Paxton and the Lone Star (5 page)

“What's happening?” Joseph said, jumping to his feet. The roan picked up steam, began to close the gap. “What's he doing?” he asked no one in particular. “Too soon!” he shouted vainly. “Too soon!”

At five hundred yards, Tory was ahead by two lengths. At a thousand, less than one. At fifteen hundred, when they disappeared behind the tall sea grass at the head of the cove, by no more than a nose. And when they reappeared, Firetail was in the lead.

“What the hell!” Joseph screamed. Andrew stared dumbfounded. It wasn't part of the plan. True was supposed to let Nolan have the lead, then pull forward at the last minute to eke out a victory. Any other way, their odds on the next race would be diminished.

True had other notions. He drove his bootheels into Firetail's flanks. “Come on!” he whispered, knowing the wind whipped his voice away, yet knowing too that Firetail would sense his urgency. Winning or losing hadn't mattered much to him only minutes earlier. Not until Mose Nolan smiled and joked once too often, until the crowd of Brandborough's citizens had laughed once too often, until the starting gun, as it had the horses, had set his emotions loose to race wildly. Heedless, he swept the English racing cap off his head and let it fly away. Enough of silliness and cleverness! He had choked on Joseph's scheme for the last time. To be taken as a fool in a dozen other cities and towns was onerous enough, but could be lived with so long as they won. To be the laughingstock of Brandborough was intolerable under any conditions. No man had dared mock or deride a Paxton for the last hundred years, and True was damned if they would start with him, no matter what the cost in future winnings.

Blue water to his right, green trees to his left, ivory sand beneath him. How did the oak tree rise out of the ground just ahead? Magic? A mile so soon? True tugged on the reins, guided with his knees, felt his mount slow and lean, then come out of the turn and accelerate to full speed. A blur to his left was Nolan and Tory, just beginning to slow for the turn. “Move!” True yelled. “Run, you sonofabitch, run!”

Whatever thoughts reside in an animal's head no one knows, but it is said that some animals love winning. For the first time, free to run as fast as determination and muscle and sinew could carry them, Firetail bounded forward. His mane whipped True's cheeks, left them burning as if stung by a thousand needles. His hooves pounded the earth. Ears back, neck stretched, forelegs reaching, his whole body appeared an elongated blur, an exact symbol of pure swiftness and nobility of motion.

Four lengths became five. “Run, run, run!” True breathed, energy flowing from his fingertips into the reins, into the horse itself.

Five became six. “No!” Joseph shouted.

Six became an incredible seven lengths' lead. Firetail's nostrils flared and his chest heaved.

Seven became eight and eight became nine. “Why?” Joseph screamed, kicking the saddlebag. “Why?”

The banner blurred overhead as Firetail streaked past the finish line. Tory, a sure winner, followed an ignominious eleven lengths behind. Some few of the spectators whooped their delight. More, all those who had bet against the Paxtons and their ungainly roan stallion, stood in stunned silence. Nolan passed through the sullen crowd and savagely reined his mare to a dead halt. A hundred yards ahead of him, shedding grace as a snake does its skin, Firetail was slowing to an awkward, shambling trot before turning to walk back up the beach. Tory was breathing heavily and needed to walk, but when Nolan let her, she moved with an economy of effort and a fluid grace that made the loss all the more unbearable. A thousand-dollar weariness weighting his shoulders, Nolan slumped in the saddle. He didn't want to face True, wanted less to face the accusing stares that waited for him back at the finish line. That left only one direction. Slowly, he turned Tory to the right and rode through the fairgrounds. A short stop at the stables and he'd head home. It would be a long, lonely ride, but at least he could nurse his humiliation in private.

Feeling better than he had for the last month, True rode back through the crowd to the pile of boulders where his brothers waited for him. Andrew looked perplexed. Joseph stared in slack-jawed disbelief. “What's the matter, Joseph?” True asked. “You look like you just lost your best friend.”

Joseph's mouth snapped shut and his shoulders hunched dangerously.

“Your best friend's wife, then?”

“Do you know what you just did?” Joseph groaned in a strangled voice.

“Yup,” True said, all innocence. He patted Firetail on the neck and, obviously pleased with himself, grinned hugely. “I won.”

Chapter II

Thomas Gunn Paxton had been a privateer during the War of 1812, and still looked the part. Tall and rangy, his raffish good looks were marred only by the patch covering the scar that cut across his blinded left eye and lent him a devilishly cruel appearance that his frequent, merry smiles did little to mitigate. At fifty-one, he looked fit to venture to sea again, and in truth, there were times when the seafaring blood of his great-grandparents, the pirates Jason and Marie, stirred his soul and left him yearning for a deck beneath his feet once more.

Such thoughts were not on his mind this August morning as he stood on the bedroom balcony that overlooked the drive leading to Solitary. Behind him the door closed, as Adriana entered to dress after the morning ritual of getting the household started. Thomas had met and wooed Adriana and taken her from the French Quarter in New Orleans to be his wife after the death of his first spouse, and he hadn't regretted a single moment of their twenty-four years together. “You are shameless,” Adriana said, walking to his side and placing her hand on his where it rested on the balcony railing. “Only a shameless man stands naked where all the world can see him.”

“It's my house,” Thomas growled, stretching in the morning sun. “Nobody has to look.” He glanced sideways at her. “Well?”

Adriana shook her head. “No word,” she said, “except that they were seen at the fair yesterday morning, which you knew already.” Her longing the equal of her husband's, she looked down the road for her sons.

“Hunh,” Thomas grunted. “Is Hogjaw awake?”

“I don't know. Vestal says he slept outside under a tree last night, with the excuse that roofs make him restless. We have such a friend.”

“A good friend,” Thomas added.

“Yes.”

He turned and pulled her to him. “Did you know,” he asked, his voice deepening, “that I dreamt last night of the first time I saw you dance? It was real as real can be. My blood was boiling and my throat was as dry as last year's kindling when I went to talk to you.”

“And did you continue this dream to see what happened next?” she asked coyly, looking up at him.

“Well …” Thomas grinned impishly. “My memory sort of dims, but I
think
…” He frowned in mock concentration. “No, that was—”

“Mon Dieu!
I am insulted, and by a brigand!” Adriana's green eyes flashed and her fingers clawed at him as Thomas ducked inside.

“Now, now,” he said laughing and putting a chair between them.

Adriana's cheeks colored and her auburn hair whipped wildly about her face. Thomas caught her and, still laughing, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her until she stopped struggling. “That was a horrid thing to say,” Adriana whispered in his ear.

“I was teasing you. What came next was …” The sentence unfinished, Thomas carried her to the broad, white expanse of bed that dominated their room. A moment later, her gown swept away, their bodies joined in a union of sultry motion and driving energy that rose to a peak and, while they held one another close, only slowly subsided.

“No woman need fear time,” Adriana said at last, reaching up to touch Thomas's cheek, “as long as her husband makes love to her in the morning.”

“You will never need to fear time, then,” Thomas said. He rolled off her and, one hand on her stomach, lay watching her. “You are too beautiful not to make love to in the morning.”

Adriana curled onto her side, molded her body to his, and parted her hair to let him kiss the back of her neck. “You did remember,” she purred, drowsy from the exertion.

“Always,” he said, shutting his eyes against the sunlight that gradually filled the room.

“They'll be here today,” Adriana said. “This morning.”

Thomas did not ask how she knew, for his wife was of the gypsies, and there were secrets he could never share. He nodded in simple acceptance. It was good to have his wife at his side. It would be good to have his sons home.

Solitary.

The swamp guarded it. Water brooded over by a dense forest of cypress gleamed to every side. To pass through, one had to keep to the path.

Solitary hadn't always been so far away from the Atlantic. Not until the first rumblings of the war for independence did Jason Behan Paxton, Thomas's father, move back into the deep woods and lay the foundation for the great house. That was ancient history, though, of no importance to the roan hammerhead stallion who plodded through the swamp with unerring accuracy. In the distance, a stone curlew piped insistently. True rode with his hands crossed on the pommel of the saddle. His mind wandered. Joseph was whistling out of tune. Behind him, his mouth pinched and his shoulders tight, Andrew studied the swamp. He had no love for this part of the journey, for he had been lost here once as a child, and had wandered for two nights and a day before Vestal found him. Andrew could remember the nights as vividly, as if they were only yesterday.

Mosquito hawks of all colors, bottlefly blue, bright red, irridescent green, and jet black, flashed in and out of the sunlight. The water turned from green to red to dark brown. A water moccasin parted the brackish scum with its head, leaving a long V wake that caught a cypress limb. A heron stood one-knee deep, peering into the water. When he moved, his beak stabbed the water and emerged with wiggling silver fish which he tossed expertly into the air, caught, and swallowed. Then he stood motionless again. Above him, spiders hung suspended on glistening lifelines dangling from vines and limbs and leaves. So many eight-legged puppets performing the tiny choreography that nature had instilled in them, they toiled mindlessly through the stillness. Ever so slowly, the brown muck shelved and rose out of the cypress to become a meadow clear of cover for a good three hundred yards before it ended in a line of oak forest.

To come to Solitary, it was necessary to pass the graves where three generations of Paxtons lay. Many markers dotted the lush, vine-shrouded glade. As always, True sought out two in particular, for they were inscribed with the names of those who had brought their name and sunk their roots into the new land. Jason Brand Paxton and Marie Ravenne Paxton. They had been pirates before forsaking their wandering, plundering ways. A diary kept by Grandmother Marie—as Thomas, True's father, referred to her—had recounted their adventures at sea and chronicled the first years of their new life in South Carolina. The diary was moldering now, but where it was incomplete or illegible, tales told to children and the children of their children had left an indelible record to be carried in the hearts and minds of the Paxtons.

They were stories True treasured, perhaps more so than his brothers. He often had imagined himself as Jason Brand Paxton, facing the raw wilderness with no more than a gun, a cutlass, and courage. Instead, almost a hundred years later, there were a warehouse and office in Charleston, and a small fleet of four Paxton ships plied the world's oceans. In addition, there was property in Brandborough and the surrounding countryside, horses, crops, and the home plantation with Solitary at its center. All of this was easily inventoried and assigned a value in dollars and cents. What was less tangible was the Paxton name itself, and what it meant to those spirited men and women who had, over the years, carried it with pride and upheld its honor.

“True!” Andrew called from horseback. “You ready?”

“Come on, True,” Joseph added. “Hell, you peppered me this far with a burr in your blanket to get home, so what's doused your fires? Damned sure can't be common sense.”

“Just daydreaming, I guess,” True said, shoving his boot into the stirrup and mounting Firetail. “It's hard to ride by this place without stopping.”

Andrew watched True as he slowly wheeled Firetail and started down the trail. True had a quiet, contemplative streak that Andrew didn't understand, and often wondered about. “What is it, True?” he asked as his older brother caught up with him.

“It's as if they talk to me.”

“They're dead,” Andrew said, his skin prickling.

“Are they?” True asked, half smiling as he urged Firetail into a canter. “Sometimes I wonder.”

The expanse of clear ground after the ominous darkness of the swamp was more than Firetail could bear. Frisky, smelling home, he tossed his head and bolted across the meadow, followed in short order by Joseph's and Andrew's horses. “Jesus! Doesn't he ever get enough?” Joseph called, reining in beside True.

“Nope,” True said. He slapped the stallion's neck and grinned boyishly. “Be glad he doesn't.”

“Be glad you don't have to ride like that with a hangover.”

“Not my fault. He's just feeling his oats. Been gone a long while.”

“Are we gonna talk or ride?” Andrew asked. “I smell something cooking.”

True and Joseph sniffed the air. “A pig!” Joseph whispered, his mouth watering. “A double eagle says Vestal's put on a whole pig!”

“A lousy bet,” True said, lifting one foot and booting Joseph's horse on the rump. “Lead the way, big brother. Age before beauty.”

“Let's go, then!”

Only one mile left! With a wild cry in their hearts, the sons of Thomas Gunn Paxton galloped up the broad winding path that cut clearly through the forest. Branches looped with thick brown vines left shadowed patterns on the dark red earth. Clods of rich dirt flew from beneath their horse's hooves as they neared the final gentle curve at whose end stood the massive hewn ornamental fence posts that announced the entry to Solitary.