The Beloved Woman (21 page)

No-wu, ge-ga
, one said politely, when it was time to leave.
Now I am going
.

Hwi-lo-hi
, the host should answer just as politely.
Go, then
.

She gazed at the lamplight desperately. When it faded away, she was surrounded by darkness.

A
H, KATIE WAS
moving about the room. Justis could hear her. His eyes still shut, he took a deep breath of warm morning air full of sunshine, and it made him feel good. Today he’d get more of his strength back. Today he’d try to soften the blunt words he’d spoken last night.

He and Katie would be grand together—her infernal pride just wouldn’t let her admit it. Eventually she’d cuddle up to the idea of marriage and half-breed babes and everything else. Maybe she’d even love him someday. He just had to coax her. By force, it seemed.

“Com’ere,” he ordered, and lolled one arm out of bed. He curled his forefinger in a beckoning gesture. “See? I’m keepin’ my eyes shut because I trust you won’t take your scalpel to me after what I said last night. You want to, I know.”

She had stopped moving. The ornery cat was standing across the room, he figured, trying to test his patience, as usual. “Dammit, you she-fiend, if you don’t come over here I’ll come get you. Do you want to see me bounce my nekkid ass on the floor again?”

Katie Blue Song would never have uttered the frantic gasp that answered his threat. Justis frowned and opened
his eyes quickly. Amarintha tottered toward him, her eyes wide with distrust, her hands pressed to her mouth.

“Where’s Katie?” he asked.

She stopped a safe distance from the bed and began to cry. “It’s the most dreadful thing,” she said in a choked whisper. “She’s run away. Back to Philadelphia.”

CHAPTER 10

A
UTUMN
was magnificent in the misty blue Tennessee mountains, the
Tsacona-ge
, Place of the Blue Smoke. Katherine remembered them from her childhood, when her father had brought the family to great council meetings. The summer’s drought hadn’t weakened the mountain forests enough to dim their brilliant fall displays of red and gold, and the first autumn rains had swept the dust from them.

Now they looked like beautiful patchwork quilts draped over the mountains’ rounded summits. Above them the sky was a crisp, clean blue dotted with puffy white clouds. Gazing up at them from the valley of the Hiwassee River, Katherine shivered with emotion. Their serene grandeur was a tragic contrast to the chaos around her.

The road was lined with wagons and ox carts as far as Katherine could see in both directions, and this was only one contingent of marchers—one of thirteen that had been organized within the tribe, each numbering about a
thousand people. The rough lean-tos and huts of the now-empty prison camp had been set on fire. Embers and flames rose high in the air, eyed nervously by livestock that threatened to bolt at any moment.

Katherine wanted to cover her ears against the noise. Dogs barked; naked children ran squealing among the horses, then dodged their hooves; people shouted at one another, and a few swung fists. Those who had bartered their food rations for cheap whiskey were the worst offenders. One man stumbled drunkenly through a crowd, bellowing orders at a child he pulled behind him by the child’s long braid.

People yelled at the small company of cavalry soldiers who would accompany them on the march. The soldiers, who understood little Cherokee, answered with rough shoves and vigorous oaths. The tribe had finally been allowed to take over supervision of the march, so the road was also clogged with mounted Cherokee police. Their long hair streamed from under their turbans as they galloped back and forth, trying to bring order so that the trek could begin.

The first contingent had left for the west at the beginning of the month. Several more had gone since, each following a few days after the last. People were gloomy but stoic. Most were just glad that the torturous days of imprisonment were over. Rumor had it that hundreds of Cherokees had died in the camps during the summer.

Today, for a few hours at least, people were too busy to think about death. They milled around the wagons, trying to decide who should ride and who must walk, since the army had been able to provide only one wagon for every twenty people. Katherine looked down at her dirty brogans. She’d bartered an ivory hair comb for them a month before, when her shoes wore out. She hoped the brogans would survive a thousand-mile walk.

Gone was the pretty calico dress she’d worn the night she left Gold Ridge; gone was the other dress Amarintha
had packed in her valise; gone were her delicate white stockings and ruffled petticoats and drawers made of batiste. She’d kept two things—her doctor’s satchel and the gold nugget she never took from around her neck. Everything else she’d traded for necessities—cooking utensils, blankets, and a skirt and tunic of coarse butternut-colored material that could withstand any hardship.

She smiled thinly. The tunic was cinched at her waist with a wide woven belt, a present from someone she’d doctored. Tucked in the belt was her most prized possession—a deadly sharp hunting knife. More than one enemy had backed away from its wicked steel blade.

In her first weeks at the huge Tennessee encampment she’d been alone among thousands of strangers, but, like before, word had soon spread about her doctoring skills. In September the Gold Ridge stockade had been emptied and its prisoners brought to Tennessee to await the big march with everyone else. The Gold Ridge Cherokees had greeted Katherine with great warmth, and soon she was known as Beloved Woman to others besides them.

Fame had its advantages. No one dared harm the Beloved Woman. Even the shamans, her professional competition, gave her respect. These days she rarely needed the knife for protection. But an honorary title hadn’t won her a lighter backpack, she thought wryly, shifting the heavy bundle tied to her shoulders. She was often tired and hungry, but at least her sense of humor remained.

Above the squalling of babies and shouts of people she heard a small, stern voice. “The Beloved Woman did not wait for me!”

Katherine squinted through dust and sunshine at the child stomping toward her. His hair was gathered in two long plaits. He wore nothing but a long deerskin shirt that ended above his knees, and moccasins.

Squirrel was the son of traditionalists. He didn’t speak English and had encountered very few white people before the soldiers came to drive his family from their farm
in the mountains. He was of the Blue clan, so he was a distant cousin of Katherine’s.

“I did not run away,” she assured him. “I told your mother I would stay right here. You went to play and forgot about me. Where is your mother?”

Squirrel jumped over a small rock and bounded to a stop beside her. He tilted his head back and grinned. “She sits in the woods to nurse my sister. A soldier said he would let her drink from his bottle as long as she let him watch. So she is not hurrying.”

Katherine kept her expression calm, while distaste soured her stomach. Walks Smiling was a drunk, and had been since her husband had sickened and died two months before. Katherine understood the need to escape pain—too many nights she slept in her own tears, thinking about Justis—but if Walks Smiling kept up this kind of behavior, she wouldn’t live to reach the Indian territory beyond Arkansas.

Katherine took Squirrel’s hand. “You wait with me.”

A few minutes later Walks Smiling ambled out of the woods, her toddler, Little Bird, tucked in the crook of one arm. A young soldier followed, adjusting his britches in a way that told Katherine he’d done more than watch while Walks Smiling nursed her daughter.

“He will carry my pack,” Walks Smiling called, pointing at the soldier. She was a small, pretty woman, still a little plump despite weeks of poor food. Her baggy woolen dress didn’t hide the sensual sway of her hips, now accentuated by the whiskey.

Katherine said nothing. Grief had etched lines around Walks Smiling’s eyes, and the shaming words of a kinswoman would only make those lines deeper. Walks Smiling waved to the soldier as he went to his horse and tied her bundle on its saddle.

“You should find one of those,” she told Katherine, winking. “An
a-sga-Ya
who wants to carry your load.”

Katherine shook her head. Thoughts of Justis burned
inside her. What had he done after she’d run away? Certainly he had looked for her, but by now he would have given up. Perhaps he had a new woman, maybe several women, to ease his anger and disappointment.

Her throat tightened. Today she would walk farther away from him, and every day afterward, for weeks and months, until she crossed the big river and left him behind in the Sun Land.

A chief rode down the line, his white-haired head lifted high as he held his pony to a slow, dignified walk. A plume of feathers bobbed in his turban, and below his hunting shirt he wore fringed leggings rather than army-issue trousers. Several young men rode behind him.

“Make ready to go!” they called. “We lead the way!”

Along the line people climbed onto wagons or took their children by the hand to walk. Soft wails went up from men and women alike. Shamans began to chant. Walks Smiling sank to the ground and drew her children to her, sobbing.

Katherine turned toward the southeast and the ancient mountains. Tears ran down her face. She thought of her family, of her home, and of Justis.
Good-bye, my beloved
, she said to all.

As the line began to move, thunder rumbled in the distance, though the sky was bright. It seemed a very bad omen.

R
EBECCA STOPPED ROCKING
and laid her needlework down on her stomach. “You make a very fine table,” she told the babe inside. “But I hope you come out soon.”

The harsh patter of rain made her glance at the window in dismay and hitch her chair closer to the fire. A week before the weather had been beautiful, but now the dreary autumn rains had settled in for good. A cold wind whipped them, moaning under the eaves of the hotel. An early dusk darkened the already gray afternoon.

She pulled the lamp on the table beside her nearer, then resumed her work. Soon she would have to go check on Cookie’s progress with supper. They had a full house tonight—ten boarders—so the table would be sagging with food.

Rebecca bit her lip. Nearly a full house. One room was never used anymore—Katherine’s room. Her trunks and clothes remained there, just as they had been when she left three months before. As he had ridden off to Philadelphia, Justis had asked that they be kept that way. He had followed her as soon as his recuperation allowed, less than two weeks after her departure.

He had yet to return.

Rebecca put her needlework down once more and rubbed her forehead wearily, remembering his fury. It had frightened her, more so because it contained so much pain. Sam had told her privately that Justis had used terrible language about Katherine, and then had sworn he’d bring her back to be his doxy, just out of spite.

It wasn’t spite, it was the most desperate kind of love, she’d told Sam. The kind that couldn’t give up even when there was no hope. If Justis came back without Katherine, he’d be a ruined man. Sam had said pshaw to that notion. There wasn’t a tougher hide around.

“I’m not talking about hide,” she muttered now, as she had then. “I’m talking about
heart.
”

H
E WAS HOME
, not that it made a damn bit of difference to him, no more than the blood dribbling down the side of his face made a difference, nor the blood covering his knuckles.

Justis staggered out of the Gallatin-Kirkland Saloon, leaving a wake of awed miners, five of whom—the ones who had intended to beat him up while he was stinking drunk—lay on the floor groaning in pain. He
was
drunk,
so drunk that he knew he wasn’t going to care when he threw up.

Cold rain hit him in the face as he reeled off the saloon’s porch. He patted Watchman’s wet, muddy shoulder and cursed himself loudly for letting the weary stallion stand there loaded with gear. After all the weeks of travel, Watchman deserved better than that.