Savage Heat (28 page)

“You look a little warm,” he said, and placing his palms flat on the floor, levered himself up. On his feet, he said, looking down at her, “Let’s get some air.” He put out his hand.

Still half lost in her guilty fantasy, she took it and, feeling the long, warm fingers close around hers, smiled dreamily at him, though she was speechless.

Outside he abruptly dropped her hand and said in a voice devoid of emotion, “I’ll be gone today. You can either stay here with Grandmother or return to the tipi.”

“No,” she said, disappointed. “I don’t want you to leave. Where are you going?”

“Never ask where I’m going,” he said, his eyes chill. “If I want you to know, I will tell you.” He walked away. When he’d gone but a few steps, he paused, turned, and came back to stand before her. “Do you ride?”

“Horses?”

“What else?”

She brightened at once. “Why, yes, I do. I’m an expert horsewoman.” She held her breath, waiting for an invitation to join him for a morning ride.

“Good for you,” he said, and once more walked away from her.

Scar noisily sucked the last traces of meat from the bison rib, tossed it into the fire, and greedily grabbed another. When he’d finished a dozen of the succulent ribs, he wiped the juice from his scarred chin onto his calico shirtsleeve, belched loudly, and rubbed his greasy hands up and down on his muscular thighs, cleaning them on his soiled buckskins.

“Tell them they can come in now,” he said to the Indian woman kneeling beside him.

Smiling, she invited the two waiting braves inside the army-issue tent that was pitched on a tree-sheltered bend of the Little Missouri River. Eagerly one brave pulled, from inside his shirt, a dog-eared envelope bearing a bright, shiny gold seal.

In his native tongue, he said, “You tell us if circle of gold have value?”

The Crow scout, full from a big meal, nodded with no enthusiasm. He had agreed to see the pair only because the woman now tidying his tent was the sister of one, and she had asked, just as she had crawled naked into his fur bed last night, if he would look at “a gold circle” her brother had found and tell him if it had worth.

Scar rubbed a coarse thumb over the shiny seal, then turned the envelope over. His beady eyes widened with interest when he saw the addressee: General William J. Kidd.

Pretending total nonchalance, the Crow scout unfolded the letter and read.

General Kidd:

I have your daughter in a rock-concealed

line shack exactly six miles northwest of

Denver. Come alone within twenty-four

hours and I’ll trade her life for yours.

Delay, and I will take her to the Dakota

Territory.

My bonafides? A scar down my chest

from your saber. Remember Sand

Creek, November 1864? I never

forget.

Night Sun

Chieftain of the Lakota Sioux

Scar could hardly keep the excitement from his voice when he questioned the braves about how they had laid hands on the message. As they spoke, waving their arms, explaining how they’d killed the big prospector, the sturdy Crow scout was mentally counting his $10, 000 reward.

“No value,” he told the pair when he had learned all they knew about the letter. “None,” he shook his head, and putting the letter back inside its envelope, unceremoniously tore it in two and tossed it into the fire, then motioned the disappointed pair away.

After they had gone, a broad smile slashed across his scarred face.

So the arrogant half-breed Sioux, Night Sun, had taken the general’s daughter! Well, the general might get her back, but she wouldn’t be the same, not after Night Sun had had her. No Indian ever hated the white man as much as that mixed-blood bastard.

Night Sun hated whites almost as much as he, Scar, hated Night Sun.

Scar’s smile broadened.

As soon as he could learn where Night Sun had her, he would steal the golden-haired woman from his old enemy, collect the $10,000 reward, and be an honored hero.

The quick recollection of a fresh and pretty young girl standing in the morning sun at Fort Collins made the plotting Crow scout lick his lips in anticipation.

25

M
artay glared at Night Sun’s departing frame and wished she had not asked where he was going. She didn’t care where he was going or when he would come back or if he ever came back!

But she watched until he was completely out of sight, and then, instead of returning to their lonely tipi, she started back inside Gentle Deer’s lodge. With her hand lifted toward the flap, she hesitated, her attention caught by a maiden’s happy laughter.

Martay froze.

The girl, small and beautiful, the very same one she had seen two mornings before smiling up at Night Sun, was rushing across the camp, hurrying in the same direction he had gone. She was going to meet him! The two of them were riding away from the village to … to …

“Peaceful Dove sounds far from peaceful this morning.” It was Gentle Deer’s firm, clear voice. Silently she had stepped up beside Martay. She was smiling, looking after the hurrying young maiden as if she could see her.

“Where is she going?” Martay wasted no time asking.

The old woman’s face crinkled with pleasure. “She goes to say good-bye to her warrior; he will be gone all day. Then she will come to me and we will work on her wedding dress.”

Martay felt her knees go weak and her heart sink. Dear God, Night Sun was marrying the girl! Speechless, she stood there watching as the laughing girl rushed after him. She felt a hand on her arm and Gentle Deer said, “Come inside. Keep me company today. Meet Peaceful Dove.”

If there was anything she didn’t want to do it was to spend the day with an old blind Indian woman and a young pretty one who was marrying the cold, heartless man who was holding her captive, but Martay nonetheless followed Gentle Deer back inside.

In minutes the beautiful young Lakota maiden, Peaceful Dove, joined them, and her eyes were so warm and friendly, it was impossible not to smile back at her when Gentle Deer introduced them. But Martay’s jealousy flared as Peaceful Dove, undeniably one of the prettiest young woman she had ever seen, hugged Gentle Deer warmly, and chattering in the Lakota tongue, spoke Night Sun’s name several times, her dark eyes flashing.

When the three women were seated, Gentle Deer reached behind her and brought forth a folded garment. Holding it up for Martay to see, she said proudly, “Peaceful Dove will wear this on the day she weds her brave, handsome warrior.”

Her eyes clinging to the softest, whitest, prettiest leather dress she had ever seen, Martay could only nod and try to swallow and finally manage to say, “When is the wedding?”

Peaceful Dove understood the word wedding and happily answered, “The moon of drying grass.”

Martay didn’t understand a word she said. Gentle Deer repeated the words in English, then added, “September. Saturday, September twenty.”

Only six weeks, Martay’s busy brain shouted. In six weeks this beautiful smiling girl would be Night Sun’s wife and he would bring her to their tipi and … and … What would happen to her then? And why had he brought her here?

Martay was confused and angry and jealous. But, for the first time in her life, she hid her true emotions. Forcing herself to smile back at the beaming Indian girl, she said, as calmly as possible, “I’m very happy for you and … and … Night Sun.” Quickly Martay turned to Gentle Deer: “Please tell Peaceful Dove what I said.”

The old woman chuckled. “Why are you happy for Night Sun?” she said. “Lone Tree is the one Peaceful Dove is to marry.”

“Lone Tree?” Martay’s eyes grew round. “You mean she’s not … Night Sun isn’t the …” Suddenly a weight lifted from her heart and Martay, looking straight at the pretty Indian girl, said, “Lone Tree?” The happy bride-to-be, hearing her beloved’s name, nodded excitedly. “Oh, Peaceful Dove!” Martay said truthfully, “I am sooooo happy for you!” And she lunged over and hugged the other girl as though they were old, dear friends. Peaceful Dove, a placid, sweet young woman, hugged her back and said,
“Kola, kola.”

Gentle Deer gladly translated. “Friend. She is your friend.”

“Yes,” said Martay, “she is my friend!”

From that day forward, Martay spent her days with Gentle Deer. It was that or spend them alone, because Night Sun was rarely in camp. He never spent any time in their tipi. He rose early each morning, long before she awakened, and didn’t return until late at night. More than one hot night she had lain awake listening anxiously for his footsteps only to fall asleep before he came. A couple of times she had half roused to see him across the tipi, his back to her, undressing in the shadows, and had lain there silent, trying to ignore the flash of bronzed muscular arms and long, lean legs before he stretched out in the darkness and promptly fell asleep.

That he was purposely avoiding her was all too evident, and it baffled her. His coldness made her so angry that when their paths did cross, she went out of her way to be petulant and disagreeable. Once when Night Sun, in a hurry to be gone, complained that he couldn’t find his canteen, Martay, poking fun at the customs of his people, tested his dark anger by saying “Why don’t you just find it with your searching stones?” She was pleased to find she could still provoke him.

And provoke him she did.

His dark head snapped up. He spun around, whipped a fist out in the air and grabbed her by her belt. He jerked her up to him with such force, she heard the slap of leather on leather as their bodies collided. “I have,” he said, his thinned lips only inches from her face, “had about as much of you as I can take.”

Experiencing that familiar mixture of fear and excitement, Martay looked straight into his hard black eyes and, hoping to goad him into kissing her, said brazenly, “I don’t think so. I think you’d like to take a lot more.”

She trembled then, the heat of his closely pressing body enveloping her. Thrilling to the dangerous look in his eyes, she waited breathlessly, lips parted, anticipating his harsh, punishing kiss.

But Night Sun didn’t kiss her.

His anger quickly changing to disgust, he said, “You’re wrong. If I wanted more, I wouldn’t have to take it.” He set her back and released his grip on her belt. “You’d give it to me.”

With his accusing words still ringing in her ears, Martay walked down the path toward Gentle Deer’s, telling herself it was not true. She wouldn’t give herself to him. Ever. She didn’t want him; didn’t even like him. Hated him.

And was no sooner inside the Indian woman’s tipi than she was, as she did each day, asking questions about him. In only a few days she had learned more about the mysterious Night Sun from his grandmother than she had ever learned from him.

She had not learned, however, why she was with him.

Night Sun was, Gentle Deer told her, a “good boy” as well as a brave and handsome one. From the hour of his birth almost twenty-five autumns before, he had been the brightest spot in her universe. His father, a white trapper, had come to the Powder River Country one winter, and Pure Heart, Night Sun’s mother, had fallen quickly in love with him. By the time the trapper left, promising to return, Pure Heart was carrying his child.

Martay had looked closely at the old woman’s face as Gentle Deer calmly told of her unmarried daughter’s becoming pregnant by the white trapper. Martay saw no censure, or shock, or displeasure on the weathered features. Only complete understanding and tolerance.

“A letter came for Pure Heart three months later,” Gentle Deer went on. “James Savin wouldn’t be returning to marry Pure Heart. He already had a wife, a white wife, who begged him to stay. He had told this wife about Pure Heart and his unborn child. He promised to help.”

“Pure Heart must have been very sad,” said Martay. “What did she do?”

“She grieved alone and never said anything against the man she loved. When she bore Night Sun, she gave all her love to him,” said Gentle Deer. “And when the boy was old enough, she let him go to visit his father.”

“Why? I would think she’d never …”

“She thought only of Night Sun. Not of herself. She wanted her son to know his white father.”

Gentle Deer went on to tell an enrapt Martay that James Savin, Night Sun’s father, had become a very rich man and that every summer from the time he was five years old, Night Sun was sent to spend some time with his father in Boston.

“My grandson knows the white man’s numbers and letters,” Gentle Deer said proudly. Martay only nodded, wanting her to continue. She did, saying that Night Sun had quickly learned English, was given music and art lessons, and was schooled in the customs and manners and dress of the white world. And when he became a man, she, Gentle Deer, persuaded Night Sun to take up his father’s offer of a white man’s education. So, at twenty, Night Sun, as bright as any young white man, went away to Harvard.

“By then,” Gentle Deer explained, “James Savin’s wife had died and he …

Interrupting, Martay asked, “Why didn’t Night Sun’s father come back to Pure Heart after his wife died?”

Gentle Deer’s sightless eyes lifted to Martay’s face. “My daughter, Pure Heart, died long before James Savin’s wife.”

“Oh,” Martay murmured, “I didn’t know. How did it happen?”

“The bluecoats. They killed her at Sand Creek with the others.”

Martay didn’t dare breathe, much less ask where Sand Creek was and who the others were. Did the blind woman know that she was an American general’s daughter?

Gentle Deer continued.

She told of the letters her grandson wrote while he was away, of his excellent marks at Harvard, of his hope to help his people by learning the law. She said that two winters ago Night Sun’s father had died, leaving a large sum of money in trust for him, money he would receive when he turned twenty-five.

“He will be twenty-five in the moon of falling leaves,” said Gentle Deer. “October.”

She revealed many, many things about Night Sun, though never why he had captured Martay and brought her to his Dakota home. That remained a mystery and any time Martay asked about it, all she got was the wagging back and forth of Gentle Deer’s gray head and Martay rightly guessed that the kind, aged woman didn’t know.