Lakota Renegade (10 page)

An hour after the wagon arrived, Creed found himself locked in one of the dismal little cells. He’d been informed of the rules and just in case he forgot what they were, a copy was posted on the wall, right next to a copy of the Bible. There was to be no talking except outside the cellblock and then only about the task at hand. He would be required to clean his cell each morning at reveille. The blankets were to be folded and placed at the head of the narrow iron bedstead, the litter swept into the passageway outside his cell, the slop jar emptied. He would be allowed to write one letter a month, and to receive letters on Sundays.

Letters, he thought bleakly. He had no one to write, no one who would write to him…except maybe Jassy, and even that was a slim hope. He had made her promise to start a new life for herself, to forget about him. He shook her image from his mind. Apparently she had done just that.

He spent the rest of the afternoon pacing his cell, silently cursing the prison garb he was forced to wear. He’d worn custom-made shirts and boots most of his adult life and he didn’t like the feel of the rough cotton against his skin, or the fit of the heavy black shoes.

He spent the next week locked in the cell, endlessly pacing. His only relief came at meal times, and then only for a few moments when he was allowed to leave his cell to fill his plate from the large table that stood in the passageway. He hated the regimentation of meal times, hated the guard who unlocked his cell, hated being treated like a trained animal. A ring of the bell and he was expected to step out of his cell with the other prisoners, fold his arms and face to the left. At the sound of a second bell, he was to march in single file around the table, take his plate, and return to his cell, all in complete silence.

The meals were filling, but unimaginative. Bread, meat and coffee for breakfast; soup, made of cabbage, potatoes, beans, peas, rice and hominy, meat and bread for dinner; mush and molasses and coffee for supper.

He longed for a thick steak, fresh vegetables, fruit. And sweets—he admitted to a craving for apple pie and chocolate cake, fried chicken and dumplings. For sweet pink lips and luminous brown eyes.

Lord, he thought in dismay, twenty years of this slop. Twenty years without a woman.

Twenty years behind bars.

Chapter Twelve

Jassy let out a sigh, one hand massaging the small of her back. She had been working at Mrs. Wellington’s boardinghouse for over a month. Every day, she made the beds, swept the floors, emptied the slop jars, dusted the furniture. Once a week, she washed and ironed the sheets, turned the mattresses, mopped the hardwood floors. She washed the windows, set the table at mealtimes, did the dishes afterward. She had never worked so hard in her life.

A week after Rose had left town, the landlord came to collect the rent. When Jassy couldn’t pay, he had tossed her out. To her relief, Mrs. Wellington had reluctantly agreed to allow Jassy to occupy the small room under the stairwell, deducting the rent and her meals from her meager salary, but she wasn’t complaining. She was grateful to have a place to work and a bed to sleep in.

Taking a deep breath, Jassy finished making the bed in Mr. Cuthbert’s room. Only four more beds to go, she thought. Then it would be time to go down and help Mrs. Wellington prepare the noon meal.

Jassy made the rest of the beds automatically, her thoughts centered on Creed. She wondered how he was doing, if he had received her letter, and if he had, why he hadn’t written her back. Every day, she stopped at the post office, hoping for a letter from Creed, for some word from Judge Parker. And every day she left the building empty-handed and heavy-hearted.

Last night, she had written another letter to the magistrate, begging him to reconsider Creed’s case, to see that justice was done. She had mailed the letter first thing this morning.

After considerable deliberation, she had written to Creed, too, but then she had crumpled the paper and tossed it into the fireplace. She couldn’t write and tell him she loved him, not when he hadn’t cared enough to answer her first letter, not when he had made her promise she wouldn’t wait for him, that she would leave town and make a new life for herself. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that Rose had stolen the money he had left her and run off with Ray Coulter.

To her shame, she had overheard two of the town ladies gossiping just yesterday, talking about Rose and Coulter and how they’d run off together.

Headed for San Francisco
, Mrs. Norton had said, shaking her head with such vigorous disapproval that her hat had almost fallen off.
I always thought Ray Coulter to be a decent sort, even if he did work in a saloon. Who’d have ever guessed he’d run off with a harlot.

Mrs. Watson had nodded in agreement.
Poor Tess. I don’t know how she’ll hold her head up after this.

Jassy had felt her cheeks burn when the two women turned around and saw her.

The twig doesn’t fall very far from the tree
, Mrs. Norton had remarked, and the two women had left the mercantile, their noses in the air.

* * * * *

Creed sat on the edge of his cot, staring at the floor. It was Sunday, the longest day of the week. He’d gladly have worked if they’d let him, because anything beat sitting in his cell, waiting for a letter that never came. Of course, he had no one to blame for that but himself. He’d told Jassy to forget about him, to make a new life for herself, and apparently she’d done just that. He wondered if she had taken his advice and left town, if she was happy, if she ever thought of him. He thought of writing her, just to see how she was, but he never did. They had made a clean break and it was best to leave it at that, but damn, it would be nice to hear from her, just once.

Stretching out on his bunk, his hands locked behind his head, he closed his eyes, his mind wandering back in time, back to the carefree days of his childhood.

He had spent the first twelve years of his life living with the Lakota. His father, Rides the Wind, had been a
wichasha wakán
, a holy man. His mother had been a white woman. She had been badly wounded in a raid. Black Otter, the warrior who had captured her, had taken her to Rides the Wind, who had treated her wounds and cared for her during her long convalescence. By the time she was well again, Rides the Wind had fallen in love with the white woman, and so he had bought her from Black Otter and married her according to the customs of the People.

But Heather Thomas hadn’t returned his father’s love. She had hated the Indians, and she had hated her husband. She had tried to turn her son against Rides the Wind, but Creed had loved and admired his father and nothing his mother had said could change that.

It had been during the summer of his thirteenth year that the army attacked the village. Rides the Wind had been killed defending a handful of children, and Heather had been rescued from the savages at last. Creed had begged his mother to let him go, to let him see if he could find Black Otter and his family, who had managed to escape the slaughter, but his mother had refused. Turning a deaf ear to his pleas, she had dragged Creed back east where she spent the next two years trying to civilize him.

Determined to turn her son into a gentleman, she had burned his clothes, cut his hair, and refused to let him out of the house until he agreed not to speak the Lakota language. To her everlasting regret, Creed had refused to become a gentleman. To spite her, he got involved with a bunch of young toughs. He smoked cigars and drank cheap whiskey, got into street fights and saloon brawls. And because she abhorred guns and violence, he bought a .44 Colt and practiced with it every day.

By the time he was seventeen, his mother had given up on him. He had been nearly full-grown by then, ornery as sin, and when he was arrested with three other boys for busting up a saloon, she had refused to bail him out. Instead, she had let him sit in that damn jail for two months. When he got out, he sold everything he owned and headed West. He had intended to return to his father’s people, but by the time he made his way back to the Lakota, it was too late. Most of Black Otter’s band had been killed in a skirmish with the cavalry the winter before; the survivors had been sent to the reservation in chains. As much as he had wanted to stay with his father’s people, he couldn’t. He had stayed a year, and then he had run away. The reservation had been too much like jail. And he’d vowed never to go to jail again…

Creed stared at the iron-barred door and swore softly. So much for never going to jail again, he thought bleakly.

After leaving the reservation, he had gone to Denver looking for a job, but the only thing he was any good at was fast drawing a Colt, so he had hired out his gun, riding shotgun for the stage line. He had prevented six robberies in the first nine weeks, killing four men and capturing seven others.

That quick, he had a reputation as a fast gun. Men who had once looked at him with scorn because he was a half-breed now treated him with respect. Miners and bankers sought his services, hiring his gun, paying him sizeable amounts of money to guard a mining claim, a bank payroll, a gold shipment.

And what did he have to show for it? Not one damn thing.

With an oath, he slammed his fist into the wall, relishing the pain that splintered through his hand, because it gave him something else to think about besides luminous brown eyes and his own wasted life.

* * * * *

Jassy’s steps were slow and heavy as she walked back to Mrs. Wellington’s boardinghouse. She hadn’t really expected to find a letter from Creed, but she couldn’t help being disappointed just the same. She had been so sure he had cared for her, and even though she’d promised to forget him and make a new life for herself, she had hoped that they could still be friends, that he would at least answer her letter.

“Hey, Jassy.”

She glanced up at the sound of Billy Padden’s voice.

“Where’ve you been keeping yourself?” Billy asked, falling in to step beside her.

“I’ve been working.”

“Working? You? Where?”

“At Mrs. Wellington’s boardinghouse.”

Billy frowned in disbelief. “Mrs. Wellington hired you? To do what?”

“Everything she doesn’t want to do, that’s what.”

“How about meeting me tonight?”

“I don’t think so.”

“C’mon, Jassy. I’ll take you to dinner at the Morton House.” His hand slid up her arm. “And then maybe we can take a walk down by the river.”

“No, Billy.” Firmly, she removed his hand from her arm.

“Why not?”

“You know why not.”

“Aw, don’t be like that. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do.”

“Hah!”

“I promise.”

“No, Billy.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“We’ll see,” she said, hoping he’d go away.

That night, overcome with loneliness, Jassy sat in her room staring out the window. Maybe she should go out with Billy Padden. He wasn’t a bad sort…but he wasn’t Creed.

With a sigh, she found a sheet of paper, then sat down and wrote a long letter to Creed, telling him that she had lied when she promised to forget him, that she loved him, would always love him. She told him all about Rose and how her sister had stolen the money he had left her and run off to San Francisco with Coulter. She told him about her job at the boardinghouse, making light of the hard work, assuring him that she was doing fine, that she was saving her money for a trip to Canon City so she could visit him.

She touched the choker at her throat, and then, feeling shy, she poured out her heart, telling him how she treasured the things she had found in his saddlebags, that she wore his beaded choker every day, that she slept on the pillow she had stolen from his hotel room.

In closing, she told him she had written to Judge Parker again, and then she begged him not to give up hope, telling him she was sure that he would be acquitted.

She signed her name and sealed the letter before she had a chance to change her mind.

* * * * *

Creed stared at the guard, unable to believe his ears.

“For me?” he asked. “You’re sure?”

“It’s addressed to Creed Maddigan,” the guard replied, fanning himself with the envelope. “But if you don’t want it, just say so.”

Creed held out his hand, his gaze fixed on the envelope. “I want it.”

“Hope it’s good news,” the guard remarked. Slipping the letter through the bars, he moved on down the cellblock.

Creed stared at the envelope for a long time, his thumb caressing Jassy’s name. Bless the girl, he thought, and sitting on the edge of his cot, he opened the envelope and withdrew a single sheet of white paper.

Dear Creed. Please don’t be angry with me. I know I promised to leave town, to forget you and start a new life, but I can’t. I think about you every day, wonder how you are. It must be awful, to be locked up. What do you do all day? Is the food terrible?

Creed grunted softly. The food was the least of his problems.

He frowned when he came to the part about her working at Wellington’s Boardinghouse, cussed long and loud when he read that Rose had stolen his money and run off to San Francisco with Ray Coulter. Coulter. Creed couldn’t explain it, but he knew, deep in his gut, that it had been Coulter’s idea to take the money. He’d met men like Coulter in every town west of the Missouri. Sweet-talkin’ men who could charm the birds out of the trees and fleece a woman out of a fortune before the sheets were cold. Rose would be lucky if she ever saw San Francisco.

He read the letter three times, his thoughts chaotic.

I love you…

I haven’t forgotten you…

Rose stole the money and left town…

I’m working at Wellington’s Boardinghouse…saving my money so I can come to Canon City…wear your choker every day…sleep on your pillow at night…

She loved him.
He bolted off the cot and began to pace the floor. How could she love him? She didn’t even know him, didn’t know anything about him.

She hadn’t forgotten him.
Lord knew, he hadn’t forgotten her. She had been in his thoughts every day, in his dreams every night, his beautiful child/woman with hair as red as fire and eyes as warm and brown as sun-kissed earth. Even now, just thinking about her made him ache in ways he didn’t understand, made him yearn for things he knew he’d never have.

Jassy. She had looked at him as if he was something more than just a half-breed gunfighter with a bad reputation and no future.

He thought about her wearing the beaded choker that his Lakota grandmother had made for him. Okoka had given it to Creed shortly before she passed away, a gift of love so that he would always remember her.

As if he could ever forget her. He had known little kindness from his mother while they lived with the Lakota. She had been too wrapped up in her own misery, too bitter about her captivity, to have much thought or feeling for a child she had never wanted. But his grandmother, bless her, had had time enough and love enough to spare. And now Jassy wore the choker.

And slept on his pillow. He closed his eyes and an image of Jassy curled up in bed, her rich red hair spread across his pillow, jumped to the forefront of his mind.

Creed groaned low in his throat as heat spiraled through him. Muttering an oath, he opened his eyes and stared at the letter in his hand. Her writing was small and neat, blurred in places, as if the ink had gotten wet before it dried. And he knew, with heart-rending certainty, that it had been Jassy’s tears that smudged the words.