The Beloved Woman (2 page)

“A Injun!”

“In a fancy dress!”

“Cain’t be! I never saw a squaw dressed thisaway!”

“A good-lookin’ savage, ain’t she?”

Katherine drew herself up so tightly, the fear churning in her stomach had no place to go. People in Philadelphia might disapprove of her or call her names, but they did it behind her back. She wasn’t used to this kind of blatant scrutiny with its insulting undertone.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said evenly.

“She speaks real good English,” one of the drovers said in awe.

“Some of ’em do. She must be one of them missionary-taught squaws.”

Katherine folded her hands on her lap and clenched the fingers tightly. “I’m on my way home, sirs. My family has a farm near the town your people call Gold Ridge. My father is the chief in this district. Would you allow my driver to proceed?”

They gaped at her. “I’ve heard about Cherokees like this ’un,” one drover told the others solemnly, and Katherine suddenly realized he wasn’t trying to insult her. He was just stating the facts as he saw them. “Mostly they’re mixed-bloods. Some’re almost as civilized as white folks.” He studied her face. “But damn, this ’un is a full-blood.”

Gritting her teeth, Katherine picked up a small silver-gray umbrella that matched her skirt and rapped on the coach’s ceiling. “Go ahead, Mr. Bingham, please.” She met the drovers’ curious stares and said coolly, “I’m afraid I don’t have any more time to chat.”

Mr. Bingham called down weakly, “Miss Blue Song, you oughten to be so quick with these boys.”

Katherine heard the fear in his voice and knew with sinking dread that the driver—hired up in Nashville for
his respectability, not his toughness—would be of no help.

“Come on out,” one of the drovers ordered, his gaze darting over the snug black bodice of her dress. “Let us have a look at you. We ain’t never seen a squaw like you before, that’s all.”

“No, thank you. I’m not an exhibit for the entertainment of rude men.”

“Get out,” another said curtly.

“Miss Blue Song, they just want to take a gander at you,” Mr. Bingham squeaked.

Katherine eyed the drovers for a second, considered her options, then nodded. But before she left the coach she opened a bulky black satchel by her feet and reached into a box of surgical implements.

The drovers moved back a little, forming a semicircle to keep the hogs away, then pulled the coach’s door open. Katherine stood, fluffed her skirt, and stepped to the hard-packed ground. She concealed a razor-sharp scalpel in her right hand.

“Lord, what a beauty,” one man breathed.

“Kinda skinny and tall. A little long in the tooth too,” another complained.

“Nah. How old be ya, sister?”

Katherine quivered with rage. “Twenty.”

“Not too old to keep a man plenty warm at night.”

“Is this the way you always talk in front of ladies?” she asked.

A stream of tobacco juice barely missed the toe of her shoe. “Ain’t no such thing as an Injun lady.”

A man stepped closer to her. “My wife shore would like this dress. Why don’t you shuck it off?”

“Don’t touch me.”

He grinned and grabbed a handful of the skirt. The man was near enough that Katherine barely had to move. She simply lifted her hand and made a quick, skillful movement across his arm.

“She cut me!” he yelped. Hogs squealed at the smell of blood. The drovers stared at their injured companion in openmouthed surprise, then at her. Katherine slashed again as another man reached for her. He stumbled back, his forehead bleeding profusely. “She’s trying to scalp me!”

“Now, really, you men calm down,” Mr. Bingham begged. “She’s no savage.”

“Get that damned knife outer her hand!”

Katherine swung again, and a drover grabbed her wrist. He squeezed painfully. “Let go of that cuttin’ piece.”

Panic grew inside Katherine’s chest. “My father will have you in jail before sundown!”

“Squaw, you’re plumb crazy.” He wrenched her arm a little and still she refused to drop the knife. “If we weren’t gents, we’d strip that dress off you and haul you into the woods for an hour or two.”

“You would regret that.” She lashed a sharp-toed shoe into her captor’s knee, and he howled.

“That done it! Grab her, boys!”

Mr. Bingham gasped and began flailing the drovers with his whip. One man grabbed her around the waist and another sank his fingers into her throat. Katherine jerked her fighting hand free and swung the scalpel wildly, hearing curses when it connected.

In the midst of struggling she suddenly heard something else—a deep, resonant thud, the sound of wood hitting a skull. A drover slumped to the ground, then another, and she realized that someone new had waded into the bunch, swinging one of the drovers’ own wooden staffs.

The men let go of her and backed away, shielding their heads and squalling oaths. Katherine stumbled on a wagon rut and grabbed the coach door for balance. Dust rose off the trail in a thick cloud. The hogs scattered in every direction.

The devil was loose in the middle of hell, and she could only watch in amazement.

The newcomer was lean and tall, but he had the shoulders of a prime bull and the strength to match. His big-knuckled hand brushed a shapeless, wide-brimmed hat off his head. Dust swirled around shaggy hair the dark, rich color of chestnut. Under a thick mustache, his mouth curved into a lethal smile.

Now, apparently, he was ready to do serious battle with the drovers. She stared at the newcomer as he punched one drover in the head and swung about gracefully to kick another between the legs. Katherine covered her nose to keep from choking on dust and excitement. Her rescuer, if that was who the devil was, began uttering inventive and filthy curses in a deep, drawling voice.

When only one drover was left standing, he jerked a pearl-handled pistol from his belt and leveled it at the drover’s forehead. “Get your asses and your hogs outta my sight,” he warned in a deadly tone. “And if you’re takin’ ’em to Gold Ridge, keep your goddamned selves out of my sight there too. You hear anybody say ‘Justis Gallatin,’ you tuck tail and run, or you’re dead. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes,
sir
,” Justis Gallatin corrected the drover.

“Yes, sir.”

Katherine wiped perspiration from her forehead and tried to catch her breath. She barely noticed as the drovers staggered off without looking back, taking their hogs with them. She was too busy studying Justis Gallatin.

He stood with his booted feet braced apart, a rangy chestnut wolf guarding his territory, his eyes never leaving the drovers, his arm bent lazily so that the pistol pointed upward, ready to be leveled again if need be. His dark trousers were rusty with dust, and his loose white workshirt had turned a pinkish color.

He wore a wide belt with a gold buckle, and tucked
into it was another pearl-handled pistol, plus two large knives sheathed in leather scabbards. His shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest, revealing a thickly haired expanse and a gold nugget hanging from a leather string.

A gold miner, she thought suddenly. Her father had said they were all over the place now. And most were mean-tempered thieves, not to be trusted.

This one might be no better. She stared at his drooping mustache. No gentleman wore hair on his face. She couldn’t recall when she’d seen such a hearty growth of hair on a man’s upper lip, and it was as intriguing as it was shocking.

She must be overstimulated from fear, she decided, because she had a sudden mental image of him tickling his mustache across her naked breasts. Swaying, she nearly fell backward into the coach.

Sometimes she saw things in her mind, and then they came true.

Katherine shook her head ruefully and began to sweep the dust from her skirt. She still held her scalpel and glanced at it, distractedly noting that blood had run onto her fingers. At least it wasn’t her blood. She smiled.

“Smiling. Lord, she’s smiling. If I live to be old and toothless, I’ll never see the likes of this again.”

The rich, teasing drawl made her look up warily. Justis Gallatin headed toward her, grabbing his hat from the ground and tucking his pistol back into his belt as he walked, his gaze never wavering from a head-to-foot study of her.

Katherine froze, her body on alert in strange ways she didn’t have time to analyze. He was a big man, tall and powerful, with corded arms that looked as if they could squeeze a bear to death, and legs that glided along in an easy cadence.

He walked like an Indian, she thought. Silent, graceful.
A woman wouldn’t hear him slip into her room, but once he was there, she wouldn’t want him to leave.

“Thank you for your assistance,” she said formally, and waited for him to stop a polite distance away.

He didn’t. He strolled right up to her, coming to a halt so close that she felt threatened by the potently masculine smells of sweat and dust and leather. Then he licked one forefinger and brushed the tip of her nose with it. The finger came away covered in damp red dirt.

“You okay under that war paint?” he asked gruffly.

She stared up into a youthful face already tending toward rugged squint lines and creases, thick, wickedly arched eyebrows, eyes the color of new green leaves, and that infernal mustache.

“I’m unhurt, thank you, sir. Thank you very much.”

Mr. Bingham hung over the side of his seat atop the coach, watching them. “I’m sure sorry about all of this mess, Miss Blue Song.”

She forced her gaze up to the driver’s. “Are those drovers typical of the men roaming the woods in Cherokee country now?”

“Yes’m.”

“My father will send the Lighthorse patrol after them.”

“Nope,” Justis Gallatin interjected.

She swiveled her gaze to the man, who was now watching her with a different kind of intensity that made her feel increasingly uncomfortable. His eyes drooped a little at the corners, giving him a sleepy, satiated expression when he smiled. But he wasn’t smiling now—he seemed far from it—and his hooded scrutiny was guarded, perhaps even angry.

“What do you mean, sir?”

“There’s no more Cherokee courts. The state of Georgia took over the law a few years ago. I figured your folks wrote you about it.”

“I read about it in the Philadelphia paper. But my
father said it wasn’t so.” She frowned. “My name’s Katherine—Miss Blue Song. Do you know my family?”

He hesitated, his wide, generous mouth tightening under the mustache. Then he said, “Your pa sent me to meet you on the road. I’ve been waiting for you the past week.” The green eyes were shuttered now, half closed. “He’s working a new field and couldn’t come himself, but he was a little worried that you’d run into trouble—just like you did.”

She tilted her head and looked at him curiously. “You’re employed by my father?”

“No. Friend of his.”

“Your name is Mr. Gallatin, is that right?”

“Justis Gallatin.”

She inched back in wary consideration. “My father wouldn’t send a stranger. This isn’t like him.”

“Lots of things have changed since you went north.” Abruptly he took the scalpel from her hand. “Never seen anything like it,” he said again. “Swiping at those boys like a cat with one mean claw. Damned good.” He pulled her hand to him, jerked the long tail of his shirt from his trousers, and wiped her bloody fingers.

Katherine was angered by his familiarity, surprised by the gentleness in his big, lethal hands, and flushed from the thought that her fingers were being cleaned by material that had recently been tucked against his thighs—and more.

“You obviously share the drovers’ opinion of me,” she said in a crisp but genteel tone. It had taken years of practice at the Presbyterian Academy for Young Ladies to acquire that soft, ice-cold voice.

He stopped ministering to her fingers and looked up in surprise. “Huh?”

“You wouldn’t be so forward with a white woman,” she said, pulling her hand away.

He frowned, sincerely puzzled. “Yes, I would.”

“Well, that’s honest.”

Amused despite herself, Katherine pivoted gracefully and climbed back into the coach. Dust puffed around her as she sat. Her heart still thudded painfully from the encounter with the drovers, and she wasn’t in any mood for Mr. Gallatin’s unsettling brand of chivalry.

“You may ride along behind the coach if you like,” she told him. “And when we arrive at my home, you’ll be welcome to stay for supper.”

She tried to ignore the anger rising in his face and nodded toward the huge gray horse that waited beside the road. Its gear gleamed with care, and there was gold plating on the bridle. “Close the coach door and go to your mount, sir,” she ordered as calmly as she could.

“I’m not some hired jerktail you can steer any way you like. I told you, I’m a friend of your pa’s.”

She raised her chin and stared stubbornly at a speck of peeling paint on the coach’s inner wall. “My father doesn’t have many white friends, and he never mentioned you in his letters.”

“Be that as it may. Don’t take on airs. You’re in no position to be choosy.”

“I appreciate your help, Mr. Gallatin, but your manners leave a lot to be desired.”

“Yes’m, I know, but you’d better get used to ’em.” With that unsettling remark he turned and whistled for his horse.

Katherine watched in consternation as he tied the horse to the back of the coach. Then he climbed in and sat down, pressing himself close to her in the narrow seat, his shoulder and thigh firmly welded to hers. The intimate contact made her feel like covering her torso with both arms, as if he had just undressed her. He flicked the door shut with a quick movement of one long arm.

“Move on, Mr. Bing-ham,” he called loudly. “And make it fast.”

The coach lurched forward just as Katherine, quietly
furious, rose to move to the seat facing him. She tottered and he latched one hand into the back of her skirt. Through skirt, petticoat, and drawers she felt his fingers brush the cleft of her hips. She’d never been touched by any man there, much less a white, mustached gold miner.

She twisted around, wrung the skirt from his grip, and saw from the gleam in his eye that he knew exactly what he’d done. She sat down hard on the opposite bench, and dust poofed up like some kind of boudoir powder she’d used too liberally. He grinned.