And One Rode West

by Heather Graham

  They all rose. Jeremy could feel the heat and fury emitting from Eagle Who Flies High. He knew the Indian longed to slit his throat then and there, but his tribesmen had spoken against him, and to retain face he must wait for the fight.

  And win it.

  That gave Jeremy the night. The night, if nothing more.

  They walked through the camp. Here and there, Jeremy was greeted with a call by those who knew him. But mostly the Indians paused and stared at him. They all knew that Christa was in the camp.

  They knew about the trouble over her, and now knew that he had come.

  A white man walking alone amongst them.

  Buffalo Run came to a halt in front of a tepee not far from his own. “You must leave her at dawn,” he said. “You will come to my home. I’ll see you are dressed properly, and Dancing Maid will cover you in bear grease, so that your opponent will not have an advantage.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You are a rare white man, McCauley. You have always kept your word with me. I hope that you live to do so again.”

  Jeremy smiled. “So do I!” he said. Buffalo Run nodded and left him.

  The battle-ax of a woman keeping guard in front of the tepee moved aside for him. He unpinned the flap, leaving it open, and stood there for a moment trying to see in the darkness. His heart started to pound suddenly, his loins to quicken. Christa. Buffalo Run had said that she was unharmed.

  A fire was burning low in the center of the tepee. He could just make out a shape beyond it. He strode into the tepee anxious, fury and fear suddenly mingling within him along with the simple desperation to hold her. She wasn’t moving, he realized. She was frozen as still as ice. He heard her shifting her position, inhaling sharply.

  “You!” she cried.

  He heard her startled gasp and realized that she hadn’t known until that moment that it was he who had come upon her.

  She was against the hide wall of the tepee, curled as close as she could come to the skin. The fire played over her, and he saw that she was dressed in soft skins, that her hair was free and long, flowing down her back. Her eyes were huge in the firelight, her face pale. She was terrified, he thought, and trying very hard not to show it. He was suddenly afraid himself. Not afraid of meeting Eagle Who Flies High in combat; he had fought too many times in hand-to-hand combat against white men in the midst of screaming cavalry horses to feel himself incapable of fighting Eagle Who Flies High.

  He was only afraid that he had found her at last, only to lose her still to death—his own.

  Christa, damn you, he thought. Why couldn’t you believe in me? Weland was a traitor to us all, but you let him use you to thwart me!

  He felt his hands shaking. He was so glad to see her safe and unharmed. Suddenly, if he was going to die, he wanted to do so with the memory of the sweetness of her kiss on his lips, not with the bitter taste of betrayal in his heart.

  He reached down his hands to her, catching her wrists when she continued to stare incredulously at him.

  He wrenched her to her feet and brought her crashing hard against him.

  “Tomorrow, madam, I may die for you,” he told her. He didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but the depths of his emotion and hunger combined to give his words a rough-edged quality. His fingers were tense upon her, making his hold a rough one. He brought her closer against him. He wanted to touch her, all of her. From the soft planes of her face to her fingers and toes. To see that she was really unharmed.

  He stroked and cupped her chin, tilting her face, forcing her eyes to his. His fingers threaded into the wild tangle of her hair. His eyes traveled the length of her. He held her head steady as his lips lowered until they hovered just above hers. His grip was forceful. The length of him seemed to shake with electric energy, be it passion or fury. And hovered there, continuing to whisper, the warmth of his breath bathing her lips, her face.

  “Tomorrow I may die. Tonight …” He paused briefly, seeking out the shimmering blue beauty of her eyes. Yes, her arms were around him. Yes, dear God, she was glad of him tonight. The last time he had seen her she had seduced him to trick him. Sometimes she had been his because she had felt her debts deeply, and sometimes because he had learned to fire her passions. Yet, he realized, none of that mattered. Tonight, she would love him because the drums were beating, because he would live or die for the glory of her touch.

  Tension seemed to burn in his body, hotter than the bluest streaks of flame within the fire. “Tonight,” he told her. “Tonight, my love, you will make it worth my while!”

  His lips descended down upon hers, hard, questing, demanding.

  And bringing up all that fire within her.

  “Jesu!” she whispered when the bruising force of his lips left her mouth at last. Again her gaze met his. Bluer than the sky, than the sea, deeper than the earth. The fire within him had touched her. The sound of the drums had entered her blood.

  She threw her arms around him and clung to him. His fingers moved over her hair, reveling in the length of it. He drew her away from him, the fury, the passion, still alive within him.

  “Life—and death. Make them both worthwhile,” he told her harshly.

  She stared at him. He swept her up into his arms and bore her down to the furs upon the ground.

  “Love me!” he commanded her fiercely.

  She was silent as he stripped, her eyes on his, waiting. Then he was down beside her, his hands upon her, stripping her of the fine doeskin tunic the Comanche had given her to wear.

  She lay against his burning, naked flesh. He could feel the length of her, and he began to shake, certain at last in his heart that she was all right. They had not touched her, had not maimed her. He had come in time.

  She would keep nothing from him, he decided. She wouldn’t fight the sensations, she would do nothing but surrender. He whispered harshly to her. “Give in to me! Everything, Christa, everything.”

  He straddled her. Her flesh was beautiful, ivory and gold in the firelight. Her breasts were so large now, full, evocative, the nipples nearly crimson, hardened. He could just feel the slight rise of their child in her abdomen, and he prayed suddenly, fiercely, that they all might live. Beneath him she began to tremble, and he didn’t know if it was with fear or with desire, or if the endless incantation of the drums had entered them both.

  She reached out her arms to him, eyes wide, luminous. She moistened her lips to speak, and her words were soft, quavering, yet filled with a passion that touched his heart, soul, loins.

  “I will give you everything!” she vowed, and added in a vehement whisper, “And make the night well—well worth your while!”

  Tonight was different from all others. Tonight the words, the accusations, the anguish, the whispers, all hovered within his body, locked within his soul. He loved her. He didn’t know how long he had loved her so fiercely, maybe it had been forever. For all else paled beside this. No love he had known could be so deep, no hunger could be so shattering.

  He found her lips. They trembled beneath his and parted. Heat rippled and burst between them, spreading rampantly. His hands moved swiftly, circling the heavy fullness of her breasts, rounding over the rise of her belly, touching her.

  The softness of her body seemed to meld to his. She twisted and turned, accepting his touch, wanting his touch. Soft sounds escaped her, sounds that sent desire rocketing more deeply into his mind and body.

  “Death holds no threat, my love. Indeed, you have made it all worth my while!” he promised her.

  He felt the urgency of her touch, pressing against him. Holding his breath, he let her have her way. Upon her knees she kissed his shoulders, her fingers biting into the flesh and muscle. She kissed his lips, his chest. Swept into a newer, even sweeter fire, he caught her hand and guided it to the fullness of his sex.

  A ragged cry escaped him. He swept her up into his arms, then laid her flat against the hides and fur of the bedding again. He caught her ankles, spreading her legs. He hovered over her
, lips ravaging hers again, eyes seeking her own.

  His body screamed that he must have her then.

  But something within him knew that he could not for he had to touch her more, had to feel her, see her, kiss her, touch her, taste her.

  Again, his lips covered hers. They covered her breasts. They bathed her belly, and even as she cried out, his kiss, his lips, his tongue stroked and teased her inner thighs, the throbbing sweet cleft between them. A cry escaped her, then whispers and gasps. She urged him to her, near sobbing as she brought him into her arms.

  “Jesu!” he cried out.

  He felt so alive, so volatile. So damned, desperately hungry. He scooped her into his arms. Sensations sheathed and sheltered him as he thrust himself into her. Her limbs wrapped around him tightly, the liquid fire of her body accepted and encompassed him. He moved and let the thunder of the drumbeats call his rhythm, for he was far beyond reason, feeling the incredible rise of his climax. He fought the explosion, savoring the feel of his wife beneath him, the sleekness of her flesh, the undulation of her body, rising against his and meeting him. He felt the ragged rise and fall of her breath, the pure thunder of her heart.

  But the splendor that night seemed as savage as the beat of the drums. Desire soared within him, then burst in a violent climax. He felt her shuddering beneath him, felt the explosion within her. “My love …”

  The words escaped him. He didn’t know if she heard him or not. It didn’t matter. He grit his teeth, feeling the final thrust of his body, the last of the little explosions that shook him.

  For a long while he held still. Felt the satiation fill his body. He lay down beside her, sweeping her damp, cooling body into his arms.

  She started to speak.

  “Shh!” he said softly. “We have the night.”

  She curled against him. She touched his cheek, but her eyes would not rise to his. “I can’t!” she whispered. “I don’t think it’s possible to forget this fear long enough to … make love.”

  He smiled. “Give me a chance!” he said softly, and they both remembered another night he had made such a request.

  She rose up, trying to see him in the flickering gold light. “Jeremy, I know that I betrayed you. I have no right to ask you to understand, but you can’t know the whole of it. Dr. Weland—”

  “Is dead,” he told her flatly.

  She inhaled sharply. There was a glaze of tears in her eyes. “Then you know? He killed Robert Black Paw.”

  Jeremy hesitated. “Robert may still be alive. It’s possible.”

  “Oh, God!” she whispered. “Oh, God! I pray that he is!”

  Her words were fervent, and he knew that they were honest. He prayed himself that the man who had been his good and loyal friend through so many things might still be alive.

  But Robert seemed distant now. The cavalry encampment might have been a million miles away. The real world was here, in this tepee, with the sound of the drums all around them, the flickering fire bathing them in its gold light, and the promise of the violence that would come with the daylight.

  “Jeremy—”

  He reached up to her, threading his fingers through her hair, amazed himself that he could want her again, so desperately, so quickly.

  It might be all that he would have.

  “Come here,” he whispered, pulling her head down to his. His lips just a breath from hers, he told her, “We haven’t that long.” He rose, pressing her back down to the furs. But she moaned deep in her throat, protesting, tossing her head. He released her captive lips, and she looked up at him, her eyes wide and incredibly blue, her hair wild and entangling them both.

  “Jeremy, you said that you might die. I don’t understand—”

  “I am to meet Eagle Who Flies High in the morning. We will fight for you. With knives.”

  She gasped, and a tremble shot through her. “You—you can’t meet him. He could so easily kill you—”

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence!”

  She shook her head raggedly. “Oh, my God, Jeremy, it’s just that he’s an Indian, a savage—”

  “He is a savage? Jesu! You should have seen the way your friend Jeff Thayer killed poor Joe Greenley and the Union soldiers on the pay wagon!”

  She swallowed hard, her lashes falling over her eyes. “I didn’t know, Jeremy—”

  “It doesn’t matter!” he said roughly. “Not tonight.”

  He tried to capture her lips again, but she was speaking quickly. “Don’t you see, it does matter?” she whispered. “Damn you, Jeremy, I don’t want you to die for me! I don’t want you to die for honor, not for my sake. I forced you into marriage, I—”

  “Christa! You’re carrying my child!” he reminded her.

  She fell silent, inhaling, her lashes once again covering her eyes. She stared at him. “Before you came, I asked Little Flower to make sure that the baby was brought to you in the event of anything happening to me. She would have helped me. She—will help me get the baby back to you if choose to leave now—”

  “Christa, if I wished to, I couldn’t leave now. My honor is at stake here, my credibility. I cannot go.”

  “But—”

  “Christa! The night is short, the hours wane. Dawn will come soon enough.”

  “Dawn?” she whispered miserably.

  “I have to prepare.”

  “Then you have to sleep!” she cried out fervently.

  “I will sleep,” he said. He threaded his fingers forcefully through her hair. “I will sleep soon enough.”

  “I—”

  “Shush, Christa!”

  She had no chance to disobey for his lips seized hers firmly, and the kiss was deep and demanding, stealing the breath from her.

  When he finally dozed, she stared down at his face, biting her lip, feeling tears form and fall. She jerked back, lest her tears hit his flesh.

  If something happened to him tomorrow, she wouldn’t want to live. Once she had loved Liam, but never like this.

  “Don’t die!” she whispered. “Please, don’t die! I cannot live without you!”

  At long last, she lay down beside him, certain that she would never sleep.

  Yet she did.

  Jeremy awoke with the first light of the new day. He stared down at the woman entangled with him. Her flesh was so ivory and soft against the brown fur, her hair so black and richly cascading, her face so beautiful. Her abdomen seemed more rounded this morning; in the midst of this chaos, their child grew.

  He leaned low against her and reached out and touched her cheek. It was damp. Tears lay upon it.

  Tears she had been shedding for him.

  He kissed her forehead, then silently drank in the beauty of her curled before him once again. He placed his hand upon her belly and wondered in sudden awe if he had actually felt movement. Life. If he were to die, he prayed God that Christa and his child might live. Gently, tenderly, he pressed his lips against the flesh of her abdomen, and then he rose. He hastily gathered his clothing, then left the tepee, moving on to Buffalo Run’s home so as to prepare.

  * * *

  When Christa awoke, she heard the chanting and the cheers. She lay staring into space for a moment, and then she remembered.

  She leapt up and found her doeskin dress and shimmied into it. She was afraid that Basket Woman would be waiting just beyond the tepee to stop her, but she was too desperate to care. She burst out of the tepee and found that she was not going to be stopped at all.

  It seemed that all of the Comanche, Basket Woman included, were attending the fight.

  She raced through the line of tepees until she came to a spot before the river where a circle had been drawn in the earth. The men were both there, surrounded by the tribe.

  She hardly recognized her husband at first. He was dressed in a simple breechclout and nothing more. His flesh had been so rubbed with bear grease that it seemed nearly as dark as Eagle Who Flies High. When Christa reached the gathering, they were parted by a medicine ma
n who danced between them, chanting and sprinkling herbs upon the ground. He carried a bear paw. He called something out and Eagle Who Flies High stepped forward, presenting his back to the man. The shaman brought the bear claw tearing down the Comanche’s back. Bright streams of blood appeared. Eagle Who Flies High stepped back. He hadn’t made a sound, nor had he flinched. He appeared smug and well pleased with himself.

  Jeremy stepped forward, turning his back to the shaman.

  Christa cried out.

  A hand clamped upon her arm. Dancing Maid was beside her, shaking her head. Christa opened her mouth to speak and then fell silent. She closed her eyes, feeling a numbing terror steal over her. She heard the Comanche give out a roar of approval and she opened her eyes. Blood was streaming down Jeremy’s back. Her knees grew weak.

  “Oh, God!” she whispered. “Please don’t let him die, please don’t let him die …”

  A drumbeat sounded. The shaman left the circle.

  Knives in hand, Eagle Who Flies High and Jeremy slowly began to circle one another.

  Twenty-four

  The two men lunged at one another simultaneously. There was a curious sound as their greased bodies smacked together. For a moment, they hovered in the air, then they were down on the ground, rolling. A streak of blood appeared on one arm, and for a moment Christa couldn’t figure out to which fighter the arm belonged. She cried out again. The blood was dripping from Jeremy.

  “You mustn’t cry out so!” a voice suddenly warned in her ear. Little Flower was at her side. “Please, Christa, you will distract him.”

  She bit her lip. She wanted to go back to the tepee, she wanted to look away. She couldn’t bear to do so, but neither could she bear to look.

  The two men tore away from one another. Once again, they were up on their feet. Circling. Stalking.

  Jeremy was a cavalry officer, she thought. Trained to fight from the saddle. He was excellent with a Colt and with a saber. But the Yanks and Rebs hadn’t fought their battles with greased bodies and razor-sharp knives.

  Jeremy and Eagle Who Flies High appeared to be evenly matched. Both men were superbly muscled, agile, and alert to the slightest movement from the other. Jeremy was slightly the taller of the two, Eagle Who Flies High was stockier. Christa bit her lip, praying that the Comanche’s added weight would not make the difference in the end.