Comanche Moon (3 page)

Judith was tied on a horse just in front of her, and looked back as they rode along single file. Her blue eyes were dazed when she whispered hoarsely,

“They’ll kill us, you know. Or worse. Oh God, Deborah, what can we do?” Forcing the words past dry, stiff lips, Deborah murmured, “Be brave.

And pray. I don’t think hysteria will help us now.” When Judith nodded numbly, Deborah turned her weary thoughts to her questionable future. In the space of a few minutes, her entire life had changed. Gone was her husband, dead in a grape arbor, and gone, too, were most of the men attending the wedding fiesta. She’d glimpsed the bodies sprawled like broken dolls on the hacienda grounds. Then the descent into pure terror had erased everything from her mind but the need to survive.

That survival instinct kept her going now, in the face of exhaustion, hunger and cold. Fear had been relegated to the background. More important needs had surfaced.

Chestnut strands of her hair hung limp and tangled in her eyes, masking her vision as she tried to keep up with the steady pace set by the men she’d heard one of the other captives call Comanche. Her legs were sore and aching, and her body bruised from several falls. Only the driving certainty that soldiers would give pursuit kept her from surrendering to despair at times. Surely, there had been at least one survivor from that night to alert the Army.

By the time the Comanche warriors rode their horses down into a pine-choked valley, it was almost a relief. Even if death awaited them at the journey’s end, it had to be better than this nightmare of bruising travel and constant threats in a language none of the captives understood.

They were dragged from their horses and bunched together in the center of a village of tall, hide-covered tents. The captives huddled miserably. The returning warriors whooped as they greeted their families, and the air was filled with noise. Comanche children ran and squealed, and dogs barked while the white captives waited, kneeling in the dirt, some with tears, some with dry sobs, some shivering with apprehension.

In the ensuing melee, Deborah stood with her head held high, too numb to react. The tatters of her lacy wedding dress hung in folds from her slender frame. Her eyes focused on a spot far distant from the chaotic village. Bright streamers of her hair draped loosely over her shoulders, and her face was calm and composed as she seemed not to notice those around her. She alone stood stiffly upright.

That was how Hawk first saw her.

Seated beside the chief, he watched as those who had gone on the raid returned victorious. They laughed and boasted of their prowess, the easy victory they had enjoyed. The men had been drunk, the raid almost too easy.

Hawk’s gaze swung inevitably toward the captives. As was common on such a foray, only some women and a few children had been brought back.

Most of the women were dark-haired, which was as expected. Not many whites had settled in the area where the war party had gone to steal horses; the raiders’ target had been a huge Spanish hacienda on the border.

Yet, one of the women had bright tresses the color of the sun. And the woman who stood so quietly in the center of the captives had richly hued hair of a deep auburn. It was unusual, and caught Hawk’s attention. His gaze grew sharper as he noted the elegant dress clinging in stained white satin to her slender curves. It had once been beautiful, but was now torn and dirty. The skirt hung limply, and Hawk knew enough about the clothes such women wore to see that the many petticoats she’d once worn had been discarded, whether by necessity or accident was pure conjecture.

He allowed none of his thoughts to show on his face. It remained expressionless, eyes fathomless, his mouth set in a straight line of indifference. Hawk felt no sympathy. It was simply the way of things. Life and death were an unending cycle, and it didn’t matter where a person lived, but how a person lived. Happiness was an abstract emotion, something he hadn’t thought about since he was a young boy. He was a man now, and thought as a man. A man was not to think of only personal satisfaction, but of the good of his people, his father said, and he followed that advice.

Yet Hawk’s gaze returned repeatedly to the young woman standing stiffly with her chin tilted and her eyes grave. There was something about her that arrested his attention. Perhaps it was that she showed no fear. Nothing showed in her face, no reaction at all. The rest of the women were sniveling and weeping, but that one slender girl stared straight ahead in an unblinking gaze.

Night fell, and the village
celebration went on. Fires leaped high, and the raiders danced and bragged beneath the sky. Deborah had ceased to think.

She’d ceased to feel. Her arms were numb where the ropes had been tied too tightly on her wrists, cutting off circulation. Some of the women had fallen asleep, yielding to exhausted fear. The children who had been captured were taken from the group by some of the Comanche women.

Deborah’s head turned, and she called softly, “Be brave, little ones.” It had not escaped her notice that the children were treated kindly for the most part, with the women touching their small heads and crooning to them in soft voices. Maybe the children would be allowed to live, perhaps even adopted. Deborah harbored no such hope for herself or her cousin, who drifted into exhausted slumber with the others. The other women were Mexican, some of them servants, some of them guests who had come to attend her wedding.

Her wedding. That seemed like years ago, not days. Why had she never considered that something like this might happen to her? It had seemed so farfetched then, even when her friend LuEmma had warned her about the hostiles in Texas. Of course, having lived in Natchez all her life, LuEmma considered any other part of the world primitive and uncivilized. Now Deborah was inclined to agree.

She shifted position, her legs aching with the strain of remaining upright. She didn’t sleep for the simple reason that she was too frightened.

Fires punctuated the darkness of the camp, red-gold flames lighting the camp and the figures of the dancers. It was a scene she’d never imagined, and Deborah felt fear prickle up her spine with malicious swiftness.

Gathering her fortitude, Deborah remained erect and watchful. Her eyes widened slightly when she saw a man approaching the captives. He walked with a lithe, powerful stride, and her throat tightened when she realized he was looking directly at her.

He looked so fierce, with jet-black hair worn long and loose. A feather dangled from a small braid over one ear, and the rest of his hair brushed against his shoulders. His face was dark and coppery, and he was tall, much taller than the others, she noted distractedly. Like the others, however, he wore only a large square of cloth between his legs, tied at his waist, leaving his broad chest bare. Knee-high moccasins clung to his calves, and he wore some kind of amulet on a rawhide thong around his neck.

Deborah was frighteningly aware of his presence, of the danger evident in his loose, fluid stride. When the Comanche stopped only a few feet away, she refused to avert her gaze. She met him stare for stare, her chin lifting in that quick gesture of pride that was inborn in the Hamiltons.

His eyes were clear and cold, his expression so indifferent that she almost lost her nerve. Fear pulsed through her nerves in singing waves, and her knees began to quiver.

It took all her self-control to keep calm, but Deborah felt that if she revealed the depth of her fear, it would only hasten the inevitable. Smoke from the campfire stung her eyes and nose, and there was an indefinable odor in the air that she couldn’t identify. She tried to concentrate on anything but the predatory gaze of the Comanche only a few feet away. He stood watching her without speaking for several moments, seeming to assess her, then turned and walked away. Deborah felt a wave of relief wash over her. Perhaps he would leave her alone, at least for a while.

But then she knew she had erred, for he returned with a buckskin-clad woman in tow. The woman looked to be Mexican, but he spoke to her swiftly in the deep guttural language Deborah had come to recognize as Comanche, and the woman nodded. She turned toward Deborah.

“That one wishes to know your name,” she said in halting English that Deborah had difficulty understanding. The woman had to repeat it twice before she was understood, and her voice grew sharp with irritation.

Deborah’s chin lifted slightly. “My name is Deborah Hamilton. May I ask what is to be done with us?” The words were out before she realized she should have given her married name. It was only natural, she supposed, as she had been wed and widowed in a matter of hours. If she was to be ransomed, she needed to give her married name, and she opened her mouth to correct her mistake, but the woman had turned back to the cold-eyed Comanche.

At the man’s prompting she asked Deborah, “Where is your husband?”

“Dead.”

No emotion betrayed her, not by the slightest quiver of her voice. It did not seem like an odd reaction, not considering the other incredible events that had so drastically changed her life in such a short time. Her gaze focused on the Comanche. She deliberately met his steady stare again, and was struck by a difference she hadn’t noted before.

“You—you have blue eyes,” she blurted, startled at the discovery. She hadn’t thought about a Comanche having blue eyes, but it was obvious some of them did. At least, this one did. Flames reflected from a blue so intense as to be almost indigo, and the blue eyes in such a dark face were both frightening and familiar. She didn’t realize she was staring until he spoke, his voice a harsh, rasping growl.

“Haa. Keta tekwaaru. Kima habi-ki.”
Her perusal was quickly ended by the Comanche’s harsh comment. She didn’t understand the words, but the tone was easily translated. A faint shiver prickled her bare arms with gooseflesh, and she looked away without speaking.

Hawk saw her faint shiver and noted with appreciation her quick recovery. Her voice was soft, with a trace of an accent he recognized as English. He was glad she had a soft voice instead of an annoying screech, as many white women had.

With a wave of one hand, Hawk dismissed the Mexican woman and stepped closer to Deborah Hamilton. His gaze raked her from the top of her tousled russet hair to the tattered hem of her gown, pausing with deliberate inspection at the full thrust of her breasts. The torn bodice of her gown revealed more than it hid, and the creamy skin he saw beneath the ragged edges of material was enticing. Slender hips curved beneath the heavy skirt, and there was a flash of bare leg that piqued his interest.

Hawk allowed himself a moment’s speculation as to the exact nature of the body beneath the gown, then shifted his attention to her face again.

Aristocratic bones sculpted an exquisite face, from her wide, gold-flecked brown eyes and thick dark lashes to her high, delicate cheekbones and the fragile sweep of her jaw. Her lips were full, with the top lip slightly shorter than the bottom, giving her the appearance of a sultry Madonna.

Even tousled and tangled, her hair beckoned him to put his hands in it.

Thick auburn tresses waved around her shoulders, spilling over her breasts and back in shining curls. In daylight, it had caught the sun in fiery splinters; at night, it gleamed with a deep coppery beauty that reflected the firelight in elusive glimmers.

Desire hit him then, swift and hard, giving a name to the lure that had drawn him closer to her. This woman reminded him of the more pleasant things in life, before harsh reality had intruded, before he’d turned his back on that way of life.

Hawk’s gaze caught hers again, and he saw the quick widening of her eyes, the lifting of her lashes as she recognized something in his face. It gave him an unsettling feeling.

Pivoting on his heel, he walked away.

“She belongs to Spotted Pony.
He is the one who reached her first.” White Eagle peered closely at Hawk. “Do you want her, my
tua?”
Hawk did not answer his father. No answer was necessary. White Eagle knew that he wanted her, and that Spotted Pony would demand a huge ransom or a fight as payment. Neither one mattered to Hawk. He would just as soon do one as the other.

Plenty of ponies wore his halter, and he would not miss any for a ransom. And if the truth be known, he was restless and in the mood for a good fight.

He looked toward the center of the camp again. The fires had burned low. Deborah Hamilton had yielded to exhaustion and sat on the ground beside the blonde girl, her head tilted back and her eyes half-closed. She had to be bone-tired, yet she refused to relinquish her vigil. Hawk’s eyes narrowed slightly.

When he looked at his father, White Eagle’s face was turned toward the captives. There was a stark elegance to the older man’s features, a purity of line and bone that would have been called aristocratic if he were white. A faint smile curved Hawk’s mouth. As a Comanche, White Eagle was called anything by the white man but aristocratic.

Hawk hadn’t known what to expect from White Eagle ten years before, nor did he really expect anything from him now. There was an unspoken understanding between them that allowed Hawk to travel his own path without question, coming and going from the Comanche camp whenever he pleased.

Nothing was asked about his life away from the camp in the mountains stretching from Texas into New Mexico; it was as if he didn’t exist once he left
Numunuu
behind.
Numunuu,
Comanche for The Comanche People, had given him a vague sense of belonging, after years of aimless wandering.

Those lonely years made him appreciate the sense of family he had now.

White Eagle made him welcome.
Kwihne tosabitu,
White Eagle, had been glad to see his son come home. He never said, but Hawk often wondered if his father disliked seeing him leave to go back to the white man’s world. This time, he’d decided to stay. He would do his best to fit in, to live, raid, even think as one of the People. There was nothing for him in the world he’d left behind, nothing but a sharp sense of failure.

Each time he joined
Numunuu,
Hawk stayed longer and longer. That made his young half-sister,
Ohayaa,
happy. Sunflower was a lovely, shy girl of thirteen, almost old enough to marry, but still too young to have a household of her own. She stayed in her widowed father’s tipi with her maternal grandmother, caring for him and her half-brother.