by Nan Ryan
Maggie sighed. She was being silly. Behaving like a daydreaming schoolgirl. She should never have allowed the Comanche chief to kiss her in the first place. What on earth was she thinking? She wasn’t thinking, that was the problem. When she had come to her senses, she had firmly warned Shanaco that he had better leave her alone.
He said he would. She believed him, despite the gossip about him. He was, it was whispered, a danger to decent white women. A handsome but heartless savage who took what he wanted, when he wanted. A menacing primitive in white man’s clothing. A charming scoundrel who was an untamed animal at heart.
There were, admittedly, enough bad stories about Shanaco to condemn him. Obviously he had already gotten into mischief here at the fort. His blackened eye was evidence of his misdeeds. And he had, without her consent, brazenly kissed her. Was she the only one? Or had he kissed others?
The fire had died. Only faint embers remained.
Maggie began to scowl, her forehead wrinkling. To her knowledge, she and Lois Harkins were presently the only unmarried females at the fort. Had the vain, flirtatious Lois met Shanaco? Had they ever been alone? If Shanaco kissed Lois the way he kissed her, would Lois make him stop? Doubtful. A troubling vision of Lois in Shanaco’s arms caused Maggie to experience a sharp throb of jealousy.
Her disturbing thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the lone bugler playing the notes of tattoo, calling the troopers to sleep. It was time she was in bed herself. She shot to her feet.
Maggie snapped her fingers at the dozing Pistol. “You’re in big trouble, my friend.” Pistol gave her a hurt, questioning look. She smiled, patted his head and led him to the door. When he went out, she cautioned, “All right, I’ll forgive you just this once. But if you see a tall handsome man with long black hair lurking around here, you bark your head off, you hear me?”
Pistol yapped his response.
Maggie laughed, closed the door, yawned and headed for the feather bed in the corner of the room. She lifted the globe on the kerosene lamp beside the bed and blew out the flame. She slipped between the covers. The nights were growing chilly and the warm blanket felt good.
Maggie snuggled down, sighed and continued to think about the mysterious man whose burning lips had so dazzled her. He was young, vigorous and brutally masculine. And his kiss had been thrilling beyond belief. But Maggie realized she had best keep the encounter—and the kiss—a secret. Tell no one. Not even Katie. The last thing she wanted to do was cause trouble for Shanaco.
Or for herself.
Maggie sighed and closed her eyes.
She fell asleep to the sound of the bugler blowing the last mournful notes of taps.
The rest of the week passed uneventfully for Maggie. She didn’t see Shanaco again, although each morning when she stepped into the classroom she quickly scanned the faces, half expecting him to show up. She was relieved that he didn’t. She wasn’t sure how she would feel when next she saw him.
Maggie heard that he had moved into his cottage. She considered that to be a bit of good news. With a place of his own perhaps he wouldn’t spend so much time in the civilian village, drinking in the back room of Jake’s and inviting trouble.
By Friday afternoon Maggie had too many other things on her mind to give much thought to Shanaco.
This particular Friday was to be a very special one. All week the students had eagerly looked forward to this afternoon’s promised outing, which Maggie referred to as the “poetry picnic.” The event had been planned for more than a month and was often the topic of discussion among the students.
Maggie had decided that it would be beneficial for the children to begin learning and appreciating poetry. She had come up with the idea of making the learning easier for them by making it fun. And what could be more fun than a big picnic after which each child would recite a portion of a poem he or she had learned.
When Maggie had broached the subject in the classroom, all the students were instantly enthusiastic. The prospect of a picnic excited them so much they zealously agreed to learn a bit of poetry. Maggie suggested that if each would memorize at least eight lines of a poem, they would be rewarded with the outdoor feast.
All had immediately turned to her for advice and help. Help which she was delighted to give. She spent hours going through her precious leather-bound books with the children, making suggestions, helping each to choose a poem. Then patiently coaching them as they struggled to memorize a few lines.
Now at last, it was time for the poetry picnic.
It was a perfect autumn day. The lowering sun was warm and the air was clear and crisp. Birds sang musically in the treetops as if they knew that this beautiful sunny day was one of the last before the winter winds began to blow and the leaves began to fall.
With Pistol running on ahead, Maggie and her excited students walked down to the banks of Cache Creek to share a sumptuous spread that had been generously provided by the officers’ wives.
The children helped Maggie spread blankets on the grassy creek banks and unpack wicker hampers filled with delicious foods. There was laughter and joy and much discussion about the poetry they had worked so hard to memorize.
After the food had been devoured and the dishes cleared away, Maggie had the group move about until they were seated in a large circle. Then she announced that it was time to begin the poetry recitations. All were eager to go first. To make it fair Maggie took a piece of paper from her satchel and wrote numbers on it. A number for each child in attendance.
With the help of two Comanche girls, she tore the paper into tiny bits, each containing a number. She gathered each numbered piece, folded them, dropped them into her straw bonnet and passed the bonnet around the circle.
“I’m number one!” cried a young Kiowa girl, and shot to her feet, eager to show what she had learned.
Maggie listened as the girl laboriously recited from a Wordsworth poem. Maggie nodded her approval, then applauded vigorously when the girl finished without missing a word. Another child—a tall, gangly Paneteka boy—came to his feet and began quoting from Ralph Waldo Emerson. The next student had chosen Keats. Another Walt Whitman. Emily Dickinson. Lord Byron. Alfred Lord Tennyson.
The recitation continued as the sun sank steadily lower. Bright Feather was the last. He had drawn the highest number. When his turn finally came, he struggled to his feet, cleared his throat and stood nervously facing the group with his hands behind his back.
The sun had now slipped completely below the horizon. Only a golden gloaming of light remained, the soft illumination giving everything a strange surreal quality, as if it were all a dream. As if they were all a dream.
The tiny copper-skinned Bright Feather stood in the center of that seeming illusion and started to quote from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe.
When he began to speak in his sweet, soft voice, Maggie felt her heart swell with pride and affection. Bright Feather spoke slowly, distinctly, pausing as he struggled to recall the poem’s lines, then pressing on.
“…That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away…”
He frowned suddenly, bit his bottom lip, and repeated,
“Yet if hope has flown away…”
Again he stopped speaking. He looked pained. Maggie held her breath, hoping the last few lines would come to him. Her eyes on his anguished face, she heard the other children begin to quietly snicker and her heart ached for Bright Feather. She drew a deep breath and was about to scold the children.
The laughter abruptly stopped and an eerie silence fell over the crowd.
And out of that silence a deep baritone voice that Maggie instantly recognized softly began reciting the last lines of the beautiful Poe poem.
“In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?”
Like an apparition, he stood on a hill above, silhouetted against the last spectral glow of twilight. Every eye turned and clung to him, and Maggie was
as spellbound as the children when he recited the final lines of the poem.
“All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream?”
Twelve
While Maggie had warned Shanaco that he was to leave her alone, Lois Harkins was bent on doing everything she could to get the Comanche chief’s attention.
The spoiled seductress’s affair with her father’s married aide-de-camp was growing stale. Lois was bored with Lieutenant Wilde. She needed a new lover. Someone handsome and thrilling and forceful.
And forbidden.
Shanaco.
The Eagle.
From the moment he had ridden onto the fort, Lois had daydreamed of lying naked beneath the handsome half-breed. She could imagine the kind of wild, animal loving he would provide. The prospect of such a taboo tryst had her plotting and planning before she’d stepped down off the review stand that sunny October morning.
Shanaco didn’t know it, but he was no longer the hunter, she was. She was the huntress, he was the prey. And she fully intended to snare him in her trap. Once he was caught, they could change places. She’d be his helpless captive, he her vengeful captor. What exciting possibilities that fantasy conjured up.
Lois grew more impatient with each passing day. Shanaco had been at the fort for more than two weeks and she had yet to meet him. Apparently it wasn’t going to be as easy to instigate an affair with the Comanche chieftain as it had been with Lieutenant Wilde. Wilde was right there under her nose and all she’d had to do was reach out and take him.
But how, she wondered, could she possibly gain access to Shanaco? She knew they intended to provide him with a private cabin, but the last she had heard he was still billeted in a barracks with the troopers. As far as she knew he slept there every night.
In the daytime he was out on the reservation with his People. Or with Double Jimmy and her father.
Or in the civilian village.
Impatient to get her hands on him, Lois decided to start spending her afternoons in the village. Perhaps she would run into him. She could do that without arousing suspicions. Should anyone ask, she could claim she was shopping.
Lois dressed in her finest and sauntered up and down the wooden sidewalks. No luck on the first day. Or the second. But her heart began to pound when finally, after three fruitless afternoons, the object of her desire walked out of Jake’s card parlor and headed down the wooden sidewalk. Coming in her direction.
Lois drew a shallow breath, reached out and grabbed the colorful barber pole for support. She stood there waiting, her blond hair gleaming in the sunlight, her pretty face glowing with good health. She was totally confident of her feminine allure. Certain that Shanaco would take one look and instantly desire her.
She saw that today he was dressed as a white man in a cotton shirt and snug twill trousers. But he looked just as handsome, just as menacing as he had when he’d worn nothing but a skimpy breechcloth. He moved with an easy, fluid grace and effortlessly exuded a strong masculine self-confidence. Just looking at him made Lois tingle from head to toe.
He was almost to her. She wet her lips, thrust out her chest and bent a knee forward. Shanaco glanced at her. She smiled coquettishly and lowered her lashes. Then blinked in surprise when he dismissed her with a cold, impersonal nod. He never slowed. Walked right past her.
Lois was stunned. Absolutely incredulous. She couldn’t believe it. Was the Comanche blind? Did Indians have a different standard of beauty than their white counterparts? Did he not yearn to hold her in his arms? Such an obvious snub from a male had never happened to her before.
Shaken, Lois stared after him, wanting him more than ever, insulted but fascinated. She was intrigued by the catlike way he moved. And by the way his white shirt stretched across his wide, powerful shoulders. And especially with the way his tight twill trousers hung so appealingly on his slim hips.
Lois sighed and bit her lip in disappointment. She had assumed that the minute he saw her he’d want her. Well, he would want her, she was determined that he would. She had only to get him alone. Once she’d accomplished that she knew what to do with him. To him. She’d let him feel her burning touch on his nakedness and arouse him so completely she would take his breath away.
But damn him, she hated to wait. She wanted him now. This afternoon.
Seething, Lois angrily headed back to the quarters she shared with her father. In her room, she shed her saucy hat, kid gloves and light woolen wrap, tossing all on the floor. She climbed onto the feather bed, stretched out on her stomach and beat the mattress with her small fists, cursing the indifferent Shanaco.
She had to come up with a foolproof scheme wherein she and the imperious half-breed would be thrown together and…and…Lois began to smile like the cat that got the cream. The annual officers’ ball!
To show his respect for Shanaco’s position as leader of his People, the post commandant—her father—should invite the chieftain to the ball as the honored guest.
Lois turned over onto her back and giggled happily. She would put a bug in her father’s ear that very evening. She’d insist he should invite Shanaco to the ball. Shanaco would feel obligated to attend.
The officers’ snooty wives would shun him, of course, but she wouldn’t. She would make him feel welcome, would offer him a glass of punch. Would dance with him. And once she had him on the dance floor, she would work her magic.
Lois smiled, pleased with herself. By the end of the dance the haughty half-breed would be so hot for her he wouldn’t say no to anything she proposed. She’d work him up into a lather and then carefully whisper to him where he was to meet her later that night.
The smile left Lois’s face as quickly as it had come. She sighed heavily. The officers’ ball was two weeks from tomorrow night. How could she ever wait that long to be in Shanaco’s arms?
She fretted and frowned until she remembered. Tomorrow was ration day! Lois sat straight up and her eyes began to gleam. She wouldn’t have to wait for the officers’ ball to see Shanaco. He was a Comanche chieftain. He would definitely be present at ration day.
She fell onto her back laughing happily. He’d be there and he would be dressed in that skimpy little breechcloth that covered nothing but his groin.
Thirteen
On ration day the entire population of the fort turned out for the fun and festivities. Ration day took place every fortnight and was always on a Saturday. For whites and Indians alike it was a day-long carnival and an occasion not to be missed.
All the tribes came into the agency from their scattered, far-out settlements. In tepees all across the huge reservation, the People awakened with the dawn. Excited. Eager to get dressed and to go to the agency. Indian braves, squaws and children rode in under the watchful eye of armed troopers.
The cavalcade began in the early morning. Long columns came in a steady stream from the furthermost reaches of the preserve. Well before noon everyone had arrived and the fun and merriment had begun.
This particular Saturday was a perfect fall day. A chill to the air, but a bright sun shone down from a cloudless indigo sky.
Maggie attended, as she did each fortnight. Regretfully she had to make Pistol stay behind at the cottage. She hated to do it, but she had taken him to ration day once and he had worn her out. When he’d seen the Indian children running about with their dogs, he had chased anxiously after them, barking incessantly and darting away from her. So now he had to stay home.
Maggie went with Katie Atwood, since Katie’s husband, Blakely, was away from the fort on patrol.
Dressed in light woolens, Katie carrying a wicker picnic basket and Maggie, a blanket, the two young women walked freely among the Indians, laughing and talking as they made their way among the men. The onetime warriors were dressed in buckskin shirts, leggings and moccasins. Some sported pipe-stem bone breastplates, others had bright-colored bandannas knotted around their necks. Their thick black hair was smoothed back with grease and neatly braided down each cop
pery cheek.
Most of the men were standing about, talking and gesturing. Others were crouched on the ground in circles, gambling. Some played cards, others tossed dice. They had quickly learned such vices from the white men. Maggie clucked her tongue. Too bad they couldn’t learn to read and write as quickly as they had learned to wager on games of chance.
The excited gamblers shouted and argued and slapped one another on the back. Hearing the Comanche tongue being spoken, Maggie looked curiously around.
She didn’t see Shanaco.
She mentally shrugged. Since he seemed to have little interest in showing support for his People, he probably wouldn’t bother coming out today. An omission for which he should be ashamed of himself. If there was ever an occasion when the Comanche leader should be present, it was on ration day.
And, furthermore, he should be there dressed as a Comanche, not a white man!
Maggie and Katie waded on through the throngs of Indian men. They reached a row of makeshift booths that were manned by officers’ wives. The good-hearted ladies were giving away cakes, cookies and candy to the Indians and soldiers alike. Maggie had made a cake for the event, but had ended up leaving it at the cottage. Her culinary efforts left a great deal to be desired. When she’d shown the lopsided cake to Pistol, he had given her a sad, pitying look. So she’d donated fresh fruit instead.
Maggie smiled now when she caught sight of the shy Bright Feather, standing before a booth, several feet back, gazing yearningly at a big glass jar filled with peppermint sticks.
Without a word to Katie, Maggie hurried toward him. Katie saw the child and followed. When Maggie reached Bright Feather and greeted him, he smiled that heart-tugging smile of his.
She asked, “Would you like a peppermint stick?” His smile grew broader and his big dark eyes flashed. She said, “Practice your English. Ask the nice lady if you may have a peppermint stick.”