Ride the Panther (37 page)

“At least he takes the time, which is more than I can say for some.”

“You know Kit McQueen ain’t got a spare moment for himself since Jackson’s had him and the Choctaws scouting Lord Packenham’s lines. Would you have him endanger us all just so’s you can lure him to the hayloft for a quick tumble?”

“Father!”

“Don’t act so surprised. I’ve known since before Horse Shoe Bend. And lucky for Kit McQueen I think the world of him, else he’d be singing high notes in a castrati choir!” O’Keefe sneezed three times in rapid succession. The force of the spasm doubled him forward and left him gasping for air. At last he settled back against the pillow and straightened his nightcap. Besides the four-poster, the room was appointed with a small table and ladder-backed rocking chair. The hearth blazed as flames greedily devoured the dry wedges of oak Raven had recently added to the fire.

She stared in speechless silence at her father. Raven and Kit had tried to remain discreet. Their moments alone had been few and far between. “Kit didn’t tell me.”

“Funny that. But no matter. I understand more than you think. Don’t let these gray hairs fools you, lass. Your pa had the same itch below his belt for your ma, God rest her soul. You and McQueen belong together same as your ma and me. And I think you know it.”

Raven shrugged, and lowered her gaze to her folded hands. She was the very picture of contrite submission. But O’Keefe knew his daughter too well to fall for such a ruse. She had as much surrender in her as a cornered cougar. But, my, oh my, she did look a pretty sight in that cream-colored dress of Spanish lace. Removed from the forest and the influence of her Choctaw friends, her Irish heritage rose to the fore and he couldn’t blame any young man for being smitten with her. O’Keefe shifted in bed and coughed. Damn, he thought, if I ain’t talking myself right out of my anger. She’s winning after all. He glowered at his daughter.

“I suppose that be the dress Obregon give you?”

“It is.”

“And I reckon you think it suits you more’n your buckskins. Or have you forgotten who you are?”

It was Raven’s turn to frown. “
This is
who I am,” she replied, indicating the dress with a sweep of her hand. Then she lifted the hem of the lace dress to reveal the brushed deerskin moccasins she wore in place of the slippers that had cramped her toes and made walking an agony. She had decorated her footwear with shells and tiny glass beads and laboriously double-stitched them with sinew. “And this also,” she added.

“So I guess you’ll be wearing the dress.”

“And dancing with the man who gave it to me. And if it makes Kit McQueen sit up and take notice, then so much the better.”

“Women! You spin a cunning web and wrap us men in your silken chains and hold us fast and there’s nary an escape.” O’Keefe leaned over and poured a measure of hot buttered rum from a clay pitcher into a pewter tankard. A look of pleasant anticipation settled his features. Was there a drink finer than hot buttered rum on a wintry night? Not by a hornpipe.

“You worry too much, Father. I’m playing a little game. Nothing more. It’s one the likes of Cesar Obregon has no doubt played in a dozen ports with a dozen moonstruck lasses carried off on the tide of his charms. He knows the game, mark you.”

“Aye, but is he playing by your rules?” O’Keefe countered, and having made his point, he drained the contents of the tankard without pause for breath. The bedroom door swung open and Madame Olivia LeBeouf entered, dressed in a pink cotton dress trimmed with French lace across her daring décolletage. Raven welcomed the woman’s arrival, for it spared her from having to come up with a rebuttal.

Madame LeBeouf was a brash and cheerful widow whose slender figure seemed woefully off balance beneath the weight of her abundant bosom. Her cheeks were caked with rouge. A mole on her left cheekbone had been accentuated with a touch of black ink. Her head was crowned with ringlets of light brown hair piled high and dangling in thick lustrous coils along the back of her neck. The room’s interior seemed to brighten as she entered bearing a tray laden with a freshly baked sweet potato pie and a tureen containing short ribs of beef floating in a broth of drippings seasoned with pepper, onions, and topped with cornbread dumplings.

Madame LeBeouf had not come alone. An eight-year-old boy stood at her side. He was tall for his age and long-limbed. His sandy brown hair was uncombed and curled to a natural cowlick at the back of his head. His eyes were pale green and pouchy from lack of sleep, for he had taken the same cold as Iron Hand O’Keefe. Despite his illness he watched O’Keefe with keen interest, for even at his young age he had heard tales of Iron Hand, the white chief of the Choctaws.

“This is Johnny Fuller,” said Madame LeBeouf, indicating the young lad with a wave of her hand.

“Indeed. And when did you drop a pup?” O’Keefe asked, peering at the woman and boy over the lip of his pewter mug. He hadn’t seen the widow LeBeouf for nigh onto a year, and anything was possible where Olivia was concerned.

“I’ll thank you to keep a civil thought in your skull. He ain’t mine.” She glanced at Raven and continued. “Well,
now
he is—since his mama caught the grippe and passed away. Consumptive she was, the poor dear. Coughing all the time.” The woman tousled the boy’s hair and patted his shoulder. “Johnny’s a good lad, ain’t you?”

The boy shrugged and continued to study O’Keefe with interest from behind the protection of Madame LeBeouf’s dress. He carried two stoneware bowls and a pair of spoons and two-pronged forks. He wore a sleeping gown and was barefoot. He scratched his left ankle with the toes of his right and then fell into step alongside LeBeouf as she crossed the room to O’Keefe’s bedside.

“Up you go now, and try not to muss the covers and be sure not to spill any of your dinner in bed, for you’ll be sleeping on these very linens.” The widow placed the tray of food on the table near the bed. She took care not to meet O’Keefe’s openmouthed stare.

“See here. I ain’t no wet nurse!” he protested. He looked at his daughter for help, but Raven covered her smile with the back of her hand and fled the room. “Raven. We haven’t settled the matter of these men… uh… Daughter!” He scowled. “Goddammit!”

Madame LeBeouf reached out and caught Iron Hand O’Keefe by his ear and gave it a terrible tweak.

“Yeow!”

“Watch your mouth—there’s a child present,” the widow painfully reminded her former lover. “The kind of sweet boy we might have had if only you’d been willing to surrender your heathen ways and live among your own kind.” Madame LeBeouf sniffed as if to hold back her mock tears. O’Keefe wasn’t fooled for a second. He glared at the eight-year-old who crawled up to take his place in bed alongside the burly Irishman.

“Any child of ours would’ve been full of piss and vinegar, wild as a wolf cub with twice the bite.”

“I would have refined him,” Madame LeBeouf flatly replied. Then she filled a plate with ribs and corn dumplings for Johnny, who silently accepted his meal. It was obvious he was as uneasy about this sleeping arrangement as the big man next to him. O’Keefe watched the widow load a plate for him and then hand it over.

“Enjoy your meal. My guests are below and it would be rude for me to tarry.”

“When you coming back?” O’Keefe surreptitiously nodded in the direction of the lad who was hungrily devouring dinner.

“I can’t tell. It depends on whether or not that handsome Mr. Belouche has arrived. They say he taught the Laffite brothers all they know of swordsmanship. I, too, should like to test his mettle.”

“I’m under your roof but one night and already I am the cuckold,” O’Keefe complained.

“Heal yourself, Peter O’Keefe, and I might change my mind—you hairy old bear.” The widow winked, and tugged his beard and kissed O’Keefe on the forehead, and then left the room with a swirl of her lace-trimmed dress. A trace of rosewater and lilac lingered in the air to mark her passing.

“Hrumph!” O’Keefe grumbled, and fixed the boy in a steely stare. “I aim to eat, then drink me another hot buttered rum and then sleep. You don’t interfere and we’ll get along.”

“I don’t like this any better than you.” Johnny gnawed the meat from a rib bone and dropped it back into the bowl, then sopped some juices with a corn dumpling. “I’d hardly call you a nosegay. And if we looked real close, we might find a flock of crows nesting in that briar thicket you call a beard.”

O’Keefe was taken aback by the boy’s outburst. Johnny Fuller was hardly the shy and quiet type. The Irishman had been deceived by the lad’s show, the way Johnny had clung to the widow and hidden behind the folds of her dress.

“Smart whelp, eh?” O’Keefe scowled. “Mind you keep a civil tongue in your head or I’ll cut it out and toss the meat to the widow’s hound outside.” The Irishman grunted in satisfaction, and spearing a particularly stringy morsel of meat, he plopped it in his mouth and wiped his lips on his sleeve.

“Too late for that,” Johnny said. “You just ate him.”

“Christ almighty,” O’Keefe muttered, and spat the chunk of meat halfway across the room. It landed a few feet from the hearth. Only when Johnny could no longer hold back his laughter did the Irishman realize the trick the eight-year-old had played on him. He started to scold the boy, but launched into a spasm of coughs that shook the bed. Finally, when the worst of it subsided, O’Keefe caught his breath and muttered, “You’re a black-hearted ragamuffin.”

“Did I do something wrong?” Johnny asked, all innocence again.

O’Keefe sat up in bed and, with his hook, skewered a chunk of meat from Johnny’s bowl. The boy fell silent as the Irishman slowly nibbled at the morsel. The ominous demonstration had the desired effect. Iron Hand licked the grease from the vicious-looking barb that capped his stump.

“How’d you lose it?” the boy asked, staring at the hook.

“A shipmate of mine asked me to lend him a hand. I did. The impudent son of a bitch never brought it back.” O’Keefe looked completely serious.

Johnny Fuller was a child in years, but the eight-year-old knew a tall tale when he heard it.

“I may have been born at night, Mr. O’Keefe, but it wasn’t
last
night,” the boy retorted.

Iron Hand O’Keefe chuckled and settled back against the pillow. The lad was as sharp as a needle and there was no denying his spunk. Reminds me of me, thought the Irishman, resolving to keep his observations to himself. Johnny Fuller was cocky enough.

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Kerry Newcomb was born in Milford, Connecticut, but had the good fortune to be raised in Texas. He has served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and taught at the St. Labre Mission School on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana, and holds a master’s of fine arts degree in theater from Trinity University. Newcomb has written plays, film scripts, commercials, and liturgical dramas, and is the author of over thirty novels. He lives with his family in Fort Worth, Texas.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1992 by Kerry Newcomb

Cover design by Connie Gabbert

978-1-4804-7883-1

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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