Chapter One
Your soul has come into the very center of my soul, never to turn away. I take your soul.
–CHEROKEE LOVE CHARM
North Georgia, Cherokee Nation, 1838
The day was too pretty, too painfully serene in its fresh spring promise, with the late-blooming dogwoods lacing the woods in white and the sweet smell of wild honeysuckle wisping through the air. A man could hurt from thinking about it, hurt so badly that he cried.
"She wasn't more than half grown, God. You turnin' your back on all the Cherokees now, even the children?" Justis Gallatin asked out loud.
He inhaled raggedly, gagged on the scent of honeysuckle and death, then took his shirt off so fast, several of the wooden buttons tore from it. He knelt beside the small, naked form and wrapped it quickly but gently, arranging the long swath of coal-black hair over the shirt.
Cradling Sallie Blue Song's body in his arms, Justis walked out of the woods, past the burnt hills of barns, past orchards standing untended, fields empty, fences broken–the utter destruction of what had once been one of the best farms, white or Indian, in this part of the Nation.
He entered a sandy yard canopied by grand old oak trees and watched his partner drop a saddle blanket across one of the four bodies stretched out there. Sam Kirkland glanced up at Justis and saw what he was carrying.
Sam gave a low moan of distress, walked to a blackened timber at the jumbled ruins of the Blue Song house, and leaned over it, retching. He began a chant in Hebrew as Justis laid Sallie by her father. Sam kept his religion a secret from the people over in town, but now he let the odd, melodic words of it ring out. Justis had no idea what the words meant, but he found them soothing.
He covered Sallie's head with the sleeve of his shirt. "That's the best I can do for her right now, old friend," he whispered to her father's corpse. He sat down beside Jesse Blue Song and gazed sadly at the bronzed face capped by inky black hair. Jesse had kept his hair cropped short because he wanted everyone to know that he was as civilized as any white man. Intelligence and kindness had given him a dignity that few people, of any color, possessed.
"You outdid 'em, friend," Justis told him hoarsely. "And the sons of bitches couldn't stand it."
He gently tugged a folded packet of paper from the pocket of the Cherokee's bloodstained shirt. Opening it, Justis squinted at the delicate, beautiful handwriting. Shock poured through him.
Dear Papa and Mama, I dreamed about home again. After more than six years away–forever, it seems to me–I still see the beloved mountains so clearly, and all of your dear faces. I can stand this dreadful loneliness no longer.
Justis read on, shaking his head in frustration when he came to long passages written in Cherokee, frowning when he couldn't make sense of the parts written in formal English. Jesse's eldest daughter had more education than anybody he knew.
He waved the letter in the air. "Sam, come read this and tell me what this gal's trying to say. She doesn't use many words less than a foot long."
Sam took the letter and read it anxiously. The breath soughed out of him. "She's had some sort of falling out with her guardian in Philadelphia, she's homesick, she's given the rest of her bank account to a maidservant who's needy, and she's worried over newspaper rumors about the Cherokees being forced to give up their land."
Sam handed him the letter. "In short, my friend, she's broke and she's coming home. Judging by the date of this letter, she'll arrive any day now."
Justis stared grimly at his business partner. He'd never met the eldest Blue Song daughter–she'd already been sent up north to get an education when he arrived in Cherokee country six years before. Shaking his head, he cursed softly. "The army's fixin' to kick her tribe clear across the Mississippi. She hasn't got a home anymore."
Justis looked around at the Blue Song and swallowed harshly. He owned it now.
"What are you going to do?" Sam asked.
Justis slowly lowered his gaze to Jesse Blue Song's body. Jesse had led him to a fortune in gold and treated him like a son. There was only one way to pay him back.
Justis closed the dark, unseeing eyes. "I'll keep her with me and take care of her no matter what," he promised softly. "I swear it."
