The Yellow Rose (42 page)
Jerusalem was finishing up supper and talking to Brodie, who was telling her a great deal of the fight between Quaid and Lion. “It was some fight. I was across the river, but I seen them knives a-flashin’. It’s a wonder they didn’t both die, Ma.”
Even as he spoke, Jerusalem lifted her head and said, “Listen. There comes Pa and Clinton and Zane, and I’ll reckon they’ll be plenty surprised.”
The three came in and took one look at Brodie, and Clinton let out a wild holler and came forward at once. “Well, you come back, you son of a gun!” All three of them came over and began to shake hands with Brodie.
“I didn’t come alone.”
“Oh, where’s Quaid?”
“He’s in the back room. He got hurt,” Jerusalem said. She walked over and picked up Ethan, who had learned to trust her by now. “This is Ethan Hardin.” She said no more and watched the reaction of the men. It was Clay who moved first and said, “Well, praise the good Lord. You got her, did you?”
“Shore did, Pa. She’s up now gettin’ prettied up. Ain’t that a fine boy?”
“He sure is,” Clay said with admiration. “What do you think, Clinton?”
“Why, he’s nearly as good-lookin’ as I am.”
“You knucklehead!” Zane said. “He’s ten times better lookin’ than you are.”
“No, he ain’t,” Clinton said indignantly. “There ain’t nobody better lookin’ than I am!”
Even as he spoke they heard steps, and they all turned to look at the stairs that led to the second story.
As soon as Moriah had entered her old room and shut the door, she felt very weak. It was all so familiar! She stood for a moment, then walked around, touching the furniture and letting her hand run across the colorful quilt on the bed. It all came back to her how much time she had spent in this room. She finally went over and sat down in the chair, unable to think clearly. Her mother brought hot water up and left to finish the meal. Taking a sponge bath and drying off, Moriah went to the drawer and began to dress. She put on clean underthings and the blue dress that had been her favorite. She noticed that it still fit her. She went to the mirror over the dresser and undid her braids, parted her hair in the middle, then tied it up in a bun. When she slipped on her shoes, they felt tight and uncomfortable after the loose moccasins she had worn for so long. She stood there feeling like a stranger in the clothes, but then she held her head up and said, “I’m home now, and that’s the way it is.” She heard voices down below and picked out the voice of Clinton louder than others and then Clay’s. She was almost afraid to go down, but she knew that Ethan would receive nothing but love from these men. She turned slowly and left the room and walked down the stairs.
“Well, look at that girl, she’s done got plumb prettified!” Clay said. He came forward at once, holding Ethan in the crook of his arm, reached out, squeezed Moriah, and kissed her on the cheek. “Daughter,” he said, “thank the Lord you’re back.”
Moriah reached up and touched his cheeks with tears brimming in her eyes. “It’s good to be home, Pa.”
Clinton came over, his voice loud as always, and hugged her and swung her around the room. “Why, you’re prettier than a speckled pup under a wagon! And that boy child you brung in, I’m gonna take him under my wing and teach him everything I know!”
Zane laughed. “Well, that won’t take long. How are you? You look good, Moriah.”
“Uncle Zane, it’s so good to see you.”
“You say Quaid got sliced up pretty bad?” Clay said.
“He’s better now,” Brodie said. “Moriah sewed him up. He shore saved our bacon, though. Why, I’ve got to tell you about it. You see, we was—”
“Not now. We’re going to sit down and eat this food,” Jerusalem said.
It took some doing to get every one quieted down, but Quaid was able to come to the table holding on to Brodie. All through the meal, Brodie told the story of how they had located Bear Killer’s winter camp and rode in and rescued Moriah and Ethan. He made little of his part in it, and finally said, “It was all Quaid there. If he hadn’t stopped Lion, we’d have been dead meat.”
“That’s right,” Moriah said, looking at Quaid. “I’ll never thank you enough, Quaid, and you, Brodie.”
Quaid tired quickly, and immediately after the meal, he said, “I reckon I’ll lie down.”
“I’ll go with you,” Clinton said. “I want to hear some more about all this.”
“You will not, Clinton,” Jerusalem said. “Quaid needs to rest. More storytelling can wait for another time.”
Clinton grumbled but then contented himself with sitting down cross-legged on the floor, talking to Ethan. The children gathered around him, and Clay said to Moriah, “I feel like a new man just seeing you here, daughter.” He hesitated, then said, “Was it bad?”
“Some of it was very bad.”
Jerusalem was sitting on the other side of her on the couch. She put her arm around her and said, “Well, God brought you back.”
Moriah was quiet, then she said, “I may as well tell you. Bear Killer will come for Ethan. Not for me, but for him. You know how Comanches love their children, and he’s a determined man. He wants Ethan to be chief of his band someday.”
“Don’t you worry about that. He won’t get within ten miles of this place, not the way we’ll watch.”
Moriah took Clay’s hand and held it. He patted it and said, “It’s gonna be fine.”
“I worry about Ethan. They’ll call him names like half-breed.”
Clay’s face darkened. “Why, they’d better not. Not in front of me! I’d cut ’em off at the neck—and so would Clint and Zane and Brodie.” He looked over where Clinton was still sitting on the floor playing some game with the children, and he noticed that Ethan had joined in. “You know, I got a feelin’. That boy is gonna be the best of the Hardins, Moriah. You wait and see.”
Moriah squeezed his hand and sat there, pondering all that had happened since that day she had been captured. After the years of fright and humiliation, she was home again, and she knew that there would be hard times ahead. But she had family now, and that gave her the courage to go on. God had been faithful, and she would continue to trust Him.
B
rodie came into the room he shared with Quaid. Christmastime had come, and the weather was cold, but the sun was bright as it beamed through the window. “You’d better get yourself ready, Quaid. Ma’s been cookin’ on this meal for two days now. I aim to plumb founder myself.”
Quaid leaned over to pull on his boots and made a face as he did so.
“Them cuts still a-hurtin’, ain’t they, Quaid?”
“Not bad.” Quaid straightened up and smiled. “I appreciate you buyin’ me these new clothes, Brodie. My old ones was about past goin’.”
“Well, I got them clothes put away.”
“Put away? What for?”
Brodie grinned and came over and tapped Quaid on the shoulder gently. “Why, them’s gonna be famous clothes, worth a heap of money someday.”
“What are you talkin’ about? They’re nothin’ but bloody old rags.”
“I can see it now,” Brodie said, waving his hand in an eloquent gesture. “For only one dollar you can see the very bloodstained clothes that the great Comanche killer Quaid Shafter wore when he fought the chief of the Comanches, Bloody Hand, to the death!”
“His name wasn’t Bloody Hand. It was Lion, and nobody would pay a dollar to see any bloody old clothes.”
Brodie laughed. “I’m keepin’ ’em anyway. Someday you’ll get to be a crotchety old grandpa, and when they don’t treat you right, you can drag out them bloody old rags and say, ‘I expect a little bit more honor around here. After all, looky here what I done.’”
“You do carry on, Brodie, but I’d never made it back if it wasn’t for you and Moriah.”
“Well, we wouldn’t have rescued Moriah if it wasn’t for you, so we can settle down and brag on each other for the rest of our lives. Now, come on. Let’s go down and see if we can destroy ourselves with Ma’s cookin’.”
The two men went downstairs, and they were greeted on all sides.
Everyone was there, Clay and Jerusalem, of course, with Rachel and Sam, the twins. Mary Aidan peppered everyone with questions. Clinton and Brodie, Zane, Moriah and Ethan, and Julie and Rice Morgan were standing around talking, waiting to sit down and enjoy the meal Jerusalem had labored to make.
Jerusalem said, “Will you children be quiet, and you, too, Clinton! I declare, you get louder every year.”
“I do not,” Clinton argued. “I talk just like I always done.”
“Well, anyway, all of you sit down and try to eat what Moriah, Julie, and me fixed.”
The women had worked for hours doing all the cooking. There was wild turkey, cornbread dressing, sweet potato pie, pecan pie, and fresh bread.
Quaid was quiet during most of the meal. Brodie, who sat beside him, kept his plate filled until finally he protested. “I’m about to bust now, Brodie.”
“Why, you ain’t hardly ate nothin’,” Clinton said loudly. “You got to keep your strength up. That’s what the Bible says.”
Everyone laughed, and Rice Morgan said, “Where does it say that a man ought to eat until he nearly busts?”
“Well, I ain’t exactly sure, Reverend, but it says it somewhere. If it don’t, it ought to.”
“You ought to write a book, Clinton,” Zane grinned. “It’d be called
Things the Bible Don’t Say but Ort To.
”
Quaid felt very strange, and his eyes kept going back to Moriah. She was wearing a simple light blue dress and no jewelry at all. Her hair had been cut and was no longer in pigtails but formed a soft red wreath around her head. He noted that her hands were hardened and scarred by the hard work during her time as a captive. Aside from that and the darkness that the sun had left, she looked much the same as he remembered her. More than once she looked up and caught his eyes and smiled, and he returned the smile.
Clinton piped up, “Quaid, I want to hear that story about how you killed that Indian.”
“Not at the table,” Julie said. “Don’t you have any manners at all, Clinton?”
“I got perfect manners,” Clinton said indignantly. “I’d like to know anyone who ever found any fault with my manners.”
As always, when Clinton made an outlandish statement like this, everyone laughed, and he stared around, saying, “What’s so funny about that?”
“Nothing, Clinton, and we’d all like to hear Quaid tell the story, but not at the table.”
It was a happy time for them to all be back together, and eventually the talk turned to politics. It was Zane who started it by saying, “I’m beginning to doubt if Texas will ever make it into the Union.”
“We’ll get there someday, Zane,” Clay said quickly.
“Well, it don’t look like it.” Zane shook his head with disgust. “I’ve heard talk that we might join up with England.”
“How would we join with them? They’re over the water,” Clinton said. “Who needs them Limeys anyway, or them Frenchmen either.”
The talk went on, but Clay turned and said, “Well, Brodie, you’ve had a nice long vacation chasin’ after Comanches. Now you can come back to work.”
Brodie was sitting next to Moriah, and he had taken Ethan from her and was holding him on his lap, feeding him bites of the pie from the plate in front of him. “No, sir,” he said. “Don’t reckon so.”
Everyone turned to look at Brodie, and Jerusalem said, “What do you mean, son?”
“I’ve decided to join the rangers.”
No one spoke for a moment, and then Clay shook his head. “All they do is get shot and fight Indians and Mexican bandits.”
As soon as Clay mentioned the word “Indians,” Quaid glanced quickly at Moriah, who showed nothing. But she spoke up and said, “Don’t do it, Brodie, not on my account.”
“It’s somethin’ I want to do. I can’t say why.”
“But, Brodie, this place will belong to you one day, or part of it,” Clay said. “That’s what Jerusalem and me have always wanted, to have family here, and have the biggest ranch in Texas.”
“I guess I got a taste of runnin’ free, Pa.” Brodie grinned. “I wish you wouldn’t pester me about it because my mind’s made up.”
Brodie’s news came as a shock and a disappointment, for Jerusalem, especially, had looked forward to the time when Brodie would be back. He had always been a favorite of hers, and she had missed him greatly while he and Quaid were out hunting for Moriah. To hide her disappointment, she turned to Quaid and said, “What will you be doing, Quaid, when you get your strength back?”
“I thought I might go back to Santa Fe.”
“Santa Fe,” Clay said, frowning. “There ain’t no point in goin’ back to Santa Fe.”
“Why, I reckon not,” Clinton said. “There’s plenty of work on this place. I do most of it myself, so I ought to know!”
Clay shot Clinton a disgusted look and shook his head. “I can’t let you go back to Santa Fe, Quaid. With Brodie leavin’, I got to have help.
This ranch is growin’ faster than I can keep up with.”
Quaid glanced over at Moriah, who was looking at him intently. He could not read her expression but said, “Well, that’s a mighty kind offer, Clay, but I’ll have to think on it.”
Afterward, when the women were cleaning up and the men were sitting over at one end of the big room singing with the youngsters, Moriah said, “It’s the best Christmas I could have imagined, Ma.”
“It is with you back.” She shook her head. “I wish Brodie wouldn’t go off and join the rangers. It’s a hard, dangerous life with no reward to it.”
“I think it’s something he just has to do.”
Two days after Christmas, at Jerusalem’s insistence, Moriah climbed into the wagon with Ethan, and the two women drove toward Jordan City. The sun had come out and was bright as they bumped along the rutted road. Jerusalem had waited for Moriah to tell more about her experiences during her captivity, but she had kept silent. Now, however, as they rode along the open spaces, something seemed to break within Moriah, and she began telling her mother about her time with the Comanches. She spoke slowly at first and then more freely, and finally she said, “Ma, when I first was captured, I thought the Indians were nothing but beasts. But after I’d been there awhile, I began to see them as real people. They’re not what I expected.”
“How do you mean, Moriah?”
“Well, when we think of them, it’s always of a warrior comin’ in with a scalping knife to kill us or ambush settlers, but when you’re with them, you find out that they love their children and they laugh a lot. That surprised me, Ma. I didn’t think about Indians laughing. They love a good joke. They love their children better than white people do, I think.” She went on speaking of how she’d had her eyes opened. She told her of how she had suffered from the other women, and then she told her of Loves The Night, saying, “Loves The Night was the best friend I had. I’ll always miss her.”