Legacies (40 page)

She still felt stunned, as if this were a dream. She was half-afraid if she closed her eyes, Rans would be gone when she opened them. Yet the arm at the back of her waist and the fingers gripping her hand were no illusion.

"I heard the Yankees were having a cotillion tonight. When I stopped by your house, your colored maid Phoebe said you were here. I couldn't let those Yankee officers have every dance with you."

Susannah suddenly remembered the hall was filled with blue uniforms. "Rans, what if one of them sees you? Don't you know practically every Union officer from the fort is present?"

"As a loyal Yankee, you should do your duty and sound the alarm," he said in that mock-solemn way of his.
 

"I am serious. You are crazy to come here like this."
 

"That's what my men said."

"You should have listened to them. It isn't safe here."
 

"I'm here just the same." His voice had a slightly angry edge to it "Can't you say you're glad to see me?"
 

"I am glad to see you, Rans. I—"

With a barely muffled groan, he pulled her against him and brought his mouth down hard against her lips, effectively cutting off the rest of her sentence. Desire surged through her, ignited by the hungry demand of his kiss. There was nothing tender about his passion or its need. It burned and scorched and seared. And Susannah responded with the same sense of urgency and desperation.

Breathing raggedly, he dragged his mouth from her lips and ran it across her jaw to the perfumed hollow below her ear. "God, how I've missed you, Susannah."

"I missed you, too," she whispered, her voice throbbing like the rest of her.

"I've needed you. You don't know how much I've needed you." His mouth seemed to be all over her at once, kissing her eyes, her cheeks, nuzzling her throat, and nibbling at her shoulder. Rocked by pleasure, she could hardly concentrate on the things he was saying. His mouth and hands excited every part of her. "I would have written but there wasn't a safe way to get a letter to you." He rubbed his lips across hers. "If this war ever ends . . ." He groaned again. "Dammit, Susannah, I can't make any promises. I don't know if I'll get through it alive, but if I do—"

"I know. I know." She dug her fingers into his hair and forced him to kiss her. She didn't want to talk about death and dying when she felt so alive.

A whippoorwill called from the woods, then repeated its mournful cry more stridently. With an effort, Rans caught hold of her arms and held her away from him. "I have to go, Susannah." Yet he didn't release her as his smoldering gaze traveled over her face, down her neck, and over the bareness revealed by her off-the-shoulder gown. "I'll see you again . . . when I can. Believe that."

"I do." She trembled with the longings he had aroused.

"Captain," a rasping whisper came from somewhere in the blackjack trees, pitched low and insistent. "Come on."

"Yes." But still his hands wandered over her naked shoulders, then trailed along the plunging neckline of her gown.

"Dammit, Captain," came the voice again.

"Rans, please go before they catch you here," Susannah pleaded.

With his hands cupped around her neck, he kissed her hard and quick. " 'Don't you cry for me,'" he sang softly into her mouth; then he was gone, swallowed by the dense shadows.

She listened to the soft rustle, but she couldn't tell if it was Rans or the breeze stirring the leaves. She smoothed a hand over her gown and struggled against the sensation that she had lost something.

Hearing the clop of hooves, she turned toward the seminary. 
A mounted detachment of Union soldiers rode into view. A patrol. She said a silent prayer that Rans and his company 
would avoid detection, then shuddered when she considered 
the risk he had taken coming here to see her. He loved her. He hadn't said it, but she knew it. Smiling, she started back across the lawn to the seminary—and the hall
      

 

 

 

26

 

 

Flat Rock

Indian Territory

September 16, 1864

 

Lying belly down on the lip of a prairie ridge, The Blade scanned the Union haying station through his spyglass, then made another, slower sweep of the black soldiers cutting and stacking the hay. Beside him were Generals Watie and Gano, the latter of the Texas Brigade and, by date of rank, the commanding officer of the combined Confederate force of some two thousand men stretched along the Texas Road.

"Depending on how many scouts they have out, I'd say there's between a hundred and a hundred twenty-five men down there," The Blade guessed.

Again, their orders for the expedition were simple: cut off the supplies to the Union garrison at Fort Gibson and some sixteen thousand refugees encamped there.

As The Blade started to lower the spyglass, someone caught his eye. He focused on the black soldier cutting hay. It was Ike, Deu's son. He remembered lying under that bed, ripped with pain, and Ike's face, his eyes, looking at him without raising one word of alarm.

A sickening tightness knotted his stomach when he heard General Gano order an advance party forward to cut off any retreat to the fort. Slowly, he lowered the glass. Outnumbered nearly twenty to one, the men at the hay camp didn't have a chance. Ike didn't have a chance. And there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing.

 

Shadrach paused to wipe the sweat from his face. Ike glanced at him and laughed. "Poor Uncle Shad, if they haven't got you weeding in the garden, then you're out here stacking hay. I'll bet you never figured when you joined the army, you'd be doing so much fieldwork. Instead of going from a house nigger to a soldier, you went to a field nigger."

Before Shadrach could respond, the bugle sang across the field. "It looks like we're back to being soldiers, Ike."

They hurried back to camp. An enemy force of an estimated strength of two hundred had been sighted near the haying station.

"Two hundred, hell," Ike muttered. "There's closer to two thousand of them. I counted six artillery pieces." He looked at Shadrach for a long second, then said, "We're in for the fight of our lives, Uncle Shad. They already have us cut off from the fort." Shadrach made no reply. "Did you hear what I said?"

"I heard," he answered slowly, hearing also his nephew's desperation. "Since it looks like we're already dead, there is no sense in worrying about dying."

Now it was Ike who was silent, his gaze sober. There was much Shadrach wanted to tell him—about life, freedom, and being black. He wanted to remind him they weren't dying as slaves, but as soldiers fighting for the freedom of every black. He wanted to tell him it was all right to die for that, but the words sounded too high-minded, too noble, especially when the feelings inside him were quite humble.

A faint smile lifted the corners of Ike's mouth. He briefly clamped a hand on Shadrach's shoulder. "We aren't going to die cheap, Uncle Shad. They're gonna pay a high price for us."

Shadrach smiled back as scattered musket fire broke out. A line of rebel skirmishers advanced on the ravine. The battle had begun. Shadrach wondered how long they would hold out.

The sun sat up there watching, a golden globe in the September sky, as the rebel infantry advanced in formation. Everything seemed to be shades of gold, from the long prairie grass and the ricks of hay in the field to the butternut color of the clothes the Johnny Rebs wore. Shadrach adjusted the rifle more comfortably against his shoulder and waited, his mouth and throat dry. He thought about his sister Phoebe, and he thought about Eliza. He thought about the school that would never be built.

Two hundred yards away, the Confederate infantry opened fire, and there wasn't any more time for thinking. Out of the golden landscape came an eerie, ripply sound that raised the hair, the terrible high, thin scream of the rebel yell. The ground vibrated under the thundering hooves of charging cavalry.

For half an hour they turned back charge after charge. Then, spotting a weakness in the rebel line, the Union captain ordered any man with a horse to mount up. They were going to try to break through. It was a desperate attempt to save some part of his command from annihilation, though there were horses for barely half the men.

When Ike hesitated, Shadrach snapped gruffly, "You heard the captain. Get on your horse."

"I can't." Ike turned from the sight of the jug-headed bay sprawled on the ravine floor and grimly faced the rebel front. "My horse is dead. I guess I'll stay here with you. I didn't really like the idea of running away."

In all, sixty-five of the one hundred twenty-five Union soldiers galloped out of the ravine. For a few minutes, it looked as though they might make it. The rebel line sagged and faltered under the weight of their unexpected charge. More rebel cavalry raced up to reinforce the line, and the fighting grew savage. Riderless horses by the score, both Yankee and rebel, added to the confusion.

"Do you think any of them got through?" Ike wondered.

"A handful maybe. I don't know." Shadrach paused to reload and glanced at the remnants of their unit. Except for the white lieutenant now in command and a few white infantrymen, they were mostly colored soldiers. Yet, the expressions on all their faces were the same—grimly desperate and haunted by death.

The rebel army launched another assault, attacking the ravine from all sides as before. A bullet tore through the fleshy part of Ike's right arm. Blood flowed from the wound, soaking his sleeve. But Ike couldn't afford to take the time to bandage it. The fighting was too intense.

Moments later, in his side vision, Ike saw the force of a bullet spin Shadrach around. "Uncle Shad." He scrambled toward him. But Shad was already turning, struggling to get back into firing position.

"I'm okay," Shadrach insisted as blood oozed between the fingers of the hand that he clutched to the wound in his chest.

With an effort he raised his rifle and took aim again. Ike hesitated, then followed suit. For two hours, they held them off, then ran out of ammunition.

"Scatter," the lieutenant ordered, "and save yourselves the best way you can."

"Come on, Shad." Ike pushed back from the wall of the ravine, holding his wounded arm.

"No." Shadrach didn't move. It hurt too much to move ... to breathe. The bullet wound on the left side of his chest wasn't bleeding much, but the pain was agony. "You go. I have a few rounds left. I'll keep them occupied while you and the others slip away."

"I won't leave you. Come on. We'll go together." When Ike lifted Shad's left arm to help him up, Shadrach nearly blacked out from the pain.

"No, don't," he moaned. "You have to leave me, Ike. I'm not going to make it anyway. I've been hit in the lung. For God's sake, go."

"Uncle Shad." Ike knelt beside him, a hand reaching out helplessly.

Shadrach saw the anguish in his eyes and tried to smile. "It's all right. Go on. Your mother will never forgive me if anything happens to you."

"Dammit, Shad, you have been more like a father to me than my own. You always understood," he said thickly.

"And you have been like my son. We're a lot alike, I guess." Shadrach smiled and continued to draw in quick, shallow breaths, the pain slowly ebbing. "But I was born before my time. This is your time. You take it and make something of it . . . something we can both take pride in. Now get out of here before they come again and you lose your chance."

Ike hesitated a full second longer, then took off down the ravine at a crouching run. Slowly, gritting his teeth against the new pain, Shadrach eased himself into a firing position and waited for the end to come, praying it wouldn't be so for Ike.

The Confederates rushed the ravine again. Two went down before his rifle; then it was empty. Shadrach tried to rise up to grapple with a charging infantryman, but a bullet struck him in the chest. He lay against the bank, staring at the sun hanging heavy in the afternoon sky. The sight of it filled his vision.

Golden, it was so golden.

 

The Blade walked his horse over to Shadrach's body and looked down. Inside he felt flat and a little dead himself. War destroyed more than people. It had a way of turning memories into bittersweet things and twisting beliefs to a point where a man questioned whether fighting was worth the cost.

"Did you know him?" a voice drawled.

With an effort, The Blade pulled his gaze away from Shadrach and focused it on the Texas captain to his right. Noting the quizzical look in those gray eyes, The Blade belatedly remembered the question Rans Lassiter had just asked and nodded an affirmative. "I knew him."

Resting his hands on the pommel of the saddle, Rans Lassiter glanced at the bodies that littered the ravine. "They put up a helluva fight for so few."

"Yes." As yet, The Blade hadn't found Ike's body. Had Ike been among the dozen or so riders who made it through the line back at the very start of the fight? He hoped so . . . for Deu's sake.

"Anything wrong, Major?" Rans Lassiter tipped his head to one side, a watchfulness about him.

The Blade realized he had been staring through the Texan and quickly let his glance slide to the blood-soaked kerchief tied high around the man's arm. "Better have somebody look at that wound," he said, and reined his horse away. Black smoke billowed from the burning ricks of hay in the field.

 

At one of the pools of water, runoff from the Grand River, Lije dismounted and let his horse drink from it. Noisily and greedily, the horse sucked up the brackish water, its neck and sides caked with drying sweat from the afternoon's repeated charges.

Absently, he hunched a shoulder forward and wiped his mouth across it, breathing in the pungent smell of sweat and powder smoke. Lifting his gaze, he let it sweep to the columns of smoke rising from the hay field.

Above the distant shouts from the former Federal camp came the drum of hooves. Lije turned as a sergeant rode up. The man reined in short of the pool.