The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series) (32 page)

      
“I...I'll use the stain. Just leave me.”

      
Silently as a wraith, he turned and did so. Stephanie watched him go, still feeling the tingling ache where he had touched her...and where he had not. With a ragged breath, she began to rub the pungent oil over her face and arms as the sun slipped beyond the western horizon and night fell.

      
When she returned to the camp, Red Bead looked up at her darkened skin and grunted in approval, then scuttled through the packs to give her a length of soft blue cloth, no doubt trade goods obtained from a raid. “Cover your hair with it when we travel,” she said, dishing up a bowl filled with fresh berries and handing it to Stephanie. She used a small knife to cut off a hunk of the roasting venison haunch still spitted on the campfire and began to chew, then offered the blade to Stephanie to do likewise.

      
The meat smelled wonderful although she was still not used to the lack of salt. Her stomach gave a small growl. She used the knife to help herself.

      
Then Red Bead said, “It was a good thing you did yesterday. Granite Arm told me how you saved her daughter.”

      
She paused but before Stephanie could make a reply she said, “Kit Fox wishes to wed the White Wolf.”

      
“I know. She told me.” Stephanie refused to venture more, wondering if Red Bead believed she was jealous.

      
“You are not like other whites I have known,” the old woman said, then turned her attention to the food, staring silently into the flames as she ate.

* * * *

      
They broke camp at dawn, continuing the trek north. Stephanie muttered to herself but wrapped the blue cloth about her head after plaiting her hair. She was ambivalent about running across any white travelers, devoutly wishing for rescue yet not wanting to bring harm to these people, many of whom had been most kind to her. Nor did she wish to see Chase carry out his threat and kill any witnesses in order to keep her.

      
Chase rode point through the day. She watched him on the ridge astride his magnificent stallion, Thunderbolt. The only time he rode the stallion was when he was with the band. What a splendid barbarian he was, riding bareback with long muscular legs gripping the sleek horse's sides and the wind whipping his long feathered braid. The sun gleamed on his sweat-slicked skin, delineating the muscles of his shoulders, arms and chest. He did not wear a breastplate today so the scars of his Sun Dance showed through the dark hair on his chest.

      
“You look at him with longing in your heart,” Red Bead said, startling Stephanie. The old woman had approached silently, catching the white woman unawares.

      
A denial sprang to her lips but she looked into Red Bead's shrewd sympathetic eyes and nodded instead. “Once long ago, we were in love. But he left me and I wed another. There is nothing that can change that.”

      
Red Bead merely shrugged. “We do not always know what the Powers have in store.”

      
Before Stephanie could reply to the enigmatic remark, Chase came streaking down the hill toward them, reining in next to Stands Tall and Elk Bull who rode at the head of the column of Cheyenne. They conferred briefly, then he approached the travois of Red Bead where Stephanie walked. Sliding from Thunderbolt's back he said, “Cover your hair completely,” reaching out to pull the cloth shawl into a drooping hood that fell across her forehead, obscuring her face.

      
“Why? What is—” Before she could pull it back and look up at him, he reached out and seized her hand in an iron grip.

      
“Do as I say! A group of white men are just over that rise—miners looking to strike it rich in the Black Hills.”

      
An expression of tortured ambivalence betrayed her before she could school her features to neutrality. Chase saw it and cursed. “Don't be a fool, Stevie. We outnumber them. I would have to kill them to protect my people.”

      
“I won't reveal myself,” she replied in a choked voice, knowing he would keep his word. She walked beside Red Bead under his watchful eye as he paced the restless stallion beside them.

      
She saw the miners when they crested the hill just as Chase had said, a rough looking company of about a dozen men. The leader was a gaunt fellow with a turkey feather in the greasy felt hat that shaded a face to which life had not been kind. Watery pale eyes narrowed as he studied the band of Indians whose path had cross his, noting that they were not painted for war and had all their women and children with them.

      
“Howdy! Any of you speak American?” he asked, spitting a wad of tobacco on the ground and patting the repeating rifle he held in his hands. His men were well armed. He did not realize that the Cheyenne warriors were equally so. Chase had instructed that most of the men hide their Henrys and Winchesters in the baggage-laden travois and carry only their bows and lances.

      
“I speak, yes,” Stands Tall said in far more broken English than Stephanie had ever heard him use before. “We peaceful—good Indians.”

      
So Chase comes by his duplicity naturally,
Stephanie thought with grim, humor as she listened to the exchange. One of the men caught sight of a travois piled with beaver pelts and offered to buy them for a paltry sum, which Stands Tall refused. They haggled as the leaders around Elk Bull became increasingly restive. Then a rumble of horses' hooves sounded and more voices in English echoed across the open plain. From behind the next rise a column of cavalry out of Fort Fetterman came riding smartly toward them. Stephanie recognized the insignia and had even met the young captain who was leading the column. Every nerve in her body screamed at her to rip the covering off her hair and run to Gus Ansil.

      
Chase was not certain what she would do. Yesterday they had sighted the miners but only an hour ago had he run across the column of cavalry apparently sent to head off the men who were illegally bound for the gold strikes in the Black Hills to the east. There was nothing they could do but pray the soldiers would let them pass peacefully. Stands Tall was now assuring the captain that they were headed north to receive rations at Fort Stanbaugh and settle peacefully for the winter there.

      
The issue of rounding up all Indians on the northern plains had not yet been settled by Washington, although many commanders in the field frequently attacked villages under the pretext of hostile provocation by the Indians, charges unfounded more often than not. During the fall of 1875 matters were particularly delicate since the government was negotiating with various tribal leaders, chiefly the Sioux, in an attempt to get them to cede mineral rights to the sacred hills. Chase knew neither his Lakota allies nor the Cheyenne would ever give away their hunting grounds, but until the dust of endless talks settled, he prayed these troops would stand down during this encounter.

      
The warriors might be able to successfully engage both groups of whites in a fight, but in a pitched battle it would be an appalling disaster, encumbered as they were with women, children and old people.

      
The Stephanie of old would never knowingly endanger children or old people, even to save herself. But that was the woman he remembered from another life, he reminded himself. He could not trust her now. If anything happened to cause a fight, he would be completely to blame. As the arrogant looking captain sought to end the haggling between Stands Tall and the miners, Chase reached down from Thunderbolt's back and swept Stephanie into his arms. She started to cry out but before she could do more than gasp, his mouth came down hard on hers. Stands Tall and several of the other Cheyenne leaders, who he had talked to before they encountered the enemy, all began to laugh.

      
“What's that buck doin”?” one miner asked.

      
“Him just married. Now breechclout all time fall down. Then he fall on squaw,” Stands Tall replied in the guttural dialect he had affected. Now even some of the other miners and soldiers joined in the laughter.

      
Chase heard the captain make some lewd remark as he carried Stephanie to the back of their caravan. With one hand he held the scarf tightly around her head while he pressed her against him with the other. His superbly trained horse responded to knee commands, stopping near the end of the long line of horsedrawn travois. He knew that Stands Tall had convinced the soldiers of the reason for his dramatic gesture.

      
Now all he had to do was make Stephanie behave like an enamored bride. The thought gave him a sudden pang.
If only she could be my bride!
Her lips were startled and soft beneath his, tasting warm and sweet as he savaged them. Her body stiffened in surprise as she kicked and flailed, trying to push him away, but he was far too strong. He deepened the kiss, taking advantage of her breathlessness by plunging his tongue inside her mouth and losing himself in the soulful hunger that had so long tormented him.

      
From among the cluster of women, Kit Fox watched the White Wolf carry her friend toward a big travois piled high with pelts for the cold winter camp in the mountains. He tossed her onto the pile of furs and covered her with his body as she thrashed, then grew suddenly quiescent. His whole body moved over her in a dance as ancient as time. In spite of the roughness of the initial encounter, Stephanie responded. Hesitant and inhibited as it was, the subtle relaxing, then tensing of her body gave her away. Her hands fell loose, no longer pushing against his body's invasion, and her legs ceased their thrashing. Instead her fingers curled against his shoulders and one leg instinctively raised and rubbed against his thigh. As Kit Fox watched, the movements spoke volumes to her.

      
They are destined to be lovers
,
even against their wills.
Her heart ached, yet she faced the truth. Her friend did not love her white husband. The White Wolf had taken no other woman to his blankets since coming to live among the People. This was the reason.
Good-bye, White Wolf, Chase the Wind. I will grieve a while...then I will live once more.

      
Stephanie felt the heat and hardness of his body as he slammed it into hers, driving the air from her lungs when he flung her onto the travois and followed her down into the soft furs. At least, that's why she told herself she did not cry out or fight him further. She would not respond to the harsh caresses he bestowed upon her as he forced her to lie silently beneath him, hidden from the soldiers. She would not. She tried lying limply beneath him at first, letting him play out the charade for the soldiers and miners. Their coarse, ugly laughter still faintly echoed but Stephanie could no longer hear it. The world receded until all her universe encompassed was the man holding her in his arms, pressing her into the soft furs. His every movement was a brazen caress, from the hot intimate invasion of his tongue in her mouth to the way his hips rocked suggestively against hers.

      
Her senses blazed to life, remembering how it had been between them every time they had touched before. With a small moan her hands reached up to his shoulders and her body opened to his, weeping with a want she could not comprehend, had never been able to comprehend from that first day in the snowbound country house in Massachusetts.

      
Then before she could utterly disgrace herself, she heard a loud command for the troops to move out, followed by the thundering vibrations of their horses' hooves. Disgruntled, the miners followed. Chase suddenly rolled off her and sprang from the travois. She lay breathless and stunned, staring at him as he stood towering over her. His breath came in gasps as if he'd run a great distance and his fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. The expression on his face was angry and at the same time agonized, as if he were in great pain.

      
Or had she imagined it? “It was not necessary to shame me. I would not have betrayed these people,” she whispered hoarsely.

      
He just stared down at her for a moment. “I'm sorry. I could not risk my people's lives,” he said in a low intense voice, still out of breath. He willed his rebellious body to obey him but just looking at her made it ache. The scarf covering her hair had pulled away now, revealing its bronzed splendor. Huge golden eyes glistened with tears in her small dark face. Thank heaven he had forced her to use the walnut oil.
That was not all you forced her to do,
his conscience tormented.

      
“You will never trust me,” she said simply, too emotionally and physically wrung out to conceal her pain.

      
“I cannot even trust myself, Stevie,” he replied. Then he spun on his heel and leaped on Thunderbolt's back, galloping away, leaving the caravan far behind.

      
Stephanie felt as if everyone around her were staring, but the Cheyenne were too polite for such a thing. They had surely seen the way she fell in with Chase's ruse—only what had begun as a ruse had swiftly turned into something else. Desire—but not love. Never would she dare to call it love. Red faced beneath the stain darkening her skin, she climbed from the travois with trembling legs. That was when she met Kit Fox's eyes. And looked away quickly.

* * * *

      
“There's a civilian feller here to see you, sir,” the corporal said to Lieutenant Phillips, who sat in the small cramped office of the adjutant at Fort Steele. “I tole him you was real busy. He looked sort of down at the heels, a drifter...but he...” The corporal shuffled nervously, unwilling to meet his superior's eyes. “He said he seen a white woman with an Injun who attacked his medicine show wagon and killed his partner. Said she might be an officer's wife.”