Follow the Sun (48 page)

“Katherine, I mean Katlanicha, met Justis and married him, so we know she survived the Trail of Tears,” Kat said softly. “But we figure her family didn’t. We don’t know anything about them.”

Nathan turned around, gazing at the forest. “This timber probably hasn’t been touched since the family left. Some of these trees have got to be nearly two hundred years old.”

“Dove’s will didn’t say anything about any of the Gallatins coming back here to live—not in four generations.”

“Well, for a long time they wouldn’t have been welcome. You know, the only thing that saved this land from being claimed by a white settler was the fact that it was in Justis Gallatin’s name. The law said Cherokees couldn’t own property in the state of Georgia.”

She exhaled heavily. “The world’s a crazy place, Nathan.”

“Better than it used to be, in some ways.” He bounced her a little. “Hang on. I’m going to my truck.”

“I still haven’t figure how I missed it when I drove in.”

“You’ll see.”

He piggybacked her to the end of a narrow trail just wide enough to drive a car along. He walked past her Mustang and down into a deep hollow on the other
side of the trail. There sat a shiny black 4X4 with massive wheels and a black camper hood over the bed.

“Oooh. Lots of chrome. And a gun rack!” Kat noted coyly. “Why, men who drive these kinds of fancy toys are the type who
love
wrestling.”

“Hey, only party girls drive Mustangs with bad paint jobs and rusty mag wheels. Party girls with names like “Beulah Ann’ or “Fanny Mae.’ They cruise into town with their beehive hairdos sprayed stiff and they—
yow
. Get your teeth off my ear!”

She eased her teeth from the gold nugget and chuckled victoriously.

Nathan set her down by the truck and glared at her, though his mouth quirked under the mustache. “Hellion.”

“Thank you.” She blew him a kiss.

The truck had a plush red interior and more gadgets than a gourmet kitchen. He lifted her into the driver’s seat so that she could study the cellular phone, state-of-the-art stereo system, and CB radio.

“Where are the flight controls?”

“I love my truck,” he said solemnly, and went around back to retrieve something from the camper.

When he returned he held a small shovel and a long contraption that looked like a Geiger counter on a microphone stand with a dinner plate at the other end. “Metal detector,” he told her.

“You use that to find gold? I thought those things found metal only near the top of the ground.”

“That’s right.” He clicked a switch and pointed the plate end toward his truck. Inside a panel on the control box a needle bounced crazily.

“You found it, Nathan. It’s a truck all right.”

He eyed her with amusement. “I’m not looking for gold with this, I’m looking for evidence of people. Find where the people were and maybe you’ll find the sites of old mines. Get it, Kitty Kat?”

“Got it.”

“Besides, it’s fun to hunt for things in the dirt.”

She nodded. “I lost a baby tooth once. I went
through a pile of dried elephant manure to get it back. It was worth a quarter from the tooth fairy.”

He slid one arm around her waist and pulled her out of the truck, then held her against him and growled with mock lechery, “I could really go for a woman who plays in pachyderm poop.”

Kat laughed so hard that she didn’t get a chance to protest when he stepped away sooner than she liked. Smiling weakly, she took the shovel and followed him out of the hollow.

Back on top of the ridge he stopped and looked around, squinting his eyes as he thought. “The trees,” he said in a soft, fascinated tone. “Hmmm.”

Kat gazed at the huge hardwoods with a feeling of awe. “This would be a great place to build a house. With the valley in front and a big, flat ridge in back. There’s room for barns and stuff up here, too.”

“Exactly.” Nathan pointed toward the valley. “The trees down there are younger than these. I bet that whole valley used to be farmland. And up here—” He looked around, his gray gaze searching, excited.

“Turn on the metal detector,” Kat urged.

“Easy, gal. There are dozens of places on this land where the Blue Song family might have built. And they most likely didn’t have anything fancy.”

“But this is where the trail comes in from the road,” she pointed out.
Gal
It was a good sign when he said
gal
“Let’s look around.”

He switched the metal detector on and they started across the ridge. Nathan swung the detector in a slow arc as they walked, while Kat hobbled along with the shovel poised for digging.

“How’s your ankle?” he murmured, his eyes on the ground.

“Fine. Everything’s nice and flat up here.”

“Put your shovel at ease, soldier. Save your energy.”

“I
know
we’re going to find something.”

But an hour later they were still crisscrossing the
ridge without success. The plan didn’t seem nearly so easy to Kat now. Her ankle had started to throb.

“Want to call it a day?” Nathan asked.

“Just a few minutes more. Let’s go back toward the front.”

They ambled along. She began using the shovel like a cane. Nathan stopped, frowning. “Time to quit. You need to go soak that foot.”

“Relax, Mommy, I’m fine.” She pointed the shovel toward a little clearing a few yards away. “Let’s go over there.”

“Nope. This is like eating popcorn. At some point you just have to say, I’m stopping for now’ and then—Kat, come on back. Kat, give it up for today.”

“Nope.” She limped toward the clearing.

“I’m not following.”

“Yeah, you are too.”

His voice rose. “
Katlanicha.
”

The way he said her full name made an odd feeling wash over her. She kept walking and called, “Sir, you need to indulge me on this.”

Sir, you need to indulge me on this?

Where had that come from? She’d never said anything so formal-sounding in her whole life.

Well, it worked, at any rate. She turned around and found Nathan striding toward her, looking very exasperated, the metal detector gripped tightly in one hand. He raised the other hand and shook his finger at her.

“
Katie Blue Song, I’ve told you before that—
”

He stopped, frowning deeply. They stared at each other. “Told me what?” Kat asked, while the odd feeling grew more potent inside her. “Katie Blue Song?”

Nathan shook his head. “I don’t know what I was going to say.” He glanced down at the metal detector and his mouth opened in shock.

Kat almost fell down hurrying to cover the yard of leafy ground that separated them. Her heart racing, she looked at the detector’s needle.

It was going wild.

CHAPTER 5

K
AT JABBED THE
shovel into the ground, barely missing the toe of his hiking boot. He jumped.

“Take it easy,” Nathan urged. “We have a lot of work to do. Go slow and steady.”

“I can’t!” She tried to balance on her good foot and push the shovel with her injured one; the pain was too great. She levered all her upper-body weight on the shovel and managed to sink it only a few inches into the soft humus. “Arrrgh.”

Chuckling, Nathan took the shovel away. “You look like a little brown hen trying to scratch a hole in concrete. Take the metal detector and let me dig.”

She grabbed the detector and circled him, watching the needle. Kat was so excited she wasn’t sure which was shaking harder—she or the indicator. “There’s something. And there. And there. More. Yes! Oh, Nathan. Yes! More!”

“Yes, more, oh, Nathan, more,” he muttered. “Women are never satisfied.” Shaking his head in mock disgust, he shoveled leaves and dirt aside.

Kat laughed giddily and ranged farther, yipping each time the needle danced. “What do you think we’ve found?”

“Who knows? Keep track of your area. Try to find the perimeter.”

Whump
. “Ouch! Dammit!”

“What’d you do?”

“Ran into a tree.” Smiling sheepishly, she rubbed her forehead and kept walking.

He choked back laughter. “Kitty Kat, look up every once in a while.”

Now she hurt at both ends, but she hardly noticed. With adrenaline firing her energy, she swung the metal detector and watched the needle carefully.

Fifteen minutes later she made her way back to Nathan. He’d dug a square hole about five feet wide and a foot deep.

“Why aren’t you finding anything?” she asked plaintively.

“Patience, gal, patience.”

Gal
Yes, a very good sign. He’d probably find something any minute. Kat pointed at the surrounding woods. “The needle stops moving when I get past that big oak over there, that maple over there, and the whatever-it-is …”

“Walnut tree.”

“Walnut tree over there.”

“Good. Now all we have to do is dig.”

Kat got down on her knees and vigorously scratched leaves out of the way. If she had to paw through this soil with her bare hands she was going to find evidence that the Blue Songs had lived here.

Nathan laughed. “Cluuuck, cluck-cluck.”

“Quiet. If I’m a hen, you’re a big ol’ gopher.”

“I’ve got another shovel in the back of the truck.”

“Can’t wait that long,” she said, puffing excited little breaths while she dug.

“Kat Woman, you’re not going to find any—”

“I found a piece of metal!”

Nathan knelt beside her and looked. Just a few inches beneath the humus her fingers had scratched something flat and rusty. “Let me,” he told her, easing her hands aside and edging the shovel under the discovery.

Kat clasped her dirty hands to her mouth and watched raptly as Nathan pried a large door hinge out of the ground.

To her it might have been a bar of gold. “A door hinge,” she said in awe. “Oh, Nathan, we found their house!”

“Maybe.” He brushed dirt from the corroded metal. It was spread open, the axis rusted solid. “Made of iron, I think. Handmade by a blacksmith, probably. Looks like it even might have had some fancy scrollwork on it.”

“That’d mean they had something nicer than a cabin?”

“Maybe.”

“Look!” She scratched into the ground and held up something else. “Nails!”

Nathan took them. “Handmade.” He smiled at her with an explorer’s gleam of discovery in his eyes. “That’d be right for the time period, Kat. Early eighteen hundreds. I think we’re on to something.”

Kat whooped with glee, grasped his face between her hands, and planted a smacking kiss on his mouth. Then she drew back, laughing and pleasantly delirious. In a more deliberate spirit he slid both arms around her waist, curved himself over her possessively, and lowered his mouth on hers.

Kat felt his arms bending her, letting her drape backward as he brushed her lips gently, then took full command with a poignantly controlled tenderness that hinted at less patient intentions.

It wasn’t a lingering kiss, but it was a thorough one, covering every inch of her lips, imprinting her with the complete taste and feel of him as he turned it into a series of teasing movements. Over and over he
paused, lifted, almost broke contact, then pressed downward again.

Kat moaned softly and lifted her mouth to seek more. She thought she knew how to kiss, she thought she’d been kissed well before; now she realized that Nathan Chatham had just raised her standard to a level no other man was likely to satisfy.

He lapped his tongue forward just a little and she touched hers to it wetly. With that brief, very intimate ending, like a dramatic coda for a sweet piece of music, he sat back and let go of her.

Kat saw the ruddy desire in his face and the troubled remorse in his half-shut eyes. It confused and depressed her. Why would kissing her make him feel bad?

“I always get excited when I find rusty metal,” he quipped, his voice gruff.

“Sure. Me, too.” Kat gestured awkwardly toward the ground. “Are you going to do that every time I find a nail?”
I’ll dig faster, if that’s the case
.

“Nah. You’re safe.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, as if making sure he hadn’t lost something in the exchange.

Kat bit her lip. “I, uhmmm, I got dirt on your mouth.”