The Guardian (6 page)

Closing his eyes, Black Sun listened to the sounds of the sacred canyon—the whisper of wind through the tall stands of pine, the rustle of a wood rat in the dry leaves, the cry of a night bird and the faint, distant rumble of retreating thunder. In the world beyond these rocky ledges there was danger, deceit, rage and bloodshed. Here he felt only peace.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that Charity was still asleep; but her infant daughter was awake and looking up at him. The blazing sweetness in that calm gaze tightened a band around his heart. A wise old woman had once told him that babies came from their creator knowing all the secrets of the universe. Only as they learned the ways of earth and began to speak did they forget.

Leaning toward her, Black Sun stroked her downy pink cheek. Her skin was as soft as the muzzle of a newborn foal. What would this small one tell him if she could talk? he mused. How would she answer the questions that gnawed at his soul?

An involuntary smile teased the corners of Black Sun's mouth as he imagined what this spunky little girl would say to him. He was a man, she would declare in a voice that would sound very much like her mother's. He had strong arms, skillful hands, an adequate brain and two people who could not survive without his help. It was time he pulled his head out of the clouds and did what a man is supposed to do—provide and protect.

And she would be absolutely right. With so much to do, there was no reason to waste time on idle thoughts.

At first light tomorrow, he would set about finding a safer camp, higher in the canyon, for this temporary family of his. While he was looking, he would gather more yarrow and prepare new poultices for Charity's burns. Once she and the baby were safe and comfortable, he would make a foray out of the canyon for meat to replace the small supply he'd brought with him in his pack. If he saw signs of the
Siksika,
he might need to create a diversion to draw them away from the canyon. In the next few days, while Charity regained her strength, he would scout the landscape for the safest way out of this dangerous country.

Easing himself to his feet, Black Sun massaged the stiffness from his lower back. The desire for sleep had long since left him, but he was too restless to sit and wait for dawn. There had to be some useful thing he could do without leaving Charity and the baby unguarded.

He took a moment to check the horses. The two po
nies were drowsing contentedly where he had left them, their bellies sleek and taut with fresh spring grass. Nearby, screened by thickets of wild rose and willow, the creek splashed its way down the canyon to the valley below.

Black Sun was walking back toward the big pine tree when a stray breeze caused a willow branch to brush against his cheek. The touch triggered a chain of thoughts, ending in an awareness of something Charity's baby would surely need—something he could make while the two of them slept.

With a murmured apology to the canyon, he pulled his knife and knelt at the base of a willow clump. One by one, the blade sliced cleanly through the limber green branches, until the pile they made was large enough to fill his arms.

Feeling strangely lighthearted, he carried the willows back to the flat rock and set to work.

 

C
HARITY AWOKE
to the yellow brightness of sunlight slanting through the dark pine branches above her head. Her new daughter was already awake and squirming against her side. She was small and scrawny, but full of fight. As Charity turned toward her, feeling sore and sticky, the baby broke into a ravenous wail. Charity gathered her close and offered her a milk-swollen breast. The tiny mouth clamped onto the nipple, sucking eagerly.

Charity felt the flow of her milk as a deep, sweet
ache, all through her body. Here, then, was the new center of her existence—this demanding little miracle. Misty with love, she gazed down at the perfect little pansy face.

“I'm going to call you Annie, after my mother,” she whispered. “Hello, Annie. Welcome to the very first morning of your life.”

A slight movement caught her eye. Charity looked up to see Black Sun sitting a few paces away, on a flat rock. The morning light cast his eyes into pits of shadow beneath his straight black brows. She could read no expression in their hidden depths, but his stern mouth was slightly curved, as if in a secret smile.

Only his hands moved. His long fingers worked with mesmerizing skill, weaving green willows around the frame of something that looked like a large basket. A baby-size basket, Charity realized, measuring it with her eyes. Black Sun was making her a cradleboard.

Gratitude washed over her, flooding her with emotion. She owed this man her life and little Annie's life. And as if that weren't enough, he was making her a gift that must have taken him most of the night.

“Thank you, Black Sun,” she said softly. “Thank you for saving us, and for weaving that fine cradleboard.”

He glanced up at her, his features rearranging themselves into a scowl. “I don't expect your thanks,” he said. “I did what was needed, as I do now. When we leave this place, you'll need a cradleboard to carry the
baby. If we put her in it today, she'll become used to it, and she will learn not to cry.”

As if in defiance of his words, Annie spat out the nipple and began to howl. Pulling the buffalo robe up to her collarbone, Charity switched the baby to the other breast, where the tiny mouth clamped on hungrily. “It's natural for babies to cry,” Charity said. “All healthy babies do it.”

He shot her a dark glance. “Perhaps all white babies cry. But among my people, a crying baby can mean death to a whole village. Before we leave this place, your daughter must learn to be silent.”

His words chilled Charity's blood. She remembered a story Rueben Potter had told her about Indian women who'd smothered their newborn babies rather than let their crying betray their people to the enemy. Could she do such a thing to Annie? Her arms tightened around her tiny daughter. She had only been a mother for a few hours, but Charity knew she would die—or kill—before she let her little one come to harm.

A sense of helplessness swept over her. She had no clothes for her or for the baby, no shelter, no way to protect herself and no way to get home, wherever home was. Her survival, and her baby's, rested on the broad shoulders of this angry man who could walk away anytime he chose and leave her to die.

Black Sun hated her people. He probably hated
her.
But he was still here. He had watched over her and the baby all night—her untamed, brooding, reluctant guardian angel. That in itself was a small miracle.

Weaving the last of the willows onto the frame, he checked the rawhide lashings and laid the finished cradleboard on the rock. As he rose to his feet, his looming head and shoulders blocked the sun for a moment, casting a long shadow across her vision. An eclipse, she thought. A black sun.

“We can't stay in this spot,” he said. “Now that it's light, we'll need to move you higher in the canyon. You may have to do some climbing.” He shot her a questioning glance. Charity could almost read his thoughts. After giving birth, a woman of his own people would be strong enough to get up and do whatever was required of her. But could he expect the same of a white woman?

She returned his contemptuous look. “I'll do whatever I must to get my baby to a safe place,” she said. “When do we start?”

“I'll need to scout a trail and find a good hiding place,” he said. “It shouldn't take long. By the time the sunlight reaches that high ledge, I'll be back for you.” He pointed to a shadowed outcrop, making sure she understood. Then he pulled his long buckskin shirt over his head and tossed it at her feet. “Put this on. And keep your baby quiet. The
Siksika
could be close by. They mustn't hear you.”

He turned and melted like a shadow into the trees, leaving Charity alone. Annie had drifted into a light slumber. Placing her daughter carefully on the buffalo robe, Charity inspected the buckskin shirt Black Sun had given her.

It was a beautiful piece of work, made with skill and care. Its open front, which closed with a thin leather lacing, would make it easy for her to nurse the baby. Its fringed hem, Charity calculated, would be long enough to hang well below her knees.

Her own cotton garments were charred from the fire and soaked with sweat and blood. She peeled them off, down to her bare skin. What she wouldn't give for a bath! But this was no time to wish for what she couldn't have. She and her baby were lucky just to be alive.

Black Sun's shirt slipped easily over her head. His clean, smoky scent crept through her senses as she pulled it down over her arms and shoulders. The tanned buckskin was soft against her burned back.

Moving gingerly, she rose to her feet and pulled the long shirt down over her hips. Her legs were raw and caked with blood. Pain from yesterday's long ride shot down her thighs. Her worn high-topped boots and filthy stockings protruded below the buckskin fringe, looking as odd as a turkey's legs on a falcon. But there was nothing she could do about that now.

The baby's sky-blue eyes gazed up at her, round with curiosity. For all her discomfort, Charity could not help laughing.

“Well, what do you think of your mother, little Annie?” she asked. “Have you ever seen a sorrier-looking sight? And look where she's popped you out into the world! A wild, heathen spot in the middle of no
where, with nary a roof over your poor little head! And you don't even know enough to be miserable!”

Annie's cherry-bud mouth blew a milky bubble, as if to say that lying on a buffalo robe under a pine tree in the morning sunlight was perfectly fine. Charity's heart swelled with love.

“Don't worry, Little One,” she promised her daughter. “We'll get out of this mess somehow. And when we get back to civilization, I'm going to dress you in ribbons and lace, and you'll be the prettiest little girl in all the land!”

Annie gurgled; then, as if on a whim, she wrinkled up her face and began to yowl like a hungry young bobcat.

Remembering Black Sun's warning, Charity scooped the baby up into her arms and cradled her against the hollow of her shoulder, kissing the downy hair and patting the bony little back with her free hand.

“There, my sweet,” she soothed as Annie continued to wail. “Hush. Your mother's right here. Everything's all right.”

But as Charity glanced upward, she realized, with a lurching heart, that everything was
not
all right.

From the plain beyond the mouth of the canyon, a thin trail of smoke curled upward, rising like a long charcoal smudge against the azure sky.

B
LACK
S
UN WOUND HIS WAY
up the rocky canyon, following the course of the stream. His moccasins moved as lightly as the padded paws of a cougar, disturbing nothing that lived in the hollow between the sacred cliffs.

On his right he could hear the gurgling of water, but here the stream was overhung with a maze of vines and willows that had not been cut back in the memory of generations. To make a comfortable camp, he would need to find a level, open spot with easy access to water. There was no such place here. He would have to climb higher in the canyon.

Emerging from the trees at the top of a rock slide, he came upon exactly the kind of place he was looking for.

Above him, a silvery waterfall cascaded down the cliff. When he climbed the narrow game trail to its top, he discovered that the water flowed from a shallow pool among the rocks. On its far side, a sandy hollow beneath an overhanging ledge offered a soft bed and shelter from the weather. Aspens and willows screened
the view from below. It was perfect, like finding an unexpected gift. Even a pampered white woman like Charity could not fail to be pleased with its beauty.

Murmuring his apologies to the rocks, the trees and the water, Black Sun turned around to go back down the canyon. Only then did he see the long thread of smoke curling skyward from beyond the canyon's mouth.

Dread pushed his pulse to a gallop as he sprinted down the rock slide. He should never have left Charity alone, he berated himself. If the young
Siksika,
or others of their kind, heard the horses or the baby, their curiosity could make them reckless and bring them into the canyon. If they found her…

Black Sun forced the unthinkable images from his mind. In the eyes of his people, the woman was not even a human being, he told himself. She mattered no more to him than a white butterfly that had settled on his hand and would soon fly away, and her baby mattered even less. But as he plunged downhill, Black Sun knew beyond doubt that he would give his life to save them.

 

“H
USH
…hush, Little One…” Charity rocked Annie in the crook of her arm as her free hand fumbled to unlace the front of the buckskin shirt. The sky had darkened with roiling gray clouds that hid the face of the sun. Charity could feel her own taut nerves pulsing a subtle current of unease through her body.

“Hush…” She pulled the lacing loose and gathered Annie to her breast. The baby sucked blissfully, her crying stilled for the moment. But Charity knew she could not wait for Black Sun to return. If the smoke was coming from a Blackfoot camp, the ponies would be as much of a lure as the baby. If the Indians found the horses, they would find her and Annie, too.

Clutching the baby to her breast, she started up the slope. Beneath her boot soles, the ground was covered with layers of wet, decaying leaves. With each step, the surface threatened to slither away beneath her feet and send her sliding back down to the canyon floor.

Her weight loosened a treacherous patch and she stumbled, scrambling and flailing. Her free hand closed around the slender trunk of an aspen. The shoulder-wrenching grip stopped her fall, but Annie lost her nipple and broke into an indignant wail.

Charity's boots dug into the earth as she clawed her way to a level spot and sank back against the hillside. The baby regained her place and chomped happily as they rested in the dappled shadows. A magpie scolded from an elderberry thicket.

Even here they were far from safe, Charity knew. It would be foolhardy not to keep moving. But she was so sore and tired. Her legs quivered beneath her with every step, and the buckskin shirt, as soft as it was, chafed her burned back every time she moved her arms. Only a moment, she promised herself. She would rest
until her head stopped spinning and her heart stopped pounding. Then she would push on.

Looking back down the slope, she could see the trail her feet had gouged in the hillside. She could see the two horses and the sodden dress, the buffalo robes, the packsaddle and the cradleboard she had left nearby.

Charity groaned. In her panic, she'd ignored the signs of her presence that were strewn all over the ground. Then she'd clambered up the hillside, leaving a trail that any child could follow.

What had she been thinking? Lying beneath the buffalo robe in the morning sunlight, she had promised Annie that she would get them both to safety. Then, as soon as she was on her feet, she had made a careless mistake that could get them both killed.

No more mistakes, Charity vowed. For her daughter's sake and her own, she would learn to survive in this wilderness. She would learn to hide her trail and to move through the trees without a sound. She would learn to find food and shelter and to fight, even to kill any enemy that threatened her baby. When Black Sun returned, she would ask him to be her teacher. Meanwhile, she needed to do something about the things she had left behind at the bottom of the canyon.

Annie had spat out the nipple and drifted off to sleep with a milky little smile on her face. Charity weighed the idea of leaving her in a cradle of leaves on the hillside, then decided it would be too risky. Whatever happened, she wanted her baby at her side.

Squaring her jaw, she gripped the nearest sapling with her free hand and began inching sideways down the hill. She was not quite halfway to the bottom, still in the trees, when a slight movement at the edge of the clearing caught her gaze. Charity froze, afraid to breathe, as a tall figure emerged from the willows. Her heart began to beat again as she recognized Black Sun.

His gaze darted around the clearing. She knew he was looking for her, but only when his furrowed mahogany face flashed upward, catching the light, did she realize how worried he must be. Charity swallowed the shout that rose in her throat. She'd made one foolish mistake. She would not make another.

He saw her then. The relief that brightened his features swiftly darkened into annoyance. “What are you doing up there?” he snapped, reaching up to help her. “I told you to wait for me.”

Charity nodded in the direction of the smoke. His breath released with a little catch, as if he'd decided that arguing would only waste precious time.

His big hand pulled her down the slope. Grimly silent, he led her across the clearing to the spot where he'd emerged from the willows. There she saw a narrow, winding path that bore faint imprints of delicately pointed hoof marks—a deer trail, she realized. Why hadn't she thought to look for one instead of blundering up the untracked hillside? One lesson learned, she told herself.

“Follow this,” he said in a rough whisper. “I'll clear
out the camp and catch up with you. If you get as far as the rock slide, stop there and wait for me—and keep the baby quiet.”

As if on cue, Annie opened her eyes, crinkled her little red face and began to fuss. Black Sun muttered under his breath as Charity spun away from him and fled up the trail, clasping the baby to her shoulder.

Where the trail wound through the willows, the way was steep and overgrown. Branches lashed her face and arms as she climbed, gaining ground but tiring rapidly. Annie's mouth had found a fold in the buckskin shirt and she was sucking contentedly on the soft leather. The shirt would taste of salt and smoke, like Black Sun's skin, Charity thought. Because of the shirt, Black Sun's own unique smell and taste would become a part of Annie's deepest memory.

It would become part of her own memory, as well.

By the time the trail leveled out, Charity's lungs were heaving. She leaned against a boulder to rest, fearful that if she sat she might not have the strength to stand again.

Through the screen of budding aspens, she could look down the slope to the hollow, where Black Sun had bundled up her dress, the buffalo robes and the packsaddle with its contents and placed them behind the flat rock. Now he was dragging a broken branch over the ground and up the hillside to cover their tracks. Another lesson learned, Charity thought, watching as he led the two ponies in circles over that same ground
so that the prints of their hooves obscured the marks of the branch. By the time he was finished, the hollow that had been Annie's birthplace looked as untouched as when they'd come upon it.

She waited, expecting him to herd the horses up the trail and brush out their tracks behind them, but what Black Sun did next surprised and dismayed her. Standing on the flat rock, he called the two ponies to him. They came forward at the sound of his voice, snorting softly, their ears pricking forward.

Black Sun stroked each horse affectionately. Bending down, he slipped the braided tethers from their necks. At last, with a final murmured word, he slapped their hindquarters and sent them trotting toward the mouth of the canyon.

Charity stared after them in shocked silence. What had he done? They needed those horses. How else were they going to get away from the canyon and make the long journey home? Fear, distrust and exhaustion welled up in her and flooded over. By the time Black Sun caught up with her, she was beside herself.

“Why did you turn those horses loose?” she demanded. “Now we're stranded here with no way to leave!” Her throat jerked tight as a new fear struck her. She gazed up at him, clutching the baby protectively in her arms. “Am I your prisoner, Black Sun? Is this what you've intended all along, to keep me here and use me any way you like? Was that why you chased the horses away, so I couldn't steal one and escape?”

He glared at her, as tall and cold and angry as the thunder clouds that now filled the sky above the canyon. “Your fear is foolish,” he said in an icy voice. “I turned the horses loose so the
Siksika
wouldn't hear them and come after us. When you're strong enough to leave this place, I will find them again or steal others. As for my taking you prisoner to use you—” He looked at her as if she had just slithered out from under a rotting log. “What use could you be to me? You can't hunt or dress skins. You can't make roots into stew or put up a teepee. And, believe me, I have no desire to sleep with a white woman.”

Charity felt the color rise in her face, flooding her cheeks with hot crimson. His insult deserved a resounding slap in the face, but she could hardly afford to alienate the man at such a dangerous time. “In other words, I'm nothing but a burden to you,” she snapped.

“Your words, not mine.”

“Then why did you help me?”

“Because you needed help.” Something flickered in the coppery depths of his eyes. “But if I'd known how much trouble you would give me, Charity Bennett, I might have gone away and left you for the ravens.”

Charity lowered her gaze, feeling like a scolded child. This man had risked his life to save her from the Blackfoot. He had saved her again when he'd brought Annie into the world. Reason told her she had every reason to trust him.

But when Black Sun had turned the horses loose, all
the old fears had boiled up inside her and she had lashed out at him. Even now, as he loomed above her, she felt those same fears knotting in the pit of her stomach.

Why? Charity asked herself. Had her strict upbringing and loveless marriage steeled her against trusting an act of simple kindness? Was she fearful because her good Samaritan was a member of the same race as the savages who had murdered her husband and companions? Or was it simply that she felt lost, helpless and at the mercy of this fiercely gentle giant of a man?

Whatever the reason, Charity had long since learned to trust her instincts. Now that she was a mother, with a child to protect, she could not lower her guard, even with Black Sun. Her first duty was to take care of Annie and to get her to safety. She could not let misplaced trust open them both to betrayal and harm.

As if roused by the thought of danger, Annie began to cry again. A pained look crossed Black Sun's face. Lowering the bundled gear to the ground, he held out his hands. “Give her to me,” he said.

Charity's arms tightened around her baby as Rueben's story flashed through her mind—the Indians who'd smothered their babies to keep them still. She would be skewered alive before she would let such a thing happen to Annie.

With a sigh, Black Sun dropped to one knee and freed the cradleboard from the bundle. Folding the
smallest of the buffalo robes, he tucked it into the willow frame to make a soft lining.

“
Now
give her to me.” The sternness in his voice bordered on contempt, as if he were thinking,
Doesn't this white woman know anything about babies?

Charity's legs quivered beneath the fringe of the buckskin shirt as she placed Annie into the bowl of his hands. Black Sun gathered the tiny, straining body against his shoulder, stroking Annie's back and chanting low, musical words in her ear—words that sounded more like chattering birds and the rush of water than human speech. Almost at once Annie stopped fussing and settled against his warm, golden skin. Her mouth stretched open in a drowsy little yawn.

Still crooning in his own language, Black Sun eased Annie away from his shoulder and lowered her into the cradleboard. She gazed up at him, mesmerized by his voice and his eyes as he packed a layer of soft moss around her legs and bottom, then pulled the edges of the buffalo skin around her and laced it tightly in place, all the way up to her shoulders.

When he had finished, Annie was so snugly bound that only her head and neck were free. Strangely enough, she did not seem to mind. She lay contentedly in her tight wrappings, gazing up at the trees with serene blue eyes.

On her way west, Charity had seen Indian babies bundled in such a fashion and thought it a quaint but harmless custom. But seeing her own precious child trussed like a sausage was quite another matter.

“Merciful heaven, she has no room to move!”

“Did she have room to move in the days before she was born?” Black Sun retorted as if he were speaking to a backward child. “Look at her. Is she in pain? Is she crying? Babies are used to having no space around them. They feel safe when—” He broke off, raising a finger to his lips as a signal for silence.