Runaway (34 page)

Maybe an hour.

She had a good sense of direction, and she was an excellent rider. She and the mare did very well, right from the start.

The problem seemed to be with the trail. At first it looked so well traveled! Pine needles lay on the ground, great branches rose high above her. The ground was very dry.

Then the trail seemed to become swallowed up in itself and the terrain began to change. The mare stumbled, and Tara realized that she was leaving the pine
trees behind—along with the hard ground. She had been absolutely convinced that it could not be possible to become lost—Robert’s property should have been straight through the forest of pines from Cimarron. But she wasn’t emerging from a field of pines onto another nearly manicured plantation-house lawn. In fact, she was no longer in a field of pines. The hard ground had given way to marsh. She’d entered into swampland. The mare was wallowing deeper and deeper into the mud.

Tara reined in, trying very hard to get her bearings and to remain calm. She had only to turn around and retrace her own trail. She wouldn’t reach Robert’s, and she wouldn’t discover the answers to any of her questions, but at least she’d be safe back home.

The sudden call of a bird caused her to cry out with surprise. She admonished herself in silence, feeling like a fool. It didn’t matter that she had cried out or made a fool of herself—there was no one to see or hear her.

She took a deep breath and looked around. Across the way the ground seemed firmer. She thought that the trees growing there were cypress. The foliage remained dense, and it looked like a green shadow-land, but she was certain that it wasn’t so marshy.

She paused in her confusion for a moment, looking around her. She couldn’t stay; she needed to move on quickly. And she was growing uneasy with her surroundings. And still, the very surroundings she feared were beautiful. The sun filtered through the green canopy, and its touch was warm, though the day had remained cool. Ahead of her, in a spray of striking color against the dark green and earth tones of the copse, was a patch of wildflowers, beautiful wild orchids. She narrowed her eyes.

She didn’t dare just remain here, staring about! she warned herself. But then again, perhaps she shouldn’t do
anything. She should just give the mare her head, and the horse would take her home. Surely the mare was well fed and well tended and would know her way back to the stable.

But the mare just stood, apparently confused herself in the muck beneath her hoofs.

So much for beautiful surroundings. They could be deadly. She had heard there was quicksand in Florida marshes. The canopy of trees and beautiful orchids might well be a shield for a deadly patch of sucking mud. A prickling feeling at her nape warned Tara that she was on dangerous ground—the muck, she saw, gave way to a narrow canal. There were downed branches and logs, low-flung branches.

A sudden movement almost caused her to cry out again, but she caught the sound, and for a moment was simply awed by the sight of the huge white bird that stood still in the shallow water, then suddenly took flight. A crane, she thought, magnificent here in the wild. There were more birds. Small white egrets, moving daintily by the water’s edge with their stilted little walk.

If there were cranes and egrets, there might very well be things that ate cranes and egrets. Like alligators.

And other awful things.

Indians.

Her heart was racing and she fought for calm. “We’ve got to turn around, girl,” she told the mare. “We’ve got to start back!”

She turned the mare, nearly being thrown as the horse’s rear hoof sank into the mud.

The idea that there might be quicksand returned to her. She couldn’t panic, she told herself, but she had to get the horse moving.

“Crawl out of it!” she commanded the horse, and in a minute they were on firmer ground, the canal had disappeared
from sight, and she thought that she was on some kind of a trail, moving onto higher ground. She nudged the mare’s sides, still reassuring the animal at a walk, but making it a faster one. She was just beginning to congratulate herself on having begun to find her way out when she reined in hard, terror creating a wall of ice around her heart.

She had heard nothing, and she was all but surrounded.

One of them stood dead center in the trail before her. He was copper in color, his hair pitch black. His leggings were as red as blood, and his cotton shirt was adorned with numerous silver ornaments. He wore a fabric headdress adorned with a wide variety of feathers and caught up with a silver ornament as well. Soft-skin boots covered the Indian’s feet, perhaps accounting for the fact that he had come upon her so silently.

A sash about his waist created a sheath for his sword. His rifle was in his hands. A long-bladed knife was secured with leather straps to his calf.

He made a motion with his hand, and suddenly several warriors fell from the trees like leaves in a northern winter. Some of them were dressed similarly to the first. Some were naked from the waist up, some were painted, some were not.

Tara screamed instinctively. As the Indians approached her she begin to kick and lash out. To her amazement she caught the first brave right in the chin with her foot. He fell back, rubbing his jaw. She kneed the mare sharply and the horse snorted and neighed and reared high. Tara held her seat. The mare plunged forward, but the Indians were too numerous, all throwing themselves at the mare’s neck, bridle, and haunches. Fighting wildly, Tara nevertheless found herself dragged to the ground. Choking, gasping, swearing, flailing, she
continued to fight. Someone caught hold of her arms. Someone else straddled her. She started to scream again in wild panic, but then the sound of a shot filled the air and everyone went dead still.

She heard something snapped out in a language she couldn’t understand. The Indian atop her rose; the one who held her arms released them.

Stunned, Tara lay still. Then she realized she was free and leapt to her feet.

Another Indian had arrived, this one on a handsome bay horse. He was in navy breeches with doeskin boots that covered his calves to his knees. His shirt was colorful, crafted in horizontal line after horizontal line of different fabrics. It lay open at the throat, one as coppery as any she had seen yet. Her eyes rose to his. An uneasy feeling swept over her, almost as if she knew him, as if she had seen him in some dream or nightmare. He was staring at her, slowly assessing her, looking her up and down. She realized suddenly that he was an Indian with blue eyes, that he must have white blood in him. Which didn’t seem to matter. He had raised a hand to beckon her to him.

She was going to die, she thought. Right here, today, in this swamp-rotting jungle.

She could have made things easy for herself. She could have drowned in the Mississippi.

She could have given the hangman her throat!

But, no, she had fought, she had run. And the salvation she had found in Jarrett’s arms had been false, for though he had protected her once, he had abandoned her here.

She stared at the Indian on the horse again, then lifted her chin and decided that she was not going to be murdered, scalped, and mutilated without a damned good fight.

She smiled. Then she cried out, “You redskinned, murdering bastard!” And she came at him. Running wildly across the pine-carpeted path that separated them, she pitched herself at him with such a frenzy that he was thrown from his horse. She landed atop him, and certain that it would be her last living act, she raised her fists wildly to pummel him again and again.

Shouts rose all around her. The man beneath her let out a furious cry that must have been an Indian oath, but she was heedless of it. She slammed her fists against him viciously.

And she suddenly found him straddling her, those blue eyes piercing into her soul. He swore again, capturing her wrists. The others were laughing now, calling out taunts. She could still feel those eyes.

Something familiar. He had a handsome face. She was becoming hysterical, she told herself. Losing her mind. She was about to be murdered, and she was thinking that he was a proud and striking warrior.

He leapt up suddenly, reaching down a hand to her. “Come!” he snapped out in English.

He leaned down to help her up. She spat in his face. He swore again, in his own language this time, and she screamed when he grabbed her wrists hard, dragging her up, throwing her over his shoulder.

In a bound he was upon the bay horse. They were not treading lightly through the pines and foliage, there was no hesitancy in this wild ride.

They were running deeper and deeper into the savage land.

J
arrett came down the river on old man Johnson’s barge. It was a little more than a two-day trip, but it was an easy one, and they were nearing the end of it now.

Johnson, older than any man Jarrett had ever met, toothless, white haired, stooped as a gnarled branch, had been in the area longer than any other living white man, and perhaps because of his age, or perhaps because he had become part of the scenery, the Indians seemed to have no war with him, or Johnson with them. He wasn’t frightened of an attack, and when the officers at the fort had suggested he might want to stay in town for a while, Johnson seemed amazed. “As if I’d want to stay in some house with ruffled drapes on the windows—and walled in!” Johnson complained to Jarrett once they had gotten under way. Jarrett, anxious to get home, shrugged. He didn’t know where Johnson hung his hat anyway—the only time Jarrett had ever seen him was on his barge. And since Johnson was determined to keep running up and down the river come what may, Jarrett was just as glad to take the barge home. He’d been driving Charlemagne night and day with the Pattersons, anxious to bring them to Tampa where they would feel safe. Charlemagne didn’t mind the river trip one bit, and with
bridges and roads being poor, it was still faster than coming home by land.

“They tell me I’m in danger!” Johnson said, offering Jarrett his wide, toothless grin. “Danger! What the hell, danger—they trying to tell me I’m going to die
young?
” Johnson went into gales of laughter, while Jarrett grinned. But then he pulled his wide-brimmed hat over his eyes and leaned back against one of the poles that created a roped-in square around the barge. The day was warm, the river gentle. He relaxed, leaving one eye half open to survey the shore now and then. Once again he was certain that his movements were being watched. The United States government was now at full-scale war with the Seminole Indians of the Florida Territory. Tyler had come out when Jarrett had left Tampa, bringing him the latest news. At General Clinch’s request acting governor George Walker had ordered militia general Richard Keith Call to raise Florida volunteers to join the regulars for one big campaign against the Indians. Andy Jackson had ordered General Winfield Scott to take command in Florida, and fourteen companies of regular soldiers were to join Clinch’s command.

Some soldiers were already wondering just what they were in for.

And yet Jarrett was aware that the massacre of Major Dade and his men, appalling to the whole of the country, was now fading in importance outside of the Florida Territory because of a tragic event that had just occurred in Texas.

Well over one hundred American heroes had been massacred at a little mission they were calling the Alamo. The men, it seemed, had held out against incredible odds, praying for help. Even when they had known that help wasn’t coming, the men hadn’t surrendered, because it had been of the utmost military importance
to keep the Mexican general Santa Anna from moving onward to fight other battles. Every fighting man within the place had been killed, including the renowned frontiersman Davy Crockett, and the great fighter James Bowie. It was a tragedy of such dimensions that the entire country was up in arms, and so poor Major Dade, whose body still was rotting in the wilderness, had been largely forgotten. Except here in Florida, where Texas heroes might be admired, but where life was still a dangerous game at best.

Jarrett had met both men when he had been but a boy himself, and though he’d known they were both quite human—apt to quarrel, definitely rough at the edges!—he felt the great national sorrow at their passing. They had given everything to their country, and in the end they had died giving their last valiant effort to the battle for their friends and countrymen.

“Seems there’s some anxious to see you get home,” Johnson said, interrupting his thoughts. Jarrett pushed back his hat, squinting as he stared toward the shore. It seemed that a number of his household had turned out to watch the river. Jeeves stood on the deck; Rutger, mounted, looked as if he were ready to race downstream and shout to him. Even the little Italian laundress, Cota, stood there anxiously.

Jarrett stood, hands on his hips, searching. Tara was not there. What had he expected? That she had suddenly decided to give her all to him because of that last night they had shared together?

She should have been there. If everyone else was on the dock, waiting.…

The barge had barely pulled toward shore before Jarrett leapt from it, striding for the place where Rutger and Jeeves unhappily awaited him.

“What’s happened? Where is she?”

“Gone, Mr. McKenzie,” Rutger said. “We followed her into the woods, but then her trail clean vanished. She meant to elude us, Mr. McKenzie, and that’s no excuse, but—”

“What did she take?” Jarrett demanded of Jeeves.

“Food,” Jeeves admitted. “Extra clothing, so Cota thinks. She may have just planned a day trip.”

“We’ll go after her, Mr. McKenzie. The boys and I will go after her, and we’ll find her.”

“I’ll find her myself,” Jarrett said flatly. “Rutger, get Charlemagne, give him a good rubdown. Jeeves, give me a roll of clean clothing. As soon as Charlemagne is ready, I’ll be riding out again.”

“She was my responsibility—” Rutger began.

“No,” Jarrett said. “She is mine.”

He strode past them. She’d been found, he was certain. On Indian land. He could only pray that it had been by his brother or his brother’s people. He didn’t think that any of the other chiefs would hurt her—he’d been given Osceola’s promise that his land was neutral—but that didn’t mean that all the chiefs would obey Osceola.