Sundancer's Woman

by Judith E. French

  Strange. How strange it felt to have a man do such a small intimate thing. Strange ... but good, very good. She caught her breath, not wanting the moment to end ... wanting to savor every sweet sensation.

  His big, hard fingers were gentle as he untied the rawhide lace and carefully combed out her hair until it fell in waves over her wet shoulders. “Best to rinse it out,” he said. “There may be blood ...”

  Docilely, she ducked her head under. Once, twice, she let the clear water wash her clean.

  “That’s good,” he said. His fingers tightened around her hand. He squeezed reassuringly and smiled at her. “Had enough?” he asked.

  She nodded, too full of emotion to trust her voice.

  He climbed out and offered her his hand.

  . “This isn’t ... our drinking water ... I hope,” she managed to ask. Her teeth were chattering so that she could hardly get her words out.

  “It’s not. I’m hardly the fool you take me for,” he replied. He was shivering too, and she was glad. He wrapped a wool blanket around her naked shoulders.

  Her gaze met his, and her mood lightened. Happiness bubbled up in her chest. They were alive. Alive! So why was she behaving so ridiculously? She began to chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Me.” Impulsively, she threw her arms around him and hugged him. “I don’t want to fight with you. I thought you were dead. I was so scared. And then when I found out ...” She broke off in another burst of shivering. “I’m sorry, Hunt. Forgive me. I just—”

  He put his arms around her and kissed her.

  For long seconds, she floated in the pure pleasure of his kiss. Then a warm trickle of blood down her cheek reminded her that he still had an injury that needed tending. She pulled back. “Your head,” she said. “You will die if we don’t stop it from bleeding.”

  He let go of her and put his hand to the gash. “You were scared I was dying?”

  She averted her eyes and nodded.

  He made a sound of derision. “You probably would have killed Powder Horn if I hadn’t come to his rescue. You’re a caution with a rock. What was that you called him? A devil?”

  She smiled. “Sort of a devil. More of a demon. I think Onishonk nainnuk is the blue-faced thing that lives in the woods and eats children.” She pulled the blanket tighter around her. Her hands still stung, but not as much as they had. Then she remembered the hot coals and ash she’d thrown into Powder Horn’s face. “My hands ...” she said. “I burned them when I threw the ashes.”

  “You’re burned?” His voice became husky with concern. “Let me see.”

  “I’m all right. I just ...” She shook her head. She felt like such a fool getting faint over a little blood. Raven would have made her a laughingstock in front of the other women. Now that she knew it was a simple burn and not Hunt’s blood stinging her hands ... “I can still sew up your cut,” she said.

  “You can just bandage it. The pool washed it clean.”

  “Coward. It needs stitches.”

  “It doesn’t need sewing.”

  “It does. And I’ll have to shave your head first. I—”

  “The hell you will.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of—”

  “Tie the scalp together with sections of hair,” he insisted. “It’s a Cheyenne trick an old warrior showed me. You do it if you’re on the plains where you can’t get proper—”

  “It won’t hurt that much. Jamie fell out of a tree and cut his knee last summer. I put four stitches in it and—”

  “I’m not your child. Do as I say. Tie the cuts shut.”

  For an instant she was lost in the memory of that morning with her son. Jamie had come running to her, his brown eyes dilated with fear. He wasn’t weeping, but his mouth was puckered and his breath coming in short, hard gasps. He’d been trying so hard to be brave in front of the older boys he’d been playing with. She’d taken him into the privacy of their hearth place, carefully washed the dirt and blood away, and taken the necessary stitches.

  He still didn’t cry, not even when she pierced his flesh with a needle. Afterwards, she’d given him a piece of honeycomb dripping with honey and covered the wound with a poultice of Solomons Seal and cattail fluff. She pulled him into her lap and sat holding him tightly, telling him how much she loved him for a long time.

  If she shut her eyes, she could still feel the outline of Jamie’s body pressed against her, the soft texture of his hair on her face, and the sticky kiss he planted on her cheek.

  “Well?” Hunt demanded. “Do you mean to let me bleed to death, after all?”

  “What?” The irritation in his voice jerked her from her thoughts. “Oh. No,” she replied quickly. “I’ll do as you say.”

  “I think you wanted to sew it so that you could enjoy every prick of the needle,” he grumbled.

  “No,” she answered softly. “No, I wouldn’t.” Putting that needle into Jamie’s skin was terrible, she thought, but it had had to be done. And so did this.

  He wrapped himself in a second blanket, took the torch, and led her back through the maze to the campsite without speaking. When they reached the fire, Hunt pulled a spare linen shirt from his pile of belongings and handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” she said shyly. Elizabeth turned her back and wiggled into the soft, worn garment. It was clean, but it smelled like Hunt. The white shirt covered her almost to her knees. She rolled back the sleeves and draped the blanket around her shoulders again.

  Among the Iroquois, she’d become used to seeing the unclad bodies of other people and she’d regularly exposed her own breasts to public view. She shouldn’t have felt self-conscious around Hunt, but for some reason she did. His offering the shirt without being asked was another act of kindness, and she was grateful.

  When she looked at the prisoner, she saw that he was fully awake. He glared back at her with hooded eyes full of malice. “What will we do with him?” Elizabeth murmured to Hunt.

  “I haven’t decided.” Hunt added wood to the fire. He motioned to his head. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Have you needle and thread?” she asked.

  “I do, in my hunting bag, but you’re not sewing me up.”

  “It’s your head.”

  “You’re damned right it is.”

  She glanced back at Powder Horn, and again, a strong foreboding came over her. “You should kill him,” she said to Hunt. “If you don’t—”

  “If you want him killed, help yourself.”

  “I can’t do it now. I could have—before—when he was trying to kill me.”

  “Exactly my point.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I know the Iroquois. I’ve lived with them. If you let him live, he’ll come after us. He won’t stop until we’re dead or he is. It’s a matter of honor.”

  Hunt shrugged. “My honor won’t let me murder a helpless man.”

  “You’ll be sorry.”

  “It won’t be the first time.” He sat cross-legged on the buffalo robe and motioned to his head. “All right.”

  Stoically, he allowed her to bind up the wounds in his scalp. Carefully, she examined the other two places where fragments of rock had struck the back of his head, but they weren’t deep enough to worry about. “I wish I had some powdered root of Solomons Seal,” she said. “It would keep this from festering.”

  “That I don’t have, but I’ll be fine,” he said.

  She tied a final knot. “I just wanted to be certain that one stayed shut. That should do it,” she said with a sigh of relief. He hadn’t complained about the pain and that pleased her. Her hands hadn’t been as steady as she’d wished, but being so close to Hunt unnerved her.

  “Good;” he answered. “Now let me look at your burns.”

  “They’re nothing.”

  He took her hands in his and turned her palms up. “I’ve some ointment in a tin container in that bag.”

  She chuckled. “Is there a
nything you don’t carry in there?”

  “No Solomons Seal.” He grinned at her. “I spend a lot of time in the woods alone. It pays for a man to be able to look after himself.”

  “You’re not married?” The question slipped out without her realizing she was going to ask. She felt her face flush and wondered when she’d become so brazen.

  “No.”

  “Not ever?”

  “No.” He dug in the bag until he found the medicine, opened the lid, and began to apply the ointment to her hands with gentle care.

  His touch made her go all soft inside. “Most men—” she began breathlessly.

  “I’m not the marrying kind, Beth.”

  Why did that bother her? And why was he calling her Beth? Hunt Campbell and his past meant nothing to her. But she still had to ask. “You’ve never wanted children?”

  “Young ones need a spot to take roots in and a father that stays put.”

  “You don’t like children?”

  “Other people’s are fine. They aren’t my responsibility.”

  “But—”

  “This is leading somewhere, isn’t it?” he demanded, lowering his voice so that Powder Horn couldn’t hear what he was saying. “I’m not going back for your son. I’m sorry. I know it’s hard to accept, but he’s better off—you’re both better off—if he stays with Yellow Drum.”

  She jerked her hand back. “You don’t know everything. And you don’t know what’s right for my Jamie.” Or my little Rachel, she almost said. “You don’t.”

  He took her arm and she went rigid. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. Taking a firm hold on her hand, he pulled her firmly into the tunnel. He dragged her along until they were well out of earshot of the prisoner. “Stop acting like you think I’m going to knock your head off,” he snapped. “I won’t. Now stand here and listen to what I have to say.”

  “I’m standing,” she said.

  “But are you listening? I’d say I know a lot more about your son’s situation than you do,” he replied. “Your experience with the Seneca was a bad one, but the Iroquois are good people. Their ways are different, but that doesn’t make them wrong. The English have nearly destroyed a way of life that existed here for time out of time. Call them savages if you like, but there’s nothing the Iroquois have done to whites that the Europeans didn’t do to them first.”

  “You condone scalping? Murder of innocent children?”

  He shook his head. “Bad things happen in war—to both sides. I’ve seen Indian babies slaughtered, Indian women raped, villages and crops destroyed by white Christians. My birth sister’s husband, Simon Brandt, burned a church full of Indian women and children. He took Indian scalps and sold them to the English. And he wasn’t particular whether he took those scalps from hostiles or friendlies.”

  “I won’t argue that there are good Indians, even good Iroquois. I had many friends among the tribe; there were people I came to care about.”

  “Then you’ve got to realize that there is a place with the Seneca for your son and no place for him in Charles Town. Stop thinking about what you want, and think of Jamie’s good.”

  Anger flared within her. Why couldn’t Hunt understand? A mother’s love for her children meant more than life itself. Surely, she could find someplace that would accept Jamie and Rachel for the beautiful human beings they were—even if she had to leave the country and take them to England. First she had to get them away from Raven and Yellow Drum. “Jamie’s only a little boy,” she argued. “I’m his mother. He needs me.”

  “An Indian mother will love him just as much.”

  “Never!” She balled her fists into tight knots. “You have to listen to me. Yellow Drum’s chief wife is Raven. You saw her. She’s an evil woman. She hates Jamie and—”Elizabeth bit off her next word. She couldn’t tell Hunt about Rachel. If he wouldn’t go back for one, what would he do for two? “Hunt, please,” she said, trying to contain her desperation. “Jamie’s not safe with Raven.”

  “He’s Yellow Drum’s son, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, his only son. But he has a new wife. If she has a child—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Jamie is a fine boy. Any father would be proud of him. A man like Yellow Drum won’t let harm come to his son.”

  “Not his son. Mine.”

  “He loves him, doesn’t he?” Hunt asked.

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “Sometimes we have to make sacrifices for those we love,” he argued. “You can’t protect Jamie from being hated by whites for the color of his skin. Even a child feels hate.”

  “You’re wrong about this,” she insisted.

  “Maybe, but I won’t risk getting both of us killed over it. When you get home to Charles Town, talk to your father. Maybe he can arrange for someone to buy the boy from—”

  She scoffed. “Do you think I’m a fool that I’d believe that. It didn’t work with me, did it? Yellow Drum would never sell Jamie.”

  “Or let him go peaceably.” He swore softly. “Hate me for this if you have to,” he said, “but in time, you’ll come to understand that this is what’s best for both of you.”

  “Nothing I can say or do will change your mind?”

  “No. I intend to get both of us back to your father’s house in one piece—with our hair intact. And messing with a Seneca war chief’s only son is the quickest way I can think of to end up dead and without my scalp. We’ve argued over this too many times. I don’t intend to discuss it with you again.” He turned on his heel and returned to the fire. Still highly agitated, she followed him.

  Hunt took Powder Horn’s rifle, found his hunting bag, and began to reload the weapon. Elizabeth set the campsite in order, then she took the rabbits the Onondaga had brought to one side of the chamber and started to clean them for cooking. She worked swiftly, as she always did when she was angry, but the familiar task did nothing to ease her agitation. Finally, she threw down the carcass she was skinning and walked over to Hunt.

  “So what we’ve been through together, that means nothing to you?” she said, unconsciously using Iroquoian.

  He was testing the thongs on a snowshoe. Patiently, he laid down the wooden frame and spoke to her with careful compassion. “It means something, Elizabeth. It means a lot. I care about you, I really do. More than you can realize. But I won’t be tempted, bribed, or taunted into getting us killed for a lost cause.”

  She turned away. “All right.”

  “All right?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You’re giving up?”

  “I can’t keep fighting you, Hunt. I can’t go back for Jamie alone, I realize that. And if you won’t, you won’t.”

  “Why don’t I believe a word of it?”

  It was her turn to shrug. “I’m not stupid. I know when to accept defeat.”

  “You don’t look defeated. Where are the tears?”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. She hated resorting to deceit, but sometimes that was a woman’s only weapon. “I’m not a weeping woman,” she answered softly. “I don’t like your decision. I’ll never believe you’re being fair to me or to Jamie, but I have to live with it.”

  “Liar.”

  “You’ve won, Hunter. I don’t have the strength to fight you anymore,” she lied.

  “Look at me and tell me that.”

  She faced him again, her features as emotionless as those of any Iroquois squaw. “You’ve won,” she repeated softly. “And I hope your conscience lets you sleep nights, because mine never will.”

  “You won’t try to escape?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  He stared into her eyes for long seconds. “I hope you mean that. I really do, because we’ve got a lot of days and nights to spend together. I hope we can spend them as friends.”

  “Are you my friend?”

  “I am.”

  “And you don’t want anything more from me than friendship?” she murmured.

  “I’m not a
man to be ruled by his cock, Elizabeth. If I could tumble you without harm to either of us, I would. But you’re not that kind of a woman. You couldn’t be content with a little innocent fun. You’d expect more of me than I can give. You’ve had enough trouble in your life, and I don’t mean to add to it.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You think I’m interested in you?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he answered gruffly. “You don’t make it easy on a man. I took a job, and I intend to fulfill my side of the bargain without compromising you.”

  “And if I wanted to be ...” She made a small sound that could have been amusement. “Compromised?”

  “I guess we’ll face that when we come to it.”

  “If we come to it,” she answered.

  “Keep your hands off me and I’ll keep mine off you.”

  “That’s a bargain I’ll enjoy keeping!”

  Chapter 9

  Hunt and Elizabeth spent another two days in the cave behind the falls waiting for the weather to break. To Hunt’s surprise, Elizabeth proved to be good company. She didn’t bring up the subject of her son again, and she seemed to hold no grudge against him because of it. He’d always hated whining women, and he admired her for taking defeat with such good grace.

  He was amazed at how much he enjoyed hearing her laugh, and she laughed easily. He’d thought her to be a sad woman, but he saw now that the sorrow was only a small part of her complex personality. Not only was she naturally cheerful, but she knew when to keep silent and listen. When she did speak, it was to say something sensible.

  “Do you know how to play the peach stone game?” she asked him after the morning meal when he was lying idle on his buffalo skin. “If you are bored with the waiting, I could teach you.”

  “Do you have peach stones?”

  She giggled. “No peach pits, but I could make dice from some of those round pebbles in the passageway. I will mark one side with charcoal from the fire pit.”

  “Six or nine stones?” he asked.

  “Six.” She held out a handful, already marked.