by Jenna Kernan
“I’ll be safe with him.” She believed it, but her words caused Sky to snap his head around and stare. She just was uncertain if she would be safe from him. Was it only yesterday he had abducted her? If he had meant to use her that way, then surely he would have done so last night.
She bit her lip at the truth she now recognized. She was fascinated by Sky in a way she had never been with any other man. If someone had told her that today she’d be willingly riding from the school with Sky, placing herself in his care, she would have called them crazy.
Crazy—yes, perhaps she was. But she knew she could trust him to keep her safe. It filled her with the confidence she needed to take this step.
“Good day, Mr. Bloom.” She nodded to him and the smithy. “Mr. Fetterer.”
The smithy cocked his head and gave her a sly smile. “It’s true then, ’bout you marrying one of them savages?”
Sky prepared to face Fetterer, coming to her defense without her even asking. But Lucie lifted her hand, and Sky hesitated.
“Yes, Mr. Fetterer. Eagle Dancer is my husband.”
“That why they fired you?”
Is that what they were saying? It made sense, of course, making it appear to be their decision, rather than hers. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t given them cause.
“Just one of a litany, Mr. Fetterer.”
“My wife said you was an Injun lover.”
Why did she care when the man leered, his gaze slithering up and down over her? Shouldn’t she be used to such treatment by now? But somehow it always caught her off guard.
Sky dismounted and the smithy scuttled back like an enormous crab, recognizing the lethal threat Sky posed. Here was her proof that Sky would protect her, even from so slight an insult. Sky glanced back at her, his eyes begging for permission. His look held such longing it nearly made her smile.
She shook her head, denying the approval he sought. He returned to his horse and executed a smooth jump into the saddle that epitomized strength and grace.
She’d had such high hopes on arrival, while trying to hide the truth that was written on her face. Thinking she had finally found a purpose and a place of welcome, but she had made a mess of it. They should fire her. And she was ruined. Pretending otherwise didn’t change a thing.
Lucie had a moment to reflect that she had veered badly off the course she had chosen. Yesterday she would have been mortified for anyone to know her secret and today she was speaking about it in public. There was an unexpected feeling of freedom attached to her revelation, coming, she decided, from the fact that she was no longer hiding. She had never realized what a strain she had felt until the burden was lifted.
But she feared the consequences of her revelation and how it might hurt her family.
The last time she had felt so great a sense of foreboding, she was a captive. But now she rode willingly out to meet her fate and for reasons she could not even begin to articulate.
For good or ill, she had broken her ties here and could only move forward, to Fort Sully. Their roles were now reversed. Eagle Dancer was a captive in her world.
Sky lifted the reins and Ceta bolted forward with such speed that Fetterer had to leap backward to escape being trampled. He landed on his fanny in the road.
Lucie touched her heels to her new mount and followed Sky out across the prairie.
The sun shone in their faces as they rode southwest. Sky tried to listen to the wind and watch the hawks that floated effortlessly on the current of wind. But instead his mind could not break the tethers that drew him back to the woman. She rode upwind and so he drew in the fragrance of her skin with each breath he took. He tasted her on his tongue.
Nothing he said had made any difference. But today, at the word of Eagle Dancer’s arrest, she’d changed her mind. She did not even look like the same woman he had captured yesterday. Then she’d trembled and tears had filled her eyes. Her hair had been tied up in a tight knot, as one ties a horse’s tail for battle. Her dress had included many petticoats and her shoes were stiff.
Now she wore no shoes. The moccasins sheathed her in soft bleached deer hide. Her long hair hung in a loose braid down her back. There were no bits of metal holding it up in the knot now. And her skinning knife and sheath adorned her neck, there out in the open, for all to see. The shawl about her shoulders reminded him of the blankets worn as any proper woman would do. The transformation shook him. Which person was she—the prim white woman or the proper Indian woman?
The changes did not end there. He breathed deep again and then glanced at her once more. Her face was now relaxed, her posture confident. She did not radiate uncertainty and fear. There was a determined lift of her chin that made her look fierce and serene all at once. Last night she was beautiful. Today she was magnificent and he could not take his eyes off her.
“Do I have dirt on my face or are you staring at my chin?” she asked.
He startled. Her voice was not gentle, and it held a certain edge that cautioned him to be careful.
“You look different.”
“Yes, facial tattoos will do that to a woman.”
“Different from last night.”
“Ah,” was all she said.
Yesterday she had tried to set Eagle Dancer aside. But today she admitted to the mangy blacksmith she was his wife and she was riding to his aid. Would she remain his wife? He pondered the change of heart as he fixed his eyes on the horizon and kept them there, until the sun shone in his eyes. She did not complain at the heat or fuss that they did not stop at midday for a meal. He had expected her to act like a white woman on this trip, but somehow, she had changed back to the girl he had first met on the prairie, walking along the trail north.
He thought of how arrogant he had been then and felt a pang of regret.
“I am sorry I did not speak to you then.”
She did not pretend not to know what he meant.
“You were afraid what your friends might think. I didn’t know them, those Bitterroot boys, but you were never without them.”
He nodded. Time made the memory sweet and bitter all at once. “Yes, my friends. I thought if I tried hard enough I would be Indian.” And he had been, until that mistake and then he had been white once more—an enemy, hated.
He felt the hole in his heart growing.
“Were you rescued or were you released?”
When he did not answer, she stared at him.
How could he tell her of the circumstances of his exile? He never spoke of it. He and Lucie had much in common, but not this.
“In my heart, I never left them.” He pressed his legs into Ceta’s sides and his horse broke into a trot. “We’ll camp up in those trees,” he said as he passed her, leaving Lucie and her questions behind.
Lucie watched him go, keeping her horse to a steady walk. There was no need to rush; she could see all the way to the grove and these plains were no longer the dangerous place they once had been. She watched him break into a canter. He certainly was in a rush to be rid of her, or was it her question? Rescued or released? Had he been forced to leave like the Commanche captive Cynthia Ann Parker, ripped from the only family she had ever known? Was he the same as her students, stranded by circumstance in the white world?
He was a mystery. She had some of the pieces, but was determined to gather the rest until she knew him. If that meant revealing some secrets of her own, she was prepared to do so, for if anyone could understand her, it was this former captive. He knew the People and he knew the whites. But unlike her, he had not chosen to return to his race, not completely. Instead, he pined like a dog whose master is not coming home. The path he chose to walk had vanished, not just for him, but for all those children back at the school. They must have a new way of being. She understood that and still thought assimilation the answer. She glanced at Sky. He had certainly made his thoughts clear on the matter. He completely rejected the schools mission, but then again, he had not really assimilated himself—had he?
She co
nsidered the quandary. How could her pupils find a place among people who would judge them on sight and hate them?
The only good Indian I ever saw was a dead Indian. General Sheridan’s sentiments were the norm. Would a proper education change that?
Lucie set her jaw and followed Sky Fox toward the cotton grove. By the time she found him he had his horse hobbled and a fire struck.
“How progressive of you,” she said.
“What?”
“Not expecting the woman to carry the wood and set the cooking fire.”
“I’m used to doing for myself.”
“I see.”
Was he, or did he just want to exclude her, even in this? She wondered if this was just another way to keep his distance. Why was he so adamant about his solitude that he took such measures to remain apart from everyone? She watched him move about, setting a wood pile here and his saddle there. Instead of driving her off, his behavior only increased her curiosity.
Finally he faced her.
Lucie thought they had traveled better than thirty miles this first day. A reasonable amount for a late start. She wondered if they had entered Dakota Territory and could not quite suppress a shiver. She knew Fort Sully was just south of the lower reservation, the one recently named Cheyenne River, and that Eagle Dancer resided in the northern reservation that now was called Standing Rock. But where exactly this tract lay, she was uncertain.
“How far to Fort Sully?”
“The Missouri is a hundred and thirty miles southwest, maybe.”
Lucie’s jaw dropped. “What? Why is their school in Minnesota if their parents live halfway across the territory?” No wonder she had never seen a parent visit. “I had no idea they had to travel so far.”
Sky snorted again. She was getting used to the sound.
“The parents who visit have to walk all that? It must take weeks.”
He said nothing, but his muscles still bunched as if he held himself back.
“Then why didn’t the government allot land for the school closer to the reservation?”
Sky gave her a look of incredulity. Whatever he saw caused his look of aggravation to transform into astonishment.
“Lucie.” He began with the tone one uses when educating a child or someone who does not have all her faculties.
She narrowed her eyes in offense.
“They don’t want the parents to visit or for the children to hear the stories of their ancestors. They want them to know the Ten Commandments. There was no mistake. The summer apprentices, the lack of holidays. Do you really think weeding turnip patches will teach those boys to be farmers? It’s all to trap them in the white world, so they’ll forget how to be Lakota.”
“But learn how to be American citizens.”
Sky shook his head. “Stop telling yourself this is for their good. It is for the good of the people who want their land. That is all.”
Lucie fumed. “They what would you have them do?”
“Return the children they stole, for starters. Allow them the seasonal hunts. They can provide for themselves, if you’d let them.”
“They use the hunts as excuses to raid.”
Sky threw up his arms. “What use is a man when his family does not need his protection or the food he provides? They have no purpose now, so they cross the river to the whiskey camps. What else is there for them to do but drink to forget?”
She hadn’t thought of that either. A shadow of doubt crept below her wall of certainty and she could not meet his eyes. He rested a hand gently on her shoulder. When she glanced at his long fingers splayed from her neck to upper arm, he drew it quickly away. He stared at the fire now.
“Will you be all right for a little while?”
“Hunting?” she asked.
He nodded and he lifted a familiar object from his saddle bags. The beaded buffalo bladders were connected by a tether so they could both be carried over one shoulder. At the sight, her mind flashed back to her morning routine all those many years ago. She was the first up and off to the river where the spring joined the flow to fetch water. Then she returned to the tipi and set the fire, all before her mistress had crawled from the buffalo skins. Tedious and terrifying, that was the life of a Lakota slave.
Sky lowered the skins to his side, his face now showing concern. “I can do it.”
“No.” Her voice sounded sharp. “You go. I’ll get the water.”
He held the tether looped over one finger. She snatched it off and headed toward the bank.
“Watch out for rattlers,” he called.
She already had a stick in her hand and beat the brush before her. How naturally it all came back. While at the river she stripped out of her dress and corset and then waded waist-deep into the warm water. She splashed the dirt and sweat away. Lucie sank to her knees using the mud to scour her skin. Finally she rinsed her hair and then stepped out and shook off. She was only damp when she slipped back into her dress, leaving the corset behind on the bank. The day’s ride had proved how impractical the garment was.
Lucie made her way cautiously up the rise and back to the fire, adding more wood. Then she sat in a patch of sun with her head thrown back to dry her wet hair. She did not hear him coming, but sensed him, somehow.
“You had a bath?”
She smiled, the answer evident.
He held out a long rattlesnake. “Can you cook this?”
She stood to accept the snake.
“I will go bathe, as well.”
She smiled. After he left she skinned and gutted the snake. She skewered the snake and was about to rake coals over to roast it, when she decided instead to walk down to the riverbank. The girls would often spy on the boys bathing. When she was a slave, she did not dare and when she was a wife it would have been unseemly, though she was only thirteen at the time. She slipped through the long grass, as quiet as a hunting lynx, following the splashing.
She found a place where she could see him standing in muddy water up to his navel. The harmless prank turned serious the instant she beheld him. His hands were raised as he rubbed his wet hair, turning his arms into corded ropes. His back was an anatomy lesson of well-defined muscle. She rooted to the spot, fixed by the beauty and power of this man. He glistened, his muscles bunching as he stooped and cording as he stretched.
Her belly fluttered and her fingers tingled in anticipation of what was not hers to touch. Until this moment she never allowed herself to fancy a man because she never expected to find one who would overlook her flaws…call her beautiful, spend the entire day stealing glances at her.
Whatever it was that drew them, it was stronger now than when they stood beneath the stars and it was growing by the minute. How long until it was too powerful to set aside, too powerful to ignore?
Her pleasure at her delusions burst like a soap bubble in the sun. Of course he called her beautiful and stared at her. She knew what he wanted, what they all wanted. The only difference was that she nearly believed him, wanted to believe him. But she knew otherwise because no one could ever think her attractive now.
She shook her head in disgust. Perhaps it was because she longed so to be wanted by a man like Sky. A man of her own who would court her and love her. She slashed at the green blades before her with her open hand. Stupid woman. You may find him attractive, but never the other way around.
It took a moment to recognize that he had finished and was using his hand to scrape the excess water from his body. In a moment he would leave the river and give her a view of him in his entirety. That was the sort of sensual image that would keep her up at night. The kind of thing that once glimpsed is never forgotten.
He turned toward the bank, paused and stared in her direction. She hunched down in the grass. Her hand came upon a small flat stone, smooth and red. The kind of weapon one uses to stun a rabbit. Lucie palmed the stone, measuring its weight.
It had been a long time since she had taken aim at a frog or rodent, and an even longer time since she had done som
ething foolish or brazen or bold. But this was not small game, in fact, Sky was large and the game she considered was dangerous. The temptation to reveal herself bumped against the fear that by doing so she would leave herself vulnerable to the sting of rejection.
When had she grown so cautious? During her captivity, of course, when she could not afford such a luxury as impulsiveness. Once back with her people, the hard looks and harder gossip had turned her into a grim woman.
The stone warmed in her hand as she turned it over and over. The wiser course was to withdraw.
Lucie stood and threw the stone at Sky.
Chapter Seven
Something bounced off Sky’s shoulder. He swore in Lakota as he turned, glancing at the bank for his gun belt and knife.
A woman’s giggle came from somewhere in the deep thicket above the water’s edge. He scowled. How had she managed to get so close without his hearing? Ah, but she was not a white woman, not totally. Lucie knew how to hide and how to move silently. He knew her location now only because she wanted him to. But why?
Was she playing a game? It had been so many years since he had engaged in this kind of foolishness, he barely remembered how.
A smile spread across his mouth as he dived under the water. Two could play at such mischief. Sky came up before her, holding a handful of river mud.
Lucie shot to her feet.
“I surrender!” she called.
Sky did not pursue her as she turned tail, using the stick to beat a safe path before her. He took a moment to scrape the water from his body and wring the moisture from his hair before dressing and following the way she had fled.
He found her still laughing when he appeared at the fire a few minutes later. The sound had such an unexpected effect upon him, he froze in his tracks. His skin tingled, not from the bracing water, but from her. Every time he got close to her his blood pounded in all the wrong places and his belly twitched like a speared fish. He recognized this feeling, though he had not experienced it in many years. He wanted Lucie.
