No Other Man

^One

Late
summer, 1875

G
od was punishing her. It had to be that simple.

And that awful.

As the
stagecoach came to a jerking halt, Skylar wondered briefly if she deserved the
kind of death that now threatened her. No. No one deserved the fate it seemed
she was doomed to discover. Please, God, no one. And what she had done was
surely not so very bad, not so horrible, not so ...

Oh, God!

She had
seen them coming. Seen the war-painted braves on their speeding painted ponies,
screeching out their hair- raising battle cries. She had prayed that the
stagecoach might somehow outdistance them, but she had wondered even then if
God would pay heed to her fevered cries after the deception she had so
desperately carried out.

It seemed not.

The
doors to the coach were suddenly wrenched open. Fear ran like an icy river
throughout her limbs, clutched her heart and lungs. Suddenly sunlight poured
in, somewhat blinding her, yet what she saw was enough to turn her fear into
terror.

A massive shadow filling the doorway. Blocking out the sun.
Huge, forbidding, terrifying ...

It was Sioux country. She'd known there were Indians in the
West. She'd known the United States Army was heavily in residence near here,
battling the heathens on behalf of the settlers, more and more of whom had
flowed into the Badlands area when gold had been discovered here. She'd heard
tales about the savages. The eastern newspapers had been filled with reports
on them, all of them, the Comanches, the Cheyennes, the Pawnees, the Crow, the
Assiniboines ...

The Sioux.

Indeed, she'd heard something about them. About the way
they'd been moving steadily westward themselves, battling other tribes who
vied for the same hunting grounds. They were what the soldiers called true
"blanket and pony" Indians, hunting the buffalo on horseback,
painting themselves garishly for warfare, finding the greatest honor in feats
of daring in battle. She'd also heard there were good Indians—those who
accepted the white ways and stayed on the reservations set aside for them. Then
there were the "hostiles," those who refused to accept the boundaries
of white treaties. Those who now raided white settlements and murdered whites
whenever they could.

Those who attacked stagecoaches.

Oh, God, she had known that horrible things happened.

And
she'd come here anyway.

She hadn't been able to allow herself to think about the
Indian situation; she hadn't been able to allow herself to be afraid. Oh, God,
she had been clutching at life, all right,
grasping
perhaps, and what she had done had been wrong. She had taken just pains to
escape the East, traveled a long, circuitous two-week route when the train
might have taken her half the time. She had done everything to avoid danger in
the East, and now, oh, God, she had been wrong, but surely, not so wrong as to
deserve this....

She blinked furiously, trying to clear her vision. The dark,
massive form in the doorway to the coach remained.

Impossibly
tall, impossibly muscled and bronzed. His face was painted: half in red, half
in black. Straight black hair fell past his shoulders. Buckskin leggings
covered his thighs while beaded boots of a like skin clung tightly to the heavy
muscles of his calves. His chest, in all its muscled bronze glory, was bare
except for designs painted in the same red and black shades that adorned his
face. One look at him was enough to instill the very fear of God and the devil
in her heart. She was well aware that the Indians could be as merciless with
women and children as they were with the soldiers.

Did they, perhaps, have a right to be so brutal? Hadn't she
heard talk as well that the soldiers were terrible when they attacked Indian
camps? Everyone had heard stories about the famous young brevet general,
Custer, who had done such glorious deeds for the North during the War Between
the States. In 1868, he'd attacked a Cheyenne camp on the Washita River. It was
another "great victory" for the whites—articles from massacred
settlers had been found in the camp—but there were those who had written about
the number of Indian women and children who had been slaughtered during the
attack.

But
she
hadn't slaughtered anyone!

Yet now, here, was a red man, blocking the sun, threatening
to make the earth flow crimson with her blood.

Split seconds passed as terror filled her.

But the hysterical scream she expected did not tear from her
throat. Somehow, she swallowed it. If she was going to die anyway, she was
going to do so fighting.

She'd heard enough about the Indians to know they'd enjoy her
death even more if she begged for mercy while they granted not a whit of it.

Even as the brave at the door reached in to drag her out, she
remembered the hat pin holding her mourning bonnet in place upon her head. She
wrenched it out with a speed she found astonishing herself, grasped it firmly,
and slammed it straight at the warrior's eye. Something deep, guttural, and
furious spewed from his lips as he caught her hand with a half second to spare
in which to preserve his eyesight. She cried out with the pain as his grasp
seemed about to break the fragile bones of her hand; his hold eased, but
barely. Kicking and screaming, she found herself being dragged from the coach.
Her wild gyrations sent both of them flying to the dry, dusty ground. She saw
the knife sheathed at his hip and lunged for it, drawing it free and aiming it
at his throat before he once more managed to salvage himself from her deadly
intent, this time capturing her wrist and rolling to pin her beneath him. She
cried out again in fury and fear as he slammed her wrist against the earth,
causing her to give up her hold on the weapon. He straddled her then, catching
both her wrists in his merciless grip, his thighs tight around her hips. She
continued to struggle, swearing, praying that the swearing would help her.
"Bastard, wretched pagan, savage, hideous demon from the fires of hell,
get off of me!" Yet, if he got off of her, what then? Three of his
comrades watched just a few yards away from them, seated upon their painted
ponies silently observing her desperate struggles. If she freed herself from
this brave, the four of them would hunt her down, run her into the ground, rape
her, take her scalp, and leave her carcass for the crows . . .

"Cowards!" she hissed, trying to spit, trying to
claw, whimpering, screaming, twisting. As she fought against the weight and
muscle pinning her to the ground, she realized that the buckskin leggings
provided little covering for the savage atop her; they twisted with each of her
wild, bucking movements, creating a wave of dread and horrific fascination
within her as she noticed the man wore a scanty breechclout along with the
leggings, and nothing more. "Cowards!" she cried again, twisting
anew. "Attacking a lone woman! Slaying that poor old driver!" Had
they slain the man? she wondered. They must have done so, for he was nowhere to
he seen; he was not leaping to her defense. She had to be grateful that she
couldn't see the driver's mutilated, dead body upon the ground. She started to
cry out again, her fury all that kept her from pure hysteria.

"You
are nothing but hideous beasts! I swear it! You will all die, you bastards; the
cavalry will come, you'll die slowly, I-promise, I..."

The cavalry would come? In time to save her? She doubted it.
Still, her threats were keeping her alive. But to what purpose? If she stalled
them this minute, they would slay her the next!

"God damn you, I will come back myself from heaven or
hell!" she breathed, then inhaled, desperate for more breath to continue
her tirade.

And in that second, she saw his eyes.

Strange eyes for an Indian brave. Green eyes. As deep and
dark as the trees from which the Black Hills had drawn their name, yet
distinctively and decidedly green.

Did it matter? Some white blood had ventured into this man's
past, leaving behind a legacy of green eyes. Would that save her life now? She
doubted it.

She sucked in more air, fighting the tears that stung her
eyes. "Bastard!" she shrieked again. "Get off me—kill me, or get
off me!"

Oddly enough, in those seconds while she had stared,
thoroughly startled, into his eyes, he had somewhat relaxed his grip upon her.
With a wild, frantic effort, she freed her hands, managing to pummel his chest
and swipe one set of nails across his cheek. A deep, rich, savage sound came
from his lips, a sound so fierce it seemed to knife into her soul itself. He
caught her hands again, this time leaping from her with swift agility and
dragging her up along with him. She thought that she had found a new freedom
with which to fight, but before she could begin a new onslaught in any way, she
found herself thrown over his shoulder as he walked for his pony. The dusty
remnants of her bonnet were left behind on the dry earth. Her hair, a very
deep, rich honey blond that fell past her waist in heavy waves— once a great
pride to her but soon to adorn various tipis as trophies—fell free from the
last of the hairpins that had held it regally in place just moments before. She
gasped deeply as it tangled around her face. She twisted, freeing herself from
the cloud of it, and struggled to rise against his back. As soon as she
achieved enough balance to slam a fist against his back, she was lifted again
and thrown belly down over his pony's flanks. And before she could rise from
that position, he had scissored his legs over his mount's haunches and sat
bareback astride the animal. Desperate, she struggled to rise against the
pony's flanks, only to find him kicking the animal into motion while delivering
a
strike both painful
and humiliating upon the region of her derriere, despite the black taffeta
bustle that rested there.

Dirt spewed up from the earth. She coughed and choked, then
ridiculously found herself clinging to his knee in fear that the sudden
speeding motion of the horse would send her hurtling down to the ground to be
trampled. She didn't know how far they rode, or for how long. Time and space
lost all meaning during the reckless race they seemed to take against the wind.
When he drew the horse to a halt at last, the daylight had waned. They had left
the dust, flat- lands, and rock behind and climbed into the hills. When he
dismounted, dragging her numbed body from its precarious perch atop the
haunches of the pony, a pale red glow of sunset was settling over a copse of
trees and a small cabin that stood within that copse.

He set her upon the ground. For a moment she merely stared at
the cabin and wondered when he had murdered the people who had once dwelled
within it, for it had obviously been the small home of a white man, a trapper,
perhaps. Maybe even that of a school marm who had been dedicated to teaching
the children of the scattered white homesteaders, miners, bankers, ranchers,
farmers. Some light glowed from within the cabin, as if a fire burned within a
hearth, a fire to welcome home the weary.

She was free, she realized. The Indian had led the pony into
a small paddock that flanked the cabin, taking the bit and bridle from its head
so that the trusty creature might munch freely on the hay that brimmed from a
feeder.

The man's three comrades had ridden on elsewhere, she discovered
with amazement.

She turned to run, downhill, into the darkness, into the
copse, into the night.

From there, where?

It didn't matter in the least. She had taken no more than
three flying steps before she shrieked out with pain and stopped in her tracks
as the Indian's fingers wound into her hair, dragging her back. "Damn you,
damn you!" she cried out, trying to pummel him with her fists as he swept
her up. She wound up face down over his shoulder again, swearing and fighting
as he made his way to the cabin.

Once inside, he set her on her feet. She tried to run around
him, determined to reach the door. But he caught her hair again and this time
kept his grip within it, moving her deeper into the cabin where he forced her
down upon a bed covered with a blanket of rich, warm fur. She grasped for his
wrist, trying to claw his flesh, anything to force him to relinquish his hold
on her hair. He did release her hair, but only to pull a rawhide strip from his
legging and bind her wrists together.

"No, no, no!" she told him, her voice rising as she
struggled to keep from being bound. It did no good. Down on one knee before
her, he quickly and efficiently tied her wrists so that she could barely move
her hands. Then he rose, leaving her seated there upon the bunk, moving to warm
his own hands at the fire within the hearth.

"You must have murdered these poor people a while
ago!" she cried out. Why was she taunting him? Wasn't she going to die an
awful enough death as it was? Why was he waiting? He should kill her, have done
with this torture! Yet as she lived, hope lived. She should keep silent. Humor
him. Humor a savage who didn't understand a word that fell from her lips? No!
Keep talking, keep fighting in spirit, pray that there would be one second when
he would truly let down his guard!

"Quite comfortable here, aren't you, you baboon?"
she cried out. "Right at home!"

He didn't seem to hear her. He stared into the flames. She
tossed her head, looking about the cabin. It was a one- room dwelling, and
surprisingly, it appealed to be inhabited. Beneath the fur cover, she could
see that the bunk was decked in cotton sheets as well; the pillow was covered
with a clean matching case. There was a table before the hearth; simple
curtains hung at the four windows. A hip tub sat to the right of the table,
near the hearth, and behind that, there was a wooden counter for food
preparation, and within it, a pump that was surely attached to an outside well.
There was a wardrobe against the wall behind the bunk, and a clothing trunk lay
at the foot of it. A huge leg of ham and several pounds of cheese hung from pegs
above the counter area, while shelves were filled with what appeared to be
containers of preserves, bottles of wine, and even canned goods. It was a
modest place, clean and neat. For one person or a young couple, it would make a
cozy home.