Free Captive by Heather Graham Page A

a full-blooded Creek Indian, a graduate of the United States Military Academy. The whites were trying to convince the Seminoles to move west and rejoin their now distant kin, the Creek nation, but meanwhile they were using Creek troops against the Seminoles. There were so many ironies.
    James had fought that day. Caught up in the running, in the skirmishing, in the drive to survive. Desperate as any man to protect the innocents behind the battle line. He had fired his gun, used sword and knife savagely. He shook now to think of it. He had feared that at any moment he would come upon a soldier he knew, a man with whom he had shared whiskey or wine, a debate, an argument, a drawing room poker game.
    Caught between two worlds, he had created his own ethics, his own standards and rules. When troops attacked, he would fight back. He had no choice. But he would never take part in a raid, and come hell or high water, he would never make war on women or children. His white blood didn’t necessarily dictate that decision. He knew many braves who refused to take part in the slaughters on the plantations. Even Osceola despised the idea of war on women and children, though as war
mico
Osceola had turned his gaze from depraved acts of war often enough. But for as many “red men” who would slaughter whole families, there were equally as many who would not murder innocents, even in the name of war.
    James knew there were as many good men in the white military—despite the things that happened under such men as Michael Warren.
    Just thinking of the man again seemed to seize mercilessly upon his temper, cause his blood to writhe and boil within him. He looked down and saw that his fingers were shaking slightly. He’d learned about the Supreme Spirit from his Indian kin, about the Christian God from his father. They were one and the same, and no matter what the Great Father was called, James was grateful to him suddenly that Naomi had died of fever and not at the hands of a white man.
    He clenched his teeth together tightly against an onslaught of pain that was like a physical blow. He would never, ever forget coming home, back to the place deep in the swampland where he had secreted his people, and seeing the fire, the back of the man, Naomi draped in his arms. The man, his brother, turning slowly, tears stinging his dark eyes. Naomi, beautiful in death, striking, so lovely that she seemed to sleep. James had taken her from Jarrett, held her in silence, and his brother had remained beside him, not speaking a word, knowing, sharing what he could. But it had been worse. His younger daughter, Sara, had been dead three days. His mother had been very ill, but well enough for the Peopleto take her more deeply into the swamp to keep her from the danger of the encroaching white troops. Such men as Warren would not care that she had been tender and good, that she had raised and adored another woman’s white child as she had Jarrett. Robert Trent had taken Jennifer back to Cimarron and Tara, and Jarrett alone had waited with the bodies for James to come, a brother to share a brother’s grief, a brother who knew more thoroughly than most full-blooded Indians how a burial for such loved ones should take place.
    But she hadn’t died by white hands. By a bullet from a soldier’s gun, or the steel of an enemy’s blade. If she had died so, at the hands of such a man as Warren … His eyes opened. He stared out at the night again. From within he heard the soft sound of a woman’s laughter.
    That she could be the man’s daughter!
    He’d had to walk away. Walk away or do something terrible there, in his brother’s house. Do what? he mocked himself. When he had first seen her on the stairway, it had seemed as if the entire world, except for the woman, had been swept away. Receded to nothingness. She was startling with her vivid beauty. Her hair was red, not an orange red, but a burning, deep red, as mesmerizing as the dancing flames of a wild