Ride the Panther (23 page)

“Lucius?”

“Shut up!” he snapped. The brandy scorched a path down his gullet and heated his gut. Still the hand holding the cup trembled. “Just shut up,” he softly repeated. Lucius carried the bottle back to his chair. Maybe another drink would help.

J
ESSE FOLLOWED THE SONG
and the sound of his grandmother’s voice out of the darkness and into the light. He opened his eyes and saw Raven, bathed in the amber glow of a lantern, seated at his side. The song had not been a Choctaw chant of healing but rather an Irish lullaby.

“Pretty little horses in the sun

Children go a-riding.

Play until the evening comes

and sunlight goes a-hiding.”

“I’m not five years old anymore, Grandmother,” Jesse managed to say. His side hurt, his head and shoulders throbbed, but his vision seemed unaffected, for which he was grateful. Raven looked the same as ever. Her gray-black hair hung past her shoulders and framed her proud features, a mixture of Irish and Choctaw, that radiated her deep affection and concern for this, her eldest grandson.

“So you finally pay your grandmother a visit.” Jesse could tell it was evening, but of which day? The last thing he remembered was being ambushed and fighting for his life against three club-wielding ruffians. And the rifle, yes, the rifle pointing at him from the underbrush. He tried to sit up. Pain coursed through him like liquid fire.

“It’s a quarter past midnight,” Raven said. “You’ve been here since sundown.”

“How?”

Raven shifted in her chair. Jesse realized he was stretched out upon a daybed that had been set up in the front sitting room. He looked past Raven and saw a powerfully muscled black man seated on a three-legged stool near the fireplace. The night had brought a chill that only a cheery blaze could abate. The black man’s face seemed chiseled out of obsidian; flared nostrils, a brooding brow, a gnarled lump of meat where his right ear had been. He was dressed in a cotton shirt, woolen dungarees, and boots. His strong hands were firmly clasped around the barrel of his army-issue muzzle loader. A Patterson Colt was holstered on his right hip.

Jesse knew the black man at a glance. This was Si Reaves. Si had been a trusted overseer on Tullock Roberts’s plantation. Yet, despite the privileges of his position, freedom had been a lure impossible to resist. One morning while supposedly out hunting, Si pointed his horse north and never looked back—until now. Jesse could guess the reason for the black man’s return, however dangerous.

“I been watching the plantation, hopin’ Willow might come out to the woods alone. I seen you leave and followed you,” Si spoke up in a deep resonant voice. He chuckled. “I figured there’d be trouble a-comin’ when I seen Sawyer Truett, Buck Langdon, and Chris Foot climbing into them yella’ robes and hidin’ out among the trees.” Si clambered to his feet. He held up a plate that he’d just sopped clean with a chunk of Raven’s crusty bread. “Ma’am…you reckon I could get me a little more of that stew? My belly’s narrowed some since I been back, what with livin’ off’n what I could catch.”

“You just help yourself, Si,” Raven told him. The runaway slave nodded his thanks and hurried off to the kitchen. She watched him leave and then turned her attention back to Jesse.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Jesse said. “I thought my being under the same roof with Pacer could only cause trouble.”

“He told me. You intend to take him back North. Why?”

“You’ve seen the wanted posters. What happened in Lawrence was no act of war. The slaughter of innocents…”

“He was there, but he tried to stop the killing. He took no part in the raid.”

“That’s his story,” Jesse scoffed.

Raven reached out and lifted the medal off his bandaged chest. His shirt hung across the back of a nearby chair. She cupped the coin and held it up to the lamp. George Washington’s scrawled initials were plainly visible in the glare.

“This is your father’s legacy. He hoped it would remind you of your family’s sacrifices, the McQueens’ sense of honor and duty. But it was never supposed to make you blind.”

“I have eyes,” Jesse replied.

“Ah, but the truth is not always as visible as a piece of paper, like some posted warrant. There is a bond between you and Pacer. Let it show you what is true.”

“I have talked with Pacer. My brother has chosen to walk a path that has taken him away from me. I see no bond between us now.”

“Yet it is there.” Raven lifted her gaze. “What is between you and the window?”

Jesse glanced around. The side of the bed was a couple of feet from the windowsill. “There is nothing.”

Without warning, Raven clamped a hand over her grandson’s nose and mouth, cutting off his air supply. Jesse reached up to claw her hand away but the pain in his side seemed to rob him of his strength. “Now you know the truth,” she said. “There is something between you and the window that you cannot live without. You do not see it, yet when I take it away, you struggle and know it is gone.” She removed her hand and Jesse sucked in a lungful of air and didn’t care how much the action hurt.

Raven reached over and filled a tin cup half full of coffee and handed the cup to Jesse, who sniffed the aroma and gave her a quizzical look. He wondered how she managed to have real coffee when the blockade had cut off such supplies from reaching the South. Even in Indian Territory, the supplies must be scarce. Raven seemed to read his thoughts. She held up the coffeepot and sloshed the contents. “Union supply train.”

Jesse nodded. “Another gift from the Choctaw Kid, no doubt,” he said dourly.

“Yes,” Raven admitted, smiling.

“Hmmm.” Jesse glanced around the room. “Where is he?”

“Asleep in his bedroom. Lorelei is using your bedroom, that’s why you’re down here.”

Things were moving a bit too quickly for Jesse to follow. “Who is Lorelei?”

“A friend of Pacer’s. She came with him from Arkansas. She is all alone and has no kin. Si asked to sleep in here by the fire. He would have pitched his blanket in the barn but for the Tellicos, who make him nervous.”

“Moses and Theotis?”

“I bought their way out of jail. Since they’ve lost their farm I’ve offered them a place here. They can help keep the farm up.”

“Always taking in strays,” Jesse dryly observed. “There was Sawyer Truett before them. And I can remember two frightened children, long ago. You gave them more than a home, Grandmother. Much more.”

“You and Pacer were like my very own. Ben was all grown up, and then one day I had two children to sing to and hold and love. I was sorry you had lost your mother, but I was happy to have you here. Kit felt the same way.” Raven patted his arm. “Sleep now.” She took the empty cup from him. She examined his bandaged head. The wound had stopped bleeding. No ribs were broken, as far as she could tell. His arm was bruised and already discolored where he’d been clubbed, but that, too, would heal. She watched as Jesse settled back against the pillow and closed his eyes. He’d be sore for several days, but there seemed no permanent damage. He would be fine. All the same, she would stay by her grandson’s side throughout the night. It was Raven’s way.

Sunlight and hammering woke Jesse at mid-morning. He stirred, wiped the sleep from his eyes, took in his surroundings, then glanced out the window at Pacer, who was struggling to hang Raven’s quilting from the porch ceiling. Pacer was oblivious to his older brother’s scrutiny, but not to Jesse’s presence. Ever since Si Reaves had arrived with Jesse draped across the saddle, Pacer had felt nothing but a dire premonition that fate was toying with them both, bringing them together to instigate a tragic confrontation. He looped a length of rope over a hook in the ceiling and tied the other end through an eyelet in the quilting frame. Raven liked to work out in the fresh autumn air. The porch was deep enough to shield the frame from the elements. Once winter set in she’d move the whole thing inside and commandeer part of a back room, just off the kitchen. Pacer resolved to let one of the Tellicos move her inside.

Bringing Moses and Theotis to Buffalo Creek was a chancy move at best. They were a dangerous breed, fierce mountain folk with peculiar loyalties; slow to anger, but once riled, they’d come fighting with knife and gun, tooth and rock, and keep at it till blood flowed. He’d sent them up the valley to work some of the cattle out of the wooded hillsides and down into the grassy floor. Buffalo Creek wound deep into the Kiamichi Mountains for a few miles to its headwaters, a natural spring flowing out of the side of a humpbacked jumble of rocks where the hills to either side closed in and formed the narrow passage called Buffalo Gap. The gap opened onto a broad pass running north to south along the length of the Kiamichis. If the Tellicos ranged as far as the gap, it would take them most of the morning, depending on how closely they scoured the slopes for stray calves. Si Reaves had gone into the garden to help Raven bring in the sweet corn. The former slave was grateful for Raven’s hospitality and had offered to help with whatever work needed to be done.

Hecuba waddled out of the barn and proceeded to chase a grasshopper out into the barnyard. The farm’s steadfast and vigilant sentry flapped her snowy wings and hurried off around the far side of the barn in pursuit of the frantically leaping insect. The goose reappeared seconds later and Pacer imagined he could see a self-satisfied gleam in the watchbird’s eyes: a morsel of grasshopper protruded from her beak. The bird’s head bobbed and dipped and sent the unfortunate grasshopper on a one-way journey down the goose’s long neck.

Hecuba scarcely had a moment to enjoy her snack. Suddenly she craned her head forward, flared her wings, and sounded an alert. Pacer watched the bird with amusement that turned to caution. He stepped down from the porch and studied the plume of dust unfurling like a sandy banner at the entrance to the valley.

Inside the house, Jesse also heard Hecuba sound the alert. The tension in Pacer was plainly evident. Jesse watched his younger brother check the loads in his Colt before returning the weapon to its holster as he moved off into the yard.

Jesse swung his legs over the side of the bed, pulled on his trousers, and reached for his gunbelt. A hammer clicked back and he glanced up at a mere slip of a girl, wearing a workshirt and rolled-up trousers. Her cheek was smudged with cornmeal. A length of her auburn hair was dusted as well. Her small hands seemed dwarfed by the flintlock pistols she brandished. The heavy-bore guns were none other than the pair of flintlocks that had belonged to Jesse’s great-grandfather, Daniel. Normally they adorned the stone chimney above the mantle, but not now. Jesse froze in midreach. He had no desire to be blown in half by these family keepsakes.

“You must be Lorelei,” Jesse said.

“I am.”

Jesse nodded toward the window. Hecuba continued to protest the arrival of strangers.

“Maybe I ought to have my gun. Could be trouble on the way.”

“It could be already here,” Lorelei warily replied, “in this room.”

Jesse grinned. He liked her. She had grit and, except for the fact the girl was prepared to shoot him dead, she was mighty nice to look at.

“My great-grandfather used to call his flintlocks ‘The Quakers’ because they tended to bring peace whenever he drew them from his belt.” He rubbed his chin. “I’ve fired them. They kick like Missouri mules. Darn near broke my wrist once.” He looked for some reaction and was rewarded with a glimmer of apprehension in her eyes.

“Maybe a broken arm is a small price to pay,” Lorelei told him. “The Choctaw Kid is blue lightning with a gun. But quickness never stopped a bullet in the back.”

“My brother is lucky to have you,” Jesse replied.

“Nobody
has
me.”

“No, ma’am.” Jesse could hear the sound of approaching horses. Time was running out. If he wasn’t so sore and stiff, he’d have caught up his gun and dove for the floor and taken his chances. The only option open to him was “slow and steady.”

“Our visitors may have come looking for me,” Jesse said. “I don’t aim to face them unarmed.” He moved slowly, easing into his boots and then standing upright. “I’ll be taking my gun now.” He held his breath and braced himself and watched for a flash in the pan that would precede the thunderous explosion in the room. He’d conserve his strength for a last-second burst of speed and a lunge out of harm’s way. At this distance, he didn’t stand much of a chance. Lorelei held his life in her hands.

Si Reaves wore the look of a hunted man in his sweat-streaked face. Perspiration glistened on his black brow and gleamed against his naked torso. He straightened and stared off toward the mouth of the valley as Hecuba trumpeted her alarm. Raven stepped around the black man and shaded her eyes.

“I can’t see from here…” she softly said.

“Oh, damn. I’m in a bad way. That cream-colored horse, only one like it I know of. That be Sawyer Truett coming here. And more than likely he got his friends with him.” Si looked around the garden as if half expecting some sort of escape route to open up for him just by wishing. It was plain to see he was trapped. The approaching horsemen would cut him down twenty steps past the garden.

“They can’t know you’re here,” Raven said, hoping to calm the frightened man. She noted he had pulled the Patterson Colt from his belt. “Kneel down.”

“Ma’am?”

“They won’t see you in the corn. You’ll look like a patch of shadow,” Raven explained with a twinkle in her eye.

“What about Pacer? That ain’t exactly a Yankee uniform he’s wearing.” Si cocked his revolver. The trigger dropped down and pressed into his curled finger. He wasn’t going to surrender. No sir. Anybody wanted his hide, they’d have to bleed first.

“Pacer will not give you away,” Raven said.

“What makes you so certain? I’m just another runaway nigger to him.”

“You came to Buffalo Creek as a friend.
My
friend.”

“Miss Raven, you sure got a powerful trust in your own.”

“I know my son,” Raven replied, and in her thoughts added,
Perhaps better than he knows himself.
War had changed her sons, but only on the surface. They were both good and decent and honorable men who had found their way home. And now they must find each other.