“I realize what a shock this must be,” Robert said. “You were so little when you were stolen away that you don’t remember any of us.” He studied her face again, now that he was so close to her. The color of her hair was almost identical to his own golden blond, and the green of their eyes was a perfect match. But it was her uncanny resemblance to their mother that touched Robert to his very core. He had been fourteen years old when their wagon train had been attacked—the oldest of the McBain children. His memory of both of his parents had never dimmed, nor had his memories of his four younger siblings. Now, he found it hard to believe that the chubby, rosy—cheeked toddler that he had toted around on his shoulders was this confused and haggard young woman he saw before him.
“We have a lot to talk about,” Robert said after a long, uncomfortable silence. “I hardly know where we should begin.” His anger when he had first arrived at her room had faded slightly now that he had met her. When he had first received the wire that his sister was alive and at Fort Keogh, he had been so overjoyed and anxious to meet her that he had immediately requested a leave so that he could go there to get her and take her back to Fort Custer to live with him. Then, when he had arrived today, he had been taken to the general’s office, where he had been informed that his sister was a traitor to her own people and that she was such an Indian sympathizer that no one here at Fort Keogh wanted to be near her.
This information had so enraged him that he planned to come to her and tell her all of the gory details of how their parents and brothers and infant sister had been slaughtered. He wondered how she would feel about her beloved Sioux then. But when she had opened the door and peered up at him from their dead mother’s face, nearly all anger had fled from him. She appeared to be so lost and helpless that Robert wondered if she had been so abused by those savages that she had lost her mind.
“I can never even begin to understand what you must have been through, but as your brother, I promise you that I will do everything in my power to help you forget the past fifteen years of your life.”
Agreeing with him would have been the easiest thing to do, but Meadow refused to let anyone strip away the good memories—the cherished memories—of her time with the Sioux. “I know what happened to our family was horrible and unforgivable, but please try to understand that the Sioux I was raised among treated me with only kindness and unselfish love. I could never forget—” Her words were cut off sharply when her brother grabbed her roughly and pulled her close to him as he yanked her up to her feet. His hands clasped her arms so tightly that she wanted to cry out in pain, but the shock of his actions rendered her silent.
“I don’t ever want to hear that kind of talk coming out of your mouth again. You hear me?”
Meadow stared up at him. She flinched at the way his mouth was curled into a hateful snarl and his green eyes had drawn into narrow slits. A weak nod of her head was her only response to his demand. The instant he released his tight hold on her arms, she started to back away from him.
Robert shook his head and let his gaze rake over her coolly. “I was told that you seemed to love those dirty redskins more than you did your own kind. I hoped and prayed it wasn’t true, but I can see for myself that you’ve been corrupted by those savages, and now I’ve got to see to it that every one of those filthy thoughts is wiped out of your head for good!”
Meadow continued to step back until she bumped into the wall and could not retreat any farther. Tightness in her throat and chest made speaking impossible, but remembering how her rash words had caused her to be in this situation in the first place, she realized she would be smart to keep her opinions to herself for a change.
“Now…” Robert began in a controlled tone of voice as he straightened up to his full height and drew back his shoulders as if he were standing at attention. “I think it would probably be best for us to head back to Fort Custer first thing in the morning. You can make a fresh start at Fort Custer, and as long as you keep any love you still harbor toward the Sioux to yourself, there should not be any problems.”
He stepped toward the door as he added, “I’ve spent half of my life trying to fulfill two goals: to find you and then to bring our family’s killers to justice. Well, here you are, now. That just leaves wiping out every one of those Sioux bastards so that no other family has to go through the horrors that ours has. You’d do well, little sister, to think long and hard about where your loyalties need be.”
Meadow’s body grew numb from the cold that raced through her as she watched this stranger walk out of her room. Before he closed the door, he turned to her and said, “Be ready to leave at dawn.” The hardness in his voice and the look on his face made it obvious to Meadow that a third goal had just been added to her brother’s list: to make sure that she became as much of an Indian hater as he was, or rue the day that she had been reunited with him!
With all the energy drained from her, Meadow fell back onto the bed. How had her life ended up so tragic, when just a short year ago she had been the happiest she had ever been in her entire life? With thoughts of Black Horse in her troubled mind once again, she drifted into a restless slumber. Her dreams were beautiful and vivid, of the brief time they had lived and loved among the towering pines. Was it possible to have loved enough in such a short time to last her an entire lifetime?
When Meadow awoke, the sun had not yet risen. She knew she had no choice but to go to Fort Custer today with her brother, but she silently vowed to somehow return to Fort Keogh and learn more about the Sioux prisoners that were incarcerated here.
With an aching head and a body that felt as if it had been run over by a stampede of buffalo, Meadow slowly readied herself for the journey that lay ahead. She did not feel right taking all of the clothes that the women from this fort had given to her, so she picked out a black riding skirt with a tailored jacket and a simple white shirt. The tall, knee-high boots she had been given for riding were pure torture to her feet. Although she knew she would never be allowed to wear her soft moccasins or loose-fitting buckskin dress at Fort Custer, there was no way she would leave them behind. Carefully, she packed them in the bottom of the small leather bag that Little Squirrel had sewn for her when she was a young girl. The white wedding blanket was also in her bag. She still slept with it every night.
When a loud knock sounded on her door, Meadow was ready but not anxious to begin a life with her newly found brother. She opened the door before he had a chance to pound on it again. He looked surprised to see that she was ready and waiting for him. Meadow noticed that two soldiers sat on horse back beside two other saddled horses, which were apparently for her and Robert.
“These men are under my command at Fort Custer, and they accompanied me here,” Robert offered when he noticed her eyeing them suspiciously. “Let’s ride,” he added. “If time is on our side, we’ll be at Fort Custer by tomorrow night.”
Meadow nodded in agreement and headed for the smaller of the saddled horses. One of the soldiers jumped down to help her mount up, but Meadow had swung up into the saddle before he was able to reach her. She glanced at Robert. The scowl on his face told her that he did not approve of anything she did, and she was certain that he was wishing now that she, too, had been killed in that attack fifteen years ago.
Without another word, the four riders cantered across the wide expanse of the courtyard. The sun was just peeking above the distant horizon, and there was very little activity anywhere in the fort, which was why Meadow’s attention was diverted to the movement at the prison barricade. A small group of soldiers carrying rifles walked on each side of a row of handcuffed and manacled Indians. The Indian men walked with their heads bowed and moved slowly, as if they were in great agony. Meadow’s heart began to pound like a drum in her breast. These had to be the Sioux prisoners she had been hoping to see, and they were walking right toward them.
Her instinct was to jump off the back of her horse, run up to the men and hug them all and tell them how sorry she was that they were
being held here and treated like dogs, but common sense made her remain in her saddle. Still, she could not leave here until she knew if any of these prisoners were men that she might know from her village.
“Robert,” she called out as she pulled on her horse’s reins and came to a halt. The look of annoyance on her brother’s face when he looked back did not deter her. “Could you please wait here for just a moment? I forgot something back in my room.”
The lieutenant gave a curt nod of his head and glanced at his two comrades with a look of aggravation, but Meadow didn’t wait around for him to change his mind. She turned her horse around and trotted back toward the barracks she had just left. Her hope was that the prisoners would be walking past the same area by the time she reached the hitching post and she would be able to get a look at their faces while she was tying up her horse. In her haste to get away from her brother, however, Meadow reached the building where she had been staying too soon. The bedraggled prisoners were moving at a pace barely more than a crawl, and they were still too far away for her to see any of their faces.
Meadow glanced back at the trio of men who were waiting for her and noticed that they were all looking in her direction. She finished tying her horse to the hitching post and hurried back into the building. Frantically, she looked around for something to grab so that she could stuff it into her saddlebag when she went back outside, since her brother was undoubtedly watching every move she made. A pink gingham dress hung on the back of the chair, so she snatched up the garment, even though that particu lar dress had been her least favorite of the clothes she had been given to wear.
Feeling as if she was about to explode inside, Mead-ow’s sweating hand could barely turn the knob to let her exit from the room again. As panic flooded through her, she grasped the knob with both hands and yanked the door open. The soldiers and the prisoners were moving right past her when she stepped out into the open. From a distance it had been obvious that they were a pitiful lot, but up close the sight of them caused Meadow’s stomach to twist into a heavy knot. There were about a dozen men. Dirt encrusted their dark skin, and their hair hung in heavy clumps down their backs. They wore filthy leggings, loincloths and nothing else, not even moccasins on their cut and bleeding feet. Meadow fought back the urge to cry at the sight of these once-proud men who were now reduced to nothing more than walking skeletons.
As the men moved past her, none of them looked up, so Meadow stepped forward in an effort to see them more clearly. The dirt on their thin faces and the scraggly strands of hair that hung over their shoulders made it next to impossible to tell who they were, but as the last couple of men stumbled past her, one glanced up. His dark gaze met Meadow’s without hesitation, and even with all the grime covering him there was no denying who he was. A weak gasp escaped from Meadow, but the strangling knot in her throat prevented her from saying anything or crying out. She grasped the railing of the hitching post for support, because her legs felt as if the bones had just dissolved, and the thudding of her heart had expanded up into her head and made her feel as if she was going to lose consciousness.
Clinging to the post, Meadow stared at Black Horse as he stumbled past her. Their gazes locked, but she could not decipher the strange look in his raven eyes. His blank stare almost suggested that he didn’t recognize her, yet that could not be possible. She leaned forward, yearning to reach out and touch him. He was alive—close enough to touch—and she desperately wanted to wrap her arms around him and never let him go again. Her mouth opened to call out to him, to tell him how much she loved him, but the words did not follow.
His eyes—those beautiful dark ebony eyes that had haunted her day and night for so long—were now the eyes of a stranger. She had seen that look in his raven gaze before, when he had talked about his loathing for the white men. She saw his eyes rake up and down her body, then rise back up to her face, but this time he did not allow his gaze to meet hers. Meadow had no doubt now that he recognized her. But he was not looking at the woman he had once loved so passionately. He saw only a white woman—his most hated enemy.
As the group of soldiers and their prisoners walked around the corner and out of view, Meadow clung to the post. If she allowed herself to move, she knew she would not be able to stop herself from running wildly after Black Horse, throwing herself at his feet and telling him that regardless of how she was dressed or where she was, in her heart she was still a Sioux.
Staying quiet and still was the hardest thing Meadow had ever done. Every inch of her being ached from the effort it took to remain passive while the love of her life disappeared from view. Her heart felt as if it had just been ripped in half, her mouth went dry and it was difficult for her take a breath.
“Mary, my God! You’re as white as a ghost,” Robert gasped as he grabbed her around the waist to prevent her from falling down. She was holding on to the post so tightly that he could not even squeeze his arm all the way around her. Although he had seen the Indians pass right in front of her, he had no idea how profoundly the sight of them had affected her. He had believed that his sister sympathized with the Indians, but from her strange reaction now, he was questioning that belief. The look of horror on her ashen face made him wonder if she was so scared and confused that she didn’t even know what she was talking about when she defended the Sioux.
“Let’s get you as far away from here as possible,” Robert said in a sympathic voice. “And don’t you worry—you’ll never have to be around another one of those savages again, because I’m going to protect you now, and if one of those animals ever comes near you, I’ll kill him with my bare hands!”
Meadow stared up at her brother, unable to speak or to think beyond the agony that was tearing her into a million little pieces inside. The joy she was feeling from knowing that Black Horse was alive was overpowered by the painful knowledge that he now hated her as much as—or more than—he had once loved her. She dutifully allowed her brother to lead her down the steps and help her mount her horse. The thoughts in her pounding head were jumbled with indecision and confusion. How could she leave Fort Keogh now, knowing that Black Horse was a prisoner here?
Still, she was rational enough to think about how foolish it would be for her to refuse to go with her brother, so Meadow took the reins when Robert handed them to her. She stared in the direction where she had last seen Black Horse. She had to figure out a way to get back here soon, and she had to prove to Black Horse that she had not deserted her adoptive people as he had once predicted. She had to show him how much she still loved him, and then she would spend the rest of her life proving it.
Black Horse had lost track of time. Some days he didn’t care whether he lived or died. But now, everything mattered again.
For months the idea of seeing his green-eyed woman again was the only thing that had kept him going. Now that he had actually seen her and knew what a liar and a traitor she was, he had a different reason to live—to get out of here and tell Meadow how much he loathed her.
He slid down to the ground, leaned his head back against the dirt walls of his cell and closed his eyes in an effort to wipe away her image, that of a white woman through and through. His hand contracted into a tight fist. If he had the strength he would beat something. He thought about the times she had told him about her never-ending devotion to the Sioux, and he had believed every word of it. His heart felt as though a stone-edged lance had just ripped through it. Her lies hurt worse than any of the pain they had ever inflicted on him in this white man’s prison.
Chapter Twenty-one
Meadow had thought that leaving the Sioux village was difficult. But that did not even begin to compare to the agony of leaving Black Horse behind at the fort.
She had no idea how far it was to Fort Custer, but she knew she had to make a plan before they had gone too far. Forcing herself out of the shocked trance she had been in since seeing Black Horse, Meadow began to focus on her surroundings. There would be no chance for her to sneak away from Robert and the
other two men until they camped for the night. She had to be very certain that she would be heading back in the right direction.
But then what? She could hardly ride right back into Fort Keogh and break Black Horse out of the stronghold without help. For now, she just had to focus on the countryside and the tracking tricks she had learned from White Buffalo.
This part of northern Montana was mostly rolling hills and wide-open prairie. Meadow hoped that making her way through the dark would not be too difficult. Traveling alone was becoming all too familiar, and she had learned that it was far more dangerous than it was exciting. Soon she hoped that she would be riding at Black Horse’s side, and then she would never ride alone again.
Spring was rapidly turning into summer, and the air grew hot by midday. Meadow was miserable in the heavy riding skirt and long-sleeved blouse she was wearing. Thank goodness for the black flat-brimmed hat that she had brought with her to shield the sun from her eyes and skin. After spending so much time indoors, she had noticed that her pale skin burned more easily when she was out in the sun.
Robert seemed obsessed with getting back to Fort Custer as soon as possible and pressed the horses and the riders to their limits. They stopped to water the horses several times during the day and only once to eat a quick meal of canned beans and corn bread. The great distance they had covered in just one day was disheartening to Meadow; she would have to ride all night without stopping to get back to Fort Keogh. She just hoped that both she and her horse were able to make the journey.
To her relief, Robert decided to call it a day just as the sun was beginning to set in the western sky. As she helped the men heat up a simple dinner of biscuits and stew that they had brought from last night’s dinner at Fort Keogh, Meadow meticulously planned her escape. For the first time since they had met, Robert’s mood seemed to mellow, and as they sat around the campfire sipping coffee after dinner, Meadow caught him watching her intently.
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