Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (5 page)

      
“A dynastic alliance that'll cut you in for the Central Pacific's expansion up and down the West Coast.”

      
“Damn, if you aren't a smart young whelp!” MacKenzie studied Cain with shrewd gray eyes, stroking the bristly beard that grew wildly around his face like an explosion of red and gray squirrel tails. “Aye, I want a piece of the Central Pacific. It's a good way to keep an eye on Andrew Powell's greasy soul.” He hesitated. “But there was more to it than that...my granddaughter. She's been alone back in St. Louis for several years. I needed to provide for her.”

      
“You sure marrying her into the Powell family is the best way?”

      
“Better that than she choose some fortune hunter like her mother did.” Jubal harrumphed in disgust and resumed pacing. For a man of considerable girth, he was agile and quick on his feet, gnarled and tough as a hundred-year-old oak. He waved away the past with one hand, willing it to dissipate with the smoke from his cigar. “This will be a good marriage for her—if she lives to walk down the aisle.”

      
He tossed Cain a wire from the adjutant at Fort Kearny. Quickly scanning it, he raised his eyes to the old man. “What are you going to do?”

      
MacKenzie leaned across the desk, his big fists resting on the blotter as he stared at Cain. “What would you do? You know these people. The adjutant says it was Cheyenne who took her. I'm not without influence in Washington. I can wire General Sherman. Have enough troops deployed to cover all Dakota Territory, if they have to reinstate the draft to do it. But I have to act now. When I think of that poor lass in the hands of hostiles—”

      
“You don't want to use soldiers. If the army blunders onto the camp where she's being held—and that's the only way they'd find her—the Cheyenne would kill her.” Cain studied the wire. “This sounds as if they were looking to take a white captive, not just their usual harassment of the stage lines.”

      
“How could they have known my granddaughter was in that coach?”

      
Cain shook his head. “They couldn't. They were just looking for someone important enough to trade for.”

      
“You mean ransom?”

      
Cain shrugged. “Their version of it, yes.”

      
“Could you get her out?” The old man's pewter eyes stared intently at the young half-breed.

      
“If I can't, no one can. Not alive, anyway.”

      
“I'll pay whatever the bastards want. The money's not—”

      
‘They don't want money, Jubal. With the powder keg we have on the plains right now, there's no way any Cheyenne can come into a trading post to spend cash. They'll want guns, medicine, blankets. Mostly guns, I'd bet.”

      
“Go to the supply train and requisition whatever you need. There'll be a big bonus in this if you bring the lass back safely.”

      
Cain nodded and turned to leave, but MacKenzie caught him with his hand on the ornate brass doorknob. “You do na' think they've...hurt her?”

      
Cain was surprised at the note of uncertainty in his employer’s voice. As long as he'd known the old curmudgeon, Jubal MacKenzie had always been loud, profane and decidedly self-assured, “I can't promise you they haven't used her, if that's what you mean. A female captive past puberty is usually given to a warrior as a slave, but since they may want to bargain, there's a chance she's not been touched.”

      
MacKenzie’s face blanched the color of whey, making the freckles grotesquely prominent. He shook his head but said nothing as Cain closed the door behind himself.

Chapter Three

      
For five days Cain rode northeast into the Sand Hill country of Nebraska, cutting trails, stopping at every Cheyenne or Arapaho camp, asking oblique questions, looking covertly for any evidence of a white captive. The law of hospitality among the People was never to be broken. Because of his Cheyenne blood they received him, but that reception varied. He was a “cut hair,” one who had turned his back on their way and joined their enemy. Suspicion and thinly veiled hostility hovered around the campfires.

      
The past five years had been bloody ones on the High Plains. After the Sand Creek Massacre by Colonel Chivington's Colorado Volunteers, the Cheyenne and their allies had raided and pillaged from Julesburg to Plum Creek while General Sherman turned loose the rapacious George Armstrong Custer to reply in kind. To avoid cavalry sweeps, the Indians scattered like leaves in the wind, dividing up into small bands that searched, often in vain, for the vanishing buffalo and other game which the hated Iron Horse was destroying.

      
After two weeks on the trail he was beginning to fear he was mistaken and MacKenzie's granddaughter had been killed by her captors. Then he ran across a small village of Arapaho, where he learned old Leather Shirt was camped high up on a tributary of the Niobrara. His band had quit the spring hunt below the Arkansas and headed north, a move which puzzled the Arapaho warriors.

      
“Why does he leave when the buffalo are yet running?” their chief asked.

      
Could it be? Was Leather Shirt the one who took Alexa Hunt? If not, at least the old man might know of her fate. Two days later, he approached the camp. Riding into it brought memories of childhood rushing back to him. Two small boys, naked in the warm morning sun, tossed a small leather sack back and forth while a cur raced around them, yipping amid their shrieks of glee. A group of giggling young women returned to camp after gathering firewood into bundles which they carried strapped on their backs.

      
A lone youth stood on a ridge above the village, his body rail straight, staring ahead into the rising sun, oblivious to the commotion below him. Cain knew he would remain perfectly motionless through the day, a test of endurance and discipline to please the Everywhere Spirit.

      
As a boy he had once dreamed of such rigorous rites of passage...until he learned that his white father scoffed at such quixotic savage superstitions. Shrugging away the past, Cain walked his horse toward the orderly semicircle of lodges, pulling the lead pack mule behind him. Each teepee faced east to the sunrise. An old man's chant, greeting the day, echoed across the hillside. The singer reminded him of his uncle. In his earliest years, the old man's morning song had awakened him every day.

      
As he neared the village, his presence drew attention. Women stirring their morning cook fires looked up curiously. Men repairing their weapons studied him with narrowed dark eyes. One youth clutching a war lance in front of him raised it defiantly as the “cut hair” passed by. A warrior bearing the marks of the Dog Soldier Society stepped in his path. Once Cain had called him friend.

      
“Greetings, Rides the Wind. I would see Leather Shirt.”

      
“He waits for you, Not Cheyenne.” Rides the Wind spun on his heel and led the way, every movement of his body revealing his antagonism.

      
Sees Much sat in front of his fire impassively.
Did he know I would come?
A ripple of unease prickled up and down Cain's spine as he dismounted. The old man had always had a peculiar ability to divine the future, an ability which no amount of Enoch's teaching could explain away.

      
Seemingly sightless silvery eyes gazed past him into the flames as the old man stretched out one veiny hand, gesturing for Cain to approach. His body was shriveled with age, like a currant left to desiccate in the sun, yet there was a wiry strength still in it despite the stooped shoulders and gaunt arms and legs. Thinning white hair crowned a small face whose prominent nose and generous mouth seemed too large to fit. He did not smile, but there was an expression of contentment, perhaps satisfaction when he spoke. “My brother has been waiting for you.”

      
“You knew I would come.” It was not quite a question.

      
A voice from inside the lodge replied, “It was our medicine man, Sees Much, who saw the silver-haired woman in a dream.” Then Leather Shirt emerged. He stood face to face with Cain, as straight and tall as his elder brother was wizened. Leather Shirt had seen sixty winters, yet his long braids were still black, only flecked with gray. His face was harsh and angular, with a large nose and heavy cheekbones. Deep grooves etched like brackets down to a wide mouth that turned down on both sides. Deep-set black eyes studied Cain.

      
“Then you have the woman I search for.”

      
Leather Shirt raised his eyes to the heavily laden pack mules Cain had brought with him. “You speak without politeness like a white eyes, Not Cheyenne, so I will answer as crudely. Yes, my young men captured her.”

      
“Because Sees Much had a vision?”

      
“You doubt, yet you are here,” the old shaman chuckled from his spot by the fire.

      
Leather Shirt's eyes swept over the gleaming chestnut stallion with its silver-trimmed saddle and the .52-caliber Spencer carbine resting in the scabbard. Neither did he miss the .44-caliber Smith and Wesson Model 3 on Cain's hip, nor the expensive hand-tooled leather boots. “You have prospered among your father's people, leaving behind a life that has become hard. Game is scarce and our children cry with empty bellies. Our women gash their arms in mourning for warriors cut down by the white eyes' bullets. We fight your Iron Horse, but we cannot defeat it. We would move north to the Yellowstone country of our brothers the Lakota, far from the belching smoke, away from the Blue Coats. But we must have guns for our warriors to hunt with and protect the women and children.”

      
“And to fight your way past Sherman's army,” Cain added. “I have brought guns.”

      
“You have said,” Leather Shirt said to Sees Much, “and it is true.”

      
The older man merely nodded, studying Cain with his penetrating sight. Then he spoke. “You must spend time with the People, relearn our ways.”

      
“I am called Not Cheyenne, a cut hair. The People will not welcome me.”

      
“It has been five winters since you killed High-Backed Wolf. Your banishment is ended,” Leather Shirt replied. “If your heart did not belong with your father, you could join us.” The bleak expression on his face indicated his awareness that Cain would refuse.

      
“My heart does not belong anywhere.”

      
“It is not a good thing to belong nowhere,” Sees Much said softly.

      
Leather Shirt gave a snort of disgust. “He is just another white man, brother. I told you this was a dangerous thing to undertake.”

      
“Do not be so swift to judge, Leather Shirt,” Sees Much rebuked gently.

      
Leather Shirt nodded and said to Cain, “Lark Song will provide you with a place to eat and rest while Iron Kite sees to your horse and mules. Then we will talk of the woman...and other things.”

      
From across the campgrounds, Roxanna watched the exchange between the old men and their visitor. He was dressed like a white man, but he looked as hardened and dangerous as any of her captors. His long lean body was draped with an arsenal. A gunrunner or whiskey trader, perhaps? His straight black hair and bronzed skin suggested that he was a mixed-blood. Yet his features were sculpted, almost classically handsome if one made allowances for the prominent nose and high cheekbones. There was a narrow scar along his cheek that somehow added a raffish allure rather than detracting from his good looks.

      
Roxanna had observed him ride in, hoping he would be her deliverance, but something had held her back from rushing out to him. Those hard glittering eyes had swept the camp in pitiless assessment. Instinctively she knew they would scorch when fastened on her. She had won a place for herself among these strange, savage people. There was no sense squandering it precipitously on a hardcase like this man. Best to wait.

      
Looking back over the past three weeks, Roxanna could scarce believe how she had survived the ordeal. After they dragged her from the coach, her captors had done nothing to harm her, only bound her hand and foot and tossed her across the back of one warrior's horse. She was forced to ride like a sack of grain for two days, with only hard chewy strings of meat washed down with muddy creek water to sustain her. Filthy, frightened and exhausted, she was brought before the village chief at last, the old man known as Leather Shirt. His English was adequate, that of his medicine man far better. The chief turned her over to Sees Much, who was surprisingly kind.

      
Roxanna quickly learned that they planned to ransom her at some point. They were vague about exactly when, but considering the options of torture, rape or death, she decided she wouldn't quibble over details. Several young women were assigned to care for her. Lark Song and Willow Tree could speak some English, supplemented by gestures and hand signs. They communicated well enough.

      
She learned from Sees Much that she was greatly admired for her bravery. When the warriors captured her she had fought until immobilized without crying out, then stoically endured the long hard ride and fearlessly faced Leather Shirt. Sees Much had told her that she was called Her Back Is Straight around Cheyenne campfires.

      
The stranger followed Lark Song into the lodge belonging to Leather Shirt. One of the youths cared for his mount while several others unloaded the packs from the mules. Their contents must have been heavy, for the strong young men strained and sweated depositing them in front of the lodge. Before she could puzzle further, she saw Willow Tree approaching with two baskets. It was time for their daily ritual of gathering roots and tubers for dinner. Perhaps she could glean something about their visitor from the other women.