He knew the illusion couldn’t last. And so did the Choctaw Kid.

Jesse was uncertain how to resolve the matter of his brother. He had come to realize that Pacer was not responsible for the Lawrence massacre. However, the Choctaw Kid was still a notorious guerrilla raider who had plagued the Union troops and settlements of Missouri and Kansas. Daniel Pacer Wolf McQueen gave no indication that he intended to curb his activities. On this Saturday morning Jesse had yet to reach a decision on the matter.

Jesse woke early from a troubled sleep. He’d dreamt of black wings against a crimson dawn and heard the cry of a bird become a howl of agony that reverberated in his skull. He sat up and wiped cold sweat from his brow. He dressed quickly, grabbed his gunbelt and hat, and stepped outside into the cool of morning. The yard was empty, the farm, dark and vacant-looking though he knew the Tellicos had pitched their bedrolls in two of the empty stalls. Jesse looked east and beheld a sky awash with streamers of blood-red clouds encroaching on the purple-black roof of night. He caught his breath, the dream image still fresh in his mind and now become real here before him. He lowered his gaze and spied a solitary shawl-wrapped figure on the wooden bridge Jesse’s father and grandfather had built across Buffalo Creek. It was a simple structure, wide enough for a wagon and sturdy enough to bear a heavy load if necessary. Rails of split red oak ran the length of either side.

“Christ almighty, doesn’t she ever sleep?” Jesse muttered to himself, and stepped off the porch and strode purposefully across the yard, eyeing the lurid sky and remembering. It was as if he were walking in the dream. Black wings against the blood-red sky. A raven’s wings. What else? But why the cries of anguish and the icy creep of fear along his spine?

She waited for him on the bridge, and when her grandson was in earshot she said, “So you also have had the dream.”

Jesse drew up sharply and stared at the half-breed medicine woman for several silent moments. “I wish you’d stop doing that.”

“What?”

“You tell me what I’m doing before I get to tell you,” Jesse said. He paused to consider his reply and wondered if it made sense. Then with a shrug, he admitted the dream that had awakened him. Raven merely nodded sagely and turned to study the dawn.

“Did you send me the dream?”

“No. It came from the All-Father, the same as mine.”

“I don’t understand any of this.”

“Someone will die today,” she said. “But you would know this if you were quiet and listened.”

“Who will die?”

Raven shook her head. “It is rare for the spirits to reveal a name. The warning at sunrise is all we can know.”

“I’ve seen the sun come up like this before,” Jesse protested. He did not like all this talk of death. Tomorrow he would hold council and try to convince the people in and around Chahta Creek to come together in peace and abandon the course of division and bloodshed. The last thing he needed was some ill omen from his grandmother. “It was a dream, it meant nothing. The clouds are just clouds.”

“Sing the song with me, the song for the dying. Sing for the one who will die alone this day,” Raven said.

“No. I walk the white road now,” Jesse flatly stated. “Let Pacer be here. It is for him to speak the words and make the prayer.”

“The dream came to you,” Raven told him. She steadied herself against the railing and shivered as a gentle wind picked up out of the north. “The blood of my mother flows in your veins, passed from me to my son and then to you. The power of the Old Ones is real and you cannot deny it.”

Jesse reached out and put his arms around Raven and held her close. He whispered in her ear, “I love you, Grandmother.” She seemed so little in his arms. The years were slipping away and the time was not far off that he would lose her. Just thinking of it made him miss her already. “I love you,” he repeated. “But I follow a path of my own choosing and there is no place for ghosts or whispering spirits.” He glanced up as the skyline brightened in hue and the crimson clouds paled to blushing pink. A golden sun crested the hills and pursued the last of the fleeing shadows along the banks of Buffalo Creek.

“See. Here is the sun and no one has died,” Jesse said with a wave of his hand. “Tomorrow I’ll return to town. Carmichael’s probably wondering if I’m ever coming back, and T. Alan Booth hopes I won’t.” He placed a hand on his grandmother’s arm. “Come back to the house. You’ll catch a chill.”

“In a minute,” Raven said. “There is something I must do.” She turned her back on her grandson and faced the risen sun and softly began to chant in a melodious voice.

“Grandfather Spirit.

Earth shaker. Sky splitter.

Voice of Thunder and

Sacred Dreamer.

You have given me the sight that

is beyond seeing and I accept it.

Hear my voice,

may my words ride the wind to your ears.

I have seen blood upon the clouds.

I have heard the dying one.

Follow his cries. Bind him to you,

O Grandfather Spirit.

Earth shaker. Sky splitter.

Voice of thunder.

Sacred Dreamer.”

Jesse retraced his route back to the farmhouse. The song hounded him every step of the way. It tugged at his heart.
But I walk a different path.
From the porch her voice was faint.
I am a Union captain come here to stop the violence.
Inside the house he could not hear Raven at all.
It is not my way.
He made his way to the kitchen and started coffee and tried to distance himself from Raven’s admonitions. He slumped onto a chair and, resting his elbows on the kitchen table, cradled his face in his hands. The song for the dying, why now? And for whom? The old words like ancient spirits clutched at his thoughts and would not set him free.

CAP FEATHERSTONE’S MEDICINE SHOW POTABLES AND ELIXIRS TO RESTORE THE HEALTH AND REFRESH THE SPIRIT

Cap lovingly dusted the side panel of his medicine wagon as he walked alongside the four-wheeled coach and peered around the corner of the wagon at the frock-coated figure standing in the doorway of the carriage shed. Parson Marshal Booth had come from Cap’s gambling house, where the women were as fiery as the liquor and sin, not Sunday dinner, was the offering of the day.

“Run out of credit, T. Alan?” Cap asked, amused.

Booth stood ramrod-stiff, his sober attire neatly creased and closely fitting the marshal’s six-foot frame. Morning sunlight glinted off the star pinned to his vest as his coat parted and Booth hooked his thumbs in the wide gunbelt worn high on his hips.

“More than one grave’s been bought for the price of a clever remark,” the marshal replied. He had yet to have his coffee at Gude’s and was in a foul mood.

“I meant no harm, T. Alan,” said Cap. He knew such familiarity bothered Booth. It amused him to goad the lawman.

“A rider came in from Honey Ridge. Tullock sent him to fetch me out of bed so’s I could mosey over here and fetch Samuel and either toss him in jail or send him home. Seems the lad’s been gone two days. Al Teel told me he saw Sam right here at your saloon just the other night.”

“That’s correct. I extended his credit and Sam spent the last two days battling his own private demons.” Cap shook his head and folded his arms across his great girth. The bandanna he wore to hide his thinning hair was soaked with sweat along his forehead. It was warm in the shed and Cap had already been in here longer than he wanted to be. “Heard he was at odds with his pa. Anyway, he left for home a little after sunup, and I can guarantee he was considerable happier than when he walked through my doors.”

“No doubt poorer as well.” A bee circled Booth’s flat-brim hat, hovered near his stern features, only to be brushed away and then return to plague the Bible-toting lawman like some impish sprite.

“Hell, Marshal, a man has to make a profit. Where’s the harm in that?”

Booth saw no point in debating the issue. Cap might be friend to Jesse McQueen, but that didn’t warrant anything but suspicion from this lawman. “He’s gone, huh?” His lanky arm shot out with suspicious speed and he crushed the bothersome insect against the doorsill.

“Left on his own horse and rode out of town. Said he was going to try and talk his father out of coming to McQueen’s council.”

“He’ll fail there. When Tullock makes up his mind about something, there’s no stopping him.” Booth shrugged. “Well, I’ve done what I said I would.” He retreated into the sunlight. “If you see Jesse before I do, tell him to stop by my office.”

“Sure thing, T. Alan. Always glad to be of help.” Cap smiled and propped a foot up on the singletree. He watched the lawman depart and, satisfied the threat of discovery was on its way to Gude’s Good Eats, turned to the small man cowering in the shadows of the carriage shed. “You can come out now.”

With a rustle of straw crunching underfoot, Lucius Minley emerged from his hiding place. He checked the open doorway and breathed a sigh of relief.

“That was close,” the banker remarked.

“You worry too much,” Cap said. He removed the smaller man’s wire-rimmed spectacles and cleaned them on a kerchief from his pocket. He handed the eyewear back to Minley, who immediately fitted them over his ears. Time and his association with Cap Featherstone had prematurely aged the former clerk. He had learned of the council and heard the rumor that both factions of Union and Confederate sympathizers had agreed to set their differences aside and face one another across an oaken table in the Council House.

“Maybe you don’t worry enough,” Lucius testily snapped. “If Jesse succeeds in talking peace, our plans are finished. There’ll be no one else eager to sell out. Why, some folks might even want to settle back on the landholdings. When they discover I’ve sold the notes to you, there’ll be the devil to pay.” Lucius began to pace the floor alongside the medicine wagon.