And One Rode West (46 page)

“I am.”

She remembered Jeffrey Thayer’s curious words just before he had been killed.

“This party—did you ride out to see that Thayer was—killed by the whites?”

He indicated one of the other warriors. “It was Eagle Who Flies High’s war party. He advised and I listened, and he was right. Your husband has never betrayed me. But it seems you have betrayed him.”

He turned and the rope he held jerked her along. She nearly tripped but was determined not to cry out. This was different from what she had expected. This man understood her. She felt that he was still the worst savage she had ever come across, but he did speak her language. There was hope that he might reason.

Yet what did she have to reason with? He knew the truth that was so horrible to face herself.

He jerked upon the rope, then caught her when she nearly tripped a second time. “You’re carrying his child?” he said.

“Yes!” she said swiftly. “Yes!” Would that buy her some mercy from this man?

He grunted and turned again. He walked her to a brook of fresh running water and released her leash long enough to allow her to drink. She was desperately thirsty, yet even as she drank she tried to think of some manner of escape.

He didn’t intend to allow it. He caught hold of the rope again and, dragging her along with him, tethered her to a tree near the water. Then he left her, conferring with the other warriors. She waited miserably, her back to the tree, her wrists chafing before her. They had ridden most of the day. Now there was minimal light, for beneath the moon they had lit only one fire. She determined that they had decided to camp there that night under the stars.

What was to be her fate, she wondered.

Dear God, she didn’t want to think about it.

Some instinctive numbness in her mind kept her from it. Oddly, she had nearly dozed again when Buffalo
Run approached her, offering her a dried strip of meat. She was starving and she took it from him, not caring in the least that she should, perhaps, have clung to her pride and refused anything from the Indian. He watched her eat. As he did so, she suddenly heard a screaming again.

Mrs. Brooks.

The dried meat stuck in her throat. She looked at the Indian. “Don’t kill her. Dear God, please don’t kill her!”

“Because she is your cherished friend?” he inquired politely. She knew that the Comanche was mocking her.

“Because it will be my fault if you do kill her,” she said honestly.

“They are not killing her,” he said.

He did not tell her what they were doing to her—that was left to Christa to wonder, and she did so wretchedly.

He rose and watched her again beneath the moonlight. He was very tall, far taller than the other Comanche warriors. His eyes were dark, his hair long and smooth and almost ink black. His face seemed a little bit narrower than some of the other braves’ and Christa remembered that Buffalo Run was a half-breed.

Not in his heart, she realized. In his heart, this man was all Comanche.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked him.

“Not tonight,” he told her, and turned and walked away.

Mrs. Brooks’s screams slowly faded. The Indians talked around their fire for a long while. Christa wondered what Jeremy was thinking, what he was feeling. She leaned her head back with misery. He had to hate her for what she had done. She had been so self-righteous about the poor wounded cavaliers of the Confederacy
that she hadn’t had the sense to realize that there were rotten apples in the ranks of Rebels.

And she hadn’t given Jeremy the least opportunity to explain anything about his captives. Now she knew, and knew too late. Jeremy had taken the men instead of allowing the Comanche to take them. Jeff Thayer had played upon her sympathies and made a fool of her.

She couldn’t hate Jeff Thayer for what he had done. She couldn’t hate anyone who had died the way that he had. She could only despise herself for her stupidity.

Jeff Thayer had paid the ultimate price.

Oh, God! There had been Robert Black Paw! Ever there for her and for Jeremy. Teaching her and caring for her.

Dying for her.

“Oh, please God!” she whispered. She could well die herself.

She couldn’t die. Not with the baby. But she didn’t feel any movement, and she thought of all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. She prayed that she hadn’t killed her child.

Jeremy’s child.

If only she had managed to tell him that she loved him! If only she hadn’t been so proud, so stubborn.

She might have listened to him. She might have seen the truth.

She lowered her head, fighting the great wash of tears that threatened to cascade from her eyes. She had fallen in love with him, but she had been too proud to forget her past, and too proud to give either of them a real chance. Now she might never see him again.

And she had, perhaps, cost him another child.

He will come for you, Buffalo Run had told her. Was that the truth? Did the hostile savage know her husband better than she did herself?

Perhaps Buffalo Run couldn’t begin to understand
that her husband had never courted her, that she had forced him to marry her for a house, for bricks and stone and wood, for something that meant nothing out here. She hadn’t even been willing to meet him halfway, not until something had turned somewhere within her heart, not until she had discovered that she could do nothing other than admire him, respect him, and love him.

Perhaps he would come. Perhaps his honor would dictate that he must. Perhaps he would come for their unborn child.

And perhaps, her heart seemed to whisper, perhaps he would even come for her!

But if he came, would he be risking his own life? What was he thinking at this moment? Was he hating her for what she had done? Thinking that she had brought this upon herself and that she deserved whatever happened to her? Was he missing her?

“Dear God, Jeremy! I’m sorry, so sorry!” she whispered out loud. “I love you, loved you. I—”

It didn’t matter. It was too late.

Twenty-one

Jeremy dismounted from his horse and knelt down by the bloodied and battered body on the ground. It didn’t take more than a few seconds, despite the condition of the corpse, to recognize the Confederate Jeffrey Thayer. His gray coat was blood spattered and stuck with a half-dozen arrows. The man’s face had been slashed, his scalp expertly taken.

Jeremy felt his muscles tensing, the whole of his body quickening with anguish.

He no longer had to fear what the ex-Reb planned to do with Christa. Jeffrey Thayer wouldn’t be doing anything with anyone ever again.

“Comanche?”

Jeremy turned. Jimmy Preston was watching him unhappily.

Jeremy nodded. “Search—” he began. He had to pause. In his heart he had to believe that the Indians wouldn’t harm Christa. “Search the area for other bodies,” he said. James stared at him, swallowed hard, then turned around and called out the order.

Company D dismounted from their horses. Jeremy walked across the dry plain and stared across it. Buffalo Run, he thought. He’d come to see if the whites were going to handle the matter of the murdering Reb.

Buffalo Run had taken down Thayer himself.

“You fool!” he hissed to the body of the dead man. He wanted to feel compassion for any man so brutally killed. But Thayer had murdered unsuspecting, innocent men. Red men, white men. He had, perhaps, come to his just reward.

“And you used my wife, you goddamned son of a bitch!” he swore savagely, fighting the temptation to kick the corpse.

“There’s no sign of anyone else,” James reported to him.

“Not Darcy, or Mrs. Brooks?”

“Or Christa,” James said quietly.

Jeremy stared off across the plain. “It was Buffalo Run, then,” he said.

“There are many bands of Comanche,” James warned him.

“But only Buffalo Run would kill Thayer this way and take the others.” He was quiet a moment, then said, “I’m going to have to go to him alone.”

“My God, you can’t go alone! You could run into other hostiles and get killed before you reach him.”

“You’ll accompany me with Company D until we reach the outskirts of his camp,” Jeremy said.

“Even then—”

“James, if I were to take the whole regiment against him, it would be an even match. The death toll would be terrible. And the Comanche might kill the captives immediately on principle. If I go alone, I’ve got a chance. I won’t be entirely alone,” he said. “I’ll have Morning Star.”

“Colonel, sir!” one of the men called.

Jeremy looked back at the twenty-three enlisted men of Company D.

Private Jenkins was staring at him awkwardly. “Do we bury him, sir?”

Jeremy’s throat seemed to constrict. He’d tricked
Christa, and Jeremy had been too damned angry and proud to try to explain things. God knew just how far Thayer intended to go with her.

Let the buzzards eat the man! Jesu, he was in anguish! He knew the Comanche well. And he knew Christa well. Don’t fight Buffalo Run, Christa, don’t fight him.

And please God, don’t let him hurt her.

“Sir, do we bury him?”

“Dammit, yes, go ahead. Hurry, we’ve got to ride!”

There was so much at stake. They had to make haste. He was responsible for Darcy and Mrs. Brooks. He had to reach the Comanche before they could kill any of their captives.

He could die going for Christa. But if he couldn’t bring her back, he didn’t know if life would be worth living. He had been in love before, but he had never known the passion of emotions he felt for Christa. Perhaps they were like the pieces of the country, torn and bruised, suffering bitterly for all that they had done to one another. Yet nothing but broken fragments without one another. He had married her under duress, but nothing in the world could have forced him to do so if he hadn’t been willing somewhere in his heart. He had been determined to bring her with him, to demand that their marriage be whole. He had forced her to live it. In his way, he had tried to give her life. And she had given it to him in return.

Night was coming in all around them.

He looked to the darkening sky. Against the night were curious, winged shapes. Buzzards were circling over him. They’d been seeking a meal of Thayer. He prayed that he would not see them circling in the sky again.

He leapt up on his horse and shouted to James. “Let’s ride!”

They would have to stop soon enough. The Comanche
before them would have to stop in the ebony darkness too.

In the morning, Buffalo Run untied her and directed her down through a scruff of trees and foliage to a narrow creek below them. For a moment she felt the incredible wonder of her freedom, then realized that her hands were still tied together before her and that he had given her freedom only to perform the most necessary of human tasks. Yet as she came along the trail, she caught her breath, trying not to make a sound. She had come upon Private Darcy.

Like her, he had been bound to a tree. She wondered why they hadn’t killed him yet, then she feared that he was dead, and she wondered why they hadn’t taken his scalp. His eyes opened, slowly, miserably. He saw her. It looked as if he was going to cry out, but Christa shook her head, turning around to look at the camp.

The Indian braves were gathered around the fire. It seemed that they were exchanging stories about their exploits.

For the moment, she and Darcy were not noticed.

Christa quickly moved into the shadow of the tree and knelt down by Darcy. Trickles of blood had hardened along his neck. She bit her lip. “Are you injured so that you can’t rise, walk, or ride?”

His eyes, filled with pain and weariness, found hers. He shook his head. “They nicked at my ears and scratched my throat. They know how to keep a captive alive and in pain and terror a very long time,” he told her.

Christa, with her hands bound together, struggled with the knots that held him to the tree.

The Comanche also knew how to tie very good knots, she realized. Her fingers began shredding before the rope did. Darcy started talking swiftly. “Pull up my
pant leg. There’s a small sheath at my ankle and I think my knife is still in it.”

It was awkward, the way that she was tied, but Christa found the knife and managed to pull it out. A fine sheen of perspiration broke out on her forehead despite the coolness of the morning. She managed to balance the knife between her hands, and in a matter of minutes she had Darcy freed.