“Certain of yourself, aren’t you?” he teased. “What if I’d said no?”
She shrugged. “Then we wouldn’t have played, would we?” She put the playing pieces on a strip of hide. “We don’t have the proper bowl, but the stones will still flip on the skin. We can keep score—”
“What shall we bet?” he asked.
“Oh, you want to gamble?” Her green eyes widened in surprise.
Her lashes were long and dark and luxurious ... they were eyes a man could lose himself in if he wasn’t careful. She’s not a woman to take lightly, he reminded himself. Still, he couldn’t keep his gaze off her—her vitality burned like a living flame.
“My father disapproves of gambling,” she replied primly. “He always said it was a sin.”
“We don’t have to bet anything it you don’t want to,” he answered. “Among the Cheyenne, gambling is considered quite acceptable. All respectable women play at games of chance.”
She settled down across from him on the buffalo hide. “We can wager if you like,” she offered. “My earrings against yours?” She averted her eyes. “Of course, you have only one but it’s more valuable than mine. If you don’t care to—”
“I thought you didn’t gamble.”
“Whatever pleases you, Hunt.”
He chuckled. “I warn you, I’ll take no pity on you because you’re a lady. I’ll keep your earrings if I win them.”
“Of course. You go first.”
An hour later, when he’d lost the shirt he’d loaned her, his knife and sheath, and the earring, he began to get suspicious. “For a woman who doesn’t gamble, you’re very good at it. Are you certain you aren’t cheating?”
She looked shocked. “At the peach stone game? Me?” She smiled and a dimple winked on one cheek. “My father said that cheating was a sin. He—”
“I think I’ve heard enough of your father’s wisdom, and I’ve had enough of this game. Next, you’ll have my buffalo skin.”
She shook her head. “Don’t want it. Too heavy to carry. Besides ...” She picked at a section of hair. “It looks as though it’s getting moth-eaten. The hair’s falling out.”
“It is not,” he protested. “This is a perfectly good hide. It will last me a lifetime.”
She looked unconvinced. “If you say so, Hunt. We could bet the skin against your earring.”
“Absolutely not.” He got to his feet. “I know when to quit.” He grimaced. “I should have had you with me after my canoe overturned. We could have gone down to Williamsburg and gotten ourselves a high-stakes card game with the rich tobacco planters. We could have won the money I needed.”
Later that afternoon, using a torch for light, he took her far back into one of the low tunnels and showed her the pictures drawn long ago on the walls by some ancient native people. “My father told me that these were here,” he explained. “I thought you might like to see them.”
“I’ve never seen anything like these designs among the Seneca,” she said, placing her hand over a redocher outline of a long-dead warrior’s handprint.
“I don’t think they were left by the Iroquois. According to the Delaware legends, the Iroquois tribes came here from the south, hundreds of years ago. My guess is that these drawings were made thousands of years ago.” He lifted the torch so that the flickering light could illuminate the magnificent sketch of an elk with towering antlers. A mountain lion, perfectly drawn to the outstretched claws and bristling whiskers, sprang toward the elk from an outcrop of rock overhead.
Elizabeth stared in awed silence.
“Seen enough?” he asked finally.
“Let’s stay a little longer,” she begged. “It’s a holy place, isn’t it? It feels almost like being in a church.”
He nodded. “I’ve not been in enough churches to know, but yes, it is a holy spot. You can feel the power here.” He reached out and took her hand. For the first time, she didn’t flinch. “Look,” he said, pointing toward a crack in the floor.
“Oh! It’s a snake!”
The serpent was drawn in red; it seemed to crawl up out of the earth below. Several hops ahead of the open jaws, a merry brown mouse scampered, tail in the air, tiny, upthrust nose peering ahead for an eternity.
“Oh, look,” she cried. “It’s wonderful. You can almost hear it squeaking!” She squeezed his hand. “Thank you, Hunt,” she said. “Thank you for sharing this with me. I’ll never forget it, never.”
And I’ll never forget how you look in the torchlight, he thought, as his heart beat just a little faster.... With that smudge of dirt on your chin, that curling lock of redgold hair falling over one eye, and my silver earring in your ear.
For over an hour they crawled into corners and explored the cubbyholes of the cavern. Every inch of the walls had been decorated. Some animal figures were painted in rich hues; others were only sketched with charcoal. But all looked as though they had been created by master artists.
“Do you believe it was done by one man?” Elizabeth asked.
He shook his head. “Generations of men, I’d say.”
“Mother had paintings, portraits of our family, and one of Mary Queen of Scots, but I never cared for them. These make me want to cry.”
“I didn’t bring you here to make you sad,” he said.
“I’m not. I’m content, perfectly content.”
“Well, neither of us will be content if this torch burns out and leaves us in pitch darkness. We’d best go back and check on our guest. We wouldn’t want him to get loose and leave before we do.”
“All right,” she agreed reluctantly. “Good-bye, little mouse. Keep ahead of that snake.”
“I’m sure he’ll do that,” Hunt said. “If the snake hasn’t caught him yet, I doubt he ever will.”
Elizabeth chuckled and followed him back up the narrow passage to their camp. Powder Horn lay as they’d left him, legs drawn up, arms bound behind his back, and black eyes wide open, glaring with malevolence.
Finally, when Hunt thought the weather would hold, the two of them set out southwest on snowshoes. In the end, Hunt decided to leave Powder Horn tied up in the cavern. The Iroquois’s knee was swollen, and the Indian was still weak from the whack Elizabeth had given him on the head.
“By the time he works those leather strips loose, we’ll be far enough away that we won’t have to worry about him,” Hunt said.
“Don’t count on it,” Elizabeth warned. “He’s not going to let us go that easily.” She felt it in her bones. If Hunt wouldn’t listen to her, there’d be hell to pay. She knew it.
“Must you dispute everything I say?”
She kept her voice mild. “Only when you’re wrong.”
His eyes narrowed. “And you’re the judge of that?” he asked with a hint of amusement in his soft drawl.
“I wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t learned something about the Iroquois. I say you’ll regret it if you leave this man alive.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, “but life comes dear. I’ll not take it without good reason.”
“For a man who’s lived on the frontier, you have strange ideas.”
Hunt chuckled. “For a woman from Charles Town—”
“Charles Town was a long time ago,” she replied, cutting him off. “You think this is some sort of game between you and Powder Horn, but it’s not. It’s serious.”
“So’s murder, Elizabeth.” He nodded toward the cave entrance. “We’ve miles to make before dark.”
“Just so you realize what you’re doing.”
“I should have thought longer about that before I took your daddy’s money.”
She sighed with resignation and followed him out under the waterfall and along the slippery, ice-covered boulders to the snow-covered forest. There, they donned the snowshoes and shouldered their packs.
They’d divided up Hunt’s goods. He’d carried them into Iroquois land on his horse, the animal that Raven had claimed as part of the price for Elizabeth. Now, in deep snow, there was on
ly so much weight they could carry. Hunt had taken Powder Horn’s rifle, powder and shot, and the heavy buffalo robe, as well as his clothes, rifle, and hunting bag. Elizabeth’s load consisted of several pounds of pemmican, Powder Horn’s knife and tomahawk, and two blankets. She’d argued that she was strong and could take some of his burden, but he would have none of it.
“I mean to travel fast,” Hunt said. “Now that the sun’s come out and the temperature has risen, the Iroquois will be stirring like bees from a spring hive. The sooner we put the lake country behind us, the better. We’re better than nine hundred miles from Charles Town.”
“You should have left the buffalo hide if you want to make time.”
“We may need it as shelter. Besides, I like my buffalo skin. Where would I get another one this side of the Mississippi?”
“I still say it’s moth-eaten.”
“It’s not moth-eaten!”
Elizabeth concentrated on keeping her bearings and remembering landmarks so that she wouldn’t get lost when she returned this way. She’d learned to use snowshoes in the years she’d lived with the Iroquois, and her pack was light. If they hadn’t been traveling farther away from her children with each step, she would have enjoyed the vigorous walk with Hunt through the sparkling white forest. She had never felt so alive—so filled with the expectation that anything was possible.
Sunlight turned the evergreens and shrubs into a fairy land of glistening pinecones, ice-tipped boughs, and lacy needles. Now and then the blazing plumage of a cardinal would flash red against the snow-frosted branches of an ancient hardwood, and the rat-ta-ta-ta of giant pileated woodpeckers echoed through the trees and hollows.
Hunter Campbell might have been a white man, but he was a skilled woodsman. He’d been so talkative when they were in the cave that she’d been afraid he’d lack the good sense to be quiet on the trail. She needn’t have worried. Hunt was as wary as a cougar. No bird called or branch snapped that he didn’t notice and identify. His sense of direction was true. At first, she’d wondered about that when he’d angled southwest instead of straight south.
“If anyone tries to follow us now, our tracks are plain for even a child to see,” he explained when she asked. “But if the snow melts, or if we get a few more inches, they won’t be able to trail us so easily. I told them I was going north. I know this route, and I think we can reach Delaware hunting grounds in a few days.”
His reasoning was sound enough, even if he was taking her where she didn’t want to go. They pressed hard all morning and stopped to break ice for drinking water in a rocky stream when the sun was high overhead. Hunt had leaned his rifle against a rock, removed his mittens, then rinsed his hands and cupped them in the crystal-clear flow so that she could drink.
Elizabeth’s heartbeat quickened as she knelt to sip from his hands. The water was cold and pure, so sweet that it tasted almost as if it had been mixed with wild honey. Her lips brushed his skin as she drank, and the intimate sensation caused her to tremble.
“Cold?” he asked her.
She looked up into burning eyes as dark and mysterious as any Indian’s. “No, she murmured. ”Not cold.” He caught her upper arms and helped her to her feet, an awkward movement in snowshoes. Then each took a handful of the dried meat, fat, and berry mixture known as pemmican and chewed while they walked on.
Elizabeth’s lips still tingled, and her blood raced. Hunt’s lean hands had left invisible brands where his fingers had gripped her through the layers of her clothing. His enigmatic gaze had unlocked some sealed box deep within her breast that she’d not known existed until this moment. She felt as light as thistledown. The pack on her back had lost its weight, and she seemed to gain strength with every step.
He wants me, she thought. It doesn’t matter that I’m ugly or that Yellow Drum has used me these past years. Hunt wants me just the same. She clasped her mittened gloves together and tried to subdue the bubbling excitement that made her want to shout for joy.
He wants me, she repeated over and over. And then a delicious thought formed and surfaced in the recesses of her mind. I want him as well.
Daily living in an Iroquois communal lodge had soon eroded away English notions of privacy. She had heard and seen the full range of human functions, from belching to copulation. She’d not been able to block out the night moans of sexual pleasure from Raven’s lips or keep herself from smelling the distinct odor of desire. Later, when Yellow Drum had deflowered her, she’d felt his hands on her where no man had ever touched her before. She’d wept as he drove his erect phallus deep into her body; and in time, she’d quickened with his seed. She had carried two children to birth, but she had never known joy in a man’s passion.
She’d thought of it often. What girl wouldn’t? The other women had teased and laughed about the sexual prowesses or lack of it in their lovers, but she had never felt the excitement or pleasure they clearly did. She desperately wanted to experience the desire—the rapture—of mating that others boasted of, but it had remained a mystery. Until now....
When Hunt had held her in the cave, when he’d kissed and touched her, she’d felt a stirring of longing. But even that heated fervor was nothing like the sensations that seethed within her body here in this snow-covered forest.
She could not keep her eyes off him. Each stride he made, each movement, stirred her imagination. His shoulders were broad and muscular beneath his fringed leather hunting coat, but she fantasized about pulling that jacket over his head and running her fingers over his tanned, bare skin. She wanted his hands to grip her unclothed skin, his mouth to kiss and suck her breasts, his hard body to press against her heated loins. . . .
Once a gray fox crossed their path, loping gracefully over the snow and startling her from her sensual reverie. She watched breathlessly until the beautiful animal vanished among the trees. “He didn’t seem afraid of us,” she said to Hunt.
He smiled at her, a slow, roguish grin that crinkled the corners of his eyes and lit his features from within.
He took as much pleasure from seeing the fox as she did, and she knew it. She was so happy that she wanted to laugh out loud. She’d always loved animals; she’d secretly cared for a bird with a broken wing until it could fly again. And once, she had nursed a rabbit back to health. No one had ever known of her strange feelings except her children. If Raven had ever caught her tending a rabbit, instead of skinning it, she’d have knocked her across the head with a stout stick.
“The fox is smart,” Hunt said. “The wild ones know when a predator is hunting and when he isn’t. I’ve seen buffalo and a grizzly bear drinking together from the same waterhole, and songbirds perching in a tree beside a hawk who’d eaten his fill.” He shrugged. “We meant the fox no harm and he knew it.”
They walked on, and Elizabeth tried to remember the fox and to picture the buffalo gathering around a pool to drink, but her thoughts betrayed her. Instead, she summoned up the image of Hunt’s mischievous grin and the way he cocked his head slightly when he spoke.
He does want me, she repeated to herself. What harm could there be if I let him make love to me? She was no virgin and no amount of weeping or prayer could change that fact. Who would be hurt if—just once—she let him make a woman of her? The temptation was enough to warm her all over. And as she hurried on, the creaking of the leather ties on her snowshoes seem to echo her question. Why not? Why not?
In late afternoon, clouds drifted across the face of the sun and the wind picked up. Two deer, nibbling at young branches, vaulted into the air at Hunt and Elizabeth’s approach and leaped away, white tails flashing alarm. “You must have been thinking of roast venison,” she teased.
“I was,” he admitted, “but I’d not risk a rifle shot. Sound carries a long way in these hills.”
Elizabeth’s back and legs were beginning to ache again, and her cheeks felt hot and wind-burned despite the bear grease Hunt had given her to rub on them. It was definitely growing colder by the minute. Now and then a f
ew drops of sleet splattered against her face. Her hands were stiff inside her fur mittens. She wanted to ask Hunt where they would find shelter, but her years among the Iroquois had left too great a scar. A slave did not ask questions. She was no longer a slave, but the habit of not asking was too ingrained. Instead, she shifted her pack and kept walking.
Lifting one leg and then the other was hard, so Elizabeth stopped thinking about making love to Hunt and concentrated on her daughter’s face. Sweet baby Rachel, so mischievous, so dear to her.... Rachel was three now. She’d grown so fast. Her chubby little legs were sturdy enough for her to keep pace with a grown woman for the better part of an hour, and she was smart—really smart for her age. She could tell a robin’s egg from a bluebird’s, and she knew dozens of nursery rhymes in English.
Where had the years gone? How was it possible that the infant nursing at her breast was now three winters—Elizabeth corrected herself—three years old?
Both children resembled their father. Jamie’s bones were finer than Yellow Drum’s; perhaps his nose would not be as dominant as his father’s when he was grown, but his dark brown sloe eyes and high cheekbones were Iroquois. Rachel’s skin was a shade lighter, but she, too, carried the beautiful Indian eyes and the sturdy body of her paternal ancestors. Whatever Elizabeth might have hoped before they were born, her son and daughter could never pass as English. It didn’t matter; to her, they were beautiful, perfect, the joy of her life.
Moisture clouded her eyes, and she blinked. The thickening in her throat was not so easy to dispel. Her children would believe she had abandoned them. Jamie might have some idea of the truth, but little Rachel would never understand why her mother was no longer there to cook her supper, kiss away her bruises, and tuck her into bed. Rachel would be hysterical. The child would refuse to eat and would cry herself to sleep as she’d done when Elizabeth had spent two nights away from the home village on a fishing trip with Yellow Drum in early fall.
And Jamie? How well she knew her son’s reaction. Jamie tried so hard to be a man to please his father. Her son’s defense against her absence would be anger. He’d pout and withdraw into himself. Jamie would never weep, but his dreams would be troubled, and he’d watch the lodge entrance for her.
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