Longshadow's Woman. Bronwyn Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ sash of the tribe’s elite Koitsenga—the Society of the Ten Bravest. Along with the other men, he had been put in chains and dispatched to Fort Sill. There, they had been placed in an unfinished icehouse and thrown chunks of raw meat once a day until they were eventually transported by way of wagon and railroad to Saint Augustine in Florida. Expecting to be executed once he reached his destination, Longshadow had instead been sentenced to indefinite imprisonment. The difference had seemed slight at the time, but that was before he met Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt.

      Pratt was like no other white soldier in Longshadow’s experience. The man had fought against the Kiowa, yet he bore no malice, choosing to educate his prisoners rather than punish them for defending their homeland. He’d had the prisoners construct their own barracks, then moved them out of Fort Marion’s dungeons. Putting them to work as bakers, sailors, fishermen and field laborers, he had even allowed them to keep their small wages. During the time when they were working on their barracks, he’d enlisted the help of a few white women to teach them to read, write and speak English.

      Warily at first, but with increasing eagerness, Longshadow had allowed himself to be taught. Somewhat to his astonishment he’d discovered that he was a fair scholar, partly because of an insatiable curiosity, and partly because he had recognized education as a powerful tool. With the world around him changing so rapidly, a man needed all the knowledge he could absorb in order to survive.

      After three years, Lieutenant Pratt had persuaded his superiors that the prisoners were firmly reconciled to the white man’s way. They had been granted their freedom. Most had returned to the reservation, but a few of the once-fierce warriors had elected to stay in the East.

      Longshadow had been among those who elected to stay. His mother was dead. If he went back, he’d be expected to live on the reservation with its invisible borders. The Kiowa way of life was finished. From his tutors he had learned about the Jesus Road and the Plow Road. The first he hadn’t understood; the second held no appeal. Instead, he had chosen the sea. Over the next few years he had saved the money he earned as a seaman, recognizing the power of the white man’s gold, for even then a dream had been growing inside him. A dream of one day breeding fine horses. But it would take more gold than he possessed, which meant more years of work until he could save up enough to buy breeding stock and the land on which to keep them.

      As a prisoner he had sailed for a company that traded in the West Indies. Upon receiving his full pardon, he had returned to the sea, for of all the options, that one was most acceptable. Life at sea reminded him of the past, when his world had been wild, free and vast. And although he read, wrote and spoke English, he kept that knowledge to himself, having quickly discovered that most of his crewmates resented an Indian who spoke their language more precisely than they did. Although he liked Pratt, and would trust the man with his life—had done as much—he found it hard to trust other whites.

      So after promising to return the favor by helping some white person in need, he arranged with Pratt to collect his pay directly from the ship owner and deposit it into an account in Longshadow’s name. Each time he returned to port, Pratt gave him an accounting, congratulating him on his good sense. While other members of the crew drank and gambled away their pay almost as quickly as they earned it, Jonah watched his savings grow. He studied the written account from the bank, visualizing the horses he would one day buy—a good stallion and two, possibly three sturdy mares.

      For four years he had carried the dream, as one after another, three ships had foundered in the fierce storms called hurricanes and gone down. Each time, Longshadow, along with at least a part of the crew, had survived. That was when his mates had taken to calling him Jonah, saying that no ship he sailed on was safe.

      Jonah recognized the name. It had come from the Jesus Book. He had rejected that path, but he accepted the name as a reminder that, just as the Feather Dance had not brought back the buffalo, neither his own god, who was called Tiame, nor the white man’s Jesus, had kept him from being punished for sins he had not committed.

      Carrie braced herself to confront her surly prisoner and herd him to the creek. If she had to work with the man, he was going to have to scrub himself clean. She put up with her husband’s stench because she had to, else he’d knock her to kingdom come. For all his love of fancy clothes, Darther hated bathing. He always reeked of whiskey, sweat and cigars.

      But she didn’t have to put up with a blessed thing from her prisoner. She’d paid her two dollars—he was hers to do with as she saw fit. And as long as she was going to be working at his side, she saw fit to clean him up. Once he knew how good it felt to be rid of his own stench and the vermin that infested his hair and his body, he would likely insist on bathing at least once a week.

      She herself bathed every single day from either a bowl or a washtub. Once a week in the summertime she dunked herself all over in the creek and scrubbed, hair and all, with her best soap that had crushed bayberries added to the fat, ashes and lye to sweeten the scent. She did her best dreaming sitting in water, letting it lap around her, washing away the cares of the day.

      With a towel over her shoulder, the Springfield under her arm and a chunk of plain soap—not the scented kind—in her apron pocket, Carrie let herself out early the next morning. The fog lay heavy across the clearing, sucking around the pines and gum trees. By the time it burned off, she intended to have at least five of the biggest stumps dragged out of the ground and all the way over to her burn pile. It would take more than a sore hand to slow her down, she told herself, setting her jaw in determination.

      Scattering a handful of cracked corn to the chickens along the way, she sang out a greeting. “Rise an’ shine!”

      Rise an’ shine… Carrie had been hearing those words in her head for as long as she could remember, saying them aloud even when there was no one to hear but the chickens and that aggravating mule. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember if they’d come from her own family or from one of the missionaries who had given her a home after the massacre. All she knew was that saying them made her feel better. As if she weren’t entirely alone.

      Besides, “Rise an’ shine” sounded far better than her uncle’s, “Git your lazy ass down here and git to work, gal!”

      Darther didn’t even bother with that much. If he was awake at daybreak, which was rare, because he usually stayed up half the night when he was home, drinking with Liam and planning ways to win the next race, he would kick her out of bed onto the floor. Kick her hard, too.

      “Oh, how I hate that man,” she muttered. She tossed out the last of the corn, dusted her hands off and yelled toward the barn. “Rise an’ shine in there! Come on, time’s a-wasting!” He might not know what she was talking about, but at least he would know he couldn’t sleep all day.

      Jonah was awake. He’d been awake for hours, lying on his back on the itchy blanket for no better reason than that he liked the oily wool smell of it. It reminded him of the blanket he had slept under as a boy before he had left his mother’s lodge.

      Gritting his teeth against the pain, he clamped his leg irons on, reattached the long chain, and stood, shaking straw from the blanket and folding it neatly. If he didn’t present himself, she would come in after him, armed with that damned Springfield, no doubt. He’d like to grab the thing and—

      No, he wouldn’t. No scrawny, ignorant white female with colorless hair and the brain of a rock was worth losing his last hope for freedom. Clearing himself was going to be risky enough as it was, without the added offense of murder.

      When she appeared in the open doorway, they eyed one another silently for a moment. She was not quite as shapeless as he’d first thought. Her hair was pale, not colorless. Looking as though it had been hacked off with a dull knife, it curled about her face, at odds with the firm set СКАЧАТЬ