Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (44 page)

      
Bowl of hot water in hand, she made her way to the curve of the stream, searching for Cain. She found him drying off after a brisk swim in the cold water.

      
He smiled at her when she averted her eyes as he pulled on his breeches. ‘‘Remembering the last time we met at the water?” he taunted, “I believed I’d cured you of maidenly modesty.”

      
“Marriage to you has cured me of a good deal more than my modesty,” she snapped, fighting the urge to fling the scalding water in his smirking face.

      
When she stood and turned to walk away, he reached out and clamped his hand around her wrist. “Stay and keep me company.”

      
His voice was cajoling now, that low seductive rumble that made her mouth go paper dry. Small wonder. All the moisture in her body had fled in the opposite direction!
      
“Why are you doing this? You know Sees Much said you must remain celibate until after the ceremony.”

      
“He said it was best, not that I had to.” He touched a loose curl at her cheek, brushing it softly back. “Hold the mirror for me while I shave.”

      
He knew what that would do to her, damn him! His hold on her wrist did not lessen as he waited. “All right,” she replied, taking the small polished steel mirror he held out.

      
He let her go then with a crooked smile and knelt beside a flat rock where he had tossed his saddlebags. Extracting a razor and soap from inside, he used the hot water to work up a stiff lather and spread it across his whiskers, then set to work shaving them away, directing her to position the mirror close to his face.

      
She perched on the edge of the rock close beside him, her eyes downcast, listening to the soft raspy flick of the sharp blade. Snick, snick, snick. After several strokes, she was unable to stop herself from looking up. With each pass of the blade, he cleared another piece of smooth bronze skin. Her fingers tingled with the urge to touch it. How well she remembered the warm firm feel of his jaw. How often she had lain beside him and traced the high planes of his cheekbones, the thick ridge of black eyebrows, the wide sensuous curve of his lips...

      
The mirror wavered just as he made one final stroke with the razor. He set aside the blade. She lowered the mirror, clutching it in her lap with trembling fingers. Their faces remained inches apart, their eyes staring deeply, hungrily at each other. Cain reached up and laid his palm against the side of her cheek. “I've missed you these past weeks, more than I could ever have imagined possible. Roxanna, I—”

      
A loud series of shouts erupted suddenly from the camp. Roxanna would have given much to know what he was about to say, but he understood the cries in Cheyenne and broke away from her with a troubled look on his face.
      
“What is it? What are they saying?”

      
“His Eyes Are Cold has been brought into camp.”

      
“Your father? What on earth would Andrew Powell be doing in Colorado hundreds of miles from the Central Pacific's farthest eastern grade?”

      
“I'm not certain,” Cain replied as an idea niggled in the back of his mind.

      
She followed him reluctantly back to camp. He walked like a restless mountain cat warily scenting the wind, moving in for the kill. What would Leather Shirt do to the man who had disgraced his daughter and deserted his grandson? What might Cain do? A chill premonition washed over her.

      
Two members of the Dog Soldier Society had bound Powell's hands behind him. They shoved him roughly, but he refused to give in, holding his footing as he came face-to-face with the old chief who waited at his lodge in the center of the circle, arms crossed, face unreadable.
      
Roxanna remembered how she had felt when she was dragged before Leather Shirt, a daunting experience indeed.

      
Andrew Powell's expensive twill riding pants were smeared with grime and dust and his shirt was torn open, hanging more off than on his tall frame. A thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his patrician mouth. His thick mane of steel-gray hair was plastered to his sweat-soaked head with several locks falling over one eye. He coolly blew them away in lieu of being able to shove them off his brow, standing as arrogantly as if he were presiding over a San Francisco boardroom.

      
Leather Shirt and Powell were the same height, both tall men, in the prime of vigor in spite of their ages. They faced each other in silence, cold dark blue eyes daring fathomless black ones. A palpable current of hate seethed between them. The excited crowd gathered around them, their gazes moving from the chief to his prisoner and back.

      
Finally Leather Shirt broke the silence, speaking in Cheyenne. “You have returned at last. Too late to sing a death song for your wife.”

      
“I did not come for that. I knew she was dead,” Powell replied in cold clipped English.

      
“Then you are a fool for coming onto our land again. Blue Corn Woman would plead for your life. No one else will.”

      
“I am a powerful man among the whites now. If you kill me, the Blue Coats will come to avenge me. Women and children will die along with warriors. The soldiers will burn your lodges and drive what is left of the band onto reservations in the hot country to the south.”

      
“The men who rode with you are all dead. If I kill you, who will ever find your body in the vastness of the land?” Leather Shirt gestured eloquently with his arm, adding chillingly, “The buzzards will pick your bones clean. Then who will recognize the great Powell?” He allowed a brief flicker of satisfaction to cross his face. “Dead bones, red or white, all look alike.”

      
If those words daunted Powell, it was not apparent from the way he stared haughtily back at Leather Shirt.
The old son of a bitch is one hell of a poker player.
Cain observed the exchange, curious about what his grandfather would do, more curious by far about what had brought his father into this wilderness.

      
‘‘Get used to red bones. There will be many bleaching across the mountains if you don't release me,” Powell replied calmly as if he were negotiating a right of way through some pumpkin roller’s back forty. “I am still a trader, a rich man now. I can bring presents—whiskey, guns, sugar, coffee. Whatever you wish.”

      
“You can't buy your way out of this one, Powell,” Cain said, walking into the open space between his grandfather and father.

      
For an instant, Andrew Powell's composure broke, then the facade slipped quickly back into place as he turned to face his half-breed son. ‘‘What the hell are you doing here?”

      
In an unconsciously identical manner, Cain's eyebrow raised sardonically as he surveyed his father. “I might ask you the same thing. This is quite a ride from the Central Pacific's eastern terminus.”

      
The two men studied each other in a subtly different fashion than had Powell and Leather Shirt, yet the hatred was every bit as pervasive. Cain offered less challenge, more mockery. Roxanna stood fixed as he circled Powell with insolent slowness. She held her breath, wondering how the older man would respond.

      
“I have my reasons for being here.”

      
“Reason enough to risk your life? My grandfather will kill you, you know,” Cain replied conversationally.

      
Powell's eyebrow rose. “Grandfather, is it? The last I heard, you'd been banished. I would imagine you're no more welcome than I after you killed the old man's favorite grandson.”

      
“His banishment has been lifted,” Leather Shirt replied in what could only be described as a smug voice. “Now he seeks a vision to find out who he truly is. The Lone Bull pledges to make a Medicine Lodge.”

      
A look of utter incredulity swept over Powell's face. “The Sun Dance?” he asked, turning to Cain. “So, all your attempts at being white end in this. I always knew mongrel blood will out,” he said contemptuously.

      
Beneath the mockery in his voice, Roxanna detected anger. So did Leather Shirt, who smiled broadly now. Cain stood rigidly still, his face expressionless as the eyes of both older men returned to him.

      
Damn them both! Leather Shirt was using his apparent reversion to primitive superstition to goad Powell. Powell was furious that any son of his—even if scorned and rejected—would dare to sink into savagery. Perhaps he had overlooked the best way of all to defy Andrew Powell; if only he did not have to sell his soul to do it. A feral grimace of a smile twisted his lips as he replied to his father, “Like you said, I have my reasons.” His eyes flashed to Roxanna for an instant, then he turned and stalked away.

      
Leather Shirt made no attempt to stop him. Turning his attention to Powell, who scowled at Roxanna now, the chief said, “Together we will watch your son make the sacrifice for his people. Then we shall see if he has the heart of a Cheyenne or the heart of a vulture like you.” He nodded to the Dog Soldiers, who seized Powell, dragged him into a lodge and bound his feet, leaving him to lie on the hard earth.

* * * *

      
That afternoon the People broke camp. The women dismantled the buffalo-hide teepees, lashing together the lodgepoles for travois to transport all their possessions, which were packed into large rawhide parfleches. Youths herded their families' extra horses while small children rode squeezed between the furs and bundles piled on the travois. Most of the women and old people trudged in a long file toward the north, where the buffalo herds had fled from the noise and stench of the white man. They would have to cross the hated Iron Horse tracks to reach their destination deep in the wide-open basin of the Medicine Bows.

      
The leaders of the warrior societies, mounted and heavily armed, led the way while others rode point, all keeping a wary eye out for signs of enemies. When Lawrence's escorts for Roxanna had left her here, they had taken the horse and saddle she used back with them. She rode one of the skittish Cheyenne ponies, rigged with a cumbersome wooden saddle which made her posterior ache interminably. Cain was mounted on his big chestnut, as graceful and skilled a horseman as any of his Cheyenne cousins. Andrew Powell, the prisoner, walked behind Leather Shirt's horse, his bound hands secured by a long rawhide tether held by the chief.

      
As much as she disliked the man, Roxanna did not want to see Powell harmed. And his claim to Leather Shirt was no idle boast. Once it was discovered that he was missing, the army would sweep down viciously on the Cheyenne. She kneed her pony into a swifter pace to catch up with Sees Much.

      
“What will Leather Shirt do with my husband's father?” she asked.

      
“They are old enemies. I know only that my brother is pleased that His Eyes Are Cold is here to observe his son make a Medicine Lodge.”

      
“You mean because he's taken Cain away from Powell.”

      
Sees Much nodded. “You are wise beyond your years, daughter.”

      
Roxanna felt warmed by the praise, yet she could not quit worrying about the fate of her father-in-law. “If Leather Shirt kills Powell, it will bring destruction down on the People.”

      
“What you say is true,” was all the old man would answer.

      
They made camp the second night by the banks of a shallow stream that trickled with autumn sluggishness across water-worn pebbles. The wide-open basin was ringed on three sides by the stark peaks of the Medicine Bows and domed by the vastness of a brilliant azure sky, which blazed with the incredible incandescence of a million stars that night. The rich loamy smells of thick high prairie grasses blended with the savory aroma of freshly killed antelope roasting over the campfires.

      
Sleeping arrangements on the trail were the same as in the encampment, Roxanna with the women, Cain across the site side of the fire with his uncle. At dawn everyone arose and began to break camp, each individual in the band performing his or her tasks with brisk efficiency as if the whole had been organized by an army general. After a simple meal of cornmeal porridge they again moved out.

      
Just before noon, Sees Much raised his hand and Leather Shirt gave a command for everyone to stop. The leaders of the warrior societies sat poised on their horses as an air of expectancy swept through the long column of people.

      
“What is it?” Roxanna asked Lark Song.

      
“Cannot feel? Come, down off horse. Touch earth,” she replied, moving her moccasin-clad foot through the thick soft dust.

      
Roxanna felt the vibrations before the low rumbling sound rolled across the valley floor. Then, beginning as tiny specks on the flat horizon to the northwest, a thin broken line of brown began to grow larger.

      
Willow Tree and Lark Song chattered excitedly in their language, then shared the conversation with Her Back Is Straight in broken English. “Big herd of buffalo. Plenty blessings. The Powers pleased with Lone Bull's pledge.”

      
The buffalo must have counted in the tens of thousands, an awesome spectacle rarely seen on the High Plains in the last decade. A vast undulating sea of brown moved slowly to the west and north of them, circling around, breaking up and reforming into different patterns as the Indians moved across the immense bowl of the basin floor.

      
At first Roxanna was frightened that they would be caught in the awesome waves of horn and hoof and trampled. But whenever the great shaggy beasts came downwind of the scent of humans, they retreated, giving the band a wide berth. The People traveled all that day around the bison and made camp at the edge of the first rolling foothills to the northeast. A clear stream, larger than any they had yet encountered, ran down from the snowy peaks of the mountains. Along its banks thick stands of cottonwoods and willows grew in verdant abundance.