by Jenna Kernan
Now she glared at him, her skin flushed gold by the firelight. His head knew his words were true, but then why was he holding his breath in anticipation of her acceptance? He was a hypocrite, happy for this excuse to possess her again.
Lucie stood. He indicated the pallet he had made and she lay stiffly upon it. He moved in beside her and covered them with his blanket and then the slicker. Sky slipped an arm about her and pulled her to his naked chest. It was like hugging an ice maiden. Her body trembled and her teeth clattered together like finger bones in a bag. But he held on.
She curled against him, pressing her back to his chest and gripping his arms. Gradually his skin grew warm again and then her trembling eased. It was as though she was melting into slumber. He felt her slip away to dreams.
Sky rested his chin on her wet hair and closed his eyes. How would it be to hold this woman in a lover’s embrace and lie with her every night beneath the stars? It would be so easy to nestle his hips against hers and then from there, a short step to stroking her, being lost in her heat.
Sky did not move until she did. He allowed her to roll to her back and followed, keeping her pressed to his side, telling himself he only meant to warm her.
He resisted sleep as long as he could, knowing that he would not soon again have an excuse to be holding her, while hating himself for betraying his friend in his heart. He wanted her, he would admit it only to himself. He wanted his friend’s woman. Sky squeezed his eyes shut, grinding his teeth against the urge to take her.
When the larks began to call the dawn, he tried to ignore them. When she roused, would he have the strength to let her go?
He realized that given the chance, he would do exactly what Eagle Dancer had done. He would steal this woman for himself and keep her with or without her consent. It was that realization that finally shook him from his bedding.
He moved away from her, each step as difficult as the last. All he wanted to do was run back to her side. How had she captured him so completely in so short a time? But he knew how. It was her beauty and her plainness. Her courage and her fears. Her power and her weakness. Everything about her called to him, except the one truth that shouted above them all. He couldn’t keep her.
He thought he had accepted his path long ago. Outlaw, outcast, loner. He was all this and worse. And even if she was not Eagle Dancer’s wife, even if he gave his blessing, Sky could not have her. Because if he did, he knew that one way or another, he’d lose her, too, just like he’d lost everything and everyone he ever cared about. It was what he deserved but after a while it was easier not to care at all. And that was exactly what he had done. And then she had come along.
Sky crawled away from the bedding, from Lucie and her warm, sweet body. He made it to the edge of the small clearing.
“Where are you going?” she asked. Her low voice, made sensuous by sleep, made his body twitch like a rabbit caught in a snare. And just like the rabbit, he struggled to breathe as he fought to regain his freedom.
“To find my horse.” All he need do was whistle and Falcon would swoop down upon them. But she did not know this.
“Oh.” She frowned at him.
He remained frozen by her attention. If she called him back, he knew he would go, but what he would do then sent him back several more steps. He wanted to cry out from the silent torture of being captured by those rich, blue eyes. Did she see him resist the desire roasting him alive from the inside?
“Will we eat first? I can rouse the fire.”
She already had.
He broke the contact of their eyes. “Yes. Do that.”
Sky turned and trotted away, trying to act indifferent as he resisted the urge to run like the coward he had become. He had to break this wanting, for it shamed and weakened him.
Sky had reached the spring and was throwing ice cold water on his face when he heard Lucie scream.
Lucie had gone a little ways from camp to relieve herself and was returning when the thrashing in the brush stopped her. She thought it was Falcon or Sky trying to catch his mount. But instead the three warriors stepped from the wall of green and stood motionless before her. She sat beside the fire, in plain sight, knowing they had seen her already. It was too late to run. So she did the only thing she could think of. She opened her mouth and screamed at the top of her lungs.
One of the men sprang forward, capturing her upper arm. He pressed a big solid hand over her mouth.
Another moved beside him. “Are you crazy? Let her go. We’ll run.”
The third peered at her. “Did you see her chin? Why does she bear the marks of the Sweetwater?”
No Indian was allowed off the reservation. Yet here they were. Lucie struggled and kicked, managing to land one good blow to the shin of her captor. He released her.
“How do you say quiet in English?” asked the man.
“I don’t know.”
The three stared at her and she inched back. She could make no sense of them. The last time she had come face-to-face with a warrior, he had her tied and gagged in a matter of moments. Yet these three simply stood and stared as if she were some dangerous creature. She drew her skinning knife, holding it out before her.
“The little kitten has one fang,” said the second.
“Let her run off, then. I won’t stop her.”
“But she’s seen us. She’ll tell.”
Sky sprang into the clearing before her, facing the warriors. But to Lucie’s dismay, he had not even bothered to draw his pistol. Instead, he held his arms out before him as if to stop them or perhaps offer to wrestle them.
The men went for their knives, and still Sky did not reach for his gun. Instead, he spoke to them. “What are you doing here, brothers?”
The three glanced at one another with startled expressions.
One lowered his knife. “We are not your brothers.”
“I am Sky Fox of the Bitterroot clan.”
The third stepped forward. “We are of the Village-at-the-End.”
“This woman is under my protection,” said Sky. “She is the wife of Eagle Dancer.”
The three made sounds of astonishment.
Their representative nodded and all weapons were lowered. “I fought with Eagle Dancer. I will not stop you. Take her.”
Sky pulled her behind him, but he did not lead her away as she had hoped.
“Have you eaten, brothers? My horse was struck by lightning last night and I took her liver. I also have some of her flank.”
Lucie wanted to pound his back and pull his hair. Was he insane?
The men exchanged glances and then the eldest nodded. “We would be honored to share a meal with you and the wife of Eagle Dancer.”
“Come.” Now Sky motioned toward their camp.
Sky tried to move away from Lucie, but she clutched at him, grasping both arms around his waist and pressing her head to his chest. She knew she was making it difficult for him to walk and embarrassing him, but she could not keep herself from clinging like a frightened child.
She was making a hiccupping sound now and found tears streaming down her cheek.
His voice came only loud enough for her to hear. “You’re safe with me, Lucie. Trust me.”
She shook violently now. “It’s like the first time, when they took me.”
“Those times are gone, Lucie. There are no more raiding parties. No more captures.”
“What about the truant officer, then?”
He hesitated. “I don’t think these men did that.”
“You are risking our lives on a hunch?” She glanced back to see them following, silent as three wolves on the hunt.
“They carry no weapons of war. They’re only a hunting party.”
She shook her head. “Hunting? But they aren’t al lowed to hunt. The government provides for them now.”
“Have you seen the provisions?”
She fell silent.
“If you had, you would know why they sneak away to hunt.”
“But t
hat is dangerous. They could be arrested or shot.”
“Or they could stay on the reservation and see their women starve.”
She eased back enough to look up at him to judge if he was serious. “It can’t be as bad as all that.”
Sky said nothing. His silence made Lucie wonder. If he felt no compulsion to defend himself, his words might very well be true.
“Why didn’t you just speak to them?”
Terror. She hadn’t been able to breathe past the panic pressing on her chest, let alone think. “It reminded me…I…just…screamed.” She fiddled with a lock of hair, winding it around her finger until the skin turned white and then releasing it as they stepped closer to the fire. “Just hunting,” she whispered to herself and felt a little better.
Before them, the fire now merrily burned the wood he had added. Sky seated Lucie on the blanket and had to peel her fingers off his arm.
He laid out the second blanket near the first and offered it to his guests. Lucie did not help him prepare the liver. She sat motionless as a stone, trying to be invisible as she had long ago, recalling the warriors who first begged for food and then…she pressed her hands over her eyes, to shut out the images. The wagon boss had been unwilling to feed them. The begging turned into angry demands and then an arrow shot that pinned their leader to the sideboard of the lead wagon, triggering the massacre. Lucie opened her eyes, determined to remain vigilant.
“Lucie?” Sky held out a portion of liver to her.
She glanced at him. Women ate last, yet he offered her this. She couldn’t eat in any case, and shook her head in refusal. She watched as the men used their fingers, knives and hands in a carefully choreographed dance of slicing and chewing. Sky had been right; they were hungry. As she stared, she noted the differences from the braves she had known. They were thin, perilously so, but that was not what struck her most sharply. It was their carriage. They did not sit or eat like warriors. Instead they had a wary look about them, a caution instead of the confidence she was accustomed to seeing in such men. It was almost as if they had lost their place in the world. These were the parents of her students, she realized, but also the sons of the men who attacked her wagon.
“What are your names, brothers?” asked Sky. He was more relaxed with these men than he was with her. It nettled her to no end.
“I am called Black Horn,” said the eldest. “This is my brother-in-law, Eye Lance, and his eldest son, Small Hawk. Thank you for the meat. It is much better than the beef rations.”
“You are hunting?” asked Sky.
He nodded. “Eye Lance has two young daughters. He refused to send them to the school and so he and all in his family have lost their rations.”
Lucie straightened at this and glanced at Sky.
“Can’t he have some of yours?” asked Sky.
“Yes, but there is not enough. Our women are already skinny as weasels. Holding my wife is like rubbing two sticks together. There is not enough fat on either of us to keep us warm.” He smiled at the joke that broke Lucie’s heart. Black Horn looked at her as he spoke to Sky. “Is she really the wife of Eagle Dancer?”
“Yes. She worked at the school.”
“The school?” said Eye Lance. “Does she know a little girl named Little Rabbit? She is the child of my wife’s sister. Only six winters old now.”
Sky turned to her, the question on his face, and she realized he was waiting for her to admit that she understood every word of this conversation.
Lucie drew herself up and faced them. “They give the girls American names. I don’t always know their real names.”
They stared at her in astonishment for a moment, then Eye Lance nudged his son.
“See, I told you they took their names with their hair.”
It was only one of the things they took, thought Lucie.
“Do they get enough to eat?” asked Eye Lance.
Lucie thought of the soap. “Yes. The girls make fresh bread every day and beef for supper.”
He nodded. “Beef again.” He looked up at her. “And they learn the stick words?”
Half of the day, she thought. The rest was supposed to be vocational training, which turned into chores that ran the school—cooking the meals, doing the laundry, sewing the uniforms as if all that could be expected of her girls was the most menial of domestic positions. Sky had asked if she thought weeding turnip patches would make the boys farmers. Was Sky right? Had she only been part of a more subtle war against the Sioux?
Her heart twisted in apprehension as a flush of shame heated her cheeks.
“Yes, they are very good students. You should be proud of them.”
“Their mothers wonder, when they cry, who will comfort them and when they are sick, who will bathe them?”
Lucie looked at their earnest faces. It was the first time she considered the trauma of having a child forcibly removed from a mother’s arms. She had been so busy comforting and trying to act as a surrogate mother, she had forgotten the children had willing mothers who were deemed unfit to raise their own children. Although she had none of her own, it was not her place to take theirs.
Lucie’s voice cracked as she answered. “They have doctors to look after the sick and women to bathe the girls. I am one of them, or I was.”
“You left to come to your husband.”
“Yes.”
“That is good for him, but bad for our children,” said Black Horn.
Sky watched Lucie as she struggled to defend the school. He thought he witnessed the moment of her surrender with the sagging of her shoulders.
Lucie turned to Eye Lance. “I think the children of your wife’s sister would be safer and happier with their families, even if there is less to eat. With you, they will not be made to feel ashamed of who they are.”
The man’s eyes widened and then he nodded. “Thank you for speaking from your heart.”
Sky offered more food and they refused but when pressed accepted another helping of the horse liver. After they had finished, Black Horn changed the direction of the conversation.
“Have you heard of the white-man killing?”
Sky nodded. “Do you know who did this thing?”
Black Horn shook his head. “It was not from my people, but they still took Iron Bear to the fort.”
Sky thought again about the truant officer. He thought his punishment was just. But who had killed him? Certainly it was not a seasoned warrior like these men because the job had been clumsy. And why hadn’t they removed his male organ? That was a final insult to an enemy, to send him to the Spirit World without his manhood intact. Sky had seen the body. The officer had not been touched there. It was almost as if the killers had been inexperienced in warfare or perhaps pretending to be warriors. And who would want to kill him knowing the trouble it would bring?
He stilled as a possibility struck him. It would explain all of it, the awkward butchering, the chance meeting on the plains that was not chance after all and the lack of understanding of the hornets’ nest of trouble such a murder would stir. Could the boy have come back and done such a thing?
Chapter Nine
Sky’s mind still reeled with his suspicions as Lucie attended their visitors. No one noticed his preoccupation and after a moment he recovered enough to hear Lucie.
Lucie seemed much more at ease as she spoke to Black Horn. “We have more meat. Please take it.”
“You have been generous already,” said the warrior.
Lucie insisted. “A gift to your wife and the children, from the wife of Eagle Dancer. Please. It would honor me.”
He nodded his acceptance.
Sky watched the exchange with a welling feeling of pride. She was becoming a woman he admired before his very eyes. She handled herself with such poise and compassion. It was a rare thing in this lonely world.
Sky handed over the remains of their food stores, unconcerned about providing for Lucie. He had a fine rifle and a horse. They would most certainly not go hungry. But th
ese men went on foot and without firearms, which they were forbidden to carry, and all because their skin was the color of the fine red pipestone.
He shook his head at the idiocy of the White Father’s plan for his red “brothers”.
At least Sky could provide some small comfort. “We butchered our other horse late last night after it was struck by the thunder gods. It was a good horse, healthy and fat.”
The men discussed the location and then set out leaving Lucie and Sky alone by the fire.
“That was well done,” said Sky.
“What?”
“He couldn’t accept all our meat until you mentioned his children. You made it a blessing instead of charity. I think you are beginning to understand now.”
Her smile faded. “Is that what this is, some grand lesson to teach me the error of my ways?”
Sky realized too late that his compliment had become an insult. He tried to correct his mistake. “I only meant to say that I see now why Eagle Dancer elevated you to wife. He would be proud of his wife this day.”
Her eyes narrowed and her face grew flushed. Sky recognized the boiling fury and had the foresight to prepare to duck, but when she stepped forward, she only aimed a finger at him.
“Let me tell you about my elevated life. Before my wedding, my mother-in-law beat me with a cord of wood as big around as her wrist and she gave me this.” Lucie pointed to her chin. “I begged Eagle Dancer for my freedom, but my husband wanted to ‘elevate me,’ a thirteen-year-old child, to wife. He took me the same month I became a woman.”
Sky frowned at this, wondering why Eagle Dancer hadn’t protected the one he claimed to love.
“Don’t you presume that my time with the Sweetwater in any way resembled the romping free life of a beloved son. I was a captive and I did what I did to survive.”
Sky met her angry stare, taking in all the pain that filled her face, refusing to look away. “Do you hate them, Lucie? Is that why you worked at their school?”
She threw up her arms. “No. They’re children. I wanted to help them adjust. I wanted to keep them from feeling the terror that stayed with me every day of my imprisonment. And I failed. I can’t protect them. I can’t save a single one of those girls. They are as much prisoners as I was. All I did was make things worse for them, bring punishment to them that…”
