A finger on her chin, turning her eyes upward, made Leonida’s pulse race, for she knew whose finger it was.
Sage’s.
He had dismounted and come to her, singling her out from the others to speak to. It was going to be hard for her to treat him coldly, while her insides warmed with his mere presence.
“You are with these women and children,” Sage said, forcing her to look at him. “Why are you?”
Leonida defied him with a set stare and a tight jaw. A part of her wanted to fling herself into his arms and apologize for his having to resort to this way of life. Yet she kept reminding herself that she did not know this man at all. Perhaps he had been responsible for some of the other raids. This one had seemed easy for him, as though practiced many times.
“You too are now Sage’s enemy?” Sage said, fighting to keep his voice cold and impersonal. “This is why you travel away from Sage? You see him as criminal? As renegade?”
Leonida could not keep her silence any longer. There were too many things to be explained. “Haven’t you proven today that you are both?” she said. She placed her hands on her hips. “If you were innocent of all crimes, you wouldn’t be here now, with those men lying wounded. If you were innocent before, you certainly aren’t now. You are rightfully the hunted one now, Sage. I have no choice now but to see you as you truly are. An unruly renegade.”
Sage took his hand from her chin. He motioned with a nod of his head toward the soldiers whose wounds were being looked after by his warriors. “If things were different, this would not be of my choosing,” he said thickly. “It is not something long planned. Only one sunrise ago did I know that this must be done. Only then did I have to scheme ways to turn the tide back in my favor. Taking hostages is the only way. Surely you can see that.”
“No, I can’t see how maiming and stealing can solve anything,” Leonida said, dropping her arms slowly to her side. In truth she saw his point, but she still could not condone his tactics. And he still had not proven to her that he had not been one of those murderous, thieving renegades all along.
“It is the only way,” Sage said, then walked away from her.
Leonida edged back to stand among the other women and the clinging, sobbing children. When Trevor took her hand and looked up at her with fearful eyes, she reached down and lifted him up into her arms and held him tightly to her breast, still watching Sage as he went from one wounded man to the other, saying words of comfort to them. To her amazement, the soldiers responded in kind, their hands momentarily locking with Sage’s as they smiled up at him.
Then Leonida was filled with horror when some of Sage’s warriors yanked the other soldiers and the stagecoach driver over to the wagon and tied them one by one to the four wheels, until they were a crowded jumble of flesh and faces massed together.
Sage came back to the women and children. His gaze moved slowly over them, then stopped at Leonida. He grabbed Trevor away from her and put him with the other children. “You will ride with me,” he flatly ordered her.
He shifted his eyes to the other women and the children. “We are taking you all to our stronghold in the mountains,” he said solemnly. “All but Leonida will walk.”
He motioned with his rifle. “Go,” he commanded stiffly. “Start walking. We will soon follow on horses.”
Terrified, the women and children stumbled away, clutching each other and sobbing. Leonida dared Sage with a set stare. “I’m no better than they,” she said icily. “I won’t ride while they walk.”
She hurried after them. She was aware of Sage’s eyes on her, angry and hot, and she was aware when he mounted his horse and began riding toward her.
She walked more quickly, so fast that she passed up some of the other women in her haste to put as much distance between herself and Sage as she could.
Then her breath was stolen when Sage reached down and grabbed her around the waist, yanking her onto his saddle in front of him.
“Let me down,” Leonida cried, trying to pry his arms from around her waist with her fingers. “Sage, I don’t want to be on your horse with you. Let me down.”
“E-do-ta, no,” Sage said, his hold on her not weakening. “I did not intend for you to be a part of my vengeance. You will not suffer for it more than I can help.”
“If you don’t want me to be a part of it, then let me go,” Leonida said, unable to control the sensual feelings that looking into his eyes caused.
“For many reasons Sage cannot do that,” he mumbled, wheeling his horse around, then leading it into a soft trot behind the frightened women and children. “You will go with me to my stronghold. There you will stay.”
Leonida’s lips parted in a slight gasp. “Do you mean that I am to be your captive forever?” she finally managed to say in a stammer. “The others will be captives forever also?”
Sage did not respond. He just gave her a look that she could not define.
Chapter 8
I strove to hate,
But vainly strove.
—GEORGE LYTTELTON
Aspens and fields of wildflowers brightened the wayside as the trail began to climb gradually into the mountains. Leonida noticed that Sage’s horse would turn, stop, or start at the mere pressure of his foot. The silver ornaments jingled on the horse’s bridle. They flashed brightly in the sun, reflecting into Leonida’s eyes as she sat much too close to the man that she had so many torn feelings about. Yet she had given up struggling with him long ago, knowing that he was as determined to hold her there as she had been to be set free.
Glancing ahead at the women and children stumbling along the trail, dread filled her. What could Sage be planning for these innocent women and children? Even herself?
Licking her parched lips, which had been baked the whole afternoon, Leonida glanced over her shoulder at Sage. He looked past her, his jaw tight, his eyes cold. But she could not hold her silence any longer. They had not stopped once since they had left the stagecoach. There had been no water offered or moments of rest. She was afraid that if they went any farther, those moving on foot might drop, not only from exhaustion but from thirst as well.
“Sage, when are we going to stop?” Leonida blurted out, her voice raspy from her thirst. “Have mercy on those who are walking. The children. The women. They must have a chance to rest. And they are in dire need of water.”
She regretted having not said something earlier, for the moment she asked, Sage drew his reins and motioned his warriors to stop. He gave his warriors commands in Navaho, then rode up to the women and children and told them to make a turn to the right.
“I will take you to a wet place where cattails can be found, pulled, and eaten raw,” he said. “This will quench your thirst even more than water. It will sustain you much longer once we move again farther into the mountains, toward my stronghold.”
Leonida’s heart cried out to the children, especially Trevor. He looked in worse condition than all the rest. His eyes were scarcely open and his mother had to keep pulling him up as he would slowly crumple toward the ground. Leonida understood why Carole did not lift the child up into her arms. She was too weak herself to carry the burden of another.
Leonida turned to Sage. “Let me walk with the others,” she pleaded. She nodded toward Trevor. “I can carry the child. I doubt he can go much farther on his own. Please allow me to help him, Sage. What should it matter to you that I do?”
Sage peered into her eyes, finding it more and more difficult to look at her as his captive. It was still hard for him to comprehend that she had been in the stagecoach. Seeing her there had brought many feelings to assail him.
But most prominent of all was the fact that she was traveling on that stagecoach away from him—which meant that she had not cared enough for him to stay.
This he could never understand.
He had felt so much in her kiss.
He had read so much in her eyes.
Yet another thought had come to him, one that pleased him. If she had be
en leaving Fort Defiance, she had also been leaving the man that she had planned to marry.
“May I?” Leonida pleaded.
Sage’s heart pounded as he gazed into Leonida’s eyes, seeing within them more than a pleading for the child. He could see that she was battling her feelings for him. Perhaps she was recalling their kiss, and the message that the kiss had sung to her heart.
If she searched her heart and thoughts carefully, he knew she would discover that she still had the feelings for him that had surfaced when he had held her and kissed her.
Yes, he thought to himself, if anything good at all came from the stagecoach attack, it was that it had led him to her, as though it had been their destiny.
“You may go to the child,” Sage said, loosening his arm around her waist. With his other arm he helped her down from the horse, her eyes having not yet left him.
“I learned from you how to say thank you in Navaho,” Leonida murmured. “Uke-he, Sage. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Sage nodded stiffly, then watched with a deep love for her as she went to the small boy and lifted him gently into her arms. It was at this moment that he knew that he had been right to choose her to be his future wife. There, standing before him, was how she would be in the future as she would hold their child with such compassion and tenderness.
Humming a lullaby, Leonida cradled Trevor in her arms and slowly rocked him back and forth. When he managed a smile, then lay his cheek back against her bosom, she knew that he was going to be all right.
“Leonida, thank you for helping,” Carole said, eyeing Trevor with wavering eyes. “I’m so weak. I—I just couldn’t lift him.”
Carole looked over at Sage bitterly. “That Indian will pay,” she hissed. “Once Kit Carson finds out what he’s done, he’ll come and shoot him. Or better yet, hang him. He deserves no pity, that one.”
A deep sadness overwhelmed Leonida, torn between how she should feel about Sage and how she actually did feel. Had he, in truth, been responsible for more than this one raid? Did he have placed in a sacred place in his hogan many white men’s scalps, perhaps even those of women and children . . . ?
She closed her eyes to such a horrendous thought and began following Sage. Trevor lay limply in her arms and fell into a sound sleep. When they reached the shade of cottonwood trees and the splash of a waterfall as it careened down the walls of a high butte, everyone ran to the river and fell to their knees, splashing water into their mouths and onto their faces.
Leonida moved carefully to the water’s edge with Trevor. Carole took the child from her arms and lay him down beneath a tree. After she ripped a portion of her skirt away, she soaked it, then began bathing her son’s face and squeezing water over his tiny lips.
Leonida was not aware of Sage behind her until he placed a hand on her shoulder, causing her to turn with a start. “Eat the meat of the cattail,” he said, handing her a cattail spike that had been stripped of its tightly packed outer flowers. “This will quench your thirst.” He held a yucca plant in his other hand, as well as a leather pouch of food. “Once your thirst is quenched, you can feed on other offerings that I give you.”
“No, thank you,” Leonida said stiffly, pretending that which she did not feel. “I will drink what everyone else drinks, and if they aren’t given food, nor will I eat.”
At almost the same moment, her eyes widened as she watched Sage’s warriors mingle with the women and children, sharing food from their leather pouches. The dried wild seeds, some jerked beef meat mixed with tallow, and the fruit of the yucca were consumed quickly, followed by deeper gulps of water.
Sage walked away from Leonida with his offering of food. “You can rest for a while and then we will move onward,” he said, looking from woman to woman, then from child to child. “We will not stop again until we are safely within the folds of the mountain.”
Leonida was deeply touched by Sage’s generosity. Everyone’s needs were being seen to, and even the warriors seemed to have relaxed. They were more like Leonida had first seen them at the fort, standing outside their tents with their wares to trade. They did not seem like renegades at all, except that she had seen them shoot to kill and force those taken from the stagecoach into captivity.
Her stomach’s sudden growling, so loud that surely even the fish in the stream heard it, made Leonida forget everything but her hunger and her thirst. She eyed the pouch of food in Sage’s hand, and the fruit of the yucca, which looked like a short, fat banana. Her throat was so parched that she could hardly swallow. She glanced over at the stream, then went quickly to the water. Kneeling down beside it, she began scooping large handfuls of water up to her lips, and the water trickled down the back of her throat so quickly that she began to choke and gag.
Embarrassed, she rose to her feet and cleared her throat one more time. When Sage came to her with a concerned look on his face, she turned her eyes away, not wanting him to sense her feelings for him.
“You are being foolish,” Sage said. He forced the pouch of food into her hand and then the fruit of the yucca. “I will share my food with you. You eat. Now. You have heard me say that we will not stop again until we are in the mountains. Only moments ago you had strength enough for both you and the child. Later, after much more travel, you will see that because you did not eat when told to, you will have to depend on someone else’s strength, as did the child yours.”
He leaned down, closer to her face. “I would be more than glad to lend you a helping hand should you need it,” he said softly. “But would you accept it as readily as the child accepted help from you? I doubt it. Your trust in me is gone. Is it not?”
“How could I trust you now, after what you did?” Leonida said, eyeing the pouch hungrily. She looked slowly up at Sage. “You injured the soldiers. Isn’t that reason enough not to trust you?”
“Did you not notice that none of the soldiers were mortally wounded?” Sage said stiffly. “The aim of Sage and his warriors is accurate. Had I wanted dead soldiers, they would be dead. I chose not to kill, only to maim.”
Leonida’s mouth opened in a gasp; now she realized that it was true. None of the soldiers had been killed.
Sage continued before she could offer a response. “And you know that I would never hurt you,” he said. “Trust me, Leonida. What I have done is the only way for the Navaho. My people’s future is dim because of Kit Carson and the other white leaders. They would not listen to reason peacefully. I was forced into using means other than that which my father taught me. He was a peaceful Navaho. So was I until today. This is the first time Sage has ever lifted a firearm against the white pony soldiers. I hope it will be the last.”
“How can you expect it to be the last time, when you know that the soldiers are even now hunting for you?” Leonida asked. “Sage, no matter what you say, I cannot condone what you have done today.”
Sage took her by an elbow and urged her to sit beside the stream. “In time, you will follow my reasoning for everything,” he said. He nodded toward the food pouch. “Open. Let us share equally.”
She didn’t have to be told again. Her stomach ached so terribly, she opened the pouch and broke the long strip of jerked deer meat in two and handed half to Sage. Between bites of tasteless deer meat and dried, wild seeds, she enjoyed the sweetness of the fat fruit of the yucca.
Sage ate along with her, his mind on what lay ahead. “It is important to reach my stronghold before word has spread too far of what my warriors and I have done,” he said suddenly. “Once we are there, no one can find Sage and his people, or his captives. It is well hidden from the soldiers. Only a few neighboring Indians with whom the Navaho trade even know where it is located.”
“It will take you quite a long time to get there if you continue forcing the women and children to travel on foot,” Leonida said guardedly. “Especially if they have to travel the narrow paths of the mountainsides.”
As she took her last bite of food, she gave Sage a half glance, hoping that
what she had said had planted an idea in his head. The government had always given the officers’ families more than adequate housing, clothing, and food to satisfy them. This had made them weak.
“You are right,” Sage said, nodding. “The captives will now all travel on horseback with my warriors.”
Leonida was stunned that he had agreed to her suggestion. A warm feeling swam through her: Sage was changing back into the gentle, caring person that she had known at first. It would be so easy to forget everything but the good about him.
“Once we are safely at my stronghold I will send a scout to Fort Defiance with word of the ambush and my intentions,” Sage said, gently taking the empty pouch from Leonida and folding it in fourths.
“What are your intentions?” she asked. “How long do you plan to hold everyone captive?”
She paled when he did not answer.
Chapter 9
The clearest spring, the shadiest grove;—
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?
—GEORGE LYTTELTON
The long ride, the hot sun and scorching wind, weighed on Leonida. Combined with the lack of sleep, the discomfort made her limbs sluggish and her eyes heavy. Her head bobbed as she forced herself not to lean back and rest against Sage’s powerful chest. It was enough that she had to ride with him at all, constantly battling her feelings for him, let alone having to ride on into the long night without any sleep or rest from the grueling journey on horseback. She had long since forgotten the others, who were as fatigued as she, for it was taking all of her own willpower and concentration not to give in to her exhaustion.
The morning sun had been welcomed, for she hoped it would reveal that they were approaching Sage’s stronghold. Yet Leonida saw that they were still traveling a small footpath at the side of a mountain, this only occasionally leveling out into a valley wide and green with grass.
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