Read Online The Loner by Genell Dellin - Free Book Online Page A

charges more for every item in that store than it’s worth to put people in debt to him so they have to do whatever he says.”
    â€œWho was your mother?” he said. “Was she Cherokee?”
    Cathleen hesitated for a minute. Would it help her if she answered yes?
    No. She had heard that Black Fox Vann had delivered many a Cherokee involved in a crime with a white man to Judge Parker’s court and Donald Turner had been white. Besides, she would not suffer the indignity of lying.
    â€œNo. We were Intruders,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t come to you Lighthorsemen for justice .”
    Bile rose in her throat with that word.
    â€œThere is no such thing,” she said bitterly. “The white man’s law wouldn’t do anything about my mother’s murder, either.”
    She had to speak through clenched teeth to keep from crying.
    â€œYou reported it to the authorities when you went to Fort Smith?” he asked.
    â€œNot only that, but I begged them,” she said. “I went to the federal marshal and to the prosecutorand when they wouldn’t help me, I even asked for a meeting with Judge Parker himself.”
    â€œDid you get it?”
    â€œNo.”
    Her lips were trembling now but she couldn’t stop talking.
    â€œNot one of them cared or valued my mother’s life,” she continued, and her throat filled with fury that nearly choked her. “All the murdering and burning happened over in the Nation and I was accusing a rich, powerful Cherokee. We were Intruders and they weren’t about to lift a finger.”
    She drew in a deep, ragged breath.
    â€œBy the time I was through, I hated every lawman there nearly as much as I hated Tassel Glass.”
    Then she bit her tongue and held her rage inside. What was it about Black Fox Vann that loosened her tongue so foolishly?
    She had just given him, this Cherokee Lighthorseman who already believed her guilty, a perfect reason for her to have killed Federal Deputy Marshal Donald Turner.
    Black Fox was surprised by a quick sinking of disappointment that weighted his heart. Why should he care? He’d been thinking she was guilty all along, hadn’t he?
    So why did he feel as if he’d just taken the first swallow of the Black Drink at the Medicine Dance?
    He’d never felt this let down before because of anything a prisoner said, especially not an admission that would help prove he’d been right in arresting them. It proved just how much he wanted Cathleen to be innocent.
    The Cat. His prisoner. He ought not think of her as Cathleen. Every time he did, it only emphasized the fact she was a woman, which he was trying to forget.
    Without glancing toward her again, he got up off the bed and walked to the window, where he leaned against the frame with both hands and stared out into the night. Over there, near where the cleared farmland met the woods, a lighter shadow moved through the dark grasses. A small animal, most likely a young possum, going about his night business into the trees.
    The sweet spring breeze moved through the grass, too, and the nightbirds called back and forth. Beside the barn, the horses grazed, the sounds of their movements muffled by its thickness. This was a good spring, with just the right amount of rain.
    The Nation needed that. It needed good crops this year and it needed freedom from the outlaws that were keeping it in turmoil. Arresting this girl was his job.
    Black Fox closed his eyes and tried to breathe in rhythm with the whispering leaves. The roaring, sleepless aching in his head didn’t belong in a night like this.
    And neither did a hanging for a girl who’d suffered such an injustice.
    Get a grip, Vann. You already had evidence she was at the scene of the murder. What difference does it make that she had reason to kill that deputy?
    He opened his eyes and tried to put his mind in some other place but it kept jumping back to The Cat. She lay