by Vella Munn
Only Jed was no cougar, and even if he was, she still wanted to be consumed by him. He began rubbing her shoulders, soothing away the slight tremors. Half frantic with need, she brought his hand back to her belly and covered his fingers with her own.
"You're making me crazy." He ground out the words. "I have to—you have to understand. I won't—I don't know how much self control I'll have."
"It is all right."
"All right?" He laughed briefly. "You've never. You don't—"
"I am a woman, Jed. Not a child. Tonight has to be for us; there may never be another time."
His groan matched what she felt. Half sobbing, she inched closer until it seemed that their bodies had already become one. His arms closed around her waist as he pulled her toward the boulder he'd covered with his clothes. Until this moment she hadn't given a thought to how their bodies might join on the unyielding ground. When he sat on the rock and drew her between his legs, she steadied herself by clamping her hands over his naked thighs.
She'd never touched a man like this before, never known such intimacy could be both frightening and overwhelming.
"I wish—" he began. "I never wanted it like this between us."
"You didn't want us?"
"No. Not that. But there are places—" His hands seemed to be everywhere, lighting fires along her hipbones, over her ribs, adding even more fuel to the flame in her belly. "Places back East where men and women make love on soft, perfumed beds. There's candlelight, soft music playing." He leaned forward, kissed her chin, nose, eyelids, laughed a little when a spasm rocked her. "Those people make love because they want to. They're not at war. They—"
She cut off his words by first clamping her hand over his mouth and then replacing it with her lips. He let her; she guessed that he too didn't want to talk about this. I love you, she wanted to say. In her mind she saw the words drifting out over them, maybe being heard by Eagle. But Jed would not want to hear those words from her.
He pushed her away slightly, not because he was done with her but to spread her legs. When she again reached for him, she felt utterly exposed.
Utterly a woman.
Once again his hands were everywhere. She loved it when he claimed her breasts, felt like screaming when he trailed his nails over her hips, desperately, mindlessly dug her fingers into him when he explored what was most woman about her.
He angled his maleness between her legs and thrust upward. He gripped her waist so firmly that she couldn't possibly break free.
Not that she wanted to.
He was touching her, tasting her woman place with his hard and insistent shaft, easing into her, spreading her apart, frightening her.
She felt pain, recoiled instinctively, held onto his shoulders for support, and threw back her head, breathing quick and deep. Thought of nothing except them.
"Luash. Luash. I'll try to be gentle."
He wasn't gentle, not really, although she sensed his struggle to give her what he'd promised. But she didn't care. Pain—
Whe-cha had told her about her first time, how unsure she'd been. How it had hurt but only for a little while and how kind and patient Kientpoos had been. How she'd fallen in love with him that night.
"Jed..."
"What?" He sounded as if he was fighting a battle.
"Jed. Jed," she said around the already fading discomfort. She couldn't think how to form any more words, couldn't say why she'd spoken his name. Hoped he didn't expect anything more from her.
There was a fire in him, a fierce winter storm. As he drove deeper and deeper inside her, she sensed he was losing control and fighting that loss. Surrendering to need.
If she'd spent her life on a reservation growing crops and waiting for army handouts, she might have run in fear from what was happening to him. But she'd stood alone and exposed while winter threw its fury at her. Watched her home burn. Eagle, with his awful speed and fearlessness, was her spirit. Tonight with Jed making them one, she faced the storm inside him and absorbed it. Lost herself in it.
Felt fury and need, insanity and abandon.
Held him in the palm of her hand and knew he did the same to her.
* * *
"Go back, Luash. You don't belong here."
"No, Jed. You are the one who does not belong."
Jed, dressed again, ran his hand over the boulder that had supported him while they made love. "Maybe I don't." His whisper was deep and yet strangely hollowed out. "They're going to keep on shooting all night," he said as yet another rifle blast shattered the fragile silence. "And they're going to keep on advancing. One day, maybe two and all of Captain Jack's tribe will have been captured."
She didn't try to tell him he was wrong because if she did, he would only throw her words back at her. Still, what he'd said filled her first with unreasoning fear and then defiance, twin emotions that made it all but impossible for her to hold onto what they'd shared. He couldn't see her tears in the dark and if she didn't let him touch her again, he might not understand how deeply she'd been hurt.
"You are wrong!" Rebellion rode her words. "We are blessed. Cho-ocks has—"
"Blessed! Damnit, Luash, stop saying that. You might be protected; I'm not going to say one way or the other about that. But the rest of your people—you don't want them to die, do you? Tell them to give themselves up. Come with me. I'll protect you."
"No. I belong with my people."
"I can force you, you know."
"If you take me with you, I will never forgive you."
"At least you'd be safe."
They had had this argument before. Why now, when they should still be clinging to each other, was he driving them apart? But maybe it was better this way. Yes. Better. Otherwise she would never have the courage to leave him.
"It does not matter if you bring ten times as many soldiers as are here now. Even they will not be enough to make the Modocs throw down their arms."
"Damn you. Your pride's going to kill you."
Before she could tell him he was wrong, he pulled her against him, crushing her to him until she could barely breathe. She didn't fight. How could she, when he'd taken her strength and made it his? "I wish I'd never met you," he said in a rough whisper.
She felt the same way, hated him as much as she loved—no! She wouldn't love him. She wouldn't!
"Let me go, Jed."
"Go? So you can get yourself killed?"
"Maybe you are the one who will be killed."
"Maybe." Still holding her wrists, he leaned down, his body sending a silent question. She answered it by lifting her face and letting her mouth fall slack. When he covered it with his, the anger that might have made it possible for her to leave him without crying seeped out of her.
* * *
It was still dark when Jed returned to the troops hunkered down behind the hastily built rock barricades. A few soldiers were curled up on the ground, trying to sleep, but most had propped themselves against anything that might serve as a back rest and were grumbling that they saw no earthly reason why they'd been sent out here to defend land that no one except a few fool ranchers wanted anyway. Jed agreed, then asked himself why it had taken six years of fighting Indians for him to question who really had claim to the earth under their feet.
He'd found a small opening in the rock wall and was staring at the nothing that was the Modocs' home when he received word that Colonel Gillem wanted to see him. The commander, still weak from whatever malady had overtaken him just before General Canby was killed, was hunched over a crudely drawn map lit by a small lantern. What, he asked, did Jed think would happen once the troops had completed their sweep around the south end of the lava beds? Jed ventured the opinion that Gillem shouldn't count on his officers to follow orders today any better than they had yesterday. Gillem, profanity sprinkled through his reply, agreed.
"It is my opinion that I have been saddled with the most inept troops ever brazen enough to call themselves soldiers," he finished. "But we will achieve victo
ry! I will accept nothing less."
Jed didn't bother to reply. Gillem, he'd learned long ago, often asked for advice but seldom took it. Jed could tell him that his officers would follow orders from a leader they respected, but to what point? The colonel was what he was, a career soldier who owed his rapid promotions to political connections, not competence. When Gillem started sending out messengers with conflicting and confusing orders for the troop commanders, Jed clenched his teeth in frustration.
He knew how to fight, how to obey orders; that's all he'd known for the past six years. Hatred had sustained and even nourished him because there'd never been anything to take its place.
Tonight he'd sought out and made love to a Modoc woman and she'd scattered his hatred to the wind.
He was army through and through; it was his life. And so, now, was Luash.
* * *
April 16, 1873
"They're not here! Goddamnit, they're all gone."
Jed could have told the others that hours ago. At Gillem's orders and because he'd been there before, he'd taken command of twenty hand-picked men and led the belly crawling advance on the heart of the stronghold while more troops backed them up with a constant barrage of fire. He'd barely paid any attention to the length of reddish rope he'd crawled over.
When he first faced his task, his still tender side had throbbed, reminding him that no matter what insanity had overtaken him because he'd looked into her eyes, his life was at risk. But the Modocs hadn't shot back and gradually his fear and single-minded determination to obey his commander had been replaced by certainty. And awe.
The Modocs had somehow escaped undetected from troops that outnumbered them more than tenfold. Maybe Luash was right. Maybe her people's lives were protected by spirits.
"Wait a minute!" someone shouted as he was taking note of a cannonball he'd found in the middle of their council ring. "I've found one!"
One. Who? Mouth suddenly dry, he joined the others scrambling toward the soldier who'd just shouted. Several were already standing at the entrance to a cave. At his order, they moved aside to make room for him. He stared down into deep shadows, barely able to make out three figures. Two were well-armed soldiers. The third, half naked, lay on the ground, propped up on his elbow.
"It's an old man," one of the soldiers explained in response to Jed's question. "He's hurt or sick. Won't talk to us, won't do nothing. Do you think they just up and left him?"
The Modocs had, Jed knew, not because no one loved the old man but because it was Indian nature not to stand in the way of dying. His thoughts went back to the first time he'd seen Luash, when she'd risked her own life trying to run back into a burning wickiup after an old woman. She had been acting on instinct, reacting out of horror.
Had instinct driven her and the other Modocs out of what had sheltered them since their wickiups had been burned nearly five months ago? Suddenly, overwhelmingly, he needed her. Needed her to tell him what lived inside her people's hearts—and where they would go now.
A shot ripped Jed's thoughts away from Luash. When he stared down again, he saw that someone had killed the old man.
Chapter 16
April 26, 1873
"I am not a warrior. I do not want—"
"Luash, stop!" Cho-Cho ordered. "You know what must be done. Kientpoos has said it."
Kientpoos, she thought, images of her uncle distracting her from Cho-Cho's insistence that she accompany him to search for the troops who'd followed them after they fled south from the stronghold nine days ago. Ever since the army had stepped over the red tule rope Cho-ocks had placed around the stronghold and a cannonball had landed in the middle of the council ring, no one had listened to the shaman. Instead, everyone had once again turned to Kientpoos. Whether he wanted that, Luash didn't know.
"Your uncle says no harm comes to those who are touched by Eagle," Cho-Cho explained. "That is why he wants you with me. There is no one else, Luash, no shaman."
"But I have no power over Eagle."
"Maybe you have been given a sign."
In Cho-Cho's eyes, she saw the death of something in which he'd always believed. She felt the same way. Although she'd never been comfortable around Cho-ocks, he had been the tribe's spiritual leader, and now they had nothing.
"It is spring," she said hopefully. "There is food and shelter and maybe freedom here." She swept her arms to take in the lava plateaus and pumice or cinder buttes that made up the volcanic basin. "At day's first light, I looked at the sky and saw not just Eagle but another as well."
"Two? They came to you?"
"Just my spirit," she explained, absently touching the white strand of her hair. "I called to him. He floated close on unmoving wings. Finally we touched, his great claw gentle on my shoulder. The other bird remained high in the sky; then they flew away together."
"Perhaps Eagle has found a mate, and that is why you have seen so little of him."
"I hope so. No one, not even a spirit, should remain alone." Her voice trailed off at the end. The recent days and nights of constant watchfulness, always aware of the army behind them, had worn on her nearly as much as thoughts of Jed had. He returned to her nightly in her dreams, clad not in his soldier's uniform, but with a dark blanket over his shoulders and his feet bare because, he said, he wanted to feel her land. The image always faded with the dawn.
"Why do you not want to do as your uncle says?" Cho-Cho asked after a brief silence. "Is it because you are afraid of getting closer to the enemy?"
"Not for myself. Out here I cannot feel their strength, but when I see their weapons, I ask myself if we will ever be free of them."
"This is our home, Luash. We know its hiding places, and if we decide that this land is no longer safe, we will take to the mountains."
She allowed herself a quick glance at the steep slopes of Medicine Lake range. Today the mountains looked so far away, promising safety, and yet they were unreachable. "What does he want of me?"
Cho-Cho explained that scouts had brought word that a large number of soldiers, a howitzer, mules carrying food, extra ammunition, stretchers, even a doctor were heading toward them. The army moved slowly, looking like frightened children. Still, there was danger in both their number and weapons. If the soldiers could be trapped somewhere, they would make easy targets.
At the word target, she fought down a tremor. Yes, the army had treated her people like animals to be hunted down, but for her to be part of an attack... "What are you going to do?"
"What I must, Luash. What I must." Cho-Cho looked at his wife, who was sitting on bunchgrass as she tried to repair the settler's boots she'd been wearing. Whe-cha sat beside her. "Will you come with us?"
Although the thought of helping trap unsuspecting soldiers made her sick, she agreed because she was Modoc, because anything was better than not knowing, not helping. Before long, she and Cho-Cho and more than twenty men were moving along the back side of a long, thin lava flow that would allow them to get much closer to the army without being seen. Was Jed with the enemy?
They'd covered less than half of the distance which separated the Modocs from the soldiers when she first heard the squeaking sound made by the cumbersome howitzer's wheels. There were other noises, a mule's bray, a horse's whinny, men yelling at horses, all of which made her wonder how whites could be so proud of their army if it couldn't move silently.
She should be terrified at the thought of getting this close to those who rather see her dead than alive, but she and the others with her knew this land. Although she spent most of the time crawling on hands and knees over nearly level ground, something close to a sense of peace stole over her.
Birds were everywhere, their gentle songs blending with the wind like whispers from a mother watching her child fall asleep.
She'd told Cho-Cho nothing of how she felt when Eagle came to her yesterday. To see him with a mate sent her heart soaring.
Did Eagle know how she felt about Jed?
When Jed's name echoed ins
ide her like an owl's call, she pressed her hand against her stomach, remembering what his touch had done to her. They'd made love, come together in the nigh while their people fired at each other. Both had spoken of the in sanity of what they were doing; both said that their night together shouldn't be.
But their bodies had joined, and for those few precious moments, their thoughts hadn't gone beyond that—hadn't needed or wanted to. And even though they would never have those moment again, the memory would warm her through all the winters of her life. And if a Modoc bullet found him—
A Modoc bullet.
Hating herself, her uncle, everyone, she looked around until she saw Cho-Cho slightly ahead of her. He lay flat on his belly on a slight rise, staring ahead. She joined him, careful not to disturb as much as a single blade of new grass. He was looking at a line of men and horses that reminded her of a disorganized ant trail. "They have many weapons," he said without turning his head. "But they are afraid."
Although the land stretched out forever in all directions, the men were bunched together like puppies trying to keep warm during a storm. All carried their rifles where they could easily use them. "Leave them," she begged. "Please, leave them alone."
"If I do, maybe they will kill my family."
"Not if we go into the hills. Cho-Cho, there are so many of them."
"There will be fewer before the day is over."
Sick, she lay beside the warrior while a tiny spider crept close to her hand. She didn't want this! She wanted to be a child again, running free and happy along the shore of Modoc Lake as she tried to catch the ducks that squawked and flapped easily away from her. Why couldn't she have that world back?
"I remember the first time I saw a white man," Cho-Cho whispered. "He was on horseback, leading two mules weighed down with furs. When he saw me, he motioned for me to come close. I did, because I'd heard that trappers carried gifts. He gave me a bright red headband and some nuts. I thought he was wonderful. That was a long time ago."
