Paint the Wind Read online

  Paint the Wind by Cathy Cash Spellman

  Called The Gone With the Wind of the West… Wide as the continent and wild as the West, Paint the Wind is the epic saga of one unforgettable woman and the three strong men who risk everything to possess her.

  1864. A plantation is ravaged by border raiders. Ten-year-old Fancy Deverell is saved by a wise old slave named Atticus, who sets her on an extraordinary journey that will lead her headlong into the rough-and-tumble days of the Old West. From a westering circus train to the gold and silver fields of Colorado, from the cutthroat world of the New York Stage and the arcane shadows of magic and mysticism to the last legendary and tragic struggles of Geronimo and the Apache Nation, the novel sweeps along with the relentless rhythm of those turbulent times…

  To survive, Fancy must learn what it takes for a woman to climb from poverty to fame and fortune in a universe that belongs to the ruthless and the male. Before she’s through, there isn’t much that Fancy won’t have done, or bargained, or sold for her dreams… and the price of her deliverance. For Paint the Wind is first and last the story of feisty, tempestuous, and vulnerable Fancy Deverell. Far too beautiful for her own good, she wants it all -- love, power, money, security -- and she’ll get it, too, if she can keep her heart out of the way of the three men who so desperately want to possess her.

  CHANCE McALLISTER -- his gambler’s luck is legendary, like his prowess in bed, and Chance is precisely the kind of rogue Fancy wants.

  HART McALLISTER -- a giant of a man with a soul and talent to match, Chance’s brother is an artist whose paintings of the dying Apache Nation will hang in the Louvre… but it won’t mean a damn to him if he can’t have Fancy.

  JASON MADIGAN -- a wizard at making deals and breaking lesser men, he’s someone who kills for sport. And Fancy, is the only woman he has ever needed to own, whatever the cost.

  Fancy’s journey is a tale of self-discovery and of spiritual growth that takes as many strange turns as life itself. The men and women who bring their dreams and drives to it are as colorful and various as the thousands who journeyed west: the stalwart, honorable madam and the gunfighter who loves her… the brilliant dwarf with the secret past… the cunning Chinese wise man who knows the cure for opium addiction… the old prospector who would sacrifice everything but integrity for the Mother Lode… the thespian who yearns for one last great role to play… the mysterious Gypsy who mastered the forbidden arts and now must win back her immortal soul.

  Against this huge, vividly rendered, multi-character canvas, three resolute men do battle for the woman called Fancy in a novel that for its scope and grandeur belongs on the shelf with the classic epics of our time.

  Published by Dell Publishing a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 666 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10103

  Copyright © 1989 by Cathy Cash Spellman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Delacorte Press, New York, New York.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  ISBN: 0-440-20813-0

  This book is dedicated to my mother

  Catherine Cash 1912-1988

  Dear Kate,

  This one's for you. In love and gratitude. For all you taught and gave and tried to do. May you find time in Heaven to read it, when the Good Lord isn't after you for advice.

  From the Journal of Matthew Hart McAllister

  They called her Any Man's Fancy—but it wasn't true, of course. She loved two men in her life and perhaps a third, at least a little. But that's hardly very much in a life like hers, and not near as many as there might have been if she'd been less particular.

  Because of her I bankrupted one man, ruined another's reputation, and killed a third, and would again if it needed doing. But that's the end of my tale and not the start, so perhaps we'd best get to the beginning. . . .

  Hart McAllister let the pen come to rest and raised his eyes, unseeing, above the paper. It was not the wall of his study that met his unfocused gaze.

  He was a man of mammoth proportion. Age had blurred the strong jaw, tarnished the auburn hair with featherings of gray, and dimmed the deep blue of the eyes that had once been keen enough to scout for Geronimo and paint two works that hung side by side in the Louvre. But time had not substantially altered the six-foot-six-inch frame, the buffalo shoulders and head that were carried with the quiet dignity of one meant by fate to rise above other men. He resumed his writing.

  My brother, Chance, and I were born in Kansas in the late 1840's fifteen months apart, he being the older. It was a hard land in those days, a place of outlaws and raging prairie winds; a land that asked lifeblood in return for its bounty. That world has long since vanished . . . cities thrive where cattle grazed, corn and wheat fields stretch their golden harvest toward forever, so you could be fooled into thinking that was the way God made it. But back then, it was a life of sunbaked hardship. No tree for a bird to sing in and no reward you hadn't wrestled out of Fate's uncompromising hand.

  My brother's christening name was Charles Yancy McAllister, but Chance is all anybody ever called him. And with good reason.

  He was a daredevil when young and a gambler later on. There was deviltry in his nature, but no meanness.

  He was the best brother a man ever had in thick or thin. And nothing ever really came between us . . . not even Fancy. But that's a long story and maybe not one you'll understand. . . .

  Hart paused and his great head sank toward his chest, in reverent memory. How do I tell their story now? he wondered. How can a generation bred in safety understand what forges characters the likes of Chance and Fancy . . . Fancy and Chance ... a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan escaped him.

  "Christ!" he whispered to the silent room. "How I loved them both."

  Hart McAllister remained unmoving for a while, lost in the long ago. It was the hardship of the times that had tempered them into steel—the hardships, and the longings that had driven them to desperate acts.

  History isn't written in history books—it's seared into the hearts of men and women . . . branded deep and washed with their sweat, their toil, their heart's blood.

  Resolutely, the old man raised his pen again and let his mind drift back and back and back to what might be called the beginning. There were two beginnings, really. Theirs and Fancy's. She was the center of it all . . . the catalyst and the lodestar. Without Fancy, perhaps none of it ever would have happened. Or, if it did, perhaps it wouldn't have broken his heart. . . .

  PART I: STORMBIRD ON THE WIND

  Fancy and Atticus 1864

  Natchitochesy Louisiana

  "A homemade friend wears the longest."

  Bandana McBain

  Chapter 1

  Ten-year-old Fancy Deverell woke with a startled cry, roused violently from peaceful dreams.

  Rough hands muffled her mouth as someone ripped the bedclothes from her small body. 'Fancy bucked against her captor and fought for breath; terror made the blood pulse painfully in her neck and chest.

  "Hush, child!" a familiar voice hissed urgently. "Atticus come to save you!" The hovering form that gripped her straightened to its immense height, and the child recognized Atticus, the plantation blacksmith, conjurer, and general factotum.

  Shouts and screams and the sharp report of gunfire rent the night outside her bedroom. "Where's Maman?" she gasped, wondering what on earth she needed to be saved from. Life had seemed safe enough a few hours before when Mammy Erline had tucked h
er in, and opened her windows to the pungent scent of clove on the bayou breeze of Beau Rivage.

  "We git your mama if'n we kin," Atticus answered gruffly. Fancy saw flames leap in the yard beyond her window and didn't struggle this time as Atticus yanked the coverlet unceremoniously over her head. Instead, she burrowed into the sheltering arms and pressed her face into Atticus' chest as hard as she could to make the terror go away.

  She felt herself bouncing as he ran; heard his breath rasped by smoke, heard shrieks and shouts and gunshots and the curses of laughing men, felt the searing heat of flames.

  She sobbed softly into the muffling strength of Atticus' body, but was afraid to cry aloud.

  "Dey's gwine to search ever'thin'!" Atticus muttered. His speech had slipped from the language he prided himself on knowing, into the heavy dialect the slaves used with one another. Atticus' wife, a second-generation slave, had taught him better speech than most.

  "I want my maman and papa!" the child demanded, trying to shake her head free. "They'll know what to do!"

  "Hush, child. Lemme think!" Then, as if the very statement had brought with it the sought-after idea, Atticus whispered triumphantly, "De old cistern!" He yanked the blanket back over her head and started off at a run.

  "Dey's killed ever'body dey could find. An' dey's stole everythin' in sight. Dey's not gwine to leave any witnesses to tell on 'em. Dey's jes' white trash in soldiers' uniforms!"

  Atticus set the child down abruptly and shook her free of the counterpane. She blinked hard and tried to catch her breath; the word killed stuck in her heart, but the haunted look in the old slave's eyes stayed her protest. He knelt for a moment to her level, and some instinct told her it cost him dearly to waste precious seconds, for he glanced right, left, and behind like a fox with the hounds in close pursuit.

  "We got to stay alive, Miz Fancy! You understan' dat?"

  The child tucked her bottom lip resolutely up under her top teeth and nodded, two large tears reflecting silver in the moonlight. Atticus put his great arms around her so hard, it knocked the breath in a whoosh from her body. He knew she didn't understand at all, but trusted. How could she understand that all life as she'd known it had just ended?

  Atticus scooped Fancy up and set her onto his powerful back. The sudden height dizzied her and she clung tightly as he began the treacherous descent into the abandoned cistern. Her arms all but choked off" Atticus' labored breath and caused a ringing in his ears that hammered along with the distant sounds of battle.

  Damn Yankees! Drunk and leaderless, riding in on horseback waving pistols and sabers, saying they were going to take every last thing they could carry. Or maybe they hadn't been Yankees at all, but renegade Confederates dressed up to give their looting the sanction of wartime.

  And the massa, only home from the regiment because of a wounded leg, hobbling out on the verandah to meet them, with the missus in her night wrapper close behind. If Capt'n Deverell hadn't sassed that trash, they might have left him and the missus in peace and settled for looting.

  Atticus had known when the shouting started where it would end. Those men were nothing more than dressed-up white riffraff, sneaking around without their captain, looking for a good time and a few spoils. Taking advantage of the fact that since the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson there was no law left in Louisiana to punish them.

  The Federal Army was in control of the Mississippi, New Orleans, and the Gulf. Winn, Jackson, and many of the other northern parishes had become infested with draft dodgers, deserters, and bands of jayhawkers who roamed the countryside looting and burning. Now the plantation owners needed to fear both the Yankees and the renegade Confederates.

  The old stones of the cistern's depths were icy to the touch, despite the steamy night air above, and they were slimy with ancient damp. Atticus repressed a shudder and continued his descent, hoping no water moccasins had made their home in the well.

  The child's weight dragged his big frame down, and his breath came hard. Even if you're a strong old boy, he told himself with a grim smile, sixty years is no age for climbing down holes with a ten-year-old child on your back. Thank God she was small for her age and slightly built.

  Atticus' feet touched water. He assessed the handhold he had on the cold and crumbling rock surface, trying to judge how long it would be before his fingers could no longer grasp the precarious perch; he spread-eagled his legs, seeking purchase on either side.

  "I'm real scared, Atticus," Fancy's tremulous voice whispered into his ear. Dey's done killed ever'body dey could find . . . kept ringing in her head, but she couldn't make herself ask, for fear of the answer.

  "Me too, honey," he replied softly. "But we cain't talk none 'til we hears 'em go."

  He felt her nod. The numbness from the stagnant water was already beginning to creep into his legs; he'd have to dose himself with comfrey and molasses when they got out of the hole, to keep the rheumatism from his bones. Atticus had a little cabin hung with herbs, with strange names like witch's bane and mugwort, that he used in making remedies. Massa Deverell had said more than once that the old slave knew more about healing with nature's remedies than any doctor in New Orleans.

  Atticus felt the stifled sobs of the child through his clothes, but could think of no adequate words of comfort. Sometimes it was best to cry things out; sometimes it was the only sane thing to do. He wondered what would be left by morning of what had once been Beau Rivage.

  The plantation house that was the envy of the parish sat on the crest of a hill just high enough to provide a splendid view of the rolling green countryside that seemed to reach infinity after crossing over the river tributary that had provided the plantation its name.

  The stately Greek Revival mansion, with its sturdy white columns and gracious vine-shaded verandahs, was surrounded on all sides by Louisiana's lush foliage. Succulent magnolias to grace the springtime, elegant elms and beeches to lend stature to the fall. Avenues of sweet olive trailed their silvery veils of Spanish moss like stately dowagers on a traipse to the water's edge . . . crepe myrtle and honeysuckle wafted fragrance sublime as a benediction on the soft bayou afternoons.

  The Deverells of Beau Rivage were third-generation planters, long enough on the land to believe it theirs forever. They were a family both God-fearing and well blessed by Him. James Deverell had inherited a plantation of the crop known as The Big Grass, and a considerable fortune to go with it; but he'd worked hard to improve both and was proud in the knowledge that he would leave to his son, Armand, and his daughter, Françoise, the most beautiful and profitable sugar plantation in all Louisiana.

  François had the dark hair and eyes of her continental mother, who had christened her thus in a gallant effort to maintain the standards of the French heritage she'd brought with her from Paris and Savannah.

  "Dat's a mighty fancy name for sech a tiny child," Atticus had told his master when he heard it, and somehow, Fancy was what she'd been called ever since.

  Atticus and Fancy had always been friends. The slave was old, but he was the nicest darkie they owned and the best blacksmith in the parish. Even James Deverell was proud of his slave's accomplishments. The rumor in the quarters was that he knew magic; the child had heard him called "the conjurer" by some of the older slaves who still remembered Africa, but no one would ever tell her what that meant.

  Maman, Papa, where are you? Why don't you come for me? Fancy shuddered in the icy dark of the cistern, and clung to Atticus. Her arms hurt from the holding and her back was cramped; her throat felt raw and her head ached. She laid it against the old slave's shoulder for comfort and drifted off to fitful slumber.

  Just before dawn the soldiers moved on. Atticus forced his reluctant limbs to move, and with numb and bleeding fingers pulled himself and Fancy to the surface of the cistern.

  A thick haze of acrid smoke hung in the air like evil swamp mist. It stung both eyes and lungs and left a silt of black filaments on the wilted grass. The remains of Beau Rivage smoldered dismally
on its hilltop; the red sun rising beyond the plantation house grimly echoed the flames that had wrought the ruin. Fancy looked incredulously at the distorted, blackened shell that had been her home.

  "Atticus, help me find Maman and Papa!" Fancy saw tears glistening on the old slave's wrinkled cheeks; she reached for his hand and squeezed it hard.

  Resolutely they began the walk up the hill toward the ruined house. There was a dreadful and unaccustomed stillness in the air; no bird or insect rent the morning quiet, only the distant crackle of still-smoking embers disturbed the dawn.

  The slave quarters were deserted; all who could had fled to the river or the swamp beyond. Atticus felt Fancy's grip tighten as they passed the dead body of Andrews, the overseer; she had never seen death before.

  As they reached the hilltop, the remains of the once grandiose portico of Beau Rivage came into clearer focus. "Oh, Lord Jesus!" Atticus breathed in shocked realization. He grabbed for the little girl to shield her eyes, but she'd already seen the shape on the steps.

  "Maman! Maman!" Fancy screamed as she tore herself from Atticus' grasp and ran toward the fallen body. "Maman, I'm here!"

  Lying like a ravaged doll, her dimity dressing gown pulled up about naked hips, Gabrielle Deverell lay, quite dead. Her pantalets, torn from her body, waited forlorn and damaged several feet away. Fancy lurched to a halt as she reached her mother . . . there was a bullet hole in her chest; dark red blood had gushed and puddled around her, dried now and darkened to the color of Bordeaux.

  Fancy felt the shriek rise up and tear itself free of its own volition. The sound was everything. It blotted out the truth, the day, the body of her mother . . . she would never stop screaming. Never! Never. Never . . . She didn't even feel the ground as she fell, nor Atticus' arms as he scooped her up and pressed her hard against his body. He knew the sound of despair too well to try to stay its voice—if you didn't let anguish out, it could kill you.