Captive by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online

running. Running deeper and deeper into the swamp because the soldiers were after them. Soldiers who would slay any Indians they came upon, young ones, old ones, men, women, maidens, little children. James had been gone when they had taken ill. He had been traveling in the area of Fort Brooke, engaged in negotiations for friends who were weary, admitting defeat, ready to travel to the dry, barren lands in the far west where the whites had decreed the Indians could live free. Friends had warned him that his wife had stopped her flight because she had been uanble to go farther. Then he had run himself, run hard and fast, a desperation in his soul.
    He had run and run and run. But he had come too late. He had almost rejoiced to see that his brother had heard, too, and come in his stead, but his brother had come too late as well. James had come to find Jarrett kneeling on the ground, his black head bent low.
    All too clearly he could relive those last few footsteps he had taken then!
    When he had approached Jarrett, he had discovered that his brother held the body of his wife, and that Jarrett’s tear fell upon her soft golden flesh.
I’m sorry, oh, God, so, so sorry, I loved her, too…
    Running, falling. He’d taken her body himself, cradled it there in the earth, sobs like howls shaking from his body, until there was sound no more, until silent tears streamed down his face.
    Then he’d discovered that he’d lost his child as well. He’d wanted to die. He’d grieved without thought of water or sustenance, grieved the night, the day, the night, and still, with him, at his side, his brother had remained.
    No, he could never hate his brother. But searing, awful fury and the need to strike in revenge had been with him ever since.
    His father had taught him all the white ways; he knew the white world. He was no fool, and he knew the whites’ strength, and knew as well that he fought a desperate battle he most probably could not win. But neither could the whites beat the swamp, and therefore they could not beat the Indians. No one seemed to see that as yet.
    “How many were killed in Warren’s raid?” Tara asked him, bringing him back to the present.
    “Almost a hundred. He had sent out word that food and clothing and extra provisions would be given to any of those Indians who chose to move west within the month. He promised payments in gold. So many women, weary of running, of watching their children starve, were willing to believe him. I could have stopped them if I had reached them in time, but I was near Micanopy while they were south of St. Augustine. They went in ready to surrender, and Warren raided them at night. He claimed he thought it was warriors camping out, preparing to attack white farms, when an outcry was voiced by even those Floridians most hardened against the Indians.”
    He decided not to tell Tara the rest. Speaking it out loud made it all the more horrible.
    White soldiers had seen to the disposal of the bodies. But news leaked out. Infants had frequently died with their head bashed in—why waste a bullet? Women had been slit from throat to groin; old men had been mutilated as well as murdered.
    James scowled. “So much for the cease-fire of March.”
    “James, I am so sorry!” Tara said. “I beg you to remember that not all whites—”
    “Are like Warren,” he agreed. “It’s just that too damned many are.”
    They had come to the porch. Tara led him to the cradle that rocked gently in the breeze. His nephew, Ian, six months old now, lay within it sleeping peacefully. James smiled. The boy was a McKenzie, all right. Despite his mother’s glorious blond hair, his small head was capped with a surplus of shiny black hair. “Watch out for this angel!” he reminded Tara.
    She wrinkled her nose to him. “And now—”
    She didn’t get to finish. Another little dark-haired creature suddenly came flying out of the house from the back breezeway doors. His surviving daughter, Jennifer, now