The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series) (38 page)

      
Of course that would not be until the spring thaw. Chances were this place would be empty by the time the soldiers could bestir themselves to ride here. But then again, sometimes a band would return early from the summer hunt to a favorite hiding place. They might just round up these stragglers before another winter season. With stealth born of years of experience, Bloody Hand slipped past the sentries and made his way out of the valley. He had a long cold ride ahead of him and no time to lose before the next snowstorm hit.

      
Chase's eyes swept the camp as he rode in, searching for the glitter of bronze hair. Then he saw her standing proud and alone, a tall slender woman swathed in heavy robes. Their eyes met and his chest tightened as he felt his breath leave him in a searing rush. Deliberately he made his way toward her, guiding Thunderbolt with subtle knee pressure through the laughing, talking people who would share in the bounty from the raid.

      
The warriors led strings of army mounts laden with sacks of flour, cornmeal, sugar and rice, hogsheads of molasses, bolts of cloth and assorted hardware and tools, even tinned foodstuffs. The Indians used their tomahawks to chop open the cans, exclaiming at the vegetables, meats or fruits they found inside as they devoured them and shared with others around them. Some of the women began unwrapping bolts of bright calico and heavy wool while others, usually older and more practical, examined hatchets and hoes.

      
Across the crowd Stephanie stood motionless, waiting as Chase approached. Thunderbolt stopped directly in front of her and he vaulted down the fluid, graceful way he always did. He could see the accusation in her eyes but there was more, the same unbanked fire, the same hunger that gnawed at him.

      
“Have you missed me, Stevie?”

      
His voice was a taunting purr but behind the teasing she could feel his desire, potent as raw whiskey and twice as dangerous.
Don't give in
. “What I've missed is civilization, where men don't smear their faces with war paint and go on looting rampages.” She was rewarded with a brief flicker of anger in his glittering black eyes but then he lowered his eyelids and a fathomless darkness filled them.

      
“Civilized men may not paint their faces, but they do loot. They've stolen all our land,” he said coldly.

      
“Return me to Rawlins, Chase. If you could get all this booty through the passes, you can take me home.”

      
“Home?” He arched his eyebrows mockingly, smothering the flames that still burned unquenchably. “You never considered those army posts home any more than you did Josiah Summerfield's mansion.”

      
She blanched. “How did you know?” As soon as she blurted out the words, she looked away, horrified. She had never told him about her father's final betrayal. He knew only that Josiah was dead, not that he'd left his only child penniless.

      
Chase studied her, puzzled and surprised by the vehemence of her reaction. “I've known you since you were a child, Stevie. He wasn't much of a father...any more than Hugh was much of a husband.”

      
He does not know the rest,
she thought in relief. She did not need his pity added to all the other emotions swirling around them. “That can never change the fact of either relationship, can it?” she asked rhetorically.

      
“Some relationships can never be erased,” he replied, pausing, “no matter how much we might wish it.”

      
“White Wolf! You have returned with a great victory just as I knew you would!” Smooth Stone hurled himself across the clearing and skidded excitedly to a halt before Chase, who knelt and picked him up.

      
“Yes, I've returned with some things for you and your sister, and for my captive,” he said, daring Stephanie. “Come see.” He turned to the group of army horses, some of which remained laden with captured goods.

      
“It's cold outside. I'm going in by the fire,” Stephanie said as he stared at her. She turned her back on him and the boy and walked away.

* * * *

      
Stephanie was delighted when Kit Fox asked her to help prepare for the marriage festivities. Although Granite Arm received Stephanie with genuine friendship, the white woman had to brave the harsh stares of some of the other women who still viewed her as an outsider. Three other young women from the band along with Stephanie accompanied Kit Fox to the sweat lodge. They spent a long cleansing period in the thick steam created by throwing buckets of cold water over red-hot rocks in a tightly sealed teepee. As the women sat cross-legged, rubbing their perspiration-soaked bodies with dried sweet grass, they discussed Kit Fox's new life as a married woman. By now Stephanie had become inured to the casual nudity among the women, even if she was not completely comfortable with it. But as the only woman who had known a husband, she was very uncomfortable with their topic of conversation.

      
“I saw my brother's manroot once when he was bathing. Judging by the size of what lies in Blue Eagle's breech-clout, his must be even larger,” Green Grass said in awe as the others giggled.

      
“Do you think it will hurt when he mounts me?” Kit Fox asked, worrying her lower lip with small white teeth.

      
“My mother explained to me that it should not if a man is considerate,” Swan Flower replied, sensing her friend's maidenly nervousness.

      
The three young Cheyenne were all virgins but living in a society where sex was a part of nature, they discussed the topic freely. Stephanie could feel their eyes on her. She obviously had experience none of them possessed. But Hugh had not been considerate—if that was what was needed to keep a bridal night from being both painful and humiliating. What could she say? “I was married for three years...” she began hesitantly. “There was a little discomfort the first time but then it no longer hurt. I think you will not have the problem I did. White women are taught nothing of what to expect on their wedding nights.”

      
“Not even by their mothers or other female relatives?” Green Grass asked, amazed.

      
Stephanie shook her head. “It is not considered...proper.” She groped for a way to explain Victorian propriety to these children of nature and found no adequate vocabulary in her limited Cheyenne—or even in English.

      
Swan Flower snorted. “Then that is why you did not enjoy it.”

      
Kit Fox looked at Stephanie with an unspoken question in her eyes. She had seen the way her friend returned Chase's ardor and knew Stephanie had desired his touch although not her own husband's. “I hope I will enjoy what passes between me and Blue Eagle this night,” was all she said.

      
The young women left the sweat lodge bundled in heavy robes and raced the short distance from the teepee to the bubbling hot springs sheltered from the cold by a curving rock ledge overhanging one of the pools. They shed their robes, shrieking when the icy cold air hit them, then dived into the steamy waters.

      
Stephanie floated in the warm water, letting its lapping bubbles smooth the tension from her body. There were small pleasures such as the sweat lodges and mineral pools that compensated a great deal for the grueling labor of everyday survival. These people lived close to the earth, in a rhythm with nature that she often envied.

      
Could you live as Freedom Woman had?
Stephanie ignored the niggling voice. She did not belong here. Chase had killed her husband—and even if he had not, this way of life, these people were doomed. Soon this destructive and hopeless war against the whites would end in defeat. The Cheyenne and their allies would all be sent to reservations. Once her identity was discovered, she would never be allowed to remain with them. But what a lovely fantasy it was if only so many things did not conspire to destroy it. A chorus of gasps from the other women brought her abruptly from her troubling reverie.

      
“It is time and the family of Blue Eagle awaits you. Go now,” Chase said to the women submerged in the pool. When he turned away to allow them to emerge and cover themselves with the robes, he added, “You stay here, Stevie.”

      
She was across the pool and now he stood between her and the Cheyenne women who unquestioningly slipped quietly away. Kit Fox gave her friend a tremulous smile before following the others, as if saying,
Here is your heart
.

      
Suddenly Stephanie felt cold as the warm waters lapped around her. Careful to remain submerged up to her shoulders, she asked, “What do you want, Chase?”

      
He arched his eyebrows and smiled at her but there was no mirth in his glittering black eyes. “Poached white woman would be nice,” he countered. But he did not remove his clothes. Rather, he took a seat on a rock beside the edge of the water, studying her as she treaded water, taking care not to reveal her breasts. Her hair spread out behind her, floating like a mantle of bronze silk.

      
“The walnut stain's worn off,” he said at length. “You're pale as cream again.”

      
“Red Bead said there was no need here in winter camp,” she replied, finding her throat and mouth gone suddenly dry in spite of the steamy air.

      
He watched her lick her lips, moistening them furtively as she sank lower in the water. “You'll turn to a prune if you don't get out—or else get overheated and I'll have to dive in and pull you out.” He held up her robe for her, waiting patiently.

      
Stephanie hesitated, then steeled her courage and swam across the pool. She was his captive and if he decided to force the issue, she could not stop him. Cowering in the water would solve nothing. In spite of his comments, he seemed to have something weighing on his mind and needed to talk. She stepped dripping from the water and he enveloped her in the robe. As soon as she felt his arms around her, she clutched the robe and stepped away, then huddled on a rock facing him and began to wring out her sopping hair as he, too, took a seat.

      
Finally he spoke. “I learned a number of things while my warriors were raiding. General Terry is mounting a spring campaign for the Yellowstone basin. He's going to turn Custer loose on us. Crook's already preparing to march out of Fetterman, but the winter storms should force him to retreat until at least April.”

      
“So what you're saying is that the army is going to surround the last of the Indian treaty territory and attack from all sides. It's hopeless, Chase,” she said with a catch in her voice. “You can't escape.”

      
“For certain I won't.” He pulled a paper from inside his robe and unrolled it, holding it out for her to see. On it was a drawing of his face, so perfect a likeness she gasped.

      
“Yes, it's taken from an old photograph made during my days in Boston,” he said bitterly.

      
A five-thousand-dollar reward was proclaimed below the picture—along with the words: “The White Wolf is also known as Chase Remington, a half-breed Cheyenne renegade.”

      
“How could anyone know?” she asked.

      
“I also learned that Burke Remington came out west on a little junket this past fall. Inspecting the army's preparedness for the great winter campaigns against us. At least that was the official reason for his trip. But I know he's had agents trying to find me ever since I left Boston. I imagine he finally got a bit impatient. Maybe the old man's near death and he's worried he'll be cut out of the inheritance entirely unless he can prove I'm dead.”

      
Stephanie digested this, knowing Burke Remington had tried unsuccessfully to have Chase murdered once already. But his next words stunned her.

      
“Hugh is alive, Stevie. I didn't kill him.” He handed her the wanted poster. Now that her hands had dried, she took it, trembling so badly the paper shook. In small print in the right corner was Captain Hugh Phillips's signature as adjutant of Fort Steele.

      
“I don't understand,” she said numbly. She should rejoice yet she could not. Stephanie did not wish for his death, especially not at the hands of the man she had loved in her husband's stead, yet she wanted with her whole heart to be free of Hugh.

      
“Burke and your dear husband are working together now,” Chase said, breaking into her thoughts. “While searching for me, my uncle's agents apparently ran across your name, which Burke had no doubt supplied them in the hopes you could lead him to me. It didn't take him long to put two and two together when you were abducted by an Indian.”

      
A shiver of fear snaked down her spine. She had heard the cold ruthlessness in the senator's voice that night at the Cabot’s' and she knew firsthand how obsessed Hugh was. The thought of the two of them together was daunting indeed.

      
Chase studied her in the waning light. The air was cold in spite of the underground heat and shelter of the cliff. “You have good reason to be frightened. The Remington wealth is a formidable goad combined with your husband's vendetta against me. Now he knows I'm the one who marked him as well as the one who ruined his wife.”

      
She was not surprised to learn it was Chase who had put the scar on Hugh's cheek. “You have not ‘ruined’ me yet, Chase,” she said, trying to read what he was thinking. It was not difficult.

      
He stared at her hungrily, as if he could see through the heavy buffalo robe to her naked flesh. “I've finally admitted to myself why I brought you here, Stevie,” he said at length.