Savage Spirit (25 page)

Alicia stood at Cloud Eagle's side as he drew the women together, side by side, then placed a comforting hand on each of their shoulders.

Alicia dreaded hearing Cloud Eagle reveal the truth to them. They had erected a new lodge, to have it ready for Red Crow when he returned from the hunt. And now Red Crow would not return to see the labors of their love for him. He had been unmercifully murdered.

And then there were the others who were yet to be told about the warriors who had died with Red Crow.

"What is it, Cloud Eagle?" Laughing Eyes blurted out. "Why do you treat us as though we have lost a husband in battle? I see no casualties.   You said that your ambush was a success. And, Cloud Eagle, Red Crow did not ride to fight this war with you. He is still out on the hunt."

The horses dragging five travois behind them came in view at that moment at the far edge of the stronghold. A muted hush fell over everyone. They watched the slow procession come closer, their eyes on the travois. It was puzzling to everyone how their chief could speak of no casualties when proof of such casualties was brought before their very eyes!

Those wives whose husbands were not among those who had left for the ambush, but who had been gone longer than they should have on the hunt, stepped forth, then began running alongside the travois, sobbing.

Laughing Eyes and Sweet Rose broke away from Cloud Eagle. When they reached the travois, the horses dragging them had stopped.

Cloud Eagle rushed to them and one by one uncovered the bodies. Then he stood back and allowed the wives to kneel down beside them, chanting as their losses were discovered.

The rest of the people shoved closer, their eyes filled with sudden despair and grieving.

"On our way home from victory against the Englishman, these valiant warriors who you see lying motionless on the travois were discovered hanging from trees," Cloud Eagle shouted. He raised a fist into the air, then lowered it to place it over his heart. His voice was filled with remorse and pain. "I am not certain who is responsible, but I feel in my heart that it is the Englishman, Sandy Whiskers. I will avenge the deaths of our warriors! I vow to you that they have not died forgotten men."   Low chants began.

Shivers ran up and down Alicia's spine. The voices of the Apache in their mourning sounded like the low moaning of the wind.

This moaning increased in volume. The voices rose higher and higher in pitch.

It made Alicia feel the sadness twofold in her own heart over her own loss and also Cloud Eagle's.

She lowered her eyes and said a soft prayer, then looked up again quickly when she heard an even louder cry of grief.

Her mouth opened in a mortified gasp as she watched Laughing Eyes and Sweet Rose tear at their flesh with their sharp fingernails. Blood rolled in streams from the wounds.

Their hair was assaulted next.

Several of the wives in mourning snatched their knives from sheaths attached to their thighs beneath their skirts, and were soon snipping their long braids off.

Alicia ran to Cloud Eagle's side. She grabbed him by the arm, her eyes wide as the various wives kept assaulting themselves in ways that were strange to Alicia.

"It is their way to show their mourning," Cloud Eagle explained when he saw Alicia's puzzlement. "If I should die, it would also be expected of you in the eyes of my people."

Alicia looked up at him, then moved into his arms. "If you should die, I would not only cut my hair and punish my flesh, I would want to die alongside you," she sobbed. She hugged him tightly. "I never want to be parted from you again. Tell me you still want me."   "Had I not, you would still be in the Englishman's cages, his brand on your lovely flesh," Cloud Eagle said, comfortingly stroking her back through the thin buckskin fabric.

Alicia leaned away from him and looked over at the women who were sitting beside the fire. Only a short while ago, they were captives. They all wore Sandy Whiskers' brand.

"On the morrow the women will be taken to their proper strongholds," Cloud Eagle said, following Alicia's gaze. "Their future is their own again."

"But the white women?" Alicia asked. When she glanced their way, their vacant eyes tugged at her heart. "How can they ever be reunited with their loved ones?"

"I will interview them all," Cloud Eagle said, frowning. "They can tell me which city they are originally from. My warriors will take them to the stagecoach station. From there the women will travel in all directions, back to their original destinations. There will surely be some kin they can seek shelter with, and pity."

"Some are so large with child," Alicia worried aloud. "They won't be able to travel far."

"It is up to the white community to see to their welfare, not the Apache," Cloud Eagle said. "The Apache have done their part by rescuing them. It is up to the white community to do the rest."

"Are you going to report to the white authorities what happened at the Englishman's outpost?" Alicia asked, worry building upon worry.

"When the women are taken to the stagecoach stations, they can explain themselves what has happened to them, and how they were rescued," Cloud Eagle said. "It will be proof enough to the   white pony soldiers that Cloud Eagle fights for the rights of their people as well as his own."

"As for Sandy Whiskers, what are you going to do about him?" Alicia asked softly.

"He has gone into hiding," Cloud Eagle acknowledged. "And so let him hide for now, thinking that he has eluded Cloud Eagle. Cloud Eagle has duties to his warriors first to tend to."

He turned and watched as each of his fallen brothers was carried away, their burial rites ahead of them. "In my eyes, they all were heroes," Cloud Eagle said. He gave the instructions to his warriors about the released women, saw that his horse was taken to the corral, then turned and with a hung head walked toward his lodge.

Alicia went ahead of him and opened the entrance flap. She then followed him into the dark tepee, shivering as the damp coldness of midnight seeped into her pores.

She hugged herself as Cloud Eagle prepared a fire.

When the flames were eating at the logs, she sat down beside the fire and held her hands close, her flesh soaking up the warmth.

She looked quickly up when an Apache woman brought a basin of water into the tepee, and another brought a fresh dress and moccasins.

When they left, Alicia turned to Cloud Eagle and smiled. "I did not hear you give the command to look after my comforts," she said, hugging the soft dress to her bosom.

"I do not always speak my commands through my lips," he said. He stood over her and softly stroked her face with his hands. "The women of my stronghold watch my eyes and my gestures. They respond quickly to my silent commands."   ''As do I," Alicia said, smiling up at him.

He ran a finger over her swollen lip, then brushed a soft kiss across it. "He will pay for everything evil that he has done to you and to my people," he growled. "If he would have placed the brand to your lovely flesh, he would have been branded a hundred times over with the same brand. Not one inch of his flesh would have been spared his dreaded
A,
which stands for Apache in the eyes of the evil Englishman."

Cloud Eagle then proceeded to gently wash Alicia's face. She closed her eyes, melting inside with rapture over being with him again. She would not allow herself to think of what might have happened if he had not cared enough to rescue her.

Although she had threatened to kill the bastards if they tried to impregnate her, she knew they had ways to keep a woman from being able to defend herself. They could have raped her, time and time again, while she was shackled to the wall.

She would have been forced to endure the pain and the humiliation not only of rape, but also of giving birth to one of their children.

The child would then have been forced to live a life of degradation at the silver mines.

She shuddered at the thought of all of this that would not leave her mind.

Cloud Eagle noticed how she shuddered. He laid the cloth in the water in the wash basin and framed her freshly washed face between his hands. She opened her eyes and gazed into his.

"What were you thinking about?" he asked softly.

"Things I never want to speak of again," she said, her voice breaking. "Some day I shall surely   forget." She twined her arms around his neck and drew his lips closer. "Help me forget, darling? Please help me forget?"

When he kissed her, she was not even aware of the pain that his lips brought to hers with the kiss. The throbbing of her swollen lip seemed to blend with the throbbing of her heart, so happy to be there, to be with him forever.

When he drew his lips away and removed her soiled clothes, Alicia was perfectly content to allow him to wash the sweat, dirt, and stains from her body.

As the damp cloth came to the rips and tears on her legs, which she had gotten while escaping her beloved, she winced, but was glad when the blood was finally washed from her flesh.

Cloud Eagle knelt over her and leaned her hair into the water. He washed it in the suds of the yucca plant, then dried it with a buckskin cloth.

Alicia combed her hair back from her eyes with her fingers, then leaned back so that her hair tumbled in wet strands down her back.

When Cloud Eagle kissed the hollow of her neck and cupped her breasts within the palms of his hands, she moaned with ecstasy.

"I need you," he said huskily. "But my need must wait until later."

Alicia opened her eyes, disappointed that they could not make love this very moment. She felt as though being held within his arms while he was loving her might momentarily help her forget the anguish she was feeling over the loss of her brother. Nothing would ever cause her to totally forget her brother. His memory would remain sweet in her heart, but only after she accepted that he was truly dead.   "I understand," she murmured. She moved to her knees and reached for the cloth in the water.

"Let me at least do this for you now," she said, gently washing the yellow war paint from his face. It was too much of a reminder of the bloody scene they had left behind at the Englishman's outpost.

Although she saw the outlaws and the renegades as the lowest form of humans on the earth, death to any human being was never something she accepted without remorse.

Those men had surely been raised with hardships, and perhaps without love. Or why else could they have turned into such hardened criminals?

Yes, they were to be pitied, the whole lot of them.

After the last of the paint was removed, Cloud Eagle drew Alicia into his arms. His eyes devoured her face, his fingers again gently touching her bruised lip. "Never again will anyone treat you wrongly," he said thickly.

He dropped his hands and turned his eyes to the fire. "I am responsible for too many things," he said, his voice filled with torment. "I am almost certain that the Englishman ordered Red Crow's hanging. Had I not gone and confronted Sandy Whiskers about the painting, to prove my innocence to you, the Englishman would have never known that Red Crow was responsible for the theft. But had I
not
gone for answers from Sandy Whiskers, you would have left me."

He paused and gazed over at her, his eyelids heavy over his dark eyes. "But you left me anyhow when the Englishman would not reveal   the full truth to Cloud Eagle," he said, his voice tormented.

Alicia reached for a blanket and draped it around her shoulders. She knelt before Cloud Eagle, her hands on his cheeks. "You are wrongly blaming yourself," she murmured. "Red Crow is dead because of
me
. Had I trusted you in the first place, none of this would have happened. Please stop blaming yourself. Allow me to carry the burden instead of you."

She nodded toward the closed entrance flap. "Hear the chants of your people?" she murmured. "They need you. They will always need you."

She leaned into his embrace, sighing with pleasure when he enwrapped her within his powerful arms. "So shall I always need you, Cloud Eagle," she whispered. "I love you so."

He stroked her long, wet hair, then she drew suddenly away when she heard a whimpering sound coming from the dark shadows of the tepee, back where blankets and equipment were stored.

"What is that?" she asked, her eyes widening.

The same sound wafted toward her. She gasped and her pulse raced as she looked up at Cloud Eagle, hope in her eyes. "Can that be Gray?" she asked, her voice breaking. "Oh, Lord, how could I have forgotten about Gray? When I last saw him . . ."

Her words broke off. She did not want to even think about how she had last seen Gray, blood matted on his fur.

"When I was searching for you, I found Gray," Cloud Eagle said. He rose to his full height and took Alicia's hand. She clutched the blanket around her shoulders. Her heart pounded as she   was taken to Gray, who lay on a thick pallet of furs, his fur shaved in a small area, his wound covered with medicinal herbs.

Alicia swung the blanket away from her shoulders and fell to her knees beside Gray. His eyes looked trustingly up at hers. She stroked his head.

"Gray, Gray," Alicia sighed, tears streaming from her eyes. "Thank God you are alive."

Gray pushed himself up from the furs and settled onto Alicia's naked lap. Laughing softly, Alicia looked up at Cloud Eagle. "He remembers me," she said, a grateful sob lodging in her throat. "He still loves me."

"Who could not love you after having known you?" Cloud Eagle said. He knelt down beside her and kissed her on the cheek. "As for Grayhis bonding with you is more than it is with Cloud Eagle. Now that you are here, he no longer broods. This is the first time he has made an effort to move since I brought him home after he was wounded. In his eyes and heart, he felt responsible for your absence. Look at his face and into his eyes,
Ish-kay-nay
do you not see that he is smiling?"

Alicia giggled and hugged Gray as Cloud Eagle walked away and left the tepee. "Now if only Snow would come home," she said. "Our little family would be completeat least until I give my husband his first child."