Winter's Touch (17 page)

Two Feathers nodded as though in agreement with Long Chin. “About what are you troubled, cousin?”

Frowning, Long Chin looked across the fire at Two Feathers. “You saw the white man carry Winter Fawn from camp, and from that we assumed he took her against her will.”

Again Two Feathers nodded.

Crooked Oak did not like the direction of their thoughts. “Of course she was taken against her will,” he asserted. “She was bloody and unconscious, was she not?”

“She was,” Two Feathers confirmed.

“Yes,” Crooked Oak said. “About this we are all troubled, as we should be. That is why we are here. To find her and bring her back. And to kill the white man. But now his death will not be only to avenge our fallen comrades. Now he must die for daring to take one of our own away from us.”

“But today, when we saw them,” Long Chin said, “she did not look as though she was being forced. She rode behind him. When she saw us, she did not jump down and run to us for help. She clung to the white man and rode off with him.”

A murmur rose around the fire as the others agreed with him.

“You are mistaken,” Crooked Oak said heatedly.

Red Bull, who, along with Spotted Calf, could always be counted on to side with Crooked Oak, waved his hand in dismissal of the others. “The white man is no fool. He knows we would not chance hurting her. He surely had tied her hands around him so she could not get down. Would not any of us have done that very thing with a captive?”

“This is true.” Spotted Calf nodded slowly. “This is surely what has happened.”

Talks Loud grunted. “She did not look tied to me. I say we would have been better off to go back for the white man’s wagon instead of chasing him. The goods in the wagon would mean more to Our People than the fate of one girl.”

“No!” In a surge of rage, Crooked Oak jumped to his feet. “Winter Fawn is not just any girl. She is mine!”

Talks Loud chuckled. “So you wish, my friend, but her father has not agreed, and is not likely to now.”

Crooked Oak ground his teeth and stared up at the stars to keep from shouting that he had no intention of worrying about Red Beard’s agreement, for he intended to kill the man. But he swallowed the words. It would not do to speak them in front of Two Feathers. Two Feathers held no true affection for Red Beard, but because of Winter Fawn and Hunter, the white man was considered family. To Two Feathers, family was sacred.

“She will be mine,” Crooked Oak said tightly, fists clenched at his sides. “She will be mine.”

Winter Fawn woke deep in the night. At first she was startled to feel the heat at her side and a heavy weight draped across her. Then she realized.

Carson.

A slow sigh slipped from between her lips. This, then, was what it felt like to lie next to a man. She’d had no idea anything could be so wonderful. Being held in his arms on horseback had been pleasurable—as pleasurable as possible with her wounds plaguing her. But this, despite the wounds, was a feeling she would treasure for the rest of her life. Such warmth. Such comfort. Yet there was tension in her, too, from lying beside him. A tension she did not understand. If only they could stay like this, she and this stranger whose eyes seemed to hold her destiny, until she could fathom this tight, bewildering yearning that tried to edge out the comfort.

But if they did not get away from Crooked Oak, she reminded herself, her white man’s destiny could prove to be tragically short.

Again she thought,
I’m slowing him down.

She had tried to do something about that last night when they’d been trapped among the rocks. She had tried, and failed.

Or had she failed? She had placed her hand on the front wound. Carson had said it looked good. It had not bled again, nor had any stitches pulled loose as they had in the back. Maybe…

She would try again, on the wound at her back this time. She must be stronger. She must not slow Carson down. She must not be a burden to him as he fled for his life. It was not only his life at stake, but the lives of his sister and daughter, as well, for who would care for them without Carson?

It might also mean Winter Fawn’s life, she admitted. She had told everyone that Crooked Oak would not harm her, but that wasn’t necessarily true. As her uncle, Two Feathers might be counted on to keep her safe. Maybe. Although he’d never been fond of her because of her father.

But Crooked Oak had seen her freeing Carson from his bonds in camp. And today he had seen her clinging to Carson’s back as they rode away from the others.

There was every possibility that he would want no more to do with her because she was helping Carson.

That suited Winter Fawn just fine.

But it also meant that her safety lay with Carson. And as long as she was such a burden to him, neither of them was safe.

Yet even with so much at stake, she was afraid to try to heal her own wounds. This was not like the other times, like Carson’s head earlier, or Bess’s two nights ago, or her grandmother’s aching shoulders every winter. Those had been compulsions to her. She had been drawn by a force beyond herself to touch, to heal. This time, it would be deliberate.

She remembered the first time, the rabbit. That, too, had been directed by some unknown force within her. She’d had no idea what was about to happen. She remembered what her father had said about it afterward as if it were yesterday.

Never, ever, do anything like that again! Do ye hear me, lassie? Never!

His voice echoed in her mind. That was the first time she’d ever seen her father truly enraged, and he’d been enraged at her. The memory still had the power to make her tremble. She had been twelve that spring day when he had brought her the rabbits to skin and roast. Her mother had been dead barely a week, and Winter Fawn had become the woman of her father’s lodge. But not for much longer, she knew. She would go soon to live in the lodge of her mother’s mother, for it was not proper for a young woman, which Winter Fawn was soon to become, to live alone with a man, not even her own father.

Knowing that this time next spring she would not be living with the father she adored, Winter Fawn had eagerly accepted the chore of skinning and gutting the rabbits. She had stroked the nearest one, thinking that she would use the soft fur to line the inside of her father’s moccasins before next winter. He always complained in winter that his feet were cold.

Or perhaps she would save the furs until she had enough to line his coat.

She stroked the rabbit’s side one more time, then clasped it by the head to bring it closer.

Her palm, pressed against the rabbit’s head, began to tingle. At first it tickled, and she thought it was merely the fur, teasing her skin. But then there was heat, and the tingling grew sharper.

She wanted to pull her hand away. The sensation running up her arm felt too much like that which she had felt on the hilltop just before the lighting struck and killed her mother.

But she found she could not move her hand.

Then a sense of pain, sharp and centered on her left temple, and fear, overwhelming fear, assailed her. Yet it was not her pain, not her fear, even though she felt them both strongly. They belonged to the rabbit.

Winter Fawn had no understanding of how she knew such a thing, she simply
knew
. The rabbit was not dead. She could feel the wound where the rock from her father’s sling had struck its head. The same spot on her head was where the pain centered.

If only she could remove her hand, she knew the pain in her head would cease. But a new knowledge assailed her then. If she removed her hand, the rabbit would die. If she left it there, the rabbit would live.

Such a thing, as far as Winter Fawn knew, was impossible. Yet the knowledge was there inside her, telling her it was true. She tried to look at her father—could he tell her what was happening?—but her eyelids grew weighted, too heavy to hold open. Her heartbeat raced in time with the rabbit’s, but her breathing slowed. The back of her neck prickled as though she sensed someone were staring at her.

Gradually the pain began to fade, and with it, the heat in her hand, and the tingling. Her heartbeat and breathing returned to normal while her strength, her energy drained away. She felt incredibly tired. Exhausted. She could not keep her eyes open. Beneath her hand, the rabbit’s eyes popped open, its nose twitched. And in a flash, it rolled to its feet and dashed away into the bushes at the edge of camp. Darkness swirled, and Winter Fawn tumbled down, down, down into its welcoming depths.

When she woke, her father was there. “Father? What happened?”

Because she asked in the language of her mother, which she was most familiar with, her father had answered in kind. “You do not remember?”

With a start, Winter Fawn sat up and frowned down at the lone dead rabbit beside her. “The rabbit, it was not dead. I put my hand on it and felt its pain. It hurt me, but then it didn’t, and the rabbit got up and ran away.” She looked up at her father, confused. “Did you see, Father? What does it mean?”

Her father had shuddered. When he spoke, his voice was more harsh than she had ever heard. “It means trouble. Never, ever, do anything like that again! Do ye hear me, lassie? Never!”

Hurt by his harshness, Winter Fawn shrank in upon herself. “I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t know what I did.”

“Promise me, Winter Fawn. You must promise never to touch a wound again. Not ever, do you understand?
Promise.
”

“I promise.” Her heart thundered behind her ribs. Her stomach knotted. “Don’t be angry, Father. I did not mean to take the rabbit’s wound away.”

Her father had gripped her shoulders tightly. “You must keep this promise, Winter Fawn. You must.” His fingers bruised her with their strength. “You must tell no one, not ever.”

“Not even Grandmother?”

“No one,” he cried, shaking her for emphasis. “Say it. Say you will tell no one.”

“It is to be a secret then?”

“More than a secret,” he said desperately. “Swear on your mother’s soul that you will tell no one what happened here today. No one must ever know. Promise me.”

Terrified by the intensity in his eyes, she had promised.

And he had left. The very next day, as thunder had boomed across a sky turned dark and ugly, he had flung his possibles bag over his shoulder, picked up his rifle, and ridden out of camp without a word as to when he would return.

He had not returned. Not that spring, not that summer, nor the next fall or the following spring.

Finally, during that next summer, he came. He stayed three days and left. That had set the pattern of his visits. Sometimes in spring, when their band was camped in the foothills of the great mountains. Sometimes in the summer when they joined the rest of the tribe along the Arkansas River to hunt the buffalo. He would stay a few days, then leave again.

It was her fault, she knew, although she had never understood why he’d grown so angry, why what she had done had made him leave. She had never dared to ask him about it during any of his brief visits for fear he might stop coming altogether. She had hoped and prayed that he had forgotten the incident and that someday he would come back to live again with Our People.

He did not know that she had used this strange gift secretly for others. She could not tell him such a thing. She had never done it on purpose. But sometimes, when she was near someone in pain, it was as if she stood to one side and watched herself touch the source of the pain and take it away. There seemed to be no way to stop herself from doing it. Her hand to a wound was like water rushing downhill. Unless something large and forceful were thrown in her path, nothing could stop her. Just as earlier this night when she had pressed her hand to the gash on Carson’s head.

She had been certain, to be sure, to pull her hand away before the wound could completely disappear. She had gotten good at that over the years. She had known that she would never be able to explain if a wound were to disappear. Her secret would be out then. She had, against her will, broken her promise to her father to never do such a thing again, but she had kept her word to keep it a secret.

Perhaps some day she would learn why such a wondrous gift must not be revealed. Perhaps some day she would find the courage to ask her father. But until then, she would keep it secret, as he had bade.

Keeping her gift a secret meant she could not heal her own wounds now, even if she were able. Not completely. Carson would surely want to inspect beneath the bandage in the morning to make certain his new stitches had not pulled loose in the night. But she might be able to partially heal it so that she would not slow him down with her pain and her fever.

So she would try again.

He lay against her good side. All she needed to do was get her hand beneath her and press her palm against the wound there.

She moved her arm and reached for the wound in her back.

Lying on his side next to her, Carson shifted and pulled her closer.

Winter Fawn stiffed. Was he waking?

His warm breath teased the sensitive skin at her temple. Oh, how wonderful that felt. Then his nose brushed her there and he murmured.

“Carson?” she whispered softly, cautiously.

His knee shifted across her thigh, but his breathing remained slow and deep.

Still, she waited several long moments to make certain he was not awake.

Finally assured that he would not know what she did, she pressed her palm over the pad covering her wound.

Carson woke some time before dawn, startled to realize he was not alone in his bedroll. He stiffened and reached for the revolver he never slept without.

It wasn’t there. No revolver.

Heart pounding, he groped beside the blanket and touched his rifle.

Then memory returned, and he relaxed somewhat. The warm form curled into him was not some Yankee come to kill him in his sleep. It was Winter Fawn. Firm yet soft in his arms.

Gently, so as not to wake her, he pressed his hand to her cheek. It was warm, but not hot. No fever.

Thank you, God.
He didn’t know what he would have done if she’d been out of her head with fever.