Legacies by Janet Dailey Page B

glanced at his uncle, he caught a flash of metal on the man's coat lapel. It was a small lapel pin, fashioned in the shape of two crossed pins. Lije instantly had a nagging feeling that the pin had some significance—that it had been described to him before. He couldn't recall when, or by whom, or what it represented. But there was an identical pin on Alex's lapel.
    "What will happen to him?" Sorrel asked, all round-eyed.
    "He will be kept under guard until his trial, which will probably be tomorrow or the day after." The Cherokee Constitution guaranteed that every citizen of the Nation would receive a speedy and fair trial.
    "Will they hang him?" she asked in a near whisper, showing a child's mixture of morbid curiosity and apprehension.
    Lije hesitated, searching for a way to spare his little sister some of the harsher realities of life. But Alex, feeling no such compunction, interjected, "If he is judged guilty, he will likely be hanged the same day."
    "Is that true?" She looked at Lije and unconsciously moved closer to their mother.
    "He has to be found guilty of stealing and murder first." But in the Cherokee justice system, sentences were carried out as swiftly as the trials.
    The rasping toot of the steam whistle collectively turned their attention away from the prisoner to the riverboat as it maneuvered away from the landing, seeking the river's channel. Arms waved in farewell to its passengers.
    With the departure of the paddle wheeler, there was no more reason to linger. Kipp and Alex were the first to say their goodbyes, leaving Lije with his mother and little sister.
    "We will see you tonight then?" his mother said after Lije had assisted her into the carriage.
    Lije nodded. "Have a bath and a hot meal waiting for me."
    "I will."
    "Can't you come home with us now?" Sorrel protested.
    "He has to take the prisoner in," Temple explained for him. She cast one last, smiling glance at Lije, then signaled to their Negro driver to proceed.
    The driver flicked his whip over the backs of the team and urged them forward with the reins. Lije stepped back from the carriage's wheels and waited for it to rumble past, then looped his reins over the bay's neck, and climbed into the saddle once more.  
    "Ready?" Lije said.
    Sam Blackburn nodded, but the prisoner simply looked at him, a little pale and glassy-eyed with pain and despair. Lije took the reins to the prisoner's horse, and they set out. Nothing more was said until the settlement was a good mile behind them. "If you met a man wearing an insignia of crossed pins on his coat, what would it tell you, Sam?"
    Sam shot him a quick, measuring glance, then looked straight ahead. He took his time answering. "It would tell me the man has joined the Keetoowahs."
    "The Keetoowahs?" Lije frowned.
    "It's a secret society. Its members are mostly full-bloods, but it is led by the missionary Evan Jones."
    "The abolitionist." Lije now recalled hearing that the insignia of crossed pins indicated the wearer belonged to an anti-slavery group operating within the Nation. At the time he had been troubled that the Northern movement to free the slaves had spread into the Nation. He knew firsthand how zealous some of its believers could be. But that wasn't what troubled him now. "It makes no sense that my uncle Kipp belongs to it. He cares nothing about Negroes. In fact he owns several field-workers himself."
    "The members also claim they seek to preserve the old traditions of the Cherokee."
    There were many old traditions in the Cherokee culture, but Lije could think of only one that Kipp would seek to keep alive—the Cherokee Blood Law, which called for the death of any Cherokee who signed away tribal lands—as Lije's father had done all those years ago. Alex would naturally go along with his father.
    "Hatred is an ugly thing, Sam. It always starts out small, as a little seed of resentment that is held close and fed with bitter thoughts. If it isn't cast out, it puts down roots and