Legacies (17 page)

"And if there are rebel soldiers living under this roof?"

Diane drew back, shock draining the color from her face. "What are you saying? Will rebel troops be quartered here?"

"Chief Ross has agreed to raise two regiments for the Confederacy. Watie has again asked my father to join his ranks. This time he agreed. He is now organizing a company to serve under Watie, which he will command."

"Your father," she murmured with a mixture of regret and anguish. "Lije, how awful for you—"

He cut across her words, his voice hard. "I have resigned from the Light Horse to join my father's company. I—"

Before he could say more, Diane pulled back, recoiling from him, the heat of anger and accusation in her eyes. "How can you join the rebels? Don't you know what this means?"

"Yes." His reply was clipped.

"You can't. You can't or you wouldn't do this." She came back to him, pressing close, her chin lifting in silent determination. "You love me, Lije. I know you do. We can go away together—we can go back East, far from the war and the fighting."

"No." He kept his arms at his sides. Her reaction was exactly what he had expected. But that didn't make it hurt any less.

"But there's no reason for you to be involved in it," she argued.
 

"I believe there is."

"You can't." Her fingers curled into the cloth of his frock coat as her expression registered his resolve. "Don't you realize it's only a matter of time before Union troops will be sent to drive the Confederates out?"

"I know that."

"You know that?" Diane was incredulous. "But my father could be among those troops. You could be fighting him."

"Would you have me fight my father instead?" Lije challenged.

"Why must you fight at all? Why must you put me through the torture of having my father on one side and you on the other? It isn't fair."

"I'm sorry. It's what I have to do."

His reply stopped her, but only for an instant. "But what of your grandfather and your mother? You know their sympathies are with the Union. They won't approve of this either."

"But they don't have enemies who are eager to kill them."

"The old feud," Diane murmured tightly. "That's what this is about, isn't it? It has nothing to do with the North or the South." When he didn't answer, Diane unleashed her frustration. "All that started long before you were born. You had no part in the feud. It has nothing to do with you."

Lije disputed that. "I saw my grandfather Shawano die at the hands of assassins. I won't stand by and watch my father killed."

"Just because your uncle Kipp—"

"My uncle is only one of many who would like to see my father dead ... just as my father is one of many they would like to see dead. This war gives them a license to kill. Given the opportunity, they will use it. When they do, there will be reprisals. For many Cherokees, your war between the North and the South will become nothing more than an excuse to settle old scores. I must weigh in on my father's side."

Diane stared at him, her body stiff with resentment and her eyes bright with tears. "There's nothing I can say, is there? You don't care what this does to us. You don't care how I feel."

"I care—but that won't change my decision."

"Don't you see what you're doing, Lije?" she said tightly. "You are choosing the past over our future together. You are more concerned with settling old scores than you are with building a new life with me."

"It may seem that way."

"It
is
that way."

"I can't take the chance of the past repeating itself."

"Then—this ends it between us, Lije. I can't marry a man who would go into battle against my father, not because he believes in the rebel cause—I might have respected that— but because of some ancient feud that began before you were ever born!"

He nodded slowly. "I will arrange for your passage on the keelboat scheduled to leave for Fort Smith the end of this week. From there you can travel by overland stage to Saint Louis."

"My trunks will be packed by morning. I would prefer not to remain in this house another day. If your grandparents cannot take me in, then I will stay at the hotel until the boat leaves." Diane crossed to her room, then stopped, her hand on the door. "You must know the South will lose this war," she said without turning.

"It's very likely."

She walked into the guest room and closed the door, shutting him out. Lije stood motionless, conscious of a sense of loss that pumped him empty. Slowly, he turned and walked back down the steps, alone.

 

Diane gathered another armload of undergarments from the tall chest of drawers and carried it to the bed. One by one, she folded them and placed them in a trunk. Every movement was carefully calculated, carefully controlled, a defense against the storm tide of emotions that threatened to rip her apart. Tears burned the back of her eyes, but she wouldn't give in to them. She had learned, to her pain, that Lije Stuart was not worth shedding one tear over.

There was a knock at her door. Diane dropped a camisole and whirled around to face the door. "Who is it?" She held herself still, wanting it to be Lije.

"Diane, it's Temple. May I come in?"

A shudder of disappointment nearly fractured her control. She scooped up the fallen camisole and turned back to the trunk. "Of course, come in." She didn't look around when the door opened and Temple walked in. "I expect Lije told you I'm leaving—that we have broken our engagement." She spoke curtly, needing the sharpness to keep the pain from surfacing.

"Yes," Temple said quietly. "I hoped we might talk."

"Perhaps you should speak to your son. He's the one who refuses to listen to reason." Diane laid the camisole in the trunk and picked up a cotton slip.

"I was once in a similar situation years ago," Temple said. "Like you, I thought my only choice was to walk away. I was wrong. I don't want to see you make the same mistake I did, Diane. Loving a person means that the time will invariably come when you strongly disagree with him, but that's when you have to hold on to your love even more tightly. You have to love each other in spite of that."

"I know you mean well, Mrs. Stuart. But the circumstances are different. You see, I was more than willing to compromise, more than willing to meet him halfway. But your son refused to make any concession."

"This was a difficult decision for him—one he didn't make lightly. Try to understand—"

"But I do understand, Temple. I understand very well. Lije chose the past over me." It was clear to Diane that Lije didn't love her. How could he when he cared nothing at all about her feelings? He wanted her, he desired her, but he didn't love her. That, in the final analysis, was the only conclusion she could reach.

 

An early morning fog drifted through the trees, turning the air cool and heavy with its dampness. Here and there, light rays splintered through its filmy web to sparkle on the dew-wet grass. It was only a matter of time before the rising sun burned off the thin layers of mist.

A stable hand led another horse over for Lije's inspection. The slow, steady thud of its plodding hooves echoed loud in the morning stillness, the sound carrying just as it had earlier when Lije heard the rumble and clatter of a horse-and-wagon team pulling up at the house—one sent to transport Diane to his grandfather's home at Oak Hill. Lije knew, any moment now, the wagon would be leaving with Diane.

With one ear tuned for the sound of the departing wagon, Lije signaled the stable hand to trot the roan horse so he could watch how the animal moved. The roan had traveled no more than a few yards when Lije heard the telltale click of a hind foot overreaching to strike a front hoof. He ordered the horse stopped to determine the cause of this gait defect.

When he saw no fault in the roan's conformation, he walked over and checked its feet. Finding the problem, he told the stable hand, "Make sure he gets reshod."

As Lije moved to the roan's head, he caught the sound of footsteps and the rustle of petticoats coming from the path that led to the big house. He turned, half-hoping . . . But it was his mother who approached the stables through the swirls of mist. He turned back to the roan and took a snug hold of its lower jaw, then rolled its lips back to examine its teeth, deliberately taking his time about it.

Temple halted behind him. "They're bringing down the last of Diane's trunks, Lije. She will be leaving soon."

"I know." The inspection complete, Lije waved to the stable hand to take the horse away.

"Aren't you going to tell her goodbye?" Temple persisted.

"Everything was said last night." He waited for the next horse to be brought out.

"You will regret this, Lije."

He nodded. "We both regret it, but that changes nothing."

Temple studied her son's profile, pained by the hardness she saw in his cheek and jawline—and by the feelings he kept deeply repressed. Like Diane, Temple strongly disagreed with the decision her husband and son had made, but unlike her, Temple would not estrange herself from them because of it. Not this time.

She touched his arm, wishing she could take away his pain. "Maybe after the war," she said, seeking to give him hope.

"Maybe." But Lije wouldn't look that far ahead.

 

Stand Watie, commissioned a colonel in the Confederate army, had made old Fort Wayne the headquarters for his regiment of Cherokee Mounted Rifles. By the time Diane left on her journey to Saint Louis, Lije and The Blade Stuart had reported for duty at the old fort, along with the company they had raised.

A second regiment of Home Guard was also organized, to serve the South under the command of John Drew. Lije wasn't surprised to learn that Kipp and Alex had joined it along with a large number of Pins Indians.

On October 7,1861, the treaty between the Cherokee Nation and the Confederate States of America was signed at Park Hill, officially making the Cherokee an ally of the South— and the Union their mutual enemy.

But there was little action that winter except the inglorious pursuit of a large band of Creeks, loyal to the Union, who were trying to reach the safety of the Kansas border. The rest of the forces marched and drilled in preparation for a planned spring campaign to sweep through sympathetic Missouri and capture Saint Louis. The campaign was to be launched from northern Arkansas.

 

 

 

10

 

 

Grand View Plantation

Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory

March 11, 1862

 

"Wisps of smoke curled from the chimneys of the Doric-columned mansion nestled among the trees.
 
Weariness, bone-deep and mind-numbing, gripped him as Alex stared at the smoke. Smoke meant fire, warmth, and food. He kicked the black filly into a trot and tugged on the reins of the horse in tow.

The jarring gait drew an immediate groan of pain from the man on the second horse. Alex instantly checked the filly's pace and glanced back at his father. He was slumped low on the horse's neck, his body shifted to one side, straining the ropes that tied him to the saddle. His gaunt face was pasty and grayed with pain beneath the battle grime, his dirty jacket torn and blood-soaked.

Drawing back level with him, Alex carefully eased Kipp onto the saddle seat. "We're almost there. Another hundred yards. No more than that."

"Where?" Kipp made a weak attempt to rouse himself. "Where are we?"

"Temple's." Alex had decided not to try to reach Oak Hill. His father had drifted in and out of consciousness ever since his wound started bleeding again.

"Should have killed him." Kipp began rambling, "charged that . . . battery, my chance then . . . I should have . . . killed him."

"Don't talk. Save your strength."

But Alex knew what his father was talking about. As clearly as he could see the house before him, he remembered the moment when he saw his father take aim at The Blade. In the confusion of their charge on the Union battery emplacement, his father had hesitated—no more than a second. Then the horse in front of him went down, shot out from under its rider, and the opportunity for a clear shot at The Blade had been lost.

That memory was only one in a series that were stored in Alex's mind, filling him with sharp, vivid impressions. He wiped the palm of his hand on the leg of his breeches, remembering how sweaty it had been when they formed up behind that rail fence in Arkansas near a place called Pea Ridge. There were a thousand of them, Watie's regiment on foot and his on horseback, along with a squad of Texas cavalry, all lined up to charge the Union battery. It had consisted of three guards, supported by a detachment of Union cavalry. Between the enemy fire and the thundering rush of blood in his head, Alex hadn't heard the order to charge.

The noise, he remembered that—the gobbling war cry of the full-bloods, the eerie rebel yells of the Texans, the rapid drumming of hooves, the explosion of gunfire, and the boom of the cannons. And the smells too, he remembered them— the acrid powder smoke, rank horsehide, sweating flesh, and most of all the smell of fear.

In a strange way, he had seen everything around him, yet he hadn't been able to focus on anything. His recollection of the charge, the skirmish around the batteries, was made up of disjointed images—a horse somersaulting to the ground; men reeling backward; faces contorted in expressions of savage desperation; blood oozing between the fingers of someone's hand clutching a wound; a riderless horse fleeing in panic, empty stirrups flapping against its sides; and a cavalry officer in blue leveling his gun—at him.

Even now Alex couldn't remember pulling back the hammer of his navy revolver or squeezing the trigger. He could only remember the jerk of the revolver in his hand, the officer recoiling to his left, and the revolver jerking again and again until the man tumbled from the saddle.

But that was after they had captured the guns, when the exhilaration of victory was screaming through him—the exhilaration and the soaring sense of power. The fleet black filly had carried him to the front of the charging line; he had routed the enemy and put fear in their faces. The sight and smell of blood hadn't been revolting like some had said. When he reloaded his revolver, Alex remembered laughing at the discovery that his hands weren't shaking, but cold and steady.