Proud Wolf's Woman (25 page)

“In the spring?”

“Thar’s what I said. Did ye iver hear the tale ’bout the man jist beginnin’ the business of trade an’ the fire he lit? Why, the way I heard it…”

Their words were lost to Neeheeowee as the two men passed by as though they didn’t even see the two young people. Neeheeowee let out his breath, knowing his ploy in making Julia look Indian had worked.

And why not? Hadn’t he taken the time this morning to braid Julia’s hair; two plaits, one on each side of her head, meticulously fashioning them and tying them?

He thought back on their morning, on their evening just passed. After the attack by the Comanche, Neeheeowee had held Julia in his arms all night. He hadn’t said much, nor had she. He had wanted to tell her many things; he said nothing. He wanted to tell her he wouldn’t let her go, but instead he had just held her and Julia, after a while, had relaxed, accepting his embrace.

They needed to talk, he knew it, yet he couldn’t bring himself to speak of the things that he must; of captivity, of kidnapping, of sabotaging her attempt to find the white travelers. He still hoped Julia would decide on her own to stay with him. It would be best if she did. And though it seemed unlikely that she would settle in his favor, he patiently awaited her decision. He merely declined to tell her it wouldn’t matter: He would not let her go.

He knew he took a chance in bringing her to Bent’s Fort. He knew that white people might discover Julia and try to take her from him, but he had little choice in the decision. He could not leave Julia alone upon the prairie, there being too many other dangers to consider. He had business to attend to with Little White Man, business involving Julia’s future, and he could not delay his visit. That left him only one solution to the problem of Julia, and that had been to make her look as Indian as possible. That way, when he approached the fort with her, perhaps no one would notice that he led a white woman in an Indian’s place.

To this end, he had taken his time with her this morning, fixing her hair, dressing her in the style of the Plains Indian. And, in truth, he had enjoyed himself. He had adorned one of her braids with a patch of rawhide and had hung a shell from the other, finishing the job by smearing vermillion paint down her center part and over her cheeks and brow.

He frowned. He remembered it now, their morning together. He had paid her the highest compliment possible by combing and fashioning her hair.

But Julia, perhaps unknowledgeable of this Plains Indian custom, didn’t understand what Neeheeowee did, didn’t know that he performed a very husbandly duty for her, one known to the Plains Indian as that of bestowing great affection and honor.

And so she didn’t acknowledge his actions, and though Neeheeowee tried not to, he knew his attitude conveyed his disillusionment.

“Neeheeowee,” she asked sometime later. It had still been early morning when they had stopped by a stream on their way to Bent’s Fort so that she might bathe and wash her clothes. “Have I done something to injure you?”

Neeheeowee hesitated to answer. He wasn’t certain Julia had recovered from the attack by the Comanche. True, she hadn’t been harmed, but she had been frightened, and he did not wish to burden her with criticism so soon after a shocking incident, not when she might still be weak from fear. Although perhaps he shouldn’t worry overmuch. She appeared more angry with him for what she thought was his deception than upset with the Comanche for threatening her life.

And so he thought for a little while and then, gazing away, he answered her question with a shrug, returning his attention back to the task at hand, that of scraping and polishing his bow. He made no other comment.

“Neeheeowee, what have I done?”

He put down his equipment, looked over to her, and gave her a half smile. At last he said, “Please excuse my ill manners if I have made you feel that you have injured me. Our customs, yours and mine, are different. There is no reason for me to assume you know mine. And it is a man with no honor who constantly corrects another.”

Julia snorted. “How am I to know your customs if you do not tell me?”

Neeheeowee rose up onto his haunches, and poked a stick at the fire, turning it round and round as though it held interest for him. At length he said, “It is true that you are new to the way in which I view things. There are some things you do that I do not understand and there are things that I do that I know you find incredible. And so I will tell you this once about a custom we have within our tribe.” He stopped, he rose to his full height, backing away from their camp to lean next to a tree. He smiled slightly before saying, “I performed a husbandly act with you this morning by combing your hair, one that is reserved for married couples who love each other deeply.”

Julia gasped and threw down the clothes she’d been washing. She swung around, coming up onto her knees. “You did?”

He nodded.

“What does that mean, Neeheeowee?” she asked, and Neeheeowee, staring at her, wondered at the look he saw in her eyes. Was that love that he saw there? It seemed incredible. She had walked away from him, causing him to believe she did not feel deeply about him, and yet…

He grinned all at once. “It means that I think of you more and more as my woman,” Neeheeowee said. “It means that I honor you and that…
Nemene’hehe,
tell me, how a woman honors her man in your culture.”

Julia paused, but after a moment, she got to her feet, and, straightening her skirt, she tread slowly toward the spot where Neeheeowee stood. “Well,” she said, her gaze never leaving his, “if she really loves him, she will cook for him and wash his clothes.”

Neeheeowee glanced to the fire where a stew brewed over the open fire, then to the water where Julia had been working over his leggings. He sent a startled glance back to Julia, asking, “And what else does she do for him?”

“Well,” she said, pacing closer and closer to him, and Neeheeowee prayed she would not see him shudder, a reaction to her nearness. “If she is wise,” Julia continued, “she lets him take her into his arms from time to time.” She stepped right up to him. She teased him with her closeness, she played with his necklace and Neeheeowee, a willing victim, at once encompassed her within his embrace. “And,” she said, her lips no more than a hairbreadth away from his, “when a woman really loves a man, she’ll let him kiss her.”

Neeheeowee brushed her mouth with his, his teeth nibbling at her lips. It was the first kiss they had shared since their recent trouble with one another had started.

“Julia.” He gasped for breath all at once, his hands running quickly up and down her spine. “Julia,” he said again, then deepened the kiss, his tongue finding hers, tasting her over and over, deeper and deeper, until breaking off the kiss, he whispered, “Julia, I need you. I want you. I—”

Julia cut him off by the simple action of reaching up to untie the strings of her dress, letting the dress fall to the ground.

She stood before him then, in all her feminine allure, and Neeheeowee sucked in his breath, his response complete. He waited only a moment, looking at her, and, then he felt her everywhere. He couldn’t get enough of her, his hands roving over her back, her buttocks, her breasts.

“I cannot wait, Julia, I—”

“I want you, too, Neeheeowee, please.”

He didn’t need any further urging. He pulled her up to him, taking her full weight upon him and, pushing back his breechcloth, he drove into her. He gazed, at her all the while, at all her beauty, as he reveled in the warmth of her body surrounding him, her inner spasms mixing with his, and Neeheeowee thought he might burst.

He tried to hold back, but as he watched her, she smiled at him before sighing and moving over him, meeting her own pleasure. “Julia,” he cried, echoing her own response. “Julia,” he wailed again, releasing himself into her. On and on it went, Neeheeowee wondering if he had ever felt anything more intense, more enthralling.

And as he drifted back to earth, he whispered to her, his shaft still aroused and warm within her. “I promise you that sometime I will take you with all the finesse and longing of couples well acquainted. Not always will I act the young brave, unable to hold back my passion.”

And to this statement Julia said, “I hope not, my love. I hope not.”

And with her legs still wrapped around him, her weight still on him, she began to move, and then he, too, and if Julia did anything at all this day, she proved to Neeheeowee that the moment of which he spoke still lay in the distant future.

Bent’s Fort lay just ahead of them, the proof that they were close to it being the amount of foot traffic they encountered, from traders and Indians to pioneers and white covered wagons.

Julia and Neeheeowee were approaching Bent’s Fort from the southeast this day, their route allowing Julia to get an excellent view of the trading post which stood situated in the heartland of the plains, almost in the center of what most called the Great American Desert. Here, dry winds blew incessantly, depriving the land of water and developing within the traveler an urgent sort of thirst. To the south, across the Arkansas, lay barren sand hills and to the north, bluffs of chalk and rock.

She and Neeheeowee had been lingering upon the outskirts of the fort from its southern end, both of them reclining on a rocky bench a hundred yards or so up from the river. There they had been able to see the long stretch of valley and rolling plains spread out before them, the distant mountains of the Spanish Peaks glittering off to the southwest and Pikes Peak to the northwest.

By mutual consent, ever since the Comanche attack at the river only a day or so ago, the two had traveled together, Neeheeowee taking the lead of their party, as was Indian custom, Julia following along behind him. She also led their pony by its buckskin reins, the animal having been brought by Neeheeowee as he’d followed Julia over the prairie. The pony was laden down with their supplies of parfleches and buffalo robes, for which Julia was grateful. Not only did it allow her to have more of her own things around her; so, too, was she spared the burden of carrying the heavy robes.

She kept her head bent, her eyes looking down as they approached the fort, only venturing to look up to catch an occasional view of the activity happening all ground her or to snatch a quick view of the fort.

Bent’s Fort—she gasped at the magnificent sight of it. The morning sun hit the gray-brown, adobe bricks, making the high walls of the structure appear reminiscent of a hundred-year-old, stone castle, with turrets and domes, rounded walls and belfry towers. The only thing missing, she decided, was a moat. But its lack was more than made up for by the scattering of Indian villages, stationed all around the fort; and the laughter in these camps; the incessant beat of the drums were more welcoming than Julia would have liked to admit.

Neeheeowee, however, avoided the camps, leading Julia instead up to the fort. And Julia wondered why he evaded his own people. Did he avoid them because of her, because he did not wish to introduce her, or was there some other reason?

Julia shook her head at her thoughts and tried to recall instead what she knew of the history of this fort, recollecting that Charles and William Bent had opened this post several years back, hoping to cash in on the abundant fur trade to be had in the area. Friendly toward most tribes, the Bents particularly catered to and allowed free rein within the fort to the Cheyenne and their allies, the Arapaho. Some said this was due to William Bent’s marriage into the Cheyenne tribe to a pretty Indian girl, Owl Woman, but most knew the alliance between the Cheyenne and the Bents had begun from the very first incident of Cheyenne meeting Bent. It was rumored that William Bent saved the lives of two Cheyenne warriors when, unannounced, a warring tribe of Comanche had entered the fort. The Cheyenne had never forgotten the incident, and a strong alliance had been forged from then on.

Neeheeowee had told Julia he had business at Bent’s Fort and that there would be many white people at the fort, some en route back to Leavenworth. He had asked her if she intended to find passage back to her home, to which Julia had shrugged, not knowing what to say. She didn’t want to return to Fort Leavenworth, but she couldn’t stay with Neeheeowee.

What do I do?
she wondered. She just didn’t know, and the conflicting emotions were almost more than she could bear.

Julia tilted her head, watching Neeheeowee now as he paced along in front of her, his path heading toward the main entryway. He stood tall and proud, his black hair fluttering back against the quiver of arrows upon his back, and Julia had an urge to reach out and touch a long lock of it where it fluttered out against the wind.

But she quelled the urge and quickly looked down. Truly, he was the handsomest man she had ever seen.

They came right up to the fort without incident, passing into it by way of a tunnellike entryway, the two of them blending in with the other Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians so much so that no one gave them pause, not even the other Indians. Julia still led the pony by its reins and quickly found herself dispatched away from Neeheeowee, ushered on toward the corral. She feared leaving him at this place, but she had little choice in the matter since Neeheeowee turned back toward her, nodding his approval of her leave-taking, though he signaled her to return to him swiftly.

An old Mexican woman led her to the south of the main building, where stood the most beautiful corral Julia had ever seen. She let her breath out in awe.

Here the adobe walls were shorter than those of the main building, perhaps six or seven feet tall to the sixteen-to twenty-foot-high walls of the central structure. But it wasn’t that which made the enclosure so pretty. Along the tops of the walls, mayhap for safety, a heavy profusion of cactus had been planted, their spring flowers in tremendous bloom. There were startling reds, mixed with the stark white of other blossoms, growing in great profusion and sitting atop the most green of cacti she had ever seen. And the sun, beaming down on the flowers, seemed to make the walls come alive with color.