The Arrow Keeper’s Song (41 page)

Joanna agreed to come only after she was assured all was well with the new mother and child. Then Red Cherries and the doctor departed the farm, covering the seven miles at a hurried pace and reaching Panther Hall by midday. The roadhouse was a notorious landmark along the well-traveled North Road to the oil fields. Joanna had heard stories of what went on there, tales of gambling and debauchery that were legendary. She had often ridden past the place, but it offered no attraction to her; after all, Joanna had seen enough of cruelly squandered lives in Cuba, during the war.

However, Panther Hall generated its share of patients for her. From time to time one of the Tall Bulls' wounded customers would wander into her office in town, bruised and bloody from a fistfight or knife wound incurred within the confines of the infamous roadhouse.

She had already met Jerel Tall Bull and his brother, Curtis, at a town meeting several months ago and was perceptive enough to realize the older brother was not a man to be taken lightly. So it was with some misgivings that Joanna followed Red Cherries around the roadhouse to a cabin nestled in a grove of post oaks behind the barn, which blocked a view of the hall.

“The respectable folks from Cross Timbers use this place when they want to be alone with one of my girls,” Red Cherries explained, “and do not wish anybody to see them. Sometimes it is not even one of my girls they fancy, but another of their own choosing.”

Red Cherries on horseback and Joanna in her carriage rode up to the cabin and tethered their horses at the hitching rail in front. The door of the cabin opened, and another of Panther Hall's “soiled doves,” a dimpled, shy-looking brown-haired girl no more than fifteen years old, emerged from the cabin accompanied by both Tall Bull brothers.

Jerel was clearly surprised to see the doctor. He leaned over to the fifteen-year-old and whispered in the young girl's ear. She nodded and immediately scampered from the porch and hurried back to the roadhouse, without so much as a simple greeting to Red Cherries.

“This is no place for you,” Jerel said, addressing the woman in the buggy. Joanna was bundled in a gray woolen dress with a hooded cape drawn about her shoulders and tied at the neck.

“Don't speak so fast, there, Jerel. Maybe it is,” Curtis countered with a grin. He bowed and swept his hat across his chest. “Good day to you, Miss Cooper. Did you come out here for a dance or two? I'd be happy to oblige. You could be my personal guest.”

Joanna recoiled at the notion, accurately judging the younger brothers intentions. She refused, however, to be cowed by the presence of the two men. She had seen their like before. Well, maybe not Jerel's. There was something different about him. …

Jerel stepped down from the porch, his large-boned, powerful physique moving with surprising grace, his manner gruff as he confronted the two women. He fixed his iron-eyed stare on Red Cherries, “I said we would handle this ourselves.”

“Jerel … Mr. Tall Bull—Clarice needs tending. More than you or I can give her,” Red Cherries replied, defending her actions.

“I might be able to help,” Joanna said, speaking in a forceful tone of voice. “I'll know better when I see her.” He glanced in her direction and she shuddered inwardly, then averted her gaze and stepped around the big man. Curtis made a move to block her, a smug expression on his face. Red Cherries hurried to stand at Joanna's side. She glanced over her shoulder and spoke to the older brother.

“Call off your dog.” It was easier to speak if she didn't have to look him in the eye. Bull-necked and broad-shouldered, Jerel's sheer physical presence had always been intimidating, but there was something else about him now—a different quality that at times chilled her to the very core and made her spirit recoil when this dark mood came upon him. When he turned, she lowered her head and began to study the porch at her feet.

“Ain't no whore gonna talk to me that way,” Curtis snarled, and started toward the women. A simple “no” from his brother stopped Curtis in his tracks. Jerel turned his smoldering gaze on Joanna, who flinched, though he never made a single motion in her direction.

“Go on, then, as long as you're here,” he said in a voice like rumbling thunder. “You'll pay her fee,” he added as an aside to Red Cherries. She nodded, and Jerel did an about-face and headed down the path that led to the rear of Panther Hall.

Curtis scowled, struggling to stem the tide of his anger. Jerel had not backed him up, and he felt humiliated. So he assumed an air of self-importance and took a step toward the porch and Joanna, who was standing with a hand on the door. “Red Cherries here thinks she's something special. But Jerel sees her for the whore she is—a whore through and through.” He looked back at the Cheyenne woman. “Could be you're spreading your legs for the wrong brother.”

“I like to watch Jerel tug your leash and make you jump,” Red Cherries said, revealing nothing but her contempt for the younger man.

Curtis's expression became mottled. His hands clenched with barely suppressed rage, and for a moment Joanna wondered if he was going to attack the prostitute, but then he dug his fists into the pockets of his frock coat. “You've got a smart mouth. One of these days I'm gonna make you put it to better use.” He looked up at the doctor on the porch and touched the brim of his hat as a gesture of farewell. He even bowed before starting off toward the roadhouse. This sudden gesture of civility was wasted on Joanna, who already knew too much about men like Curtis Tall Bull. It was Jerel, the elder brother, who was the enigma. Even in retrospect Joanna trembled at what she had glimpsed in the man's unflinching gaze—a most dangerous mixture of raw power … and madness.

“Doctor Cooper isn't here, mister. I guess that's who you must be lookin' for,” the young girl said. She appeared to be about nine years old, a pretty child with long black hair that hung in thick ringlets past her shoulders and framed her olive features. One day she would be considered a sultry beauty, a heartbreaker, with every man at her mercy. But today she was simply a child, with the painful uncertainties of romance the furthest thing from her mind. Her days were filled with the excitement of pretty sunsets and fireflies and games of hide-and-seek and chase-the-sparrows, and picnics by the banks of the Washita River, whose waters once had run red with the blood of soldier and Southern Cheyenne in a none-too-distant past. Tom wished he could tell her all he had seen and learned, how the world was poised on the brink of change now, the age of the Wild West in its death throes, soon to be dust in the wake of the onrushing twentieth century.

Then, again, the child in all her innocence was part of that unstoppable juggernaut that had doomed his people's way of life. She was the future in which the Southern Cheyenne must learn to exist or perish. Where was the path, though? He'd begun to think it lay between the worlds of red man and white, drawing on the old to confront the new. Tom had returned to Cross Timbers with a heart full of questions, seeking answers from the truths of the past.

Oblivious to the stranger's inner turmoil, the girl arched her thick black brows, and her brown eyes turned lustrous in the afternoon light. She was bundled up against the cold in a brown woolen coat with dull-black buttons, trimmed with black stitchery about the wrists and along the hem.

“What's your name?” she asked, fidgeting nervously upon the porch. “My name's Anna Yaquereno. My papa owns the restaurant in town. What do you do? Are you an Indian? I kind of look like an Indian, don't I?”

Tom had to grin before the girl's onslaught of questions. He glanced sideways at his reflection in the clinic window. “Dr. Joanna Cooper, M.D.,” had been painted on the glass pane and repeated on a wooden sign that hung above the porch—as if the owner had realized, as an afterthought, that the window could not be read from any great distance so long as the wooden shingle dangling in the breeze—INFIRMARY—was clearly visible from the center of town.

After the posse's departure Tom had saddled a blaze-faced roan and explained his actions to his father with a perfunctory, “I'm going to ride around and see if I can find Willem.” He didn't linger to find out if Seth and the priest believed his explanation, but rode off in the opposite direction from town. Once out of sight, he had circled over to the Cross Timbers road. It was only early afternoon, and he was disappointed not to find Joanna in her office.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Anna. My name is Tom Sandcrane.”

“Then you
are
an Indian. I know, 'cause you have a funny name,” the girl said with a smile, oblivious to the fact that someone might find a name like Yaquereno equally amusing.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Anna.” With her dark Italian complexion she might have passed for a Cheyenne child, though she wore a woolen dress, thick cotton stockings, and buttoned boots that most Cheyenne children would never have been able to afford. Business was obviously good for Mr. Yaquereno. “Shouldn't you be in school?”

Anna covered her mouth to stifle her laughter. “Jimmy Turner stuffed a great big old bullfrog in the stove chimney and plugged it up, and smoke filled the room, and it stunk something awful, so Miss Flannery told us all to go home until she could clean up.” The girl burst out laughing. Then she pursed her lips a moment and pointed to the back of her parents' restaurant fronting Main. “Why don't you wait there for the doctor? My mama makes the best peach cobbler in all the world.”

Tom hooked a thumb in his coat pocket and studied the town, then shrugged. Perhaps he wasn't dressed proper for a sit-down meal. Still, his fleece-lined denim coat was relatively clean, and he'd changed his shirt before entering town and even slicked his long hair back. “I've never been a man to turn my nose up at a plate of peach cobbler,” he told the girl, and followed her off the porch. He caught up the reins of the roan gelding he had borrowed from Seth, then hoisted Anna into the saddle. She beamed with pleasure as he walked his mount toward Main. They reached Main Street in a matter of minutes, and Tom looped the reins around a hitching post in front of the narrow-looking saloon attached to the restaurant. Anna allowed him to help her down from the horse. A short, stout, broad-shouldered man emerged from the saloon. He wore an apron over his black woolen trousers and a long-sleeved checkered shirt rolled to the elbows. An immense black mustache covered his upper lip.

“Anna … what are you doing? Do not bother people.”

“But, Papa …”

“Run inside. Your mama, she looks for you. Don't I tell you to come straight home from school? It is no safe for little girls until they catch that Indian.” Mr. Yaquereno folded his arms and sternly appraised the man in the street as his daughter grudgingly obeyed.

“Your daughter told me her mother makes the best peach cobbler in all the world. Is that true?” Tom asked, meeting the man's stare.

“Anna tells no lies. Well, most of the time she tells no lies,” Yaquereno gruffly said. Then he stepped back and motioned toward the front of the restaurant. “Maybe you better find out for yourself.”

Tom climbed the steps to the walk and started past the girl's father, who reached out and caught the Cheyenne by the arm. Tom might have taken offense but for the circumstances. Mr. Yaquereno seemed more worried then belligerent.

“I'm a—how you say?—jumpy, like when you walk out at night and hear a rattler, but you don't know which way to go, eh? I love my little girl. And I don't want to wind up like Luthor White Bear.” The Italian pointed up the street toward the mercantile with its black wreath upon the door. Tom recognized Rebecca White Bear's father and two brothers; Ned Scalp Shirt and his two sons, Matt and Little Ned; and several of Luthor's kin whose names he could not immediately recall—all hard men determined to avenge the death of one of their own. The irony wasn't lost on Tom that he had survived one war only to find another brewing at home. Clay Benedict had seemed surprisingly earnest about keeping the peace and seeing justice done. But how much weight did his words carry? Noble sentiments alone had never stopped a lynching.

The interior of Yaquereno's was divided into two brightly lit dining rooms, each heated by Franklin stoves, each with a homey feel. The walls were covered with pale-blue fabric and adorned with a variety of chromolithographs depicting the Italian countryside: white stone paths bordered with golden trees whose limbs rose like flames, whitewashed villas on hillsides overlooking quaint villages where everyone, even the most humble milkmaid, seemed cheerful. There were children frolicking in the shadows of aqueducts, oxcarts traversing roads built in the time of Caesar, and ruins of buildings, the origin of which Tom could not even guess.

A few patrons in the front room lingered over the last of their dinners, absorbed in their papers or books, yet they looked up as Tom entered, and their eyes followed the new customer until he found a table.

As it was midafternoon, Tom expected business to be a little slack. A chorus of women's laughter drifted in from the rear dining room, where several ladies were evidently indulging in some of Mrs. Yaquereno's desserts. Sandcrane chose to avoid intruding on the ladies and took a chair at a table by the front window. From this vantage point, if he leaned just right, Sandcrane could watch the mercantile.

A middle-aged Italian woman appeared at his table. The resemblance between mother and daughter was immediately noticeable, the same thick brows and dark eyes—it could only be Mrs. Yaquereno. The woman studied Tom warily. The recent killing had evidently left everyone suspicious of strangers, and Cheyenne in particular.

“Can I help you?”

“Your daughter told me her mother makes the best coffee and peach cobbler in all the world. Is that true?”

The woman blushed, pleased by the compliment, and thawing toward the stranger her own daughter had so recently described. “My Anna … she carries on so. But she is a good girl.” The woman nodded. “I bring you coffee and a bowl of cobbler, and you tell me what you think, eh?”