The Soul Survivors Series Boxed Set

by Vella Munn

  "The sight of your father makes you sick. You are unable to speak your mother's name without great sorrow. Your heart needed to be free to live as our ancestors did; it also needed peace from what you felt when you were around your parents and the soldiers."

  Shaken by her uncle's wisdom, she could only squeeze his hand. "The army men will never understand you, my uncle. They see a chief and a warrior, a man who makes war with them."

  "A man who kills."

  "Yes. And for that they must have their revenge—unless you escape into the mountains." When he said nothing, she went on, her attention on the bent feather and what it might mean. "In years to come, will anyone speak of you with wise words? Will they know what lives inside your heart?"

  "My family does; you do. Maybe that is enough."

  She couldn't agree; those who came after them and stood at the Land of Burned Out Fires and spoke of Captain Jack should understand why honor and freedom meant more to him than life itself. But no one would listen to her any more than the army had to the leader of the Modocs. They both would end their lives in silence.

  Eagle still carried wisdom within him. As long as he flew free and proud over this land, people might look up at him and sense a warrior's heart beating.

  "We will wait here," Kientpoos said softly. "Soon they will find us and when they do, I will hand my rifle to them. There is nothing else for me to do. Nothing."

  He reached down and picked something off the ground. Luash watched, grief stricken, as he rubbed pitch over his cheeks as a sign of mourning.

  Tears stung her eyes, but she didn't beg him to reconsider. Her body felt as if she'd been alive since the beginning of time; Kientpoos had to be just as weary, feel just as broken. The only thing that kept her going was knowing that her uncle was still alive. Despite his belief that he'd ended his life by killing the general, his heart continued to beat. "I will walk to them with you."

  "You do not have to do this. Alone, no one will come after you. And with Eagle beside you, you would be safe."

  Eagle still protected her. "My heart does not beat only for me, my uncle." Holding out her hand, she waited for him to place some of the pitch in it. "You are my family. You and Whe-cha and Cho-Cho and all other Modocs."

  "There is another in your life, Luash. One who is not Modoc."

  * * *

  Jed wasn't with the men who accepted Kientpoos's surrender. Luash was grateful that she didn't have to look into his eyes and half sick because the soldiers whooped and shouted that they had won the war against savages; they pounded each other on the back. These hard-eyed strangers—how could any of them possibly understand what having to give up meant to Kientpoos?

  Whe-cha cried the whole way to the army camp, and Kientpoos's young daughter seemed frightened half to death. Luash rode behind her uncle, refusing to look at the armed men pressing around them. Like Kientpoos, she held her head high. If their captors thought themselves great fighters, she couldn't do anything about that. What she did know was that she was Modoc, that she had chosen to spend a winter deep in the Land of Burned Out Fires because freedom meant that much to her.

  Several tents had been erected at the army camp at Clear Lake, and she and Kientpoos and the others were directed toward the largest one where, they'd been told, Colonel Jefferson C. Davis, the man who had replaced General Canby, waited. As the tall, slender colonel Stepped out of his tent, Luash's attention was drawn to the man beside him, the fierce, brave man who had turned her from a girl into a woman.

  Jed's face carried no expression. If she hadn't learned to look deep into his eyes and from there to his heart, she might have thought that today meant nothing more to him than all those that had gone before it.

  This was a man sent here to help end a war. His features should be alive with triumph. Instead, he no more than glanced at Kientpoos before walking over to her and holding out his hands, indicating he wanted to help her off her horse. She should have refused; after all, she and her people were at his mercy.

  But his eyes spoke of understanding.

  "You 've lost weight," he said when she was standing beside him and his body heat seeped into her. "And you look tired."

  "A deer running from wolves has little time to eat." She kept her voice low.

  "The wolves won, Luash."

  "Because there were ten wolves to each deer."

  Colonel Davis was shaking hands with Kientpoos, who barely looked at him and said nothing in reply to whatever the colonel was saying. Kientpoos's wives and daughter were still on horseback. Luash couldn't stop watching her uncle, not even when Jed slipped his arm around her waist. "He'll be treated fairly," he whispered. "You don't have to worry about him."

  "His heart is broken." Many eyes were on them, but if it didn't matter to Jed, she would continue to stand beside him—at least until she understood her emotions.

  "I wish it didn't have to be like this."

  "Do you?" He seemed old today, his eyes cave-like. Although he was dressed in a fine uniform that reminded her all too much of what he was, he seemed unaware of anyone except her. They had been through so much together, distant and unsure at first, finally finding a kind of understanding she could put no words to. She couldn't think of him as her captor. Her enemy.

  "At least they didn't strip him of his dignity," Jed was saying.

  How much dignity does an unarmed man have when he stands surrounded by those he has fought? Suddenly, she could no longer keep her thoughts on Kientpoos. "You were in the leader's tent. I thought you would be out looking for us."

  "I was. Yesterday, I found a woman and her baby. They—" Breaking off, he gripped her and held her firmly at arms' length. "I've been so scared for you," he whispered. Then, as if regretting his words, he began pulling her toward another tent. She stumbled, then regained her balance, wondering why she wasn't fighting him and why he thought he had to hold onto her.

  This camp, although hastily assembled and temporary looking, was alive with both soldiers and the reservation Indians who'd helped hunt the Modocs. She felt buffeted by their presence, exhausted by the heat their bodies gave out. Beyond them lay the hills and mountains her great-grandparents had known.

  No one was inside the dark, stale-smelling interior of the tent, which wrapped itself around her like a trapper's steel trap; still, she could sense the presence of the men who spent their nights here. This was not Jed's tent.

  "This is where the reporters have been staying," he explained briefly. "You and I are in the middle of a war, and people are following us around, writing about what we're doing, so people across the country can read about it."

  She didn't care about that any more than she could keep her thoughts on what might be happening between her uncle and the man who'd taken the place of the one he'd killed. The air in the tent smelled as if it had never been touched by a fresh breeze. It was strangling her. Feeling slightly nauseated, she considered sinking onto one of the cots, but if she did, Jed would loom even larger and stronger.

  "Are you not needed with the others? With your kind?"

  "There aren't hinds here, Luash. Only the end to something that should have never happened. Should have never run on the way it did." He released her but didn't move far enough away. "Are you sure you're all right? You look so tired."

  She shrugged to let him know it didn't matter. Awareness of the difference between them washed over her. He carried a pistol, wore sturdy shoes that didn't feel the hard ground underneath. Someone else prepared his meals for him and if he wanted, he could walk away from everything. Still, a Modoc sun had tanned him and Modoc wind had left its mark on his flesh and hair. "What will happen to us now?" she asked.

  "Things haven't been settled. Until today, we weren't sure Jack would turn himself in."

  "Turn himself in? How easy you make that sound."

  "What do you want me to say?"

  "Nothing." She caught the word before it could become a cry. Still, speaking took all her strength, that and battling her
unwanted surroundings. "This morning my uncle told me his legs were played out. A warrior should remain proud, not be driven to the ground like this."

  "I can't help what happened, or the way you feel about it. I wish to hell I could, but I can't."

  "Why did you bring me in here? There is nothing left for us to say."

  "The hell there isn't. I've got to know how you feel about this."

  "Why?" she challenged even as tears pressed at her until she thought she might explode. She heard the muffled sounds of men and horses, wagons and weapons, but they didn't matter. Nothing did except for the stench and heat of this tent, and the man who shared it with her. "Would that change what is going to happen?"

  The muscles around his mouth tightened. "No. But damnit, we've been through a lot together. I want—"

  "I want to be left alone. To mourn the loss of everything I hold dear. To try to find the strength to face the rest of my life."

  "Oh, God."

  "You do not believe in a god, remember?" Why was she attacking him? Was this the only way she could keep from falling apart?

  "It doesn't matter, Luash. Nothing does except what's going on inside you."

  He cared. Of course he did. He wouldn't be here with her if he didn't. But his compassion frightened her. She was standing at the edge of a cliff with no room to turn around and only blackness ahead of her. If she couldn't find her courage, she might cling to Jed and sob out her fear for the future, but eventually his arms would no longer be enough and she would have to face that darkness again. Alone. "What I feel, Jed, does not concern you."

  She thought he was going to strike her. For little more than a heartbeat, she saw rage in him. Then anger was replaced by something she lacked the strength to explore. "You can't believe that," he said. "After everything we've been through, you can't."

  "What have we been through? Have you spent the days and nights since we last saw each other running, hiding, afraid on the very land that should have brought you peace? Did you fall asleep knowing the man you had given your body to was among those hunting you down?"

  He reached toward her, then stopped, looking like a wolf who senses danger. "I was afraid it would be like this between us. Either that or—or you would be dead."

  Dead? He'd feared that for her? But Eagle—"I do not want to talk to you, Jed. I hurt... my heart... I belong with my people; I was wrong to come with you."

  "Were you?" he asked, the question so gentle that she couldn't hold onto her anger, her grief, her hatred of her surroundings. "I don't think so, not if we're ever going to resolve what's tearing us apart."

  "You ask me to forget who we are, to believe we were both born today? I cannot. I do not want to."

  "I don't believe you."

  How did he know her so well? Desperate to keep her growing despair concealed, she opened her mouth to remind him that they'd been already ripped apart and nothing would ever put them back together. Instead of arguments and anger, only a whimper slipped past her lips.

  "I'm sorry," he whispered as he drew her into his arms. "I'm so sorry."

  He couldn't change what had happened to her ancestors' world. Why did she think that blaming him would take away the pain? "I hurt, Jed," she moaned from the shelter and danger of his chest. "My heart, my spirit—all I want is the wind in my face. Is that too much to ask for?"

  He didn't answer, and she felt herself drowning in the silence. No, he couldn't give her the wind or mend her heart. All he had to offer were his arms. And maybe his understanding.

  But to turn to him instead of one of her own kind? To have walked away from her family because a white man asked her to—

  Why couldn't she think?

  Why did she feel as if she was dying?

  Chapter 18

  Fort Klamath had changed in the nearly three years since Luash had last seen it. The collection of crude wooden buildings were still sheltered by evergreens, but a new stockade had been built from heavy, fresh-cut logs driven into the ground and the fort now pulsed with life and white man's power.

  Sitting next to Whe-cha, Luash thought only briefly of what her mother had endured at this place. The long wagon ride from the Land of-Burned Out Fires had numbed her, stripped her down until only fear and heartache and resignation remained.

  During the journey, Jed had been a silent and brooding man whose eyes said endless things Luash didn't want to acknowledge. The chasm-deep differences between them, which had always simmered beneath the surface, had burst forth to swamp her. He was captor, she captive.

  It didn't matter that he hadn't put a bullet in her or thrown a rope over her. He was part of that terrible and massive thing called army and she couldn't forgive him for that. Neither could she forgive him for the chains around Kientpoos's ankles and the four helpless Modocs who'd been gunned down right after their capture. The day was clear and bright and warm with birds singing and the wind playing; in her heart it was winter again.

  When the wagon stopped, she and the others were immediately herded into the small, high-walled, shadowed stockade. In the distance, mountains and trees beckoned, but in here there was barely room for her to lay down. Once again she was forced to fight the sense that the teeth of a steel trap had closed around her. Heat reached her, heat and dust and sometimes the smell of pitch and pine, which helped a little; but because there was so much noise, she no longer heard the birds, and the stockade walls blocked out the wind she'd embraced her entire life.

  Kientpoos had been hauled off to a small, solid building with only a single window. Her heart wrenched at the thought of him forced to sit in there, separated from his family and Mother Earth, heavy chains on his ankles, waiting for white man's law.

  Eagle, she thought bitterly. Eagle hadn't heard her pleas! Swamped by despair, she stumbled over to Whe-cha. Always before, she had felt like an older sister to her uncle's wife. Today, however, it was Whe-cha who comforted her.

  For most of that first day, she and the others stood in small, frightened groups asking useless questions about what would happen to them now. No one knew what a trial meant, just that it was something Kientpoos and other braves had to endure; they had no idea where they would be sent once their time at Fort Klamath was over.

  She was a prisoner. Over and over again she struggled to make sense of the word, but every time it began to invade her heart, she recoiled. She could think of only one thing at a time—how would they be fed; would they be given sleeping blankets; would the angry settlers make good on their threats of more killing? Most of all, she thought about the man outside the stockade, the gray-eyed man who'd once shared his body with her and now might be meeting with those who wanted all Modocs to live like cattle.

  * * *

  The captives had been at Fort Klamath for three days when Jed first walked into the crowded stockade with its smell of unwashed bodies and fear. For a moment it was all he could do not to turn and leave, but if she could survive these conditions, so could he—at least briefly.

  Already, the Indians had begun to turn the enclosure into a home of sorts by arranging their few belongings in separate, mostly neat piles. After the way they'd spent the winter, they were used to sleeping in close confinement and, he reassured himself, took comfort from each other's presence.

  But Luash trusted in Eagle. Eagle had given her strength at a time when many might have given in to despair. Her spirit couldn't reach her in here. What was that doing to her?

  Aware of hostile and frightened eyes on him, he walked slowly past small knots of ragged Modocs until his senses told him she was near. Stopping, he looked around, his hand a deliberate distance from his handgun even as he cursed the soldier in himself that wouldn't allow him to remove it. These were mostly women and children; the few warriors who hadn't been separated from them had no fight left in them. For too many, only their eyes remained alive.

  At last he saw her. She was almost unrecognizable. Her hair hung limply over her shoulders, which slumped slightly, aging her. She wore the ov
ersized deerskin shirt he'd once taken off her, now caught at the waist with a short length of rope. Her bare feet were dusty, her legs scratched from trudging through brush during those last days of running. Her hands hung useless at her sides. Still, she met his gaze boldly and made no attempt to hide from him. Her eyes were magnificent, alive and angry.

  Now that he was standing face to face with her, he realized he had no idea what he was going to say to her. A thousand things had crowded his mind when he had finally been allowed to leave Colonel Davis's side, but now, seeing her deplorable condition and sensing her still-simmering fierce pride, nothing mattered except adding fuel to that pride and keeping her eyes alive.

  "Have you had enough to eat?" he forced himself to ask "Enough water?"

  She shrugged. "What will happen to him?"

  "Jack?"

  "Kientpoos."

  "Kientpoos. There's going to be a trial." He looked around but there was no place they could go for privacy. "I need to talk to you alone. As long as you're with me, you can walk out of here."

  "Because I am your prisoner?"

  He should have been prepared for her hard question. He thought he was; still, the words stung. "Call it what you want, Luash. What I'm saying is, if you want to understand what's going on, the only way you'll get the truth is from me."

  For an instant he thought she was going to turn and run, hide from what she couldn't possibly want to hear. Instead, trembling so faintly that maybe he only imagined it, she nodded and waited for him to lead the way. He told the guard she'd be back later, not caring what the man thought of his behavior.

  Once they'd stepped outside the stockade, he pointed toward the thick pines that surrounded Fort Klamath. He told Luash that if she decided she couldn't live as a prisoner of war, he wouldn't try to stop her from fleeing.

  Her gaze went to her surroundings, and he sensed her spirit, her soul, something, clinging to the trees, taking nourishment from them. "Where would I go? If our enemies see me, they will kill me."