The Guardian (4 page)

He froze for an instant, scarcely daring to trust his ears. Maybe it had only been the thunder he'd heard. But his instincts told him otherwise. Heart slamming, he stretched his legs to a sprint. Somewhere out there in the forest, there was trouble. And if the sound of a gun had reached his ears, the
Siksika
would have heard it, too.

He thought of Charity, alone and helpless in the night. Had someone come across her by chance? Someone with a gun?

No story he could piece together made any sense. Black Sun only knew that he had to reach her side before it was too late.

He was out of breath by the time he burst into the clearing where he'd tied the horses. His knees weakened with relief as he saw Charity. She was sitting in a patch of moonlight, her eyes wide with terror, her hands clutching the base of a long, dead tree limb.

As he came closer, his eyes caught the gleam of moonlight on a miniature pistol, no bigger than a child's toy, lying next to her knee.

“You shot that gun.” The words came out as a harsh rasp.

She clutched the limb tighter, as if she meant to strike him with it. “I shot at a cougar,” she said defensively. “My shot missed, but I think I scared it away. I don't have any more bullets, just this…limb.” Her voice trailed off and broke. He realized she was on the verge of tears.

Black Sun exhaled sharply. He might have dismissed her story as a woman's imagination, but the huge, fresh pug marks in the earth gave testimony to the truth. He should never have left her here alone.

“You shot at the cat and missed, and now you're sitting there expecting to beat it off with a stick.” He was angry at himself, not at her, but when Charity straightened her spine and thrust out her chin, it was clear that she hadn't understood things that way.

“Yes,” she declared. “It was all I could find. I didn't want the cougar to attack the horses.”

“You're sure you missed? We can't leave a wounded cat out there.”

“I'm sure. The bullet knocked this limb off a tree. Stop treating me like a child.” She shot him a scathing look. “Did you find the Blackfoot?”

“Yes.” He strode toward the horses, glancing back at her as he untied their tethers. “They were camped for the night. We'd have been fine. But your gunshot changed all that. They'll be after us as soon as they can round up their horses. We've got to get moving.”

“If you hadn't gone off and left me for cougar bait, there'd have been no gunshot.” She scooped the little weapon into her pocket and staggered to her feet, swaying with exhaustion. She'd been remarkably brave, Black Sun thought, but this was no time to tell her so.

Pain rippled across her moon-pale face as he helped her mount, but she did not cry out. “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

“That depends on how far we can ride before the horses give out.” Black Sun caught the lead of the packhorse and swung the animal into line. Best not to mention the forbidden canyon. As a white woman, she would not understand the importance of respecting sacred ground, and she might argue for stopping there.

Nudging the dun pony, he started out of the clearing at a brisk trot. There would be other hiding places beyond the canyon. The trick would be to reach them without being discovered. The
Siksika
would lose a little time catching their mounts, but they had the advantage of speed and endurance. Riding double and with an injured woman, Black Sun calculated, he would not be able to stay ahead of them for long. Even if he were to unload the packhorse, progress would be slow, and the two of them would have to do without much-needed food, clothing and blankets.

Charity held on to him tightly as they picked their way down a creek bed to hide their trail. The hands that gripped his ribs were small and cold. What was she thinking? he wondered. Was she mourning her hus
band, the father of her child? Had the man been good to her? Had she loved him? But such questions were none of his concern, Black Sun reminded himself. Charity Bennett was not, and never would be, his woman.

Her belly pressed the small of his back, so close that Black Sun could feel the thrust of a small foot against his spine. The movement sent a strange, warm quiver through his body, but he quickly steeled himself against it. He could not let himself feel anything for this white woman and her unborn child. His only aim was to get her back to her own people before the time came for her to give birth.

And how soon would that be? It was not a seemly question to ask a woman, but her time had to be close at hand. And if her pains started here in the wilderness, with only his unskilled hands to help her, she could die.

Like his mother.

Like his wife.

“Tell me how you learned English.” Her voice startled him in the darkness. Earlier he had found her personal questions irritating, but Black Sun had since come to realize that she made such careless talk to take her mind off her fear and the pain of her blistered back, so he resolved to be patient.

“I learned English from the white trapper who bought my mother,” he said.

“He
bought
her? Like he'd buy a horse?”

“Such things happen where there are white men and
no white women. Because my mother was a widow with a child, her price was lower than the price for a maiden, but she was pretty and a hard worker. A bargain, as your people would say. We stayed with him for nine years.” Black Sun spoke carefully, hiding the bitterness that gnawed at his spirit whenever he thought about those nine years.

“Was he good to you?”

“Not so bad at first. He'd gone to school, and he taught both of us to speak English. I even learned to read from some books he had. But then the drinking started. It made him…vile.” He had to grope for the last word, which he had read, but never heard spoken.

Charity was silent for a time. Black Sun could feel her shifting behind him. “What happened at the end of those nine years?” she finally asked. “How did you get away from him?”

Black Sun sighed. “You ask too many questions, Charity Bennett. And your questions knock on doors that I choose not to open.”

“I'm…sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I meant no offense.”

“You are a
Nih'oo'oo,
a white person, and not expected to know better,” he said. “Among my people it's disrespectful to ask such private questions. Let's be still for a while. Stillness is good.”

She did not reply and, after a few moments, he knew she would not. Had he hurt her? Thinking back on his words, he realized they had sounded pompous and silly
in English—not the way they would sound in Arapaho, as spoken by an elder to rebuke an unruly child. Not the way they had once been spoken to him.

In truth, he mused, he had never mastered correct Arapaho behavior. The Arapaho life way was something that had to be learned day by day, year by year, moving through the lodges, the lessons, games and rituals and ceremonies with one's own age mates. Living apart for nine years, as the stepson of a drunken white man, had taught him to speak and read English. But it had robbed him of an Arapaho boy's education.

His accident of birth, during the time of the black sun, had marked him for a life as a healer and medicine man. But on returning to his people after his mother's death, he had discovered that the gift was gone. In his life as an adult, he had performed the sun dance four times. His chest was laced with scars where his flesh had hung from the sharp bone hooks while he'd danced in a slow circle around the sacred pole. He had fasted countless days while he pleaded for a vision. But the
beetee,
the spiritual power he needed to serve his people, hadn't come to him. Maybe it never would.

The darkness lay like a quiet lake around him, its silence broken only by the movement of the horses and the low, edgy sound of Charity's breathing. Had his words made her weep? No, that would not be like her, he thought. She was too strong for that. But she would be weary and in pain. Soon, regardless of the danger, he would need to stop, make camp and tend her burns.

To the west, the mouth of the forbidden canyon cut like a deep black gash into the foothills. He turned his eyes away, struggling to ignore its call. There were other canyons, other shelters, he reminded himself. But none of them were so temptingly near.

Lightning flashed across the dark sky, followed by a shattering boom of thunder. Rain began to fall around them, first in stinging drops, then in sheets of water that streamed off their hair, their shoulders, their backs and down the flanks of the horses.

“C-can't we stop somewhere?” Charity's teeth were chattering with cold.

“Soon.” Black Sun willed his gaze away from the canyon, despite the fact that the weather seemed to be driving them toward its shadowy entrance.

“Please, I'm so— Oh!” She gave a muffled gasp. Her fingertips dug hard into his ribs.

“What is it?” he asked, alarmed.

She gripped him harder, writhing. “The baby!” she gasped. “I—think it's coming!”

C
HARITY CLENCHED
her jaws, biting back the cry that pushed upward into her throat. She could feel the resistance in Black Sun's body as he halted the horses. She could hear the unspoken dread in the low rasp of his breathing. Oh, why couldn't the baby have waited? Why did her pains have to start tonight, in this miserable storm, with no one but an Indian brave to help her?

“Are you sure it's the baby?” He spoke above the hissing sound of the rain.

“Yes. I'm sure. I'm…wet.” She hoped he would understand and not point out that they were both soaked from the rain. The surge of warm fluid between her thighs had come just before the first pain stabbed through her body. Charity knew far too little about having babies, but what was happening to her could hardly be mistaken for anything else.

“How soon, do you think?” He glanced ahead, then to his left, as if torn between one danger and another. Where her fingertips rested on his ribs, Charity could feel the rapid pulsing of his heart.

“I don't
know!
” She found herself wanting to pum
mel his body with her fists. “It's my first baby! How could you expect me to know something like that?”

The words Black Sun muttered under his breath could have been a curse or a prayer. “Hold on tight,” he snapped, swinging his mount to the left. As he kicked the horse to a gallop, Charity saw that they were headed toward an inky shadow that spilled across the foothills. Seen through the thick curtain of rain, it slowly took on the form of a deep cleft, then a canyon with a wide mouth and steep, rocky sides.

Charity was trying to pick out more details when another pain knifed through her. She gasped, her body doubling against his back.

“Hold on!” Black Sun spoke quietly but his voice was hoarse with strain. How much did this man know about delivering babies? Not a great deal, she suspected. Right now, Charity would have given anything for the presence of her grandmother, or even one of the hatchet-faced sisters who'd perished beside their wagons in a hail of arrows. She could only hope the birth would be easy and natural. If there were complications, she and the baby might not live to see morning.

Her fingers pressed into the hard knots of Black Sun's shoulder muscles as she wondered what dying might be like. Pain, she imagined, perhaps terrible pain, and after that a feeling of blessed release, or maybe sadness at all one was leaving behind. Then darkness, to be followed by whatever came next. Dying might not be so bad after all.

But no, she wasn't ready to die—she who had tasted so little of life. Whatever this man must do to save her and her baby, she would see that he did it. If she had to scream at him, curse at him, threaten him…

Slowly the gripping agony slid away from her. They were in the canyon now, with tall stone buttresses rising on both sides of them. How quiet it was here. Even the rain had become a fine, silent mist. High above them, the night sky flowed like a river of thinning clouds. Stars emerged as the storm moved eastward, and now the pale rim of the moon peeped over the rim of the canyon, flooding their path with a ghostly silver light.

The packhorse snorted, the sound exploding in the stillness. Charity could hear the splash and gurgle of a stream and the whispering chirp of crickets. Black Sun had not spoken but he seemed unusually anxious, leaning forward on the horse, his eyes peering into the darkness. Was there some danger in this oddly peaceful place? Something she didn't understand?

Charity had no more time to wonder. Another contraction seized her like a brutal fist closing tight around her, squeezing, pushing and twisting. Her hands seized Black Sun's shoulders from behind, gripping them to hold back a scream. “Please,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “Please, can't we stop now? I need to get down! I can't have this baby on horseback!”

“As soon as we come to a good, safe place.” He maneuvered the horses around a cabin-size boulder that blocked their path. “If they find us in here—”

“No!”
Pushing against his back, Charity slid across the horse's rump and dropped to the ground. As she landed on the damp moss, her knees buckled beneath her. Burned, soaked and hurting, she huddled on the earth in a ball of misery, her arms clutching her swollen belly. Her eyes glared up at him.

“
This
is a good, safe place,” she hissed. “And if it's not, it will just have to do! I'm not going another step!”

 

B
LACK
S
UN STARED
down at her, amazed that such a small, punished body could endure with such determination. She reminded him of a cornered bobcat, wounded and chased down by hunters, spitting defiance with the last of its strength. But he had no mind to argue with what she'd said. Charity Bennett was not going another step.

Dismounting, he glanced around at the rocky glade where she'd forced him to stop. They could do worse than this, he decided. The giant boulder they'd just made their way around formed a barrier against anyone approaching from the mouth of the canyon. The stream was nearby, and the overhanging willows and alder trees, heavy with catkins, offered shelter from the wind and rain.

With a sigh of resignation, Black Sun tethered the horses and removed the bundled supplies and the rawhide-covered packsaddle from the little brown pinto. He had hoped to get the woman back to her people, but that was no longer possible. Her life and her child's life
were in his hands now. If things went badly, their deaths would be on his conscience to the end of his days.

By the time he turned back toward Charity, the contraction appeared to have passed. In the light of the cloud-veiled moon, she looked like a spirit child, so small, pale and vulnerable that her helplessness tore at his heart. But he could not allow himself to feel any softness toward this woman, Black Sun reminded himself. She was one of the
Nih'oo'oo,
the spider people, and bringing her to this canyon was a violation of all respect for sacred places. There would be a price to pay for what he'd done, but for now he had no choice. He had taken pity on Charity Bennett and it was his duty to help her.

“Let me look at your burns,” he said, taking a step toward her. “Maybe I can do something for the pain.”

Charity did not answer but turned away, offering him a view of her back. Black Sun lowered himself to a crouch beside her, turning her shoulders to expose her burns to the brightest angle of the moonlight. He had glanced at her injuries earlier; but now he suppressed a gasp as he saw, in detail, the fragments of charred fabric clinging to an expanse of seared and blistered flesh as large as the span of his two hands. How had this small person endured the agony of the bouncing horse, the lashing tree branches and the roughness of his own hands? Her strength astounded him. But Charity's ordeal, he realized, had only just begun.

“How bad is it?” She spoke in a whisper.

“The burns will heal. But you will have scars.” Black Sun had once been told by a
Nih'oo'oo
trader that white women were very vain about their bodies, wanting them to be perfectly shaped and flawlessly smooth to please their men. He had expected her to be dismayed. Her edgy little laugh startled him.

“Scars? Good heavens, do you think that matters at a time like—”

Her words ended in a gasp as another birth pain seized her. Her body arched and her fingers dug into the wet grass, but she did not cry out. The
Nih'oo'oo
trader had said that white women in labor squealed like pigs. Either the man was lying, or he had never known a woman like Charity Bennett.

Moving swiftly now, he tugged the buffalo robe out of the pack and spread it at the base of a sturdy pine tree. The dry needles beneath would cushion the ground, and the spreading branches would keep out the worst of the weather. As the pain receded, she uncurled her legs, crawled onto the buffalo robe and stretched out on her side, resting with her eyes closed. Her spent, swollen body quivered with each breath.

Would she survive the night? Black Sun wondered. Would she deliver her child safely, or would he find himself digging a grave by the light of dawn? His own people laid their honored dead beneath the sky, but whites, he knew, required burial in the earth. If Charity died, he would prepare such a grave to honor her courage.

But this was no time to think of death. Such thoughts only invited the gloomy spirits to come and lurk in the darkness, waiting to snatch fragile spirits in their greedy claws and carry them away. Charity Bennett was a fighter, and he was here to help her live, not to watch her die.

Images of his battered, bleeding mother and his beautiful wife rose in his mind. Both of them had died in agony and he had been helpless to save them. Now Black Sun forced those images back into the shadows of his memory. The past was the past and he could not change it. He could only pray for the skill and luck to pull this brave white woman and her child from the claws of death.

Charity was still resting, so he put himself to the task of gathering herbs to soothe her burned back. Yarrow would be best if he could find some. It was early in the season for the feathery green leaves to be sprouting, but maybe in this sheltered canyon, close to water…

The spring was only a few paces away. At the base of a decaying stump, where the midday sun had warmed the soil, he found a clump of the precious yarrow sprouts, enough for a generous fistful of soft green leaves. Where there were these, there would be more, Black Sun told himself. At first light he would look for them—if Charity Bennett was still alive.

He returned to the pine tree to find her on her knees, doubled over in pain. Black Sun dropped to a crouch beside her. He was hesitant to touch her, for fear that
he might startle her, but one small hand flashed out and caught his wrist in a frenzy of need. The fingers squeezed and kneaded his flesh, blunt nails digging into his skin.

Tentatively he stroked the soggy mat of her hair. “It's all right,” he found himself murmuring. “I won't let anything happen to you, Charity Bennett. I'll take care of you and the baby for as long as you need me…”

The sound of his own words frightened and astonished him. What sort of craziness was this? He owed nothing to this woman. In the eyes of his people, she was not even a human being. In his own eyes, she was a member of the same race as the drunken monster who'd destroyed his mother. But as he squatted beside her, stroking her hair, the desire to protect her was like a blazing fire inside him.

Her grip on his wrist eased as her pain receded. The silvery eyes that looked up at him were calm, almost cold. “Why would you say such a thing, Black Sun? I can tell you have no love for my people—and as for me, I'm nothing but a burden and a danger to you. You could have ridden away and left me to die. Why didn't you?”

“Because you needed my help.” The words came without hesitation. “Taking pity on those in need is the way of my people.”

A little smile tugged at her childlike mouth. “Then you are like the good Samaritan,” she said. “Do you know the story?”

He frowned as the memory emerged from the past—the thick, leather-bound book in his stepfather's cabin; the pages filled with columns of tiny print. He remembered chapters and verses. And he remembered the stories. So many stories.

“I have read your Christian Bible,” he said. “But I am not a Christian.”

Again he saw the smile, as brief and enchanting as the flicker of a butterfly's wing. “As I recall, neither was the…Samaritan.”

By the time the last word was spoken, Charity was in the grip of another pain. While her frenzied fingers clutched his upper arm, Black Sun began to prepare the yarrow for her burns. Since he had no grinding stone, he chewed the leaves lightly between his teeth, then mixed them with water to make a lumpy paste in the palm of his hand.

“Have you…ever…helped with a baby before?” she asked, her teeth clenched.

Black Sun hesitated, wondering how much he should tell her. “Once,” he said at last. “My mother— I tried my best to help her. But I was only a boy. There was nothing I could do.”

“She died?” Charity whispered the question. Her fingers had begun to relax their grip on his arm.

“Turn around,” Black Sun said. “I'm going to put this poultice on your burns.”

With a shudder of release, she turned away from him, exposing the length of her back. There was no
need to cut away her dress or the undergarment beneath, since the cloth had burned through. She winced at the first touch of the mashed yarrow. Then, as the herb's cooling effects began to work, her breath eased out in a broken little sigh. “The pains are getting worse,” she murmured. “I'm hoping it won't be much longer.”

“People say that first babies can take a long time.” Black Sun tried to sound calm and confident, hiding his fear as he dabbed the yarrow paste across the backs of her shoulders. “Your baby may be getting ready to give you a lesson in patience.”

“Will I have to lie on my back when the baby comes?” Her question sounded as if she'd been thinking about it for a long time. “With the burns, I don't know if I can…” She glanced away from him, as if suddenly aware that she'd crossed a line, discussing such an intimate subject with a man who was not her husband.

But this was no time to be proper, Black Sun told himself. Charity was close to giving birth, with no woman or doctor to help her. It was important that they learn to speak frankly with one another.

“Among my people, women squat to give birth,” he said. “The earth pulls the baby down, which makes it come easier.”

“I understand, but what an odd idea. I don't know if I can—” She gasped as another pain took her. This time her groping fingers found his hand, squeezing it
so hard that Black Sun could feel his knucklebones cracking together. Her hands were surprisingly strong, the palms and fingers lightly callused. Her skin was cold, and he found himself wishing he could build a fire to warm her. But that would be too risky. The
Siksika
could be near enough to see the smoke.