Follow the Sun (41 page)

“Not even in delicate places?” Smiling, she caressed the areas in question. “Not even on the
wautoli
or the
tse-le-ne-eh?
”

He chuckled. “I love it when you talk dirty.” Then he reached over and stroked her breasts. “Not even on the
ganuhdi-i.
”

“Ah. If you say so, then I won’t worry.”

He opened one eye and squinted at her in the summer sun. “But you’re a different sort of Cherokee, so I think we’d better go back inside before you turn into a redskin the painful way.”

Erica kissed him. “Thank you, Wolfman, for understanding.”

“No problem. I love your skin just the way it is.”

She arched one brow. “Freckled?”

“Naked.”

He chased her into the forest and tickled her while she tried to get dressed. When her T-shirt and cut-offs
were finally back in place she attacked in revenge, biting his chest and stomach while he hopped on one foot, pulling a pair of jogging shorts up his legs.

“Butterflies don’t bite,” he protested.

“When they’re going to marry wolves, they have to learn how to bite,” she explained, laughing while she nipped at his shoulder.

He wrestled her to a truce, and they walked the rest of the way home holding hands companionably. They found a note from Echo tacked to the front door. “The lawyer from Gold Ridge wants Erica to call him right away.”

James stretched lazily. “I guess it’s time we put in a telephone.”

Still looking at the note. Erica chuckled. “Now, why do I suspect that cousin Kat has stirred up some sort of trouble?”

“Trouble? Red, if you want trouble, c’m’ere.” He sat down in the rocking chair on the porch and pulled her into his lap.

Erica put her arms around his neck. “I’ve grown to love trouble,” she whispered.

He looked at her gently. “Trouble loves you.” James touched the medallion she wore. “You stood in my soul even before I knew you.”

Erica nodded. “Katherine and Dove knew that you and I belonged together.”

“Katherine knew?”

“A woman who’d go to so much trouble to preserve her family’s heritage must have known that it would be cherished again someday. Maybe she was predicting our future when she wrote about wolves finding their mates.” Erica nodded solemnly. “I bet she and Dove were in spiritual cahoots.”

“Spiritual cahoots?” James repeated in a droll voice. “For a practical woman you’ve sure got some wild ideas.”

“Look, if you can believe in Little People and invisible people who live underground and
Uktenas
and—”

“Then you can believe in prophecies stamped on gold medallions,” James finished.

“Right.” She touched her lips to his.

James leaned back and studied her for a moment. “Why, Eh-lee-ga Tall Wolf,” he whispered happily, “I believe I can tell the future by looking in your eyes. And I love everything I see.”

SOMEDAY … 

K
ATHERINE BLUE SONG
made her way out of the huge Cherokee camp, dimly aware of the glances of the soldiers stationed around the perimeter. She knew they didn’t care if one less scrawny, sick woman survived the march to the Western territory.

She staggered when her worn moccasins let frozen clumps of snow torment feet that were already chapped raw, but the fever kept her from shivering. Physical discomfort faded along with her hope for survival, and she wished for only two things—that she could tell Justis Gallatin how much she loved him, and that she could be buried beside her family in Georgia.

Someday I’ll go back there
. The promise had kept her spirits up for months, but it was folly to believe it now.

Disoriented from sickness and hunger, Katherine wasn’t certain how far she walked along the high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. She dropped her frayed blanket on a snowy knoll, then sank down on it and draped her hair around her shoulders as a
little protection from the cold. The thin linsey-woolsey dress she wore was a far cry from the fine gowns Justis had admired so much.

Tears filled her eyes as she gazed at the broad, ice-filled river. Under a full moon, the ice shimmered like the crystal chandelier her mother had hung in the dining room back home. Too fancy for a farmhouse, her father had said teasingly, but the Blue Songs were prosperous, proud farmers, like many of their Cherokee relatives.

The chandelier hadn’t survived the robbers who attacked after the state militia came.

I’ll buy you a dozen chandeliers
, Justis had told her later, gruffly trying to be kind.

Justis
. Katherine lifted her face to the moon and gazed woozily into its pale light. “I wish he had loved me,” she whispered.

“H
ER NAME IS
Katlanicha Blue Song,” Justis Gallatin told the grim-faced Cherokee matron. “But she goes by the name Katherine, too. I just want to find her. I don’t mean the gal no harm.”

He squatted by the campfire and pushed a wide-brimmed hat back from his face so that the woman could study the honesty in his eyes.

She stared hard into their green depths, then studied his chestnut hair and frowned at his moustache. Finally she scowled at the luxury of his heavy fur coat and warm wool scarf. Without hesitation he pulled the scarf off and handed it to her. She ignored the gift.

“You call her ‘Beloved Woman,’ ” Justis said, speaking slowly so that she’d understand his poor Cherokee. “Everyone on the trail has heard of her. She knows white medicine and white ways.”

“I hear nothing of such a one.” The old woman stirred hominy gruel in a chipped kettle set on the embers at the fire’s edge. “Go away.”

No one was talking. They didn’t trust him, and so they protected Katherine. He understood why they
loved her—Lord, how he understood. If only Katie had believed that no one, Cherokee or white, could love her more than he did.

Justis stood wearily, his shoulders slumped. He was a strong, no-nonsense man, used to hardship and self-denial, but tonight he was nearly beaten by the fear and fatigue that had swallowed him during the months since Katherine’s disappearance. Dully he noticed a lanky young Cherokee man hurrying toward the campfire.

“Mother!” he exclaimed in Cherokee. “The Beloved Woman won’t eat! And she’s gone to walk beside the river alone!”

The woman gasped. “Be quiet!”

Justis ran for his horses. Behind him he heard the woman yelling for help.

K
ATHERINE SWAYED AS
a gust of wind hit her. She leaned forward, placed both hands on the blanket, and braced her arms. Five-foot-long strands of thick black hair floated behind her as she tilted her face up even more toward the high, cold moon. She could feel its silver fingers running over her.

This same moon was shining on Georgia, blessing the graves of the parents and sisters who kept watch over Blue Song land. Katherine’s head swam, and she shook it groggily. Somehow, some way, that land would always belong to her family, even if Justis produced a thousand deeds bearing his title to it.

She cried out sadly. Justis Gallatin had become part of her soul, but he’d never own her, any more than he owned the land in Gold Ridge. Some things had to be won through love, and love alone.

At first she didn’t hear the repetitive thudding of horses’ hooves racing up the slope to her sitting place. When she did, she lurched to her feet. Katherine staggered, then caught her balance and looked wildly toward the sound.

The moon silhouetted the dark figures of a tall rider
and two big horses. The horses were only a few strides away, and they were charging directly toward her. The rider reached out in her direction.

The horse’s shoulder bumped her, and she nearly fell down. When Katherine felt the rider’s hand winding into the neck of her dress, she began to claw at him and struggle.

“Katie, girl, calm down!”

Justis
. Stunned, she stopped fighting, and he pulled her onto the saddle in front of him. His long arm went around her waist like an iron band.

She sagged groggily against him, her hands digging into the wide, furry wall of his coat, her face burrowed in his shoulder. Her feverish mind knew only that hope had come back into the world, and she couldn’t understand the distant sounds of men shouting and horses’ hooves racing in muffled rhythms. Justis held her tighter and clucked to his horses. They went into a smooth, rocking lope following the river-bank north.

Katherine tilted her head back and tried to look at Justis in the moonlit darkness. Love overwhelmed her, until all she could manage to say was a plaintive, “Home?”

He bent his head close to hers, brushed a kiss over her forehead, and whispered, “Someday.”

KAT’S TALE

CHAPTER 1

N
ATHAN
C
HATHAM HAD
lived in places so remote that even the
National Geographic
wouldn’t visit them. He was an adopted member of primitive tribes in various regions of the world, including one in South America whose witch doctor had tattooed his right buttock while the whole village watched gleefully.

A few years later he’d added to his ornaments by getting the top of one ear pierced. The African chieftain had given him a choice—either have the ear pierced or have it cut off. Being a practical man, Nathan had chosen to get it pierced.