Captive (44 page)

“There is speculation among the whites that you wish to see their strength and learn what you can about how and where they are keeping Wildcat, Philip, Blue Snake, and the others prisoner.”

Coa Hadjo and Osceola exchanged glances. Coa Hadjo shrugged. “Men always talk to gain new information.”

James grinned. “That is true.”

“I seek no battle, Running Bear. That I swear to you by the Great Spirit.”

“I have never doubted Osceola’s word.”

Osceola stood. He seemed to tremble as he did so, and his color was ashen. James and the others stood quickly as well. “Thank you for being among us,” Osceola told him briefly.

“I am glad to be with a friend,” James replied, but as he watched the war chief, he was worried. Osceola had looked well during the day; he looked as if he was ill again by night.

He left them, and the others moved away, except for Coa Hadjo, a power in his own right, who watched James.

“In truth, what do you think of these new talks, Running Bear?” Coa Hadjo demanded.

James sighed. “I think that men have talked and talked. And that most of the talk has been lies. From both sides,” he added sadly.

“What truth is there except that which each man sees in his own heart?” Coa Hadjo asked him.

“Osceola is gravely ill,” James said flatly.

“And very, very tired,” Coa Hadjo added.

“And what does that mean?” James asked him.

“It means he tires of war,” Coa Hadjo said. “Good night, Running Bear. I have never feared for my own safety. I am glad to speak for myself, and for Osceola. But I am glad that you will be with us as well.”

James nodded in acknowledgment. Coa Hadjo went his own way. James stared at the fire, then went to find the shelter he had been provided there in the barrens. It was a simple platform raised above the ground a few feet, covered with cabbage palm. The air was cool circulating in and around it. Being elevated, it protected the inhabitants from the creatures that preyed upon the ground at night.

He lay down, weary. He closed his eyes. And all that he could think was that she was gone. He had slept so well beside her. He had felt her warmth, her fire, her heat. Now there was cold and loneliness. He wanted to cry out in the night. He wanted to close his eyes, sleep and dream.

And in his dream there would be no war, nothing savage, and nothing civilized, and nothing red or white. The sky would be alight with a brilliant red dawn, and she would be laughing, running to him, and when he captured her, and spun her beneath the sun, he would never need to let her go again….

He tossed, cold, stiff, uncomfortable.

It was a dream.

Just a dream. And in this wretched world it could never come true.

There was no way to hide the fact that Teela Warren was with the McKenzies, in their home. Teela was very anxious to set the papers straight about her capture and so-called kidnapping. At Jarrett’s suggestion, certain of the reporters from Florida and the nation who had swept
down upon St. Augustine to cover the Indian wars were invited to the house. Both Tara and Jarrett were with her when the five invited interviewed her.

She was amazingly composed and relaxed, relating her story from the moment she had left Fort Deliverance to the time of her capture.

“That anyone has accused James McKenzie of any evil or treachery in this entire affair is pathetic and laughable,” she informed them. “He saved my life.”

Thomason, of a Washington paper, demanded, “But what of your captivity, Miss Warren? You were seized by a savage and held against your will—”

“My brother-in-law is not a savage!” Tara interrupted, as fierce as a terrier.

“I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie,” Thomason said hastily, stroking his white-bearded chin. “What I meant is, there was a certain time in which you were kept in the bush. Was no danger, no offense forced upon you? What will your fiance’ think and feel? Have you spoken with Lieutenant Harrison since your ordeal?”

“John Harrison and James McKenzie are the best of friends. I know that John will be grateful, as will anyone who is pleased to see me still alive, that James came to my rescue. Sir, I cannot even condemn Otter, the chief who so craved my death, because his own family was cruelly murdered in this war.”

“Preposterous!” the heavily jowled fellow from St. Augustine muttered.

Teela rose. “Sir, if you find the truth preposterous, there is nothing else I have to say. Now, if you will all forgive me …”

She didn’t care if they did or didn’t. She was suddenly exhausted. She turned and headed for the stairs. She was incredibly grateful for Jarrett McKenzie’s stern admonition that the men were now to leave his residence.

In her room, she stretched out on the bed. She could hear the reporters talking among themselves outside the house, nearly below her window.

“It’s disgusting! A decent woman would be horrified
by all that has occurred—” one man began. Evans, from an Atlanta paper.

“Ah, but through history they tend to fall under the influence of their captors,” another man asserted.

“Gentlemen!” It was Thomason speaking. “You’re forgetting that the man involved is a McKenzie, half white, brother to one of the most influential man in the state. Both have been highly respected for years; they have both acted as negotiators often enough in this sad fracas.”

“What, are you an injun lover, too, Thomason?” Teela was sure it was that vile Evans speaking again.

“There is right and wrong, my friends. And I have seen right and wrong on both sides of this affair. You tell me, sir, would it be better if young Miss Warren was today a dead woman yet a
decent
corpse? Her life was saved, quite simply. That is the story, the way I will print it.”

“Ah, but it isn’t what Warren believes. The half-breed McKenzie is one powerful buck, so rumor has it. Warren believes his daughter feels a fascination for this man. Perhaps he slaughtered the troops, yet she gave him promises of wicked pleasure if he should spare her!” Evans theorized. He would have spoken again when Teela heard something like a choking sound. And it was Jarrett’s voice she heard next.

“May I suggest, sir, that if you wish to discuss
my brother
in such slanderous terms, you do so far from my home. Otherwise, I might be the one to give you some very savage behavior to condemn within your text!”

“Mr. McKenzie, you’re hurting me—” Evans gasped out.

“Indeed. Get off my property before I kill you!”

Teela heard a door slam. A scurrying. And then … blessed quiet. She rolled over, heartsick, wondering how she could feel so exhausted when she had slept so deeply the night before.

There was a tapping on her door. She sat up, trying to straighten the damage she had done to her pinned hair by lying upon it. “Come in!”

It was Tara with a tea tray in her hands. She set it on
the morning table by the window. “You did very well,” Tara assured her.

Teela sighed. “I heard them talking afterward. It didn’t really matter what I said. They all have their preconceived notions.”

“No, you spoke very well.” She paused reflectively, pouring the tea. “You were very good. Jarrett let his temper get the best of him. No matter, he’s been accused of everything in the world already. Come over here now. You must eat something.”

“Oh, Tara, thank you so much, but I’m just not hungry.”

Tara sighed, looking at her in perplexity. “Teela, you are actually losing weight.”

“Am I?”

“You must come eat.”

“But—”

“Oh, you little fool!” Tara cried at last in exasperation. “Don’t you want a healthy child?”

Teela felt a sudden surge of energy and bounded to her feet, staring at Tara. “What?”

“The most casual of observers will soon notice your condition, and yet you have not considered the possibility yourself!”

She had not. Oh, God. Sweet Jesus, she had not.

Why not?

She had been so busy. Men had been dying. She had patched them up. She had lain awake nights at Fort Deliverance, praying that she would not get word that James McKenzie,
Running Bear,
was dead. Praying that she would not find him maimed and dying on the operating table. And then …

“Teela?” she dimly heard Tara’s cry.

But that was all. She was spared any more of the initial shock and trauma of the revelation.

The room misted to shades of red and gray.

And she saw no more.

A strange period of peace and inactivity settled over Osceola and his warriors as the time passed before the
agreed-upon date for the parley. James worried more and more about Osceola. The chief had days when he looked fit and well, and days when chills and fever seized him. He liked to talk during those periods about his boyhood, about the life he had spent, always fighting, so it had seemed.

“They think that I have waged a war against their people,” Osceola told him. “The whites—they think that I have wished to kill them all, as they have wished to rid the land of us. They are wrong. I fought and I killed just so that we could have our piece of this great land. I know what the white newspapers tell people. I know that there are those in the great cities who consider this a battle against a people they would rip from their heartland, their blood land. And there are those who say the whites have more right to this peninsula than we do, that we
Seminoles
are new here. Yes, I am Creek, yes, many of my brothers are what
they
call Creek. But we have come here now in waves for well over a hundred years. We have shed our blood here; we have fed the land here with it. I have always fought only to stay, only for our right to the land we have bled upon for our heritage. There are many among your father’s people I have called friend. Young John Graham, your brother, others in the military. If only they could make a treaty and keep it!”

James stared at the fire without replying. But Osceola smiled. “Many of them have said that I cannot keep a treaty. That I make promises, come for the white food and supplies, and then run again. Sometimes I have done so. I could not watch my children starve.”

James looked at him. “I am uneasy about this parley to come.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel it. Like we feel the footsteps of others when they are near. Like a scent on the wind. I fear for you.”

Osceola was quiet for several long seconds. “The parley will take place. I am resigned.”

*  *  *

The date came. Osceola, Coa Hadjo, many of the others, were dressed in their finery for the talks that would take place.

The army was coming to the Indians. In a copse not far from Fort Peyton, Osceola and his warriors raised a huge white flag above their camp.

James had dressed neither to suit his Indian heritage nor his white, but chose his usual dark breeches, cotton shirt, strip of red fabric around his head to keep his hair from his eyes.

He was on his way to find Osceola when he heard the cry of a bird.

One he had not expected. He answered in kind.

Jarrett stepped from the foliage but beckoned to him. “Follow me out some. The soldiers are coming here even as we speak.”

James quickly did as his brother bade him. He almost felt as if they were boys again, running wildly through the forests and marshes, learning, laughing. Jarrett had taught him to hunt, to fish. Through their mothers they had differed. Through their love of their land, they had forged a bond deeper than blood.

They were older now. Jarrett was gasping somewhat as he paused next to an old oak. “General Hernandez left St. Augustine early this morning for the parley. Jesup will not be with him; he is so nervous that he awaits the results at Fort Peyton. Altogether Hernandez will have a force of nearly two hundred and fifty well-armed men. James, this is not to be a talk. Jesup believes that Osceola has betrayed him again and again. He plans to capture him under a flag of truce. You shouldn’t be here. Teela has given a statement to the newspapers—”

“Teela is still in the territory?”

“She is safe, she lives with us, and Harrington has been the best of friends, escorting her about town so that they can be seen together. There is more about Teela that I must tell you, but pay heed to me about this first. Most men believe that you are the noble if
half-savage negotiator you have been throughout the conflict, but there are those still eager to hang anyone associated with any attacks on whites.”

“Do they plan on hanging Osceola?” James asked.

“No, there is no such talk. The Indians are to be escorted to Fort Marion. You know, the old Castillo de San Marcos.” Even as Jarrett spoke, James became alarmingly aware of motion on the trails near them. He dragged Jarrett down low beside him as they watched the mounted men of Hernandez’s force riding by on the trail nearest them.

“Jarrett, I’ve got to go back.”

“You’ll be imprisoned with the others by association.”

“Perhaps. And perhaps I will speak for myself and clear my name before your military friends. Jarrett, all I know is that I must be with Osceola now. He—”

“He what?”

“I think he’s dying. I have to go. If I need you, I swear, I will send for you. If not, brother, I have to pave my own way in this world. You must get out of here before you are condemned as a traitor for coming to me!”

“Wait! I have to tell you—”

The more horses that rode by, the more James worried. For his brother now, not himself. He turned, ready to run back the way he had come. “Go!” he commanded his brother, and disappeared back into the bush himself.

He ran harder than he had come. Too late. He slipped through the back of the copse even as the first of the military men entered the Indian camp with its high-flying white flag. There was nothing that he could do.

He stood back in uneasy silence, watching as the white soldiers came around them. General Hernandez was at the head of the delegation. As Jarrett had told him, General Jesup was not among the soldiers. James studied the uniforms of the men around Jesup. There were Florida mounted men with him, dragoons on foot.

Scents on the wind …

He suddenly knew that they were completely surrounded
by white military, just as his brother had warned. There was nothing that he could say or do; any cry of alarm on his part now would bring all the white guns blazing against them before the Indians had a chance to raise their own weapons. He saw that Osceola seemed to be choking. He went forward with Coa Hadjo at his side. General Hernandez stepped forward with his black interpreter at his side. He greeted Osceola and Coa Hadjo with all courtesy, then said, “I thought there would be more of your number among you. Where are Alligator, Micanopy, Jumper, and Cloud?”