The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series) (27 page)

      
Chase looked contemptuously at Stephanie, then turned his gaze on the little girl and smiled. “It is a kind thing you offer and I am grateful. When you grow up you will make some warrior a fine wife. But my captive is a woman grown and she must learn for herself. Go play with your brother while I teach her what must be done.”

      
“It be as White Wolf say. Come,” Smooth Stone said with dignity. He took his sister's hand and pulled her away, leaving the two adults confronting one another.

      
Chase knelt and reached for a bird with one hand, retrieving his knife with the other. “I'll clean one. You watch. Then you can do the rest.”

      
“And you can go to hell,” Stephanie replied through gritted teeth. “As you've pointed out several times, I'm your captive—not your squaw.”

      
“Would you like to change roles, Stevie?” he asked softly, looking up at her with smoldering black eyes, daring her.

      
Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She stared down at him with impotent fury. “Is this the way all Indian women are treated? Brought up from girlhood to wait on men? Tiny Dancer was afraid for me. Already she expects to jump any time a male speaks, to do whatever he asks.”

      
“We have a cooperative society. Everyone has their assigned tasks to perform for the good of the group as a whole. Cooking and caring for children are women's work, not all that different in white society—except for the idle rich who have everything done for them.”

      
“Now who's being superior and a hypocrite to boot, Mr. Chase Remington of the idly rich Boston Remingtons? At least we idle rich abolished slavery. Servants are paid. Captives aren't,” she snapped back.

      
Chase stood up, hiding his anger. She had scored a direct hit with her barb about the idly rich Remingtons. Damn her. His eyes narrowed on her, raking her from head to toe and back. “We might be able to arrange some sort of payment, Stevie...that is what you want, isn't it?”

      
The sexual innuendo hung between them as their eyes and wills clashed. “I am not one of Rocky's girls. The only thing I want from you is my freedom!”

      
“Is it, Stevie?” he asked in patent disbelief.

      
“I've told you not to call me Stevie.”

      
“And I'm telling you, you'll learn to clean those birds or you'll go without food tonight. I suggest you make up your mind quickly. The children are growing hungry while you have a tantrum.”

      
Stephanie felt a sudden inexplicable urge to burst into tears. She was hot and tired and hungry herself, frightened of this savage stranger, saddened beyond measure by the way things had turned out between them. Swallowing the hard knot of misery in her throat, she knelt and picked up one of the dead birds. “Show me how to clean this,” she said tonelessly

* * * *

      
They rode through the night, Smooth Stone and Tiny Dancer each mounted on one of the old team horses, which they controlled with the ease of those born to ride. Stephanie remained mounted in front of Chase. They stopped to rest for a few hours when they lost the moon. Stephanie's only sense of direction was maintained by the setting and rising of the sun. Otherwise she was utterly lost even as the moon reappeared to illuminate the stark outlines of jagged mountain peaks looming ever nearer. They had crossed untold miles of flat open buffalo grass for the past two days. The third night the topography began to change dramatically. As they drew near the mountains, the plains gave way to hills, gullies and ravines, rocky, rugged land dotted with increasingly taller stands of lodgepole pine.

      
“Your village—is close, White Wolf?” Smooth Stone asked excitedly as the eastern sky began to lighten with a faint pearl-gray glow.

      
“It is close, yes,” Chase answered with a smile. He reined in and the children did likewise beside a small sluggishly flowing creek. He dismounted saying, “I must make final preparations to greet my people.”

      
Smooth Stone and Tiny Dancer slid effortlessly from their horses and sat down to watch with avid interest. Chase assisted Stephanie down, then brought out a razor and shaving gear from his saddlebags. He knelt with the mirror beside the creek to perform the daily ritual which he intensely disliked. “An unfortunate reminder of my white blood.”

      
“Apparently the only one,” Stephanie muttered.

      
“White men have much hair,” Smooth Stone said. “Is good you cut it off face.”

      
Stephanie had heard that Indians considered the facial and body hair of white men to be ugly. Chase had a dark bristly growth of beard every morning and hair on his chest, all reminders that he was half-white.
He must hate that,
she thought.
But you love the feel of it, an inner voice mocked.
She turned angrily away from the enticing sight of the razor gliding along his face and stared at the horizon while he continued his toilette.

      
When he had finished shaving, he put away the razor and took out the rest of his warrior's regalia—more jewelry and a breastplate. He was aware of Stephanie's apprehensive gaze as he made the final preparations for his homecoming. Smooth Stone and Tiny Dancer understood that a warrior returning to his people after a successful raid always dressed in his finery, but for Stephanie it was merely another indication of how deeply he had sunk into savagery. He finished dressing and motioned for the children to mount up, then swung into the saddle and swept her up in front of him.

      
“I'm surprised you don't ride bareback,” she said breathlessly.

      
“If there were some place to stow the damn saddle, I would,” he replied, kneeing the dun into a trot. As he flexed one bare arm around her waist, the heavy copper bands on his wrist and biceps gleamed in the dawn's light.

      
Chase pressed her back against his chest and felt her spine stiffen when the hard bones of the breastplate touched her. “Nervous about meeting the family?” he whispered lightly in her ear.

      
“I'm not ‘meeting the family.’ I'm being dragged in as a captive—a slave for you to parade in front of your friends.”

      
He shrugged indifferently, hiding the hurt her stinging words brought. “Have it your way.”

      
“If I had my way, I'd be asleep safely in Rawlins.”

      
They rode in silence while the children chattered between themselves excitedly in a mixture of English and their native tongue. Just as the sun tipped over the horizon in a great golden ball, they crested a steep ridge and looked down into a wide flat bowl, a shallow valley through which ran a narrow stream of water. Between thirty and forty buffalo skin lodges were arranged in an orderly semicircle facing the rising sun, as was the Cheyenne custom.

      
Chase watched as Stephanie leaned forward, peering down at the activities around the awakening camp. “The rider moving from east to south around the camp is the crier,” he explained. “He informs everyone in the village of the day's activities, who is raising a hunting party, who gives a feast this night, any news of interest or restrictions decided upon by the elders. Right now I imagine he's telling them of our imminent arrival.”

      
She turned her head back to him quizzically. “How would he know?”

      
“Sentries,” he replied, pointing to horsemen whom she had not seen on the perimeters of the valley's ridge.

      
Stephanie observed women gathering in clusters, laughing and gossiping as they listened to the crier. Some started cookfires while others already had heavy kettles boiling and were dishing up bowls of some sort of meat and vegetables. A group of preadolescent boys drove a small herd of horses into the center of the village while a dozen or so young girls carried in bundles of firewood. Old men clustered at the openings of some lodges, watching the sunrise and serenely puffing on their pipes while younger ones stood stretching and yawning, preparing to greet the day. Everywhere small children ran giggling and shrieking, as utterly naked and unashamed as were Smooth Stone and Tiny Dancer.

      
As they drew closer to the village, an excited buzz began. All eyes were on the White Wolf, who led two little children and brought a captive female back with him. Young boys and girls ran ahead to greet their hero as a number of mongrel dogs yipped excitedly at their heels. Women turned from their chores to smile and men raised their arms in salutes of welcome.

      
They were an uncommonly tall and handsome race. Stephanie remembered hearing someone at Fort Steele refer to the Cheyenne as “the beautiful people.” Certainly they were nothing like the beaten starving wretches she had seen herded into the compounds of army posts with their heads bowed, ragged and stoic, awaiting their fate. These people were proud and free, their fragile way of life as nomadic hunters still intact, thanks no doubt to the half-breed renegade who stole and killed for them.

      
The men had long-boned muscular bodies and possessed strong features although none had quite the chiseled perfection of Chase's arresting face. Most were clothed only in breechclouts, a few with leggings, and all were adorned with jewelry and feathered ornaments similar to those Chase wore. The women were striking rather than conventionally pretty, with large liquid black eyes. Their hair, like that of the men, was braided but frequently coiled into heavy rolls at the sides or back of their heads. They were a great deal more modest in their dress than the men, clothed in long tunics and high laced boots, all made of soft tanned animal hides.

      
Everyone stared at her. Stephanie could sense a blend of curiosity and hatred emanating from those who crowded around the horses as Chase rode to a large lodge in the center of the village. An older man with gray-streaked hair and hawkish regal features stood waiting patiently with an unreadable expression on his face. Chase's uncle. She remembered his name, Stands Tall, which fit him well. His fathomless obsidian eyes studied her without revealing any emotion but when they shifted to the children, a smile lit his face.

      
Chase slid from the dun directly in front of him and the two greeted each other by clasping arms. As they spoke in Cheyenne, Stephanie could sense that they discussed her and grew uneasy. The exchange seemed troubling to Stands Tall. Other children crowded around Smooth Stone and Tiny Dancer chattering in their tongue. The Crow children could not understand them but it was apparent they were friendly.

      
Chase had known his uncle would not be any happier over his captive than he was, but at least Stands Tall understood the necessity of his actions. And his uncle also intuited that there was something between him and the bronze-haired woman. He looked up at her, sitting proudly on the dun gelding.

      
“She shows no fear. Her heart is strong,” he said.

      
Chase turned to Stephanie and lifted her down from the horse. ‘This is my uncle, Stands Tall, a great peace chief among our people, and this,” he said as a wizened old woman emerged from the lodge, “is my great-aunt, Red Bead. They both understand English.”

      
Stephanie turned her attention to the crone whose small wiry body still moved with ageless grace. She bowed gravely to Chase, then returned Stephanie's perusal with shrewd black eyes. “Come,” she commanded as she turned and disappeared again into the lodge, expecting her new charge to obey.

      
“Go with her and do as she says,” Chase instructed.

      
“What about the children—”

      
.“I'll see they're well cared for,” he replied, then spoke in Cheyenne to the village children clustered curiously about the two old horses.

      
They stepped back, quieting as he summoned a plump, moon-faced woman who came forward and reached up for Tiny Dancer, opening her arms in a motherly embrace. The little girl responded instinctively and Smooth Stone bounded to the ground, eagerly awaiting his hero's instructions.

      
“This is Crow Woman. She is of your former people, captured in a raid as a child and adopted. She still speaks your language and will teach you ours. Go with her.”

      
“You be big brother, White Wolf?” Smooth Stone asked wistfully.

      
Chase knelt by the boy and said, “I will teach you the way of a warrior and you will grow up to be fearless and strong.” Satisfied with the pledge, Smooth Stone took Crow Woman's free hand. She walked off with him, carrying Tiny Dancer on her other arm.

      
There was nothing for Stephanie to do but follow Red Bead into the lodge. Blinking to accustom herself to the soft light filtering in from the rolled up bottom edge of the lodge skin, she observed a surprisingly spacious living area with a small fire pit in the center. Various tools and implements of war hung from the lodge poles. Pallets made of thick soft pelts lay against the outer perimeters and between them what looked like backrests made of willow poles and buckskin acted as dividers and storage units. Everything was neat and orderly.

      
“Sit,” Red Bead commanded, her tone of voice neutral, as she squatted agilely on one pallet, gesturing for Stephanie to take her place at the opposite end of it.

“Chase said you speak English,” Stephanie began with an uncertain smile.

      
“I speak English. You are from the faraway place where he was held prisoner?”

      
Her eyes squinted sharply, fixed on Stephanie, who nodded. “Yes, we knew each other when we were children...then again just before he returned to you.” She volunteered no more, waiting to see what the old woman would do.