For a moment he saw something in Summer Sky's eyes that told him her instinct was to follow the warning of the vision, but Crazy Elk had dismissed him saying that the spirit of Charging Bear cried out for vengeance and magic or spirits wouldn't accomplish that but by the bow, the arrow, and the spear. With that, he had been dismissed. Part of him wondered if Charging Bear was even worth avenging. The brave had been on more than one occasion overheard talking about his envy of the riches of the white man and had even boldly proclaimed that were he to have the wealth of the white eyes he could travel far beyond The Settlement and see a world only spoken of in whispers.
Other had tried to discourage Charging Bear that he would not be welcome in such places, but the brave didn’t seem to want to listen. White Eagle now found himself wondering if the man’s death didn’t have something to do with his lust for riches. Perhaps he would seek a vision on it. Right now, Little Flower waited.
Days earlier he had commissioned her to build a cradle for his sister’s soon to arrive papoose, but it had really just been an excuse to spend more time with the beautiful young maiden. Each time he saw her to check on her progress, he became more and more convinced that she shared his interest, and he didn't need to seek any visions to know it to be true. Now, perhaps tonight they would reap the pleasures that men and women craved, as there would be no better time since this might be their only chance. Once Crazy Elk carried out his ambitions attack there would be no peace going forward when word of the battle reached the white eyes beyond the Horseshoe range.
Arriving at Little Flower's tent, he drew open the flap and stepped in. For ten long seconds, his mind tried to process what he was seeing. Lying before him was a bound and gagged Little Flower, and she was naked from head to toe. Her eyes grew wild and muffled cries came from beyond her gag. White Eagle dropped to his knees, unable to stop his vision from roaming over figure and the sight of her pert breasts that jiggled as she strained against her bonds. He yanked the gag free from the woman and demanded to know what was going on.
"The yellow woman! Sister of the half-breed!She came into my tent before. I thought she was you. This strange one, she attacked me, so she could dress herself to look as our people so that she might free the men Crazy Elk captured from the stage!" she panted as he worked at the knots Lijuan had used to bind her.
"So, the folly of Crazy Elk has begun. Still, I must stop her," he said as her hands came free. "You work on getting your feet free, and I will see to this woman." Before rising, he gripped her hands and looked into her face with a smile which she readily returned. Without another word, he was gone.
CHAPTER 22
At the same time White Eagle had finished freeing Little Flower’s hands, Lijuan herself had just liberated Farquhar and was reaching up to grip his shoulders, she shook him until he peered at her with a glassy look.
"We're getting out of here right now! You've got to hold it together! If not for yourself then for Rosalee!" This seemed to register within the shell-shocked man, and he blinked and narrowed his eyes.
“Rosalee Tatum?”
“Are there more Rosalees in Horseshoe? Of course! She’s worried sick about you! She’s the one who insisted that I come after you!” the lie slipped off her tongue with ease, but it seemed to have the desired effect as a look of resolve seemed to sweep across the man’s face.
“Then we can’t disappoint her, now can we?! Lead the way, ma’am!”
The invitation wasn't necessary as she was already sweeping past all three men. "Follow me! There's a door up ahead, and it's our way out of here!"
The quartet launched into a dead run in the direction of the door and arrived at it within seconds. Lijuan threw it open and motioned for the men to go through and shouted that once on the path to go left and follow it as it ran along the stream. Farquhar was last, and just as he went through it she saw a Mescalero racing at her from the direction of Little Flower's tent, and he was shouting something in his language she didn't need interpreting to understand. The jig was up, and she was exposed.
Lijuan reached into the satchel and pulled out Blue River's gun and raised it. This brought White Eagle to a halt and silenced him, but she was not pointing it at him. Instead, she lifted it straight up in the air. With a swear on her lips, frustrated to have to abandon her plan not to fire it until they were already heading down the path, she pulled the trigger. Originally, they had prearranged the blast of the gun as a distraction for the warriors watching the fight Blue River hoped to start. Now there had been no choice but to fire it prematurely instead of after they had put enough distance between them and the wall to give them a good head start. There had been no choice, however. If this Mescalero followed her and somehow prevented her from firing the shot, she would be leaving Blue River in a possible fight to the death.
With the echo of the gun blast fading away into the night, Lijuan flew through the door and headed down the path as fast as her feet would carry her. Her mind held only one thought, and that was her hope the distraction would allow Blue River to escape.
A few moments earlier in the center of the camp Blue River had just delivered a punishing blow to his foe's stomach with the ball-like head of the war club. Any other man he believed would have been doubled over gasping for breath, but Crazy Elk winced several times but seemed to shake it off and began swinging his club at Blue River again with renewed vigor. Using his own club, he blocked the warrior's blow, but pain shot through his hands from the vibration from the two wooden clubs striking each other.
Leaping back, he managed to avoid what would have been a crippling blow if Crazy Elk had connected. He wasn't sure how much longer his luck was going to hold. Had Lijuan freed the men? If so and she was fleeing down the path, why hadn't she fired the shot? The thoughts had barely raced through his head when from the direction of one of the walls came the blast from a single shot from a Colt .45. This galvanized the warriors, and they all spun in the direction of the wall, bringing their weapons to bear. Even Crazy Elk turned his back on Blue River as a man's shouts could be heard over the silence. Escaped! The prisoners have escaped!!
Like a wave, the men flowed out from around the fire pit racing towards where the shaman had appeared and was gesticulating wildly. Blue River stood dumbfounded for a moment, astonished that their plan had succeeded, but then he felt tendrils of concern creep over him. The shot had been much closer than they had planned. She wasn't supposed to have fired it within The Settlement but somewhere along the trail.
Frustrated at not knowing what might have transpired, he tried to focus on his surroundings. He looked around seeing he had been left alone save for the women, children, and the elderly. They all stared at him, and he turned towards Summer Sky who was eying him coldly.
As children there had been such a brightness about her, her agile mind had quickly learned the Yavapai language from Bright Feather allowing them to communicate as back then he hadn't mastered but a couple of words of the Mescaleros. It was that intelligence coupled with the frosty look that she was giving him that told Blue River she had instantly pieced together the Wildes' plan.
“Your doing. As surely as the sun rises, this is your doing. The fight, a distraction. A fight you knew would occur if you laid with me.”
He shifted on his feet for a moment, his gaze glancing toward where Rainbow was tied. He should be on his way.
“All lies.”
“No, truth, Sky. You have colored my thoughts throughout the years. I wanted to be with you tonight. The men escaping was a bonus-”
Pain shot through the left side of his face as she slapped him harder than any woman had ever done before. He knew he deserved it, but he had to make her see that his feelings were genuine.
"Sky, when we were joined, there was no Blue River, and there was no Summer Sky. We were one. It was a joining meant to be from the very moment that we met as young ones."
Her eyes softened, and she seemed to be holding back tears. “I would like to believe you. I want
to believe you, Blue River, but how can I ever trust you again.”
He shook his head up and down forcefully and gripped her by her biceps and drew her close. “You will trust me when I live up to my word that I will not allow your brother to be killed and you made to be the wife of that dog!”
An excited murmur rose amongst the remaining people by the fire, and Summer Sky looked at them to see they were pointing at something beyond the far end of The Settlement. In the hills that overlooked it, tiny orange lights could be seen bobbing.
"It seems you will have your chance to prove it. Those torches. That is my brother and his men returning from the Great Hunt. When he arrives and finds we are on the brink of war, he will have no choice but to go through with the attack on Horseshoe. We are past what the whites from which you spring call the point of no return."
Risking another slap, he brought his lips to her and kissed her passionately, and she did not try to fight it. Pulling himself away, the club still in his hand, he freed Rainbow and mounted the steed.
“You said at the town is where Crazy Elk will try to kill your brother. I’ll be waiting for him. I promise you that will not happen!” he took one last longing look at her, jerked the reins, and dashed towards the front gate. Looking back over his shoulder at the receding figure of Summer Sky, he turned as the two braves standing sentry at the gate charged towards him. One hurtled his spear and missed by a very close margin as Blue River hunched down. He felt the wind as it flew past his ear. The other brave was raising his bow, but Blue River at the ready with the club swung it, striking the man in his arm and knocking him aside. Angry shouts followed him as he swept through the gate and away from The Settlement, his thoughts now on Lijuan who would be making her very own flight for safety, and unlike him, a mass of braves would be pursuing her.
***
The well-honed muscles in Crazy Elk's legs had the effect of making him almost weightless as he flew down the trail taking great strides. Beside him, White Eagle was nearly pacing him, and that galled Crazy Elk to no end. The shaman was nothing like the man's elderly father who had passed during the last winter moon. He was young and strong and should have taken his place in the ranks of the tribe's braves. The man, however, had intended to follow in his father's footsteps and derisively Crazy Elk always wondered if it was out of respect for his elder or because of the man's peace-loving heart that made the shaman weak in his eyes.
Still, the man had alerted them to the escape of the prisoners even though he had tried to discourage their capture in the first place. For that Crazy Elk felt a small measure of gratitude. Turning his head, he called out to the shaman.
“They were tied securely! How did they manage to escape? Did you see?”
"They had help! A woman attacked Little Flower and stole her clothes so that she might walk our camp without suspicion! She was Blue River's sister. The one said to be of the yellow people who dwell far across the sea!"
A spark of pure, white rage exploded within Crazy Elk’s mind as he reached over and grabbed White Eagle’s arm yanking them both to a stop so quickly that the shaman nearly stumbled forward to the ground.
“Crazy Elk!”
“You are saying it was the half breed’s sister?” he said, his eyes flashing about wildly as he looked back up the trail. “That snake with his foul white blood! He wanted that fight with me, so all would be distracted and not discover the yellow woman's treachery!" Crazy Elk's feet prepared to spring him forward to race back to The Settlement when he forced himself to stop. There would be no point going back.In their zeal to recapture the stagecoach prisoners, he had failed to order any braves behind to watch him. No matter what he might think of Blue River, he knew the Indian side of him would easily escape past the two sentries that still manned the gate. Blue River would be long gone. Now his only hope was to catch up with their quarry and recapture them along with the Oriental woman. It would give him great pleasure to hold her out in front of Blue River later and cut her throat.
"Come!" he shouted, and the two men's feet barely began slapping the dirt when unseen ahead of them further down the path a great cry arose from the pursuing braves. Crazy Elk's feet moved faster than ever before towards the clamor, and with the swiftness of the wind in less than a minute, he came face to face with the aftermath of Lijuan Wilde's inventive and clever trap.
His entire pack of braves was disentangling themselves from the mass of arms, legs, and torsos they had become. Off to the side of the trail, a couple of men were staggering to their feet from the thicket, and on the side of the path nearest to the stream, a pair of men splashed as they dragged themselves out of the stream where they had been catapulted in.
Moments earlier as Lijuan had fled down the path she had stopped when she had come to the pair of saplings that grew directly across from each other on the path. Earlier she had found where she had tied the rope to the base of the tree near the stream on her way to The Settlement and once relocating it she had yanked it up, so it was just over shin level.Holding on to it, she crossed to the other tree, so the rope stretched across the path. Quickly she had played it out to a tree further down the track and tied it off. The rope had been formed into a perfect "L" shape, and to a hurried band of men chasing after them, even in the moonlight, they would not see it. Losing no time, she bounded off after the men from the stagecoach.
Far behind her, she knew the trap had executed its function perfectly as she had heard the cries of men. If she had still been around to witness her handiwork, she would have seen the first two braves racing side by side become airborne the moment they hit the rope and were catapulted forward, tumbling across the ground, losing copious amounts of flesh as they scraped and bruised their bodies. Immediately the chain reaction had begun as the next men tripped as well and all who came behind were no longer tripping on the rope but the bodies of their fellow braves. Unable to stop in time most wound up into a mound of flesh piled up on the trail while a few of the men were pitched to either side, either landing in the brush or becoming human projectiles into the stream.
Now with an enraged Crazy Elk shouting for them to regroup, the men scrambled for their lost weapons in the night and picked up the pursuit again. In anger, Crazy Elk severed the rope trap with his tomahawk before exerting all his might to race to the forefront of the pack. His rage was so great he doubted he would be unable to stop himself from killing this she-devil on the spot. Now all he had to do was catch her.
CHAPTER 23
PALMAREZ, MEXICO
Not long after identifying Salazar, Dutch and Bright Feather had exited the saloon. They had decided not to overstay their time in the establishment and instead went across the street. Spying an old table that sat on the boardwalk outside a now-closed general store, they decided to take up position there. This vantage point would allow them to see if he left the bar.
Approaching the rickety looking table, they saw long ago someone had painted an actual chessboard on the surface though its colors were now faded from the Mexican sun. Bright Feather commented on a box holding a chess set that sat off to one side. Laughing Dutch said for the chess set to remain unmolested in this town, the owner had to be either a very respected man or a very fearsome one. He then flipped open the lid and toyed with the rook he snatched from the box. Chuckling, he said Honor Elizabeth had desperately tried to teach him the game once, but he said he wasn't interested.
Not to be deterred she had said to think of it, not as a game but an exercise in military strategy. The hook had worked, and he had given in. Now every time that he beat her at it, she would always huff that she had created a monster. The couple shared a laugh as her smile tugged at his heart, and he tossed the rook back into the box and stood behind her wrapping his arms around her waist and nuzzled her neck.
"You looked so beautiful at Dad's party the other night," he told her, and she couldn't help a slight blush through her copper-colored skin.
"It was the dress — the one your father bought me for the award
ceremony at the fort. I was pleased to wear it again," she told him.
“It was more than the dress, my dear. I saw a good many women of Alamieda’s upper crust looking at you with envy and a few of their men with interest,” Dutch told her. She smiled at his compliment so happy such a gentleman was her soul mate.
“Just the curiosity of seeing an Indian all dressed up I’m sure,” she responded.
"Stop! It was more than the dress, and you know it," he said and touched her face lovingly. "You're such a beauty. I give thanks every day that I didn't die on the field of battle or that hell on earth that was the Confederates' prisoner of war camp. If I had, I never would have returned home to find your love." Dutch told her, and she shivered with pleasure. Bright Feather turned to him and palmed his face in return.
“Yet, I live with the knowledge that your heart was meant for another, who you would now be with but for that horrible tragedy on the Mississippi when you were being released,” she told him, remembering what she had heard of the incident and of his lost love that they never spoke of.
“When, when she died, I railed against God, or the Great Spirit, whatever you want to call Him. It made no sense that she would be taken from me. I have reconciled it, though, as part of God’s plan. In the end, it led me to you. Please don’t ever suggest that you are a substitute or second place. Bright Feather, you are the love of my life, and I will never want to be with anyone but you,” he reassured her as she wiped a tear away.
They kissed for a while and then took their place at the table, holding hands over the chess table they waited. Several fights broke out up and down the street, but at least for now the gunfire had stopped. They used the time to speak of many things including the possibility of taking a trip back east next year when he had an extended furlough. He wanted to show her Philadelphia where the family had lived when he was but a boy. Bright Feather warmed to the idea but following that he saw her hesitate when she went to ask him something. He had a feeling whatever she was going to say would have something to do with Lijuan, and he was dreading it.
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