by JoAnn Ross
And then, beneath the cottonwood tree, in the same place where Wolfe had kissed her to distraction, Noel sank to her knees and began to pray.
The dawn was painting the sky with brilliant fingers of scarlet and gold when Noel reluctantly decided it was time to return to the village. Her gaze drifted toward a side canyon, where Wolfe had told her the ceremonial hogan was located.
All she could see was a faint puff of gray smoke rising into the unbelievably blue sky. But a feeling of dread continued to be draped over her like a wet and heavy cloak.
She reached for her bag and felt the familiar tingling in her fingertips. Drawn by a pull she'd felt too many times in the past to ignore, she retrieved the invitation.
As she watched, the woodcut image of the burning cabin disintegrated, replaced by a scene of a muddy road lined with frame buildings. One of the frame buildings had a sign nailed above the door: The Irish Rose.
As if in a dream, she felt herself entering the building, passing through the front parlor to the stairway, then up the red-carpeted stairs and down the hall to a room that was furnished a great deal like the bedroom in Belle's Road to Ruin bordello. A man with a handlebar mustache was lying on his back on the bed, drinking whiskey out of a bottle, while a fat redheaded whore straddled his bare thighs.
Although she'd never seen a photograph of the man, Noel knew she was looking at Bret Starr. Excited, and knowing that she'd just been given an important clue, Noel nearly screamed as the vision faded away. Scooping up her bag, she ran back to the hogan to await Wolfe's return.
The village had awakened during her absence. Outside several of the hogans she passed, people were sprinkling pollen to welcome the return of the sun.
In front of one hogan, a man was slaughtering a sheep hanging from a pole while his wife sat at her loom, creating a rug much like the one Noel had seen hanging on the wall in the lobby of the bed and breakfast.
Some children were playing, shooting small arrows with their tiny blunt-tipped bows, stalking one another. Noel realized that there had been a time when such play would have been meaningful, a prelude to the intense training they would have received when they were old enough to learn the ways of the warrior. Now, it was merely the last remnant of a history that was coming to an end, just as the absolute freedom of the people who had made that history had come to an end.
The thought saddened her terribly.
Outside the hogan where she'd spent such a restless night, Second Mother sat on a wooden bench, winding red clay into a coil. Nearby, a drying pot hung from the branch of a cottonwood tree.
"May I watch?" Noel asked, not wanting to disturb the woman's creative mood.
"Of course." The walnut-dark face wreathed in a smile. "I am not one of those who believes that I must isolate myself to make a perfect pot."
"Did you make the ones inside the hogan?"
"Yes." The fingers, gnarled with age and arthritis, deftly worked the clay with a grace and skill that Noel admired. She wished that Chantal could see some of the exquisite works of art being created in this isolated nineteenth-century village.
"They're quite beautiful. My sister is an artist. She paints. Having no talent myself, I envy hers, even as I'm in awe of it."
"You have simply not found your gift," Second Mother assured her. "The Holy People determine which talents we are all to be given. See over there? Where Running Girl is weaving her rug?"
Noel nodded.
"When she was a little girl, during her vacations from boarding school, she would sit with me while I worked my clay, always begging me to teach her how to make pots. It seemed that she wanted to make pots more than anything else in the world. But the pots did not want her."
"Clay has a soul of its own. Its own song. And prayer. I taught her the songs I sing when I make my pots. She tried very hard, mixing the clay just as I taught her, singing the songs, but whenever her pots were baked, they broke. Every one."
"That must have been horribly discouraging."
"She became very sad. I told her that she was trying too hard. That she must be patient and wait for the Holy Ones to choose her gift. And eventually, Spider Woman did give her the blessing of weaving. But while Running Girl was waiting, she would not listen to me." The older woman slanted a faint smile Noel's way. "You know the stone mind of young people."
"I've been called hardheaded a few times," Noel agreed with an answering smile.
"Of course you have. Wolfe is stubborn. Like a goat. As was his mother, my sister." A fond, faraway look drifted into the coffee-brown eyes. "My sister was a basket weaver."
"Tell me about Wolfe's mother."
The soft reminiscent smile turned into a frown. "It is taboo to speak of the dead. I should not have menthe basket weaving. Such talk brings witches."
With that door effectively shut, Noel tried another. She took a deep breath and asked, "What about his father?"
The hands that had been patting the clay stilled. Dark eyes drifted over the landscape, but Noel had the feeling that it was not the sheep and hogans the older woman was seeing, but something else. Something from another place. Another time.
"Some people believe you are a witch, come here to bring harm to my sister's son."
"What do you think?"
Second Mother gave her a long look that, as impossible as it seemed, went all the way through Noel, all the way to her heart. And her soul. And her mind.
"I have seen my own death," the woman finally answered. Although to some, such an answer may have seemed off the point, Noel grasped her meaning immediately.
"I once saw a threat against my sister," Noel revealed. "And another against my brother. But I seem to be mostly blind regarding my own life."
Second Mother nodded, satisfied. "It happens that way, sometimes." She treated Noel to another of those knowing gazes. "You saw my son in a vision. In danger."
"Yes." Noel dipped her head. "I did. And although I don't understand it, myself, I knew that it was my destiny to come here to Arizona Territory and save him."
"You succeeded in your destiny, then."
"But not permanently. Because men are still after him. Men who are lying about what they say he's done. Men who want to kill him because he tells the truth."
"Words are powerful," Second Mother agreed. "Wolfe's words are especially powerful because they take the truth of the Dineh out to the world. Something Anglos do not want."
"Some Anglos," Noel corrected mildly.
Despite the seriousness of the subject, Second Mother's lips quirked in a vague smile. "Some Anglos," she conceded. She fell silent again, thinking quietly. "Would it help you save my son if you had a powerful Anglo man speak for him?"
Noel's instincts were humming. "It certainly couldn't hurt."
Second Mother rose from the bench and went into the hogan. Noel waited, hearing the thump, thump, thump of the shuttle as she watched Running Girl weaving nearby.
When Second Mother came out of the hogan again, she was carrying an envelope. "This was sent from Fort Prescott," she said. "To my sister many years ago. Wolfe had not yet lived one winter. But he was being raised in the way of the Dineh, so I sent back word that she had perished on the way back to Dinetah."
As Noel took the envelope, a jolt of electricity shot through her fingers. It was so strong that both women jumped back. The envelope fluttered to the ground, yellowed ivory against the red dirt.
Noel bent down and gingerly picked it up. Although the ink was faded, she could read the bold scrawl. "It's from his father? The cavalry officer who raped her?"
"He did not rape my sister." Second mother sighed and looked away again. "He loved her. And she loved him. But times were difficult and the Anglos were much-hated. As were any Dineh women who lowered themselves to sleep with the soldiers. So, my sister hid from everyone the fact that she was with child."
"Everyone but the baby's father, who, of course, recognized the changes in her body. It was only when she gave birth on the Long Walk that her secret was reveale
d to our people."
"So, when he wrote asking about Wolfe's mother, and his child, you told him they'd both died."
"It was better for him to think that."
Although the letter had been written years ago, the emotional state of the writer lingered like a fiery aura. Wolfe's mother had not only loved her young officer, she'd been loved in return. By a power so forceful that only death could have kept them apart.
"The same way it was better for Wolfe to be eaten up by hatred all his life? Thinking some bilaganna soldier raped his mother and was responsible for her death?"
"You do not understand."
"I'm sorry." Noel took a deep breath and let it out slowly, striving for calm. It was not her place to attack the woman who'd only been trying to do her best for her dead sister's son.
"Wolfe's father is an important man now," Second mother revealed. "He is a federal judge in Flagstaff. Perhaps he can help his son."
"Perhaps." Noel ran her hands along the top of the envelope, considering her options. "Thank you," she said. "And I'm sorry I was impolite."
"That is not so surprising."
"Because I'm Anglo?"
"No. Because you love my son."
Noel knew she could no longer deny it. To herself. Or to this woman who saw so much. "It's that obvious?"
"Of course." At the sound of the hooves hitting turn, Second Mother and Noel both turned toward the rider who was trotting into camp.
Noel's heart soared when she recognized, beneath the coating of black ash, this man who was so clearly her destiny. Then, mindless of what anyone would think, she went running toward him.
9
The sight of her, running toward him, a wide, welcoming smile on her exquisite face, shouldn't give him so much pleasure, Wolfe told himself. It shouldn't make him feel the same way he felt whenever he glimpsed the red cliffs of Canyon de Chelly. It shouldn't make him feel as if he'd come home.
But it did. He reined in his horse.
"You're back!" Relief shimmered in her wide blue eyes, echoed in her tone. The bright dawn light revealed dark smudges beneath those incredible eyes, silent testimony that her night had been as sleepless as his.
"I told you I would return," he reminded her. Without taking his gaze from her face, that pale exquisite face, he reached a hand down and patted the massive yellow head of the dog as it jumped up and down in canine welcome. The pony, accustomed to the ubiquitous dogs at the canyon, remained calm.
"I know." She drank in the sight of him, as if to convince herself that he was truly here. That he was not some vision conjured up by her desperately hopeful mind.
He was covered in black ash. Yellow pollen clung to his hair and the pungent aroma of smoke surrounded him. Noel found him wonderful.
"I was so worried. I saw things. Terrible things. You were battling with a horrid giant. I was afraid he'd eat you. But just when I was certain I would lose you for good, you killed him. With three arrows. The final one struck him in the heart."
Wolfe knew that the odds of her knowing the details of the Blackening Way were slim to none. "You were in my mind."
Her gaze turned solemn. "I have been. From the beginning."
A memory flashed in his mind. A memory of the female with hair the color of moonlight, who'd soothed his wounds with magic herbs, allowing him to return to vanquish the giant.
Wolfe was not prepared to admit to Noel's presence in the holy ceremony, since he wasn't sure what such thoughts meant.
"There's something else," she said. "This morning, I couldn't sleep, so I went for a walk. Down to where you showed me your family had planted their corn. Where you kissed me. I was sitting there, worrying about you, when I saw Bret Starr."
"In a vision." He no longer questioned her abilities.
"Yes. He was lying in bed, with a woman. The sign above the door of the building said, The Irish Rose." She frowned. "But I can't see where it is."
"The Irish Rose is in Silverton. In Colorado." Wolfe attempted to rein in the blatant hope on her face. "But even if Starr is there, we don't know that he witnessed the massacre."
"But the woodcut—"
"And even if he did," Wolfe cut her off with a swift wave of his hand, "the fact that he took off to Silverton doesn't suggest a willingness to help keep my head out of the hangman's noose."
"Then we'll just have to talk him into cooperating," Noel decided. The fact that she and Wolfe had shared, telepathically, his encounter with Yei Tsoh, had only deepened her belief that this man—and this mission— was her destiny.
"We?"
Her enthusiasm immediately turned to a tenacity that was all too familiar. Princess Noel Giraudeau de Montacroix was both the most appealing and frustrating woman he'd ever known.
"I told you," she said, "we're in this together."
"And if I said I didn't want you with me?"
"I'd say that's too bad. Because I have no intention of letting you leave without me."
"Has anyone ever told you that such mule-headed behavior is most unfeminine?"
"Why don't you ask me if I care?" She shook her head. "Besides, you have to take me with you. Unless you want me to be hung for murder on the same gallows the good people of Whiskey River built for you."
Despite the seriousness of their situation, Wolfe laughed. "You do not fight fair, Princess. However, you make a good point. I suppose I have no choice in allowing you to accompany me to Silverton."
Having gotten her way, Noel was diplomatic enough not to argue. "Thank you."
He laughed again, a rough, resigned laugh and shook his head. "Go get your things," he said. "I've arranged for Many Horses to bring you some of his younger brother's clothing to wear on the trip."
"It'll be much easier riding in trousers," Noel said gratefully. Although Second Mother had given her some herbal cream to rub on her chafed thighs, she wasn't looking forward to getting back in the saddle again wearing a skirt.
"That was my thought. But pack your red dress to wear when we arrive in Silverton. With that hair and your white complexion, there's no way we can pass you off as Dineh."
"So you'd rather I look like a prostitute?"
"Next time you steal clothing, I'd suggest taking something more subdued," he suggested.
"If there had been a more appropriate outfit for escaping a posse, I certainly would have selected it."
"If you'd have stayed in your room the way any sensible woman would have under the circumstances, you wouldn't be forced to escape a posse," he told her dryly. "We'll be leaving camp in thirty minutes. There is something I must do first."
Before she could answer, he turned and rode away.
After changing into the trousers Many Horses gave her, gathering up her belongings and saying goodbye to Second Mother, Noel grew impatient. Rather than wait for Wolfe to come fetch her, she went looking for him.
She found him down at the spring, sitting on a rock beside the water, spinning tales of Navajo gods and of the hero twins who'd first fought the giant, to a rapt audience of children seated in a semicircle at his feet.
That he relished his role of storyteller was more than a little obvious. It was when she found it so easy to imagine him telling similar stories to his own children—their children—that she realized she'd fallen in love with Wolfe.
As she waited for him to finish the tale, Noel's mind reverberated with that amazing thought. And al-though she could not understand a word, the emotion in his tone held her as spellbound as the children.
When the story ended, the children loudly begged him to tell another, but he shook his head, then told them something that had them all looking at Noel. As he stood up and walked toward her, a dozen pair of dark eyes followed him.
"They remind me of my sister and me," Noel said with a smile. "Always asking for one more bedtime story before Maman turned off the light."
"Someone needs to keep the stories alive," he said, somewhat defensively, Noel thought.
"Of course that's importan
t," she said. "And no one tells them better than you."
"Ah, but you are undoubtedly prejudiced."
All the love she was feeling for him shone in her eyes as she smiled up at him. "Of course I am." She wanted to touch him, only a hand to his cheek, but restrained herself, worried that such an outward sign of emotion would embarrass him in front of the children who were watching them with unblinking attention.
"But that doesn't change the fact that you're a wonderful storyteller, Wolfe. Which is why people will still be reading your stories a hundred years from now."
The idea, which should have pleased Wolfe, did not. Because it reminded him that at any moment his princess could return to her own world. Her own time.
Would he remember her? he wondered, knowing that he would.
Would she remember him? That was only one of the questions that were gnawing at Wolfe's gut as they rode out of the Canyon de Chelly camp.
Noel was not particularly disturbed when Wolfe did not speak during the long ride out of the canyon and across the high desert. Having grown accustomed to his thoughtful silences, she knew that no amount of prompting, pleading or threatening would coax a solitary word from his lips. He would talk when he was ready, and not before.
While Noel was drinking in the magnificent scenery that was so unlike her homeland, Wolfe remained deep in thought. He was thinking about the events that had nearly led to his death. About that damn book— Rogues Across Time—she alleged to have brought with her from the future that described his death by hanging.
And, as they rode side by side across the vast open, lonely land, he thought about the chances, slim as they were, that Bret Starr could actually clear his name.
He also, of course, thought about his princess. And her claim of having crossed time to come to Whiskey River in the first place. He wondered if she'd be surprised to learn that he did not consider the idea as outlandish as a white man might. There were, after all, more things on earth and in the heavens that any one man could possibly understand.
Such knowledge usually led to a type of serenity in the face of the astounding. One that was rooted not in submission, but in acceptance. There had been a time when ancient man were terrified by an eclipse. And although Wolfe now knew the scientific cause for the seeming disappearance of the sun or moon, the sight nevertheless strummed innumerable primal chords deep within him.
