Ride the Panther (18 page)

Booth’s mares whinnied nervously and began to circle the corral. The gelding was unnerved and joined the other two horses as they tried to avoid Jesse’s position as well as the section of fence nearest the wagon. The pen was simply too confining. At last the gray gelding and both of Parson Booth’s brown mares chose to bunch by the gate as Jesse continued behind the shed, then followed the fence to the far corner of the corral. He picked his way among dry twigs and brittle grasses. Sweat beaded his forehead and trickled down his cheeks. Another step would bring the man by the wagon under his gun. Jesse took a deep breath, crouched on the balls of his feet, then stepped out and leveled his Colt at the figure he had so laboriously stalked. The hat rested atop an ax handle, the blade of the ax deep in the grainy top of a black stump. Jesse’s expression hardened. He’d been tricked, but by whom? A gun barrel pressed against his spine provided the answer.

“You always fell for this trick, Jesse,” a familiar voice said.

“Hello, Pacer,” Jesse replied. He holstered his Colt and turned to look up at his little brother.

They were a study in contrasts. Pacer had all the size with his long-limbed frame and large hands. His shaggy red hair framed his features, burned dark as a full-blood’s. He wore a faded gray Confederate shirt and buckskin breeches and calf-high boots. A Union-issue gunbelt circled his waist. The D-guard knife on his left was stamped CSA on the base of its heavy brass hilt.

“I thought all you Yankees were supposed to be ten feet tall and snort fire,” Pacer said as he stepped around his brother to retrieve his hat. He continued to keep his guard up and held his Colt at his side.

“And I thought all of you Quantrill’s raiders crawled on your belly and hissed at the shadows,” Jesse replied. He was angry for allowing himself to be caught by Pacer. Jesse tilted his hat back on his head and folded his arms across his well-muscled chest. He stood several inches shorter than Pacer. His black hair, while unruly, was trimmed. Even in his civilian clothes, Jesse possessed the aura of command.

“I quit his bunch.”

“You were a fool to join. It was bad enough seeing the Choctaw Kid wanted for stealing Federal payrolls or horses or a wagonload of supplies. Now it’s murder and looting and attacks on innocent people.”

“Why have you come here, Jesse?”

“Father sent me. He hoped I might be able to stop a war from breaking out.”

“You’ve seen Ben? How is he?”

“I left him helpless, with a Rebel bullet in his back, waiting for a Yankee surgeon to cut it out.”

“Father’s wounded…How did it happen?” Pacer slipped his gun into its holster and leaned against the wagon. His pulse quickened, fearing the worst.

“He was backshot by some Rebel sympathizers,” Jesse told him. “Might have been one of your friends—or did you boys get your fill of bloodletting in Kansas?”

“You’ve got no call to talk like that. There’s a war on,” Pacer retorted.

“I know. I’ve fought it.”

They were like the country itself, divided, separated by a gulf of suspicion and mistrust and more than a little pain.

“I’ve come here to bring these people together if I can. So you and your Knights of the Golden Circle stay out of my way.”

“I am not with them,” Pacer said.

“You expect me to believe that.”

“I don’t give a damn what you believe,” Pacer snapped. His brother was already getting under his skin. He was losing control of his temper. But Jesse was so damn calm, even when Pacer had him under the gun.

“I’ll do what I can to bring a truce to the people here,” Jesse said.

“And when you’re done…”

“I’ll leave.”

“Alone?”

Jesse reached into his pocket and unfolded the wanted poster and handed it to Pacer, whose hastily sketched likeness adorned the wrinkled page. “No.”

Pacer understood. “I’ll be watching for you, Jesse,” he ominously promised.

Pacer started toward the wooded slope behind the jail. Jesse heard a horse whinny and shake its mane. The sound came from somewhere not too far off among the trees.

Jesse could have tried to stop his brother then and there, but he wanted to avoid a fight if at all possible. The last thing he wanted was his brother’s blood on his hands. No, the last thing he wanted was a bullet from his brother’s Colt right between the eyes. Taking Pacer was not going to be easy.

“Daniel!” Jesse called out, using his brother’s Christian name. “How can you turn against your own people?”

As his brother paused in the darkness, a swirl of fireflies swarmed up from the ground and gave the impression that the tall man had burst into flames.

“Funny—” said Pacer Wolf McQueen before he vanished without a sound. “I was going to ask the same of you.”

A
RBITHA ROBERTS HEARD HER
husband scream. She bolted awake and pulled on her dressing gown. Her heart pounding within her breast, she cracked open the door to her bedroom and peered around the doorsill, dreading what she would find and knowing she had to look. She discovered her husband standing in the hallway. He wore a nightshirt and clutched a lantern in his trembling hand. Tullock Roberts did not easily show fear. He was a strong-willed, confident man, generous to his friends, defiant toward his enemies. There was no quit in him and very little give. Arbitha had never seen him this way in all her married life. His thick, rough features were drawn and pale. His eyes were wide as he stumbled out of his doorway and headed for his son’s bedroom.

“What happened?” Arbitha asked. She stepped into the hall. They had taken to sleeping apart these days, ever since Tullock had involved his son in the Knights of the Golden Circle. She held a hand to her mouth and hurried down the hall. They reached Sam’s room almost at the same instant.

Tullock cracked the door open and, holding the lamp before him, examined the room, the unslept-in four-poster bed, a pile of work clothes discarded upon a chest at the foot of the bed.

“Tullock…please…what is it?” Arbitha was pleading now. Something had happened, and if it had unnerved a man like her husband, it must be terrible indeed.

“That’s right,” Tullock muttered. “He went to town. What time is it? No matter. He went to town with Chris, Buck, and the Teel boy. Yes. They went together…”

“Tullock Roberts, if you don’t tell me what’s going on this very minute I’m going to go downstairs and fetch me the stoutest switch I can find and come back and give you the damndest lashing of your life.” Arbitha folded her arms across her chest and tried to block him from leaving the room, but Tullock simply brushed her aside as he walked into the hall again and this time knelt and placed his hand upon the hardwood floor. Arbitha followed him. She was beginning to question his sanity. Had some malady overtaken him in the night and left him bereft of his senses?

“I had a dream,” he said at last, his voice as soft as the flickering light illuminating the papered walls and the framed pages of poetry Arbitha had carefully written and decorated with a variety of colored inks. No one stopped to read them. Her husband never had the time. Samuel had shown an interest in his youth, but he had become closer to his father now and distant to Arbitha, and he could see no purpose to poetry.

Tullock stood and returned to his room, his bare feet padding on the floor as he crossed to the end table by his bed and poured some water from a white china pitcher into a washbasin. He bent over and cupped water over the back of his neck and then up to his face and straightened with his hair plastered close to his skull like a white cap. He looked in the mirror and saw his wife standing behind him. He could just make out her figure through the cottony material of her gown; the rounded swell of her breasts and the inviting curves of her hips began to replace terror with desire.

“I thought you wouldn’t enter this room again unless I forbade Sam to ride with me when the Knights gather.”

“What happened? I heard you cry out. I saw you afraid…like I’m afraid when you leave with him. What did you see, Tullock? What was it?”

Tullock slumped onto the side of the bed. “Dreams mean nothing.” He stared at his folded hands and then reached over and pulled up his sheet and dried his face. “There was blood by my bed. I thought I was awake, but this was the dream. I sat up and swung, climbed out of bed, and stepped in the blood. It was so real I could feel it, smell it.”

“Where did it come from?” Arbitha asked in a soft voice.

“It flowed under my door and right up to the side of my bed. I walked across the room and opened the door. The trail of blood was coming from Sam’s room. I ran to his door and found it locked. I knocked but there was no answer, then I kicked it in. He was lying on the bed, his arms outstretched and his cold eyes staring at…at nothing. He was dead, a black bullet hole in his side and another in his chest and another…and another—” He lowered his face into his hands. He had dreamt the death of his son and wanted to hide. Even though he was awake now and all was seemingly well, the dream had left its mark and he doubted he would ever be the same again, and he hated that.

Arbitha drew near and knelt before him and took his hands in hers. Her own eyes were glistening with tears. She believed in the power of dreams, much like the full-bloods and those who still clung to the old ways in their attitude if not their dress. Her husband’s dream was a warning. “Listen to the dream,” she whispered. “For the love of heaven, listen to the dream and save our son—our only son. Abandon the Knights, because if you don’t something terrible will happen. I know it, Tullock. And now, so do you.”

“Stay with me?” he said. It was both a question—and an answer.

Morning began with a sacred fire and a column of prayer smoke and Raven McQueen. On the hill behind the farmhouse, flames danced among the circle of ashes left by former blazes. As she had so often in the past, Raven McQueen, herself a product of two different cultures, swayed to the rhythm of her own voice and chanted the spirit songs taught to her by her Choctaw mother.

Raven owned a Bible, one that belonged to her father, and she might have found a prayer to suit her needs among those venerable pages, but the prayers of the Choctaw enabled her to speak directly from the heart and allowed her to open to the All-Father in a ritual as ancient as the land and the morning light.

A blush on the horizon—faint hints of crimson seeped upward into the gray-blue canopy of heaven like an open wound. The land was hushed, as silent as the ribbon of morning mist that rose like some serpentine spectre above the winding undulations of Buffalo Creek. Only the crackling fire sounded as flames devoured the branches Raven continued to add while softly singing.

“All-Father, Shaker of mountains,

Whisper of wind, Spirit of birth and

Death, my words climb to you on the wings

Of my prayer smoke.

I fear for my grandsons. They walk separate

Paths and death is the hunter who

Follows their tracks. Be the rain that hides

Them, the wind that washes away the

sign of their passing.”

Her voice was strong as the woman herself was strong. Time had streaked her long black hair with silver but had left her spirit untouched. The brightness of her light within was undimmed. She had yet to sleep. After waiting up for Pacer she had learned from him of his encounter with Jesse. He made no attempt to hide the fact that Jesse intended to make him a prisoner and take him north. As for Ben, news of his injury and the attempt on his life was more than just cause for concern. Yet she felt deep in her soul that he would heal and be well. It was Jesse and Pacer that had her dreading the future. Jesse was not the kind of man to back down from a fight and Pacer was just the man to give him one. These McQueen men could be as obstinate as they were brave. It was up to their grandmother to shake some sense into their heads before a tragedy occurred. Raven ceased her chanting, sighed, and studied the prayer smoke. She followed its winding trail as it dissipated against the dawn and lifted her gaze to heaven. “I’m knowin’ what has to be done,” she added, a brogue creeping into her voice. “But I wouldn’t mind a little help.”

Morning began with a woman alone, a whispering breeze and the fiery dance of the sun.

Carmichael Ross had more than coffee on her mind as she stepped out the back door of her house, crossed the alley, and headed for the newspaper office. Balancing a tray laden with coffeepot, cups, biscuits, and a jar of honey, she started up the stairway that ran alongside the building and led to the room above the office. Morning light illuminated the upper story, and the whitewashed wood walls of the office seemed to glow with an almost biblical radiance. Carmichael had slept fitfully, and after her restless night, she rose from her bed before dawn and started the coffee. She heated water and took a bath, placing a dash of lilac into the copper tub. She chose a modest but handsome Sunday dress from among her sorely diminished wardrobe: workclothes were her mainstay these days. She brushed her waist-length hair a hundred strokes until it glistened and flowed softly over her shoulders, brown tresses against a dark green bodice and pale green woolen skirt.

It was a tricky climb, balancing the tray with one hand and lifting the hem of her skirt with the other. But at last she reached the top landing, and with the sun warming her back and shoulders, she knocked upon the door. It wasn’t every day she had a male guest and it didn’t hurt to be polite. No—neighborly. She was being neighborly. After all, Jesse had come a long way to risk his life to bring two of the territory’s warring factions to the peace table. She admired him for his courage and determination. The fact that his dark brown eyes deepened in hue when he watched her or that his laugh was honest and good-natured and that he moved with the sleek sure grace of a mountain cat certainly didn’t hurt either. What harm was there in beginning Jesse’s first morning back in Chahta Creek with a little special treatment?

She knocked on the door. The latch clicked and the door creaked open on its hinges. Carmichael checked the street to see if anyone was watching, then stepped inside. Had he left the door unlatched on purpose? She entered the room and paused to allow her eyesight to adjust to the shadowy interior.