Runaway (26 page)

“I’m seeking nothing but what is mine.”

“If you discover something else should be yours, let me know.”

Jarrett gripped his hand and met his steady eyes. He smiled after a moment. They had agreed to disagree. But he would respect Jackson all of his life; fight for him whenever he could.

That night, at a dance in the old city, Jarrett met Lisa. To the tunes of five fiddles they danced in an old coquina-shell mansion built by a Spanish don years before. Lisa spoke about the territory, about the travels into the interior she had taken with her father. She talked about the bays and the crystal springs. About the colorful birds, the exotic plants. The feeling of being alive and alone in an Eden lit only by the stars.

He found himself staying in the town. Walking the streets of the city, staring at the never-breached walls of the Castillo de San Marcos.

He wouldn’t fight the Indians, but he would translate. He stayed on.

The old alliances from the Creek War were now gone. Many of the Red Sticks from the earlier war had come to peaceful terms with the whites.

But some Red Sticks had remained hostile. And some of the “civilized” Lower Creeks had come upon their more militant distant kin and become more militant as
well, willing to fight the Americans who had cost them their lands once and were ready to do so again. As the Creeks—Lower and Upper—moved into the Floridas, displaced by their previous wars, they joined with those who had come before them and the remnants of tribes native to the peninsula. They were all to become known as
cimarrones
, renegades. Seminoles.

Some Indians managed to hold on to lands in northern Florida, lands deep in hammocks, hidden away, and far enough from white settlements. But for the most part the bands had been pushed south of St. Augustine on the east coast and far south of Pensacola on the west.

Jackson faced tremendous problems before it was all over. He had been sent to fight Indians. He had attacked Spanish positions. The English and the Spaniards were up in arms again. Members of Congress rained down abuse on the general as well. John C. Calhoun, secretary of war, was furious with Jackson. John Quincy Adams, secretary of state, defended Jackson, and was given the task of smoothing over all that had happened by President Monroe.

In 1821 an agreement was ratified between Spain and the United States of America. The U.S. would take on a multitude of Spanish debts to citizens of both countries, and the eastern boundary line of Mexico was also decided, with the U.S. giving up any claim to Texas. Andrew Jackson returned to Florida and received title to the Floridas, East and West, at Pensacola on July 17, 1821, and became the first territorial governor.

Americans began flocking over the border.

Jarrett called on his old friend and commander once again. Like everyone else he wanted land. His own.

Jackson, anxious to see the settlement of the new American territory, was ready to listen to Jarrett’s request, and ready to grant him what he could. He would
be happy to give Jarrett title to vast acreage in his control, with one catch: It neighbored directly on Indian territory. It lay eastward from the port at Tampa Bay, a savage country bordering rough, wild land that the Indians had been free to take. In 1821 these regions were of little interest to other whites.

Jarrett didn’t care how wild or savage other men might consider the place. Sean had spent years teaching him the value of land, and Jarrett had learned his lesson well. He also knew the Florida peninsula better than almost any other man alive, since he had traversed it with both Andrew Jackson and his scouts and surveyors and his own adopted family—which included men without university educations, but the innate common sense and natural ability to blaze trails through any wilderness and discover the means to survive—and prosper—within it.

That seemed a long time ago now, a very long time. Jackson had formally taken hold of Florida, but soon after he had left the state. William P. Duval had become territorial governor, done well with the job, and kept confidence with the Indians, and matters had remained somewhat stable. John Eaton had then been appointed to the office. He had taken his sweet time coming to Florida and had arrived just in time to find the Indian situation exploding. Ole Hickory himself was sitting in the White House, and if Jarrett knew the old warrior at all, he knew that the days—maybe the years—stretching ahead of them were going to be brutal ones. Andy Jackson had always believed in Indian removal.

The Florida Indians didn’t want to be removed.

Jarrett stared at his brother. James stood near the water, watching him, hands idly folded at his back, striking, handsome, obviously Indian, obviously white. He could have been part of either world, and he had chosen his
place among his mother’s people. But he had never broken his bonds with his brother or with other whites he had determined to call friends. Like their father he had the ability to judge a man not by his color, ancestry or creed, but by what he was within his own heart.

“Dear God, but this is bad. There’s always been trouble. Always. But now, we’re at war,” Jarrett muttered hollowly.

“We’ve been at war before,” James said. “And this war will be like other wars. Some men will seek peace. Some Indians will fight
with
the white men. Some will fight against them. Win or lose, we will lose. I didn’t attack Dade, and I didn’t fight with Osceola. But I understand why they fought.”

“I learned in Tampa that General Clinch was out there somewhere. He was on his way to see that the Indians were removed at the same time Dade was being ambushed. There will be more federal troops coming down as well. Militia groups are rising up right and left. The whites are outraged.”

“You refused to fight us?” James asked.

“They knew that I’d refuse.”

James shrugged and walked to the log, taking a position beside Jarrett.

“You’ve never broken a treaty with any of your Creek, Seminole, or Mikasuki brothers,” James told him. “Hell, you’ve never even broken your word. And I didn’t have anything to do with the massacre of Dade and his troops, nor have I burned any white farmhouses or stolen any goods. We’re at war—yet you and I have a faith that we keep with each other.”

“Yes,” Jarrett agreed, “but I have taken up arms against some Red Sticks, I did fight with Andy Jackson, once.”

James grinned. “Ah, yes, but even Osceola has forgiven you for that now.”

Jarrett shrugged at the comment. “James, though you are capable of seeing that many whites are good men, not so many whites are capable of telling the differences among Indians.”

“I’m well aware of that. And though I committed no atrocities, Jarrett, you have to understand—I cannot condemn the warriors who believe that they must fight or else find themselves dead, betrayed, and completely at the white man’s mercy. The white military have swept in often enough to decimate entire villages, you know that. I have seen men thrive on the butchery of children.”

Jarrett felt a burning sensation in the pit of his stomach and he straightened his shoulders and stared up at the sky. He did know too damned many whites who thought the only good Indian was a dead Indian—and the Indian’s age or gender didn’t mean a thing. Little Indians grew into big, tomahawk-carrying Indians—or so the philosophy went. Thank God there were enough rational people in the United States to protest senseless slaughter, or else the atrocities committed might be so fierce that no native population could survive.

“What do we do?” James asked Jarrett softly.

“Do?” Jarrett murmured. He stretched out his fingers, then folded them tightly together and looked at his brother. “Do? I’m not in this war.”

“They’ll make you be in this war,” James said.

His brother was right. He still wanted to deny it.

“I have refused to take command of any troops,” Jarrett said flatly.

“They will demand that you negotiate and parley with our leaders,” James said.

“I will do that—but I will not take up arms.”

“What if you find you have to?”

Jarrett cocked his head to his brother. “What of you?” he asked softly. “Men have been murdered by their own kind by not taking up arms against the enemy.”

“I haven’t taken up arms—but I have never betrayed any of my people. I have never signed a treaty, or agreed to take my people to the barren lands west of the Mississippi. Still, it is true. It seems in this we must take care, for we may both have enemies among our own people. And by the way, what did your new wife think about your turning down a military command?”

Jarrett shot him a quick look, wondering that information could travel so much more swiftly than men. But he knew that he had been watched all the way home from Tampa, and he’d been sure the ones watching him were doing so at his brother’s command.

Protecting Jarrett from other Indians, perhaps. And keeping an eye on any white man—his brother included—for the Indians.

James was grinning, pleased to have taken his brother by surprise and pleased especially to taunt him on this issue.

“My new wife has no right to comment on any of my choices,” Jarrett said with a scowl. James’s dark brow shot up, his grin deepened.

“Now, that, brother, is not a chivalrous attitude! Shall I take that to mean that your so recently arrived bride is not aware that she is now kin to half the
savages
in the area?”

James was highly amused; Jarrett cast him a deeper frown. No good. James kept grinning.

“The last thing I imagined you coming home with was a bride!” James told him.

“I had not imagined to do so either,” Jarrett assured him.

“You married her by accident? A man spills food by accident, brother. It is much more difficult to take a bride by accident.”

“I never said I married her by accident.” Jarrett groaned.

James sobered suddenly. “It is just that after Lisa …”

“Lisa has been gone nearly three years,” Jarrett said flatly.

“You said you’d never marry again,” James reminded him softly.

Jarrett shrugged. James was determined to pursue the issue, as surely no other man would have dared to do. “But you have now acquired a new wife and brought her into the midst of this powder keg. And if I am not mistaken, she doesn’t know a thing about me or my family.”

Jarrett stood, hands on hips, walking to the water, looking across it. The winter sun was clear, yet somehow gentle. The air was cool, the breeze slight; the moss dripping from the trees to the water was lifted and stirred by it. A crane came into view in graceful flight, sheering above the water, coming to rest just atop it. Light waves rushed out around the creature, causing the water to ripple. The scene was beautiful.

Peaceful.

This was the home he loved, the enchantment he had seen in his mind’s eye when Tara had mocked his savage land.

“Jarrett?” James said.

Jarrett didn’t turn. “No, she doesn’t know about you—or my family. I didn’t refrain from telling her because I was afraid of her reaction.”

“Then?”

Jarrett turned again. “I married her because she was in some kind of serious trouble.”

“What trouble?”

“I don’t know. She was … running.”

“Another runaway?” James inquired musingly. “But how—”

“I won her in a card game.”

“You married a woman you won in a card game?” James said incredulously.

“They were strange circumstances. She didn’t belong where I found her. Since I did marry her, I can vouch for that.”

“If you’d merely bedded her, brother, you could have vouched for the same. This is one time I wish I’d been with you in your wondrous New Orleans.”

Jarrett gave a grunt of aggravation and impatience and James immediately sobered again. “All right, big brother. You won her in a card game, then she ran—from whom or what you don’t know. So then you married her.”

“Something like that,” Jarrett agreed, amused himself at last.

“All right, so I’m not so surprised. I’ve heard that she is exceptionally beautiful. True?” James asked.

Again, Jarrett shrugged. “She …” he began, then said flatly, “Yes. She is very beautiful. Nearly perfect.”

“Don’t resent her for it,” James advised him.

“What?” Jarrett said sharply.

“It is almost as if you bear her a grudge for her beauty,” James advised him. “A beauty that was enough to bring you to the altar when you didn’t intend to be there.”

Jarrett shook his head. “I didn’t resent bringing her there. Maybe I didn’t want a wife, but I do need one. I wasn’t coerced, seduced—forced. I married her with full intent to do so. But …” He strode back to the log and
sat again beside his brother. James was probably the only one he could ever speak completely honestly with regarding the situation. “I noticed her the moment she came into the tavern … then I saw the outrage, fear, and determination on her face when she suddenly found herself the stake in the game. At first I meant only to get her out of the situation she was in that night, feed her, give her a reprieve from the place for the night. Then suddenly it seemed we were being followed by half the thugs in the city, and I still didn’t know a thing about her.”

“And you still don’t?” James murmured.

“Right. I couldn’t demand or even threaten the truth from her, I couldn’t leave her—” He broke off with a lift of his shoulders. “I definitely wanted her,” he said very softly. “You’re right there. I wanted her badly enough to behave quite rashly, but Robert was the one who suggested that a marriage would be a good idea. She needed to disappear—I had a whole savage wilderness in which she might do so.”

“Ah, but you refrained from telling her the whole truth about your savage wilderness—because she refused to tell you the truth about herself even then? Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Ah!” James murmured. “So my new sister-in-law is an elegantly beautiful mystery woman. I can’t wait to meet her. Of course, under the current circumstances … if I were to ask you both to dinner she’d probably assume that I wanted her to
be
dinner.”

“I admit,” Jarrett said, “she is … not pleased with the situation in which she finds herself.”