Peter pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his sunburnt nose and nearly choked on his own words. “That’s …that’s right, Captain. Tom told me about four hours ago that he was taking Teddy … ah, Miss Gordon …upriver for some privacy, since there were no trees along the bank. Nobody’s seen either of them since.” As if for reassurance, he turned to O’Fallon, then faced Blade again. “But they should be all right, sir. I’ve told them before that if they ever get lost they should stay put until somebody finds them.”
“Then let’s pray we find them before someone else does, Lieutenant,” Blade snapped. Grabbing his rifle, he hurried from the tent with the two men at his heels. He scanned the busy campsite. “Has Conyers returned yet?”
O’Fallon shook his head. “Negative, sir.”
“Then send Guion to find him.” Blade checked his carbine as he strode toward the hobbled livestock. “I want Conyers to follow me as quickly as possible. I’m going to pick up the Gordons’ trail. Let’s hope to hell I can find it before dark. If I’m not back by nightfall, start a roaring blaze for a signal. And inform Lieutenant Fletcher that I’m leaving. He’ll be in charge if anything else comes up.” He glanced at his aide-de-camp. “Haintzelman, you come with me.”
Even in the fading light, Blade easily found their bathing spot. Theodora’s laundry, dry now, waved like flags from the bushes, and he touched the lacy chemise with anxious fingers. The image of her wading into the clear stream rose before him, and the possibility that someone had discovered her swimming there sent a wrench of foreboding through his gut. He forced himself to reason calmly. If the Gordons had taken time to bathe and do their laundry, they couldn’t have gone too far.
Ruthlessly, Blade smothered his growing dread as he rapidly gathered up her things, folded them, and put them in his saddlebags.
“They were here for a while, Lieutenant,” he called to the young officer seated on his horse nearby. “Looks like Tom swam over by those rocks while Miss Gordon was doing her laundry. Then they both climbed up the bank. No sign of a struggle.”
“Shall I get some men to fan out and search the bank, Captain?” Peter asked as he turned his mount.
“No, wait. I’ll try to pick up their trail first. I don’t want a bunch of damn fools stomping around in the grass, destroying all trace of them.” He glanced at Peter. “Try firing your rifle again. They could be fairly close.”
Haintzelman pulled his carbine from its scabbard and pointed it skyward. They waited hopefully, but the explosion brought no answering reply.
Studying the scarred turf along the stream, Blade followed their footsteps. He knew they’d started off spontaneously, for though Theodora had been fully clothed, Tom had been bare foot and dripping wet as he clambered up the ravine and then sat down on its ridge to pull on his boots. The earth was torn where they’d pulled up botanical specimens.
Blade stood with War Shield’s reins held loosely in his gloved hands. He scanned the bank, which rose in a gentle slope to the rolling grassland that surrounded them. “Looks like they went flower hunting. Ever read the story of Hansel and Gretel, Lieutenant?”
Peter grinned as comprehension dawned. “Then all we have to do is follow the trail of broken plants?”
“That’s all. The hard part’s doing it in the dark.”
By now the light was nearly gone. Blade led War Shield up the slope and onto the plain, the young officer following close behind. Blade knew the flatness was a deception, for the prairie was pocked with ridges, gullies, and ravines through which the greenhorns could wander for miles, unseen from afar even in the daylight. There was no method to their hike; they seemed to have cut back and forth across the ground at whim, looking ahead only as far as their impulsive noses.
At last they heard the crack of a rifle behind them. Haintzelman turned to face the captain. Peter’s hair had been bleached to white from the sun, and in contrast to his dark blue uniform, it and his pale face were all that were visible now in the inky darkness. “It could be them, sir.”
“No, that was Conyers’s Kentucky rifle.” Blade fired his carbine, reloaded, and sat back in the saddle, waiting impatiently for the scout to overtake them. The night was their enemy as much as the Pawnee, and he chafed at his inability to continue trailing the missing twins. He knew he had to find them fast.
Although there was no moon that night, Zeke followed the sound of the blast like a hound scenting a coon.
“Any luck, Cap’n?” he called. He was no more than a dark shape against the horizon.
Frustrated, Blade leaned forward and patted War Shield’s neck. The great beast stamped his hooves and shook his head fretfully, jingling the harness in the quiet evening. “No. It took too much time following their trail in the dark. I kept losing it and had to go back over the same damn ground all over again.”
“Tarnation, Blade, you’d have to be a mountain cat and follow the trail with yore nose in this light.” Conyers pulled his roan alongside the gray stallion and pushed his hat back on his head. “No response a’tall to yore shots?”
Blade shook his head, trying in vain to see into the darkness. “None. They’ve been gone for over six hours now. No telling how far they’ve traveled.” He fought to keep his voice detached. The thought of Theodora in the hands of hostile Indians chilled the blood in his veins.
Beside them, Peter stirred in his saddle as he compulsively shifted the stock of his carbine back and forth in its holster. “Will we go back to camp and wait till daylight, sir?”
“No, we’ll stay right here, Lieutenant. No sense retracing our steps tomorrow morning.” Blade dismounted and loosened War Shield’s cinch, then lifted down his saddle and blanket.
“Yo’re right there, Cap’n.” Conyers joined him. “I’ve got some jerky in my bags. Leastways we won’t go hungry.”
Blade glanced at Peter. “Gather up some buffalo chips, Haintzelman. We’ll make a fire. There’s always a chance the Gordons may see it.”
They dined on jerky washed down with water from their canteens. Then Blade sat in front of the fire and smoked a cheroot, and the sweet aroma wafted through the campsite on the clean night air. He listened to every noise that came from the wilderness around them, the image of two frightened young people, alone and unprotected, ever in his mind. Before eating, he’d checked his carbine and placed it on the ground beside him, then taken out a whetstone from his bag and sharpened the long blade of his bowie knife in an attempt to calm his tense nerves. Now he was quiet, just listening, as he rested one arm across an upraised knee and remembered the feel of Theodora’s sweet young arms wrapped around him .
Theodora Gordon was like no other woman he’d ever met. And he’d known plenty of them. Before she charged into his life like a green-eyed dervish, he’d thought there were only two kinds of unattached Eastern females: those who were fascinated by the hidden savagery they suspected lay beneath the surface of his fine West Point manners, and those who looked down on him with pointed distaste, openly contemptuous of his mixed blood. The first kind bored him and the second left him indifferent. And both types, though they tried to hide it, were afraid of him, expecting him to treat them with harsh brutality.
But not the stubborn, stiff-necked Miss Gordon. She didn’t seem to give a damn about his Indian heritage, and he was certain at least one person had enlightened her on that score by now. Rather than being intrigued by his ferocity, she’d made it clear that she held his brute strength in disdain. He knew very little about the Quakers, but Haintzelman came from Pennsylvania, and he’d questioned the lieutenant about the sect. Peter had told him that the Society of Friends, as they called themselves, believed in turning the other cheek, no matter what the provocation. Blade scowled at the thought of what would happen if they tried that philosophy on a Pawnee war party.
And although the fiery little blonde professed to believe in peaceable conciliation, he wasn’t so sure she practiced it. When he’d thrown the horsewhip at her feet and dared her to teach him some manne
rs, it wasn’t the feeling of brotherly love he’d glimpsed in those sparkling green eyes. Hell, for a second he’d thought she was actually going to accept his challenge and try to use it on him.
“Don’t think any Indians will bother us, do you?” Peter questioned Conyers in a half-whisper.
“If ’n they do, boy, we ain’t never gonna hear ’em comin’,” the scout replied, as he lit his yellow pipe and drew on its stem. He stretched his thin legs with their long buckskin fringes toward the fire and propped his shoulders against his saddle.
Sitting cross-legged, Peter moved his rifle closer to him.
“Are they really as sneaky as the French Canucks say?”
“Yep, maybe even better.” A cloud of smoke rose on the night breeze from the corncob pipe. “Onc’t I was out on the prairie by myself, I tied my hoss to my wrist ’fore I went to sleep at night. Come mornin’, I woke up to find my mare gone. Some ornery varmint had crept up and cut the rope durin’ the night and then skeedaddled. I hadn’t heard nary a sound.”
Blade glanced at the two men with irritation. He stood and wandered to the edge of the firelight. The sight of Theodora’s flashing eyes as she’d handed him back his shirt, the feel of her soft little bottom in his cupped hand as he’d taught her how to swim, the smell of wildflowers drifting from her hair as she’d sheltered under his cape rose up to haunt him.
Does Tom still have his rifle? he questioned the silent prairie. It hadn’t been in his scabbard back at camp, or in his tent. The inability to continue the search rankled like a fresh saddle sore. From early childhood, Blade had been taught the responsibilities of a leader. A good one didn’t take out a hunting party and not bring his men back safely. At the age of twelve he’d accompanied his grandfather on a horse raid and seen the middle-aged man fearlessly risk almost certain death to rescue a wounded young brave.
“A good chief places the lives of his warriors before his own,” Painted Robe had told his grandson. “To lose many men shows that you are not worthy to be a chief. And too soon you will find that you are chief only of yourself. When you go into battle, nixa, use your best ability. Remember that only the stones stay on the earth forever.”
Blade Stalker had known his grandfather spoke the truth, for in the winter’s lodge he’d often listened with his cousins to the story of the Cheyenne chief who’d fallen asleep, only to wake up the next morning to discover the rest of the tribe had moved away in the night without him. So different from the white men, who, after a military disaster, generally sought to make some junior officer a scapegoat while protecting the incompetent general in charge.
Shaking his head to clear the images of just such a failed campaign, Blade squinted and tried to pierce the darkness. As a lovely melody plays over and over in one’s mind, the memory of Theodora’s exquisite form rose up to taunt him once again. The thought of her full, round breasts pressed against his chest, her slim arms draped around his neck, her graceful hands sliding across his bare skin brought renewed hunger. The heat he’d felt as she’d curled against him, seeking his warmth, roared through his loins. How could one little, insignificant female so quickly overturn his emotional detachment? What was so different about this hardheaded New England blue stocking that he swung back and forth like a pendulum, one minute wanting to blister her backside and the next wanting to explore every inch of her smooth, ivory skin?
When he got that exasperating blond wench back, he’d hobble her in the middle of camp like the perverse, headstrong mule she was. And he vowed to Maheo he’d never spend another night like this again.
More than five miles away, Theodora sat beside Tom, cold, hungry, and frightened. When they’d finally realized they were lost, they’d searched for a familiar landmark until it became too dark to see. Both brother and sister suspected that everything seemed “turned around,” as they’d been warned it might if they got lost. Exhausted and angry at their own stupidity, they decided at last to shelter in a hollow. Finding some brittle willow branches in the dried-up gully, they propped Teddy’s white petticoat over their heads to provide some protection from the breeze—for though the days were hot the nights remained cool—and in the hope that it would be visible to their rescuers in the morning. Both refused to mention what would happen if the wrong searchers spotted it first, for the fear of being narrowly missed by the soldiers compelled them to take the chance. Then, without the cheering warmth of a fire, they sat under the makeshift tent and waited to be found.
Theodora took off her boots and rubbed her blistered toes. Her feet were swollen and sore, and her legs ached up to her knees. “We must have walked twenty miles, Tom. They’d better find us tomorrow. Honestly, I don’t think I can walk a step farther.” She refused to voice the fear that had been haunting her since twilight: What if we’re never found?
Tom answered her thoughts. “They’ll find us, Teddy. They won’t quit searching till they do.”
“I can’t believe they will either, Tom. Not with Blade Roberts in charge. The man’s as arrogant and self-assured as that Oxford scholar who came to visit Papa once, but he’s also courageous,” she admitted reluctantly. “And tenacious. He’ll never give up searching until he finds us.”
“And you’ll be able to walk tomorrow, Sis.” Tom’s tone was bright and cheerful, though his irrepressible grin was absent. “You’ll see. You’ll feel a whole lot better in the morning.” He ran a nervous hand over his gunstock. “It’s dam lucky we both learned how to use this rifle,” he added. “We can take turns keeping watch. You go to sleep, and I’ll wake you in a couple of hours.”
But Theodora was far from sleepy. She leaned against the sandy bank that rose behind them and hugged her arms over her chest for warmth. “If it takes a while for our rescuers to find us, at least we have the gun. We can shoot our breakfast tomorrow when it’s light.”
Tom chuckled wryly. “Now that’s something I’d like to see—you shooting your own food.”
Theodora couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re right. All the rules and regulations taught at that fancy ladies’ seminary never prepared me for stalking game.”
“And if we should by some miracle catch something, do you think you’ll really be able to prepare and cook it?”
Theodora giggled. “Just what do you think I’ve been learning from Julius Twiggs for the last three weeks, Tom? Believe me, it hasn’t been tatting.”
“Well, lie down and try to get some rest, Sis. I’ll wake you later and you can spell me while I sleep.”
But neither of them got any rest that night. Every sound in the dark brought them both up with a start.
Stretched out on the ground in the middle of the night, Theodora turned onto her side and looked out into the darkness. “Tom, do you think we’ll ever see Papa and Grandma again?”
“Of course we’ll see them! Now go to sleep and don’t be so silly.”
She knew her brother was right. This was no time to get morbid and pessimistic. Yet somehow Cambridge had never seemed so far away. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the shaded, irregular streets around the university where their father would soon be walking on his way to his classroom. The image of Massachusetts Hall, with its long gabled sides, brought an aching lump to her throat, and she brushed away the tears that crept down her cheeks despite all her brave intentions. She wasn’t afraid.
She was terrified.
She remembered Martin Van Vliet’s angry words to her father the last night they saw him in New York. “You allowed Theodora too much freedom when she was growing up. Thanks to you, she now has the confounded notion that she can do anything she wants. And that’s just not logical for a woman! I’m going along with this absurd idea as her husband-to-be, but I guarantee you both that it’ll only bring heartache in the long run. My only concern is for her welfare. Females can’t handle the rigors of scientific research in the field. They’re just too fragile.”
Well, there was one man on this scientific expedition who agreed wholeheartedly with Martin. And h
e just happened to be the only man who could bring her and Tom back home alive. Whatever would Blade say when he found them?
Gad, he was a cantankerous, mule-headed brute! He didn’t hesitate to ride roughshod over her or anyone else who threatened to stand in his way. She’d never met any man who radiated such smoldering, untapped power. Were that violence unleashed, she had no doubt he’d resemble the volcano he’d compared himself to. And yet …
Every time she’d been near enough to touch him, she’d nearly thrown herself into his arms. Even now, the memory of his sinewy muscles under her fingers brought a delicious tingle of excitement. The thought of him holding her cuddled so close against his wide chest sent an unfamiliar, gnawing ache through her.
This kind of thinking had to stop, she scolded herself. Blade Roberts was everything she disliked in a man. Rude, overbearing, and proud. It was no wonder they couldn’t get along. The gun-toting, knife-wielding army captain had absolutely nothing in common with a female botanist from Massachusetts.
Restlessly, Theodora rolled onto her back and placed her forearm across her closed eyes. But I wish he were here right now, with his cocky self-assurance and his know-it-all grin, she admitted to herself. It’d be worth the ungodly scolding I know I’ve got coming!
Finally, toward morning, she fell into an exhausted sleep.
Blade watched the first glimmer of light come up over the horizon. He’d taken the last watch and had been awake for two hours. Nudging the soles of his sleeping partners with his boot, he lifted his blanket and saddle and swung them up on War Shield’s back. “Let’s go, men. By the time we’re mounted, we’ll have enough light to see by.”
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