Cheyenne Captive (53 page)

But as she studied him, she saw a different Austin, a more decisive Austin than the one she had always known. He straightened up and he seemed almost like a self-confident, seasoned officer.

“No, Sergeant,” he ordered in a firm voice. “Let these people ride out. They’ve done nothing wrong. But get a rope and tie up Dallinger!”

He gestured toward the scout sitting moaning on the ground. “I’ll tell you the whole story later, but it looks like he may do time in the stockade for everything from attempted robbery to attempted murder! One of you men go look for that big whip! If at all possible, I’m going to see he gets a public lashing back at the fort! But first, we’re riding on in to Denver to see about my brother!”

“Yes, sir!” The Sergeant snapped him a salute and Summer saw the new respect in the man’s eyes.

Austin turned and looked up at her. She saw the love in his eyes and she was sorry she couldn’t love him enough.

“Be happy!” he said gently.

“Thank you, Austin,” she whispered. “I’m sorry it had to end this way for you. What will you do now?”

He shrugged. “I may just stay here in the West and serve with the cavalry. I like this country! Maybe I’ll end up joining up with my friend Custer somewhere. I’ll decide all that later!” He tipped his hat to her and tried to give a brave smile. “I somehow always knew that you wouldn’t be mine. And I suppose you are leaving with the one man who loves you as much as I do.”

“I love her even more!” Iron Knife declared, and there was respect in his voice as he nodded to the lieutenant. “You have been a fair man, Lieutenant. May the great god Heammawihio smile on you!”

Summer sighed and leaned back against his chest, feeling his big arms gripping her possessively as the war party rode out of the clearing.

She didn’t look back as the horses started down the mountain trail. This was her man! She had chosen him, and of all the places she could spend the rest of her life, she wanted to spend it in his arms.

The war party returned to the camp in the Big Timbers not too far from Bent’s Fort. It seemed to Summer the whole band had turned out to welcome them.

“The war party has returned!”

“The men have come back!”

“Look! Iron Knife has reclaimed his woman!”

They were cordial and friendly. Pony Woman and Pretty Flower Woman, who was round with pregnancy, came running to Iron Knife’s tepee with clothing for Summer. She visited with them and put on the deerskin shift and the soft moccasins, glad to be rid of the uncomfortable Boston clothing. She gave the clothes to any eager squaw who wanted them, keeping only the small locket with the painting of her mother.

Iron Knife went off to report to the old chiefs in detail about the journey.

When he returned, he led the small chestnut mare. The Appaloosa stallion nickered in recognition, glad to see the dainty mare again.

“Starfire!” Summer exclaimed and ran to throw her arms around the pony’s neck. “I never thought I would see you again!”

Iron Knife came to her side. “And I never thought to see you again, but I kept your mare. Having her around made me think of you and I see Spotted Blanket is also glad to see her.”

They both laughed as the stallion nuzzled Starfire’s face.

“Let’s go for a ride!” she cried. “I have dreamed for months of galloping along with you beside me!”

They both mounted and rode out of the camp in the warm spring sunshine. Pausing on a ridge overlooking the purple-shadowed, snow-capped Rockies, they surveyed the green valleys below.

“Has anyone found out about Angry Wolf?” she asked.

“No,” he said soberly. “But someday it must come out and then there will be trouble for us both. But until that day, I have everything a man could want! I will pack a lifetime into whatever time is left to me or my tribe because I have your love!”

She smiled at him. “You are right. Let us not borrow trouble by worrying too much about the future. And to think we almost lost each other because of that hateful Gray Dove!”

He frowned. “When the women found out she was the one who betrayed us, they ran her out of the camp. But Gray Dove is a survivor. Wherever she is, she is alive and doing well because she is so ruthless.”

Summer studied the towering mountains and sniffed the clean, pine-scented air.
Yes, they were living on borrowed time, she knew that. The army, the settlers, and the gold prospectors were crowding in. Eventually, there would be no room left to roam for the fierce nomads of the plains.

“I would rather live only a few years with your love than a lifetime without it,” she said.

Iron Knife smiled. “Pony Woman is supervising the making of a ‘One Thousand ’ dress decorated with elk teeth. When that is ready, I will marry you in the Cheyenne way. If I ever find a white preacher who will do it, I will marry you in the white man’s church, for I have never loved and trusted a woman so much.”

She looked at him with love and her happy laughter sounded like tiny silver bells. “Let’s race!” she challenged, and she urged the chestnut forward at a lope across the meadow through the bright spring flowers.

She loved the freedom of the gallop and the feel of the wind blowing through her loose hair. He caught up with her at a small creek and they both slid from their horses as he swung her up in his big arms. The horses stared at them curiously and dipped their muzzles in the icy stream to drink.

He laid her very gently on the stream bank. “It was on just such a creek as this that I first made love to you, remember?”

She lay on the soft grass and watched him lean back next to her on his elbows. “Do you think I could ever forget? It was on a warm, wonderful day just like this one! Was it only a few months or maybe a million years ago that two people who were meant to be together finally found each other?” She remembered as she looked at him, her heart almost too full to speak. “You taught me about passion.”

“And you taught me about love, real love,” he murmured, leaning over to brush his lips across her forehead.

Summer winked up at him. “Many Cheyenne men take more than one wife. Will I someday be pushed aside by a prettier girl?”

“You know better than that!” he declared. “You are the only woman I will ever want! Do you remember, that first time, the gesture you made?”

She knew immediately what he was talking about. Very slowly, she opened her arms to him and he came to her, taking her in his embrace, kissing her fiercely. The taste of his mouth, the feel of his arms around her was even more wonderful than she remembered. Eagerly, she pressed against him and his lips took hers with all the gentle wanting of the long, empty months.

She felt his hard muscles rippling under her hands as he pulled away her clothes. She could feel his manhood against her and he looked deep into her eyes.

“I have felt like the eagle deserted by the wind currents,” he whispered. “Like the soul of me fled with you. Now I am whole again.”

“Then let the eagle soar,” she answered in her halting Cheyenne. “And let my devotion be the song of your
tasoom. Ne-mehotatse,
my darling. You are now and forever my once in a lifetime love!”

He kissed the pulsing hollow of her throat and all her senses were alive with desire. Always she would remember this moment, the sweet scent of the grass, the sound of the creek roaring over the rocks, the horses stamping lazily. The colors surrounding her were dazzlingly brilliant. The snow-capped mountains appeared to be sparkling with spun sugar as they reflected the sun.

His warm mouth came down on hers and she arched against him, wanting him as he had taught her to desire him. His strong hands lifted her so his lips brushed her breasts.

“Summer Sky!” he gasped.

“Yes, oh, yes!” she answered, parting her thighs and running her hands in a frenzy down his scarred back. This moment was everything she had ever dreamed of as she sat by her lonely fireplace in Boston.

“
Ne-mehotatse.
I love you, Little One!” he gasped as he plunged into her.

“Take me!” she breathed as she surrendered to her passion. Then she had no time to think as he impaled her with his hardness and she wrapped her legs about him, arched herself against him. It was too good to last forever. She surrendered to her ecstasy and began a dream ride at dizzying speed across the Ekutsihimmiyo, the Milky Way. Nothing could be better than this peak of passion they were approaching together.

So there in the soft, sweet grass of a tiny valley in the Colorado Rockies, they reached ever higher to ride a crest of love and fulfillment and it was as wonderful as the very first time!

As Summer predicted, it was a frontier territory, Wyoming, that first gave its women the right to vote in 1869. But when applying for statehood in 1890, the U.S. Congress suggested the territory rescind this brash action. Gallant Wyoming fired back: “We may stay out of the Union a hundred years, but we will come in with our women!”

In spite of this, Congress regretfully gave them statehood. The constitutional amendment allowing all American women the right to vote would not come about until 1920.

The friendship pact the Cheyenne-Arapaho made with the Kiowa-Apache, Comanche, and the Kiowa tribes in 1840 has never been broken up to this very moment. For those interested in history, Bull Hump’s Comanche were attacked by mistake on October 1, 1858, near the present town of Rush Springs as I indicated. Little Buffalo, Aperian Crow, and the unwilling Cheyenne had yet to play out their roles in the terrible Indian uprisings now known as the “Great Outbreak of 1864.”

Here in my home state of Oklahoma, the Cheyenne still gather to dance the sun dance at the ancient site of Cantonment (Canton). All over the state in the hot summers, thousands of plains. Indians still powwow even as they did more than a hundred years ago when my grandfather was an Indian agent. I attend sometimes with my Irish-Choctaw husband and my Chickasaw brother-in-law and I always leave saddened for a way of life that is as close to extinction as the once-great herds of buffalo.

I do in-depth research for my stories, tracking down such small items as the exact time the stagecoach left Fort Smith and details on Indian rituals. However, Cheyenne Indians do not belong in the hilly forests of eastern Oklahoma. Their territory has always been (and still is) the flat plains country to the west and north. Since the Butterfield stage did not run through western Indian Territory, I was in a dilemma until a friend with a Ph. D. in History pointed out there were several known incidents involving plains Indians riding into eastern Oklahoma to raid the Five Civilized Tribes.

Curious people often ask me about the Cheyenne Sacred Arrows and I will share with you a secret that only a handful of white people know. Yes, the Arrows still exist and are as important and sacred to the Cheyenne as ever. In fact, the tribe pays the Keeper of the Arrows to look after them. At the moment of this writing, the official Keeper of the Arrows is Joe Antelope out in Watonga, Oklahoma. Watonga is deep in the heart of the old buffalo plains near Canton and Roman Nose State Park, named for the famous Cheyenne warrior.

The Sacred Buffalo Hat also still exists and is in the possession of a northern Cheyenne family living in southern Montana. The day did come when the Buffalo Hat was damaged and defiled. That started a whole new series of calamities and adventures for the Cheyenne people.

Meanwhile, down in the Texas hill country, Iron Knife’s beautiful half-breed sister, Cimarron, Spanish for “wild one”, was growing up. She would meet a dashing Spanish vaquero on a great ranching empire during the Civil War. This was the time called “The Great Outbreak of 1864,” when the fierce Plains tribes realized the soldiers had gone east to fight and the western frontier was set ablaze and soaked with blood. Cimarron would be caught in the middle of the fierce Comanche-Comanchero raids involving El Lobo, Little Buffalo, and Aperian Crow. Spirited Cimarron dared any man to tame her or steal her heart. Then she came up against the handsome, moody cowboy called Trace who expected wild mustangs and women to submit to his will.

But the story of sultry Cimarron is the next tale I will tell in this series....

Although my research encompassed some fifty books, I wish to acknowledge these in particular:

The Cheyenne Indians,
Their History and Way of Life, Volumes I & II, by George B. Grinnell.

The Fighting Cheyennes,
by George B. Grinnell

The Southern Cheyennes,
by Donald J. Berthong

And special thanks to Indian friends who told me things never found in print.

ZEBRA BOOKS

are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.
475 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10016

Copyright
^©
1987 by Georgina Gentry

ISBN: 978-0-8217-3880-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.