Nicademus: The Wild Ones Read Online Free PDF Page B

five-foot-three. Her skin was dark and her hair parted in thick braids. She had a heart shaped face and large oval eyes under thick upward swept lashes. She wore a dress unlike any he’d ever seen a Negress in. Most in Tennessee were in rags and tattered clothes.
    Was she a slave? She didn’t look like a slave. She looked pampered, feminine and soft. Not worn over and broken from the hardships of that life. And there was a hint of defiance in the way she eyed him back, never dropping her stare. It was as if he was the oddity, not her.
    Who was she? Where was he?
    He recalled the bank robbery, taking the gold that Tyler Shepherd had stolen from his family, after his search for Shepherd on the stagecoach failed miserably. He deserved revenge against the bastard that had slaughtered his people. He remembered getting shot and running his horse toward the mountains. Then everything else was a fog of wandering memory and delirium.
    “Who?” His voice broke, and nothing else squeaked out but a wheeze.
    The brown beauty drew down on him with the biggest gun he’d ever seen a woman wield. Jeremiah frowned.
    “Don’cha give me no trouble, and won’t be no trouble, you hear me?” she asked.
    Jeremiah looked around the small cottage, then back to her. “Who are you?”
    “They call me Annabelle.”
    “Do they?” he smiled, unable to stop himself. Whoever she was, she had become his guardian angel. Annabelle had saved his life. “I want no trouble,” he managed to say.
    She shrugged. “How you feel? Any pain?” she asked. He picked up on her fascination with his injury. He watched at how her eyes lit with excitement from the mention of his suffering. She put the gun in the front of her dress and reached for his side. He seized the opportunity to grab her weapon. She jumped back. He pointed the gun at her. For a long tense moment they held each other’s stare. She put up her hands, breathing hard, her lips pressed thin. Though he didn’t doubt if need be she’d use it on him, he discovered that she wasn’t some wench who had fired the gun at another human being without cause. He recognized the fear in her eyes. During the war he saw it often in the eyes of young men holding guns on him before he was forced to kill them. He turned the gun around and gripped it by the muzzle, giving her the handle.
    “Now you know you can trust me,” he said.
    She snatched the gun from him and held it with both hands. She trembled with fright.
    “If I wanted to use it on you, Annabelle, I would have.” He tried to rise.
    “Don’t! Don’t move!” she said, continuing to tremble.
    He nodded and lay back down on the cot. It suited him fine. Reclining was the only position that gave him comfort. “I owe you my life,” he said.
    Slowly she lowered the gun. She nodded. Those beautiful dark eyes of hers met his without fear. Then she smiled, softness and care returned to her features. He saw pride on her face. “Look at it, I mended it ma’self. Look.” She returned to him. So quick was she to dismiss the moment between them, even he was taken by surprise. She pulled back the bandage covering his side and showed him her handiwork. “Good, ain’t it?” she asked. “The doc can’t do it this good.”
    “You did this?” he asked.
    “Sure I did,” she replied.
    “Why?” he asked.
    “Why indeed,” she smiled. “Now you need to eat. Then we can see to your bath.”
    “Bath?” he asked.
    “Do you always repeat a person? Cain’t ya talk on your own?”
    She was fiercely independent in her speech, her mannerisms. She was no one’s slave. From the looks of her she probably had never known slavery.
    “But you’ve already washed me. I, uh”—he lifted the sheet and looked under it—“can tell.”
    “You bathe every day. It’s Godly to do so,” she said. “Besides, the stench on you is hard to remove. Had to scrub you good, three times!”
    “Where’s your man?” he asked as she put the wooden spoon to his lips to