Ride The Wild Wind (Time Travel Historical Romance)

by Ivey , Kimberly

  Antonio settled down beside him. “What do you wish to discuss?”

  Sonny made a gesture toward Halle. “Tell me the truth. Why have you brought the woman with you?”

  “As I told you last night, there is cash reward for her return. At the time, I saw her as my only hope to secure supplies for The People. But now I cannot let her go.”

  “You should not have brought her with you. Her people will follow and cause more trouble. And then there is Doli. She will have much to say about this.”

  “Doli has no say in any of my affairs. She and I are no longer married.”

  “When has that ever stopped her?”

  Antonio had to agree. His first wife had caused trouble in the past.

  “What is in your heart?” his cousin asked.

  It was a long time before Antonio was able to answer for the truth was staring him in the face. He was in love with Halle. “I have since come to have a strong affection for her. For the time being, however, I intend to keep her. I believe no harm will come if your men believe she is my wife.”

  Sonny turned his face toward the brightening sky. “I admire your honor in wanting to protect the woman and I will keep silent of the truth. But you will not be able to fool the men. I saw rope marks on her wrists. You have tied her?”

  Antonio’s jaw clenched as disgust rose like bitter bile in his throat. “Only once, and I regret such.”

  Sonny shook his head. “You cannot fool the men if treat her like a captive. You must change your ways. Be a lover.”

  Antonio blew out a breath of exasperation. “She is a maiden.”

  Sonny turned, quirking a brow. “Last night when I came upon your camp, I believed I had interrupted you.”

  ”I exercised much control. More than you can know.”

  “You must like torture.”

  Antonio chuckled. “I must. It is difficult to lie with her night after night and not act upon my desires.”

  “Then I say you should not sleep with a maiden if you do not wish to make her your wife. You will be miserable.”

  “I am already miserable,” he muttered

  The humor was not lost on Sonny. “As I said, you should not lie with the woman. Her nearness will have an unpleasant affect.”

  “How else am I to keep warm?” he joked. “She wears my shirt.”

  “You would be warm if you took back your shirt. You have given her all your power.”

  Antonio laughed. “Yes, but since she has no other clothes, she would also be naked and cold.”

  “I will not ask why the woman has no clothes. That will be a story for another day.”

  Antonio saw a smile tilt the corner of his cousin’s mouth. “She has pleasing legs,” the other man said after a quiet moment. “If I did not already have two wives, I might consider taking her as my third.”

  Antonio scoffed. “Looking at my woman, are we?”

  “I admire beauty when I gaze upon it.”

  “Perhaps you should turn your ‘gaze’ in another direction, my cousin. You have a difficult enough time handling two wives and their continual squabbling.” Antonio thought back to the unfortunate disfiguration incident between the two women only months before. “Have the women’s hair grown back?”

  His cousin nodded. “And there is less arguing.”

  “Now you see why I do not want a wife.”

  Sonny offered the pouch of blessed pollen to Antonio. “It is not too late for prayer.” Antonio declined.

  “Do you pray to the bilagaana’s God now?” Sonny asked

  “I have not prayed in a long time. The Dine’ gods do not listen. The white man’s God has abandoned me as well. My pleas go unanswered.”

  “You are a man of medicine…of healing, cousin, just as I am. True, we walk different paths, but we both desire good for The People. Perhaps you ask the wrong things of the gods?”

  Emotional healing for his scarred son? Food for a starving people? A free existence for the Navajo? What god—Dine’ or otherwise—would find those requests wrong?

  He had no time for Sonny’s riddles, nor the argument that would surely follow, but as his cousin returned to silent meditation, Antonio watched intently with a longing for something he could not explain.

  At times like this he felt distanced from his Navajo roots, from his cousin and best friend. He and Sonny were as close as brothers, had grown up together on this harsh yet beautiful land, and played the same games and heard the same stories passed down from the elders. But Antonio changed once he grew up and returned to his father’s relatives in California where he lived for many years. Although the same blood ran through his and Sonny’s veins, other than the tie of blood and clan, they were vastly different men, often with opposite points of view.

  Sonny spoke. “Your heart is clouded. I fear darkness has settled upon you. You need a sing to bring you back into balance.”

  Antonio shook his head. “A sing will not help me. I am in too deep.”

  His cousin nodded, not in agreement Antonio recognized, but out of respect. It wasn’t the Navajo way to impose one’s will or beliefs on another. Sonny remained silent a moment.

  “Is it justice you seek or revenge, my cousin? Both are different, and a quest for neither will ever bring you peace.”

  “I do not know what it is I want anymore.” It was the truth. When Antonio began the fight, revenge for the murder of his family fueled his actions. He realized that now and it gave him no pride. Time had healed most of his emotional wounds, although he had never forgotten the baby, Mariposa. All he had ever wanted was justice, as well as freedom for The People. He wished for that even now.

  Sonny turned to face him. “I know you do not wish to speak of marriage with the Star Woman.”

  Antonio had almost forgotten his cousin’s name for Halle. Sonny claimed he had once seen her in a vision in the sweat lodge and that she had traveled the sky from another world.

  “No, I do not wish to discuss marriage.”

  Sonny was not deterred. “Your wife and the babe are gone now…two years. You and the boy are alone. You need a woman to care for you and the child, a strong one to bear you more healthy children.”

  “I have already had two wives,” he reminded Sonny, adding, “and both situations met with disastrous results. I have no desire to return to the past.”

  “I fear you have never left the past.”

  Antonio banked his urge to lash out as anger flared. His cousin had never suffered. Sonny was wealthy by Navajo standards, and well respected as a medicine man. He also had two pretty, young wives, both expecting children in the spring “You know nothing of my losses.”

  Sonny nodded solemnly. “Perhaps that is true, but I do know that a man cannot see what is before him when he is always looking behind him. You must look ahead and see what I have seen in my vision—the woman with hair like fire riding across the stars. She has come to save us. She is our people’s destiny.”

  Sonny was speaking nonsense again. If he had ideas of this sharp-tongued, feisty woman saving a nation of people, he was far off target. She had become more of a liability than an asset in many ways, most of which tugged at his heart and threatened to cloud his good judgment.

  “I have never met anyone like her,” Antonio admitted. “A weaker woman would have crumbled after all she has endured. You remember how I found her dying in the arroyo a day’s ride from Albuquerque. Truly a miracle she survived.

  Sonny nodded. “It was then she proved that her will to live was stronger than the fever.”

  “Yes, she is strong-willed and resourceful. She does not listen to reason and at times appears to have no fear. But she does speak with honesty.”

  “The woman sounds much like you.”

  Antonio flinched.

  “But that is a good thing, cousin, for you are a strong warrior who needs a mate who is equally strong. I believe the star woman will never stand in your shadow, but will be a light to guide you on your journey through these dark days.”r />
  Antonio pondered Sonny’s words a moment. His cousin meant well, and he respected his

  opinion in matters. “I will consider all you have suggested.”

  Antonio pulled a folded, hand drawn map from his vest pocket and showed Sonny where he had hidden the latest store of weapons. From there, he detailed a route to the fort, with notations about the location of The People’s stolen livestock.

  “Only you will enter the ancient one’s burial cave,” Sonny said. “When you return, I will perform the Blessingway to protect you from the chindi.”

  Antonio held back his response. There was more at stake than fearing a few evil ghosts. If Sonny’s men failed in their raid on the fort, men would die.

  “From the caves we will head south for a raid on Fort Dennison tomorrow night,” Antonio continued. “We will reclaim as much stolen Navajo livestock as possible and as well as food and provisions.” He pointed out the storage buildings. “I watched soldiers unload munitions and store them in this building. And here…” He pointed to another, “is where they keep the smoked meats. In this one, bags of grain.”

  Sonny nodded. “Very well. Consider this done. I will choose forty of our strongest men to accompany you.”

  “Will you stay behind and look after my woman and let nothing harm her while I am away?”

  A broad smile split Sonny’s dark face. “I will keep the Star Woman from harm, but perhaps you should be more concerned for my safety. I have seen what she has done to your clothes and I do not wish to wrestle with a cougar”

  Confused, Antonio shook his head. He looked down at himself, then back at Sonny who was grinning. “What? Is this about my shirt?”

  “Check the back of your breeches.”

  Antonio stood and craned his neck to look at his backside, specifically the seat of his pants. What the hell? Were those dried mud footprints? Large ones. He clenched his teeth together. When had she...?

  At the river when they bathed two days ago.

  Anger rolled through him like a flashfire. He looked to his cousin first, and then glanced over at the sleeping woman. At Sonny’s chuckle, he shot him a hard glare. “I do not find this amusing.”

  Sonny bit back a smile. “You have been bested by a woman.”

  Antonio craned his neck once more and tried to frantically pick off the dried mud but to no avail. As soon as they reached water again, she would scrub all traces of her dirty deed from his clothes. She would scrub them until her knuckles were raw!

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Today had been the most grueling since leaving Albuquerque five days ago. The midday sun beat down on Halle’s bare head, baking her scalp. Worse, Antonio was acting as if he were pissed. She couldn’t think straight in this miserable heat and only wanted to find a shady spot for a few hours to sleep. That didn’t appear to be Antonio’s plan.

  They rode for hours, deeper and deeper into a desolate, red rock canyon and finally into an Indian encampment, arriving in the early afternoon. At least three dozen pair of dark, hostile eyes stared her down, most of them belonging to men older than Antonio, and a few young boys barely old enough to be called men. Antonio said something to the crowd who dispersed. Antonio also disappeared without explanation.

  Deciding she was reasonably safe, she slid from the horse’s back, Max snug in the small cradleboard which hung from her back. She needed to pee—and bad—but the sparsely vegetated landscape didn’t afford privacy, not unless she wanted to risk running into a man-eating rattlesnake behind a large rock. When pressure on her bladder intensified, she decided any rattlers could simply move over or be drowned in a gulley wash of urine.

  No sooner than she was out of sight of the men, she realized she’d been followed. She squeezed through a narrow passage between two rock walls, then scaled the jutting boulders a few feet, climbing down on the other side. Just when she believed she’d ditched her stalker, a thin, mostly gray-haired man with stepped out from behind a boulder to block her path. Behind her, several more men surrounded her.

  Okay. The quest for privacy had been a bad choice.

  The gray haired man stepped forward and touched her hair.

  She smacked his hand. He jerked back, a mix of confusion and anger twisting his hard, weathered face. Was he shocked she’d struck him? Halle didn’t know how men from this culture treated women, but he was about to find out that you didn’t mess with her.

  Lifting her chin a notch, she gave the old codger a look that warned there’d be hell to pay if he touched her again. “You want to draw back a nub, Gramps? Go ahead. Make the mistake.”

  A smile quirked the corners of his mouth. He grasped her by the arms and reeled her against his solid form, nearly knocking the breath from her lungs. Oh, God, but he reeked of a month’s worth of sweat! She gagged, then brought her knee up to the old Stinker’s groin, but he twisted away and released her. The other men who’d gathered around laughed raucously. She turned to run, but tripped over a rock and stumbled into another man. Much worse! A man with one ear!

  One Ear laughed and released her into the clutches of Stinker. Max, stuck helplessly in the pouch on her back yelped and thus began their game of ‘catch’ with the other men using her as the ball.

  She heard a commotion behind her and Stinker released her. The crowd of jeering men parted. She turned in time to see Antonio charging Stinker like a raging bull. Everything happened so fast. One punch from Antonio sent the older man sprawling backward into the dirt.

  Antonio turned to her, his gray eyes wild, nostrils flaring. “Did he touch you?” He pointed to the felled man.

  She shook her head no.

  Antonio stood over the older man and spoke some rather intense words in a language she didn’t recognize. Then he turned to One Ear. “And him?”

  “No.”

  After that, all the men left her alone, not looking at her, as if she’d suddenly become invisible, all except the one eared man. Although he kept his distance, she was aware of the sidelong glances he’d occasionally cast her way.

  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky or a shade tree to be found for miles. It seemed that even the winds ceased to blow across the canyon. She and Max found a spot in the shadow of a boulder to sit. A while later Antonio brought her a meal consisting of some sort of roasted meat, and cornmeal mush. Never would she have believed she’d be grateful for a bowl of mush, but at least her stomach had ceased growling. And anything was better than eating Antonio’s god-awful dried up animal meat stew thingy night after night.

  Mid-afternoon, the group resumed riding eastward with the forty men following. Since there were no women, Halle believed she was with either a hunting or war party. Instinct told her it was the latter.

  Antonio had barely spoken to her all day and when he did, it was to bark out orders. Sit down. Stay here. Eat this. She was tired of being treated like a child, or worse, a dog. She was thirsty, dirty, and sunburned, her exposed skin the deep red hue of the desert rocks. Her entire body, particularly her buttocks and inner thighs ached from bouncing upon the horse’s back all day.

  “I can’t ride any longer,” she told Antonio as miles of endless canyon lands loomed before them. He didn’t answer. “Please stop a while.”

  Still, he ignored her. Half an hour must have passed before she mustered the strength to even attempt a conversation with him. “Why won’t you talk to me? Are you angry?”

  “What could I possibly be angry about?”

  Oh, yeah. Something was definitely up. She heard it clearly in his tone of voice. “Have I done something to upset you?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Is it about what happened earlier with the men?”

  “No.”

  Great. He was now using one word sentences. Well, at least they were making progress. “Was it because your brother saw my bare legs?”

  She heard him snort. On second thought, it might have been Max farting. “Hey, Antonio, do you think we could stop and rest a while. I think Max might have to take ca
re of some important doggie business.”

  Silence again.

  Okie-dokie. Not even the threat of a dog pooping on him had any effect. He apparently didn’t plan on making this easy. “What if I say pretty please? Will you stop and let us rest a while?”

  “No.”

  Oh, this damned stubborn man! Well, she’d see about that. “Okay. Fine. Max is going to crap in his pouch and I am going to pee on your horse.”

  “I would not suggest you do such.”

  “Yeah? Well, I asked nicely but it didn’t work. So I wouldn’t push my luck if I were you, Antonio. I never make idle threats.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “I didn’t hear you make one.”

  “Perhaps you recall that I told you once not to test my patience.”

  She laughed. “What are you going to do, you big meanie? Kidnap me? Tie me up? Maybe take my shoes away? Whoops, guess that’s already been done. Hmmm, let me think. I know! You’re going to force me to eat some putrid dried animal meat stew thingy again.”

  He was silent.

  It was pointless to attempt a conversation, Hell, she didn’t even care anymore. All she wanted was rest. But her urge to pee mounted. Even Max turned squirmier. Yep, this situation was going to turn ugly very soon. And she wasn’t cleaning it up.

  From her estimation of the sun’s position in the sky, it was late afternoon. That meant they’d be stopping to make camp before dark. On second thought, she might be able to hold it a little while longer. As for Max, it was anyone’s guess what might happen.

  A short time later, Antonio reined in his mount and whistled to Sonny who was riding behind a short distance. Antonio spoke to his cousin at length. Then Sonny stopped and called out what sounded like a command to his men. Once they began to ride ahead, Antonio dismounted and lifted her and Max down. Hallie released Max who dashed about in crazy circles and waging his curly tail.

  He left his horse with Sonny and hustled her down a narrow trail through the scrub brush, Max happily panting and dashing to tinkle on every shrub. Casting a glance back, she saw that his brother had dismounted, too, but remained in place.