American Dreams (32 page)

Halfway there, she saw The Blade. He was carrying someone inside the enclosure. He was carrying Xandra. Temple broke into a run. Please, God, no, she prayed silently. Her mother was crazy with grief now over Johnny. She couldn't take it if anything happened to Xandra.

Temple entered the pen and paused long enough to glance in her mother's direction. Victoria appeared to be resting. Ignoring the jabbered greeting from her son, Temple noticed only that Phoebe held him before she hurried to the near corner where The Blade had taken Xandra. Black Cassie was already there, trying to help him lay her sister on a blanket. But Xandra was fighting them, low moans coming from her. Was she delirious with a fever? But how could it have come on so quickly?

Temple sank to the ground beside them and shouldered Black Cassie out of the way. "Go sit with Mama," she ordered, then reached for her sister as The Blade pried at the arm wrapped around his neck.

"No," Xandra moaned, her head lolling back.

Temple stared in shock at her sister's disheveled appearance. Pieces of grass and leaves were tangled in the long, dirty strands of her hair. Tears left muddy streaks on her cheeks, and her half-closed eyes had a glazed look. Despite Xandra's clutching of The Blade, there was a limpness about her that Temple found frightening.

"What is wrong with her?" She put her arms around Xandra and tried to pull her away from The Blade. Xandra turned her head toward her. Temple unconsciously recoiled from the strong smell of whiskey and vomit on her breath. "She is drunk. How—" But she didn't need to ask that. Whiskey and cheap liquor were constantly smuggled into the camp. For too many of her people, alcohol had become the antidote for despair. "Oh, Xandra, why?" Temple murmured.

"It wasn't her fault," The Blade stated, his expression grim as Xandra appeared to recognize them. With a broken sob, she averted her face and buried it against The Blade's chest. When she did, the front of her dress gaped open.

"You have torn your dress, Xandra." Temple sighed in disappointment and disgust, wondering how her sister could be so careless when they had so few clothes.

"She didn't do it. They did."

"They?"
Her glance shot to him. His bitter tone, the hardness in his voice, suddenly made her suspicious. "Who are
they?”

"Two of your lieutenant's soldiers took her into the woods. Something about wild grapes—she wasn't very coherent when I found her." He paused briefly. "They gave her whiskey and got her drunk, then they took turns holding her down."

"You mean they—"

"Yes." An anger vibrated below the surface of his clipped response.

Not her little sister, not the gentle-hearted, unassuming Xandra who cringed from harsh words; she couldn't have been raped.

"Xandra, I am so sorry." She wanted to cry with her, but when she tried to take her sister into her arms and comfort her, Xandra cowered and pressed even closer to The Blade.

"I will take care of her," he said. Reluctantly, Temple sat back on her heels, vaguely hurt that her sister would turn to The Blade and not her. He held her like a child, gently and soothingly stroking her head. "You are safe now," he murmured. "You have no need to be afraid anymore. I won't let anything happen to you."

"They . . . hurt me," Xandra whimpered, slurring her words.

"I know." The Blade nodded. "But they are gone. I am here."

"Don't leave me."

"I won't," he promised.

Over and over he whispered words of assurance while Temple looked on, hating the helpless feeling but hating even more the men who had done this to her sister, hating with such force that she vibrated with it. When The Blade lowered Xandra onto the blanket that was his bed, Xandra immediately rolled onto her side, turning her back to Temple and hunching her shoulders as if trying to hide.

Her sister had always been the shy and quiet one, a little slow to grasp things yet so anxious to please. Now she lay there motionless, her dress soiled and torn, her black hair in tangles, and her face smudged with dirt and tears like some battered doll.

Angrily, Temple rose to her feet, determined to make them pay for what they had done. She felt a hand on her arm and spun around to face The Blade. Yet she couldn't focus on him; she couldn't focus on anything except the blinding need for vengeance.

"Who are they? Which ones did this?" she demanded hoarsely.

"I don't know. She was alone when I found her."

She curled her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms. "They should be hanged. I would like to kill them myself. I wish I had a gun, or a knife—anything!" Temple blazed. "I hate them!"

He seemed to study her curiously. "You are the Temple I married, fiery and alive," he mused absently. "Not the cold, passionless woman I have seen these last months."

"I wish you were the man I married instead of the traitor you have become!" she shot back, not noticing the way he recoiled as if she had physically struck him. She was too angry to care if she hurt him, too filled with hatred to remember the tender way he had treated Xandra. She whirled and ran out of the pen straight to the post commander's office to demand that the guards guilty of committing the vile act against her sister be punished.

 

A week later, Jed Parmelee made one of his infrequent visits to the camp. After being informed of the incident and the known facts surrounding it, he summoned both Temple and her father to the commander's office to advise them of the final disposition of the case.

Although he addressed his remarks to Will Gordon, Jed found it difficult to meet his level gaze, seeing in it the recent grief for his dead son and the anguish over his now damaged daughter. "The two soldiers involved in this regrettable incident have been confined in the guardhouse."

"For how long?" Temple demanded.

He hesitated a moment, then spoke briskly. "In view of their exemplary military record in the past, they will be serving a two-week sentence." When Temple breathed in sharply, Jed lowered his chin a fraction of an inch and added stiffly, "I am sorry, but that was the term handed down."

After what seemed a long silence, Will Gordon quietly said, "I understand."

"I do not."

Jed flinched inwardly at Temple's bitterly sharp response. "Would you mind waiting outside, Mr. Gordon? I would like to speak to your daughter alone for a few minutes."

"Of course."

As Will Gordon turned to leave the room, Jed glanced pointedly at the post commander, his senior in rank. "Sir, would you please leave the door open on your way out?" he requested, doubting the major would argue with an aide of their commanding general.

Temple left her chair and crossed to the small window, too upset and outraged by the lenient sentence to appreciate Jed's concern for her reputation.

A hot breeze chased a cloud of red dust across the compound, obscuring the ground in a swirling fog of powdery dirt. The sight of it made her conscious of the grit that clung to her skin and her clothes, and the matted filth of her hair. For weeks, they had had no soap for bathing and no water to spare. She hated being seen like this. It was humiliating and degrading—but not nearly as horrible as what Xandra had been through.

When the last footsteps receded from the room, she turned to face Jed, holding on tightly to the only three things she had left: her dignity, her pride, and her anger. "Two weeks. That is their punishment for what they did to my sister. You should see her," she protested thickly. "You should see the fear and the shame in her eyes."

"I am sorry."

"I don't want your pity. I want those men punished."

"You don't understand." He sighed. He stared at her for several seconds, a troubled frown knitting his brow together. "I. . . couldn't tell your father this, but both men swore under oath that your sister was ... a willing participant. They claimed she agreed, if they would give her whiskey."

"That is a lie!"

"Temple, there was no evidence, no testimony to dispute their statements. Your sister refused to talk to the provost marshal or answer any of his questions."

"She refuses to talk to anyone," Temple admitted. Anyone, that is, except The Blade. Since that awful morning, Xandra had become his shadow. She wouldn't go anywhere or do anything without him. She even slept beside him at night. Yet she cringed every time one of the family approached her.

"I wish there was something I could do," Jed murmured.

"I know." She finally believed that.

He half turned from her. "I can't stand seeing you in this camp," he muttered savagely. "You don't belong here."

"None of us do." Her faint smile of sadness became twisted with the injustice of it. "We are imprisoned for the crime of loving our homeland. For that same crime, we are to be exiled."

He took a step toward her. "I wish you weren't going. I wish—" Then he stopped, checking whatever he was about to say. "Tell your father that Chief John Ross has met with General Scott. He has insisted on the closing of all grogshops in the vicinity of the camps and the suppression of any smuggling of liquor into them. The general has agreed. I know the action comes too late for your sister, but—"

"He will be glad that others will be spared. Bitterness and resentment are foreign to him."

"Ross has appointed a committee to make regular inspections of the camps and ascertain your people's needs, whether for food or clothing or medical help."

"Soap. We need soap," she said, then turned and walked from the room.

Moved by the poignancy of such a simple request, Jed stared after her. He tried to feel sorry for her, but he couldn't. All he could feel was admiration and the deepest respect. After all she had endured, her head was unbowed.

 

Ross obtained even greater concessions from General Winfield Scott. He requested and received permission for the Cherokees to organize and conduct their own emigration, taking it out of the army's hands. The council would arrange transportation, set up the detachments, and lead the emigrant trains to their new lands in the West. They accepted full responsibility for the conduct of their people in the interim.

In theory, the Cherokees were freed on their own recognizance pending the September 1 deadline for emigration. But they had nowhere to go. The camps were the only homes that remained to them, a source of food, shelter, and much-needed medical aid. But at least they were free to wander through the woods to gather herbs, wild berries, and nuts, and to privately bid farewell to their beloved mountains and valleys. And the daily rations now included the addition of coffee, sugar, and soap.

Another committee was set up to accept claims from individuals for property that had been abandoned. The list Will Gordon submitted for compensation was a lengthy one, billing the government for his fine brick home, all the elegant furnishings, the plantation's numerous buildings, and equipment, livestock, and carriages. It lay side by side with more humble ones requesting payment for a fiddle, a coffeepot, and six ducks.

September came, but not the expected rains. Again Scott postponed the deadline, this time until October.

 

 

 

27

 

 

Rattlesnake Springs, Tennessee
 

October 1838

 

The wood smoke from thousands of cookfires spread a blue veil over the landscape and scented the crisp morning air with its pungent odor. Beneath the haze, sprawling over ten square miles, were tents, wagons, horses, oxen, and the Cherokees, assembled at the departure point for the long trail west.

As he gazed at the vast camp bustling with activity, Will Gordon heard its underlying silence and understood. The last day of September, thunderheads had rolled out of the Smoky Mountains in the north and brought rain to the parched lands of Tennessee and Georgia, ending the summer-long drought. Again water chuckled in the streams, raised the river levels, and turned the wheels of the gristmills.

Honoring John Ross's word when he persuaded General Scott to lift the martial law and permit the Cherokees to organize and conduct their own emigration without army control, the people had gathered here at Rattlesnake Springs near the Indian agency, some thirteen thousand counting their Negroes. They came but without smiles, joyful hearts, or cheerful voices. That sense of silence came from heavy hearts and somber thoughts.
 

"Will?"

Recognizing Eliza's voice, he turned.
 

"It is time," she said.

"I know." For a minute he studied her, noting the familiar gold flecks in her hazel eyes and the attractive tumble of pale brown curls that framed her face. Love, gratitude, and need welled up inside him for this indomitable woman, emotions that added to the pain he already felt. Not wanting her to see it, he swung his gaze back to the encampment that stretched farther than he could see. He felt her eyes leave him to survey it as well.

"I have to agree with The Blade," Eliza announced quietly after the passage of several seconds. "A nation is made up of people, not land. It is their collective spirit that forms it, not boundaries. All these people are traveling as a nation with their laws, their constitution, their government, and their heritage intact. In its own way, that's a remarkable achievement, one they can all take pride in."

Nodding, Will acknowledged the truth of her statement. At the council grounds at Red Clay, all the records of the Nation had been safely packed and boxed to be taken west with them. More than just their constitution and laws, the documents included the succession of treaties the Nation had made in efforts to appease the appetites of their white neighbors, as well as correspondence with every president of the United States from George Washington to Martin Van Buren.

Yet it wasn't the pending transportation of the national records that made him frown but her initial statement. "I don't understand him."

"Who?"

"The Blade. He betrayed us all by signing that treaty. Yet in the detention camp, he didn't try to get favored treatment. We all know the supporters of the treaty received special dispensations from the federal government. But he hasn't asked for an increase in his travel and subsistence allowance. The group of seven or eight hundred that left on the eleventh with their carriages and horses, accompanied by their servants—he could have joined them and made the twelve-hundred-mile trek in relative comfort. They would have welcomed him. He could have been among friends instead of surrounded by those who regard him as a traitor and look upon him with loathing and contempt."