Sword of Vengeance (14 page)

Kate remembered how her son, no longer able to stand idly by while all the world was coming to an end around him, had strode purposefully to the edge of the grave. All eyes turned to watch him. Even the minister ceased his prayers and watched with curiosity, his solemn visage momentarily relaxed. Kit drew the knife from his belt, the blade he had crafted as a boy of twelve. Despite the near catastrophe, his father had been so proud. Kit had cherished that crudely honed weapon.

In her mind’s eye Kate watched her son kneel on the mounded dirt and gently, reverently, place the childhood blade upon the wooden coffin, like a Viking prince paying final homage to his liege and lord, a warrior’s weapon for a warrior king.

Rest in peace, my darling Danny, one day we’ll be together again.

“Mother?”

The sound of Kit’s voice brought her back to reality. He held up the blade and inspected the edge, then hefted the weapon to see if he had altered its balance. He had weighted the hilt to offset the weapon’s broad blade. Despite its size, the knife could be thrown with accuracy if need be. Kit returned the blade to the sheath at his waist. He pulled on his linsey-woolsey shirt. She had caught him off guard, yet he was glad she had come. Putting off a confrontation never solved anything or benefited anyone.

Arguments, considerations, all the reasons and decisions he had struggled with hit him at once and left him speechless. Where to begin?

“You’ll be leaving, won’t you?” Kate said, stealing his initiative.

“Yes,” he replied, amazed at her perception.

“Colonel Harrelson is like a thief in the night: When he leaves, life is never the same.”

Kate walked over and embraced her son. She pressed her cheek to his and then kissed him. Kit held her in his arms, knowing this might be the last embrace from her he might ever have. It was a morose thought, but one that had credence. If he had learned nothing else from his experiences, it was that life was full of the unexpected.

His mother opened his hand and placed something round and hard in his palm.

Kit opened his fist and looked down at a coin, and not just any coin, but a British crown sterling, a large silver coin with the initials
G.W.
carved on one side. He knew the story behind the coin: General George Washington himself had presented it to Daniel McQueen in recognition of his courage and service to the newborn nation in the early hours of its struggle for survival. Daniel McQueen, Kit’s father, had hung the coin from a cord of braided leather and worn the makeshift “medal” all his days. Kit had assumed the Washington medal had been buried with his father. He was surprised to find it in the palm of his hand.

“Your father wanted you to have it,” Kate explained. “He left it up to me to choose the day and time. I believe he would want you to have it now, when you are leaving.”

“Then you knew—”

“From the moment Harrelson told me his reason for being here.”

Kate stepped back to drape the braided leather cord over her son’s head. The coin gleamed against his chest. Kit studied the medal (How often he had seen it dangling from around his father’s throat!), then tucked the coin inside his shirt, where it would remain, close to his heart.

“I tried to think of something to say, words to compell you to stay,” Kate confessed. “But the damn medal kept countering every argument.”

She chose a bale of hay near one of the front stalls and sat down. A blur of motion caught her attention up near the rafters, and she looked up to see a barn owl flutter in through a loft window. The owl held a field mouse in one mighty talon. It lighted on a rafter, worked its way over into a shadowy corner where the roof sloped, and began to feast on its kill.

“How did you know I’d be leaving with the colonel? I scarcely worked it out for myself just a while ago.

“You are your father’s son, aren’t you?” Kate smiled. She folded her hands on her apron. “Dan wouldn’t have been able to pass up Harrelson’s offer, either.”

Kit sighed in relief. He had expected a torturous scene. He thought he knew Kate McQueen better than most, but she was still able to surprise him. He walked across the barn, dragged a stool over with his toe, and sat down beside his mother.

“You are full of marvels, lady.” He grinned. “But will you be all right? You and Hannah and the girls?”

“Of course we will. Just because I like having my son around, don’t go thinking we’re helpless.” Kate reached out and touched his hand. “What of you? There is so much hidden behind those eyes of yours. Are you healed?” Kate patted his hand.

“As much as I’ll ever be until I set something right,” Kit replied coldly. Then he brightened. “I have my roots under me now. That’s what my time here has brought me. I’ve walked in my father’s shadow, stood where he stood, and I am better for it. When I first came back, I thought, maybe if I filled his shoes, took his place here, I could make up for past failures.”

“You followed your own path,” Kate said. “That is all your father ever wanted for you. He knew the price of freedom better than most. He treasured his own.”

Kit stood. He looked up as his dun mare poked its head over the gate of its stall and whinnied. Kit ambled over to the animal and scratched its nose. Then, taking an apple from a nearby barrel, he rewarded the dun with its favorite treat. Kit looked around at his mother.

“I never understood why Father felt the way he did about … well … about the country—our country—until I thought I’d never see it again. I don’t rightly figure I can ever say it the way it ought to be said. But during those long days, home and country became like a precious dream, something to live for, to hold on to, and, if need be, to die for.”

Kate studied her son’s features as he spoke what was in his heart. His face seemed to glow as if illuminated from within. There was fire in his highland blood, so what else could he do but burn? She rose from the bale, straightened her apron, and started toward the barn door.

“I have packed your provisions for tomorrow’s journey and have left them on the table in the kitchen.” She smiled bravely. “Sleep some. You’ve a long journey before you, son.”

Kate had done what she had to do, and later she could feel proud of herself and take comfort in that decision. But tonight, she was a mother whose only son was riding off to war. She had a right to her tears.

Daniel Christopher McQueen

Born August 25, 1742

Died December 1, 1800

Beloved Husband and Son of Liberty

H
E COULD HAVE BEEN
buried in a plot in Springtown, but Daniel had loved this spot behind the inn, beneath the shade of oak and walnut, here on the edge of the forest and overlooking a meadow where the livestock grazed and a narrow cornfield where deer were wont to explore in the gray hours of a summer dawn.

Kit had been the one to discover his father on that bitter cold day in December, slumped over an anvil, dead as the iron he lay across, a blacksmith’s hammer in his hand. Daniel McQueen had died at the trade he loved, the trade that gave him peace when he wasn’t risking his life for his country. The memories of that wintry morning were etched in Kit’s mind and came flooding back as he stood by his father’s grave on the morning of departure. There were good memories, too, of a strong and loving father, easygoing, full of humor, compassionate yet, in times of conflict, indomitable and unyielding as the steel he’d forged.

Kit was dressed in a blousy, coffee-colored shirt and black breeches tucked into calf-high boots of supple leather. A worn black belt circled his waist and secured a pair of pistols, butt forward, holstered one above each hip. The “Quakers” had drawn Kit to the mantel in the early hours of the morning, and he had brought them to his room and fallen asleep.

His had been a fitful sleep, full of disturbing images and fragments of dreams, some that caused him alarm, others that brought him a momentary peace. One in particular lingered after he awoke in the silence of his bedroom. He had seen his father, shrouded in the mists of dream time. A big, rugged man in homespun clothes, Daniel opened his shirt and stared down at his chest. He no longer wore the initialed British coin that had become his own private medal of honor.

“So you wear it now, eh, lad?” the dream ghost said. “Then you’ll be needing these.” And with that, Daniel McQueen held out the matched pair of guns he called the “Quakers.”

Standing at his father’s grave now, Kit drew one of the pistols from his belt. It was a fine weapon, with a ten-inch heavy bore and a hexagonal barrel encased in a burled walnut stock. Each gun fired a .50-caliber lead ball, capable of leaving a fist-sized hole in an enemy. Each gun butt was tipped with molded iron. The weapons made excellent war clubs should a man not have time to reload in a close fight.

“Thanks for the guns, Father. And the medal—I’ll take care of them.” Kit gnawed on his lower lip a moment, trying to find the words. He shifted his stance, returned the gun to its holster, and hooked a thumb in his belt. “When I came back, after losing everything to that bastard Tibbs, well, I guess maybe I just felt sorry for myself. I just wanted to be here and let the rest of the world go to hell without me. It’s taken a while, Father. But I reckon I’ve sorted things out. And now this Harrelson’s come, with a job that needs doing. So it’s time I go. I know you understand.” He knelt by the grave and placed his hand upon the grass-covered earth at the base of the headstone. “Goodbye,” he whispered.

Then he stood and started back across the meadow, where wildflowers bloomed in the wind-rustled weeds and dragonflies hovered and darted and soared in acrobatic splendor, their airborne dance of glory on a lazy summer’s morning.

Esther Rose was waiting by the cornfield. She held a bucket filled with half a dozen roasting ears, fresh picked while waiting for Kit to notice her. Sunlight played upon her golden-yellow curls and her cherub’s cheeks, and the breeze ruffled the hem of her sleeping gown, whose white lace trimming was wet from dew. Allowing Kit his privacy at his father’s grave site was almost more than the eight-year-old could manage. The minute Kit started across the meadow, Esther’s control quite simply dissolved, and the girl rushed toward her uncle as fast as her bare pink feet could carry her.

Soon she was in his arms, swept off the ground by her Uncle Kit, who lifted her high above his head, then held her close.

“Good morning, princess.”

“Nothing good about it.” She choked back a sob. “You’re leaving.”

“But I’ll be back.”

“How do I know? Papa’s gone. He hasn’t come back.”

“I’ve never lied to you,” Kit said, lowering her to the ground. He knelt at her side, yanked a pouch from his belt, and emptied its contents into her outstretched hand. Polished silver gleamed as she beheld a delicate flower Kit had crafted from a silver spoon he had melted and poured into a mold.

“A rose for Esther Rose.”

Yes, a rose with its petals in bloom and its serpentine stem tipped with tiny thorns. The little girl’s eyes widened with delight.

“Oh, Kit, it’s so beautiful. I will keep it forever.”

“Then you’ll have me with you forever,” Kit told her. He kissed her cheek. She kissed his nose and laughed. Tears glistened in her gentle eyes.

“But what can I give you?” she asked plaintively.

“You already have,” he said as a lump slid upward into his throat. Sweet Jesus, this wasn’t going to be easy. As he held her close, one of the rose’s silver briars pricked his neck and drew blood. Having her love and her trust was worth the pain.

“Watch me while I saddle the mare,” he said. “C’mon, Lady Esther.”

“Queen Esther,” the girl corrected in a whimsical tone.

“Your wish is my command,” Kit declared. He took her by the hand and started toward the barn.

“Then I command you not to leave,” the little girl replied regally.

Well, I blundered into that one
, Kit admonished himself,
and no way out
. But the child was wise beyond her years, and she knew a lost cause when she saw one. Esther dragged on his hand until he stopped by the corner of the house, where a flock of tame ducks nibbled insects from the shortened grass and a pair of goats idly grazed nearby. They kept the yard cropped around the inn. Esther tugged her uncle to a stop. She motioned for him to squat down where she could whisper a secret in his ear.

“I’ll miss you, Uncle Kit. More than anything in the world. But we mustn’t let the queen hear.” She straightened and continued toward the barn, this time bravely leading the way. After all, she was Queen Esther. And she had a silver rose to prove it.

September 1, 1813

Alabama Territory

T
HE FIRST DAY OF
September might have been the last for Raven O’Keefe. Lithe and tawny, with long hair, black as a pirate’s heart, the only thing that kept the eighteen-year-old Choctaw alive was her quickness. Her Irish blood wouldn’t let her quit, even when all had seemed hopeless.

Unlike the other young Choctaw women taken captive by the Creeks, Raven had not for an instant lost her determination to escape. It was her Irish pride that made her stubborn enough to survive, but credit the blood of her Choctaw mother that taught her to fight back and fight mean, using whatever came to hand.

She crouched behind a shagbark hickory, her muscles tight and poised to strike. She clutched a stout branch.

The gnarled and knotty wood made an excellent club that at close range could be just as effective as the rifled muskets of her pursuers. The Creek warriors who had followed her through the winding, shadow-shrouded hollows of the Appalachians were certainly at close range.

Raven scolded herself for the brief rest she had snatched in the hours of morning. But she had been winded and tired from the moonlit run. After slaking her thirst on the spring water seeping from the hillside, the half-breed woman had been unable to resist resting her weary limbs. She was battered and bruised and had needed the hour’s sleep. A cracking twig had awakened the fugitive. Raven now flattened herself against the hickory and gripped her makeshift club as the near silent pad of moccasins drew closer.