Winter's Touch (44 page)

Damn that Crooked Oak. When Innes got his hands on him— Well, he supposed he might have to stand in line behind Carson if he wanted his hands on Crooked Oak, and he figured, from the grim look in Carson’s eyes, there wouldn’t be much left of the bloody bastard when the lad finished with him.

Innes was worried, though about the things Gussie had asked him before they’d left. Things about blood and cuts disappearing before her eyes. What had Winter Fawn been doing?

Then there were Gussie’s other words. The ones that left him all shaky inside. The ones that made him say and do crazy things.

“You’ll be careful, won’t you?” she had asked him with such a tender, worried look on her sweet face.

Ach, when was the last time a woman had worried about him?

“I’ll be waiting for you to come home,” she’d said softly.

“You do that, Gussie Girl,” he’d told her. “When I get back, there’ll be changes made atween you and me.” Gad, what had made him say such a thing? Yet the words had felt right. He’d been sensing the changes within himself for some time, and they were good.

She had smiled in that way she had that made her eyes twinkle. “We’ll see about that.”

“Ye’re damn right we will. Ye need a man in yer life, lass, and I be the one.” If that hadn’t been enough to shock everyone to silence, he’d kissed her. Right there in front of everybody.

Aye, Gussie Girl, I’ll be comin’ back to ye, or die tryin’.

When he made it back to Carson and the troopers with the men from town, they helped load the two into the wagon, then took their leave.

“Did ye hear him?” Innes asked once they were on their way again. “He recognized Crooked Oak.”

“You already said you recognized the signs.”

“Aye, I’m not concerned with us knowing. ‘Tis him we’re following, right enough. But now the Army will come down on the whole damn Southern Arapaho tribe like a bloody blue and brass plague. It’ll be Sand Creek all over again. Damn that glory-hungry bastard.”

Carson said nothing. From what little he’d observed of the military’s handling of the Indians in the territory, Innes was likely right. And dammit, there’d been enough killing. More than enough. He’d heard the stories about Sand Creek, about the massacre of women and babies and old men.

He hadn’t exactly been treated as a guest during his brief stay with the Arapaho, but he’d seen that those who wanted to fight were few in number. He’d seen the children laughing and playing. Mothers with babies at their breasts. Grandparents teaching young ones skills to carry them through life.

He did not want to see them slaughtered.

On the other hand, he would personally kill anyone who kept him from Winter Fawn. The first would be Crooked Oak. The bloodlust rose in him and threatened to strangle him with its strength.

Crooked Oak stood at his place in the circle around the council fire with fists clenched. “I spit on peace.”

Winter Fawn shivered in the evening warmth. As few as there were left of the Southern Arapaho, they would be fewer still. She could see in the faces of many that the tribe would tear itself in two now. Some would follow Little Raven, who preached peace, but many were attracted by the prospect of war.

“What has peace gotten us?” Crooked Oak demanded. “We stand in line at the trading post with our hands out like helpless beggars who can no longer feed ourselves. The white men come and kill off the buffalo and other game, drive us from our hunting grounds, and you speak of peace. They kill our women and children, and you speak of peace. I spit on your peace. It is war for me.”

“But we are so few,” one man called. “How will we defeat the white man?”

“We are not alone.” Two Feathers publicly chose sides with Crooked Oak by standing. “The Cheyenne have long asked us to ride with them. We can also join with our kinsmen in the north, and their allies, the Lakota.”

“Yes,” cried another. “We have the finest dog soldiers on the plains. Let it be war!”

Little Raven’s expression grew more bleak and grim with every word. “And what happens to our women and children while we chase off after white men? Do you not remember Sand Creek? We have been invited to a peace council in the fall. We should go and hear what the whites have to offer. Maybe it will be good this time.”

“It is always good—for them,” Crooked Oak said heatedly. “We give, and they take. We starve, while they grow fat off our buffalo. While they tear up the grass and plant their crops and leave no place for the deer and the elk. No place for
us
.”

“Do you think I do not see this?” cried Little Raven. “Do you think any of us is blind to what is happening? But what good will war do us but to get us killed? There are too many white men. We can never kill them all.”

“Then let us do as they did at Sand Creek. Let us kill their women and children. Such an act turned our warriors into old women. Maybe it will do the same to them.”

Murmurs of approval rose from among the younger warriors. Protest from many of the women.

Crooked Oak was not satisfied with only a portion of them agreeing with him. He wanted them all. The whole tribe. “I have had a vision,” he claimed loudly.

The crowd quieted.

“We all know the prophecy of the Woman Whose Touch Can Heal.”

Nods and murmurs and questions made their way around the fire.

“What has an ancient legend to do with this?” Little Raven asked.

“It has everything to do with this. The prophecy is coming true before you.”

The hair on the back of Winter Fawn’s neck stood on end. She knew instantly what he was speaking of. She had not thought of the old prophecy in years, and never in connection with herself. She could not be the woman. That woman would be wise in all things, strong enough to choose her own man and keep him beside her. Winter Fawn was none of those things.

“You speak in riddles,” said Little Raven.

“I speak the truth,” Crooked Oak asserted. “Is not the land consumed by a plague of white locusts, as in the prophecy?”

A murmur of agreement rose.

“Have not our numbers dwindled again and again until we are but a small force of what we once were? Has not the game grown scarce and war filled the land? Are not Our People threatened with extinction, as it says in the prophecy?”

“But where is the woman?” someone called. “For the prophecy to come true we must have Woman Whose Touch Can Heal, and Man Who Walks By Her Side.”

“The woman is here, among us.”

Everyone followed Crooked Oak’s gaze as it centered on Winter Fawn. A hushed silence stretched across the crowd.

With heart pounding, Winter Fawn rose to her feet. This madness must stop. She must put an end to Crooked Oak’s plans.

“Crooked Oak is wrong. I am not the woman of the prophecy. Look at me,” she cried. “I am half white. I wear the clothes of a white woman, covered in the blood of the white man I chose as my mate. Crooked Oak uses the prophecy as an excuse to kill. We may have no choice but to fight now. Yesterday he and Red Bull and Spotted Calf killed soldiers. The Army will fall upon us now as they did at Sand Creek.”

“Let them come,” Crooked Oak bellowed. “You are Woman Whose Touch Can Heal, and I am Man Who Walks By Her Side. I am invincible!”

“You are a conceited liar, a kidnapper of women, a tormentor of little children. I am not Woman Whose Touch Can Heal.”

In a roar of fury, Crooked Oak grabbed her young cousin, Meadowlark. Before anyone knew what he was about he pulled the knife from his belt and cut at slash across her cheek.

The girl screamed. Her father leaped to his feet and pulled his knife.

“Hold!” Winter Fawn cried. Ignoring the smug look of victory on Crooked Oak’s face, Winter Fawn reached for the girl. He had won this battle. She could not let the child suffer.

“Hush, Meadowlark,” she whispered. When she placed her hand over the girl’s cheek, her palm heated, and her own cheek stung viciously. She felt a thin stream of blood trickled down her jaw.

Around her voices rose, cried out. People backed away as if in fear. Meadowlark stared up at Winter Fawn in horrified fascination.

When the pain in Winter Fawn’s cheek disappeared, she took her hand from the girl’s face and wiped the blood away. “There.”

Tentatively, the girl touched her cheek. “It is gone,” she whispered. “You
are
her.”

“You see?” Crooked Oak called out. “She is Woman Whose Touch Can Heal. A white man stole her from us. I tracked him down and killed him like a dog.”

“He did not steal me.” Anguish at the reminder of Carson’s death—as if she needed a reminder!—colored her voice. “The council had agreed to wait until morning to decide his fate. You gave your word he would be safe.”

“Woman, you know not what you say.”

“Don’t I?” She turned and spoke to the crowd at large. “My brother overhead Crooked Oak telling his friends that he would use an unmarked arrow to kill the white man while everyone slept.”

“You lie!”

“The white man was my father’s friend. We could not find my father, so I went to set the white man free. Crooked Oak stepped from the shadows and fired an arrow at him. He missed and hit me.”

Two Feathers rose again, slowly this time. “I saw the white man carry you from camp. I thought he was kidnaping you. You were bloody and unconscious.”

“It was the white man who injured her,” Crooked Oak shouted, his eyes wild.

“It was
you
,” she countered hotly. Farther out in camp, dogs barked. Around her, voices rose. “It was you who led your men to chase us into the mountains. It was you who sneaked around in the dark two nights ago and killed him. If I am Woman Whose Touch Can Heal,
he
was Man Who Walks By Her Side.”

“
I
am Man Who Walks By Her Side,” Crooked Oak claimed. “It is I who will lead Our People to great victory!”

Now the silence was stunned. Pregnant. Ready to erupt into confused disbelief.

“You are
nothing
,” Winter Fawn spat.

Seized by uncontrollable fury, Crooked Oak forgot for a moment that they stood before the whole camp, that she was not yet his woman to punish as he pleased. He raised his fist in the air.

The sound of a pistol being cocked, followed so quickly by the louder sound of a rifle barrel being snapped closed that the two seemed almost as one noise, Crooked Oak froze.

Innes’s voice rang out in the Arapaho language. “Touch her and die.”

With a glad cry, Winter Fawn whirled toward her father’s voice. But it was the sight of the man next to him that froze her feet to the ground.

Carson!
“You’re alive!” With blurred vision she flew to his side. She would have flown into his arms, but he held her off and stared at her face. His eyes turned dark with rage.

“Innes, will you translate for me?”

“Aye, lad.”

“Ask him if he hit her.”

“I don’t mean to sound the coward, lad, but it might be the better part of valor if we just hie ourselves out of here while we can.”

“Ask him.”

With a sigh, Innes turned to Crooked Oak. “He wants to know if you hit her.”

“I do not answer questions from white enemies.”

“Am I an enemy then? I have lived among Our People for most of your life. You cannot make me an enemy by your words alone. Is he the enemy? Or is he Man Who Walks By Her Side?”

“
I
am the man in the prophecy,” Crooked Oak cried. “I have seen it in a vision. I will be known as White Killer and I will lead Our People to great victory. I will fulfill the prophecy.”

This time the murmurs were questioning rather than supportive. Crooked Oak’s eyes darted around the crowd, desperately seeking support from among the other dog soldiers.

“What if you are wrong?” Little Raven asked. “What if this white man really is Man Who Walks By Her Side?”

“How can he show us the way to survive the Plague of White?” Red Bull asked. “He is part of the plague.”

Sentiment throughout the crowd again swayed toward war.

Innes was translating all of this for Carson. “Little Raven wants to accept the government’s invitation to a peace council at Medicine Lodge Creek this fall. Crooked Oak and his followers are trying to convince the others to join them and go to war.”

“War?” Carson fought back a shudder. “Don’t they understand that there’s no way to win against the whites?”

“Nae, lad, they dinna. Ye’ll have to be tellin’ them.”

“Me?”

“They—some of them—think ye’re part of a prophecy. They will listen to you.”

Somehow Carson found himself among the inner circle around the fire. He stood until Crooked Oak lowered himself to his own blanket, then Carson finally sat. He looked around at the faces staring at him. On some he could see the hatred. On others, wariness, doubt, hope.

“You are brave fighters,” Carson began, with Innes translating. “But you are not enough to win a war against the Army.”

“We will join with the Cheyenne,” one man said. “And the Lakota, and our kin in the north.”

Carson shook his head. “If every tribe in the land joined together, you would still not be enough.”

“You say that so we will think we are weak.”

“I do not believe you are weak. Only too few. The Army you want to fight is too many, their weapons too strong.”

“Bah.”

“Listen to me,” Carson urged. “I have fought against this Army.”

“You?” Little Raven asked, stunned. “A white man has fought the Bluecoats?”

“For four years,” he said. “There was a war in the east.”

“We heard of this,” another man said.

“The graycoats,” another muttered.

“Yes. I wore gray and fought the Bluecoats. Our gray army was larger than any you can imagine, yet the Bluecoats were more. We killed them in such numbers…you cannot imagine how many tens of thousands of Bluecoats we killed. Yet still they kept coming, more and more of them, until we were finally defeated. Our guns were far better than yours, yet theirs were better than ours. You
cannot
win. Peace is your only chance to survive.”

“Another treaty that the white man will break?” someone said with disgust.

“They probably will break it,” Carson admitted. “White men have a way of forgetting their promises to suit themselves. But another treaty might buy you time, time for your children to grow up, time to find a place for yourselves where you can live as you want.”