True Colors

by Diana Palmer

  Atop the hill was a monument listing the names of the men who died in the battle. At one time it had been a mass grave for all the Seventh Cavalry dead, but the body of Custer had long since been taken back to West Point for burial. On the other side of the museum, under transplanted fir trees, were graves of many other men, including Vietnam veterans. Major Marcus Reno was buried there.

  "What about Captain Benteen?" Meredith asked.

  "He died and was buried in Atlanta, Georgia," Cy replied. He leaned over the fence and stared down the ridge to the banks of Medicine Tail Coulee far below.

  "It's a long walk to the coulee," she remarked. "I remember we did it one Sunday afternoon in summer, and it was so hot."

  He glanced down at her. That had been in the early days of their relationship, when they'd barely been able to exist apart.

  "Do you remember what we did when we got back to my apartment?" he asked huskily.

  She remembered all right. He'd stripped them both and carried her into the bathroom, placing her in the cool water of the Jacuzzi before he climbed in beside her. He'd turned her so that the jets gave her a shattering climax, and while the tremors were still shaking her, he'd joined his body to hers in one of the most satisfying bouts of lovemaking they'd ever shared. Before it was over, he'd had her on the floor of the bathroom, the carpet of the bedroom, and, finally, in bed.

  It had taken days for her to recover from the experience, which had left her sore in ways she'd never been since. That had been only days before his mother had accused her of theft.

  She lowered her eyes to the ground.

  "It was the last time we made love," he said quietly, staring out over the battlefield while his body gnarled with memories of almost painful pleasure. "I couldn't have you for days after that, because I'd been so insatiable with you." His eyes closed. "Before we could be together again, Tony came to me with that money"

  Her gaze wouldn't lift. She didn't want to look back, to remember that last feverish coupling. He remembered nothing but the pleasure, and then the so-called betrayal. It was all physical with him, right down to the memories.

  "I'll die without ever experiencing anything like that afternoon again, Meredith," he said, his voice giving nothing away. "What I had with you I can't find with other women."

  "Can't you?" she asked with a cynicism far beyond her years. "I thought sex was satisfying with any partner, for a man."

  He looked down at her, scowling. "Did you find that kind of pleasure with anyone else?"

  She lifted her eyes to his and thought of Henry and how much he'd loved her. She remembered the night before Henry's plane crashed and the first stirring of love she'd felt for her husband.

  "I came very close," she said quietly, her eyes clouding with pain.

  Jealousy raged through his body. He hadn't expected her answer or me look in her eyes, the faint haunting. "Did he?"

  "He loved me," she said with pride, with reverence, for Henry's memory. She looked at Cy without flinching. "I was his world. If he hadn't died, I'd be with him still, and I'd never have given you a thought for the rest of my life!"

  He paled. His hand clenched and he cursed, his dark eyes dangerous with feeling.

  "Go ahead, lose your temper," she said calmly, knowing that he wouldn't. "I don't belong to you anymore. I'm not your slave. That was why you brought me out here, wasn't it, to see if I still loved you, to see if I was vulnerable." She put her hands on her hips, aware of the solitude on the hill. Only a few tourists had come today because of the cold and threatening snow, and most of them were in the museum. "Well, I like kissing you, Cy. I might even enjoy an afternoon in bed with you. But I could still walk away afterward and never look back." She smiled with pure malice, lying through her teeth and enjoying the fact that he actually believed what she was saying. "So lose control, if you like. It won't change anything, though. It won't make me love you again."

  "Did you ever?" he asked roughly.

  "What does it matter now?" She stuck her hands in her pockets and turned her face back to the battlefield. "Like what happened down there" she gestured toward the slope of the hill "it's ancient history. The details have been swallowed up in the aftermath. Dead is dead, Cy. Who cares in the final analysis how it happened?"

  He didn't reply. He lit a cigarette, shocked by the intense emotion he still felt with her. His own behavior made him uneasy.

  "Would you have taken out your anger on me?" she asked after a minute and without looking at him. She wanted him to admit that he couldn't

  His eyes searched hers. "Not ever, little one," he said quietly. He turned. "Let's go down."

  They wandered through the museum, where a copy of Custer's last command to Benteen survived, in the handwriting of his adjutant, Cooke. There was also a duplicate of the white buckskin suit Custer had worn that hot June day in 1876 when he left for the Little Bighorn with his column. Indian artifacts were presented along with bits and pieces of equipment from the battle. The colorful Indian regalia looked odd beside the sedate blue of the soldier's uniformsalmost celebratory.

  She mentioned that to Cy as he towered over her at the glass cases containing the memorabilia. "Remember, when a Sioux went to war, he dressed in his best clothingor at least carried it with him with the intention of being buried in it. He decorated his face and body with his medicine symbols, sometimes even decorated his horse the same way, and carried his medicine shield before him. As he charged, he sang his death song. It was an occasion when a warrior went into battle."

  "They fought individually, though," she recalled. "Not under orders from company commanders, like in the army."

  "The warriors, Sioux and Cheyenne, belonged to a warrior society. Each society had its own chiefs and subchiefs. During the battle, the societies attacked together, one at a time, but it was the individual efforts which were noted and later recited around the campfires. It was why soldiers had such a time fighting the Indians, because they waged war on an individual basis, not as a group."

  "Not at all like some southwestern tribes," she murmured, "which frowned on individual achievement and rewarded group achievement."

  He glanced down at her with a smile. "You know your subject. I forget sometimes that you grew up on the Crow reservation. I suppose you learned a lot about Indians."

  "Yes, and from reading," she agreed. She didn't add that Henry had bought her volumes on American Indians while she was expecting Blake, to give her something to pass me time. "Crow society is fascinating. Its structure is an ideal one for mutual cooperation and harmony."

  He led her to another exhibit in a glass case. "The arrows always fascinated me," he said, indicating a quiver of them. "Each tribe had unique ways of making arrows, and each warrior as well. You can tell by the makeup of the arrow who it belonged to. The funny thing is that an Indian could shoot eight arrows before the first hit the ground, and never miss his mark. But Indians were notoriously the worst rifle shots around."

  She laughed. "Great-Uncle Raven-Walking certainly was. I wonder why?"

  "Because the way you sight a rifle and the way you sight a bow are different, I expect," he said, smiling at her.

  "Did you ever read Memoirs of a White Crow Indian by Thomas H. Leforge? The one Dr. Marquis helped him put down on paper?" she asked. "I had an old, old copy that my great-uncle gave me. It's like a textbook on how the Crow once lived and what they believed."

  "Honey, everybody who knows anything about Custer or the Little Bighorn has read Leforge's story. It's one of the foremost sources on the Crow way of life and, indirectly, on the Little Bighorn campaign. But nobody, and I mean nobody, in my opinion comes close to Son of the Morning Star , Evan S. Connell's compilation of all known information about the battle. The bibliography goes on for pages. It's a monumental work, and interesting to read as well as factual."

  "I know." She grinned up at him. "I've read it."

  He chuckled. "I should have known. Look at the Sioux knife stick."

  It was an
odd implement, made of iron spikes along a lance. There were also Sioux war clubs, huge foot-size rounded rocks from the Yellowstone River tied to wooden handles with rawhide. The Cheyenne seemed to prefer iron, because their tomahawks were made of it.

  "That's a coup stick," she told him, pointing to another artifact. "My great-uncle had one that his grandfather carried. I think I've still got it at the house somewhere."

  "I remember seeing it," he said. "The Plains Indians considered touching a live enemy much more courageous than just killing one. Counting coup was a great feat."

  "There's a soldier's watch," she murmured as they turned to another case.

  "Several Indians walked off with those, and threw them away when they stopped making their magical noise," he said, smiling.

  "So long ago." She sighed, thinking about how it must have felt to the soldiers when they saw the great numbers of Indians surrounding them and knew they were going to die. And afterward, the Indians running for their lives, forever threatened because of what had happened to Custer, regardless of whether or not their particular branch of the tribe had any part in it.

  "Lots of the soldiers were green recruits from back east who'd never even seen an Indian before," Cy remarked, resting his lean hands on her shoulders to look past her at the case. "The Indians were painted, like their horses, screaming their death chants, firing captured guns and their own bows and arrows, and blowing eagle-bone whistles. There was dust and noise and the screams of the wounded. Worse, the Indians were all seasoned warriors, comfortable in battle. The recruits were outmatched from the start."

  "But Custer was experienced," she said.

  "Oh, yes. There were any number of seasoned soldiers in his command, like Reno and Benteen and many of the noncommissioned officers. Custer himself was a veteran of the Civil War, where he fought old classmates from West Point like Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart. That's where he got his battlefield commission as brevet general. He led charge after charge right into the enemy ranks. But his luck gave out here. So many things went wrong for him that it was fate more than coincidence that he fell. He left his artillery pieces behind because he didn't want to be slowed down, he refused to take along companies of Montana militia, he either disbelieved or disregarded intelligence from Crow and Arikara scouts about the strength of the Indian camp, he split his forces between himself, Major Reno, and Captain Benteen"

  Cy shook his head. "Historians will argue the outcome as long as there are historians alive. But only Custer and his men know what really happened here, and whether or not it was inevitable. Some say Reno and Benteen should have rushed to his assistance, but they were pinned down and very nearly destroyed. Eyewitnesses said there was no way they could have gotten through the mass of milling Indian warriors even if they'd had sufficient strength to lend aid to Custer."

  "Reno was court-martialed, wasn't he?"

  "He asked for the inquiry," Cy corrected, "because he was tired of the gossip about his actions at the Little Bighorn. He was cleared of all charges. Benteen, too, was exonerated of any blame for Custer's death. The whispers followed them all their lives, though. Reno died of cancer. After the Little Bighorn battle, he was court-martialed for behavior unbecoming an officer, after having allegedly been peering late at night through the window of a woman with whom he was infatuated. Benteen was happily married and died of old age."

  Meredith didn't say any more. The exhibits made her sad and full of regret for the soldiers and the Indians. It had always amazed her that Cy knew so much about the battle. They had that interest in common, along with plenty of others. But in the old days, there had been too much passion between them for long talks and lazy afternoons out of bed. She followed Cy out into the cold sunlight and back to the car.

  Outside the gates of the battlefield park, Meredith noticed several small tables and any number of Indians selling their wares.

  "Northern Cheyenne." Cy grinned as he nodded toward one group. "Ironic, isn't it? The battlefield is on Crow land. Back in the old days, Crow and Cheyenne were mortal enemies, like Crow and Sioux."

  "There are so few of both tribes left that fighting hardly accomplishes anything today," she said. "It takes a lot of work just to keep the few rights they still have, and to fight off speculators who want their land. They can't even sell it, you know, without government approval. There are lobbies working for them in Washington, but it's an expensive business." She stopped short, almost having blurted out that she financed one. That wouldn't have done at all.

  They drove back to town without speaking. "You still haven't eaten," Cy remarked when he pulled up at Meredith's house.

  "I'm not hungry."

  "I could go out and get supper," he said as he cut off the engine. His dark eyes caressed her face. "We could talk some more."

  Her heart was beating so fast. She remembered oh, so well, the last time they'd seen the battlefield together and what had come afterward. She had to think about her new life, about her son.

  "Meredith."

  His voice was velvet. It almost purred. She looked up into his eyes. It was fatal. The old electricity was still there, even stronger with maturity, and the years fell away. The same hunger she felt was mirrored there, a need so desperate that it overcame all her protective instincts. He was the only man she'd ever loved. Once more , her mind whispered. Just once more, while there's still time

  "I'llcook something," she whispered, but she was saying much more than that, and he knew it.

  With deft, somber movements Cy got them both out of the car and into the house. As he closed the door behind him and turned to Meredith, all the years in between dropped away. His chest rose and fell heavily, his heart shaking him. She was here, no longer a dream. The reasons he shouldn't touch her vanished like smoke. He could hardly bear the throbbing need that consumed him.

  "I want you," he said roughly. "Oh, God, I want you so!"

  Meredith shivered with a need of her own. Precautions never entered her mind; neither did consequences. For these few minutes, nothing mattered except Cy and her relentless love for him.

  "I want you, too," she whispered, her eyes adoring his face.

  "There's no tomorrow, Meredith," he said, his voice as deep with feeling as his eyes, caressing, coaxing. "There's no yesterday. There's only now."

  "Yes," she said softly. And he reached for her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  » ^ «

  Meredith kept repeating to herself, silently, all the reasons why she should stop Cy. But as his warm, hard mouth closed on hers and fitted itself hungrily to her lips, the years rolled back and she was a young girl with her first love, her only love, in her arms.

  "Don't fight me," he breathed into her mouth as he lifted her. "Don't fight me, little one, I need you so badly!"

  He carried her effortlessly into the bedroom and settled onto the narrow mattress with her.

  It was like the first time. He was slow and careful and infinitely tender. She yielded completely after a faint protest and watched him slide the fabric away from her body.

  He looked at her, finding all the subtle differences between the girl's body he'd possessed and the woman's body before him now. Frowning slightly, he touched her belly, where the faint bikini-cut scar made a thin white line. She'd had to have a cesarean section with Blake, despite all the weeks of Lamaze training. She held her breath, wondering if Cy would recognize it for what it was.

  "An accident?" he asked softly, his eyes seeking hers.

  "An operation," she said quietly. "Ithere was a female problem," she fibbed.

  "Are you all right? Did you recover fully?" he persisted.

  "Yes."

  His big hand traced her belly up to the swell of her pretty pink breasts with their hard, mauve crests, noting their increased size. "You were always beautiful," he said softly. "But you're much fuller than you were, more voluptuous"

  Her skin tingled as his fingertips traced over it. She felt the old sensations winding through her again.
It had been so long!

  She must have whispered it, because she heard him echo the words against her mouth. He shifted and one long leg inserted itself between both of hers in a lazy, arousing rhythm.

  He'd been expert even when she was a girl. Now he was much more knowledgeable. He did things to her, whispered things to her, that she'd never experienced with him.

  As the lazy minutes dragged by, with his mouth sucking hungrily at her breasts, her belly, even the inside of her thighs, she became a wild thing, bent only on satisfaction, lost to reason entirely.

  She pulled at his shirt and he smiled even through his fierce arousal as he helped her divest his body of clothing. He was more muscular than he had been six years ago, more powerfully athletic. The muscles her hands touched were bigger now, and his body had filled out with maturity. He was still more man than most women could handle, and she felt a sting of pride that she could accommodate him so easily.

  He laughed gently as his body began to penetrate hers. "You're tight," he whispered huskily. "Wasn't your last lover as well endowed as I am?"

  "No," she replied, flushing a little at the intimacy of the question.

  "You always fit me like a glove," he breathed, nipping at her lower lip arousingly. "Even the first time, when I had to hurt you. You never said a word, you never told me I was the only man you'd had. But I knew, just the same." He shifted, nudging one of her long legs gently. "Like that, sweetheart," he murmured at her mouth. "And try to relax a little, if you can. I don't want to make you any more uncomfortable than I have to."

  "It's beena long time," she whispered, jerking as he furthered his possession of her, his glittering eyes looking straight down into hers.

  "I can tell." He stopped to catch his breath and bent, drawing his mouth tenderly over her damp forehead, her closed eyelids. "Do you want me to stop and arouse you again? Will that make it any easier?"