Ride the Panther (10 page)

“You didn’t look tame last night.” Sam grinned.

“Neither did you, boy, neither did you.” Both men broke into laughter, sharing a joke that Arbitha could never be a part of. “Riding and shooting your gun and chasing those horses to beat the band,” Tullock said. Sam’s laughter dissolved into a coughing spasm that caused his father to glance worriedly at Arbitha. She rose and crossed around the table and stood by her son, placing an arm around his narrow, bony shoulders.

“I’m all right, Mother,” he gasped, at last catching his breath. “It was worse last night, what with all the fire and smoke. Darn near coughed myself plumb out of the saddle.” He managed a weak smile. “Maybe I’ll take me a rest.” He slid back from the table, reassured his mother with a pat on her arm, stood in his dusty clothes, and excused himself and left the dining room. His footsteps reverberated in the hallway, then beat a brisk tattoo on the broad wooden stairway that swept up from the foyer to the bedrooms above.

The downstairs consisted of a front parlor and dining room, a conservatory, and a library. The kitchen and pantry ran along the rear of the house. Tullock Roberts had done well for himself in the territory. He had rebuilt and recovered everything that had been lost when, as quarter-Choctaws, his parents had been forced to leave their plantation in the Mississippi Delta. His mother and father had died during the removal of the Civilized Tribes. Bowed but not broken, Tullock had come to this new land determined to achieve more than his parents had ever dreamed. Honey Ridge was twice the size of their Delta home. He had claimed twice the amount of land and, working alongside his slaves, Tullock had made the land yield its wealth in cotton and crops to be shipped eastward to markets in the South. Riverboats along the Red River carried bales of his cotton on to Shreveport. Yet there were times when he would give it all up for the health of his only son.

“He’ll be fine,” Arbitha said. At moments like this, she was the stronger of the two. Her mother’s love refused to accept anything less than Sam’s complete recovery. With her hands on the back of the chair, she faced the doorway through which he had vanished.

“How can you be so certain?” Tullock said.

“Because he’s as stubborn as his father,” Arbitha said.

“Hmm,” Tullock grunted. His fears for the moment defused, he returned his attention to breakfast. He wolfed down the last of his food.

“Take your time,” Arbitha gently chided as she returned to her place. Sunlight was clearing the ridge to the east and transformed the cornfields into stalks of gold. “You’ve been gone all night. The only place you need to hurry to is bed.”

“I want to start some of my blacks on harvesting that corn before the damn crows take it all.”

“Sawyer can tell them. You hired him to run things.”

“I sent him off into the hills yesterday morning. I told him I didn’t want to see his face unless he brought me a deer to hang in the smokehouse. He’s a natural-born hunter and a crack shot. I expect he’ll be along directly.” Tullock belched, and endured his wife’s withering look of disapproval.

“Uh—pardon me.” He started to wipe his mouth on his sleeve again, then switched and reached for the cloth by his plate. He eased away from the table and gathered up the two robes and hoods he had left in a pile on a chair by the door to the kitchen. “See you put these back in the trunk upstairs.” He placed them on the table near his wife.

“Grown men playing like children,” Arbitha remarked. Now that the sight of the robes had started her up again, she was determined to make her objections known.

“No. This is not a game,” Tullock said. “We aim to strike fear in the hearts of these Federalists. And as long as our identities are concealed, there can be no retribution should the Union troops massed on our northern border ever move across to occupy the territory before we can put together a force to push them back.” Tullock saw she wasn’t convinced and he shrugged in exasperation. “Just hide the blasted things upstairs.” He wagged his head and started from the room. “What do women know about war anyway?” he muttered.

Arbitha sighed, and glared at the robes as if they were the harbingers of her misfortune. No one knew the identity of the leader of the Knights, although many of the night riders knew each other despite their robes and hoods. Still, the disguises kept their enemies from making a positive identification and perhaps there was some safety in that. But such a notion did little to dispel Arbitha’s sense of foreboding. What did women know of war? “We do the burying and the mourning,” she said. But Tullock was outside and heading for the slaves’ quarters and there was no one to hear her reply.

Pacer Wolf McQueen stood on the porch of the ranch house and sipped coffee from a blue enameled tin cup. Steam curled up into his nostrils as he held the cup to his lips, then blew gently to cool the dark bitter liquid before he chanced another mouthful. He peered over the cup and studied the homesite in the fight of a new day. The barn sure looked in need of repair. Someone had been fixing the roof and had apparently left without completing the task. A tall ladder still rested against the side of the barn. Pacer took a step off the porch and started to cross the side yard when a large snow white goose came charging out of the barn. With its wings spread, the mean-tempered creature seemed huge and angry as a banshee bearing down on Pacer.

“It’s me, Hecuba!” Pacer shouted. He dropped his cup and backpedaled toward the safety of the porch. Raven emerged from the house and had a good laugh at her grandson’s expense.

Hecuba flapped her wings and lowered her beak like a knight his lance and drove onward. Pacer leaped back onto the porch, leaving the goose to flap and honk and parade victoriously across the field of battle.

“Hecuba. No!” Raven hissed, and added a command in Choctaw. The great white bird shook its head and then waddled off around the side of the house.

“She wasn’t around last night,” Raven said. “Every once in a while she wanders off; I suspect to meet her paramour back in the woods.”

“Keep that up and she’s apt to meet her maker and do a turn on the roasting spit,” Pacer grumbled. Hecuba had been the bane of his existence for several years. He tolerated the belligerent bird because it made an excellent “watch goose” and could generally be counted on to sound an alert whenever strangers appeared in the vicinity of the ranch house.

Pacer Wolf had been with Quantrill’s raiders for the better part of the summer. In his absence he had hired three men to tend the cattle and see to the crops and general upkeep of the homesite. Not a one of them was anywhere to be seen. Raven seemed to read his thoughts.

“Two of the lads ran off to join the Confederate regiment in Arkansas. They collected a week’s wages and left. Noble Pierce stayed on another week and a half. Then he heard of a troop of Creeks heading for Kansas to fight for the North and he left, too.” Raven shook her head. “All three boys sat around my table and took their supper and ate together like family. And now they’ll be trying to kill each other. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“A man does what he has to do,” Pacer said.

“Oh, my life, I swear, such talk is but an excuse for a body’s own foolishness. I’m thinking, maybe it’s time men did what they
ought
to and not what they
had
to.” Raven walked along the porch and sat in a ladderbacked rocking chair. The floorboards creaked as she began to rock. A blue grosbeak glided past the porch, rode an updraft that carried the bird across the meadow and over the banks of the Kimishi River, where it alighted among the reeds and Christmas ferns whose emerald fans swayed in the morning breeze.

“Do you know about the Lawrence raid?” Pacer asked. While settling in for the night he had only offered an explanation for Lorelei’s presence and spoke little of himself. To his dismay, she nodded her head.

“News travels quickly. I have already heard several versions,” Raven replied. “Sawyer Truett’s was most exuberant. Carmichael Ross also devoted an entire front page of the
Chahta Creek Courier
excoriating those who took part in the slaughter.”

“And you know I was there.”

“Yes.”

“And still you welcomed me home. Why?”

Raven turned and color crept into her cheeks. “Daniel Pacer Wolf McQueen. Do you be thinking that I believe every tidbit of hearsay that comes my way? Yes, I’ve been told the Choctaw Kid has a price on his head for coming to Lawrence. As for what happened and the role you played, I’ll believe what I hear from your own lips.” She set her cup of coffee aside and folded her arms across her chest. “I know my grandsons. And I know that both you and Jesse, though you might march to different drummers, you both stand for what you believe is right. And I know that neither you nor Jesse nor your father would ever willingly bring dishonor to our name.” She nodded and then with a wave of her hand motioned toward the meadow. “This is a good country. The topsoil is rich and thick. We McQueens are like the land, Pacer. Our pride runs deep.” She smiled and the skin crinkled about the mouth and eyes. Pacer thought his grandmother had never seemed prettier, for she was passion and fire and quiet wisdom and indomitable strength and enduring faith. “Tell me what happened if you wish, but do not think to win my trust, for you have never lost it.”

Pacer was tempted but the land called to him. He wanted to be about the business of being home. “I would like to. Later tonight. I think I’ll pick some snap beans for supper.” He climbed down the steps and picked up a bucket that Raven kept at the corner of the porch. The medicine woman watched him, noticing the changes in Pacer a year had wrought. Despite a night’s sleep in his own bedroom, his movements were wary and tense. Like a cat poised to spring, he remained constantly on guard, as if expecting an attack at any time from any direction. And he carried a Colt revolver either belted around his hips or tucked into the waistband of his trousers wherever he went, even to the garden. She didn’t question his actions, though Lord only knew she wanted to. Evidently the Choctaw Kid had made a number of enemies. And the list was growing.

“Yeow! Ouch!” A woman’s outcry followed by a series of antagonistic cackles and a good deal of honking shattered Raven’s thoughts. She heard the pad of bare feet upon the dirt, and then with another resounding “Ouch!” and a brisk flapping of wings the door to the outhouse creaked open and slammed shut. There followed a stream of curses and insults blue enough to make a muleskinner blush.

Raven listened and waited, a bemused expression on her face. The young woman’s curses eventually subsided and became a plaintive call for someone to please—please—free her from the “necessary.”

Hecuba continued to dare “someone” to try.

Just try.

Lorelei managed to dress without sitting down. Her posterior still smarted from Hecuba’s attack, but at least she had the satisfaction of seeing the goose take a healthy swat from Raven’s broom. Escaping the outhouse, Lorelei had hurried back to the house where she pulled on a gingham dress and slipped into a pair of brushed buckskin moccasins that Raven had left by her bed. With a certain degree of trepidation, the fifteen-year-old descended the stairway and stepped once more into the morning sunlight. As she closed the back door behind her, she noticed Raven over by the chicken coop surrounded by a piping flock of young chicks clamoring for the feed she was scattering over the ground. Several white leghorn hens and plump Rhode Island Reds pecked at the ground corn spilling like a golden shower from Raven’s outstretched hand. Lorelei stood on the outside of the coop looking in.

“My ma, first thing every morning, used to feed the chickens. My job was to gather the eggs. Once I tripped and dropped my basket and broke nigh all of them. Pa was furious and whipped me good. He liked his eggs of a morning. Reckon eggs was the food he favored most. Some days he traded the extra for a bottle of corn liquor in town.” Lorelei chewed absently on the knuckle of her hand as she remembered the incident, reliving each stinging blow from her father’s switch. She frowned and looked at Raven. “After, I broke ’em on purpose. Every chance I got. Sometimes I’d wake up real early and sneak out before sunup. I’d take them eggs and crush ’em or bury ’em out in the field.” She seemed very satisfied with herself, a smug set to her lips. “Pa thought it was a fox or a coyote or some other kind of critter breaking into the coop. Drove him plumb crazy. I think Ma knew it was me but she never said nothing. She was afraid he would kill me.”

“This frontier’s a place of great beauty, but it can be hard and unforgiving. And those who live here can turn out the same way. Your father sounds like just such a hard man.” Raven glanced at the steep-sided hills bordering the secluded valley of Buffalo Creek.

“I seen iron with more bend,” Lorelei replied. She shrugged. “What the hell, most men are bastards.”

Raven flashed the girl a stern look. It was a warning, unmistakable and grim, but Lorelei seemed amused.

“I know, if it wasn’t for Pacer I’d still be a prisoner in Fort Smith. But he wants something. Everybody wants something.” Lorelei studied the older woman a moment, her gaze full of cynical wisdom belying her young age. “I thought Indians were supposed to hide their feelings but, Miss Raven, you are as easy to read as a book. I’ve seen lightning tamer than the look you just gave me.” Lorelei folded her hands in front of her. An auburn strand of hair curled toward the corner of her mouth.

“I’m half Irish, my darling,” Raven said. “The Irish in me often takes offense at the drop of a hat. But it’s my Choctaw half that’s the more dangerous. My mother’s people know a thousand ways to take revenge and exact retribution for an affront. We don’t forgive or forget.”

“That sounds like a warning,” Lorelei replied. Her nonchalance was a trifle forced. It disturbed her that Raven seemed beyond the young girl’s power to charm.

“As a boy growing up here, Pacer was always bringing home a stray pup or a bird with a broken wing or anything wounded. Once he rescued a bobcat from a fox trap Sawyer Truett had set. The cat’s leg was sorely injured. Pacer nursed the animal back to health and set it free. He still carries the scars from the bobcat’s claws.”