Follow the Sun (60 page)

Kat shook her head sadly. “You and me aren’t settled. You left me. You didn’t want me anymore. And now I don’t know what I expected when I saw you again, but it looks like you came here only to make me feel bad.”

“Nope. I gave you freedom so you’d forget what I’d done to you. Then I came here today to tell you that you can’t forget me.”

Feeling a little dazed by the way he was looking at her, she took a step back. “You wanted me to forget.”

He stepped forward. “Nope. You can’t forget. You’ll never forget.” Suddenly he was touching her, slipping one arm around her, pulling her to him while he nestled a hand into her hair. “You’ll always need me, Katie.”

Katie
. His hand. Her hair. Oh no. Kat shut her eyes and put her arms around his neck, then raised her mouth and caught his in a long, spellbound kiss.

She rested her forehead against his shoulder and felt the swift movement of his chest, the harsh grip of his hands on her, her own body trembling. “Needing and having are two different things,” she whispered.

“No.”

Tilting her head back, she looked at him wretchedly. “I’m going to college. I’ve already talked to the people at the one in Gold Ridge. They say all I have to do is take some catch-up courses first.”

“Yeah? So?”

Kat frowned. Was he dense? “So maybe I’ll be educated enough for you.”

“Good God, who said you weren’t?”

She studied him closely. “Are you ashamed of me for being so low-rent? Tell the truth.”

With a soft groan of dismay he took her face between his hands. “You’re not low-rent, sweetheart.
And if I were any prouder of you, I’d be hard to live with.”

Giddy and confused, she said solemnly, “You
were
hard to live with in Atlanta. I didn’t know you anymore.”

“Is that why you stopped wanting me?”

She cried out sadly. “I didn’t know how to treat you. All those gifts, all that fancy stuff … I just wanted my old Nathan back, the one who roamed the woods and took buck-naked baths outdoors.”

“I can manage that for you.”

She pulled away, shaking her head and sweeping a hand around her. “You’d have to live here with me.”

“Best invitation I’ve heard in years. I accept.”

His eyes gleamed like old silver as he grabbed her hand. Without a word he pulled her along beside him as he headed for the front of the ridge.

Openmouthed, Kat stared at him, wondering what gave his eyes such a compelling purpose and set his mouth in a knowing little smile.

He stopped at the edge of the ridge, gazed out over the valley as if mesmerized by its beauty, then rested his fingertips on her medallion and looked at her the same way he’d looked at the valley.

“Do you want to know what your medallion says?” he asked softly.

Kat caught her breath. “Oh
yes.
”

He shut his eyes for a moment, then locked his gaze to hers. His fingertips caressed the Cherokee symbols. “Taken from the land, given back to the land, this gold will bring us home.”

His eyes never leaving Kat’s, Nathan turned the medallion and touched the symbols on the other side. “I will know him by the gold over his heart.”

Kat shook her head, puzzled. Nathan lifted the gold nugget from her chest. “This belonged to Justis.”

She gasped lightly and clung to him with both hands. Kat looked down at the nugget he cupped reverently in his palm. “This belonged to Justis? This is the nugget your great-great-grandpa took from him?”

“Not ‘took from him,”“ Nathan corrected gently. “Justis gave it to him to send to Katie after he was executed. Justis didn’t expect to escape.” Nathan paused. “This nugget’s stayed in my family over a hundred years. I’ve worn it all my life.”

Kat looked up at him and asked in a small, awed voice, “I will know him by the gold over his heart. Are you asking me to believe—”

“I’m asking you to marry me, Katie.”

She quivered with emotion, took his face between her hands, and searched his face until she knew she wasn’t imagining what she saw there. “That night when I asked you to make a deal on the mining rights, I said that I loved you,” Kat whispered. “You didn’t believe me. Will you believe me now?”

His voice was gruff. “I’ll believe you. Say it again for me, Katie.”

“I love you, Nathan.” She swayed against him, and he held her tightly. “And I’ll marry you.”

“Good. I love you, too.” He kissed her, then murmured against her lips, “That sounds so right I know I’ve said it before.” He chuckled hoarsely. “Maybe I’ve just thought it a lot.”

“Maybe,” she agreed. “But I’ve been waiting forever to hear it.”

SOMEDAY … 

H
E HAD LOVED
Katherine Blue Song Gallatin for twenty-five years, and when he died tomorrow he would love her for eternity.

Justis Gallatin squinted both from the hot Arkansas sun and the blinding pain in his left arm, shattered by a Yankee bullet. His head aching with fatigue, briny sweat slipping through his mustache and into his mouth, he settled closer to the trunk of the aged pecan tree. The tree was his salvation and his tormentor; he was bound to it by six feet of thick iron chain which led to tight shackles around his booted ankles.

A shadow fell across Justis’s face. He lifted his head wearily and met a sympathetic gaze. Justis smiled thinly. “A hot day in hell. Good work. Colonel.”

“You ought to know.”

The blue-coated colonel squatted by him, handed him a canteen, and accepted a nod as thanks. Justis filled his stomach with the cool liquid.

“Major Gallatin, if there’s any message you want sent to your family, you best tell me today.”

Justis slid his good hand inside the neck of his shirt and, ignoring the agony every movement sent through his body, lifted a chain with a gold nugget on it over his graying hair. He handed it to the officer.

“That came from my wife’s land in Georgia.” Justis shut his eyes for a moment, picturing the old Blue Song place, thinking of all it meant to Katie and all he’d done over the years to keep it for her.

He gazed intently into the colonel’s eyes and said simply, “Tell her I’ll be waiting there.”

S
HE HAD LOVED
Justis Gallatin for twenty-five years, and she would love him for an eternity more. She would not let him step into that eternity alone and before his time.

Her pulse hammering with fear, Katherine entered the army tent and stood before the makeshift desk of a bearded, grim-faced Union officer. Colonel Nathaniel Chatham of the 1st Arkansas Cavalry stood and bowed slightly; he was obviously surprised as he took in her regal demeanor.

“I’d heard that you were beautiful and refined for a Cherokee woman,” he said. “But the rumors don’t do you enough credit, madam.”

Katherine ignored the compliment. “You have no right to hold my husband prisoner here in Arkansas. He’s a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.”

“He’s a white man. Living in the Oklahoma Injun lands doesn’t change that.”

“He’s a citizen by marriage. He has sons who are half Cherokee. He served in the tribal government before the war.” She paused, struggling to keep her dignity despite the growing terror for Justis’s safety. “We’re not part of your war, sir. Let him go.”

Chatham stroked his graying-brown beard and gave her a hard look. “Madam, there’s no use in trying to protect him or yourself. I know you were both born in Georgia. I know you’ve got Southern sentiments.”

The colonel arched a brow. “And I know that your
husband is secretly an officer in the Confederate army. He and his Injuns spent the past two years bushwhacking Union troops all over Indian Territory.”

“Because those troops didn’t belong there.”

“
No
. Because you Gallatins wanted to save your way of life. You owned fifty slaves. That showplace of yours over at Tahlequah was one of the biggest farms in the territory.”

Katherine glared at him. “We’ve never owned slaves. Colonel. Those were freemen who worked for hire.”

Looking stunned, Chatham studied her. Then he grimaced. “Doesn’t matter. Major Gallatin is going to hang.”

A rush of queasiness made lights dance in front of Katherine’s eyes. She took a steadying breath. “Your troops have confiscated everything we owned. You ordered them to burn our house. My youngest son is in hiding because he shot a soldier who was trying to harm me. He’s only thirteen years old, just a child. Haven’t we suffered enough?”

“Madam, last month Injun soldiers killed my two eldest sons at the battle of Honey Springs.” He paused. “And they scalped them.”

Despair settled coldly in Katherine’s chest. “My eldest sons fought for the Union,” she told him. “One is dead and the other is in a Confederate prison.”

“Your husband is a Reb and your sons enlisted for the Union side?” he asked, amazed.

“Yes. They went East and joined a regiment there so there’d be no chance of them fighting their own father one day.” She paused, her throat aching. “It was an act of conscience and honor.”

She and Chatham traded awkward, almost sympathetic looks. Katherine wondered if he had a kind-hearted soul beneath the bittemess war had brought him.

“Please, Colonel,” she whispered. “I beg you to let my husband go.”

He looked away wearily. “I’m a man of duty, madam. I can’t turn a prisoner loose.”

“Duty,” she repeated with disdain. “You destroy my family and my home for duty.” She raised one
hand and pointed at the colonel, then murmured an incantation in Cherokee.

He glowered at her. “Madam, I’ve heard stories about your witchcraft. I’m not swayed by it.”

“I’m a seer, not a
tsgili
. I cast no spells. I see what God intends. There will be a bond of darkness between my family and yours. Only God can change that.”

She turned and glided from his tent, leaving him spellbound.

I
N HIS MIND
Justis relived his memories—the first time Katlanicha Blue Song, wary and full of fight, had shared his bed; the day she had admitted that she loved him as much as he loved her; the marriage that had produced four fine children.

They had shared all the happiness that came from living
da-nitaka
, so close in spirit that they stood in each other’s souls, and he loved her more now than he had the day they’d met.

“
Osiyo
, Father,” a voice whispered behind him.

Justis turned slowly, all his senses alert. In the moonlight beyond the tree crouched a lanky, handsome boy dressed in buckskins, his black hair streaming down his back.

Pride and love mingled with fear in Justis. “Holt. Get out of here, Son. There’s nothing you can do.”

But Holt slipped soundlessly forward and fiddled with the manacles. With a sharp click they fell open. “Mother bribed a soldier to get the key.”

Justis clasped his son’s arm. “Your mother—”

“Is waiting for us.” Holt’s teeth flashed white in the darkness. “Put your good arm around my shoulder. Father, and let’s leave this place behind.”

S
HE HELD JUSTIS’
s head in her lap as Holt drove the wagon through the darkness. Crying silently, Katherine stroked a wet cloth across her husband’s face.

He reached up and grasped her hand. “You weren’t worried that those Yanks would hang an old buzzard like me, were you, Katie gal?” he whispered hoarsely.

“Sir, you gave me a fright.” She bent over him, kissed him tenderly, and whispered, “How would I live without you?”

They were silent for a long moment, their lips not quite touching, his hand squeezing hers more tightly as he struggled for composure. Finally he asked, “Where’d you get enough money to bribe somebody for the key?”

“I traded the medallions to one of Chatham’s men.”

“Katie.”

She shook her head. “Saving you was more important than saving some gold pieces from the old homeland. They were just a silly notion of mine, anyway.” She slipped her hand inside his shirt, then gasped.

“I gave the nugget to Chatham,” Justis told her. “He was supposed to send it to you after I was dead.”

She stroked his chest. “Oh, husband. Then we have nothing left of the land but memories.”