Sundancer's Woman

by Judith E. French

  “So you waited until he caught up with me.”

  He nodded.

  “Why then? Why didn’t you let him kill me? Your troubles would have been over.”

  “You know me better than that, Elizabeth. But if you couldn’t hold your own with one outlawed Iroquois, how in hell do you expect to take on the whole Seneca nation single-handed?”

  “I wouldn’t be single-handed if you’d help me,” she said. A lump was forming in her throat. Her eyes were dry. She had no tears left. Whatever joy she’d found in Hunt’s bed felt as dead as Powder Horn.

  “I’m not going to get you back to South Carolina without that boy unless I hog-tie you, am I?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I guess not.”

  “All right, then,” he replied. “I guess you’re harder-headed than I am.”

  She looked at him in confusion. “All right, what?”

  “I’ll help you steal him back.”

  “What?” Her knees felt suddenly weak. “What did you say?”

  “Are you deaf as well as mule-stubborn? I know when I’ve met my match.” He leaned on his long rifle, and grinned at her. “I said, I’ll help you kidnap your son.”

  She shook her head again in disbelief. “Why, Hunt? Why would you—”

  He pursed his lips and shrugged. “You made me an offer, back there in the cave. You kept your half of the bargain. I guess it’s only fitten that I keep the rest.”

  Chapter 13

  Later, back at Baptiste’s cabin, Elizabeth warmed herself by the fire and tried to rub feeling back into her icy feet. She was still shocked by Hunt’s unexpected offer to help her get Jamie back—but something else had shaken her almost as much, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the incident that had occurred shortly after Hunt had killed Powder Horn in the forest.

  Hunt had drawn his knife and knelt in the snow by the Iroquois’s body, preparing to scalp him. Just thinking about it made her sick to her stomach.

  “No!” she’d screamed, once she’d realized what he meant to do. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

  He’d turned cold eyes on her. “God has nothing to do with this. I’m going to lift his hair, same as he would have done to me.”

  “No,” she’d protested. “You can’t. That’s uncivilized.”

  Hunt’s cruel expression had sent cold chills down her spine. “I never claimed to be civilized.” He’d hesitated, knife poised over Powder Horn’s scalplock. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t do it.”

  “If you do, he can’t go on to the spirit world. His soul will be forced to wander—”

  “Now who’s uncivilized?” Hunt had scoffed at her. “What would your Christian father say to that?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe,” she argued. “Powder Horn believed it. Can’t we just leave him—”

  He grinned. “For the wolves, you mean?”

  “No. Not that. We could bury him. I just—”

  “Quit when you’re ahead, Elizabeth. If it bothers you, I won’t scalp the son of a bitch, but I’ll be damned if I’ll dig a hole for him.”

  They’d left Powder Horn where he lay. Now, with the stout log walls securely around her, she didn’t want to think of the lonely moonlit glade or the wolves she feared would come slinking in to devour the Indian’s body.

  She glanced sideways at Hunt and felt a slight breath of fear spiral up her spine. He was seated at the table drinking another cup of spirits with the cat curled in his lap. He seemed the same easygoing man she’d come to know in the last few days, but she couldn’t shake the memory of the underlying savagery he’d shown her. Ground that she’d thought was safe had suddenly opened under her feet.

  She had misjudged Hunt badly, and misjudging a man could cost her everything. Beneath his lazy drawl and laughing demeanor crouched a spirit as fierce and deadly as any Seneca. She’d not forget that ever again.

  When they’d arrived at the cabin and he’d taken off his outer garments, she’d seen that his face was flushed and red. She’d been afraid he was running a fever, but he’d refused to let her examine his wounds. “I’ve not forgiven you yet,” he said.

  “I’m sorry you feel betrayed,” she answered, “but I’m not sorry I ran away. If I hadn’t tried to escape, we’d both have been sleeping when Powder Horn burst in on us. We’d have been murdered in our beds.”

  “If ...” he said sarcastically. “If the hunter hadn’t objected, the bear would have had a meal.” He stroked the sleeping cat gently, taking care not to ruffle the animal’s fur. “I’m not so easily killed as you seem to think, woman. I’ve managed so far without your help.”

  “You will do what you said ... won’t you?” she asked, studying his chiseled features, desperate for some way to gauge his thoughts. “You’ll help me go for my ch—for Jamie?”

  He tilted his head slightly and gave a faint smile. Elizabeth shivered as flames from the glowing hearth reflected in the bottomless black pools of his eyes. “I’ve said as much, haven’t I?”

  “Can we leave in the morning? I can’t wait—”

  He threw her a withering look. “I’ll do it, Elizabeth,” he muttered, “but I’ll do it my way. You want my help, you’ll take orders for a change.” He pushed the crock away from him and stood up. “I still think this is wrong,” he added. “Wrong for you, wrong for the boy.”

  She rose to her feet and looked toward the bed. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want, Elizabeth?” Quick as a striking copperhead he sprang up, seized her by the shoulders, and yanked her hard against him. He looked deep into her eyes and she felt her will weaken.

  “I ... I...” she stammered. She trembled in his grip ... not from fear, but from an emotion as old and as powerful. “Hunt ...” Her bones turned to water and she felt as though she were about to faint. She clutched at him to keep from falling. And in that instant, her need for him was so great that she would have done anything he asked. “Oh, Hunt,” she cried.

  “Not this way.” His tone was harsh, grating. He released her and stepped back.

  She turned her head to hide the tears of shame.

  “It’s different between us now, isn’t it?” he said.

  She covered her face with her hands.

  He went to the fireplace and leaned against the brick hearth with both hands. “Forgive me, Elizabeth,” he said. “I shouldn’t drink. I guess I’m more Indian than I thought.” He squatted on his heels in front of the fire. “I’ll put some more venison on to roast. We’ll eat our fill, and then we’ll sleep. At dawn, we’ll set off for a Shawnee village where I’ve got friends.”

  She forced herself to look at him. “You promised to get Jamie,” she reminded him. Her voice cracked, like an old woman’s.

  “I’ll get your boy if it’s humanly possible,” he answered. “I may be foolhardy, but I’m not crazy. If I’m going on a raid, I need a war party.”

  “Will they help—your friends?” The words echoed in her head as though they came from a long way off. “I thought the Shawnee and the Iroquois were—”

  “At peace?” He gave a snort of derision. “Barely. There are old wounds between the tribes, old scores to settle. I’ll get the warriors I need. If not, I’ll look elsewhere. I can’t do this alone.”

  “I’ll be with you. I—”

  “You’ll be where I say you’ll be. I’ll have no more of your nonsense. You’ll wait for me in the village. You’ll be safe enough there. Once I get the boy, I mean to put ground between me and Yellow Drum. He’ll come after me with every warrior he can muster. I don’t need a woman to slow me down.”

  But what about Rachel? she thought desperately. If Hunt went without her, he wouldn’t get her daughter. And if she told him that there were two children instead of one, he wouldn’t go at all.

  “Let me come,” she pleaded. “I won’t slow you down. Jamie will be frightened if I’m not there. He won’t—”

  He blew ou
t the candle on the table, carefully put the cat on the floor, and stood up. “It’s not your decision. It’s mine. If he’s scared, he’ll get over it once he’s reunited with you. He’s only six; hardly hardly more than a baby. I was eight when I was captured, and I got over being afraid.”

  “You must have been terrified when it happened—when you and your sister were separated?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not a day I care to remember. I only knew Becca was alive because my father told me later—once I’d learned enough Cheyenne to ask questions.”

  “Oh.”

  “Some memories a man’s better off without.”

  “A woman as well,” she agreed. Was it easier to forget? she wondered. Would she have been happier if the day of Avery’s wedding was a void in her mind?

  “Enough talk, best you get some sleep.”

  “I’m sorry,” she answered. She wasn’t sorry; her reply came automatically as it had come so often in the years she’d spent in Yellow Drum’s lodge.

  “Sorry for what? Curiosity?”

  “For a woman as well,” she agreed honestly. She struggled to hold herself together, to keep from saying something that would bring her even more shame.

  He’d rejected her. No, he’d seemed almost disgusted by her. What a fool she’d been. Spinning dreams of cobwebs, Raven would have said. Weaving hopes of rainbow colors. She’d wanted Hunt to care for her so badly that she’d imagined it.

  He’d taken her up on her offer, sex in trade for Jamie. Hadn’t he said it bluntly? ”... just a roll in the blankets ...” he’d told her back there in the woods.

  She meant nothing more to him and she never would. She drew in a jagged breath. For an ugly red-haired woman, she’d gotten more from Hunt than she had any right to ask for. But she wouldn’t settle for Jamie. She had to have Rachel as well. She’d think of something, and she’d pay the price, no matter what it cost.

  They traveled hard and fast the next nine days. Elizabeth clung to the hope of Hunt’s promise that he would return for Jamie as each step took her farther away from Yellow Drum’s village. They left snow and cold behind them as they trekked south and west through trackless hardwood forests, open meadowland, and rough mountain terrain.

  Flocks of ducks and geese passed overhead; winter-barren trees were left behind. In their place, Elizabeth saw forests resplendent in autumn leaves of red, brown, and brilliant gold. But although the nights remained cool, daytime temperatures made Elizabeth’s winter clothing uncomfortably warm, and the afternoon sun shone hot on her face.

  In all that time, they never saw another human, although they did come upon an abandoned Indian village and empty cornfields. On two nights, they heard wolves, and once a herd of deer nearly ran them down as they entered a ravine, but there were no traces of people, white or Indian. As they walked, Hunt and Elizabeth often startled rabbits or porcupines or quail. Such small game provided meat when they needed it, but Hunt preferred to snare rabbits at night. That way he didn’t have to chance firing his rifle and possibly alerting an enemy to their whereabouts.

  To her surprise, the solitude didn’t bother Elizabeth. She found herself caught up in the beauty of the vast stretches of hardwood trees and the tumble of white water along the rocky streams. “This country is bigger than I thought,” she said one evening when they’d stopped to make camp.

  He chuckled. “Big? You don’t know the half of it. We’re not even to the Ohio, yet. If you could paddle a canoe from the Big Lakes down to Can-tuc-kee or stand on a peak in the Blue Mountains looking east across the great plains—” He broke off. “Hell, woman, words can’t describe the size of this land. The Cheyenne say that beyond their mountains lies another salt sea, bigger and deeper than any man’s ambition. I always meant to go and take a look-see at that ocean, but I never got there yet. Maybe next year.” He pointed to an eagle gliding high overhead. “See that bird? If you could fly like he can, you’d see a heap more than walking. Some Indians think eagles are big medicine. They carry the spirits of men who lived long ago. If I couldn’t be a man, I don’t suppose it would be bad to be an eagle.”

  “I think I’d be satisfied just to be a man instead of a woman,” she’d replied wryly.

  “I’m glad you’re not.”

  “Hmmp.”

  That night, Hunt built a small campfire, then scattered the coals and covered them with dirt. They made their bed on the heated earth and slept warm, wrapped in the same buffalo robe. Hunt lay beside her, but he hadn’t approached her sexually since they’d left the cabin. She wasn’t certain if that was what she wanted or not. She didn’t know if she could turn him down if he did reach out to her.

  “How far must we go to find this village?” Elizabeth demanded of Hunt when they’d walked for hours the next afternoon without exchanging a word. He was not cruel to her; he never raised his voice or touched her in anger. But the man she’d come so close to falling in love with eluded her. This Hunt Campbell was a stranger, as incomprehensible as an Indian. He seemed aloof, lost in his own thoughts, often staring off into the distance as though he saw far mountains she could not envision.

  “You must have been terrified when it happened,” she said. “When you and your sister were separated ...”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, I suppose I was. It’s been a long time. When the Shawnee attacked the cabin, we were too busy to be afraid. Becca fired at them; I reloaded for her. When they torched the house, we escaped down a tunnel. They were waiting for us at the other end.”

  “You and your sister were separated?”

  “Yes. Wolf Robe, the man who became my father, took me in one direction; the rest of the party—with Becca—went the other way. I don’t know why. Later, my father said that the woods were full of Huron that day. We were supposed to join up with the Shawnee again, but it was too dangerous. We went on ahead by canoe.”

  “And you never saw your sister again?”

  He shook his head. “No. Later, when I learned to speak enough Cheyenne to make myself understood, I asked Wolf Robe about Becca. He assured me that she was alive. It was her they’d wanted—to trade for an important Shawnee prisoner. Months after that, we heard she’d been exchanged.”

  “I remember the day I was taken as clearly as yesterday,” she said. God knew she’d tried to forget the screaming, the blood, the terror. A thousand times she’d wished the day of Avery’s wedding was a void in her mind.

  “It’s been hard on you, hasn’t it?” he asked. “The Cheyenne don’t keep slaves.”

  “I don’t understand how you got so far west, and then back east again.”

  “It’s a long story,” he said, “too long for tonight.”

  “I’m sorry,” she answered. “I shouldn’t pry into your affairs.”

  “Don’t be.” He sighed. “It’s good to have a woman to talk to, even one as troublesome as you are. The older I get, the more old memories seem to drift back into my mind. Funny, isn’t it? How you remember things that happened when you were just a tad?”

  On the morning of the tenth day, she woke to a cramping in her belly. And when she went apart from Hunt to tend to nature’s needs, she saw that she had begun her monthly bleeding. When she told him, he matter-of-factly sliced a section of bark from a cedar tree and shredded the inner lining to make a soft, absorbent filling for the lengths of cloth he cut from a clean linen shirt.

  “I hate to ruin a good garment,” she said. “I should have thought—”

  He shrugged. “Forget it. You barely left Yellow Drum’s village with your life, let alone such stuff. We’ll make an easy march today. By tomorrow we’ll be at the camp, if the Shawnee haven’t moved. You can rest there.”

  She was secretly pleased that he showed none of the superstitious fears of her woman’s menses that the Seneca exhibited. Raven and Many Blushes had always gone apart from Yellow Drum during their periods. No one had ever asked her to, and she’d never been comfortable enough with any of the other women to question why.

>   “When we get to the Shawnee village, the women will put you in confinement,” Hunt said.

  Startled, she looked at him. “What?”

  “The women’s hut, seclusion. Don’t the Iroquois send women away during their—”

  “It’s not something men and women discuss,” she replied primly.

  “I’ve just made you a bleeding clout, and you think I shouldn’t be talking about it?” He shook his head and sniffed in amusement at her. “White women’s shyness or Iroquois women’s medicine, which is it, Elizabeth? Are you white or Indian now?”

  “A little of both, I’m afraid.” He must know the feeling well, she thought. It was something the two of them shared. “Going away to a woman’s house—that’s something the Seneca never made me do.”

  He leaned on the muzzle of his rifle. “You’re not with the Iroquois anymore. These are free Shawnee. They’re old-fashioned, and they like doing things the way they’ve always done them. You’ll be treated with courtesy, but they’ll shut you up until you quit bleeding. Then they’ll give you a ceremonial bath to purify you before you come in contact with any men.”

  “I thought you were civilized!” she flung back indignantly. “How can you allow such—”

  “This is different. You’re part of my family—temporarily—and we’re running from the Iroquois. I said these Shawnee were old-fashioned, not stupid. Exceptions can be made under certain conditions. Once we get to the village, old rules prevail.”

  “I just won’t tell them,” she sputtered. It was ridiculous. She was no longer under Raven’s control. She wouldn’t be locked up. She’d had enough of confinement and people telling her what to do.

  “If you don’t tell them, I’ll have to,” he said. “Under the circumstances, it would be very bad manners not to. Insulting, even. It would put an end to any hope of gathering a party to get your boy back.”

  He put out his hand, and she shook it off in exasperation, “What does my ... my condition have to do with getting Jamie back?”