Ride the Panther (16 page)

“You still don’t understand the way things are, do you?” Booth said. “You show up here with papers and a ranger’s star and a captain’s rank and you think you know so much.” The peace officer scoffed and kicked a dirt clod against the stone wall of the jail. A small spider a shade darker than the sandstone scurried up the wall out of harm’s way and proceeded to weave its silken web in the corner of the roof above the washstand. Jesse turned to face the parson marshal. The newly appointed ranger had been caught off guard by his old friend’s vituperative behavior. Perhaps, Jesse thought, he sees me as a threat to his authority. Booth had been the marshal in Chahta Creek for more than fifteen years. He was a good man and proud.

Booth wandered back toward the jail, grumbling with every step about how it would take more than a slip of paper to bind together these divided people. Jesse made no move to call him back. The marshal would have to come to terms with the situation all by his lonesome. Nothing Jesse could say or do would roll back the clock for Booth or add the glow of youth to his pulpit. Jesse wondered if the peace officer felt a sense of failure over the deteriorating situation in the territory. His self-recrimination was totally unwarranted. Jesse doubted he could do any better. But he had come to try, and by heaven, he would.

Captain Jesse McQueen was no stranger to the owner of the Choctaw House. Henri Medicine Fox had been friends with the McQueen family for many years, and back when Jesse was barely four, Chief Henri had bounced the boy on his knee and told him the creation stories of the Choctaw people. Henri’s father had fought alongside Kit McQueen at Horseshoe Bend, where the Choctaw and Cherokee peoples had defeated their mortal enemy, the Creeks. So it seemed odd to Jesse that the man he considered more an uncle than a friend should greet him with such cool reserve. Henri was a square-jawed, plain-spoken man whose once thick solid frame was getting a little soft in the middle. Henri wore his close-cropped brown hair well-oiled and parted in the middle. A mixed-breed, Henri in many ways reflected the French-Creole who had fathered him. The Creole had never formally given Henri his name or registered him in a church. It didn’t matter to Henri. The name Medicine Fox suited him fine.

The lobby of the hotel was empty except for a pair of leather-backed chairs. Wildflowers filled a vase by the door. The arrangement had to be the work of Henri’s second wife, Ellie. The comely young woman had filled the void in the proprietor’s life after the death of Henri’s first wife. She loved John and Keila as if they were her own.

“Afternoon, Jesse. I wondered when you’d get around to me,” Henri said, looking up from behind the clerk’s desk. Pince-nez spectacles perched on the tip of his nose forced him to peer over the wire rims. He wore a four-button pullover shirt with a gold stud button at the collar. A black sleeve garter circled his left arm. His shirt was tucked into high-waisted woolen trousers. He looked much the same as when Jesse had last seen the man almost two years ago, yet walking through the sunlit foyer Jesse sensed that there were indeed changes beneath the familiar surface of his surroundings.

“Ellie always had a way of keeping this the tidiest room in town,” Jesse said.

“I’ve always suspected Ellie was born with a duster in one hand and a broom in the other,” Henri replied, and nervously smiled.

“I’ve decided to put up at the hotel, seeing as I’ll be around for a while.”

“Oh? You don’t want to stay out at your grandmother’s place? Raven will be powerful hurt. You might give it some thought.”

“I
have
given it some thought, Henri,” Jesse matter-of-factly told him. “Any room will do.”

Henri lowered his eyes. He stared at the floor beneath his feet. There was nothing interesting to see, but it beat locking eyes with McQueen. A fly landed on the counter and explored the leather cover of the ledger close at hand.

“We can’t take you, Jesse. Me and Ellie ain’t got a room to spare.”

Jesse turned and his gaze swept across a lobby devoid of any traffic whatsoever. If the two-story hotel was indeed teeming with guests, they must be all out in the street or holed up in their rooms. The lobby was a comfortable place to sit and exchange news. And as Henri and his family occupied the downstairs rooms toward the rear of the building, Ellie could be counted on to set out a pot of coffee and a plate of molasses cakes for the guests. When the high-backed chairs were taken, a couple of wooden bench seats lined two walls, with an end table by each bench. No, in the heat of the day, this was the place to be.

“How can they all be taken, Henri? Who’s in town?”

“We’re full up,” the man repeated with a note of anger in his voice.

Jesse grabbed the ledger. Henri tried to stop him, but McQueen batted his hand away and opened the book to its most current page. According to the signatures in the ledger, of the eight rooms upstairs, only three were currently occupied; one by a drummer and the other two by purchasing agents representing the Confederate States of America who were having a difficult time convincing the farmers in the area to accept Richmond-issued currency for produce and cotton. That left five rooms empty.

“I do not want any trouble,” Henri said. “I have worked too hard for all this just to see the Choctaw House wind up a pile of ashes.” Henri reached over and closed the ledger. “I have nothing for you.”

“No,” Jesse said. “I reckon you don’t.” He looked toward the doorway behind the clerk’s station. The door was ajar and anyone in the sitting room could overhear the conversation. Jesse had the distinct impression Ellie waited, quiet and listening, just inside the room. “Give Ellie my best,” Jesse said, loud enough to carry to the room beyond. His footsteps rapped upon the wood floor as he crossed the lobby and vanished outside. When McQueen was safely out of sight, Henri sighed and turned toward the doorway as Ellie appeared and hurried to his side. She was a narrow-waisted, slim, diminutive woman whose features were sharp to the point of almost being severe. Her hair was hidden beneath a sun bonnet whose brim shaded already darkly tanned skin. A black mole grew above one cheekbone, and when she spoke, her words seemed punctuated by several unnecessary breaths. Today her expression reflected only tension and fear as she stepped into her husband’s sheltering embrace.

Another figure filled the doorway and this was far more menacing. It was a big man, clothed in the saffron hood and cloak of the Knights of the Golden Circle. The embroidered serpent in the center of the hood seemed to glisten with a life of its own. Hud Pardee kept his head lowered so that his eye patch would not be visible through the slit in the hood. The coarse heavy fabric served to muffle his voice. Pardee hadn’t liked the idea of paying a call by daylight, but Cap had insisted, and the old bastard had certainly figured right about Jesse attempting to room at the hotel. Pardee kept his Navy Colt pointed at the couple.

“You did well,” he said. “I knew you could be a sensible man if you wanted to. Now stay that way and your brats won’t grow up orphans. Cross us and they might not grow up at all.”

Henri’s expression changed. Fury like a prairie fire swept over him. His features grew mottled. Ellie was pale and near tears. Henri’s voice trembled as he spoke. “You lay a hand on my children and I’ll—”

“—die choking in your own blood. Her, too.” The Colt swerved toward Ellie. “Stick to your hotel, Mr. Medicine Fox. Don’t be clever. I’ll shuck these robes and leave by the back door. If I think you’re watching me, I’ll come back and see you both planted in the boneyard.” Hud Pardee didn’t wait for a reply, but turned and left. He could tell by their faces they would do as he said.

Pacer Wolf McQueen emerged from Buffalo Creek and, framed by a ring of bright water, he sprayed the air with a fine mist of droplets shaken from his long red hair. The sun in decline flirted with the long ridge of hills to the west. Soon the shadows would reach out and engulf like a silent tide the secluded valley that Raven and Kit McQueen had settled thirty years ago.

Raven sat next to Lorelei, a bucket between them. The two women were sorting snap beans, tossing aside the few that weren’t fit for the pot and breaking the other pods in half and sometimes thirds. At the moment, Lorelei was distracted in her labors. The front porch of the farmhouse provided an unobstructed view of the creek bank and the south road cutting through the grasslands. Raven gave the girl a sideward glance and noted that Lorelei was wholly preoccupied with watching the tall rangy physique of Pacer Wolf as he cooled off from a hard day of rebuilding the smokehouse. He’d also begun the arduous task of resupplying the woodpile with fresh-cut timber from a deadfall he had found back in the hills. During the afternoon the air had rung with the sound of his ax as he split and stacked the hard gray brown logs. It had been a demanding task beneath an unforgiving sun in a cloudless sky. When Pacer had reached his limit, he stripped off his shirt, chucked aside his gunbelt, kicked off his boots and socks, took off for the creek wearing only his buckskin breeches for modesty’s sake. Lorelei appeared unable to take her eyes off Pacer. Her hands resumed working but her focus was on Raven’s youngest grandson. She dropped the snap beans aside without looking and continued to miss the bucket. Raven chuckled softly, and at that, the girl realized what she was doing and blushed. She bent over and gathered a handful of green beans from the floor and dropped them into the bucket.

“He works hard, but the place is too much for one man to tend,” Raven said. “I’ll find him some help.”

“That’s for him to say,” Lorelei replied. She looked at the half-breed medicine woman seated beside her. They had been together for more than a week and yet there was so little she knew about the old woman. Lorelei had learned by the ripened age of fifteen it was dangerous to reveal too much about oneself.

“Where’s your husband?” Lorelei asked. Perhaps the question had caught Raven off guard or merely in a reflective mood.

“He is buried, back in the hills, in a private, quiet spot,” she said, watching her grandson stroll up from the riverbank and seeing her husband reflected in Pacer Wolf. Oh, physically, it was Jesse who favored Kit McQueen, a man of average height who cast a giant shadow. But Pacer’s spirit had been one with his grandfather’s. The two were cut from the same cloth, as unpredictable as a summer cloudburst, while Jesse was solid and as indomitable as the mountains.

“It was the time of the muddy-face moon when the snows have melted and new grass sprouts from the soil and out of the tired branches new buds bloom.” Raven’s voice took on a distant quality; her eyes seemed focused on the past, reliving the event.

“Who killed him?” Lorelei asked.

“Killed?” Raven repeated, puzzled by the girl’s question.

“Pacer told me he comes from a line of warriors…”

Raven smiled, remembering Kit’s tales of his father’s exploits, fighting the British back in ’76. Kit, too, had crossed swords with the British as well as Creek warriors and bloodthirsty pirates. And Ben, her son, had soldiered with the Texas Rangers during the Mexican War. The McQueen men did have a penchant for riding to the sound of gunfire. The medicine woman sighed.

“Yes, the McQueens are warriors. And like all true men of battle, they have stared into the red face of death and looked upon the horrible wasteland of war. Such men long for peace. They fight because they must, because good men and women must always stand against that which is wrong…or evil.” Raven studied the girl and wondered if Lorelei was understanding any of this. The girl’s desire for Pacer was certainly clear enough. She made no attempt to hide her interest. But whether she was capable of deeper introspection was anyone’s guess.

“Kit woke early one morning, kissed me for the last time, took his rifle and rode off into the Kiamichis. He never came home. Ben and I rode out to look for him. We found him a few miles to the north. He was sitting against a shagbark hickory, his rifle across his knees, a look of such happiness on his face.” A tear formed in the corner of Raven’s eye and spilled down her cheek. She did not bother to wipe it away. The hurt, the sense of loss, the pain, were all honest emotions. The death of Kit McQueen, though a wound that would never heal, was something she had learned to live with. The peace of his passing reassured her. She would never forget the expression on his face, as if at the last moment he had looked into the heart of the great mystery and been filled with awe and wonder and unbearable joy.

“The only men I ever known gone under have died hard. Mean and hard, and they deserved every lick,” Lorelei said.

Hecuba waddled in front of the porch and began to complain vigorously with a series of squawks that Raven immediately recognized as a warning. How the bird sensed the horseman in the distance defied explanation. Raven shielded her eyes, searched the road, and spied the rider coming up the valley at a gallop. Pacer saw their visitor at the same instant and hurried over to the porch and retrieved the Spencer carbine he’d leaned against a pole supporting the roof overhang. Hecuba flapped her wings and craned her neck forward until the horseman became recognizable as Gip Whitfield. At a word from Raven the goose reluctantly gave ground and fell silent. Ten minutes later Whitfield rode into the front yard. His boyish face was flushed, his hair windblown from his detour out to McQueen’s valley. Somewhere along the trail he’d lost his hat. The former Confederate cavalryman was no stranger to the place or to Pacer, who had always figured a man’s loyalty was his own affair. He neither forgave or condemned the deserter.

“I hope Libby hasn’t taken ill again,” Raven said. She could see no reason for Whitfield’s visit save his wife’s recurring ailments.

“She’s fine, Raven,” Gip replied. He walked his lathered mount closer to the porch. Raven kept a clay jug of water and a wood dipper suspended from the ceiling at the corner of the porch. He gulped down a dipper full and poured another over his head. Then with water streaming down his face, he turned toward the others.

“Jesse’s back. I was in town, looking to buy Libby a hat for her birthday, and Jesse came riding in with Cap Featherstone.” Gip glanced at Pacer, who struggled to remain impassive. Raven was standing. Her cheeks had paled. “Al Teel told me your brother’s not only a Union captain, he’s been appointed a territorial ranger. Ain’t no telling what he aims to do. Some figure he’s after the Knights, others say he plans to bring the Unionists together and lead ’em north.” Gip mopped his brow with a kerchief. “Lord knows where that leaves me. Libby’ll want to head north. I might walk into a Yankee prison if I went along.” He scratched the back of his neck and shifted uneasily in the saddle. “Tellico boys are in jail again, but what else is new with them two?”