Ride the Panther (29 page)

She began backing toward the door. “Miss Roberts!” she yelled. “Miss Roberts!”

Buck flinched as if struck. He hadn’t expected her to call out. He lunged for Willow. She twisted aside and darted to the back door. Buck leaped an overturned bench and lost his balance, stumbled, glanced off a shelf of preserves, and sent a row of mason jars crashing to the floor. He caught a glimpse of Willow as she dashed through the open doorway. He regained his balance and cleared a spreading puddle of scuppernong jelly, leaped through the doorway and straight into a hard black fist that spun him three-quarters of the way around, knocked two teeth out of his mouth, and dropped him in the dirt.

Willow was half a dozen yards from the back of the house. She lost a shoe but never a stride. Lithe as a doe, she ran flat out until she was stopped by a word spoken by one she had loved and still loved.

“Wife!”

Willow slid in the soft earth and spun around. Her hand fluttered to her mouth as she gasped and stared with amazement at Si Reaves, outlined in the deep glow streaming through the kitchen door. Unable to believe her own eyes, she faltered, then ran to his arms. They held one another for a long silent moment.

“I told you I’d come for you. I said I would,” Si whispered in her ear.

“And I waited. And I never gave up watchin’,” Willow tearfully replied. She peered over his shoulder and glimpsed someone in the shadows. She stiffened and tightened her hold on her husband, then relaxed as Jesse McQueen stepped into the kitchen’s glare.

“Willow…what was that crash? Did you call me?” Arbitha Roberts had entered the kitchen and had yet to realize anything was amiss.

“You two go on,” Jesse said. “See if any of the others wish to join us.”

“Where we going?” Willow asked, keeping her voice low.

“To freedom, gal. To freedom,” Si told her. “With Jesse and them families that took a stand against holding our people in chains.”

“I’ll join you down by the shanties,” Jesse said, and walked up the steps to the back door. Si nodded, and tugged Willow’s arm and led her off into the night.

Jesse made his way into the kitchen. It was warm here and fragrant with the aroma of pies and bread and the cloying scent of spilled jellies and preserves. Jesse began to sweat inside his heavy blue woolen shirt and buckskin jacket.

Arbitha had wrapped a beige dressing gown around her ample frame. Her thick black ringlets were tangled as if she had been asleep in bed only moments ago.

“Willow?” she called in a weak voice. “Oh,” she said, noticing Jesse at last. “It’s you.”

“Willow is gone, Arbitha.” Jesse eased into the room and cautiously approached the table. His fears of alarming the woman were wholly ungrounded; she did not seem frightened at all. Jesse had come to the plantation often enough as a boy and been warmly received by her. Now, the tragic death of her son had left Arbitha all but living in the past, a fantasy created out of her own desperate denial.

“I heard Willow calling me. Is she all right?”

“Yes, ma’am. But she won’t be returning. Si has taken her away.”

“Oh my. That is alarming. I shall miss her, but I don’t blame the child. Still, what shall I do?”

“You’ll get by, Arbitha. I’m sorry about Samuel. Tullock doesn’t believe me, but I am.”

“Tullock doesn’t believe in anything right now but the hurt in his soul,” Arbitha said. She patted the wrinkles from her dressing gown and primped her hair. “I look a fright. I’ve been so tired lately. My boy is dead and my arms feel so empty now. I used to carry him around like a lump on my back when he was little.” She shook her head, refusing any more of the memories. The portion she had was already too much. “You’re taking folks up north.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jesse replied. “But they’ll return when this cursed war is ended. Maybe people can learn to live as neighbors again.”

“My husband will come after you.” Arbitha had no doubt but that Tullock Roberts would exact bloody revenge upon Jesse and the other abolitionists. He was driven by the Old Testament admonition of “an eye for an eye” and a “tooth for a tooth.”

And a life for a life—or many lives.

“He’ll destroy you,” she added with utter certainty.

“He can try.” Jesse remained uncowed by Arbitha’s dire prediction. He’d struggled for peace with all his might. He waged war the same way.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Roberts. Take care.”

“Good-bye, Jesse McQueen,” Arbitha said in a frail voice. She sat near the oven and peered in at the flames whose lurid glare played upon her sorrowful features. “Willow, bring me the sherry, that’s a good dear. I should like some sherry to help me sleep. Willow—” She looked around and found herself alone in the kitchen. Jesse was gone. Maybe he hadn’t really been here at all. So many ghosts had visited her lately. Oh Lord, so many ghosts. What had Jesse said? And where had Willow wandered off to?

“I’ll have to speak to that girl,” Arbitha mumbled to herself. To her broken…hearted…self.

T
HAT SAME NIGHT, IN
Chahta Creek, a departure of a different sort was taking place. Lucius Minley sat hunched over his desk in his house on Choctaw Street, his thin face looking sallow in the glow of the lamp. He was hurriedly writing, his pen scratching the surface of the pages on which he scrawled an account, not only of his own actions over the past months but those of Cap Featherstone, those he had personally witnessed and those Cap had alluded to. He paused and a look of alarm came to his face as he heard some commotion in the alley. He listened for a moment. Was that the sound of breaking glass? A dog began to bark, then abruptly quit. He forced the interruption from his mind and continued to outline Cap Featherstone’s conspiracy and the manner in which he had used an already volatile situation to his own advantage.

Again Lucius paused and read what he had written so far. It was precise and factual, clear cut, and wholly incriminating of himself and most especially Featherstone and his associates. Missing were the motives Lucius knew had brought him to this impasse. He had loved a woman who had driven him to
be
more, to
aspire
to more. Yes, his own personal ambition and greed had been part of it, but he would have never acted without his wife’s insistence. She had encouraged his involvement with the likes of Featherstone. But the price of power and wealth had begun to weigh heavy on Lucius’s soul. Falsifying bank records to show Cap paid considerably more for properties than he actually had was one thing. But to be a part of murder…

He stood and walked to the door of his study and was tempted for a moment to return to his bedroom, to lie down by Rose and take her in his arms. No. She was still angry with him for not standing up to Cap Featherstone. She had called him weak. The saloonkeeper was taking advantage of them both, she reiterated, and if Lucius had any backbone he would demand a larger share of the profits to be made after the war. Without the banker’s complicity, Cap had no legal way of acquiring the land he sought. Lucius was integral to the scheme. Featherstone certainly did not have enough funds to purchase the notes the bank was carrying.

Lucius frowned and returned to his desk. For a moment he had actually been tempted to confront Cap. Thankfully, common sense took over, fueled by the memory of his latest encounter with him earlier in the day. The saloonkeeper hadn’t offered so much as a Yankee dollar for the deed to the Choctaw House Hotel. Lucius had advanced Henri Medicine Fox three hundred dollars and promised to hold ownership of the hotel until the end of hostilities, when Henri intended to return with his family to the business he had built with his own two hands.

“Henri Medicine Fox is a friend,” Lucius had protested.

“He isn’t
my
friend,” Cap had replied, pacing the confines of the banker’s office. His massive girth stirred the air and rustled the papers on Minley’s desk every time he crossed in front of the banker. “Sign the transfer of ownership. Mark down I paid the bank four thousand.”

“My God. The bank will need some funds to operate with. Why, I’ve even fired the tellers and am doing everything myself. You agreed to provide me with enough funds to do business. I’ve barely two hundred dollars in the safe.”

“Lucius, you have an annoying habit of arguing with me,” Cap had said. He’d stopped pacing and leaned forward using his massive arms for support. His thick ugly features had been inches from the banker’s face. Even two hours later, Lucius could still smell the saloonkeeper’s breath.

“Do as you’re told.” Cap had straightened and shoved the documents in front of Lucius. “Let’s get this over with. I’ve wasted enough time here. One day you’ll thank me. When this town builds back up, that hotel will be a real money-making venture and you’ll have a share of it. That is, if you can keep from talking yourself into an early grave.”

Now in the quiet of the midnight hour, amid his home’s familiar and comfortable surroundings, Lucius closed his eyes and watched himself do Featherstone’s bidding. There had been no other way. Not then. But Lucius had glimpsed something in Cap’s eyes; for one brief second he had beheld his own death. There would come a time when Cap would no longer need him and what then? What could Lucius expect from one who had arranged the death of his own friend, Ben McQueen?

So you see, Jesse, my motives in this are not entirely unselfish. As Cap murdered your father so will my life also be forfeit, of that I have no doubt now. My only recourse is to flee and put as much distance as possible between Featherstone and myself. Greed and lust were my undoing. I cannot make amends for
m
y wrongs, but I can at least tell you who your enemy is and in saving your life perhaps save my own.

Lucius signed the letter, placed it inside an oilskin packet, secured it with a leather string, and weighted the packet with a fist-sized stone. He did not intend to personally deliver his confession to Jesse McQueen out at Buffalo Creek. But Lucius knew someone who would—Carmichael Ross. He scrawled Jesse’s name on a slip of paper and tucked it inside the leather string, then hefted the entire thing in his right hand. He saw no problem in pitching the stone through a window in Carmichael’s house. He’d be blocks away before she could light a lantern and step outside.

Well on his way.
Lucius liked that thought. He stood and tucked the packet in his coat pocket, lifted a black barrister’s satchel which contained the few remaining funds taken from the bank’s safe. He had robbed his own bank. The very notion made him giggle. He wished he could see Cap’s face when the saloonkeeper learned—no—Cap’s was the last face he’d ever want to see after tonight.

His horse was saddled and waiting out back. It was time to cut his losses. His gaze drifted to the stairway.

“Bye, Rose,” he whispered. Then he crept from the house. Somewhere, back East, away from the war and this uncivilized country, a new life waited. He intended to find it.

In her bedroom, Rose Minley stirred in her sleep, reached out and rested her hand upon the empty pillow beside her, and then began ever so gently to snore.

A
T A QUARTER PAST
eight on the morning of October 16, Tullock Roberts led his command of forty-four volunteers across Chahta Creek and into town. They had ridden most of the night to get there by morning. He’d been pushing his men hard for several days now and they deserved a rest. He’d give them the day. Word had reached him that Jesse McQueen had gathered the abolitionists at Buffalo Creek and was preparing to take them north. McQueen was a fool. No matter where the abolitionists attempted to escape, Roberts’s Knights could easily overtake a bunch of frightened Yankees in mule-drawn wagons. If they chose to make a stand, so much the better. With the Yankees outnumbered and outgunned, his men would sweep over the column and destroy it.

The patriarch of Honey Ridge rode up Main Street. The men behind him were a hard-looking bunch dressed in a mixture of buckskins and Confederate military attire. Some wore short-brimmed caps, others broad-brimmed gray flannel hats and waist-length coats. There were Creeks with close-cropped hair and Cherokees whose long black locks hung free and trailed in the wind like the manes of the horses they rode. These men rode with Tullock because they shared his allegiance to the Confederacy. Several of the volunteers were related to Arbitha, herself the product of a Cherokee father and a Creek mother. Bloodlines, however strained, were ties impossible to ignore. When word spread of the murder of Arbitha’s only son at the hands of abolitionists, that was reason enough to fight at Tullock’s side.

The street was empty except for a pair of mongrel hounds that eyed the company of armed men with extreme misgiving and then scampered off toward the nearest alley. At a signal from the man in command, the armed company halted in front of the
Chahta Creek Courier,
one of the few businesses along Main Street that had not been abandoned.

Carmichael Ross was inside. And she was in a bad mood. The editor had been awakened just after midnight by a rock crashing through her bedroom window. She’d picked her way through the glass and reached the windowsill, pistol in hand, in time to catch a glimpse of the culprit responsible as he galloped off in the direction of the river road, south of town.

She’d stepped on the oilskin-wrapped packet on her way back to bed and read by moonlight the hastily scrawled instructions. Carmichael didn’t understand why she had been chosen as Jesse’s personal mail carrier, but she hoped it was worth the price of her bedroom window.

Now in the office of the
Courier,
she tucked the packet in her saddlebag as Tullock’s raiders formed out in front of the newspaper and she heard her name called in a booming voice by Tullock Roberts.

“Carmichael Ross!
Carmichael Ross!”

The woman glanced toward the window and the horsemen crowding the street. Tendrils of steam drifted up from her tin coffee cup. The grounds had been boiled twice and then mixed with dried berries and wild herbs to make a particularly nasty morning beverage which only a healthy dollop of rye whiskey made palatable.