A burning itch had started where his homespun trousers were belted at his waist. Hell, should have used more coal oil on his cuffs. Damn chiggers.
“Like beautiful Selu, she will stir the passions of men in her time.”
Billy’s heart leaped. “Ain’t no one gonna be stirring nothing when it comes to my sister. Jus’ ’cause you lost your…” He shook his head. “Ah hell, John. I didn’t mean it.”
Gritts’s expression didn’t change. “That was long ago.”
“Never can trust them damn Northern people.”
“Andrew Jackson was a Southerner. So were the men working with him. We call it the Trail of Tears now.” He paused. “My sisters weren’t the only ones who died.”
“If I were you, I think I’d hate all white men.”
“That means I’d hate you.”
“Reckon so.” Billy slipped Gritts a sidelong look. “You’re my best friend. Maybe my only real friend.”
“I’ve had things to teach you. The Creator made older men to teach younger men. A man without sisters has no one to teach. You know how it is among Cherokee. A man is responsible for teaching his sisters’ sons to be men. Your father understands these things.”
“Maw sure as hell don’t.” Billy shook his head. “Paw? He spent time out West. Still talks all the time about the Crow, about trappin’, and that William Drummond Stewart. At least when Paw’s home, that is.”
“He should buy a house in Little Rock instead of renting that room. This convention on secession the governor called is going to take all summer.”
“No it ain’t. Not since that man Lincoln called for Arkansas to send troops to fight South Carolina and the secesh states. Even the Union men are mad about that. And that damn Lincoln, he shouldn’t have sent that ship to reinforce Fort Sumter. That was a damn slap in the face to them Carolinians.”
“So, you gonna go be a soldier?”
Billy grinned as he shook his head. “Paw told me about soldiering down in Mexico. As much as it didn’t suit him, it’d suit me less. I ain’t taking orders, marching to someone else’s call.” He paused. “And there ain’t no hunting.”
Gritts started down the winding trail, sniffing the flower-laden air on occasion, as if—like his Wolf Clan ancestors—he could scent the presence of prey and dangers. “Your mother likes to sound enraged, but like a nesting hawk, it is mostly loud noise.” He paused. “You confuse her. She is so proud, at the same time worried. You are her favorite.”
“Favorite? Then why’s she always yelling at me?”
“Because you are her favorite. The others, they are walking the path of their futures. Philip is already a trained healer, long gone. Butler now studies in the white man’s school in Pennsylvania, and beautiful Sarah will choose any man she wishes.”
“She damn well better choose smart, then, ’cause I’ll whip any of these lazy bastards come sniffing around her. They only got one thing on their mind, John, and they ain’t doing that with my sister.”
“You can’t stop Sarah from becoming a woman any more than you can stop the White River from flowing. Sometimes this preoccupation you have with her worries me. Guarding her honor is one thing, craving her, that becomes dangerous to the soul.”
“I don’t crave her! You’ve seen how men look at her. How that change comes to their eyes. And, damn it, you know they’s figgering on what it would be like to peel her out of her dress. It just lights my fire. I see red and want to stomp every one of them for being sneaking bastards.”
“Sarah is good to look at.” John gave him a bland smile in return for Billy’s hot glare. “All the curves are right … even if she’s too pale with the wrong color hair for a man like me.” He lifted a finger. “Even your maw worries that you take things too far.”
“She’s always yelling at me to let Sarah alone.”
Gritts shot Billy a hard look. “You know your paw is taking her to Little Rock next fall. She’s old enough to marry. She wants a rich and powerful husband. One who will increase your paw’s standing and power. Your paw and Sarah understand these things.” He smiled tightly. “They could be Cherokee.”
Billy ground his teeth, looking away. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad with Sarah married and living way off in Little Rock. To change the subject, he muttered, “Hell, John. I just want to have fun.”
“Among my people, we have a word for your kind.”
“Udiga udli,” Billy replied. “Thrown Away Boy, the crazy brother.” He’d been working hard to learn as much of the Cherokee language as he could, and John always helped him with the pronunciation. Said it might save his life one day.
“Gehyahtahi. The Wild One,” Gritts corrected as they emerged from under the forest canopy and onto a high limestone cliff. Billy narrowed his eyes against the hard sunlight and stepped to the precipice. Patches of green moss clung to cracks in the eroded gray limestone. The sky beckoned, pale blue, with puffy white clouds in the distance over the rumpled ridges.
Perched on the lip, Billy looked out across the rounded tops of trees in the valley below. To the west lines of forested bluffs and ridges seemed to march away into the misty blue. The distant clouds beyond the horizon thickened in the southwest where they floated in from the Indian Nations, hinting of rain in the afternoon.
The fragrant air was heavy with the scent of blooming flowers and trees, the damp freshness of the soil, and the muggy warmth of the season. The different shades of green in the valley below marked elms, varieties of oaks and hickories, maples, and chestnuts. Redbuds, dogwoods, and vines of honeysuckle that added spots of color. He thought the forest greens to be achingly vivid in comparison to the stark blue of the sky. In the valley below, the
