He smiled thinly. “I have been in your cabin, Becca Brandt. Over the fireplace was a clock with a moon painted on it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”
“And at the foot of your bed a carved chest.”
“You sneaking—”
“Save your insults, Becca Brandt. But know this. As much as I hate your husband, as much as I desire his death, I will not harm your smallest finger—so long as my father lives.”
“And if he dies?”
“If he dies, you must die as well.”
“Out of revenge.”
“For honor’s sake.”
“How would an Indian know anything of honor?”
“If I do not, then your husband must blacken his face with the ashes of mourning. For if I, Fire Talon of the Mecate Shawnee, have no honor, then you have no hope of life no matter what happens to my father.”
Chapter 6
“I won’t take off my clothes for you! You’ll have to kill me first,” Rebecca shouted at Talon. It was early morning the following day; they’d left the shelter of the cave and were standing beside an ice-sheened forest pool about a quarter of a mile away.
“Lower your voice, Becca Brandt,” Talon warned. “I mean for you to wash, not lie with me. Again you prove your ignorance. A Shawnee brave who shares pleasures with a captive woman on the war trail gives away his power and his luck. Your charms do not tempt me enough to risk failure of my mission.”
“To hell with your luck. I may be a country girl, but I’m not stupid. If you want my dress, you’ll have to cut it off my dead body.”
His rough-hewn features darkened like a thunder cloud. “Now you do tempt me,” he threatened.
He’d used a bone comb to dress his long hair and fastened it back away from his face with a simple rawhide thong; it fell over his shoulders and caught the rays of light like skeins of raw black silk. The war paint that had seemed so garish to her yesterday was smudged and faded, making him seem more human.
“I’ll wash my feet, nothing more,” she said. Slowly, step by step, she edged away from him until a fallen log lay between them. She didn’t know what he would do, but she meant to fight or run before she’d give in and remove her dress.
The rest of last night had passed in fitful starts with her nodding off to sleep and then jerking awake. Her head hurt, and her belly growled with hunger, but she had made it this long alive. She was still afraid of Talon, but not so fearful as she had been, and she was in no mood this morning to be bullied.
Dawn had broken cold and clear. The storm had passed, leaving the crusty snow and frost-decked branches a fairyland of sparkling splendor. Their breaths made little puffs of white in the crisp, clean air. It was her favorite kind of winter day. Often, she and Colin had tramped through the woods for hours in weather like this. The thought made her throat tighten.
Where was her brother today? Was he following the river? Or did he lie stiff and cold somewhere in this endless forest, unburied and unmourned? Never unmourned . . . He was all she had, and so long as she drew breath, she would never cease searching for him and hoping he was alive.
“You smell bad, white woman,” Talon said rudely, interrupting her thoughts. “I do not wish to make hunting us too easy for our enemies. You will go into this water and clean your whole body. You will scrub your skin with sand, and you will wash your hair.”
“I am a decent Catholic woman,” she replied. “I take off my clothes for no man but my God-given husband.” She glanced around breathlessly for a stick, anything to defend herself with. Was he mad that he thought she would disrobe because he told her to? He must be, she decided. Only a crazy person would expect her to go willingly into that frigid creek.
If that was truly what he intended . . .
She looked into his eyes, trying to read what was behind the flashing obsidian irises. She’d been chastised by Simon too many times not to be wary. If her own husband would lose his temper and hit her, what might this savage do?
Ravishment by the Indians was the black terror in every white woman’s soul. There were tales . . . whispers. Once, a Dutch family had stopped at the farm where she and Colin had worked when she’d first come to America. The oldest daughter—unmarried—had been large with child. “An abomination,” the farmer’s wife had informed her after the guests had left. The pregnancy was the result of unholy union between the Dutch girl and a Lenape Indian, and the resulting bastard would make mother and babe outcasts. “Better if they both die when it is born,” the goodwife had insisted stridently. “Any Christian girl would have killed herself before letting a red heathen touch her.” And hadn’t Simon said the same thing to her—not once but many times?
Rebecca’s stomach knotted into a tight ball. Frissons of fear rippled down her spine, and her mouth went dry. She didn’t want to die this morning. She didn’t want to die at all.
“Please,” she bargained with Talon. “I won’t make trouble for you. I won’t try to escape. Just don’t force me to—”
He leaped the fallen log without mussing a hair on his head and strode within inches of her. His black devil eyes bored into hers; his half-naked chest was close enough for her to feel his body heat. She could smell the black powder on his hands, hear the soft hiss of his breathing.
And then she remembered something else that had happened last night, and her heart skipped a beat.
Sometime between the time he had branded himself with his knife and the time they had awakened at dawn, she had dreamed again, of him.
Shame flooded her; tears sprang to her eyes. She was no decent Catholic woman—not even a good Christian to have such hidden desires. For an instant, the dream flashed across her mind.
She was home in her cabin. It was night—winter, as it was now. A fire crackled on the hearth, and she could smell a haunch of deer smoking in the chimney. The room was shadowy. and she was lying in her bed with her rose quilt pulled round her shoulders. She was warm and happy, joyous almost.
Then Simon stepped between the bed and the hearth; his nude form was backlit by the glowing fire. She called to him, rose on one elbow, and raised the quilt to beckon him into her bed. He moved closer and she held out her arms in anticipation. But when he bent to kiss her, a mass of black hair fell over his shoulders to brush her face with silken promise.
And when she looked into his eyes, they were not Simon’s eyes. Not Simon’s lips pressing hers, or Simon’s hard hands on her breasts. The lover she had welcomed so eagerly into her bed was Talon.
Reality replaced the unthinkable dream. Rebecca’s eyes widened; she let out a short scream, and turned to flee.
He caught her before she had gone three paces. “No! No!” she cried hysterically. She thrashed from side to side, tossing her head and kicking at him.
“When I say you will bathe, Becca Brandt, you will bathe,” he hissed.
She shrieked as he swept her up into his arms. Suddenly, she was flying through the air. Before she could scream again, she hit the water. The shock of the numbing cold stream drove everything but self-preservation from her mind. She struggled to get her head above the surface, came up sputtering and gasping for breath, lost her balance, and fell under again.
Strong hands closed around her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. As the panic receded, she realized that the water was only waist deep and she was in no danger of drowning.
“By the great deeds of Glooskap! Are you possessed of a demon, woman, that you try me so? Can you not bathe without drowning yourself?”
She stared at him through dripping strands of hair and cursed him with the foulest expletive she could muster.
“Good,” he said. “If you can call me names, you’ve enough breath to survive.” He let go of her and waded out of the creek. “I will go downstream,” he said, “and wash my own body. See that you clean your hair properly, or I will throw you in again and do it myself.”
“You . . . you’re crazy!” she said with chattering teeth. “I
’m . . . freezing!”
“Then wash quickly and return to the fire. I’ll try and find us something to break our fast.”
“Fiend!” she shouted at his broad back.
He must be an animal not to feel the cold, she thought, as she splashed half-heartedly in the shallows. Her feet and legs were solid ice. Her body shook with chills. “Damn him,” she muttered. “Damn him to a frozen hell.”
It was impossible to wash in her dress, but she wasn’t even certain she could get it off. With stiffened fingers, she fumbled with the ties of her gown, unlaced it halfway down the front, and pulled it off over her head. She stood shivering in her long-sleeved shift and stays and was about to throw her gown up onto the bank when she heard a gunshot. Instantly, she clutched the soaking wet garment against her bosom.
It sounded to her as if the rifle had been fired on the far side of the stream and down to the left. Yet she was positive that Talon had gone right. She waited, unsure of what to think, when suddenly she caught sight of a gray shape streaking down the hill toward the water.
A dog? The gait was not a deer’s gait. As the animal came closer, she gave a little gasp. It wasn’t a dog—it was a gray wolf, a big one.
It came at a dead run, and when it reached the edge of the creek, it didn’t hesitate. It leaped in and began to swim across. One front paw, Rebecca noticed, was missing toes and bloody.
Rebecca didn’t move a muscle. Terrified, she stood where she was and didn’t utter another sound. The she-wolf came close enough for her to see the white hairs around her muzzle and glimpse sharp yellow teeth.
Paying no more heed to her than if she’d been a tree stump, the wolf scrambled up the rocky overhang at the water’s edge and vanished into a thicket in two bounds.
“A wolf,” Rebecca murmured. “He tried to shoot a wolf for our breakfast?”
Seconds later an Indian appeared near the spot where she’d first seen the wolf. He came loping down the incline, rifle in one hand and tomahawk in the other. He saw her at the exact instant she realized that he wasn’t Talon. She dropped her dress and dove under, swimming toward a pile of brush and fallen trees in midstream, but not before she’d heard the high-pitched Huron war cry.
She reached the logjam and climbed over the twisted timber as the Huron splashed into the creek after her. Brandishing his hatchet, he charged. Branches tore at her shift and dug into her skin, but she didn’t stop. She clawed her way into the tangle, walked an icy branch, and burrowed deeper into the intertwined morass.
He was right behind her. She crawled through a small opening, half-climbed and half-fell down a partially submerged log, scrambled up the icy bank, and reached for an oak sapling to steady her balance. With a sickening thud, the Huron’s tomahawk splintered the tree inches from her head. The blade passed so close to her head that a lock of her red hair was pinned between the axe and the sapling. Crying out in fear and anger, she jerked free, snatching the weapon loose, and whirled to face her pursuer.
The Huron stopped short and a wide grin spread across his face. He said something to her; the guttural sounds were like nothing she’d ever heard, but she didn’t need to translate. His eyes told her what he meant to do.
His knife hissed as he pulled it from the sheath at his waist. Strips of braided yellow hair dangled from the antler handle; the nine-inch iron blade bore stains of rust or blood. He laughed and raised the knife.
She hurled the tomahawk with all her strength—straight into his right kneecap. He howled like a panther, and staggered forward, grasping his wound and trying to pull out the hatchet. The knee spewed blood; it couldn’t bear his weight. When he crumbled, she seized a fist-sized rock and threw it at his head. The rock struck his temple and he fell forward groaning. She picked up a second rock, larger than the first, and advanced on him.
Suddenly, his hand shot out and grabbed her ankle. She screamed and hit at him with the rock. She twisted, trying to get away, but he pulled her down and dragged her inch by inch toward him. He pinned her to the ground; his bloody face loomed over her and his hands reached for her throat.
His fingers dug into her neck and the earth began to sway under her. Then, without warning, another face appeared behind the Huron’s. The weight was jerked off her chest, and she realized the second man was Talon. She drew in deep gulps of air and tried to crawl away. When she stopped and looked back, the Huron lay face down, no longer moving. Talon knelt on the prone man’s back, took hold of a section of his scalp lock, and sliced free a dollar-sized piece of hair and skin.
Rebecca moaned and tried not to gag.
“I told you to bathe, not hunt Huron,” Talon said, calmly wiping his knife in the snow and replacing the weapon in his sheath.
She began to shake.
“Come,” he said, touching her arm. “You must warm yourself at the fire.” She didn’t notice when he bent to pick up the section of her hair that had been hacked away by the tomahawk and never saw him ball it up and tuck it into his waistband.
She rose and followed him, too cold, too exhausted and hungry to do anything else. “The Huron,” she stammered. “Will you leave him here for the wolves?”
“No. There is a deep ravine near here. I will come back and throw his body down there. It doesn’t matter. I have taken his scalp. The Iroquois say a man cannot cross the great river to the sky without it.”
“You mean he cannot enter heaven?” She forced herself to think of the warmth in the cave, to take one step after another. She remembered her dress. Where was it? Had it sunk in the creek? She wanted to beg Talon to look for it, but she wouldn’t ask him for any more favors, not even if it meant her death.
Talon scoffed. “I doubt he was any more of a Christian than I am, although my mother allowed the French priest to spill water on my head when I was a child. What need has a Huron of a Christian heaven?”
She crossed her arms and hugged them to her breasts. Her hair hung in her eyes, but it was too much effort to push it away. All she could think of was the fire. Her limbs were stiff with cold; she wanted to lie down and rest, but she knew she couldn’t. “Surely you know you committed a mortal sin when you took that man’s scalp,” she said. Arguing with him would keep her moving, keep her from giving up and freezing where she stood.
He shrugged. “I am a warrior. I kill because I must. I kill to protect those who cannot protect themselves—and you did not thank me for saving your life, but you are welcome, just the same.”
“Killing is one thing. I would have killed him if—”
“You nearly did. I must remember to keep my tomahawk far away from you.”
“Killing in self-defense is not the same as mutilating—” She broke off abruptly. “He might not have been dead.”
“I cut his throat from ear to ear. He is surely dead.”
“Still, to take a trophy from a human being, it is barbaric, beyond the bounds of—”
“The Shawnee and Delaware are few. The Iroquois—the Huron, the Seneca, the Mohawk, and the other tribes of the league—are many. If an Iroquois is a little afraid for his soul when he faces me, so much the better. It may give me an advantage.”
“And if he kills you and takes your scalp, what then?”
“I said the Iroquois believe it. I did not say I believe it. I am not a superstitious man.”
“You are not superstitious? You who prattle on about luck and power.”
“Be silent, wife of Simon Brandt. I tire of your incessant tongue.” He paused near the entrance to the cave and turned to glare at her. “You are the captive. You should fear torture, not me. You flay me with your barbed tongue.”
“I . . .” She started to answer back, to tell him just what she thought of him. But the fierce gleam in his eyes made her remember the wolf. Talon was as dangerous as that ravenous beast. He had saved her from the Huron, but for what? Not for herself, but for his own purpose. And when he no longer needed her, he might kill her as easily as he had slain the enemy warrior. She needed to keep that i
n mind at all times, and not be lulled by his glib English.
She kept telling herself that as he built up the fire. She huddled close, trying to warm her entire body at once. He didn’t speak to her, which was just as well. She didn’t think she had the energy to reply. Worst of all, she couldn’t stop shivering, deep, bone-rattling shakes that made her feel wretched.
He was still damp, but he didn’t seem to notice. When the fire was hot enough to suit him, he stood up. “I will tend to the Huron now,” he said. “Take off your garment and wrap yourself in the wolfskin. I will leave you alone long enough to dry, and I will call out before I enter the cave.”
“Thank you,” she managed. Somehow, the thought of being naked didn’t matter as much as the cold. He said he wouldn’t come in on her—but after all, if he intended to rape her, he could do it any time, couldn’t he? “My feet are so cold I can’t feel them.”
“Cover them with warm ashes from the hearth. Stay here. I’ll try to find us food.”
“Where do you expect me to go? With wet moccasins, I wouldn’t last an hour outside.”
“That’s what I thought.”
She waited until she was sure he was gone, then removed her stays and shift. She wrapped the wolf pelt around her, hair side in, and crouched by the fire.
If anyone saw me, she thought, they’d take me for a savage. Naked, barefoot, with my hair hanging every which way. When she was warmer, she’d try to tame her tangled locks. Now, all she wanted was to stop shivering.
She did not mean to sleep, but somehow she did. She was awakened by the smell of something delicious roasting over the fire. “What’s that?” she cried, opening her eyes.
Talon was seated across from her. Between them, a large bird sizzled and dripped fat into the glowing coals.
“Oh,” she said. “I—” Realizing that she was clad only in the fur, she pulled it tight around her, trying to cover her legs, her shoulders, and her breasts all at the same time. “You monster!” she said. “You promised me you’d call out before you came back. You tricked me.” She grabbed her shift and retreated to the shadows in the back of the cave.
This Fierce Loving Page 6