The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart (26 page)

A
T QUARTER TILL NOON WE WERE ALL THE MORE
on edge and scared. Even Henry was sober and silent and just sat in a chair calmly waiting. He still had no gun. As was clear enough from what he’d said to Jeremiah, he wasn’t a fighting man. He just sat there praying, though I could never have guessed the direction his prayers were taking. I reckon he would say that was his kind of fighting. We hadn’t heard any more from Jeremiah since he’d gone out to hide in the barn.

Suddenly we heard a horse outside. The moment we’d been waiting for had come!

We waited. Still the bag of gold sat on the sideboard. I didn’t know if Katie’d decided what to do or not. At a time like this, as much as we’d shared of our life together, what we were facing on this day involved decisions she had to make herself. Even a cousin couldn’t help her now.

A tense minute went by. We heard the horse walk up and stop. A few seconds later a knock came on the door. It seemed so loud it nearly made us all jump right out of our chairs.

We looked around at each other. I could tell that Katie didn’t know what to do. But she was the mistress of Rosewood now.

She hesitated a moment, then got up from the table and crept toward the door. Slowly she opened it.

“Uncle Templeton!” she exclaimed. The next instant her visitor found himself smothered in a tight hug of joy.

The words flowed like a wave of deliverance into the room. The rest of us let out big sighs of relief accompanied by smiles, and of course Emma started carrying on immediately.

“Hello, Kathleen,” said Mr. Daniels. Even as he embraced her at the door, I saw his eyes searching past the entryway into the kitchen until they found me. He smiled above the blond hair of Katie’s head buried against his shoulder, and I knew the smile was meant just for me.

“You came back!” said Katie, still holding him.

“That I did, Kathleen,” he said. “Like I told you last time, I finally found that I cared about something other than myself. And now that I’ve got
two
girls to care about … or maybe
four,
I should say,” he added, glancing toward Aleta and Emma, “I decided that I’d had enough of running away from my obligations. Every time a little responsibility gets too close, Templeton Daniels hightails it away. Well, maybe it’s time I change that. I can’t keep running forever. So here I am.”

He stepped back from Katie and the two of them walked into the kitchen, Katie beaming with pride. Like he had so many times, he was looking straight at me and gazing deep into my eyes. Now I knew why. He was seeing my mother. And at last I wasn’t afraid to return the look of love in his eyes.

Slowly I got up and went toward him. He opened his arms and I walked into them. He closed his embrace about me. I leaned my face against his big chest and stretched my arms tight around his waist. It felt so good to have him, my very own papa, hold me close, to know that he had loved my mama, and to know that I was no longer afraid of what it meant.

The whole kitchen was silent. Sometimes the reconciliation of hearts needs no words. I reckon this was one of those times.

I shed no tears right then. I’d spent my tears and they’d done the work that God invented tears to do—they’d helped clean out my heart and wash away the selfishness from it. So now I just stood, happy and quietly content to let my father hold me.

“You and me are going to have to have a long talk, Mary Ann …” he whispered.

I just nodded my head against his chest.

“… a long talk about your mama, and about you, and me.”

“We’re so glad to see you!” said Katie, excitedly interrupting the quiet moment between us. “We’re in trouble, Uncle Templeton. Those men I told you about … they’re back. They’re coming today, real soon … they said they were coming with guns! Jeremiah’s outside right now with a gun. I’m afraid he’s going to shoot them. We don’t know what to do!”

Mr. Daniels stepped away from me and I fell out of his embrace. A serious expression came over his face. That’s when he noticed Henry standing on the other side of the room.

He walked toward him and stretched out his hand.

“I take it,” he said, “that you must be Henry.”

“Yes, suh,” said Henry, shaking his hand.

“Templeton Daniels.”

“Henry Patterson,” said Henry with a nod.

“Well, I’m glad to know you, Henry,” said Mr. Daniels. “From what these girls of mine tell me, you’ve been a mighty big help to them. I want to thank you. I should have been doing more myself. I’m still trying to learn a few things about life. I might be a slow learner, but I hope it’s not too late for me.”

“Ain’t neber too late fer learnin’ the bes’ things life’s got ter teach us, Mr. Daniels.”

“And just what would those things be, Mr. Patterson?”

“Ter do fer others as we’d hab dem do fer us. Ah don’ reckon hit gits much simpler dan dat.”

Mr. Daniels nodded and smiled. “You are absolutely right. Well said. A worthy lesson indeed!”

Then he quickly became serious again. “How it is to be applied in a situation like Kathleen says you’re in, however,” he added, “sometimes that’s hard to say. If I know these men, they’re not the kind that will return good for good. In any event, I am most appreciative that you’ve taken it upon yourself to watch over things here. I hope we will be good friends from now on.”

A little taken aback to have a white man treat him with such courtesy and even respect, and to take his words seriously, Henry didn’t exactly know what to say. In the meantime, Mr. Daniels turned to give Emma a smile and tousle Aleta’s hair. “How are you two young ladies doing?” he said.

Even as he did so, Henry brought us back to the immediate hornet’s nest Katie’s uncle had ridden into without knowing it.

“Miz Kathleen’s right ’bout one thing, Mr. Daniels,” he said. “Dem men’s comin’ back. Dat’s what I’m doin’ here.

Dey’s after Miz Kathleen’s gold, an’ like she say, my son’s out dere right now wiff a gun waitin’—”

But Mr. Daniels didn’t hear the rest of what Henry was about to say.

“What!” he exclaimed, spinning around. “You found it!”

“Oh yes! I almost forgot,” said Katie excitedly. “We found it, Uncle Templeton. There really was gold after all.”

“Where?”

“In a lantern down in the cellar.”

“A lantern!”

“Mama hid it in the base, in the oil chamber. But when I took it to the bank, a man called Sneed found out. He’s supposed to be from the government, but we don’t know whether to believe him or not. And then the other men found out from him.”

“So they know about it?”

Katie nodded. “But they don’t know how much there is,” she said. “I only took some of it to the bank.”

“Good girl!”

“But they said they were coming back today and that if we didn’t give it to them, they were going to ransack the place. They even said they would burn us out if they had to.”

“Looks like I got here just in time,” said Mr. Daniels, taking in everything Katie had said.

He sat down with a serious and thoughtful expression on his face, then let out a long sigh.

“What’s this about your son, Henry?” he said after a minute, glancing toward Henry.

“He took two guns, an’ is hidin’ out dere right now.”

“Are the guns in the cabinet loaded?”

“Don’ know, suh,” said Henry, shaking his head. “But I ain’t no man ter use er gun. Dat ain’t my way.”

Mr. Daniels thought a minute, then looked up at Katie.

“Where is the gold, Kathleen?” he asked.

Katie went and got the bag and set it down on the kitchen table. Mr. Daniels stared at it, then slowly smiled in a funny sort of way.

“A bag of gold,” he said. “Doesn’t look like that much, but it’s what men dream of and will give their lives for … even kill for.”

“But why, Uncle Templeton?” asked Katie. “
Why
do they?”

“I don’t know, Katie,” he answered. “It’s more than just the value. Gold gets into a man’s soul, and sometimes drives out everything else.”

“Is that what happened to Uncle Ward?”

Mr. Daniels thought a minute. “The truth of it is, Kathleen,” he said with a reflective sigh, “no. That’s why Ward gave it to your mama, God bless her. The fact is, it was probably more likely to get into my soul than Ward’s. Ward made a few enemies along the way, but down inside he was probably a better man than me. I couldn’t see it for a long time, but now that things are starting to come clear in my brain, I can see that Ward probably followed more in Mama’s footsteps than any of us. He was a good man.”

His words of reflection quieted us all, until Emma spoke up.

“Is dat bag ob gold in yer soul now, Mr. Daniels?”

He thought for a moment, then began to chuckle at Emma’s simple yet profound question.

“No, Emma,” he said. “There was a time when it might have gotten in there. But no more.”

He glanced around and let his eyes rest on Katie for a second, then on me.

“Now that I’ve figured out a few things about what’s important, and now that I’ve found the two of you,” he went on, “and I know how much that means, I don’t want to lose you. No amount of gold is worth that.”

“So what should we do, Uncle Templeton?” asked Katie.

“Why don’t we just … give it to them?”

“What about the loan at the bank?”

“It’s not worth anyone’s getting killed over. We can take care of it. We’re a family now. I’ll talk to the banker. I’ll tell him what’s happened and about Rosalind and the rest of your family. Surely he’ll understand. I’m certain he’ll extend the terms a few months. I’ll work. We’ll harvest crops.—

That’s possible, isn’t it, Henry?” he said, glancing toward Henry. “Dat it is, Mr. Daniels,” replied Henry. “Dese ladies here, dey picked dere own cotton las’ year an’ wiff all da lan’ out dere, ain’t no tellin what can be done.”

“There, Kathleen, you see. It’s just like Henry says. We don’t need gold, we’ve got land, and that’s better than gold. And we’ve got each other now too.We don’t need that little bag of gold to be a family and to make Rosewood prosperous again. All we need is each other.”

Suddenly the sound of horses from outside interrupted him.

Our brief enthusiasm vanished. Suddenly tension filled the room again. Unconsciously every eye in the room went straight to Mr. Daniels. Whether he liked responsibility or not, he was in charge now. He walked toward the open window and looked out.

“It’s them, all right,” he said. “There’s four of them.”

He thought a minute.

“All right … Henry, you take these ladies upstairs.”

“What about you, Uncle Templeton?” said Katie.

“Right now I’m more worried about the rest of you,” he said. “I’ll talk to them and give them the gold. But I want the rest of you out of sight in case they’re on a short fuse.”

“Should we hide in the cellar?”

“I don’t think there’s any need for that. I’m going to try to handle this thing peaceably.”

Reluctantly we all left the kitchen and Katie led the way with Henry upstairs.

In spite of what he had said, the moment we were gone, Mr. Daniels went to the gun cabinet, took out a rifle, loaded it, and walked with it back to the window, carrying a box of shells.

By then there were already shouts coming from outside.

S
HOOTOUT

39

H
EY IN THERE … YOU
C
LAIRBORNES!” YELLED
the lead rider. “Time’s up. We’re back like we said we’d be. We’re here for what belongs to us.”

The voice they heard shouting back at them through the window, however, was not the one they had expected.

“All right, you out there,” it called. “We’ve got the gold and we’re not going to put up a fight.”

The rider seemed momentarily puzzled as two of his partners rode up alongside him.

“That you, Daniels?” he finally called out.

“Yeah, it’s me, Jeb.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m here, that’s all that matters.”

“I figured you’d be back for the gold one day. Now I can settle my score with you for that money you cheated me out of.”

“I never cheated you, Jeb. You’re just a bad poker player, that’s all. You should never have called, holding just a pair of sevens.”

“We’ll see about that, Daniels,” the man shouted back. “The way I figure it, I got the winning hand now.”

“You’re right, Jeb—no argument there. You got me dead to rights. That’s why, like I told you, I’m just going to fold and let you walk away with the gold.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it ain’t that simple, Daniels, you ever think of that? Maybe it’s gone too far. Maybe it ain’t only the gold we want.”

“What else could you want, Jeb? We’ve got nothing else.”

“Yeah, well maybe we’re just gonna take the gold
and
that pretty little girl in there for Hal here. And maybe I’ll just kill you to boot.”

“No need for all that, Jeb. I told you, you can have the gold. You don’t want to get yourself into even more trouble than you’re already in.”

“Why should we trust you, Daniels? Ward lied to us. The woman lied to us. The kid lied to us. And you’re all kin. We’re going to take it … all of it.”