‘Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. He struggled to remember who’d said it for a moment, then snapped his fingers as it hit him. “Alfred Lord Tennyson. That’s right,” he said with a small smile of satisfaction that lasted only a moment.
In just a few hours, he was going to war.
Chapter 16
Suzanne was very tired and now hungry. Neither she nor the other prisoners had been fed since the night before and, with Major Richards being so upset with her, she knew it would be a lot longer before any of them ate.
She apologized to the men who told her it was all right and not to worry while they encouraged her to rest.
It was dark now and she could hear the men roaming the fort, laughing and talking. She could hear the lively piano music, and the whoops and hollers from Annalee’s saloon as well as boisterous laughter and clanging glasses. She lay on her bed with the thin blanket around herself, shivering with the cold of the night and keeping alert of the rats that were moving freely around the damp, dark cell. It was so dark, she could barely see her hand in front of her face.
Her body ached from the beatings that Major Richards had so brutally inflicted on her, but she was more worried about the welfare of her baby. She knew the importance of good prenatal care to ensure the baby’s health and she’d had none since her initial visit to the doctor to confirm her pregnancy. How long ago had that been? She’d completely lost track of time, but knew the baby was growing since her clothes were getting tighter. She also knew she would be showing very soon. Then what would happen?
Cody was her only chance and she begged God to bring him back safely so he could return her to where he’d found her.
It was her baby’s only chance.
~~~
Outside the fort, Chief Tall Deer had gathered the warriors, including Cody, and surrounded the fort while some of the women had stayed back with the horses. They’d made sure they were out of harm’s way and the horses wouldn’t be heard.
Cody watched the men in the tower playing cards by oil lamp. It was business as usual for them and they showed no sign that they’d heard anything. He and four other warriors were considered sharpshooters and were motioned by the chief to kill the guards. They pulled arrows out of their quivers and loaded them onto their bows, and, after careful aim, released them simultaneously, successfully killing the four men without a sound.
They made their way inside the fort and saw there was a sentry posted outside Major Richards’ private quarters, dozing in a chair. The rest of the fort was quiet except for Annalee’s and everybody in there was either drunk or indisposed with one of her girls. The element of surprise was on their side.
He and the four other warriors made their way around the tower which gave Cody a good look at the stockade. Once again, there was a guard sitting outside dozing in the chair like Richards’ guard was doing. Nothing seemed amiss.
He loaded another arrow and aimed at the sentry at the door of the stockade. The man jerked a little when the arrow hit him in the chest, but stayed in the semi-reclined position in the chair.
Oblivious to what the others were doing, he ran across the clearing and into the stockade, but he did hear the melee start with men and women screaming as they ran for their lives. The whoops and hollers from the other warriors briefly drew his attention. He wanted to get Suzanne, but changed his mind, thinking she would be safer where she was rather than trying to outrun the warriors and cavalrymen. He ran back to Richards’ quarters and flung the door open with his pistol drawn.
Richards looked up as he was awkwardly pulling on his pants and didn’t say a word.
Cody dashed to him and held his gun under the man’s chin. “You rotten son of a bitch,” he growled between clenched teeth. “You hang an innocent man and imprison an innocent woman and mistreat her and expect to walk away from it?”
“You won’t get away with this,” he shouted frantically.
“And what are you going to do?” he challenged him, pressing the gun further into his skin sneering at him. “Your men will all be dead by morning and you’re too much of a coward to kill me yourself,” he said angrily.
“Cody Black Fox,” he gasped in horror when he realized who was speaking to him.
He moved the gun to his forehead. “Where are the keys to the cell?” he demanded.
“I’m not going to tell you that,” he said indignantly.
He pulled the hammer back. “You will if you value your life,” he said lowly and rammed the barrel of the gun into his forehead a little harder. “I could kill you right now. God knows I want to, but let’s make this easy and tell me where the damn keys are!”
“The guards have them,” he sputtered.
He raised the pistol and hit the man in the head as hard as he could, causing him to drop to the floor with a thud. He didn’t waste any time and ran outside into the battle zone where guns were being fired and people were dying. When he got back to the jail, the guards were all dead and the cell door was open. He could barely see inside, but it was easy to see it was empty.
Where was Suzanne?
In a frenzy, he ran back up the steps and outside where the soldiers were being slaughtered with hardly a fight. There was so much chaos, dust, and death and the smell of blood was pungent. Under normal circumstances, he would have been satisfied that the attack was going so well, but he was busy scanning the faces of the fallen women, looking for Suzanne.
The women who had survived were being lined up outside Annalee’s saloon. They would be marched to the village and made into slaves. He knew death would be better for them, but Chief Tall Deer was already looking them over and picking out his favorites, despite all the fighting, yelling and screaming going on around him.
Cody whistled for his horse as he ran through the crowd of Indian men as they dragged dead soldiers behind their newly acquired horses and desecrated the bodies of others. The massacre had been quicker than he had ever imagined it could be. From the looks of the dead who were strewn all over the fort, there were very few Indian casualties and no fatalities. It had been a good night.
When he reached the women, he was alarmed to see Suzanne leaning wearily against the hitching post being checked for quality. Chief Tall Deer raised her lip to look at her teeth, then squeezed her breasts and her arms to see if she was muscular and looked at his son with a smile.
“This one is fine. Yes?”
Walking Bull nodded with a smile. “She is fine.”
“I take her,” he said grandly.
Cody had arrived just in time to hear that and his heart sunk. He was too late. Chief Tall Deer had already staked his claim.
He could feel Suzanne’s fear and fatigue. She had no strength left and was at the mercy of the madman chief and his madman son. “You cannot take her,” he interceded seriously as he went to stand beside her. “She is of yellow hair. She is evil.”
Tall Deer and Walking Bull both laughed.
Cody felt he was losing ground. Apparently, being blond wasn’t held in reverence anymore.
“No,” Suzanne said weakly.
He was still scrambling for a way to get her into his care. He could picture her hanging from a tree with her eyes gouged out like the woman he’d come upon not so long ago. She wouldn’t survive Tall Deer’s brutality. She was much too delicate for that. She wasn’t meant to be enslaved and tortured. She was meant to be loved and cherished and she wasn’t going to be getting any of that. He feared for her life.
Tall Deer pushed Cody aside and grabbed Suzanne by the hair, making her fall to her knees. “Horse!” he ordered gruffly and shoved her face down into the dirt at the feet of the bay stallion next to him.
She was weak from lack of food and water and the growing baby was taxing her system. She somehow regained her feet and reached for the horse, but it moved and she fell again.
Tall Deer and Walking Bull burst into laughter and drank more whiskey from the bottles they’d stolen from the saloon. They w
atched her try to get up and kicked her in the backside, sending her face-first into the dirt.
Cody knew he shouldn’t interfere, but did it anyway. He went to her and helped her to her knees, holding her hand and grasping her elbow. “You have to get up,” he murmured to her urgently.
“You like this woman. Yes?” Tall Deer asked Cody.
He looked at the tall man. “I do.”
“Well, she belongs to me,” he roared with laughter and drank more whiskey.
Walking Bull pulled a bloody knife from its sheath and pointed it at Cody in anger. “Leave her be,” he sneered.
Suzanne clung to Cody’s arm weakly, her back still toward the two men. “Don’t let them take me,” she begged weakly.
His heart was breaking, but he had no choice. “I’m sorry,” he told her softly and eased her to the ground. “This woman is not well,” he told Walking Bull coolly.
“Fine,” he spat with an angry wave of his arm. “She see medicine man.”
“She is very beautiful. Yes?” Tall Deer queried of Cody in a slurred voice.
He didn’t want to agree even though, through the grime, cuts, and bruises, she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He didn’t want to add to her agony; if he told the chief that he did think she was beautiful, he and Walking Bull would hurt her in the most heinous ways and would mar her beauty so that no man would ever look at her again. “She is not beautiful,” he said coldly. “She is a white woman and looks like a white woman.”
“You are a white man also, Black Fox,” Tall Deer said casually, slapping his face mockingly. “But you are of our race as well and you have done much to help. I give you any woman except her.”
He shook his head. “I want no woman,” he muttered.
The other warriors had the other women mounted on their horses in front of them and were anxiously waiting to leave with their new slaves and their whiskey.
Cody didn’t actually take a count, but he could see that Annalee was not with the other women nor was Mika. It saddened him to think the child had been killed, but was grateful that Suzanne had survived. She was in a hell of a situation now. It wasn’t going to be an easy thing to do, but he was going to get her away from the chief as fast as he could. Her life depended on it as well as the life of her child.
Walking Bull heaved his slave onto his new horse as Tall Deer was looking at Suzanne who was still on her knees, trying to get up. He did not help her, but looked at Cody. “Horse,” he said coldly.
He didn’t hesitate and helped her back to her feet by the arm and around her waist. “Do everything he says no matter what,” he whispered to her with urgency as he lifted her onto the bare back of the white horse, pressing a quick kiss to her cheek.
Suzanne couldn’t respond, but felt that fleeting kiss. It gave her the strength and courage to go on. She hoped he would help her if it got to be too much, but knew she couldn’t count on him. He was with his people now and she was the property of who, she assumed, was Chief Tall Deer.
Tall Deer leaped up behind her and smiled at Cody. “She is very beautiful. Yes?”
He couldn’t respond and resisted the urge to touch her blood-caked ankle as it hung limply against the big horse. She’d lost her shoes and her feet were a mass of dirt, cuts, and bruises, but that’s how her entire body was. It was obvious she’d been mistreated by Major Richards which served only to infuriate him even more. He vowed Richards was going to pay dearly for this.
The deranged chief rode away with Suzanne, laughing and waving his whiskey bottle in the air.
Suzanne was too tired to care.
Cody watched them with sadness in his heart and determination to get her back. He would not rest until she was safe in his arms again.
Chapter 17
Cody had spent the remainder of the night trying to identify bodies. He intentionally left Richards in his quarters, tempted to put a bullet in his head, but that was too good for the man. He’d take care of him later.
“Did you find anybody you know?”
He was looking at the half-dressed corpse of Annalee. She’d obviously been raped. She was beaten and bloody in her extremities and blood still oozed from her mouth. He’d found little Mika not far from the saloon with half of her head blown off, upsetting him even more. He couldn’t tell who had shot her, but the fact remained she was just an innocent child. He hated it when children died.
He looked at the only real friend he had in the village. Lone Wolf had been his first friend when Cody and his mother had first returned to the Chiricahua after his father died. Together, they’d learned to track, hunt, and to sustain themselves in the intense desert heat with the help of Lone Wolf’s father. They’d both gone on to the white man’s school and spoke excellent English and knew how to read and write. Lone Wolf was now married to one woman who he loved very much and had three young sons, all of them making him proud.
Cody finally nodded as an answer to his friend’s question. He never liked death or destruction or hunting other people even if they were soldiers. He gestured toward Annalee. “She was somebody I knew. She ran the saloon. Did you find anybody you knew?”
“No. I didn’t come here often. The soldiers were too cruel,” he said with a heavy sigh as he looked around at the dead bodies and the smoldering fires of the buildings that were in ruins.
“Yep,” he said with definition. “They were.”
“What about the soldier who is there?” he pointed toward Major Richards’ quarters.
He followed his friend’s arm and shrugged indifferently. “Death is too good for him.”
He was taken aback at his friend’s unfeeling attitude. It was so unlike him. “He, too, is cruel?”
“Yes. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with him. I may just leave him and let him find his way back to civilization.”
“He will not survive, Black Fox,” he said seriously.
“I don’t care. He hanged one of my friends, who was a lieutenant, and abused my—I mean, Chief Tall Deer’s new slave. Death by my hand is warranted, but maybe I should let God take care of him.”
“Ah,” he said slowly with realization. “She is your woman.”
“I have no claim to her,” he muttered.
“I saw you outside of the village with her. You didn’t bring her to your lodge. Why?” he asked curiously.
He shrugged.
“Tell me,” he urged, knowing that Cody Black Fox was a very private and secretive person, but they’d done a lot together in the past and he respected him. “I am your friend.”
He knew he was and looked at him pensively. Lone Wolf was a couple of inches shorter than Cody and Lone Wolf’s hair barely covered his neck where Cody’s was between his shoulder blades. Other than that, they were dressed similarly in dark pants, painted faces and chests, moccasins, and headbands.
“It’s wrong for me to take a white woman. It’s wrong for me to take an Indian woman. It’s wrong for me to take any woman. I am a half-breed. I belong nowhere,” he said with a little bitterness in his voice.
“You have to put that aside, Cody,” he said compassionately. “If you love this woman, being a half-breed will not matter.”
“Only in fairy tales. She does not love me, Lone Wolf. I am a dirty half-breed to her,” he said sadly.
“I don’t know that to be true, my brother.”
“Regardless, it doesn’t matter anymore. She belongs to Chief Tall Deer now,” he muttered.
He gave a visible shudder. “Poor woman.”
He nodded.
“I know Lame Bird would be your wife,” he offered hopefully.
He shook his head. “I will not do that to her. I’d better go take care of the major,” he murmured, giving his friend a pat on his shoulder, before walking away.
Much to his dismay, the major had already been murdered. He had a dozen arrows sticking out of his chest, a bullet wound in his forehead and his throat had been cut.
“I hope you begged for yo
ur life, you son of a bitch,” he sneered at the dead man and went back outside where Lone Wolf was waiting. “You can go back. I need to bury the child.”
“I’ll help you.”
“The rest of them can go to hell as far as I’m concerned, but a child is innocent and deserves better,” he told him as they stepped over gory bodies on their way to the now empty stables, hoping to find shovels.
He nodded. “Yes.”
It took them a little while to dig the grave deep enough to keep scavengers out of it, then lowered Mika’s little body into it and covered her face with a piece of her dress. Both men said short prayers rendering her spirit to the next world with wishes for a good journey.
The sky was beginning to lighten with the promise of another hot day when they finally headed back to the village. Neither said anything as their hearts wept for the loss of a little child who had been completely innocent. Such atrocities were not unknown in their own village and they silently relived the pain for her sake.
Cody added Mika’s death to the long list of reasons he had a guilty conscience.
Chapter 18
Suzanne was not allowed to sit, eat, or bathe as she so desperately needed to do. Instead, she was put to work cleaning the Chief’s lodge as he had his way with one of Annalee’s girls a short distance away. She tried to ignore the woman’s screams and sobs as she fought with him, which seemed only to encourage him. She heard him slap her hard and make her cry out until all of her sounds were muffled.
She did not watch, but she could hear everything. It scared her. Cody had told her to do everything the chief said without question, but she knew she could not, would not, have sex with this beast. She would die first and, considering she had nothing to offer her baby anymore, death would be a blessing.
She was horrified when another man came in as the chief was getting off Annalee’s girl because she knew what his intentions were when he carelessly dropped his pants. She kept her back to them as she covered her mouth and wished she could close her ears as the two men exchanged brief words and laughed. She cringed when she heard the old chief slap the younger man on the back as if to congratulate him. These men were no better than animals.
For the Love of Suzanne Page 9