And One Rode West (36 page)

Now, as the others laughed and chatted and enjoyed the picnic, Jeremy noted that Clara was having difficulties again. She was complaining to Bertha about something.

Jeremy excused himself from the young captain he had been speaking with and placed himself strategically beside an oak that looked onto the buffet table and the scattered camp chairs and tables that had been set out.

Christa had finished preparing and serving and was
leaving the rest to Bertha, who remained contentedly behind the tables. Christa, he noticed, was actually smiling. She was standing with James and Celia and Emory Clark, and Emory was saying something that pleased her. She laughed out loud.

Jeremy wondered at the rush of resentment that filled him. Why was she so quick to smile for Emory? Hell, he was as much a Yank as any man here. Maybe it was Celia, he tried to tell himself. Christa liked Celia. But then, who could help but like the young woman? She was small, delicate, lovely, with an innocence and wide-eyed wonder as big as the West. She had instantly formed an attachment for Christa, and not even Christa could find fault with her.

Christa was blushing, laughing at something that
Emory
was saying.

Emory. Who reminded her of Liam.

Jeremy tightened his lips. His attention was momentarily drawn away from his wife when there was a commotion at the buffet table.

“Oh! I’m afraid that it’s sickening, just sickening! I can’t possibly eat this meat! I need something quickly!”

It was Clara Jennings. She was waving her handkerchief before her nose.

Bertha, alarmed, had hurried around the table to her. “Mrs. Jennings, what can I do?”

“Some bread, please! That will help, I think!”

“Nathaniel, Nathaniel, please! Get Mrs. Jennings some bread.”

Nathaniel was circulating around the tables, picking up plates as the men and ladies finished with them. As Bertha called him, he hurried over to the table.

Clara Jennings saw him for the first time. She watched as he cut her several slices of bread from the loaf.

“Oh, dear, you don’t mean for him to give it to me
after he’s touched it, do you?” Clara Jennings said, horrified.

A silence fell upon the gathering.

Nathaniel, in the act of cutting the bread, went dead still.

Clara felt the silence. She waved herself with her handkerchief profusely. “Well, the man is a Negro!” she said defensively. “And he’s touched the bread!”

Jeremy saw Nathaniel’s face. The face he had known and trusted so long. A face he had come to care about greatly.

And he saw the weariness and the hurt on it.

He had to say something. As politely as possible, the woman had to be put in her place.

But he didn’t have a chance to speak.

“Excuse me!” came a feminine voice with a ring of steel.

Christa stood up and came beside Nathaniel, slipping her arm through his. “Nathaniel, please, would you be so good as to go back to my tent for my shawl?” she asked him quickly.

Proud, wounded dark eyes touched hers. “Please, Nathaniel?”

“Yes, Mrs. McCauley. Yes, right away.”

Jeremy could have spoken then, but he was too curious to see what his wife intended to do next. He leaned back against the oak, watching her.

Her back was very straight. Her hands were folded in front of her. Her chin rose as she stared coolly at Clara Jennings. “It always seems to me to be such a curious thing that so many northerners fought such a passionate battle as abolitionists when they were so ignorant of the people they longed to free. Mrs. Jennings, Nathaniel was born a free man. He’s received a finer education than most white men I know. I don’t know if that matters to you or not. I come from a family that owned slaves at one time. Black people fed me
and bathed me as a child, and they stood by me as an adult while the world around us crumbled. I’m lucky. I know that they have hearts and souls—and that the black of their skin can be very beautiful, and that it isn’t something that comes off when touched! Perhaps I was one of the wretched southerners holding a people in bondage. At least we knew that they were people. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Nathaniel is my friend. I think that I need to see to his welfare.”

She had never appeared more the great lady, Jeremy thought, his gaze keenly upon her as she swirled around. For a moment, her eyes touched his. There was an instant of wariness within hers. She thought that he would chastise her for rudeness to his associates again. But she didn’t care. There was the slightest trembling to her lower lip, and then her jaw tightened. Her lashes lowered, and she walked by him.

He felt a smile tugging at his lips, but he suppressed it.

“Well, I never!” Clara Jennings stated indignantly once Christa had gone. She flounced around in her chair, staring at Jeremy. “Colonel, I demand that you say something to your wife about this matter!”

He bowed deeply to her, doffing his hat. “Indeed, Mrs. Jennings, I do intend to speak with my wife!”

“Hmmph!” Mrs. Jennings said, somewhat mollified.

“I intend to tell her that I found her speech most touching and admirable. Nathaniel, you see, is my friend too. He grew up in the North, but I want to reassure him now that most northerners do not share your sentiments—and that we are heartily glad that we fought and won a war for the Union and emancipation.”

He bowed again and turned to leave the gathering. As he walked away, he could hear Clara Jennings again.

“Well, I never! Never, never! Paul, I—”

“Shut up, Clara,” her husband warned her.

Jeremy followed the trail that led down to the river, certain that Nathaniel would come to his “thinking log,” a place he sought when his emotions were in an uproar. When he reached the break in the trees before the river, he paused.

Nathaniel was indeed there, as was Christa. They faced one another across the log. Christa was speaking.

“I hope you won’t let her words hurt you, Nathaniel. She’s a dreadful woman.”

“Yes, ma’am, Mrs. McCauley. She is that.”

“She’s too stupid to know what she’s saying—”

“It’s the way a lot of folks feel, Mrs. McCauley.”

“Not good folks, Nathaniel.”

“I thank you for what you did, Mrs. McCauley,” he told her, standing very straight and tall. “I heard what you said when I left, and I appreciate it. But there’s no cause for you to go getting in trouble with those other army wives, ma’am. I’ve been called ‘dirty nigger’ half my life. It’s not something you have to suffer over.”

“It’s not something that’s right, either,” Christa said. “Just because it’s something that has happened.”

Nathaniel grinned broadly. “Maybe southern folk aren’t so bad.”

Jeremy watched as Christa lowered her head, then raised her eyes back to Nathaniel. She sighed. “Nathaniel, I don’t know how to judge this world anymore. Far more than half the southern boys who went to war never owned a slave in all their lives. Some who owned them were very decent to them.” She hesitated. “There were cruel men and women too. Men who overworked their people. Who shackled them. Who beat them. I can’t—I can’t defend slavery.”

Nathaniel walked toward her. He reached for her hand. It was very small and pale against the ebony coloring of his own. “You do know, Mrs. McCauley, that
the black doesn’t come off like dirt. That means a lot to me.”

She smiled at him. “However it came about, Nathaniel, slavery is over. We just have to convince some people that we’re all human.”

Nathaniel’s handsome jaw twisted. “It’s a nice thought, Mrs. McCauley. But a hundred years from now, we’ll still be trying to convince some people of that fact. You shouldn’t worry about those people who call us dirty niggers, Mrs. McCauley. We have our ways of getting back.”

“Oh?”

“We just call them ‘white trash.’ And that’s what they are. That’s what they are. I—” He broke off. Jeremy realized that Nathaniel had seen him standing on the trail watching them.

Nathaniel frowned, about to tell Christa that Jeremy was there.

Jeremy shook his head, warning Nathaniel that he didn’t want Christa to know that he had been there. Nathaniel nodded, and Jeremy turned and walked away.

Sixteen

Jeremy couldn’t return to the tea-time gathering on the lawn. Their guests would just have to get along without his or Christa’s being present.

He had decided to double the guard—he was certain that Robert Black Paw would not return with any good reports about the smoke seen on the trail.

If Major Jennings was right, Buffalo Run was in a rage again, and though Jeremy’s troops hadn’t been guilty of any crimes against the Indians, it wouldn’t matter. Just like some whites felt about Indians, Indians felt the same way about whites.

Jeremy could never guarantee that there wouldn’t be a raid or attack against them. Not when they were in Comanche territory. He felt confident that his troops were capable of fighting the enemy, but he didn’t want any surprises. Especially not now. There were far too many women present.

If Clara Jennings felt squeamish about a black man cutting her bread, just what would she feel about a red man whisking her away?

Actually, it might be total justice, Jeremy thought, a grin teasing his lips. He could just imagine the red-faced, corpulent Mrs. Jennings reduced to being a slave
for some demanding Comanche squaw. The situation did have its humorous side.

But only in the imagination, Jeremy reminded himself somberly. The Comanche tortured their captives sometimes too. He knew that a number of officers in the West kept ammunition set aside to kill their own wives and children before letting them fall captive to the Indians.

A shudder ripped through him.

What of Christa?

No. He could never put a bullet through her heart. Christa was young and strong and beautiful. If the Indians took her, they might well make a slave of her, but the hope for freedom would always be there. She was a fighter. He would not take the chance for life away from her.

Besides, Christa’s sentiments were just about the opposite from Clara Jennings’s. To Christa’s way of seeing things, she’d already bedded a Yankee. What worse could happen to her?

He paused in the trees for a moment, straightening his shoulders, stiffening his spine. God Almighty, what had he done to them both? Why in hell had he ever dragged her away from her precious Cameron Hall, her hallowed Virginia? How in hell had he ever made the stupid, stupid move of falling so deeply in love with her?

“Colonel!”

He gazed down the roadway as he emerged from the trail. Robert Black Paw was making his way toward him on his paint pony.

He saluted in return. “Robert. Did you look into the smoke that Jennings saw?”

Robert nodded gravely, throwing his leg over the horn of his saddle and slipping lithely to the ground. “It was a Comanche raid on a single wagon. Ranchers, I think, from near the Pembroke homestead. There
were two men on the ground, both dead. The wagon was lit—that was the source of the smoke and the fire.”

“Any sign of the Comanche?”

Robert shook his head. “I think it was a quick hit-and-run raid. In retaliation for the village that Captain Miller struck last week.”

“Damn Miller!” Jeremy muttered.

“Yes, sir. Damn Miller. That kind of thing will start up some heavy wars with Buffalo Run. You know him, sir.”

“Yes, I know him.”

“The funny thing is, Colonel, I think that half-breed Comanche actually likes you. I think he believes you want to leave him and his people in peace. But if men like Miller keep on killing old men, women, and children, there isn’t going to be anything that anyone will be able to do.”

Jeremy clenched his fingers into fists at his sides. Robert was right. What the hell could he expect out of the Comanche when white men brutalized their people daily? Not that they weren’t a warlike tribe—they were. But Buffalo Run seemed to know a hell of a lot more about making a treaty—and keeping his word—than the United States government.

“Damn Miller!” he repeated furiously.

Robert remained silent—there was nothing either of them could say on the matter. “All right,” Jeremy said. “We’ll have to take greater care. No small hunting parties heading out. I’ll speak to the men, all of them. I think I’ll ride out to the site myself.” He started to walk away, then paused. “Keep a careful eye on my wife until I return.”