Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (48 page)

      
“You're too weak to be up,” she scolded, kneeling by his side. “Here, let me help you lie back down.”

      
Cain let her reach out to him, her soft hands touching his arms. He could smell the faint essence of lilacs and woman that belonged uniquely to his wife. “I'm more weak than sick, Roxy. All I need is some solid food and water—to drink and to wash in,” he added, wrinkling his nose at the blend of blood and red paint smeared over much of his body. “I smell like a cross between a livery stable and a slaughterhouse.”

      
“You've been through a terrible ordeal. You need to rest,” she said, trying to ease him back onto the pallet, but he took hold of her arms with surprising strength.

      
“I know you were shocked by what I did—that you didn't know it would be so bloody, so savage—”

      
“Yes, I was shocked,” she admitted. “I never dreamed I was asking you to suffer such agony when I accepted your uncle's suggestion about the Sun Dance.” She forced herself to meet his eyes, clear glittering onyx now. “When you walked out of the lonely lodge that first day and looked at me, I...I was afraid that you hated me.”

      
A faint tinge of sadness touched his smile. “I suppose I did for a little while, but it was my decision to make the pledge. I knew what I was getting into. Did it repel you? Did I?” He studied her, the Sun and Moon Woman of his vision, and wondered how he could ever explain it to her. Would she think it was superstitious nonsense—or would she believe as he had come to believe?

      
Roxanna shook her head and the fat silvery plait of her hair slid from her shoulder down her back. “No, you could never repel me. I felt guilty for causing you to suffer but...how can I explain it?” She paused, then continued, “You seemed to find yourself in the ceremony those first two days. Sees Much told me you barely rested but danced all through the night, that it was a sign the Everywhere Spirit was working in you.”

      
“And when you witnessed the fourth day?” Cain held his breath, meeting her eyes steadily. He had to know how she felt now that she had finally seen the red half of him which he had kept so deeply buried—even from himself—until now.

      
She could see the uncertainty in his face.
He still fears I'll leave him.
Tears filled her eyes as she reached up and touched the scar on his cheek. His breath caught and his hand shot up, wrapping around her wrist, pulling her hand to his lips and pressing his mouth on her palm. “The fourth day you made a sacrifice for me and for your people that I will honor all the days of my life.”

      
A blaze of joy lit his eyes, but before he could reply, the raspy sound of Leather Shirt clearing his throat outside the lodge interrupted them. “Come, Grandfather.”

      
The old chief entered, smiling shrewdly at the way Her Back Is Straight sat beside Brother of the Spirit Bull. “Our warriors go out on the hunt. Buffalo are plenty and there will be a feast tonight when they return with fine meat. Now there are many in the village who would offer you presents in gratitude for the good medicine you have brought us.”

      
Cain nodded. “I would be honored.” In truth he felt uncomfortable accepting gifts from these people who had so little, yet he knew if he refused it would be considered an insult.

      
A steady stream of men, women and children came through the lodge during the day. One of the first visitors was White Owl Woman, who brought him a magnificent leather vest worked with one of the most treasured of Cheyenne talismans, elk teeth, perfectly matched in gleaming amber-gold rows all across the front of the exquisite garment.

      
“Now you too shall be a leather shirt,” she said with a smile.

      
Cain thanked her warmly as Sees Much translated her words for Roxanna. There were many other presents, some humble, such as a small boy's treasured favorite arrowhead, others grand, such as a pair of beaded moccasins and a finely carved medicine pipe. In between visitors Roxanna saw to it that her husband rested and ate more nourishing broth and even some small pieces of solid food to regain his strength.

      
That evening old Leather Shirt himself offered his grandson his most prized possession, the heavy leather war shield which he had carried into battle against the Crow and Pawnee as a young man. “I know you do not fight with lance and arrow, but it is good medicine to protect you against danger.”

      
Cain let his fingers trace the shiny surface of the shield, which had been stretched and cured over a low fire until it was hard as metal. “I will keep it with me always and my children's children will tell the stories of Leather Shirt's bravery around their campfìres.”

      
The two men sat sharing a pipe while Roxanna was out with the other women preparing for the feast. They sat in companionable silence for a bit. Then Cain asked, “What will you do with His Eyes Are Cold?”

      
Leather Shirt looked at his grandson. “What would you have me do?”

      
“I honestly do not know.” Cain thought about the renegades hired to raid the Union Pacific and throw the blame on the Cheyenne. They had to be stopped. But not this way. “His death will only bring the Blue Coats.”

      
Leather Shirt grunted sourly. “They will come anyway. Your Iron Horse has seen to that. It carries the soldiers to us even as it drives away the buffalo.”

      
Cain could not dispute that fact, which troubled him greatly. ‘The whites are as grains of sand on a riverbank. We cannot stop them from bringing the Iron Horse trails into Cheyenne land. But I will do what I can to keep peace between the People and the invaders.”

      
“Perhaps I will let you have His Eyes Are Cold,” Leather Shirt said with faint amusement.

      
Once he had wanted evidence to prove that his father was responsible for Johnny Lame Pony and his renegade's actions so that he could turn Powell over to Dillon. Now the idea held little appeal. Soon Powell would be publicly humiliated by the other Central Pacific directors, his financial empire in ruins. After all the years Cain had lived for vengeance, their confrontation in San Francisco had shown him that his vendetta was no longer the most important thing in his life—his wife was, and now that he had a second chance with Roxanna, he found Andrew Powell's fate was of little matter to him.

      
“I will think on what to do with him,” Cain replied, passing the pipe back to his grandfather.

      
Although still faintly lightheaded, Cain felt surprisingly well after his ordeal. His wounds throbbed dully, the sharpness of the pain reduced by Sees Much's herbal poultice. There was no sign of infection, always the worst thing to fear from the scarring ceremony. With help from several of the other warriors he made his way to the river and waded in to cleanse himself fully. They left him there. Roxanna had sponged away the worst of the paint and blood. He carried the last remnants of a bar of soap taken from his saddlebags. As he stood waist deep in the cool running water sudsing his lacerated chest, the dichotomy of his life struck him.

      
“White man's soap, red man's ritual,” he murmured to himself. For the first time in his life Cain realized that he did not feel the clash of his two natures, nor feel any desire to deny that he was Cheyenne. Deep in thought, he did not hear Roxanna approach.

      
She stood on the riverbank partially concealed by the dense growth of kinnikinnick, watching him bathe. A sudden surge of desire caught her by surprise, but she suppressed it. Here he was, only two days after such an ordeal, standing in swift running water! She started to call out an admonition, then realized how foolish it would be. He had managed to get down to the river and wade in without being swept away and he did not look in any immediate danger as he soaped carefully around the angry wounds on his chest.

      
Watching the glide of his hands over the hard muscles of his shoulders, chest and belly left her mouth cottony dry, her heart beating fast as the current. The ache of desire grew inside her, warm and insistent.
He is truly beautiful
She had always thought that, even when he looked like a dangerous brigand, more so when he was elegantly dressed in a black wool suit and white silk shirt. But now she realized that he was equally magnificent wearing only a loincloth and pagan jewelry with his body painted...and yes, even scarred by the Sun Dance. This too was Cain, Brother of the Spirit Bull.

      
“Now we're even. Once I spied on you bathing in a stream. Now you've looked your fill.”

      
His laughing words jarred her from the reverie which had let her mind wander while her gaze remained riveted to the wet, naked man walking toward her. White teeth gleamed in his bronzed face. The pallor of his ordeal was gone, but he made his way out of the water with the measured step of someone whose footing was not the steadiest.

      
“You shouldn't be down here alone. You could have drowned if you'd passed out in the water,” she scolded, knowing her voice was scratchy and breathless. He stood ankle deep in the current now, arms crossed, unabashedly naked, grinning at her. Wide turquoise eyes locked with dancing black and held for a moment. She could not help but see the visible proof of his desire thrusting proudly forward as he let his gaze rake her body from her blushing face down to her moccasined feet. “I...I brought medicines to tend your wounds.”

      
“Then by all means, tend to me.” The smile left his face. God, just looking at her made him ache, this Sun and Moon Woman with her luminous aquamarine eyes and pale glowing hair. He had come so close to losing her. Even being president of the Union Pacific was not worth that cost. Nothing was. He extended one hand, palm up.

      
Roxanna stepped from the kinnikinnick and reached out to take his proffered hand. “The feast will begin in a little while. You have to dress for it.”

      
He pulled her closer, murmuring, “I'd rather you undressed for me right now... We have time.” His voice was a low silky purr, yet beneath the teasing burned a hunger for her, a need to reaffirm his claim that she was yet and would always be his wife.

      
Roxanna still clutched the medicine pouch in one hand like a talisman. “You're too weak. Your wounds—”

      
“Are healing just fine. Put some more of that herbal poultice on...and then...” He took hold of the fat shiny plait of hair hanging over her shoulder and drew her closer until his lips brushed her cheek, then trailed down the side of her neck to the racing pulse at the base of her throat.

      
Her eyes closed and every nerve in her body thrummed with the remembered pleasure of his touch. How lonely and cold she had been without that touch. She leaned into his embrace, raising her hand with the pouch in it unconsciously, reaching up to hold him. Accidentally she brushed his injured chest. The instant the buckskin came into contact with the newly healing flesh he winced, but did not release his hold on her.

      
Roxanna's eyes flew open and she tried to step back. “You're not ready—”

      
“Oh, I'm ready, believe me,” he replied, letting the rigid pressure of his erection press into the soft buckskin of her tunic. He took the pouch from her and released the drawstring, holding it open to her. “Tend my wounds, Roxy.”

      
He stepped away from her then, walking through the shallows to where a thick copse of willows hid the path from the camp. He took a seat on the cool, mossy earth and waited, patient except for the burning hunger revealed in his eyes.

      
She knelt beside him and extracted a handful of the poultice. “It will work best if you lie down.”

      
“Whatever you wish,” he replied, stretching out on his back, one hand resting proprietarily on her thigh.

      
She worked the poultice around the ragged edges of skin, already beginning to scab over, then let the moisture soak in to numb the ache. “Does that hurt?” she asked, feeling his muscles quiver with pain when she placed the medicine directly into the punctures.

      
“Only for a moment...then it cools the burning.” There was another burning deep inside of him that was of far greater urgency than these mere superficial wounds.

      
She finished her work with trembling hands, then rose and walked over to the edge of the water to wash the poultice from them, feeling his eyes follow her.

      
“Take off your clothes, Roxy. I need you...now.”

      
His eyes compelled her and his voice was raw, hoarse with desire—or was it something more, something he had yet to say?
You have never spoken of love, Cain.
She pulled off her moccasins, then stood up and began to unlace the ties on her tunic until she could pull it over her head.

      
When she reached down to unfasten her leggings, he said, “Come, let me do it.”

      
She walked across the soft earth to him and he reached out to unlace the thin leather ties first on her right leg, then her left. As he did so, he pressed his mouth along the curve of her calves and ran his fingertips around to the sensitive skin behind her knees. Her legs buckled as she knelt beside him, afraid to touch his injured chest. “I'll hurt you...”

      
Cain smiled. “You'll just have to be gentle with me, wife.” He took her hand and placed it around his phallus, gasping when her small fingers, still damp from the river, slid up and down the hot length of it.

      
She leaned down, careful not to touch his upper body as her lips neared his. His hand tugged insistently on her braid, guiding her mouth to his for a long slow kiss of homecoming. Releasing his hold on her hair, he reached over to cup one breast, kneading gently as their kiss deepened.