Come Juneteenth (16 page)

"It can be our secret if you behave yourself," I told him sassily.

"So you've got something on me."

"Yes."

"Vows can be broken, you know."

We both laughed on our way back to camp, then discussed the bigger problem. What to do with no boots. We decided to wear our Indian moccasins. "We ought to reach Cummin's Station today," he said. "It's a good trading post. They'll have boots. Come on, let's pack up."

W
E WERE
five or six miles from Cummin's Station. And the way we had to travel was free of obstacles, because Cummin's Station was ten miles above San Felipe, Gabe said, and so we'd be passing a scattering of plantations, tilled land, and lovely green pasturelands.

We did the six miles the next morning under skies as blue as Mama's porcelain and as we came upon Cummin's Station in the distance, Gabe slowed his horse's pace and I followed. The trading post was bigger than I thought it would be, and outside were hung colorful blankets and rows of strung peppers and onions. Saddles and horses' tack sat on the railing ledge, along with some fry pans and kettles. A ragged black boy was seated in the dust just outside Cummin's Station.

"Never rush right in," Gabe instructed. "Always be careful to size up the place. See what kind of people are hanging about."

Still in his Confederate uniform, he was concerned about Yankee soldiers who might not be as lenient toward
him as Cochran was, in spite of the letter he had explaining our mission.

Then there were Indians. Some were harmless, others out to kill, especially anyone in a uniform. So we approached slowly from the back, where we dismounted our horses and hobbled them to the fence of the corral.

"You aimin' on telling them inside how we lost our boots?" Gabe asked me.

I saw that even asking the question made him uncomfortable and that was reward aplenty.

"No," I said. "I can't see how it's any of their business."

He nodded. "First thing we do is find out if that Yankee came through here with Sis Goose."

A hawk circled overhead as we headed toward the front entrance. Before we reached it, the little black boy came up and tugged Gabe's pants.

"Suh. I's hungry. Could you please give a coin to a little nigra boy like me?"

Gabe stopped and looked at him. "Don't you have a home?" he asked.

He shook his curly head. He was ragged and dirty, no shoes on his feet. "I comes from the Hardin place, over to the north. I ain't goin' back there, no suh, no."

"Did they free you?"

"Yassuh, but the war be over and those white peoples still all be killin' each other back there. No more shootin' fer this nigra boy. No suh. I seed 'nough of it."

"Shooting?" Gabe inquired.

"Yassuh. Them Yankees that come done shoot all the horses and dogs and wanna put the white folks outa the house. The white folks started shootin', and I run. Been runnin' ever since."

"How old are you?" Gabe asked.

"Doan rightly know, suh. I wuz born a little bit before the war. All I knows is, it was the summer of the bad rain."

Gabe nodded. "Means you're about nine. Come on inside and I'll buy you a bowl of beans and meat."

"Yassuh!"

The boy followed us into the cool inside of the station. Here were a few tables to sit down at, a stove on which was a large pot of what must have been the beans and meat, a bar, and a counter filled with merchandise.

Gabe sat the boy down at a table and ordered him a bowl of food and some cornbread. Then he asked about Sis Goose and the Yankee.

The man who owned the place, by the name of Max, ruminated a bit. "Come through here mebbe two days ago."

"How was the girl?" Gabe asked.

I held my breath. Would he say she was pregnant?

"Seemed aright."

"Did she seem like she wanted to be with him?"

"Nooo." Max shook his head. "He had her hands tied behind her back. Said she was wanted by the law. I mind my own business."

Gabe swore and asked if he knew where they were headed.

"Nearest law or Yankees be in San Felipe. He asked me the way."

Gabe thanked him and told me to find some boots. He found a pair as well, and while he was at it purchased some trousers, a shirt, and duster, too, the kind he'd had before the war when he rode the prairie for Pa.

"Tired of this damn uniform," he told Max. "I need a place to change."

Max showed him a curtain and he went behind it and put on his new clothes.

"You want me to get rid of the uniform?" Max asked.

"No. I'll keep it. Show it to my grandchildren someday," Gabe said.

When he paid, Max told him that the little boy had been loitering around and begging for two days. "He's got no place to go," Max finished.

Gabe nodded and without saying anything to me walked over to the table where the boy was wiping out his bowl with the last of his cornbread. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Hamilton. But everybody call me Ham."

"You intending on staying here and begging, Hamilton? Or would you like a home?"

I gasped. Gabe was going to bring him home!

The boy looked at him warily. "I still be free?"

"You'll always be free," Gabe told him. "But you still need to eat. And lay your head down someplace at night. Being free doesn't take care of that. Responsibility does. You have to learn to read and write. You want to do all that, come with me. I'll take you to a place where they'll teach you how."

It took only a minute for Ham to decide. "I come with you," he said, slipping off the chair. "Where we goin'?"

"A fine place," Gabe said. "I promise."

T
HAT WAS
the first glimmer I had into my brother's mind since he came home from the war. The way he was helping Ham, with all his own worries, Sis Goose being kidnapped, being commissioned to take over with the ranch, and me, Pa dying...

My mind couldn't get a purchase at first on why he was taking time to help Ham, and then I pondered it out.

Most likely he was trying to make up for those Indian women and children he'd killed. They, not Yankees, were his casualties of war. Ma had told me about them when she cautioned me to be patient with him.

Anyway, we fed and watered the horses and mule and then were on our way.

To San Felipe, Gabe said. "Even though I don't think Heffernan would be stopping at any Yankee headquarters or sheriff's office there. He's still a deserter. Though word may not have gotten out about him yet."

He put Ham on the horse behind him, and you could tell by the way the little boy clutched at his waist how
scared he was. What did Gabe intend to do with him? Leave him? Where?

"I know some people in San Felipe," he said. "Catholic nuns. They take in children who have no one."

Catholic? We were Presbyterian. How did it come about that my brother knew Catholic nuns? There was more to him even, I decided, than met the eye. And then a frightening thought seized me. "You're not sending me to a Catholic school in New Orleans, are you?" I asked.

He grinned, enjoying my agony. "Should. Would do you a lot of good. But no, this is just a fine ladies' school, where you'll learn a lot more than embroidery, believe me. Officer I served with at Fort Belknap has his daughter there and told me all about it. You'll learn Latin and French, equations, philosophy. You'll quote Shakespeare and Cicero. Didn't do me any harm when I learned all that back in college in Virginia. You'll learn about the constellations in the sky and meet wellborn young men. You'll come home telling
me
what to do."

"I could do that now."

"You could try."

We covered ten miles that morning, and Gabe put his Indian training to work tracking a horse's footsteps on the sandy ground. Several times he got off his horse and examined the prints, pronouncing them to be made by a Yankee horse, which he could tell because of the horseshoe marks.

"You certainly are going slow there, Captain," I found myself saying to him. "If somebody I loved was kidnapped, I'd be racing across the prairie."

He gave me an odd look. "The sun getting to you, Luli? I've been tracking. When you track Indians you go steady and unrushed and sure of yourself."

I giggled. "So now Sis Goose is an Indian. Oh, look, there's something in the sand." I stopped and slid off my horse. "Signs, Gabe, the kind of signs Mercy Love makes when she spreads sand on her table at home. Come look."

He slipped off his horse and came over. He squatted down. "Where?"

"Right there. Can't you see? A moon and stars. A circle of stars. They say something about when we'll find her. And the moon is dripping blood. Oh, I wish I could understand what that means."

His face went hard. "There's no moon dripping blood there," he said sternly. He got up. "I see nothing. Now stop making a joke of this. There're no signs at all. Get back on your horse."

"But Gabe. You can't ignore such signs. The angels will get angry. You don't want to make the angels angry, do you?"

"Get back on your horse, Luli. Now."

"All right, if you want to be a spoilsport."

We went on. The horizon danced before my eyes. "Where are the mountains, Gabe? Where did they go?"

"No mountains here, Luli. We've passed them."

"You mean they passed us. They danced right by. Did you know that mountains can dance, Gabe?"

"Stop talking gibberish."

"Gibberish?" I got scared. I somehow sensed that the words coming out of my mouth were not just right, but I couldn't have stopped them coming out if somebody paid me new Yankee dollars. I closed my eyes and rocked to the rhythm of my horse's gait. I almost went to sleep. "Soon as Ma calls me I'm going in for the noon meal," I told him. "I hope she's got some of that good vegetable soup of hers. Wouldn't you like some of that vegetable soup, Gabe?"

"What I'd like is for you to shut your mouth for a while, dear sister," he said.

We soon reached a spring and Gabe told me to get off my horse, that we were all going to wash. I caught him looking at me out of the corner of his eyes. "We don't want to look like outriders to the nuns," he said. "Find someplace to wash and change your dress, Luli."

I was fishing out a clean dress from my saddlebags when I came across the blue cloak. "Who put this in here?" I asked.

"Pa suggested I bring 'em along," he said. "I've got Sis Goose's."

"But it's too warm. It must be over a hundred. I'm dying."

He looked at me in alarm. He lifted Ham off the horse and started toward me. "Pa said it was worth six bales of cotton just to see you two wearing these together."

"Pa just has a fancy for these cloaks, is all. Pa doesn't know the real world anymore. How could he? He hasn't been out of his bedroom in months."

"Don't bad-mouth Pa!"

"I'm sorry. But I'm never going to wear that cloak with Sis Goose again. Where is she? We'll never find her. She's gone from us. Flown away. Like geese do. Gone." Again the words were coming out of my mouth without my being able to control them. Lord, I hoped Gabe would remember his vow.

I threw my cloak on the dusty ground, an action I couldn't control.

"Pick it up, Luli."

"No." I was testing him. I almost ran to a place along the stream where I could have my privacy.

When I came back he and Ham were washed, too, and he was shaved and wearing a clean shirt.

My cloak was still on the ground. This was bad. A battle of wits between us was always bad. He was putting away his shaving gear. Ham was helping him.

"Get the cloak for me, Ham, would you?" he asked.

Ham picked it up. Gabe brushed it off and started toward me, putting it on my horse's back. I backed away.

"Stop it, Luli. No showdowns today."

I stopped.

He reached out one hand and I braced myself. "What's wrong with you?" I could hear the hurt in his voice. In a practiced way, like Ma did, he felt my face for
fever. "You're burning up is what's wrong. God, child, you've got a first-rate fever. You've been talking crazier than a coot for the last hour."

"Gabe."

"What?"

"You've got angels on your shoulders. They're powerful pretty ones, too. And they like you, Gabe. They're going to help you."

His voice broke. "Ham, get me that large saddlebag in front, will you? There's a boy." He dug in it and brought out some boneset, Ma's remedy for fever. I hated the stuff but took it obediently because of all the trouble I'd been causing him. I saw Ma, not Gabe, standing over me now, cautioning me to behave.

Then I pointed out to Gabe how the sky was darkening in the west, ugly black clouds, and it was true, not some fancy I dreamed up. In the next instant I saw streaks of lightning, which always terrorized me, and I heard mutterings of thunder.

"Your horse," Gabe said.

"I know, I can't let him catch my fears, but I won't, don't worry."

I felt chilled, but I followed Gabe diligently, never holding him back. I don't know what we looked like coming into the lovely little town of San Felipe, but with it being near one o'clock and hot and everyone taking siesta and the storm threatening, no one was in the streets.

Gabe went right to the end of the dusty street where
there stood a Mexican-style church. Next to it was what appeared to be a convent, whitewashed and with pots of geraniums on the spacious front gallery, where there was also a settle and some chairs.

We got off the horses in front.

"Wait here," Gabe said.

Ham and I waited. My head was still throbbing. I wished Gabe would come out. I knew he was going to turn me over to the nuns for treatment, but I also knew he wouldn't leave until I was better.

Right now I'd be willing to have a tooth pulled to get out of here.

"You lucky you got such a brother to take care o' you," Ham said. "My brother wuz sold away."

Should I tell him now how such a brother could boss you around, scold you so you'd have to run to Mama, who'd send you right back to him again, maybe for more? No, this wasn't the time. Anyway, he'd been witness to some of it.

The door opened. Gabe came out. A nun was with him.