Cheyenne Captive (33 page)

“Maybe. Maybe not. Our people have a lot of experience in eluding the soldiers and the desolate plains between here and the Colorado country hold many gulches, rock piles, and other hiding places.”

“If the soldiers come,” she promised against his lips, “I will tell them I am here of my own free will and do not want to leave. Then they will turn and ride out.”

“That’s what my mother told them,” he said bitterly, “and they took her away anyhow.”

“I won’t go with them,” she said firmly, wondering in her own mind if the priest would do such a thing. Now she was uneasy for the safety of the Cheyenne. “It is still a long time till dawn. Let us rest now, for there is nothing that can be done in the middle of the night.”

They returned to their bed and she lay sleepless, staring into the darkness and felt him stirring restlessly. The purple night was faded and the fire had turned to silver ashes before she drifted off to sleep, wrapped in his big arms.

It was approaching dawn when Summer awakened and stretched as she got up and dressed quietly. Her lover lay asleep and she smiled down at him, wondering if he had made good his pledge to get her with child last night. She hoped so. A strong, fat baby was all she needed to round out their love, make their lives complete.

He looked exhausted as he slept and she moved carefully as she picked up her water skins to go down to the river. She knew the war party and the hard ride had been tiring to all the warriors and what they needed was several days’ rest without having to move the camp today.

She really thought there was no need to worry about the priest bringing the soldiers but perhaps it had been stupid of her to take the chance.

Wrapping her shawl about her, she took the water skins and started for the river. It was still dark and frosty out; she could feel the frozen grass crunch under her feet. In another hour, the sun would be fully up, burning away the early chill from the scarlet sumac and green loblolly pine of the area.

At any rate, food must be prepared whether the camp was moved or not and the Cheyenne would not use water that had been left standing overnight. They called that “dead water.” It was customary to go early to the river for the new day’s supply. In a few more minutes, she would be joined by other women coming down to the river.

But for now, as she walked in the semidarkness, she was happy to be alone with her thoughts. She passed the horse herd and the little mare and the big Appaloosa nickered at her as she passed by.
Strange,
she thought,
where are the sentries?
There should be several on the perimeters of the camp, guarding against the approach of enemies that might sneak up on the People. She shrugged it off. No doubt, they were scattered out behind the brush so they could not be seen.

She smiled, thinking of the prospect of a colt from the pair of horses and pleased that the pony might make a good mount for her own son when she had one.

Absently humming to herself, she walked through the wild sand plum bushes near the river’s edge and bent down to fill her water skins.
She was more than happy
, she thought,
except for this crazy fear of Iron Knife’s that seemed to haunt him from his childhood that soldiers would take her away.
What had happened to his mother simply would not happen to her.

Summer was a stubborn, strong-willed person. She would not leave with the soldiers if they came to the camp. She would explain to the commanding officer that she wanted to stay and he would be satisfied with her explanation and ride off.

She bent over to fill her water skins. Abruptly a hand reached out of the plum bushes and grabbed her, clasping itself over her mouth as she struggled to scream a warning.

Terrified, she battled, thinking of Pawnee and knowing now that someone had killed the sentries. But as she fought, the hands that held her whirled her around. In the faint light of beginning dawn, she looked up into a bearded face, a white face.

The man smiled down at her and did not take his hand off her mouth. He wore a cowboy hat with two feathers in it and a smelly fur vest. The stink of him assailed her nostrils and she tried to bite his dirty hand.

“Take it easy, missy,” he whispered. “Don’t you understand? We’re friends! Old Jake’s come to rescue you and brought the whole damned cavalry from Fort Smith!”

Jake Dallinger looked down at the girl struggling in his arms. Gawd Almighty! She was a real beaut! Even in the dim light he saw the cascade of golden hair, the eyes blue as the waterfall known as Toccoa Falls back in his home state of Georgia. As he felt her satin skin against his rough hands, he understood why some Injun buck had taken a shine to her and wouldn’t turn her in for the reward.

“I ain’t agonna hurt you, missy,” he reassured her in a hoarse voice as she struggled. “We’re here to save you from the Injuns!”

But she didn’t seem to understand because she kept fighting him. He was glad he had his hand over her mouth so she couldn’t cry out and awaken the whole camp.
Probably, he thought, the gal had been so raped and brutalized, her brain was addled and she couldn’t tell the difference between friend or foe anymore.

The pimply-faced captain broke through the underbrush at his elbow. “For Christ’s sake, Dallinger, what’s going on?” He glanced back nervously toward the sleeping camp. “I’ve got the troopers hid out in that grove of trees like you said but we can’t keep the horses quiet forever! What have you got there? Is that a white girl?”

Jake grinned at him but didn’t relax his grip on the struggling blonde. “We’re in luck, Cap’n. This is bound to be the one we came after! That Injun girl, Gray Dove, was right about what she came and tole us! And it’s a lucky break for us, too; we don’t have to worry about riskin’ her gettin’ shot when we attack the camp!”

“Why is she fighting?” the officer asked in his high, Yankee voice. “Doesn’t she know we’ve come to help her?” He peered through the growing light at the girl struggling in Jake’s arms.

“She’s just plumb crazy with fear right now, sir, and probably don’t know friend from foe! But she’ll be all right onct we get her back to civilization! I’ll just tie her up and leave her here outa the way so she’ll be safe until we get through attackin’ the camp!”

“Christ! There’s no reason to attack the camp now! I’m not going to risk my men when there’s no need! We got the girl, let’s get the hell out of here!”

Frowning, Jake looked at him over the girl’s head as she struggled. “You mean we’re just gonna ride outa here without stoppin’ to kill all those Injuns? You’re sayin’ the only ones I get to kill are the two sentries whose throats I cut?”

The young officer looked back at him uncertainly. “Why should we bother? After all, we got the girl and that’s what we came for!”

Jake spat to one side. “Maybe that’s the only reason you came but I never get tired of killin’ Injuns! I hate ’em! Every one of ’em! I’d think you’d be happy to hit this camp hard, seein’s as how you’re eager to get transferred back to New York! Just think how’d it look on your record that you personally led the charge that wiped out the savages that slaughtered them people on the stage! Why, the Butterfield folks’ll probably give you a reward, too! And just imagine how them back East newspapers would make over the handsome young captain that saved the purty white captive!”

The captain tipped back the plumed black cavalry hat, thinking, and as he thought he smiled a little.

He’s a purdee danger,
Jake thought as he held the girl. There’s nothing quite so dangerous as an ambitious man who has neither talent nor brains to assist his ambitions.
God help the country if this one kept getting promoted!

“You’re right, Jake!” The officer nodded. “I’ll alert the troops!”

“We got to hit them now, hard and fast before they start comin’ awake,” Jake cautioned, looking toward the reflected glow behind the eastern hills. “In a few minutes, they’ll all be up and someone will find those two dead sentries and give the alarm!”

The captain looked at the struggling girl. “You’ll take care of Miss Van Schuyler?”

“I’ll tie her up till this is over!” he reassured the officer, enjoying the feel of the warm, struggling girl in his hands. “Jest see to it that you signal them soldiers with hand motions! Don’t let no bugles blow!”

Captain Baker nodded agreement and disappeared into the woods.

Jake looked down into the long-lashed blue eyes. “I’m afixin’ to do you a favor, miss,” he drawled respectfully. “You’re gonna wake up when this is all over and be so beholden to me!”

It was awkward to keep his hand over her mouth while he reached for the big whip at his belt. Very lightly, he tapped her across the skull with the heavy silver butt and caught her as she fell unconscious.

“Sorry I had to do that, honey,” he said familiarly as he swung her limp body up in his big arms. “I couldn’t take a chance on you workin’ yore way outa the ropes and screamin’ to alert yore big buck! I can just guess why you don’t wanta leave this camp!”

Her head swung over his arm, the yellow hair hanging almost to the ground. The stress pulled the deerskin tight across her full breasts. He felt his manhood rise hard and eager for her now that she had aroused him by fighting and resisting. The thought that she was helpless and at his mercy excited him even more. He wished he had the time to throw her down in the grass and take her quickly before he left. After all, she’d never know the difference and he’d never get another crack at an uppity, high-class gal like this one again.

There was a little something about her that reminded him of another woman, another time. Maybe it was that both of the women had courage or “grit,” as they called it where he was from down in southern Georgia. She didn’t look that much like Texanna, but, still, there was something about this girl ...

He remembered now that night he had gone to see Texanna a few months after her baby girl was born in Fandango. Jake had been gone from Texas, scouting for the army. But the next time he was in the hill country, he got himself all slicked up and rode out to the small shack on the edge of town.

The place was almost as bad as the one he’d been raised in, Jake decided as he dismounted at the front gate and started across the dark yard.
The gal must
be havin’ a terrible time of it,
he thought. He paused and reached up to slick down his oiled hair. Not only had he been to the barber, he’d spent a short bit for a bath in the tin tub in the back of the shop.
Yep, he was goin’ all out to woo her
. He’d even bought ill-fitting shoes and a store coat.

The moonlight lit up a small, pathetic flower garden as he crossed the yard. Jake surveyed the bright color, sniffed the perfume of the blossoms. Texanna was the kind of woman who would plant flowers in front of a shack, trying to make it homey. A saddled horse tied around at the side of the house so as not to be easily seen mystified Jake. Ladies wanting sewing done usually drove a buggy and Texanna surely couldn’t afford a fine-blooded horse like that one.

Jake felt as skittish and nervous as a new colt. He paused on the front porch, wiping the sweat from his face. But as he started to knock, he heard angry voices through the open parlor window, and he peered in to see Texanna confronting her brother-in-law, that uppity Ransford Longworth.

“Get out of my house, Ransford.” Texanna gestured angrily. “You aren’t welcome after this!”

“Now, Texanna,” the pompous shopkeeper whined, “I didn’t mean to offend. Land 0’ Goshen, you know how much I think of you!”

She had her hands on her hips as she faced the plump man. “I know you’re married to my younger sister. Obviously, you’ve forgotten that!”

“Well, no.” He waved his fat, soft hands placatingly. “Your sister Carolina is a fine woman, but she isn’t very warm and loving like I think you must be—”

“So you thought I’d jump at the chance to carry on an affair with you?” Even from the window, Jake could see the sparks in her bright blue eyes.

“Don’t put it so crudely.” Longworth stuck his thumbs in his loud, expensive vest. “I merely thought some nights when Carolina thinks I’m working or at a civic meeting, I might drop by. After all, since hardly anyone in town will speak to you, you must be as lonely.”

“I’m not that lonely, to entertain my sister’s husband!” she flung at him, looking him squarely in the eye. Texanna was tall for a woman, almost as tall as her arrogant brother-in-law, Jake thought as he watched.

Longworth sucked his teeth loudly. “Let’s just say we both have needs. I need, er ... companionship . . . and you certainly need a little money and some of the nice things from my dry goods store. We could work out a fair trade—”

She slapped him then, a hard blow across his pasty face that echoed like a pistol shot. “I am not nor have I ever been a whore, Ransford, in spite of what this town thinks! My love is saved for my husband, War Bonnet.”

Longworth rubbed his red-marked face. “Husband!” he snorted. “Let’s quit pussy-footing and get down to it, Texanna! Your sister and father are so embarrassed because you been sleepin’ with an Injun buck, they won’t even speak to you. Any tart who’d let some dirty savage between her legs can’t be more than a tramp for all your high and mighty talk. You ought to be glad a white man would offer to sleep with you, comin’ in behind an Injun!”

“Get out of here!” Her voice rose high-pitched and furious as she pointed to the front door. “Get out of here or I’ll tell Carolina you were at my house tonight when she thinks you’re at a meeting of the town beautification society!”

But Longworth didn’t move. “She won’t believe you,” he said, “not when I can get a couple of the other important men in town to swear to her I was at the meeting tonight.”

“Those same ‘pillars of the community’ who have come by to offer to ‘help’ me and my children if I’ll just be ‘nice’ to them?” Her velvet voice dripped sarcasm. “Get out of here, Ransford!”

The man hesitated as if he might argue the point further. Jake had seen enough. He left the window, stalked over, banged on the door, and walked in.

“Maybe Carolina wouldn’t believe her sister,” Jake drawled as he glared at the man, “but she might listen to me.” He strode over and glared down at the shopkeeper. “You get the hell out of here, you pale, soft maggot! And if I ever hear of you comin’ near Texanna again, I’ll take my whip to you!” His hand went automatically to his belt before he remembered he was dressed up tonight. But the threat was obviously enough as the other stumbled backward toward the door.

“Land 0’ Goshen, Dallinger,” he pulled out a fine linen handkerchief to mop his pasty face, “I didn’t realize you had already laid a claim here—I mean, I didn’t know—”

“Well, you know now.” Jake moved toward him threateningly, his fists doubled. “And you pass the word around town to every man jack that if I hear any more about Texanna bein’ bothered, you’ll all answer to me for it!”

“Sure, Jake, sure.” Longworth stumbled backward out the front door. “I didn’t know—! I mean, I—I’ll tell the others!” And with that, he turned and fled.

Texanna put her hand on his arm, gratitude apparent on her lovely face. “Oh, Jake, thank you. All the men in this town have made my life miserable. I guess I could have shot him, but after all, he is my sister’s husband—”

“The town fathers probably would have hung you if you shot the uppity bastard.” Jake’s head reeled with the warmth of her hand on his arm, the clean scent of her red-gold hair. He’d never really courted a woman before. If he saw one he wanted, he took her by force if she wasn’t willing. In the awkward silence, Texanna moved over to fuss with the blanket on the baby sleeping in the nearby cradle.

Jake listened to Longworth’s horse clopping away toward the fashionable end of town and looked around the small room. The furnishings were so old and ragged that even Jake was appalled but it was clean and shining. The odor of homemade cookies drifted from the tiny kitchen and there was a bluebonnet in a cracked vase on the table.

“Where’s the boy?” he asked, running his finger around the too-tight collar of the new shirt.

“Asleep,” she sighed. “Tomorrow’s a school day.” She stroked the baby’s head.

“Other kids at school treatin’ him bad?” Jake shifted from one foot to the other, uneasy and unsure what to do next.

“Yes.” She nodded sadly as she came over to him. “They treat us all bad; you must know that. He’s whipped every boy in school so they don’t taunt him anymore, they just ignore him. Since the town doesn’t want us, you’d think they’d let us go back to the Indians.”

“Civilized people couldn’t hand a woman back to the Injuns!” he exclaimed without thinking.

She shrugged. “This town feels betrayed. They thought they had a virginal saint who’d given her life to save their wagon train. Then I have the colossal nerve to turn up alive with two half-breed kids.”

Jake cleared his throat awkwardly. “You did what you had to do to stay alive, Texanna. I can’t fault you for that. I reckon I was purty mean and shocked myself the day the Rangers brought you back—”

“Let’s not talk about that day, Jake. It was painful to find out my brothers were both dead. Otherwise, they’d deal with these men now for me.” She interrupted with a gentle shake of her head. The light from the coal oil lamp reflected off her red-gold hair, making it glimmer as if touched by fire.

He shifted his huge weight from one tight, hurting shoe to the other and thought how weary and strained she looked as she went over to the big pile of unfinished sewing and picked up a half-done dress.

“What did you want, Jake?” she sighed and her shoulders slumped with apparent weariness. “Were you wanting some shirts made?”

Jake paused, quaking. He had faced down Indians, renegades, outlaws, but he’d never faced a woman and asked her to marry him. If he’d seen a woman he wanted, he just took her whether she liked it or not. He’d killed a couple of men who’d objected to his taking their women.

“No, I don’t need no shirts.” He felt foolish standing there in his store-bought clothes and slicked-down hair.

She smiled. “You look nice tonight, Jake, must be all dressed up to go calling on a lady friend when you leave here.”

“I—I come callin’ on you!” Once started, the words stumbled over each other and came out in an awkward rush like a schoolboy’s. ”Texanna, you need a man to protect you and I always had a hankerin’ for you. So what do you say we get ourselves hitched!”