In the Season of the Sun (39 page)

Kilhenny clapped him on the back and draped his arm across Tom's shoulders. “I knew those heathen bastards couldn't hold you. How'd you get away?”

“As quickly as I could. Just like you taught me, Coyote. I came to in that Indian camp, took a look around, and played possum till I could brain one and steal his horse.” He held out a cup and Thalia filled it with strong black coffee.

“That-a-boy.” Kilhenny said. He spied Pike Wallace and Skintop Pritchard working their way through the trappers. “See here, lads, Tom ain't under yet.”

Pike seemed genuinely happy. Tom Milam's capture had been a bad omen to him. Skintop Pritchard, on the other hand, stepped aside and faded back into the crowd. He'd greeted the news of Tom's capture with a perfunctory “Good riddance.”

Tom looked up into the face of his father's murderer and smiled. “Good to be back among my own kind.”

“Who was that white renegade running with those Blackfeet?”

“Never said his name,” Tom said, his expression devoid of feeling. He strode up to Thalia, knelt and picked up the platter, brushed off some of the biscuits, and stuffed a couple into his coat pocket. “Never like to see a man go hungry, especially when that man is me.” Abigail brought a jar of honey and a plate and set a place for him at the head of the table. Her eyes were warm and welcoming. She was greatly relieved to see him, battered as he was.

“I didn't run out empty-handed,” Tom said. “I savvied enough of their conversation to know the Blackfoot village is ripe for the picking. We could drive them out of the mountains in a single blow.”

“You remember the way?” Kilhenny asked. He'd been pondering the same notion himself.

“In my sleep.”

“Well, get some.” Kilhenny clapped him on the shoulder once again. “We've got a war party to put together come sunup.” Kilhenny wiped a beefy forearm across his bewhiskered mouth. “You heard me, lads. We aren't gonna let those bucks regroup. We can burn their village and drive them out for good. There'll be prime trapping this summer.”

“Just so long as we don't drive out the women,” Iron Mike roared from the periphery of the crowd.

“Naw,” another of Kilhenny's men spoke out. “We'll capture then squaws and tie 'em to poles for safekeeping.”

“I gotta pole you can tie one onto,” a third voice said. Some of the men laughed. But not all.

“I didn't plan on fighting anybody's private war,” Dog Bill Hanna spoke up. Several men around him nodded. “We come for pelts not scalps. Me and my Platte River boys figure we've done all the soldiering we intend to.” He touched a hand to the leather brim of his coonskin cap. “Glad you made it back, Tom,” Dog Bill remarked, then turned and left.

Tom saluted in the man's direction with his cup of coffee. Dog Bill's men broke away from the main body of Kilhenny's bunch and started toward the gate. They preferred to sleep out under the stars, where it was easier to watch their backs.

“There goes a smart man,” Tom said aloud. “The trouble is, he'll always be poor.”

“Now you're talking,” Kilhenny said.

“I think I ought to have a say in what happens,” Abigail suggested sternly.

“Say all you want, but you've been voted down,” Kilhenny said.

“By who?”

“By me,” Kilhenny retorted. “With Nate lying yonder in his grave, I'm putting myself in command.”

Tom froze at the news of Nate Harveson's death. “How did it happen?”

“Injuns. Probably that red devil we got chained in the barn,” Kilhenny said. “No need for me to tell you. I reckon you'll get an earful tonight,” the half-breed answered with a knowing look in Abigail's direction. “Maybe you can talk some sense into her, Tom. Me and the captain have failed.”

“Most assuredly,” Smead exclaimed. He rose from his bench seat, steadying himself against the table. “Took a little too much port, I fear.” The Captain nodded to Tom and Kilhenny, doffed his cap, and made a grand bow in Abigail's direction.

“My dear ‘almost' daughter, I remain at your service.” The captain patted the wrinkles from his coat and adjusted the dog-eared leather Bible in his belt. “I don't suppose one of you gentlemen would consider showing me to my boat?”

“Come along, parson,” Pike Wallace said, volunteering. He took Smead by the arm. The righteous captain didn't imbibe often, but now and then he could be counted on to tie into a bottle with a vengeance. Afterward, he'd wind up weak legged, bleary eyed, and the proud owner of a monstrous hangover that made his skull feel like the boiler on his boat.

The trappers slowly ambled away as Pike led Smead toward some members of his crew preparing to return to the riverboat with a wagonload of timber.

Kilhenny returned his attention to Tom. “You had me worried,” he told the younger man. “I'd have blooded these hills if the Injuns had put you under.” He patted the array of pistols slung across his chest. “I'd have made them answer for what they done to you, Tom. Be sure of that. An eye for an eye, that what's writ in the Good Book.”

“I feel the same way, Coyote,” said Tom. And there was something in his voice that might have alerted Kilhenny had he only taken time to watch and listen. But the half-breed had a raid to plan. And the subtle change in Tom Milam went unnoticed by him.

But not by Abigail Harveson. The moment Kilhenny was out of earshot, she drew close to Tom and put her hand on his arm where he leaned on the table. “What's happened to you?” she asked.

“I'm tired as hell,” Tom grumbled. He slathered a biscuit with honey and plopped it in his mouth.

“No.”

“You'll see. Soon as I scrub my hide and drink a gallon of coffee.”

Con Vogel squatted in the loft; straw clung to his frock coat and dust patched the seat of his pants. He didn't give a damn. He rose up on his knees and peered out the upper window of the loft toward the Harveson blockhouse and the lamplight flickering in the upstairs window of Abigail's bedroom.

Vogel had been prepared to go calling on Abigail as soon as he had his way with the servant girl. Tom's return ruined everything. Vogel had watched from the loft as Tom Milam arrived at the blockhouse. With Virginia at his side he had waited in the stable's hay loft, hoping that Tom might leave. Instead, Abigail and Tom had entered the house together, dooming the arrogant musician's hopes for rekindling his former romance.

“Damn him!” Vogel's breath clouded on the cool night air. Virginia waited on a bed of straw. She had wrapped herself in a shawl to ward off the chill and waited for Con to return to her side.

“What does it matter? I am here,” Virginia said. “I have given myself to you alone, isn't that enough?”

“Alone?” Con laughed and turned to look at her, his disdain replacing the passion that had once ruled his emotions. “Who haven't you given yourself to?”

His words, like the bite of a lash, left her wounded and hurting. She lowered her head and began to sob. “I have never given myself. I meant no more to Mister Nate than a good horse or a huntin' dog. White folks like him say I'm free. Sure. I'm free as long as I do what I'm told.” She dried her eyes on a corner of the shawl. Hurt gave way to anger, and she rolled from the hay and stood, naked save for the shawl. Her hands closed into fists.

“Mister Coyote took me. I knew I couldn't stop him, so's I just lay back and let him do what he gotta do. Just like everybody else around here. I didn't give him nothing.” She walked across the loft to stand at Vogel's side and touched his arm. “You were gentle. And you got dreams like me. You say sweet words. I give myself only to you, Con. You know that, now. Tell me it's so.”

Con Vogel stared glumly at the house in the center of the stockade. In his mind, he could just picture the scene upstairs, Abigail all white and naked and writhing beneath Tom Milam. There would never be any place in Abigail's life for anyone else, not as long as Tom Milam lived. Why the hell couldn't those Indians have finished him?

Anger burned in his breast, welled up to choke him. It wasn't fair. Not again. Fantasies, like a house of cards, came tumbling down and in their ruin naught but smoldering embers of jealousy and hatred remained.

“Mister Con …” Virginia softly pleaded.

At last he focused on her, his expression rigid, stone faced. He needed a drink. He wanted to drown himself in rum. Maybe that would blot out Nate Harveson's face, which appeared every time Con closed his eyes.

“I don't know you,” Vogel harshly replied. “I don't know you!” He brushed her aside and rushed toward the ladder leading down from the loft. He hurried down, risking a nasty fall on the makeshift rungs. He left Virginia alone in the shadowy loft, her sobs wasted on his hardened heart.

Virginia fumbled for her calico dress and quickly slipped it on, then wrapped herself in the shawl. A night owl screeched and whirred past the loft window. Virginia jumped, startled by the sound, her heart fluttering.

She heard a voice in the momentary stillness that followed. The captive Blackfoot chained in one of the stalls below had begun to sing. It was a mournful chant whose simple, sad words Virginia couldn't understand. But the spirit of the song was as familiar to her as her own pain and that of her entire race, a people enslaved.

Hiram dug his fork into the wedge of pie on his plate and lifted a mouthful of apples and sugar crust to his lips. Thalia sat across from him, nursing the day's last cup of coffee and watching the old black man enjoy his snack.

He closed his mouth around the fork, shut his eyes, and all but purred with contentment. “Man oh man, whoever made this here pie knew what she was about. Ah, who'd you say it was?”

“Don't know,” Thalia, refusing to rise to the bait, reached across the table and broke off a piece of the crust and sampled it. “Somebody just left it on my windowsill 'bout noon. Crust ain't bad. Almost as good as mine.”

“Almost,” Hiram said. “Mister Nate used to love your pies.…” The old man's features drooped. Sugar and cinnamon turned sour on his palate. Hiram lowered his fork and slid the plate away. “He wasn't the best man, but he wasn't the worse neither.” Hiram studied his wrinkled hands and tried to remember a time when his leathery black flesh had been smooth, unseamed by age and work and care. He couldn't. “You were right, woman. Comin' out here was a mistake. We all are for the worse.”

Thalia shook her head. “Such talk and you the one always claimin' to be so all-fired ready for a change.” The cook slid the plate of pie back toward the house servant. “Tears are for the dead. Pies are for the living. It ain't proper to waste neither.” Her round dark features were set, a veritable mask of determination.

Hiram studied her. “Where'd you get such wisdom, woman?”

“Maybe it got left on the windowsill, too,” she said.

Hiram laughed gently and dug into the pie.

Abigail woke in the early hours of morning. She touched the place beside her in bed but found cold sheets instead of a warm sleeping body. She sat upright and brushed her hair back from her face and saw Tom standing by the window in the moonlight. He was naked and lithe and seemed to her like some primitive animal waiting at the lip of his cave—for what? His mate? His prey? One and the same? She had wept in his arms and they had made love. No, he had taken her, without pause for endearments and tender caresses and arousing kisses. And she had met his fierce demands with her own, clawing at him and taking his hunger and losing herself in the fires of what seemed now a frightening mixture of passion and rage.

She crawled from the bed and wrapped the quilt around her like a toga, which trailed behind her as she padded to his side. She opened the quilt and offered him a place within its folds.

“Among the Indians, that's a way of proposing,” Tom wryly observed.

“You'll catch your death.”

“I've been trying to for years.”

“Well, don't succeed in my room,” Abigail replied bitterly. “I've buried enough of my heart the past few days.” She shrugged and closed her wrap when he made no move toward her. In truth, he seemed impervious to the night's chill, as if he were one with the cold and the dark.

“What are you looking for?” She peered through the window, overlooking the front gate and the distant hills like dunes of drifting coal against the horizon of stars.

“Ghosts,” Tom said. His right fist encased the serpent ring he wore around his neck. His knuckles shone bloodless and white in the moonlight.

Abigail shivered though not from the cold. “Tom …” she leaned closer, “Tom?”

But there came no reply, for tonight Tom Milam kept his vigil in a place where even love could not reach him.

45

“G
ive me seventy fighting men and I'll cut a path through the heart of the Blackfoot nation,” Coyote Kilhenny declared from the sun-drenched yard of the corral. He looked on as the last of his men found suitable mounts, roped the animals, and led them to the corral fence where the saddles were draped across the rails. It had taken a couple of days to arrange and outfit his force, but they were days well spent. Kilhenny had spent the time exciting his men with the prospect of plunder.

“Seventy men, that's my count,” Tom replied, standing alongside the man who had raised him. “And the cannon you've hitched to the wagon.”

“Insurance, my lad.” Kilhenny squinted at the sun's inevitable climb in the sky. “I want us under way by mid-morning, so don't let your ‘fare-thee-well' with the Harveson girl slow us down even further.” Kilhenny spat in the dirt at his feet and leaned against Tom. “See you keep your drawers cinched up. Save some for those Blackfoot squaws we're gonna find just waiting our pleasure.”

Tom continued to play along with the half-breed. He noticed Skintop Pritchard and the Shoshoni leading Lone Walker from the barn. Kilhenny intended to take the Blackfoot medicine man along just in case they ran into a war party. If Lone Walker was as important as Bear claimed, the braves from the Medicine Lake village would think twice before attacking. Coyote Kilhenny didn't miss a trick, Tom thought—well, maybe just one.