Rafe (8 page)

Crissa remembered a quiet, almost sad boy, one who rarely laughed. A boy who'd never known his mother. A gentle boy. But the boy had changed. Two years older than she, he had grown hard around the edges. Tougher, sterner somehow. More taciturn. Perhaps the army had helped. Knowing the swamp as he did, he made captain easily. He knew the turns and bends of a thousand creeks, knew the men who made a living in the swamp, killing for hide, fur and plumage. This knowledge made him invaluable to the army. When the occasional Creek or far-roaming Atakapan hunting parties raided into the white man's land to steal food and drive off stock, it fell to Captain Steven Bennett, he who had eschewed God and carried gun and machete in place of his father's Bible, to pursue them back into the swamp. Sometimes he found them. They had yet to find him first.

Crissa had looked forward to seeing him again. But now she wasn't sure. He wasn't the same person. She found herself more than a little awed by his new personality and a tiny bit fearful. So she bided her time, making up her mind to suspend final judgement until she'd been back a while longer.

And finally Natchitoches! Saturday afternoon and the Red River Diamond, whistle hooting brashly, eased into the Upper Landing on the shore of Cane River Lake opposite Texas Street. They disembarked to the noise of trade, for Natchitoches was the converging point of important water and land trade routes. A hired chaise, or as Crissa would have it, a shay, with a Negro boy, strangely enough, riding postilion, drove them down Washington Street toward Nicholas Lauve's house where she was to spend the night.

This was the scene Crissa had missed for four long years. Freedom was but forty miles to the west and her father and mother had brought her to Natchitoches often. The noise and bustle, the swirling clouds of dust and humidity were symbols of life and gaiety and extra-special times and treats. She didn't even mind the heat, unused to it though she was after four years in the north. It felt good because it felt like home. She made Steve order the boy to a halt before they reached the Lauves', for a pack train was braying its way up the road toward the landing. Coming from the west, the mules and horses, heads lowered in exhaustion and flanks lathered with foam, were loaded down with hides and dried buffalo tongue, perhaps even silver bars from the mines of Mexico. Crissa remembered the wistful look in her father's eye when such a train passed Fitzman's Freedom, for he too wanted to make the trip one day. Perhaps he would have had he not been so devoted to Micara and Crissa. Only the idea of country had come before them, and for that idea he had died.…

Sunday stole quietly into Natchitoches. Crissa awoke in the high-dormered guest room to see the sun steal up over the river. She had stayed at the Lauves' before when her father, John Fitzman, was still alive and a good chess-playing friend of Nicholas Lauve. She shoved the memory from her mind, relaxed to feel the Sunday morning quiet, then suddenly sat up with a jerk. They should be on their way. Freedom was but a day away. She dressed quickly, urged on by the pungent odor of frying ham and dark, roasted coffee rising from below.

Downstairs, Steve Bennett, newly commissioned captain in the U.S. Army guarding the new Mexican border, kicked his booted toe against the hardwood spokes of the brightly painted gig. With its black leather calash folded down so they could catch the cool morning air and the five foot high wheels designed for rough roads, Ezra's gig was one of the best looking in town, one a man could be proud to drive. A strong-limbed brown mare between the shafts shook her head, rattling her harness as if impatient to be underway. Steve moved to her head and stroked the soft nose and shuddering neck. High-spirited, the mare would get them to Freedom before dark if Crissa would hurry and get out and ready to go. Bored with the wait, he sucked at the red weal where he'd scraped his finger while checking the loading of her brass embossed trunk, due to follow the next day on a supply wagon.

A church bell pealed nearby, echoed down the alleyways, boomed hollowly along the street, strove vainly to carry across the river, only to be drowned out by a swirling cloud of screeching gulls who had followed the boats up from the coast. The morning fog had not yet burned off, and on all sides friendly bearded ghosts, giant oaks festooned with Spanish moss, lurked in the mist. Saturday night revelers had been awake all night, and now that dawn was on its way the town was quiet, only an occasional party-goer straggling by from time to time. The world lay in wait for Crissa Fitzman, and lady though she was, she was also independent enough to make it wait.

Not until nearly eight o'clock did the Lauve House doors swing open and Crissa, accompanied by host and hostess, descend to the waiting gig. Steve doffed his bicorn and offered his hand, his eyes roaming appreciatively over Crissa's bared shoulders. She gathered her voluminous skirts and allowed him to assist her into the carriage. While hosts and guest said their goodbyes he crossed in front of the mare, patting her neck again and speaking softly to the restless beast, then clambered up into the space beside Crissa. Reins in hand, he released the brake and made a clucking sound, lightly touching the long carriage whip across the animal's back. The mare, to the sound of muffled farewells, broke into an immediate trot, its hooves pounding a cadence in the still dewy dust. They were off.

The last forty miles! How short they seemed. Their motion stirred the still air about them and sucked the memory smells to her. Cape-jasmine, magnolia, roses—so early? She had forgotten roses bloomed so early. An acacia, feathery green and gold, floated out of the mist to her right, faded again behind her. Somewhere in the near distance a hound bayed its displeasure at their passage. So little had changed here. So little. And yet Crissa had changed. She saw herself from afar, a timid, frivolous girl, excited and afraid, trembling expectantly. And now a willful, independent, strong-minded young lady looking wistfully to the past.

Before long the gig's steady progress carried them from the town proper and onto the open trail west where they passed the last of the outlying small farms from whose windows drifted the heady aroma of grits, cornbread spiked with molasses and frying fatback—country breakfasts cooked on wood stoves.

For the better part of an hour they rode in utter silence. Steve, country wisdom sensing Crissa's need to gradually assimilate herself into the world from which she had been so long absent, sat hunched over the reins and left her to her own thoughts. Soon they were running along Katichitoo Bayou. Beyond it lay the swamps to the northwest. Grim and foreboding childhood fears reached out from the mossy depths to assail Crissa, plunging her into yet a deeper, gloomier silence. She was thankful for the brace of pistols under the seat, primed and within easy reach should Steve need them. She watched as his right hand strayed from the reins to play along the hilt of his saber. Regardless of its spartan lack of ornamentation and design, it was an utterly lethal weapon when used in close combat. The wire and brass hilt atop the hidden steel bolstered her nerve. Surely she was being childish.

Crissa had forgotten how unsettling this stretch of the trail could be. Because she had grown used to the civilized trappings of the northern cities, the sudden confrontation with the primeval gave rise to a host of unsettling emotions. When she was a child, visions of spooks and savages had burst from behind every lichenous rise where trees, vine-draped and gnarled, exploded in a canopy of moss. The air still and sentient, the old visions crowded in upon her, blotting out the joy of homecoming. The air was thick and moist, barely breathable, a viscous fluid flowing into the lungs and painfully out again. Crissa had always avoided the swamps near the plantation, and when travelling this road with her father had cuddled close to him, peeking out from time to time in spite of what she might see, then ducking back rapidly at the slightest hint of danger.

It took nearly an hour before the road wound away from Katichitoo and the land rose slightly to become rolling low hills covered with pine and, on the higher ridges, hardwood forest occasionally broken by cleared fields planted to cotton and sugar cane and vegetables. Crissa drew a breath of relief. This was the land she knew and loved. “I'd forgotten that horrible swamp,” she said with a little shudder.

“It isn't so bad,” Steve answered laconically, “once you get used to it. Nothing there to hurt you much.”

Conversation wandered in a desultory vein for the next hour until, on a rise in front of them, Fort Jessup appeared alongside the trail. The gig pulled to a stop in front of the low gates, then entered slowly to the salute of the private on guard duty. A half-hour later they were settled on a blanket beneath an elegant magnolia which stood on a grassy knoll out of sight of the fort. Ivory blossoms scented the air about them. Crissa unpacked the lunch they'd brought and set it out. “Four years,” she said dreamily. “How could I not remember how beautiful all this is?”

Steve looked out across the rolling land to the west, then back to her. “I never forgot how beautiful you are.” His lips sought hers and he forced her back to the ground, his body half covering hers. Crissa could do little but submit as his tongue darted inside her mouth. She tried to squirm free, only to realize her arm was pinned to her side, caught between his legs where she could feel his swelling organ press boldly against her forearm. Gasping, she twisted her head free. “Steve, please … no. No!”

He relaxed with an effort, rolled from atop her yet held her down, staring intently into her eyes. “Four years is a long time. I guess I sort of forgot myself.” He let her arms go and stood, his ache and longing plainly visible beneath the coarse, snug fabric of his trousers.

Crissa sat up slowly and busied herself with the lunch, keeping her eyes lowered and away from his. He
had
changed. Certainly more blunt, direct and to the point. But life here was hard, and who knew what four years could do to a man? Passion lived in the heat that baked the clay and sucked the moisture from the bayous. Love here didn't wait on niceties. Raised to fever pitch by the shrill cry of cicadas and the pulsing fecundity of the land itself, it sought wild consummation. Crissa would have to handle Steve differently than the more cold-blooded men of the north who were more easily put off, more willing to wait. She looked back up at him. He hadn't moved. “Steve …?”

“Uh?” he grunted tonelessly.

“I'm not ready for … that, Steve. Do you understand?”

He turned to her, his eyes raking her body. “No. Not really.”

Crissa forced a gay laugh, patted the blanket beside her. “Steven Bennett, you're being surly. Just like some old he-bear come rooting out of the swamp.”

“Crissa, you don't…”

“Come on. Sit down. Let's eat, okay?” She smiled and handed him a sandwich.

Steve bowed to her will and flopped down on the blanket, tore a huge bite from the bread and fried meat. “Different, isn't it?”

“What?”

“All this.” He waved the sandwich in a wide sweep. “The land.”

“I don't even know half the names.”

“Lot of new ones, especially since the treaty. Lot of easterners coming in. You'll get to know 'em. Claude Duggins has the biggest farm around, except for Freedom and Bernard's place. Plenty of other small free-holders, too. Ol' Claude been rousin' up some of the other farmers. They figure they can bargain with the big plantation owners like your daddy … your stepdaddy. Ezra Clayton isn't too happy about the way they're acting up.”

“What does mother think about them?”

Steve stared ahead, not speaking for several thoughtful moments. “Micara Clayton doesn't take … well, she leaves most of the running of things to her husband.”

Crissa sat back, musing on the emptiness and uncharacteristically subdued tone of her mother's letters. Perhaps Ezra Clayton had asserted himself over her father's wife, his home, and holdings more than she had thought. I'm coming home none too soon, she reflected. She roused herself to bright chatter. “Well, whatever, the whole place seems so much more open and civilized—except for you, Mr. Grumpy Bear. The fort … even the road seems wider, better, more travelled.”

“Ought to be. It's due west to Mexico, besides all the folks going to Freedom for Ezra's shows.”

“Shows?”

“Didn't your mother tell you?”

“What?”

“About the pit.”

Crissa's face broke into a puzzled frown. “She told me nothing. Since when is there something as brutal as a gaming pit at Freedom?”

“Since Ezra started holding sporting matches. They're right popular. I guess maybe your momma doesn't hold much with them. If she doesn't, she's about the only one. You'll see when we get there.”

“Mr. Bennett, you are entirely too mysterious for what is, by this time, a very curious southern lady. What's in the pit? Animals?”

Steve frowned, remembered Crissa's anger in New Orleans, her remarks about slaves. He covered his misgivings with a grin. “Miss High and Mighty won't let her man have a little kiss, she can just wait and find out for herself.”

“Well, all right, Mr. Bennett. You needn't be so huffy.”

“C'mon,” Steve answered, getting lazily to his feet. “You eat any more you're gonna get fat as well as sassy. Besides, we have to get going if we want to get in before dark.” He started back to the fort, leaving Crissa to pick up the hamper. The chivalry of love denied. Crissa was back home, surely. She picked up the hamper and blanket and, with one last look over her shoulder, followed him, the question of the mysterious pit relegated to the future.

Cat restless as usual and jealous about not being matched against the two Creek opponents of the week before, prowled the compound yard looking for trouble, bragging to anyone who would listen how he would have handled the redmen. How he would have left the pit unscathed. He could afford to play cock-of-the-walk. Rafe was still sore and slowed by his wounds. Rafe watched the young buck with some bemusement, shifted his wounded leg to take better advantage of the sunlight. The poultice had formed a crusty covering beneath which his remarkable healing powers had long begun to assert themselves. The warm rays of the sun filtered into his knotted muscles as back and forth he worked his leg, flexing it, gradually rebuilding its strength and stamina.