The Beloved Woman (16 page)

Justis thought all of that sounded good, especially considering his bad mood. “What’s your charge?”

“A quarter for five minutes of sniffing. Dollar if you want your own bottle.”

Justis reached into his pocket, then flipped a small gold nugget to the man. “Gimme two bottles.”

K
ATHERINE WOKE FROM
a light, troubled sleep, and her heart skipped. Someone was trying to unlatch her door.

She scrambled out of bed and fumbled in the darkness for her wrapper. There was no time to hunt for her scalpel or even light the lamp. In a streak of moonlight she saw a thin knife blade slip through the fine crack between the door and its facing. It flicked upward and popped the latch.

Her heart racing, she threw herself forward just as a hand grasped the facing, slamming her shoulder into the door so that it trapped the invading hand’s fingers. To her amazement, the intruder didn’t struggle or scream in pain.

“I bet that’s gonna hurt like a sonuvabitch tomorrow,” a drawling, unmistakable voice observed solemnly.

She swung the door open and watched in distress as Justis tucked his knife back into its scabbard, then raised his hand close to his face and studied it, his expression grave. Moonlight fell on his slowly blinking eyes and
nonchalant frown. His hat was shoved back crookedly, and when he lowered his hand he gave her a lopsided smile.

“You’re drunk,” she said, and sniffed. “I don’t smell liquor, but it’s obvious.”

“I’m not drunk.” His words were slightly slurred. “I just wanted to visit you.”

“You came to do more than that, I’d say. Sneaking into my room!” She struggled not to cry with rage. He was ashamed to visit her in public now. She furiously tied the neck and waist strings on her wrapper, as if warning him not to touch her. “I’ll not be your secret entertainment, sir.”

“Shhh.” He wavered a little, looked up and down the dark hall with exaggerated care, then gazed back at her. “Don’t worry, I can’t bother you,” he said in a low, utterly sincere voice. “My pecker’s numb.”

She gasped softly. “You are
very
drunk.”

“Come outside and dance with me,” he said, taking her hands.

“No!”

“Shhh. Don’t wake everyone up.” His expression darkened as he added sarcastically, “Think of my reputation.”

She tried to pull her hands away. “You’ve had enough dancing for one night.”

“Not with you, I haven’t. Now, totter on outside with me, or I’ll yell like a Cherokee on the warpath.”

He led her down the hall to a back staircase, where he stumbled more than once during the descent. She grabbed one brawny arm and tried to hold him steady. “You’ll kill yourself!”

“Nope. Already fell off m’horse. Didn’t hurt a bit.”

“What’s wrong with you?” she cried in a bitter whisper. They reached the back door and lurched outside to the porch. “Why did you do this to yourself? Didn’t the evening go well with Amarintha?”

“Hmmm. Damn well. She gave me everything I
wanted. My reputation’s at stake because of you, see? She’ll save me.”

Katherine jerked her hands away and walked into the moonlit backyard, hugging herself. Oh, this was agony. He had no idea how much his honesty hurt her. “I see your predicament,” she said acidly. “You regret taking me in, and you had to get drunk to say so.
Coward.
”

He threw his head back and cursed loudly. “I’m not drunk and I’m not a coward!” He came after her, swaying, and grabbed her by one arm.

“I just won’t be coming to see you anymore. That’s what you wanted—no more of that damned Gallatin hangin’ around you.
Say it
. That’s just fine with you, isn’t it, by God?”

“Yes,” she retorted, her voice vibrating with emotion. “All I need is the gold you owe me. I wouldn’t care if I never laid eyes on you again.”

He stared at her for a moment. “That’s a bald-faced lie.”

She shook her head fiercely. “Good night.”

She pulled her arm away and started back to the porch. Her pulse was thready. She heard his boots crunching the loamy soil with what sounded like long, unsteady strides. Following her! When she stepped onto the porch she pivoted to rebuke him, then squealed as he clamped a folded handkerchief over her mouth and nose. She inhaled a pungent gas that tickled her throat.

Justis circled her shoulders with one arm and pulled her against him, holding her gently but firmly while she struggled and swallowed huge breaths filled with the fumes. Her bones seemed to fall apart. When she slumped against him, he took the handkerchief away and asked, “You ever been to an ether frolic, Katie?”

“Ether,” she repeated groggily. “Dr. Ledbetter experimented with it. Painkiller, he thinks. You b-blackguard.”

“I need to kill a lot of pain tonight,” he whispered in her ear. “Figure you do too.”

His legs buckled slowly and he leaned against a porch column, sliding downward still holding her. He put the handkerchief over her nose again, until she clung to his shoulders weakly and began to giggle.

“You’re d-despicable.”

“I reckon that’s bad.”

“Bad.”

He half sprawled on the porch with her lying across his thighs. They helped each other haphazardly until he was upright and she was seated on his lap, her left arm draped around his neck. She rested her forehead against his and knocked his hat off in the process. “Sorry, blackguard.”

“Katie, I got it all set for you to go to the stockade. To doctor folks, I mean. You can start tomorrow.”

“That’s nice.” Her head felt as though it were floating. She patted his cheek, stroking the healing red welts left from when she’d struggled with him at the stockade a week before. “How did you accomplish it?”

He shook his head. “Don’t matter.”

“
Doesn’t
matter.”

“Either way.” He sighed and hugged her gently. “I’ll be around if you need me. I’ll send one of my men to take you back and forth every day.”

Her head drooped onto his shoulder. “Justis?”

“Hmmm?”

“I never thought … you’d be ashamed … to be seen with me.”

He groaned. “Katie,
no.
”

He ought to explain about Amarintha’s manipulative little bargain, though he hadn’t wanted to let Katherine know how much pride he’d swallowed on her account. No, Katherine didn’t want sentiment or sacrifice from him. He dipped his head close to hers and listened to her soft sounds. She was asleep, but crying.

* * *

K
ATHERINE ROCKED A
sick baby in her arms and prayed for a breeze to stir the heat. Under a cloudless sky the stockade seemed cast adrift from the rest of the world, a huge ship on a sea of filthy ground. The soldiers kept the gates open, thankfully, because they’d learned that their captives stayed quieter if they could glimpse the outside world.

Captain Taylor, an idealistic young officer whom Katherine had grown to like during the past six weeks, said that the Cherokees wouldn’t start the march west until September, more than a month away. As brutal as captivity was, the drought and lack of supplies would have made traveling worse. So all over the Cherokee Nation, in stockades such as the one at Gold Ridge, Indians waited under a broiling sun.

Katherine laid the baby next to its mother, who was also sick. Their only shelter was a lean- to made of poles and canvas; it was nearly identical to those built by the other several hundred captives. People spent most of the days stretched out beneath the crude tents, venturing into the sun only when necessity demanded it.

The soldiers weren’t heartless, and they tried to help. Every day they escorted groups to the river, but the brief sanctuary of running water, so sacred to Cherokee rituals and so necessary in the heat, was barely enough to make a difference. The inadequate food, the contamination from human waste, and their heartbreaking grief were simply too much for some captives to survive, especially the elderly and the children. Every week the graveyard beyond the stockade grew larger.

“Will he go to the Dark Land?” the sick mother asked Katherine, laying a feverish hand on her child’s head.

“I don’t know. I’ll leave more medicine for him.”

“The shaman says your medicine does no good—but your strong spirit scares away the witches. He tells others not to look at you with black eyes.”

Katherine nodded gratefully. “They still talk about me … because I’m free?”

“Yes. But many understand why that’s best. Don’t worry. The things you bring are much needed. Some are calling you Beloved Woman.”

A pang of remorse shot through Katherine. “No. There are no more Beloved Women. It was a great honor. My mother earned it only after many years.”

“Still, that is what some are calling you.”

Katherine hung her head. “But many say I’m a traitor.”

“They are bitter toward everyone. I know who they are. They take your gifts anyway, so don’t feel too bad.”

Katherine cupped her hand into a bucket of tepid, dirty water and smoothed the liquid over the baby’s forehead. “Keep him cool and give him the medicine. I’ll come back to see him tomorrow. And you.”

The woman pulled the baby close to her breast and smiled at Katherine. “You’ll find us still living in the Sun Land. We’re strong.”

Katherine smiled as she rose to leave, and ignored her intuition about the baby’s prospects.

She made one last round for the day, her moccasin-clad feet moving wearily, her satchel dragging at the end of her arm. She wore a print skirt and light blouse during her visits to the stockade, and kept her hair in a doubled-up braid that hung to her lower back. People accepted her better now that she dressed more Cherokee than white.

She finished her work and went to the gate. As usual, one of Justis’s men waited patiently under a canopy, where he was playing poker with several off-duty soldiers. Sorrow tugged at her throat, as it had many times during the past few weeks.

She hardly ever saw Justis anymore. Occasionally he came by the store when she was there organizing her supplies for the stockade, but he never stayed long. The
strange night with the ether was still unclear in her memory. When she had awakened the next morning, she was back in her bed, and the escapade seemed like no more than a vivid dream. But she remembered enough to know that Justis no longer thought it wise to associate with her.

Well, he had done his duty more kindly than any other man would have, and she knew he’d always be her defender if she needed him.

Her wounded pride would never let her need him again.

R
UPERT MORGAN ESCORTED
Katherine to the stockade regularly, so he’d learned to expect Justis’s interrogation every evening after they returned.

“Yes, sir, she looks just fine. A little thinner than last week, but gawd, she works in that heat all day without stopping, so she’s bound to lose a bit of meat.”

“Are some of ’em still cursin’ her because she’s free?”

“Not many, no. It’s hard to cuss an angel, even if you hate her for bein’ able to fly.”

“From now on you make sure that she stops for an hour in the middle of the day to rest. Make sure she eats while she’s at it.”

“She won’t cotton to that, Mr. Gallatin.”

“You tell her it has to be that way, Morgan. I say so.”

“Yes, sir.”

After Morgan left the mining office, Justis slumped in the chair behind his desk, head in hands. This was the kind of thing that drove men crazy. He couldn’t think of anything but Katie. He couldn’t sleep, he barely knew what he ate, and worry gnawed at his stomach until he drank to stop it. He’d been this way for weeks.

But at least she was carrying out her mission at the stockade in safety, and Amarintha had kept to her word
about Captain Taylor’s support. All he had to do was stick this madness out until the governor sent that exemption.

He was asleep with his head on the desk the next morning when Sam arrived.

“Justis? Did you stay at your desk again? Dammit, friend, you’re making yourself sick.”

Justis eyed him morosely. “What’s that you’re carryin’?”

Sam raised a letter stamped with the state seal. “It’s from the governor.”

K
ATHERINE HAD BEEN
at work for only an hour. The sun was barely above the stockade; the dew still lay on the tufts of grass that grew near the walls.

“Beloved Woman, the men are coming toward you.”

The words were spoken in a soft, warning whisper by her patient, an elderly woman with swollen sores on her arm. Katherine looked up from putting a salve on them and saw her escort, Mr. Morgan, winding his way through the stockade. Captain Taylor was with him. Both men looked unhappy.

She stood, feeling a knot of dread tighten in her stomach, and suddenly she saw the sentence, written neatly in a prim, official hand: Miss Blue Song is not exempt from the Cherokee removal.

When they reached her Taylor removed his blue cap, ran a hand over short blond hair that he never mussed otherwise, and cleared his throat roughly. “I’ve some bad news, Miss Blue Song.”

“I’m to be a prisoner now,” she said flatly.

“Yes.”

Morgan slapped his hat against his leg. “I’ll tell you who done this to you, miss. It was that sour-faced Amarintha Parnell. She brought the letter from the governor—drove out here herself and gave it to the cap’n a few minutes ago.”

Taylor stiffened with anger. “I won’t have you talk that way about Miss Parnell. She was just delivering a letter that came to her father. She was in tears over it.”

“Tears of joy,” Morgan retorted. “Are you a fool, Cap’n? Don’t you know better than to set your sights on that Parnell piece? The only man she wants is Justis Gallatin, and Miss Blue Song was gettin’ in the way.”

“I assume that Mr. Gallatin also received a letter from the governor,” Katherine murmured, lost in tortured thought. Now Amarintha would have Justis all to herself.

“Clear out, Morgan. I mean it,” the captain said fiercely. “Or I’ll have my men throw you out.”

Katherine stepped forward and laid a trembling hand on Morgan’s arm. “Thank you for your concern, but I’ll be all right. Would you go over to the hotel and have Mrs. Kirkland pack my things? Then will you bring them to me here?”