Yellowstone Romance Series - Bundle (# 2-5) (109 page)

“I know. The village has to be on the way. Right now, I’m guessing we’re only another couple of days away.”

“What if Elk Runner won’t let us leave?”

“I’ll try and convince him again that Daniel and Aimee are in danger, and we need to see them.”

They walked for the remainder of the day. The Indians moved tirelessly through the endless forest, stopping only once along a shallow creek to drink some water and share strips of dried meat and handfuls of a mixture of nuts and berries.

Dan grinned at Jana’s dismayed look at the food in her hands. He leaned toward her and whispered in her ear. “You ought to be used to nuts by now.” They had eaten plenty on their trek through the wilderness.

“There are some nuts I’ll never get used to,” she said, and Dan clenched his jaw at the sensual teasing in her voice, and the twinkle in her eyes. He forced himself not to pull her into his arms at that moment. Her unexpected flirty side left his head spinning.

Without a proper comeback, Dan glanced up to distract himself from the images in his mind, images that included Jana’s legs wrapped around him. Elk Runner stared at them from a short distance away. The satisfied smirk on the Indian’s face reminded Dan of a fox who’d just raided a henhouse.

Chapter 23

“Are we there yet?” Jana asked listlessly. The sun had almost disappeared behind the mountains, and Dan wrapped his fingers around her hand for encouragement. She looked worn out. It had been one very long day that had started out with a terrifying encounter with those trappers.

Elk Runner and his companions had set a steady pace all day. None of them gave any indication of being tired. Dan was just about to tell Jana it shouldn’t be much longer, when his nose caught the scent of wood smoke. Dogs barked in the distance.

“I think we’ve arrived,” he said, and gave her hand a light squeeze. Jana’s head perked up, and she walked a little straighter. Coming out of the forest into a grassy clearing, a group of nine dwellings appeared. Each was constructed of wooden poles erected close together to create a cone shaped hut. Most of them were partially covered with hides, while a few were merely thatched with grasses and leafy tree branches.

Children ran from the village to meet the returning hunters. Soon, chattering kids surrounded the four men. Dan stood off to the side, and slipped his arm around the back of Jana’s waist. “Now that’s quite a homecoming,” he remarked. Several of the children spotted them, and stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed. A couple pointed and whispered. Dan distinctly heard the name White Wolf mentioned several times. One little boy, the youngest in the group who appeared to have barely learned to walk, toddled up to Dan, and pulled at his pants. All the other children fell silent.

“
Bia
,” the child cried, and stared upwards. Dan knelt to the ground to be closer to eye level with the little boy. Chubby little hands reached for Dan’s face, and the tot smacked them against Dan’s cheeks. The little smile suddenly turned upside down, and his lips quivered. The boy sobbed, but didn’t cry out loud. Dan was lost for words, or what to do. Clearly, this youngster could tell he was not the person he had at first believed him to be.

“My son, Touch the Cloud,” Elk Runner said, and grabbed hold of the toddler’s arm. In one swift move, he pulled him up and set him on his shoulder. The tot grinned again, and grabbed his father’s hair.

“He misses his true uncle,” Elk Runner said.

“I am not his uncle,” Dan said apologetically, and stood to his full height.

Elk Runner’s penetrating gaze left Dan feeling uncomfortable. These people were strongly rooted in their spiritual beliefs, and Dan had no way of explaining his appearance to them. If Elk Runner believed him to be a copy of Daniel that the spirits conjured up, what did he think had happened to the original? And what had Daniel done to make Elk Runner believe the spirits were punishing him in the first place?

The men dispersed with the children toward the village, where women and other adults waited. Elk Runner’s eyes lingered on Dan. It was obvious he was trying to work things out in his mind.

“Come, brother. You and your woman will eat, and I make a gift of my lodge to you. If you keep the sky people happy, perhaps they will return you to the spirit world and bring the brother I know back.”

“And how do I make the spirits happy?” Dan asked.

“By following the customs of the people.” Elk Runner looked taken aback. “One season ago, White Wolf refused to take the woman the sky people brought to him as his wife. When the time came that he realized she was meant for him, the spirits took her away again. He has never told me, but I believe he brought her back from the spirit world. Now he defies the sky people again. Perhaps they have decided that he is no longer worthy of being a Tukudeka. I cannot explain your appearance. I do not possess the gift to speak to the spirits.”

 The reaction of all the other adults in the village was the same as the hunters when Dan and Jana first came upon them in the forest early that morning. Looks of awe and disbelief showed on their faces when Elk Runner led him and Jana through the village. Jana clung to Dan’s arm like a tick on a hound.

Elk Runner led them to one of several cooking fires, and peeled his son from his shoulders. He set the boy down on the ground, who quickly toddled toward a short woman who held a flat pot made of clay in her hand. Her eyes were full of questions, looking from Elk Runner to Jana, and lingering on Dan.

“White Wolf’s spirit and his woman will stay in my lodge tonight,” Elk Runner said, addressing the woman. She nodded without speaking. Turning to Dan, he said, “This is my wife’s sister, Yellow Flower. She will prepare food for you. After you eat, this is my lodge.” He pointed to a large wickiup covered in hides. “I will speak to the elders. Perhaps they know the reason why you are here.” Without another word, he turned and headed toward several older men who stood in a half-circle, eying them curiously.

“What’s going on, Dan?” Jana asked in a hushed whisper.

“I’m not sure,” he said, expelling a lung full of air. He ran his hand through his hair.

“Are we prisoners?”

“No,” Dan laughed, and touched his hand to her back for reassurance. “We might as well make the best of it for tonight, and I’ll try and convince him again in the morning that we need to get to Daniel and Aimee’s.

The Indian woman, Yellow Flower, handed him an earthen bowl filled with some sort of soup consisting of chunks of meat, and root vegetables. Wordlessly, she walked away, the toddler at her heels. Dan sniffed. The food smelled delicious, and his mouth watered. He wasn’t going to tell Jana that she would most likely be eating marmot tonight.

“Let’s eat, then you can wash the trail dust off of you over by the creek. You might even get to sleep on something other than the hard ground tonight.”

While Jana left for the creek, Dan sought out Elk Runner. He sat in front of one of the wickiups, in animated conversation with several older men. They all looked up when Dan approached them.

“Spirit of White Wolf. The elders have agreed to welcome you as a member of our village,” Elk Runner said eagerly. “They have never seen the sky people’s power like this before. They all agree that you must do what my brother refused to do, so that my true brother can be returned to us.”

Dan’s forehead wrinkled. He was more confused than ever. “What do I have to do?” he asked.

“White Wolf must go on a hunt to gift the members of the village. He has refused to do so. The elders say that perhaps you were sent here to take my brother’s place.”

A hunt? That was it? Daniel had refused to go hunting, and now the spirits were mad at him?
Dan mentally shook his head. There had to be more to the story than that.

“I must get to the valley,” Dan said, trying again to communicate that he had to warn Daniel and Aimee.

“You cannot go there,” Elk Runner said adamantly. “I have told you this. It is because your other self did not leave the valley that the sky people are angry.”

“Your brother White Wolf and his wife, Dosa Haiwi, are in great danger if I do not warn them,” Dan said forcefully.

Elk Runner dismissed his words with a wave of his hand. “I will send word to Dosa Haiwi, but she cannot leave her lodge.” He paused and smirked. “Knowing that woman, however, she will not do what she is told. Much like my brother.” He shook his head.

Dan wanted to hit something. He was frustrated beyond belief. Daniel shouldn’t be in the valley, but Aimee couldn’t leave? What key piece of information was he missing here?

Elk Runner placed his hand on Dan’s shoulder. He looked him in the eyes, smiling. “Spirit of White Wolf. I have made a gift of my lodge to you. Do not make the same mistake my true brother made last season. This time, follow my advice and spare yourself the misery he lived with. Take your woman to your lodge. She is now your wife.”

****

Dan held the mountain sheep hide away from the wickiup, and ducked through the opening into the dwelling, letting the flap fall closed behind him. The wooden poles in the center were barely high enough for him to stand up to his full height. He ran a hand through his damp hair, some water droplets falling to his bare shoulders. He wiped at the back of his neck with the shirt he had slung over his shoulder. Washing the trail dust from his body had refreshed his tired muscles.

He squinted his eyes, and tried to focus his vision in the dim light. Outside, dusk was quickly giving way to the darkness of the evening, and it was even darker inside this hut.

“Dan, these hides are so comfortable,” Jana spoke out of the darkness. “I almost forgot what sleeping on something other than the hard ground feels like.” Dan followed the sound of her voice, and lowered himself to the ground.

“I hope there’s room enough for two,” he said, reaching out his hand. He made contact with the top of Jana’s head. Her hair was still damp from her own bath.  She moved over, and Dan settled himself next to her. She was right. The soft furs beneath him did feel mighty nice, after weeks of nothing but hard ground. He sighed contently, stretched out on the furs, and clasped his hands behind the back of his head. Jana still sat upright at his side.

He stared up at the darkness for several minutes, listening to the sounds coming from outside. The village was growing quiet. Every now and then, hushed murmurs could be heard, and a dog yipped, but everyone seemed to be settling in for the night. Dan pulled his arm from behind his head, and reached for Jana.

“Come here,” he suggested, tugging on her arm. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

She resisted for an instant, then lay down beside him, and rested her head on his arm.

“What if we’re too late?” she asked quietly. “What if something already happened to Aimee and Daniel? Why would Elk Runner think you’re another version of Daniel? Maybe you didn’t understand him correctly. Maybe Daniel is dead, and Elk Runner thinks you’re his reincarnation.”

Dan thought about what she said for a minute. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure these people believe in reincarnation. He simply sees me as someone the spirits conjured to right something that Daniel apparently did wrong, something that supposedly made the spirits mad.” He paused for a second. “At least that’s how I understood it.”

“We have to get to the valley.”

“I know. I think we’re really close. I saw a bunch of smoke plumes this afternoon to the southwest. I believe that was the Norris Geyser basin. We’re less than a day’s walk from Madison.”

Dan tightened his arm around her, and gave her a reassuring squeeze. Jana lifted her head upwards, and kissed his cheek. “We’ve almost made it,” she said wistfully. “And then we wait for Hastings, right?”

Dan’s body reacted immediately to Jana’s kiss, regardless that it was just an innocent peck. He suddenly became acutely aware of her hand that rested on his bare chest, and the nerve endings on his skin all around where she touched him sprang to life. He sucked in a breath of air, and his gut tightened at his sudden reaction.

“Yeah, then we wait for Hastings,” he managed to say between clenched teeth. He rolled slightly sideways from his back, and wrapped his other arm around Jana’s waist.

“You’ve been amazing these past weeks,” he whispered, and held her close. He slowly moved his hands up and down her back, and kneaded the tension from the muscles along her spine. Her soft moan of contentment fueled his sudden desire quicker than a raging forest fire. She relaxed and leaned into him, her body molding to his. Heat coursed through him.

 Dan leaned over her, kissed her cheek, and let his mouth glide along her jawline until he found her mouth. Slowly, deliberately, he kissed her soft lips, his tongue probing along the seam of her mouth. When Jana wound her arms around his neck, he groaned, and pulled her tightly to him. His hands roamed along her back, and worked their way under her shirt. He wanted . . . needed to feel her bare skin on his.

He slid his hands up along her ribs, molding his palms to her feminine curves. He pushed her shirt upwards, and Jana lifted her arms for him to pull it completely over her head. Dan tossed the cotton garment to the side and a hot wave of desire flushed through him. She’d acted almost flirty with him today, and memories of this morning came rushing back. Her response when he held her in that clearing by the lake, the way she’d wrapped her legs around his hips. He’d started to tell her he would never do anything she wasn’t ready for, just before those trappers interrupted them. He had wanted to tell her so much more. How much he loved her. How he couldn’t envision his life without her.