Captive (41 page)

He had been sickened, knowing then that to wage a war would mean sure death for him and so many others. They hadn’t planned as yet. They hadn’t gathered rifles and gunpowder. They were too weak. Yet even as he waited just south of St. Augustine, desperately plotting and planning, he had heard a woman’s joyous cry, shouting his name in greeting. And through the brush she had come running to him. Behind her, leading the pony she had ridden, were the McKenzies. Running Bear and his white brother. They had known, they had heard of the injustice, and they had gone to the overseer and persuaded the licentious bastard to sell her to them. At an exorbitant price, Osceola was certain, but neither brother would ever comment on it.

Now neither of his wives was so very young or fragile, but neither had he forgotten what that first hunger and passion of love could be, denying all reason and logic. Wild Orchid had been precious to him all these years, as had Morning Dew. He loved his children by both wives; he knew the strength and support of his family, all begun by love.

He could not deny James McKenzie his passion. Especially, he thought with a certain humor, since he had seen the red-haired woman himself.

“You will leave him be one more night,” Osceola said. “Let him watch the sun go down in his hammock one
more time, see the colors streak the horizon, feel the kiss of the dew upon his flesh with the coming of the dawn.”

“Osceola, you forget the events that have taken place! We need him—”

“One more night will not change the war, not the history of our world or theirs. I will send for him myself come the morning,” Osceola said.

He would let McKenzie have one more sweet taste of his savage paradise before the world exploded upon them all.

General Thomas Sydney Jesup sat at his desk, studying again the war orders from Secretary of War Joel Poinsett. He closed his eyes morosely, damning his Florida duty. In fact, for the moment, damning the military altogether.

Let them come down from their high horses in Washington! he thought angrily. They had ignored him. Ignored his plea that they leave the Seminoles alone. Let them flee south. Live out their pathetic, starving lives in the no-man’s land that filled so damned much of the mosquito-infested peninsula.

He was a military man, a hard-core soldier. He had come to Florida from battling the Creeks, and he knew how to fight Indians. If he had ever said anything negative regarding any of his predecessors as to their stint of duty as commanders in Florida, he had let it be well-known that he retracted such statements. This was hell. A war that couldn’t be won. He had quickly, painfully learned that the Seminoles could split their numbers and disappear into the terrain while his men floundered in hammock and swamp. He had come expecting to round up the Seminoles with all speed, and send them west to live. Poinsett was an able man, an incredibly able man, in Jesup’s opinion. But Jesup damned him just the same. Poinsett had left him no choice but to exterminate the Indians.

Jesup sighed, running his fingers through his white hair. His bitterness extended toward the enemies. Before
the escape in June of the nearly seven hundred Indians from the center at Tampa, he had believed he had broken the resistance, that his war was all but over. But then those seven hundred had disappeared, with the wily Osceola at the head of it, or so it seemed.

He slammed a fist against the table. The Indians deserved no decency on his part. They knew nothing of any code of honor. They were slippery, cunning, treacherous.

If he had to use treachery against them in return, then so be it.

He set aside the missive from the secretary of war. He picked up his quill and began to pen the orders he would give in turn to General Hernandez.

His hand shook as he wrote. He set his quill down. And still his hand shook. A chill fell over him. He shook it off. He refused to admit that his ill feelings might forebode the damning consequences of his own actions, setting the cry of treachery upon himself for his lifetime, and all history yet to come.

The day had been a good one. They’d awakened to a powder blue sky, puffs of clouds moving across it. Teela had been ecstatic to catch a fish herself, spearing it through with lightning speed. He’d skinned it, they cooked it and ate it with nuts and fruit.

Now they played in the river. Teela had become an excellent swimmer. The water was filled with an abundance of sea cows, and Teela took great pleasure in them. She’d even decided that they weren’t ugly anymore. There were adorable, as charming as otters, as gentle as puppies.

“There!” she cried to James suddenly.

“Where, what?” he asked, turning.

She dove beneath the surface, caught his foot, dunked him thoroughly, then swam away with a practiced speed that startled even him. He sputtered to the surface. “Playing with fire again, eh, my love?” he shouted, swimming hard to pursue her. Damn. She was getting good. She reached the bank and raced out of the water,
laughing and shrieking. He followed her. Despite the fact that she was a quick learner and swam very well indeed now, she hadn’t a chance against him on dry land. Yet even as he sped after her, he suddenly ground to a dead halt, staring past her to the entrance of the secluded copse.

There was a rider there, a very old black man on a gaunt gray mare. It was difficult to determine which was more pathetically thin, the man or the horse.

Osceola’s old servant, Riley, had come for him, he realized, the air all but sucked out of him with the knowledge that the days he had clung to so desperately had come to an end. That Riley had come already indicated trouble, for if things were normal, Wildcat would have been the one to come.

Teela had been looking back at James as she ran. Still laughing, she whirled around and shrieked in sudden terror as she nearly crashed into the black man who had dismounted from a horse. James found motion again, running swiftly enough to be there when she backed away from Riley, trembling. Perhaps Riley was a startling visage. He dressed in buckskin trousers and a white man’s shirt. A turban of bright cotton and egret plumes sat atop his dark head and cascaded down his back. It was a magnificent headdress, a gift from Osceola to a faithful servant. It made him appear, however, to be nearly seven feet tall.

James wound his arms around Teela, then eased her behind him. Her hands set upon his hips, the fullness of her naked body pressed against him as if he were a barrier of steel.

“Riley,” he said quietly. “Teela, it’s all right. It’s Riley. He offers us no harm.”

She was shaking still, but it occurred to him then just how greatly she trusted him.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said softly.

“I’m not afraid. I’m—I’m naked James.”

“Riley will take his clothes off, too, if you want.”

She slammed a fist against his back.

“Riley, have you something there Miss Warren might wear?” he asked.

Riley nodded gravely, tossing a satchel he carried down to James.

“Real clothing,” James muttered, bending down to open it. Teela quickly ducked down behind him. In the bundle he found a full, flared indigo-dyed skirt and a colorful pullover blouse. He turned and offered both to Teela, who scrambled into the items quickly and awkwardly, refusing to rise behind him until she was dressed.

“Coffee, Riley?” James suggested. His breeches were back by the cypress log, and it didn’t seem that Riley had brought anything for him.

“Coffee would be fine fittin’, Master James,” Riley said. The old man’s usage of both the Muskogee and Hitichi languages was fluent, but he had always addressed James by his English name and in the English tongue.

“Well, let’s all come along, then, shall we?” James said, starting back to his pants and their shelter. “Did you come alone?” Teela asked him. “I did, Miss Warren.”

“How did you know where we were?” Teela demanded.

“Osceola knows this place. Wildcat came before and talked to James. We knew where James would be when the time came.” James winced, stiffening his back for a moment. “Wildcat was already here?” Teela asked sweetly. “And we didn’t know?”

James found his breeches and scrambled into them. When he turned, old Riley was grinning and Teela looked flushed. “Master James, he knew. He knew.”

Teela turned her stare on James. Accusingly. He brushed past her to get water for the coffeepot. “We always knew that our time here was limited,” he told her.

She followed him to the water. “Your friend, this Wildcat, was the bird, right?” she demanded in a furious
whisper. “I was, we were—” she sputtered. “And he was there!”

He sighed. “Wildcat was discreet. Since he did rather interrupt us in the middle of something.”

“Bastard!” she hissed.

“He has seen far more,” James said with a shrug. “Besides, it was dark.”

She started to shove him. He caught her hand and warned her harshly, “Teela, he came, he went. He didn’t mean to interrupt. He came to tell me we were completely safe from Otter. Now, my love, you behave, or I’ll have to paddle you black and blue to keep my standing—and perhaps my life—among the people. Riley is a good man but a damned talkative one.”

He didn’t give her a chance to obey or disobey, keeping one hand and a firm grip upon her arm and another on the coffeepot as he rose and headed back toward the hootie. Old Riley had already laid out some of the delicacies he had brought them, smoked deer meat and cornmeal cakes. Dragging Teela with him, James quickly had the chicory coffee going. As the fire lapped beneath the pot, James asked Riley, “What news?”

“Soldiers seized all of King Philip’s camp. King Philip was betrayed by his servant, whose woman was unhappy.” Riley paused to glance at Teela, silently warning against the evils of female influence. “Wildcat has gone in to the whites for his father’s sake. There is to be more talk. Osceola has sent messages to General Jesup, and General Jesup has said that there will be a meeting again. Running Bear, Coa Hadjo will speak for Osceola, but Osceola has asked that you accompany him and the others when they meet.”

James bowed his head. “He knows that I will come.”

Riley hesitated. He looked at Teela again. “Osceola says that you must know there is talk that you are the most dangerous of all Indians, a white Indian.”

“Why this talk?” James demanded, frowning.

“The white soldier, Warren, has said that you planned
the murder of many men in order to steal his daughter. Warren says that you should be hanged.”

Teela gasped, horrified. “He is a liar!”

“There are many who will believe his lies,” James said quietly.

“But I’ll tell them all that he’s a liar—” Teela began.

“Tell them what you will,” James said. “Some men will believe you, and some will not.”

“Then you can’t go in with Osceola!” Teela said. “James, you must stay hidden!” she insisted fervently.

“I have to go.”

“You cannot! You—”

“Teela!” he warned her, his voice low and grating, a harsh command that she stop.

Riley said, “You can keep your camp here until morning. Then Osceola asks that you meet with him tomorrow, behind the soldiers’ road that leads to the east.”

James nodded. “That will be fine.”

“That will not be fine—” Teela began.

James clamped a hand over her mouth, dragging her hard against his chest. “That will be fine,” he repeated.

Old Riley poured himself coffee and rose. “I will sleep behind the copse,” he told James. James nodded. Teela was fighting like a scalded wildcat against his hold. He gave her a firm shake, not daring to release her until Riley had made his way from the copse.

“You can’t go! You can’t go!” she told him, tears blinding her eyes.

He stared down at her, not replying. “You can’t, you can’t, you can’t!” she said, slamming her fists against his chest, beating him, pummeling him. He didn’t stop her. She kept it up until her blows were soft, until her words were sobs.

“We’ve a last sunset,” he told her. “You can’t go. You can’t—”

He hushed her with a slow, tender, heartbreaking kiss. Yet as darkness came, she was the one to refuse tenderness. To hold him fiercely. Make love with a wild, wicked, violent abandon.

But with sobs, not words. Now her very violence brought her to exhaustion. When at last she slept next to him, he cast a fur around his shoulders and left the copse, coming to Riley.

Awake, resting against an oak, Riley smiled grimly, as if he’d expected James.

“I must make arrangements for Teela. Osceola knows this.”

“Osceola has sent word to Jarrett McKenzie, and he and the young soldier Harrington will come for your woman.”

James nodded, feeling a twist like a knife in his abdomen. “Sleep, Riley,” he told the old man.

He returned to the hootie and stared down at Teela. Her cheeks were liquid with tears. Her hair was a fan around her, beautiful in the moon glow, red, radiant. She was almost ivory in her whiteness, her naked body as perfect as porcelain. He lay down beside her, intending to let her sleep.

But their last sunset had already fallen.

He woke her. Silenced her words, her protests. Made love tenderly, fiercely, tenderly …

Indeed, their sunset was gone.

And dawn was coming. A red dawn. A bloodred dawn.

T
eela was subdued during the ride early the next morning. She kept her distance from him at first, and he thought that she was feeling ill again. He didn’t attempt to comfort, though he worried at the many deadly diseases she might fall prey to. No matter what emotions and desires tore at his heart, it was not just necessary but good that she was going to be back in his brother’s care. Harrison’s care, even. Out of the territory, with any luck!

She swam without him, using sand for soap as he had shown her, and dressed without a word in the strange new outfit Riley had brought her. He longed to seize hold of her, defy the bleak future. He turned away. He couldn’t hold her tightly enough to change the future. He braced himself as he did so, wondering if this was the last time he would ever see her. A million different things could go wrong. Osceola’s parley could turn into a desperate battle. Warren might have already made arrangements for Running Bear to be seized and hanged upon first sight. Yes, Teela was best far removed from him. There was nothing that she could do.