The Beloved Woman (7 page)

He smoothed the backs of his fingers up and down her cheek. “Katie, try to understand.”

“You tricked me … all along. You own the land. You think you … own me too.”

“No, I’m your friend.” He grasped her hand, holding it gently. “You’re a fine, beautiful lady, and I can’t let you go off alone in the world. There’re too many men who think Injun gals are theirs for the taking, and when they see one as special as you, they’ll do anything to have her.”

She began to cry again, to her shame, but coherent thought had nearly deserted her and she was half asleep. “You’re no better than them. You want to make me
a-tsi-na-Ha-i
. A captive. A slave.”

His hand tightened on hers. He bent close to her, his mustache brushing her ear, and said gruffly, “I reckon that’s partly true. I’ll do anything to have you.” He kissed her cheek. “Now rest, Katie. I’ll leave you alone till you say different.”

J
USTIS PACED THE
aisle of the Gallatin-Kirkland General Store, a cigar clenched between his teeth. Rebecca and Sam stood behind the counter, safely out of his way.

“One more day,” he said angrily. “If she doesn’t eat by tomorrow, I’ll force the damned food down her.”

“Justis, she’s lost her whole family,” Rebecca said. “Let her grieve.”

“It’s been a week! What has she swallowed—a little soup, a few glasses of milk. That’s all! I’ve done what I said. I’ve left her alone, I’ve not set a foot in her room or spoken a word to her!”

He stopped pacing to punch his fist into a smoked ham hanging from a low beam on the ceiling. “She never comes out!”

“I can’t blame her.” Rebecca slapped a ledger shut and shook a finger at him. “She feels cornered. You ought to give her a fair share of gold and send her back to Philadelphia, where she can start a life among people who’ll offer her a better chance at happiness.”

“Who’s she got there? Nobody! She even admitted to you that she couldn’t go live with that doctor again, not after his nephew caused such a scandal in the family.”

“Justis Gallatin, if you
ever
let her know that I told you that story, I’ll have Cookie put a purgative in your biscuits!”

“Becky!” Sam exclaimed reproachfully, fighting a smile.

Justis tossed his cigar into the unlit iron stove at the center of the store, then rammed both hands through his hair in frustration. Thinking about Katherine’s experiences with that young dandy in Philadelphia made him itch to fight.

“Blue-blooded bastard,” he muttered. “He courted her, did all his fancy stuff—read poetry to her, all that high-falutin’ nonsense—and after she decided that he was a fine gentleman, he tried to kidnap her! And then told everybody she was the one at fault! He just wanted an exotic doxy!”

“Isn’t that what you want?” Sam asked bluntly.

The air seemed to freeze. Justis faced his friend and saw reproach in his eyes. Rebecca wore a look of horror.

Guilt was all that kept Justis from anger. “I don’t know what I want,” he said finally, defeated. “Except I never met a woman like her before, and I’m not gonna let her get away.”

His goal in life was to lord it over the kind of people who had turned up their noses at him for being born the son of dirt-poor Irish immigrants. Courting an Injun, whether for wife or mistress, was not exactly a smart thing to do if he wanted to rise in society, but Katie Blue Song’s appeal overwhelmed her liabilities. And frankly, he wanted her so much, he didn’t care about the consequences.

“Let her go,” Rebecca urged, shaking her head. “She deserves a husband, white or red, but a husband. I know you can sweet-talk her into some kind of arrangement. I’ve seen how women humble themselves just to get in your good graces.”

“If you think I can sweet-talk that Injun princess, then you haven’t listened to her boss me.”

“No, but I’ve sat in her room many an hour over the past week, and I’ve answered a hundred questions about you—are you an honest man, did you really keep her family out of trouble—and I tell you this much, she’s drawn to you despite herself, like a rabbit to a trap. I tried to warn her, without being obvious, about the trap’s success.”

“I’ve never claimed to be a lonely man.”

“I told her about Qualla and Big Pumpkin.”

He thought for a moment. “She sees that I respect Cherokee women, then.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “She sees that you lived with those two widows and they both called you ‘husband.’ ”

“They never took that serious, and neither did I. Just because three people share the same cabin—”

“The same bed,” Rebecca corrected him drolly.

Justis sat down on a barrel of whiskey and rubbed his forehead wearily. “I reckon you even told her about the Cherokee name they gave me?”

“Yes. I blushed, but I told her.”

Justis crossed his arms and contemplated a crack in the plank floor. He’d never learned to pronounce the name very well, but the English translation said it better anyway. The Stud.

“I hope she was impressed,” he grumbled.

“She said that she wasn’t surprised.”

Justis thought there were hopeful signs in that answer. Before he could wonder about them, a half-dozen soldiers arrived outside the store’s open double doors, stirring up dust and interest.

Over by the courthouse a group of men who were fancily dressed started toward the store. A few miners ambled out of a nearby saloon and gathered on the store’s porch, gawking. Men halted their wagons in the middle of the street so they could stare at the blue-coated cavalry soldiers and their captain.

The soldiers hitched their mounts to a rail and followed their officer inside. Justis stood slowly, suspicion putting him on guard. He’d come to this wild part of Georgia to escape authority, or at least to have more control over how it treated him.

The officer tipped a snappy blue cap. “Good afternoon, gentlemen, ma’am. I’m Captain Taylor, and I bring you greetings from General Winfield Scott.”

When Justis refused to respond other than by putting another cigar between his teeth, Sam came forward and made the introductions. Captain Taylor turned to his men. “Begin passing those handbills out.”

By now a large crowd had swarmed into the store. The excited comments of those who could read provoked the nonreaders to anger, and some of the miners began threatening one another.

“I’ll rip the eyes out of any man who starts a fight in
this store,” Justis announced loudly, and that settled the crowd. Sam climbed on the counter and read General Scott’s announcement aloud.

The army would build a temporary stockade two miles south of Gold Ridge, just as it was constructing stockades in other areas of the Cherokee Nation. The Gold Ridge station would be completed by the middle of May, in about three weeks. Every Cherokee within a fifty-mile radius would be brought to the stockade and held there for escort to the western lands.

There were whoops of joy from the crowd. “It’s about time we had a rattlesnake roundup!” one man shouted.

“Hot durn! I promised my ma I’d kill an Injun before I came home again!” another said.

The captain held up his hands. “No violence,” he called out. “General Scott will prosecute any white settler caught doing harm to an Indian. He wants them treated as kindly as possible.”

Justis scowled at him. “He’s a little damned late for that. Clear out of here. I’ve got no use for you federal loblollies.”

“States’ rights man, are you?” the captain asked.

“Just don’t like the smell of the general’s plan.”

“Don’t pay any attention to Mr. Gallatin, Captain,” a man said. “He’s an Indian sympathizer. He had two Cherokee wives and he’s got a third shacked up over at his hotel.”

Justis began to smile.

“Oh, no,” someone whispered. “Get out of his way.”

Justis started forward, but Sam grabbed his arm. “He’s new in town, partner. Let him have one mistake.” The man’s friends were already hustling him out the door.

“Oh, I don’t know,” a majestic voice boomed. “Let Justis have at him.”

The crowd parted to let a tall, regal figure stride down the aisle. Judge William Parnell, Amarintha’s father, had snow-white hair, a slight paunch that only added to his
imposing appearance, and dark eyes that one or two gossipers suggested came from an Indian relative somewhere in the illustrious Parnell family tree.

Judge Parnell had presided over Superior Court for the past four years, and his rulings were as stern as the black suits he wore. Justis studied him idly, seeing, as always, a smiling old lion who ate people alive.

“You getting into trouble, boy?” Parnell asked jovially.

“Every second of the day.”

The judge was a grand politician, and after Sam introduced him to Captain Taylor he went through the crowd, finding new faces and shaking hands with the strangers. A respectful quiet had fallen as soon as he stepped into the store.

Only one other man in Gold Ridge could inspire that reaction. When Judge Parnell finished his campaigning and halted in front of Justis, studying him with smiling, soulless eyes, they both knew who the other man was.

“I’ll have the hide and tallow of any rascal who mistreats our peaceful Cherokee brethren during this tragic, tragic time,” the judge said in a solemn voice. He turned to the crowd. “It’s our duty to treat these innocent children of nature with respect. They are doomed by the good and proper onrush of civilization, and though God has given us the right to bring light into their dark country, He does not intend for us to lose our own souls in the process.”

Several
amens
and
here, heres
demonstrated the crowd’s righteous support.

Justis silently cursed every pious thief who’d engineered the Cherokee treaty, and wondered how he was going to break this latest news to Katherine.
If
he ever got to talk to her again.

F
OR TWO WEEKS
Katherine alternated between periods of dull apathy and unnatural exhilaration. Either she
sat by the hotel window for hours, gazing blankly at the activity on the town square, or she paced her room frantically, her mind fired by memories of her family and horrible imaginings about their deaths.

Justis was waiting in the outside world, him and his vow, I’ll
do anything to have you
. She had twenty dollars left from her travel money, and until that ran out she wouldn’t ask him for anything. Though Rebecca had tried to refuse, Katherine had given her six dollars for room and board over the past two weeks. Katherine sat by her window every night until dawn, clasping her remaining money and staring at the stars as if they hid answers.

“You can’t go on like this,” Rebecca exclaimed tearfully when she discovered Katherine asleep in a chair one morning. She guided her to the bed and stood beside it, arms akimbo. “Please talk to Justis. He won’t take advantage of your situation.”

Katherine lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. “But will he give me my land and a share of the Blue Song gold?”

“He can’t give you the land. I’m sure he would if he thought the state would let you keep it. But no Cherokee can own land here anymore.”

“My family is buried on that land.”

“It doesn’t matter to the state, Katherine.”

“Then I’ll find some way to support myself until I can change the state’s mind. I’ll find employment here.”

Rebecca gently patted her shoulder. “Justis will give you all the money you need. Just be patient about the rest. He can’t do anything to change it, but he wants to be good to you. He’s bullheaded but not cruel.”

“I’ll never understand him.”

“He grew up on the docks down on the coast, an orphan, fighting for every crumb he put in his mouth. His parents were Irish. Irish and Catholic, and they died in a
fire when Justis was little. Imagine, a little boy all alone, dealing with prejudice and poverty. An outcast. So much about his life has been brutal—even you came to him under brutal circumstances. But there’s honor, and courage, and a simple kind of idealism in him that tries to right all that, even though his methods are sometimes rough.”

Katherine thought of the anti-Irish protest she’d seen in Philadelphia the previous year. It had been sparked by religious bigotry and a deep fear that the desperately poor immigrants would take too many jobs from American workers.

“You’ve explained a great deal about him,” she admitted softly. “I think he’s more hot-blooded than you believe, but … he’s reared himself very well, considering what little life gave him to start with.”

Rebecca smiled. “You see why he’s got such sympathy for other outcasts.”

Katherine looked at her closely. “I heard you speaking Hebrew to yourself. I’ve studied the language a little. I recognize it.” When Rebecca paled, she added quickly, “I won’t tell. But is it such a terrible worry?”

“We feared that the frontier was not the best place to be … um, different from everyone else.” She glanced away, frowning. “Is that cowardly?”

Katherine sighed. “No, not in my experience.” She got up, went to the window, and inhaled the fresh, promising air of the spring morning. “But for me, at least, there’s no point in hiding from it any longer.” She squared her shoulders. “What day is it?”

“Sunday.”

Katherine thought for a moment. “Does Justis ever go to church, any church?”

“No. I think he’s afraid a bolt of lightning might strike him dead as soon as he stepped across the threshold.”

“Tell him that if he wants to see me, he can escort me
to services this morning. I’ll fight this battle on my own grounds.”

Rebecca clapped merrily all the way out of the room.

J
USTIS WAITED ON
the hotel veranda because it looked better than stomping back and forth at the base of the stairs inside. The last thing he wanted Katherine to see when she came down from her room was him pacing like a worried beau. The pretty red fox knew how to play her cards right, for damned sure.

He heard footsteps and quickly checked his appearance. He lived in a cabin at the mine, but he kept his fancy stuff here at the hotel, where it had a better chance of staying clean. Everything was spotless—the dark blue frock coat, the black vest and tan trousers, even the white linen shirt and cravat. The black dress shoes hurt like hell, but they were clean, too, and that was all that mattered.