The Texan's Bride (12 page)

Katie pummeled his back. “You’d better not throw me in the river this time, I’ll take a chill.” An uncharacteristic whine entered her voice. “Besides, I washed my hair before dinner, and it’s just now dried. You know how long that takes.”

“Still vain about your hair, I see,” Shaddoe said, reaching behind his back to give those locks a tug.

“Ouch. You’re just jealous that my braids have always been thicker than yours.”

“Bratling.” He swatted her rump again and continued toward the Angelina.

Katie didn’t relish a dunking tonight. The water truly was too cold. But her longstanding relationship with Shaddoe made it a distinct possibility.

The precedent was set years ago when, as a child, Katie decided to rob a bee tree of its honey. She managed to knock the hive from the limb, but she hadn’t counted on the swarm of insects that engulfed her in moments. The young Shaddoe, newly arrived at the Cherokee village, heard her screams. Braving the bees, the boy lifted her in his arms, ran to a nearby stream, and tossed her into the water.

Hurting and in a temper, mad at the world, she had sloshed from the water and launched herself with fists flying at the closest target, Shaddoe. He responded by pitching her back into the water. It took four drenchings before the exhausted girl gave up and lay on the bank, crying. Without a word, Shaddoe tenderly carried her to the Cherokee village, where his uncle performed an incantation and covered the stings with a soothing poultice.

Since that day, Katie had hit her friend in a fit of temper on half a dozen different occasions. Each and every time, he dunked her in the nearest water hole.

The night was winter quiet as they reached the river. “I should have known better than to punch you,” Katie grumbled.

“As usual, Kathleen, your arms flew faster than your mind.” He lifted her from his shoulder and placed her gently on the ground. “However, you are safe tonight. I did not journey this far only to watch you die of pneumonia.” He tilted her chin with his index finger. Softly, he told her, “I have missed you.”

“Oh, Shaddoe, I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you. I thought you were dead!” She hugged him again, then stepped back and searched his eyes for answers. “Where have you been? What happened?”

Instead of answering, he turned away and busied himself gathering the makings of a fire.

“Shaddoe?” Katie’s thoughts returned to the last time she had seen him, July of 1839. Down in the Neches riverbed a horrible event had taken place. “Da and I were there at the Neches River that morning, we watched the battle between the Cherokees and the Texians. So many men, so much blood, everywhere I looked.” Katie’s stomach churned as the memory of the battlefield came alive in her mind. She could almost smell the gunpowder.

She rubbed her arms as a chill swept her body. “You were beside Duwali, helping your chief, and then, when the Texian shot him in the back, it was so horrible, I couldn’t watch anymore. Da looked for you but you’d disappeared. We thought you were one of the bodies, Shaddoe. There were so many of them!”

Shaddoe knelt on one knee next to the dry brush he’d piled together for a small camp fire. He looked up at her, and moonlight slashed across his face like war paint. “No, Kathleen, the Texians didn’t kill me, although at times I wished they had.”

“Were you hurt? Where have you been? What has happened to your people? You’re back for good, now, aren’t you?”

“Oh, little one, you haven’t changed at all. Still asking twenty questions at once, allowing me no opportunity to ask my own.” He blew gently on the base of a thin ribbon of flame. “I want to know what happened here. I want to know who is the man in your home. But time is short, Kathleen, and other things must come first.” He fed a clump of dead grass to the growing fire, stood, and went to her.

Taking her hand, he said, “I have a critical request to make of you, and too, I must speak of my sorrow. I have been to Nacogdoches, where I learned of Steven’s death. Know that I share your grief.”

“He was lynched. Daniel and I found him hanging from the elm tree at the Starrs’ home. They cut him, Shaddoe—oh, the blood! It was—I can’t find the words to describe it!” Katie felt the sting of tears as she gazed into his somber black eyes. She said, “He loved you. He never believed you had died. He took care of everything, Shaddoe, about the land, I mean. Da and I, we wanted to forget all about the Cherokees’ lands, but Steven wouldn’t hear of it. He said that someday you’d return, or at least send someone to settle. We have it, Shaddoe; the land is waiting for you.”

Her voice cracked as she added, “Steven and I married. We had a daughter. She… died that night, too. They didn’t need to set the fire, Shaddoe!”

Shaddoe touched her shoulder. “I am so sorry, Kathleen. Upon my oath, I will discover the one responsible, and he shall forfeit his life.”

Sadly, Katie shook her head.
That duty is mine, my friend
. The pitchfork. She’d find the devil, she’d made promises. Besides, Shaddoe could never learn the connection between Steven’s death and the Matagorda Bay and Texas Land Company. He would feel responsible when, in truth, it was all her fault.

She moved to the camp fire and sat beside it, tucking her feet demurely beneath her skirt. Like times of old, Shaddoe sat cross-legged on her right. This time, however, Steven wasn’t there to complete the circle.

“What is this request you have, my friend?” she asked, anxious to change the subject.

Shaddoe’s fierce scowl accentuated the hard angles of his face. In that moment, she saw nothing of the Louisiana Creole that made up half his blood. The man before her was a Cherokee warrior. “Kathleen, I must have Steven’s father’s supply of smallpox vaccine.”

“You want Doc Starr’s what?” She could have imagined him asking for many things, but not that. “Why? Is that why you’re here? But Doc Starr passed on shortly before Steven died. Why come to me? I don’t know what you—”

He interrupted. “Truly, Kathleen, you must learn to control your questions. But, knowing you, I must return to the beginning so that you may know the whole of it. It’s an ugly story, little one.”

Abruptly, he stood and walked to the riverbank, moonlight illuminating his form. He scooped up a handful of stones and skipped them, one by one, across the water. Katie stared into the fire. Apprehension crept up her spine like a slow-moving spider, and for all of her questions, she doubted whether she really wanted the answers. “Shaddoe, I’m sorry. You don’t need to tell me. You’re my friend. I’ll do anything I can to help you, no matter what. You know I will.”

“Yes, Kathleen, I know you will.” But after a few moments of silence, he began to tell his story, his voice a low rumble, his words clipped. “After the battle at the Neches, the Texian army took many prisoners, mostly women and children. Corn Tassel, Little Mush, and Running Wolf were killed. Tenata and I helped the remnants of our group travel to Mexico.”

“Not Indian Territory?” Katie asked.

“Some went north, yes. I have just come from there. But many of us realized that making a home in the Territory only delays the inevitable, so we went south.”

“What do you mean?”

Shaddoe arched a stone over the water. “How long do you think the Cherokee will be allowed to live in peace in the Territory, Kathleen?” The rock plopped into the river. “As long as we lived in Texas? Long enough to build villages, clear the land and plant our crops? Long enough to tame the land for the whites? So they can live in our homes, harvest our corn, benefit from the fruits of our labor? Just as it happened here?” He sneered. “I do not think so. Mexico offers something the northern settlement land cannot. Retribution. You see, it is much easier to raid white settlements from Mexico than it is from the north.”

Katie wasn’t fooled. She flipped her braid over her shoulder. “That may be why others chose Mexico, but not you, Shaddoe Dancer. I know you too well. You might seek revenge, but never against those who have done you no wrong. You may raid Nacogdoches, but never a South Texas ranch.”

From the opposite bank of the Angelina came the rusty croak of a bullfrog.

A crooked smile tugged at Shaddoe’s mouth, and he nodded. “You have the innocent faith of a babe, Kathleen, but you are right. Steven’s arrangements for the East Texas lands will fulfill my need for vengeance, and I wish with all my heart that he could be here to witness it when it happens. But now is not the time for revenge—other needs are greater.”

“Smallpox?”

He nodded. “Smallpox is the insidious weapon of the white man. It travels from village to village, an invisible cloud that descends with its fever, chills, and nausea. When it lifts, it leaves behind scarred faces, mutilated lives, and death—black, bloated, stinking death.”

After violently pitching one last stone, Shaddoe whirled and returned to the camp fire. In silence he tended the fire. Katie looked into his face and saw the ravaged reflection of a real and personal pain. “Shaddoe?”

His dark eyes glittered in the firelight. “Do you see, Kathleen? It is the perfect weapon. There will be no more Indian Wars. No men will live to fight the battles, no women to bear children, no children to grow into angry warriors.”

“What happened, Shaddoe? To you, I mean. What happened to you?”

He was quiet for a long minute before asking, “Do I hide it so poorly?”

“I know you well,” Katie answered.

He closed his eyes. She watched his chest expand with a deep breath, then sink as he exhaled in a heavy sigh. “I carried messages from Mexico to my people in Indian Territory. I met a woman, we married. She was Elizabeth, and she walked in my soul. She carried my child, my son. Smallpox took them both.”

“Oh, Shaddoe, no!” Katie clasped his hand between both of hers. “I’m so sorry. I know how hard… I understand.”

“I think perhaps you are the only one who can, Kathleen. We have not been lucky, you and I.”

“It doesn’t seem fair, any of it. Shaddoe, can the Indians not obtain vaccine from the government?”

He laughed harshly. “The American Congress passed a law that requires smallpox vaccine be given to Indians. But guess what? I visited the Indian Agent before I left the Territory—no vaccine is available, none will be forthcoming. There’s an epidemic in the north, Kathleen. It is slowly spreading south and soon will reach the village where the Texas Cherokees have made their homes.”

“So you came here to Doc Starr?”

He nodded. “I’d no other choice. I attempted to see Colonel, The Raven, but he was of no help to his Cherokee brothers.”

“Sam Houston wouldn’t help you?” Katie asked incredulously. “Why, I can’t believe that!”

“I never found him. In Washington-on-the-Brazos I was told he had retreated to a large holding of land near Huntsville, where he intended to build a plantation. On my arrival there—Raven Hill, he calls it—I discovered he had journeyed south to meet with other proponents of annexation.” Shaddoe scratched in the dirt with a twig. “My time was growing short. Even had I found Sam Houston, as immersed as he is in the political fortunes of the Republic of Texas, I feared he’d not have time to give to the Cherokees. He is not a god; his efforts to save our East Texas lands failed miserably. It was not guaranteed he could obtain the vaccine for us.” The twig snapped as he added, “I knew Doctor Starr would help.”

Katie nodded slowly. “Steven’s father would have given you the vaccine without hesitation.”

“He treated the Cherokee like any other man. But he, too, is dead. As his son’s wife, you must have inherited his medicines.”

“Yes, I did. But Shaddoe—oh, I hate to tell you this. Shaddoe, I no longer have his supply of vaccine! I gave it all to Doc Mayfair.”

BRANCH GLARED down at the pocket watch in his hand. Twenty minutes had passed with no sign of Katie or her Cherokee. John and Daniel had given up on him and were deeply involved in a two-handed version of euchre. All the while, the boy’s excited prattle regaled him with stories of the illustrious Shaddoe.

Half-Creole, half-Cherokee, he went by the name Shaddoe Marchand while living with his grandfather in New Orleans as a child. But growing to manhood among Chief Bowles’s tribe, the medicine man’s nephew answered to what translated as Dances In The Night. Katie always called him Shaddoe Dancer.

He fought beside his chief in the summer of ’39. “I’ll never forget the sight,” John said, a faraway look in his eyes. “Chief Bowles was a brave old man. In his eighties, I think’. Throughout the battle his voice rang out, urging his warriors onward.” John shook his head. “You couldn’t miss the man. He wore a bright red silk vest and sash, a black military hat, and he carried this fancy sword Sam Houston had given him.”

Gallagher folded his arms across his chest and continued. “Toward the end, only a few men were left to stand beside him; the Neches River bottom was red with blood and dead Cherokees. The Bowl rode a handsome horse, a blaze-faced sorrel with four white feet, and the Texians shot it out from under him. The old Indian climbed to his feet and began to walk away.” His expression twisted to a snarl of disgust. “A Texian shot him in the back.”

Despite himself, Branch’s interest was piqued. “You fought with the Texians?” he asked.

“Hell, no!” John exclaimed. “I was after finding me Katie. She’d taken an idea that she could somehow help her friends. The hardheaded girl—she’d run off looking for them.”

Branch snorted. “That’s not hard to believe,” he said. “Did she? Did she save her”—he sneered the name— “Shaddoe Dancer?”

Daniel interrupted his father. “She didn’t. Da saw Shaddoe riding right next to Chief Bowles. We figured he died then too.”

“Well, it appears everyone figured wrong,” Branch grumbled.

After five minutes that passed as hours, Branch could stand no more. “Dammit, John. You’re her father. How can you let her traipse off into the darkness with some half-naked half-breed and sit there losin’ at cards like nothing’s happened? Hell, by now she’s probably wearing fewer clothes than he did when he got here.”

John sniffed. “A fine thing that you’re after worrying about such. And you, sportin’ but the skin you were born with that afternoon not long ago. “’Tis the pot callin’ the kettle black, in my book.”