“Like a rabbit?”
“I suppose.”
“I never asked, how did you...kill him? I mean, you didn’t take the rifle.”
“That worthless piece of trade goods is only fit for Indians. Cheap, probably misfire or the barrel explode in my hands. I prefer this.” He rubbed the knife handle with a palm.
“You killed him with a knife? How?”
He yanked it from the scabbard, pointed at the rabbit skin he’d stretched on the opposite wall and with a move so quick she missed it leaving his hand, buried the blade hilt-deep at the edge of the downy fluff. “That was his neck,” he said and retrieved the knife. “I will take some pots and bring in snow for drinking and cooking.”
“Why don’t I go with you? I can bring in the snow.”
“And wander off and get lost again so I have to put myself in danger to come looking for you?”
Embarrassed, she gazed at the floor for a moment, then snapped her head up. “That won’t happen again. I’m a quick learner.”
“Okay, wrap a blanket around you. I will show you how to tie it. That buffalo coat gets in the way when you are working.”
As he helped her wrap one of the smaller blankets around her shoulders, she sneaked quick glances at his glowering countenance. He had gone back to his Cheyenne self in speech as well as action. When he stepped close to tie a small, tight knot between her breasts, she held herself rigid. The brush of his fingers sent tingles through her. Head bent, he appeared not to notice the effect his closeness had on her. His loose hair tickled her cheeks and spilled across her bosom like melted gold. When he bent to tie yet another knot below her waist, she tried hard to concentrate on the intricate design on his shirt, analyze how each of the tiny blue and red beads had been woven together into the pattern. But he breathed on her and he smelled of smoke and the deep woods, and clean prairie air.
Dear God, what was wrong with her? Obviously, she was addled from being too long in this wilderness. Once back at the fort and then on her way home, she’d forget this man. Totally and completely.
He finished the second knot and stepped back. She let out a sigh of relief. What was wrong with her? This was no way for a reputable young woman to behave. Being shut up here with this savage obviously had brought out the worst in her. Mama would have a fit. Only trash gave in to lustful thoughts. But she hadn’t given in. Not yet, anyway.
“Throw it back away from your arms when you work,” he said in that musical chant he used when he wasn’t yelling like a wild white man.
Though his words startled her from her reverie, she remained frozen to the spot for another instant.
Taking up one of the larger pots, he pulled the door open. “Well, come on; let’s see what’s out there.”
He insisted on going through the tunnel first, and was forced to do some digging on the other end before they broke through to the outside world again. She waited patiently, for there wasn’t room for them side by side. That she considered a very good thing indeed.
Fresh, clean air washed over her even before she squirmed from the hole and rose to her feet. She hadn’t realized until that moment how stuffy the dugout had become. A crisp, bright day had replaced the earlier brutal cold. It was wonderful simply to breathe, and she took long, refreshing gulps, face turned toward the azure blue sky.
He stood before her, head thrown back, mouth open as he did the same. The brilliant sun reflecting off snow formed a halo of light around his head. For a long while she could only stare. A light wind lifted strands of his golden hair, tugging at something inside her. Forcing her gaze beyond him to the unbroken panorama of pristine white that stretched as far as she could see; nothing but snow all the way to the horizon. Even the dugout scarcely made a lump in the endless blanket. It was breathtakingly beautiful and horribly treacherous.
“Oh, dear God. We’ll never get out of here,” she said.
“We need to find something to burn for heat. We’ll not find any dried chips out here. They’re four or five feet under.”
“What about wood? There’s some trees around the spring, over...” She turned to gesture, found she couldn’t locate either the spring or its surrounding trees. Even squinting, she had trouble seeing in the glare. Still, she knew she should be able to pick out the stand of trees from there.
“It can’t have drifted over their tops.”
“No, but it’s drifted between us and them. They’re in a low swale in that direction.” He pointed. “We just can’t see them from here. And if we get very far from the dugout we won’t be able to see it either.”
Studying the mound, she asked, “Could we make a flag?”
He regarded her for a moment. “That’s a good idea. Wait right here and I’ll fetch a blanket.” He turned and fixed her with a hard gaze. “Don’t move, you hear me? Don’t take a step till I get back. If you hadn’t sang for me the last time I’d never have found you, and you’d be frozen under all that snow, not even leaving a lump.”
“Sang? I didn’t...” But he was gone back into the tunnel, and so she didn’t finish. For a long moment, she stared into the blue sky. But Papa had sung. In her mind, she’d heard his clear tenor voice singing “Danny Boy,” so plain he might have stood beside her.
She began to hum the tune, and turned in time to see Stone Heart emerge from the tunnel, blanket in hand and a look of amazement on his face.
“That is what I heard. So plain I followed the sound to you. The pipes are calling, from something to something, o’er the mountainside. I heard them.”
Excitedly, she nodded and sang the song for him. Neither moved until she had finished. Enthralled, she gazed up into his expressive face, tenderly touched his cheek with a fingertip. A muscle ticked there, his eyes blinked.
“I thought it was the singing of the spirits,” he murmured.
“My father sang it to me. I mean, I heard him singing it while I huddled in the snow waiting to freeze to death. I believed I was joining him in death. How can that be? I mean, that you heard it too?”
He shook his head. “This is foolish. We must get to our tasks. Daylight will be short and the work hard.”
She nodded, but could not turn away from him as their gaze locked. Something very strange had happened between them, and clearly neither understood it. He might want to ignore it, but she didn’t and decided after they went back inside, she would ask him to tell her more of what had happened the day before while he searched for her.
Chapter Six
He carried two blankets from the dugout. Draping the smaller red one near the chimney, he piled snow around its edges so the wind wouldn’t blow it away, and caught her hand. It felt cold, small and vulnerable enclosed within his.
“We’d better get started. I’ll help you fill the pots with snow and we’ll leave them inside to melt while we go down to the spring. It’s not going to be easy making our way through this. Some places it will be piled higher than my head. We must stay together.” He glanced quickly at her, saw indecision in the way she furrowed her brow and studied the situation. Being lost and almost frozen the day before had put a scare into her, and he was worried. Up till then she’d been ready to face any challenge.
“Why don’t you stay here? You don’t have to go,” he told her.
Eyes flashing with bravado, she yanked her hand from his. “If I don’t work I don’t eat, and I’m starved. Let’s get busy.”
While she didn’t refuse his help filling the pots, she insisted on doing her share, and once more he admired her fortitude. Soon the heaping pans were lined up around the fire, and they set out on the difficult trek to the spring where he hoped to find wood and game. He had brought along hide thongs to put together a travois on which they could drag their find back to the dugout.
“Stay behind me and keep up. If you fall behind shout, don’t let me run off and leave you.”
When she nodded, he said gruffly, “Answer me when I talk to you so I know you are here.”
Again she nodded,
then said, “Yes, I will.”
“Good.” To keep her at bay he tried to sound gruff, and it wasn’t difficult. Anger dwelled so near the surface lately. The presence of this enemy added to his problems, and even though she was not the source of them, he vowed to remain distant. Doing so was proving more and more difficult. Perhaps he hadn’t shed his white skin quite so thoroughly as he’d thought. Her sweet vulnerability definitely presented a dilemma from which he must escape.
He led the way, keeping to cleared areas as much as possible and tramping through the deeper drifts to make a path for her to follow. It was tough going, and after a while the wound at his side began to pound with each beat of his heart.
They moved along for quite some time, the only sound that of their struggle, before they topped out on a rise that allowed him to spot the marshy, tree-covered area around the spring. He stopped and she bumped solidly into him with a grunt.
“Sorry, I was watching my feet.”
Resting for a moment, he gazed into the sun, almost halfway along its low winter path across the southern sky. Despite the harsh, cold wind blowing over the prairie the exertion of ploughing through the snow had warmed him.
“What is it?” she asked when he continued to stand in one place, his thoughts drifting back to the fort and what might be happening there to the survivors of the breakout.
“Nothing. Just wondering if we might make it back to Fort Robinson if we lit out today.”
She had leaned forward, hands on knees to catch her breath and snapped a quick look at him. “Why? We have a shelter and fire.”
“True, but if another storm comes it could bury us till we could not get out. We would die, and it would not be quick. I think we might take a chance. Just wish I could bring down some big game so we would have food.”
Cupping both hands around her mouth, she blew to warm them.
“Put them under your arms.” His attention was drawn suddenly to a slight, dark movement against the white snow at the edge of the frozen marsh. “Hsst.”
“What?” she whispered.
“Shh. Do not move, do not talk.”
She didn’t, but tried to see what he saw.
Dropping to his knees, he signaled her to do the same, held his hand out flat so she would know to stay there.
Without looking to see if she obeyed, he studied the landscape from his prone position, searching for sight of further movement.
“Slide down out of the wind and be quiet. I’ll yell when the coast is clear. We can gather wood after I have found us some supper.”
“If you find us some supper. There’s nothing out here but us and all this snow. The smart animals left this place a long time ago.”
Turning, he gazed long and hard at her. Huddled in the snow coated blanket, she hugged herself and looked completely miserable. Her beautiful red hair hung in tangled strands, her cheeks were reddened by the wind and sun and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. In all the white world, she was the most lovely woman he had ever seen. She had no business out here, but belonged in some ballroom dressed in satins and lace, swinging around the dance floor in the arms of some young white gentleman. He imagined her whirling round and round beneath glittering chandeliers, gazing up into the face of the man who held her, danced with her, adored her. The face became his.
Angrily, he flung away the image. His days of ballroom dancing were over. He would never hold a white woman in his arms again, and certainly not this one. He was Cheyenne. He was not Martin Stone, bastard son of George Armstrong Custer, but Stone Heart, the man who would free his people.
From the corner of his eye he again spotted movement within the copse near the spring. On his belly, he crept closer, wished for a bow and arrow, instead eased the knife from its scabbard while scarcely moving a muscle. After a long wait he made out a hawk poised on a limb watching something in the underbrush. A rabbit perhaps, or a rodent of some sort. Perhaps a ground squirrel or rat. Stupid to hope for a beaver. Even if it was, he probably could not bring it down with the knife. Why hadn’t he brought the trade rifle, poor as it might be? Stubborn, that’s what he was. So filled with a blinding hate for the white man he could not see what might be best for the both of them. No time to contemplate the consequences of his foolish action now. Whatever was down there, he would do his best to bring it down.
The hawk was about to lose his dinner to someone hungrier and more cunning than he.
Not budging an inch Aiden watched the Cheyenne creep toward the trees. He hunched forward low to the ground, every movement a study in grace as he all but disappeared from sight. Had she not been watching, she might never have been able to tell where he hid. Obviously the vigilant hawk couldn’t either. Though in all fairness, the bird had its eye on prey and not the approaching predator. She thought the Cheyenne might be going to capture the bird for them to eat, was relieved when at last he let fly with the knife and sent it toward the thicket below the hawk’s lookout.
The bird took wing with a loud scree, knocking snow from the drooping branches. She thought the hunter might have missed for a moment, until he leaped from his hiding place and lunged forward. He clambered onto the ice, broke through with a splash and came up with a struggling animal. It looked like a rat only bigger. She stared with disgust, then turned away.
She had managed to eat a cute bunny, she wasn’t going to eat a rat. Never, not even if she starved to death. With horror, she watched him remove the knife from the twitching body and wave her forward.
His tracks were easy to follow, even though the new fallen snow was nearly waist deep.
Disgust clear on his features, he held up the small, sandy brown animal by its hairless tail. He probably had no appetite for rats, either.
“Small pickings, won’t fill much of a hole in our bellies, and me and that bird made enough noise to scare everything else off. I was hoping for a rabbit.”
“What is that thing? It looks like a rat.”
“It is not a rat, not really,” he reassured her.
She swallowed with a loud gulp. “What do you mean, not really? Either it is or it isn’t.”
He swung the animal in front of her eyes. “This is a muskrat. A big, juicy rat would have been tastier.”
“Musk-rat, rat. What’s the difference?” Turning away from the dying, ugly creature, she swallowed hard to keep from gagging.
“This isn’t a—”
“I know, I know. But I’ll bet it tastes like one.”
He laughed in that harsh way that made such a thing sound painful for him. “Well, now, how will we ever know? I have never had to eat a rat myself. How about you?”
“How can you joke? You’re standing there dripping wet with all your clothes freezing solid, and you’re holding a furry...furry dead animal that doesn’t look like it would make a meal for me by myself. And you’re making jokes.”
“It is a veho’s trait, one I am trying to break, along with my other white attributes. Now, let’s gather some wood and get back. It will be getting cold soon.” He eyed the sun that had moved much too fast toward the western horizon.
As far as she was concerned, it was already quite cold, with that brisk wind blowing across the prairie, occasionally picking up snow. Ice crystals hung from the long braid, clung to his stiffly frozen buckskins.
Together, they traipsed through the wooded area, gathering chunks of downed tree branches. He found two rather long sturdy limbs, lashed them together with some shorter ones and they stacked their salvaged wood lengthwise on the crude travois. When it was piled high he backed up to it as if he were a beast of burden and lifted the front end. Dragging it from the woods was difficult, but after that the makeshift sled seemed to move along over the snow pack rather well.
Following in his trail, she found the going easier. Once he stumbled and went to his knees. She started forward, but he motioned her back.
“I am all right.”
Of course he wasn’t, this she could tell by watching him struggle upright and
take up the heavy burden once again.
“I can help.”
“We’re almost there.”
He was right. The red blanket he’d plastered to the roof of the dugout stood out in the gathering dusk like a spot of blood.
At the end of their entrance tunnel, he dropped the travois and hunched forward to take in great gasps of air. She watched with some anxiety. If he died so would she, but there was more to her concern than that. She did not want him to suffer, moved forward and touched his heaving shoulder. The heat from his struggle had thawed the frozen cloth and it was clammy under her palm.
She could only imagine how much it had taken out of him to drag that heavy load of ice-laden wood so far. And then to realize that it would probably be burned up by morning, must be frustrating. He was right. They had to move on, and soon, or they would both die.
Leaning forward, she peered up into his face. “Are you all right?”
He took another deep breath and straightened, the expression in his eyes one she couldn’t read. Not anger nor sadness, like she’d seen there before, but something else. Stubborn pride, perhaps.
As he stood, the disgusting dead animal hanging from a leather loop around his wrist caught her eye, and had something else to think about. They were going to have to clean the thing. The rabbit had been bad enough, but this would be a much nastier job, she just knew it. Maybe she’d tell him she didn’t want her share and in that way get out of the job. Her growling stomach urged her otherwise, a grumbling she struggled to ignore.
“Well, we made it,” she said, still eyeing the overgrown rat.
“We can’t stop yet,” he said. “Now we have to get all this wood inside. Why don’t you crawl in and I’ll pass it through to you? Stack it back in the corner as best you can.”
“Can’t we just leave it out here and get it as we need it? Surely no one will steal it.” With an exaggerated stare, she looked all about.
The sun slipped beyond the horizon, shooting a brilliant orange blaze across the snow covered land. Above them the sky glowed like fire and, in what seemed to be a mere instant, a frigid cold embraced them. Stomping numb feet, she faced him with what little grit was left to her. His silver eyes dared her to complain.
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