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“You’ve got a mighty big mouth today, Colonel,” Hiram said between clenched teeth. He again wiped his hands on his pants.
Fred leaned across the table. “Want to make something of it?” he taunted. “Hiram, you know that I’m nothing like your brother. I don’t let anyone push me around. No one. Not even the likes of you who pretend to be my friend.”
“Pretend?” Hiram said, arching an eyebrow. “You think my friendship is all pretense?”
“Son, no one knows how to take anything you do or say, so how can I know whether your friendship is real or false?” Fred said, drumming his fingers on the top of the table.
“Fred, I am your friend and I hope I can depend on you as being mine,” Hiram said. He sighed heavily. He slid a hand inside one of the pockets where he had placed the coins and ran his fingers through them, jangling them noisily.
“You have come to ask me for something, haven’t you?” Fred said. He smiled cunningly at Hiram. “You didn’t come just for a few games of poker or chitchat, did you?”
“Not to ask for something, just to see if you have recently sent men into the Everglades to try to find that Seminole island,” Hiram admitted. He flicked sweat from his brow with his fingertips. “My brother thought he could peacefully coexist with them, but I’m not sure whether I can. If I stir up trouble, will you be there to cover my back?”
“What sort of trouble are you talking about?” Fred asked. He lifted his cigar from the ashtray and slipped it between his lips again.
He took a long, leisurely drag and let the smoke leave his mouth in casual circles.
“There’s this lone Indian I’ve been seeing sneaking around way too close to my property,” Hiram said, recalling the glimpses he’d caught of the Seminole in a canoe, far too close to his home.
Yes, his home.
He owned the plantation now, except for the portion that Lavinia had inherited from her husband.
“Has he caused you any actual trouble?” Fred asked, eyeing Hiram closely.
“Not really,” Hiram said, shrugging. “It’s just that I feel uncomfortable with him being so close to my property. Who’s to say whether he might come some day with a whole passel of Injuns and take over everything, even Lavinia, for God’s sake?”
“I imagine he’d be more interested in that golden-haired beauty than your land,” Fred said. He laughed softly. “Even I’d come around if I knew there was a chance in hell she’d consider courting me. My wife has been dead now for five years. I’m ready to settle down again. Lavinia would be a wonderful choice.”
Hiram leapt from his chair. He leaned down and glared into Fred’s face. “Don’t you think for one minute about coming around my place to court Lavinia.”
“And you think she’d take a second glance at you with that one eye and that God-awful sweat?” Fred said, slowly rising from his chair to glare at Hiram. “Hiram, I think you’d better leave. All you brought with you today was confrontation. Don’t come back until you are in a better frame of mind.”
“
The same goes for you, Fred,” Hiram growled out. “Don’tcha come anywhere near my place or you might find the barrel of my shotgun staring you in your ugly face.”
“I think you’d better take my advice, Hiram, and leave, or one of us will do something foolish, evenmore foolish than the words we are exchanging,” Fred said tightly. “Calm down, Hiram. You’re letting your brother’s death get the best of you.”
“He’s got nothin’ to do with anything I say or do,” Hiram said. He turned and stomped toward the door. He stopped suddenly, whirled around, and glared at Fred. “Just remember what I said. You’d best heed my warning not to come to my place ex-pectin’ to see Lavinia. You see, Fred, she’s mine now. All mine.”
“Like hell she is,” Fred said, guffawing at the nonsense that Hiram was speaking. Fred knew Lavinia well and knew she wouldn’t take well to Hiram’s attitude. The man sounded as if he thought he owned her, like one of his slaves.
Hiram gave Fred one more glare, then hurried from the cabin.
He mounted his horse and rode swiftly through the tall gates of the fort. The argument between him and Fred had stoked his courage to confront Lavinia at his first opportunity.
“Tonight,” he mumbled to himself. “Yep, by gum, tonight.”
Chapter Nine
They are not long,
The weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate.
—Ernest Dowson
