Firebrand's Woman Read online

  Firebrand's Woman

  Vanessa Royall

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1980 by M.T. Hinkemeyer

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition September 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-424-0

  More from Vanessa Royall

  Come Faith, Come Fire

  Flames of Desire

  Fires of Delight

  Seize the Dawn

  Wild Wind Westward

  The Passionate and the Proud

  For Barbara McFadden Laskowski

  The many moons and sunny days we have lived here will be long remembered by us. The Great Spirit has smiled upon us and made us glad. But we have agreed to go.

  We go to a country we know little of. Our home will be beyond a great river on the way to the setting sun. We will build our wigwams there in another land. In peace we bid you good-bye. If you come to see us, we will welcome you.

  A. Chieftain’s Farewell to the Ancestral Lands of his Tribe

  Author's Note

  In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson purchased from Napoleon a vast tract of land called Louisiana, which stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to what is now the state of Montana. The westward movement of settlers and frontiersmen, already under way, was accelerated by Jefferson’s acquisition; and bloody conflicts over territorial rights to ancient Indian tribal lands began to scar the face of American history. During these years the government devised a policy called “Indian removals.” A euphemism for eviction. For exodus. Such was the fate awaiting Dey-Lor-Gyva, whose name means “Beloved-of-Earth,” and who was in her savage but love-filled lifetime to become the brave and beautiful Firebrand’s Woman.

  V.R.

  Prologue—1803

  Four Bears, motionless now for hours, lay flat against the sweet, pine-needled earth. High overhead, wind stirred in the Georgia conifers. The mountainside dropped steeply from the place where he lay waiting, and rose again, even more severely, across the gorge. There was a fast-running, rapids-filled river below, a white ribbon of light, luminous beneath the stars. Four Bears heard the thunder of the distant falls, which he could not see. He was relying on that booming tide of sound to cover his attack when the right time came, just before dawn. Just before dawn when the deep sleep comes, when even sentries sigh with relief that the night is over, and let down their guard.

  Four Bears sighed, too, but with gratitude and anticipation, and listened to the roar. It was fitting that the sun and the earth and the river and the falls should be in alliance with him. The white men called this place Roaring Gorge; they could call it what they wished until they died, which would be very soon. Four Bears knew this place was holy ground—Cradle-of-the-Speaking-River, to which for a thousand thousand moons had come the Seminole and Cherokee, the Creek and Chickasaw (of which Four Bears himself was chieftain), the Choctaw, the Sac, and the Fox, all to thank the Great Spirit for the riches and wonders he had bestowed upon his Indian children: fecund, corn-growing earth in the red valleys; pungent, healing herbs in the soft and shielding forests; animals heavy with meat and milk and young. And the vast smoky mountains that had been home since time beyond the memory of the tribal seeress, who had the divine handprint of blood upon her face. Truly this was Indian ground.

  Why did the white men not know such an obvious thing?

  Clearly the white men were a challenge sent by the Great Spirit, a test to prove the wisdom and strength of Indian braves, to confirm them as warriors, and thus to reaffirm their age-old claim to this holy place, this lovely land. Four Bears clutched tightly the Red Stick that gave him immunity from bullets and blades and death, watching the blueness lighten its shade over the mountains to the east, waiting for the pale pink predawn haze. So soft was this earth, so wonderful the warm and faithful sun. In his old and battle-hardened heart, Four Bears felt great tenderness, and prayed for the safety of his one-year-old granddaughter, asleep now down there in the white man’s encampment in the gorge. Dey-Lor-Gyva, Beloved-of-Earth. Yes, beloved of earth, and beloved of Four Bears, too, but now a prisoner of Jacksa Chula Harjo, as the Chickasaw called him—Jackson, old and fierce.

  Andrew Jackson, who had not yet seen the circling of forty suns! How was it possible that a man so young became so relentless and bold? Had the Chickasaw nation somehow offended the Great Spirit, that such a terrible man be loosed upon them? Ababinili, Four Bears prayed, calling upon the force that was the sun, the clouds, the clear sky, and Spirit-Who-Dwells-in-the-Clear-Sky, grant us victory in the coming battle. Grant that we safely recapture the infant, though she is but a female.

  Fleetingly, because there was no time now to think further upon the matter, Four Bears wondered why Chula Harjo had not killed the child. Chula Harjo did not shrink from the giving of death. He had killed the child’s parents readily enough, three days ago, and destroyed by torch the village near Talking Rock where Four Bears’ son, Dark Wing, had lived peacefully among the white settlers with the white woman he had taken to wife.

  When the whites had first come into the territory, there had been concern on the part of the elders that intermarriages would occur. Four Bears, knowing in his heart that love was a thing difficult to confound by prohibitions, had at first hoped that the mixed marriages that did take place would bring Indian and white man closer together. But he was older now, and wiser. He saw that the whites gave on their own terms and took on their own terms. They were jackals, only jackals, Four Bears realized now, fully and forever. He had been a fool even to think that intermingling love and blood would result in a greater good. Look what had happened! The jackals had killed not only Dark Wing, Four Bears’ beloved son, but his white wife as well. So now it was irrefutable. Ababinili could not have willed that the blood of red warriors be mixed with that of white jackals, who respected neither life nor land, neither peace nor living wind.

  Yet the blood is mixed, he thought then. The child is undeniably the issue of a Chickasaw chieftain’s son. Chula Harjo will upon this dawn pay dearly for what he has done.

  Behind him, spread out in concealed positions in the bushes and trees along the gorge, Four Bears felt the taut readiness of the fifteen braves he had selected for this mission. It was a tension not of fear but of eagerness. These young braves were strong and true, and perhaps one of them would become chieftain when the time came for Four Bears to join the Spirit-Who-Dwells-in-the-Clear-Sky. These bold and fearless braves, Red Sticks in their hands, had already bloodied white soldiers along the Chattahoochee, and then along the Etowah River. They had fought, too, in the battle of the fort on the banks of the holy Oostanaula. They had fought, and fought well, and always it seemed that the victory was theirs. The white men would flee, taking, with them their women and children, departing in fear. But always—in a fortnight, or a moon, or two moons—the white men would return; many more of them this time, and with soldiers.

  It was beyond understanding. With every Indian victory, Four Bears and his people were driven farther and farther from these lands, and soon they would be forced to retreat all the way back to the ancient villages in the mountains of Tennessee, the heartland upon which Ababinili had breathed life into the Chick
asaw nation.

  Four Bears felt the red flash of pure anger, raw passion, arise behind his eyes, and felt the hot blood race through his veins as if he were young again. He was ready. Slowly, soundlessly, he rose from the pine-needled carpet of the forest, Red Stick in one hand, long killing-knife in the other. It was a white man’s knife, designed for death; and until the pale jackals had come into Indian lands, such a vicious weapon was unknown. Now every brave had one; it was a mark of honor.

  Seeing their chieftain rise, the braves rose, too, as soundlessly as he had. Since earliest childhood, they had learned how to be fleet and silent in the forest, how to race like the wind beneath sheltering trees, how to become the earth and the grass and the leaves through which they moved. This was as it should be, for heaven had willed them to be more than mere tenants of these mysterious, brooding lands. No, heaven had created the Chickasaw to be at one with earth, inseparable from it through all the days.

  Slowly the warriors began the tortuous descent upon the steep wall of the gorge, clinging to outcroppings of rock or to gnarled bushes and saplings sprung from cracks among the rocks. The pounding thunder of the falls obscured the sound of an inevitable pebble shaken loose or the groan of a branch too tender for the weight it must bear. Over the rim of the pine-encircled gorge, the sky was now bright blue; but down inside, the air was still dark, purplish, cold enough to urge a man, even a soldier, more deeply into the warmth of his bedroll. Good. Four Bears had planned on that, and planned correctly.

  Still, he had a certain respect for the canny Jacksa. The accumulated wisdom of a thousand moons dictated that a campsite must be on high ground when threatened in war at night. Thus one’s enemies were forced to climb to the attack, losing the advantages of both elevation and gravity. But here, in the Cradle-of-the-Speaking-River, all things were different. A campsite on the rim of the gorge meant disaster for the white men because, if trapped, they could be driven over the side, hurled to plummeting deaths. By choosing shelter down in the gorge, however, they forced any attacker to advance most slowly, pinned all the while against steep, rocky walls, easy as targets in a children’s game—unless the attacker calculated everything, and waited for the right moment, as Four Bears had.

  Still in the lead, he released his grip on the stump of a tree, slid cautiously down across a mossy embankment, caught hold of a branch—and felt the Red Stick fall away from him, perhaps twenty feet to the floor of the gorge. He held his knife between his powerful teeth, which could still crack walnuts with a single crunch. But he would rather have dropped the knife than the stick, his symbol of immunity against death; and he looked around to see his braves studying him. They had seen the Red Stick fall away; and in tense, wary silence, absolutely without motion, they pressed against the rocks.

  Moment by moment the sky grew brighter. There was no time to pause, and less to consider the portent of a fallen stick. Four Bears readied himself, kicked off from the rock, and dropped quietly to the floor of the gorge. There in the gloom was his Red Stick, and he retrieved it from the dew-wet grass and held it high above his head for the others to see. Then he grinned, with the killing-knife still between his teeth. It is only dangerous to drop the stick in battle, he was telling them. Otherwise there is no meaning.

  The braves had faith in him. Together they advanced rapidly in the shadows along the wall of the gorge; and against the white cascade of the falls, beside the silver river, the Indians could already see the huddled bundles of sleeping enemies. But which of those dark shapes belonged to little Gyva, Beloved-of-Earth?

  Four Bears halted his men, looking for sentries. He saw none. A trap? Chula Harjo thought of everything. Four Bears scanned the side of the gorge and studied the trees, squinting along the river bank. His braves, beside him, behind him, grew impatient. If a battle has been planned, there is a moment beyond which it cannot be delayed. This was one such moment. Every luck was with them, even the wind. The horses tethered by the river did not sense their presence.

  The chief was just about to lift his Red Stick and give the high, hooting, blood-chilling cry of battle and assault. He was already raising the stick into the blue air, and his heart was pounding as it always did before a confrontation. His braves, anticipating blood, appeared already to be leaping forward toward the encampment, although they had not moved.

  Then the thin, bleating cry of a child, piercing as a lance, rose in the cold morning air. It became a wail, bereft and need-filled, born of hunger and cold. The cry was easily audible above the rumble of the falls, and audible through the layers of human sleep, too, just as a baby’s cry is meant to be.

  For one long, agonized instant—perhaps for the first time in his life—Four Bears hesitated at the moment of attack. His own granddaughter would rouse the sleeping white men; they would awaken and all would be lost. Or he would attack anyway and the child would be killed. Torn between his feelings as a progenitor and his duties as a chieftain, Four Bears froze.

  The crying continued, louder now and more demanding. A figure stirred and half rose from one of the bundled bedrolls.

  Four Bears decided. He raised his Red Stick and shrieked to heaven and all the spirits—to the soul of his son, Dark Wing, which must be hovering about them in the very air, awaiting vengeance.

  Howling and hooting, the Chickasaw rushed forward toward their enemies, who were even now leaping to their feet, clutching rifles and pistols and swords. Dey-Lor-Gyva’s cry rose, frantic now, near the waning fire.

  The battle itself was short and fierce, and just as joyfully brutal as Four Bears had hoped it would be. Perhaps even a white man who died in battle received some reward from whatever god he had. So let the white men die. The chieftain felt no age in his bones, none at all, as he flew down upon a blanket roll and plunged his knife down, up, down, up, down, up, and felt the heavy body jump and twitch, felt the blood hot and lovely on his hands. He rolled away, sprang to his feet, and thrust the hot blade of his knife into a young soldier crouching before him, jerking furiously at the hammer of a pistol. The man—no more than a boy—went down clutching his spilling entrails, when Four Bears jerked the knife out of him. As young as Dark Wing, Four Bears thought, whirling to meet another man, older, taller, charging at him with one of the killing-knives.

  All around there was battle, and shrieking, and the smell of death, which is like the juice of sugar cane cooked too long in a kettle over the campfire, and which is like the smell of apples rotting in a pit, and which is like the ordure of a sick dog, and which is like all these things combined. Four Bears breathed deeply of the smell and gave thanks that he had lived long enough to partake of it again, and slashed with his great knife at the man who attacked.

  He had reason to give thanks again.

  Even here, in the dark dawn within the gorge, he saw the lank wild yellow hair, the eyes so hard and shrewd, the body that was lean and hard as a young hickory tree.

  Jacksa Chula!

  “Yayaeeeeeeeeee!” howled Four Bears in the ecstasy of battle. He held his Red Stick high and lunged with the knife.

  Along the river the horses of the white men jerked and reared against their tethers and added the frightened sounds of beasts to the human melée. Around the campsite blood ran red on rumpled blankets, clung like dew to blades of tender, trampled grass. Braves grappled with more than a full score of white men, but the element of surprise forgives a deficiency in number. At least half of the ivory-faced hyenas lay dead already, and Four Bears sought to include their leader in that doomed contingent. He thrust at the hard belly of Chula Harjo. The high wail of his granddaughter, in her bundle by the campfire, went on unceasingly.

  Jacksa saw the blade coming, tucked in his gut, and spun away, feinted, and drove in at Four Bears, knife flashing in the dawn, fire in his eyes.

  Four Bears, as young and strong this morning as he had been on the long-ago day of his manhood ritual, evaded the thrust, distracted Jacksa with a quick movement of the Red Stick, and jerked his knife upward toward th
e white man’s heart. The top of his weapon slashed through buckskin as if it were parchment, and Jacksa dropped back, blood welling from a long cut on his ribs.

  Four Bears grinned and came forward in a crouch, holding the Red Stick wide in one hand, moving it, moving it slowly, trying to distract the white man with the stick, as a snake would move to charm a rodent. But Jackson did not make the same mistake again. He kept his eyes on the knife.

  The chieftain feinted again, awaiting the perfect moment for a killing thrust. He was sure of himself now, just as he always was when he first drew blood from an enemy. He did not even see the blade that came whistling through the air, cutting him high on the cheekbone, jolting him backward. But he felt the hot blood pouring down his face and tasted the sweet copper taste on his tongue.

  Now Jacksa Chula was grinning at him.

  Dey-Lor-Gyva became suddenly silent.

  Around the campfire now the battle had ended. Those white soldiers who were not already dead or dying had surrendered, their arms high in the air or crossed upon their heads. Several braves lay dying, too, their Red Sticks lost in the dust. It was as the legends proclaimed: A warrior who drops his sacred shield must soon be overcome. Soldiers and Indians alike turned to regard the two men who were yet in attitudes of combat, Four Bears and Jackson.

  “You are lost,” the chief muttered to his antagonist. “Drop your evil steel.”

  Jacksa laughed. “Drop yours.” Having spoken, he leaped forward once more and drove his blade at Four Bears’ beaded throat, coming close enough to slash the rawhide string that bound the beads, which sparkled like tiny hailstones, catching the light as they fell to earth.

  It had been a magnificent, reckless thrust. Jackson must have known that he would die anyway at the hands of the other braves, even if he succeeded in killing the chief. But he wanted the satisfaction and attacked while he was still able. Not for nothing had he earned his Indian name. But however young or however old and fierce, he was off-balance after the blow. Four Bears struck upward with his blade, and a deep, ugly gash appeared above Jackson’s left eye, a diagonal slash from the edge of the eyebrow to the temple, where the big vein throbbed. Clutching the wound, Jacksa fell backward to the earth, blood running through his fingers.