The Legacy (12 page)

“Hey—wait, what are you doing!” Corin exclaimed, trying to wrestle the reins from her as the horse tossed its head in protest, the bit clanking against its teeth.

“I want to go! I want to get
away
from them!” Caroline cried, shaking all over. She put her hands over her face, desperate to hide. Corin steadied the horse and then peeled her hands into his.

“Now, look!” he said seriously, eyes pinioning hers. “Listen to me, Caroline. They are good people.
People
, just like you and me. They just want to live and work and raise their families; and no matter what you’ve heard back east where they like to paint Indians as the worst kind of villains, I am telling you that they don’t want to trouble you or anybody else. There’s been strife in the past, strife that often enough we white men brought with us, but now all any of us wants to do is get on as best we can. Joe has brought his family here to live and work alongside us, and that’s taken a kind of courage you and I can’t understand, I do believe. Are you listening to me, Caroline?” She nodded, although she could hardly credit what he was saying. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Don’t cry, my darling. Nothing you’ve been told about Indians applies to Joe. I can guarantee you that. Come along now and I’ll introduce you.”

“No!” she gasped.

“Yes. They’re your neighbors now, and Joe is a firm friend of mine.”

“I can’t! Please!” Caroline sobbed. Corin took out his handkerchief and wiped her face for her. He tipped her chin up and smiled affectionately.

“You poor thing. Please, don’t be afraid. Come on, now. The second you meet them you’ll see you’ve got nothing to be frightened of.”

Clicking his tongue at the beleaguered buggy horse, Corin turned it again and drove them toward the teepee and dugout. Surrounding the two dwellings was an array of washing lines and drying racks, ropes, tools and harnesses. A fire was burning outside the tent, and as they approached a small, iron-haired woman emerged with a blackened pot to place over the embers. Her back was bowed, but her eyes sparkled from deep within the creases webbing her face. She said nothing, but straightened up and nodded, eyeing Caroline with quiet interest as Corin jumped down from the buggy.

“Good morning, White Cloud, I’ve come to introduce my wife to you,” Corin said, tipping the wide brim of his hat respectfully at the old woman. Caroline’s legs, as he helped her down, felt unsteady beneath her. She swallowed, but there remained a lump in her throat that made it hard to breathe. Her thoughts swirled inside her head like a blizzard. A man came out of the dugout, followed by a young girl, and another woman came from the teepee, middle-aged and severe looking. She said something incomprehensible to Corin, and Corin, to Caroline’s utter amazement, replied.

“You speak their tongue?” she blurted out, and then recoiled when all eyes turned to her. Corin smiled, somewhat diffidently.

“Indeed, I do. Now, Caroline, this is Joe, and this is his wife Magpie, most commonly known as Maggie.” Caroline tried to smile, but she found that she could not hold the gaze of either one of them for more than a few seconds. When she did she saw a stern, dark man, not tall but broad across the chest; and a plump girl, her long hair prettily braided with colored strings woven through it. Joe’s hair was also long, and they both had high, feline cheekbones and a serious line to their brows. Magpie smiled and ducked her head, trying to catch Caroline’s eye.

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Massey,” she said, and her English was perfect even if her accent was strong. Caroline gaped at her.

“You speak English?” she whispered, incredulously. Magpie gave a cheerful chuckle.

“Yes, Mrs. Massey. Better than my husband, although I have been learning for less time!” she boasted. “I’m so glad you are here. There are far too many men at this ranch.”

Caroline took a longer look at the girl, who was wearing a simple skirt and blouse, with a brightly woven blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her feet were shod with soft slippers of a kind Caroline had never seen before. Her husband, who wore a heavy, beaded vest beneath his shirt, muttered something sharp in their own tongue, and Magpie scowled, answering him with something short and indignant. Joe did not smile as readily as his wife, and his expression seemed, to Caroline, most hostile. The blackness of his eyes alarmed her, and his mouth was a straight, implacable line.

“I have never met any Cherokee . . . people before,” Caroline said, somewhat emboldened by Magpie’s cheerful demeanor.

“Still you have not.” Joe spoke for the first time, wryly. His accent was so guttural that it took a little while for her to understand him. Caroline glanced at Corin.

“Joe and his family are of the Ponca tribe,” he explained.

“But . . . Hutch told me these lands were Cherokee before . . .”

“They were. It’s . . . well, put simply, there are many tribes in this country. It was Indian Territory before it was Oklahoma Territory, after all. Joe and his family are a little out of the ordinary, in that they have chosen to adopt some of the white man’s ways of living. Most of his people choose to stay with their own, on reservation lands. Joe here got a taste for cattle driving and has never looked back—isn’t that right, Joe?”

“Got a taste for beating you at cards, mostly,” the Ponca man said, twisting his mouth to one side sardonically.

As they moved away from the teepee, Caroline frowned.

“Joe seems an odd name for an . . . for a Ponco . . .”

“Ponca. Well, his real name, in his own tongue, is just about unpronounceable. It means Dust Storm, or something of that kind. Joe’s just a lot easier for folk to say,” Corin explained.

“He does not seem to show you much respect, considering you are his employer.”

At this Corin glanced at Caroline, and a frown shaded his eyes for a moment. “He has plenty of respect for me, I assure you; and it’s respect I’ve had to earn. People like Joe don’t give out respect because you’re white, or because you’ve got land, or you pay their wages. They give it when you can show you have integrity and a willingness to learn, and can show respect to them where it’s due. Things are a little different out here than in New York, Caroline. People have to help themselves and help each other when a flood or a freeze or a tornado might wipe out everything you have in an instant . . .” He trailed into silence. A warm wind blew off the prairie, singing through the spokes of the buggy wheels. Stinging with his rebuke, Caroline sat in unhappy silence. “You’ll soon settle in, don’t you worry,” Corin said, in a lighter tone.

A
few days later, they took their honeymoon picnic; setting out in the buggy while the sun was skirting the eastern horizon, and heading due west of the ranch for three hours or so, to a place where the land rolled into voluptuous curves around a shallow pool, fed by a slow-running creek. Silver willows leaned their branches down, shading the water’s edge and touching it in places, pulling wrinkles in the wide reflected sky.

“It’s so pretty here,” Caroline said, smiling as Corin lifted her down from the bench.

“I’m glad you like it,” Corin said, planting a kiss on her forehead. “It’s one of my favorite places. I come here sometimes, when I need to think about things, or when I’m feeling low . . .”

“Why didn’t you live here, then? Why did you fix the ranch over to the east?”

“Well, I wanted to fix it here but Geoffrey Buchanan beat me to it. His farmhouse is another two miles that way, but this land is in his claim.”

“Won’t he mind us coming here?”

“I doubt it. He’s a pretty relaxed kind of fellow but, more importantly, he won’t know we’re here,” Corin grinned, and Caroline laughed, crossing to the edge of the pool and dipping her fingers into the water.

“Do you come here often then? Do you get low, out here?”

“I did sometimes, when I was first here. Wondered whether I’d staked the right claim, wondered if it was too far from my family, if the land was right for the cattle. But I’ve not been back here for many months,” he shrugged. “It soon became clear to me that I never did a better thing than staking the claim I did, and making those choices. Everything happens for a reason, is what I believe, and now I know that’s right.”

“How do you know?” she asked, turning to him, drying her fingers on her skirt.

“Because I have you. When my father died, I thought . . . I thought for a time that I should move back to New York and look after my mother. But the second I got back there I knew I couldn’t stay. And then I found you, and you were willing to come away with me . . . and if any good thing could come from losing my father, then you are that good thing, Caroline. You’re what was missing from my life.” He spoke with such clarity, such resolve, that Caroline was overwhelmed.

“Do you really think that?” she whispered, standing close to him, feeling the sun’s heat flush her skin. It shone brightly in his eyes, turned them the color of caramel.

“I really think that,” he said quietly; and she stood up on her toes to kiss him.

In the shade of the willow trees they spread out their rugs, unpacked the hamper and unhitched the buggy horse, which Corin tethered to a tree. Caroline sat with her legs tucked carefully beneath her, and poured Corin a glass of lemonade. He lay down easily beside her, propped on one elbow, and undid the buttons of his shirt to let the cool air in. Caroline watched him almost shyly, still not used to the idea that he belonged to her, still not used to his relaxed manner. She had not known until her arrival at the ranch that men grew hair on their chests, and she examined it now, curling against his skin and damp with the heat of his body.

“Corin?” she asked him suddenly.

“Yes, love?”

“How old are you?”

“What? You know that!”

“But I don’t! I just realized . . . I don’t know how old you are. You seem so much older than me—not in appearance, I mean! Well, partly in appearance, but also in . . . in other ways,” she floundered. Corin smiled.

“I’ll be twenty-seven next birthday,” he said. “There now—are you appalled that you’ve married such an old-timer?”

“Twenty-seven is not so very old! I shall be nineteen in just a couple of months. But . . . you seem to have lived here for a lifetime already. You’re as settled here as if you’d been here fifty years!”

“Well, I first came out here with my father, on a business trip—prospecting for new beef suppliers. My father traded in meat, did I tell you that? He sold to all the best restaurants in New York, and for a time I was destined to go into the business with him. But I knew as soon as I got out here that we were at the wrong end of that chain of supply, and I never left. I was just sixteen when I decided to stay on out here and learn about raising the beeves instead of just buying their dead flesh.”

“Sixteen!” Caroline echoed. “Weren’t you scared, to leave your family like that?” she asked. Corin thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“I’ve never been much afraid of anything. Until I asked you to dance,” he said. Caroline blushed happily, straightening her skirts.

“It really is hot, isn’t it? Even here in the shade,” she commented.

“You want to know the best way to cool down?”

“What is it?”

“Swimming!” Corin declared, springing to his feet and pulling his shirt up over his head.

“
Swimming!
What do you mean?” Caroline laughed.

“I’ll show you!” he said, sliding off his boots, kicking his pants to one side and charging into the pool, as naked as Adam, with a wild whooping and splashing. Caroline stood up and watched in utter amazement. “Come in, sweetheart! It’s the best feeling!” he called.

“Are you
crazy
?” she cried. “I can
not
swim here!”

“Why ever not?” he asked, swimming the length of the small pool with broad strokes of his arms.

“Well . . . well, it’s . . .” she waved an incredulous arm. “It’s muddy! And it’s out in the open—anybody could see! And I don’t have a bathing suit.”

“Sure you do! It’s right there under your dress,” Corin grinned. “And who’s to see? There’s nobody around for miles—it’s just you and me. Come on! You’ll love it!”

Caroline walked uncertainly to the edge of the bank, unlaced her boots and hesitated. Sunlight danced prettily on the water’s surface and tiny fish were lazing in the warm shallows. The sun beat down on her, scorching the top of her head and making her clothes feel tight and stifling. She bent down, pulled off her boots and stockings and put them carefully on the bank, then, gathering her skirt to her knees, she stepped in until the water lapped her ankles. The relief of cold water on her clammy skin was her undoing.

“Oh, my goodness,” she breathed.

“Now, how much better does that feel?” Corin called to her, coming over to where she stood. The white of his buttocks gleamed, distorted, beneath the surface, and Caroline laughed.

“You look just like a frog in a bucket!” she told him.

“Oh, really?” he asked, flicking a spray of water up at her. With a squeal she retreated. “Come on, come in and swim! I dare you!”

Caroline looked over her shoulder, as if an audience might have appeared, ready to gasp in dismay at her wantonness, then she undid her dress and stays and draped them over a willow branch. She kept her chemise on, the bare skin of her shoulders crawling, feeling utterly conspicuous, then went back to the edge of the pool with her arms wrapped protectively around her. There she paused, mesmerized by the feel of the mud as it squeezed up between her toes. She had never felt anything like it, and hitched up her petticoat to look down, flexing her feet and smiling. When she looked up to remark upon it, she found Corin watching her with a rapt expression.