Cheyenne Captive

by Georgina Gentry - Iron Knife's Family 01 - Cheyenne Captive

  The mayor sighed. “Danny was executed by the Mexicans in the terrible black bean lottery after the Meir expedition two years ago.”

  Texanna’s face crumpled: “Danny,” she wept. “Oh, not my favorite, Danny!”

  The boy looked up to see a horse galloping madly into town from the other direction, and as it reached them a man slid off and ran toward them.

  “Gawd Almighty!” the man drawled as he ran up to Texanna’s horse. “I came as soon as I heard you had been found, and . . .”

  The man’s voice trailed off, disbelief mirrored on his ugly, bearded face as he stared up at the woman, his mouth hanging open. He was a big man, dressed in rough, frontier-style clothes. His western hat was pulled down over his eyes, and a silver filigreed whip hung on his belt.

  When he spoke again, his voice was an angry, accusing drawl. “Texanna, how could you? How could you have let one of them savage stallions—?”

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence. Texanna lashed out suddenly with the ends of her reins, catching the big man across the face.

  “How dare you! How dare you scold me, Jake Dallinger!” She looked out across the crowd in outraged dignity. “How dare any of you disapprove of me! Don’t you remember? The war party demanded a hostage or they would wipe out the whole wagon train. How quickly you forget! I gave myself up to save your worthless necks and this is your gratitude!”

  Falling Star glanced around the circle, saw them look away, ashamed. It was true what she said. He could tell by the way people kicked the dust in guilt and the crowd began to drift away to their homes.

  He watched a man reach up and rip down a banner, then someone helped him pull down another. They threw them in the street and as people mounted up and rode away, the departing horses trod on the banners, grinding them into the dust.

  The boy listened to the muttering of the crowd as they drifted away. “Well, yes, she did go out to the Injuns when they demanded it or they’d kill us all, but she didn’t have to sleep with them. She could have done what any self-respecting white woman would have done; she could have committed suicide.”

  “Poor Carolina Longworth! Her so high-class and caring of what everyone thinks. I’ll bet she wishes they’d never found her sister.”

  “Wouldn’t you under the circumstances?”

  Even the sister got to her feet, and assisted by her husband and father stood looking around uncertainly. The bent, gnarled father turned away with finality.

  The man called Jake wiped the blood away where Texanna had lashed him. “Missy,” he drawled, “I reckon you’re upset, but if you’d consider marryin’ me, I’d forgive you for—well, you know.”

  He looked over at Falling Star and the boy felt instant dislike for the man, knowing the scout did not want him.

  “Forgive me?” Texanna threw back her head and laughed heartily while tears ran down her face. “Forgive me! How kind of you to overlook my loving a Cheyenne chief who’s twice the man you’ll ever be!”

  The wind picked up a banner out of the dust of the almost deserted street and blew it toward them, spooking the horses.

  Welcome Home, Texanna.

  So the miserable life in the town of Fandango had begun, Iron Knife remembered now with a sigh. Carolina Longworth did what she considered “her Christian duty” in finding the two a small shack on the edge of town. Then the family ignored them pointedly. Only Pastor Schmidt and his wife were kind to Texanna and her half-breed son.

  Texanna had inherited the nimble fingers of her father, an expert tailor who was now too crippled by age to sew. She supported herself and her son by making clothes for the women of Fandango. For the most part, the townspeople avoided the two except when they needed sewing done.

  The white man named Jake Dallinger came to the house only one more time in the next five years and the boy was not sure what happened that night but Ransford Longworth had been in the parlor when the boy went to bed. He was awakened by loud, angry words and had peeked around the door to see his mother confronting the army scout. Texanna and he had backed Jake out of the shack with weapons.

  Falling Star remembered the night the new baby was born. Not even the town doctor came. The minister’s wife delivered the baby while the pastor sat with the boy. Aunt Carolina had been conspicuous by her absence. As she told everyone in town later, someone had to uphold the morals of the family and she didn’t want anyone to think she approved of her fallen sister by associating with her. Texanna shrugged when she heard that gossip and retorted that Carolina was neither in charge of family nor town morals. She might think she was, but no one had voted her that position.

  Texanna looked down proudly at the pretty girl child crying wildly in her arms. “She has a loud, lusty voice,” she said, smiling. “I will call her Cimarron, which means ‘wild one’ in Spanish.”

  Falling Star reached out to touch the small fist and it promptly closed on his finger. “With a cry like that, ‘Wild One’ is a good name.” He nodded. “Father will like that.”

  Tears came to Texanna’s eyes and she buried her face against the tiny head. “I don’t know what to do, how to find the Cheyenne again,” she sobbed. “There’s so much wilderness and if they catch us trying to escape, they’ll say I’m loco, send me to an asylum, and you children to some terrible orphanage.”

  He reached out to pat her hand. “Someday, Mother,” he assured her, “someday, either Father will track us down or I will be big enough to rescue us all. We’ll wait for that day.”

  So life went on for the small family for the next five years. Then, one fateful afternoon, when he was thirteen, a saloon girl had lured him up to her room. He had known then that the boys at school had said the girl belonged to the big army scout, that she slept with men and gave Jake the money.

  Iron Knife sighed now, remembering. It had happened in the late afternoon, and before midnight his back would be scarred forever and his brave mother facing down a lynch mob with a shotgun....

  He could remember vividly the events of that one day and night as if it had happened this morning although it was a long time ago....

  He was unhappy among the whites because the adults called him “Injun bastard” and the other children at the one-room school teased and mistreated him. But he was big for his age, almost as big as some full-grown men and he had fought all the boys and whipped them so that they no longer teased him. They ignored him.

  He remembered now that it had been a hot Friday afternoon and he was walking home alone as always from the school. His path led past the back door of the saloon. A smiling, red-haired woman in a scarlet dress had come out the door and called to him.

  “Say, you’re Texanna’s son, ain’t you? Why don’t you come in for a minute? There ain’t nobody here but me right now. I been watching you walk past here for weeks.”

  The only white woman who ever smiled at him was his mother, so he shyly followed the girl inside where she took him up to her room and gave him white sugar, which was rare and expensive. It was all his mother could do to provide the bare necessities with her sewing and there was no money left for fancy things. He hunted with his bow, of course, and tried to find work on the surrounding ranches. No one would hire an Indian even though he was bigger and stronger than most grown men.

  He remembered even now the taste of the gritty sweet and the woman’s smile, both were so rare to him. He knew the other boys at school laughed about this woman. It was said she would let men mate her if they gave her money. The boys also said the scout, Jake Dallinger, claimed this woman as his own when he was in town and sometimes brought men to sleep with her and made her give him most of the money the men paid her.

  Now the saloon woman stood very close to him, so close he could see that her neck was dirty and smell the strong reek of her perfume.

  “My name’s Kate,” she said, and she moved closer, running her hand across his big shoulders and he didn’t move since he was not sure what she wanted.

  “Have you ever had a woman?�
�� she asked finally.

  He shook his head, feeling foolish and embarrassed and wanting to run away. But she was stroking his arm in a manner that excited him as nothing had ever excited him.

  He thought of what the boys had said.

  “I—I have no money,” he admitted.

  She threw back her head and laughed and he realized that her lips and cheeks were smeared with red color like scarlet war paint.

  “You been talkin’ to the men, ain’t you? Believe it or not, I don’t always do it for money! Sometimes, I see a good-looking man and get to thinkin’ about how it’d be and invite him up. Have you really never had a woman?”

  He bent his head feeling very young and stupid, wondering why she asked such a naive question. No, of course he had not yet had a woman. He’d been too young for the captive women the warriors occasionally took. And a brave could not take a proper wife until he had proved himself on the hunt and accumulated enough property on the warpath to offer gifts to the girl’s family. No Cheyenne girl would think of removing her protective string and letting a man mate her unless he went through the appropriate offer and marriage ceremony.

  The dance-hall girl put her hands in the open neck of his shirt. “You look a lot younger up close than I thought you was from a distance, but you’re sure built like a man.”

  Her fingers stroked his skin lightly, unbuttoned his shirt. “I like the idea you never had a woman before. Well, I’m gonna teach you about women, my young warrior,” she whispered.

  He stood there dumbly, afraid and embarrassed, ready to run. Yet not quite sure of what she expected if he stayed.

  By now, she had his shirt off and was running her fingertips across his nipples.

  She took off the red dress and posed for him a long moment, then slowly removed her stockings and the rest. She was flabby and heavier than he would have wanted in his first woman, but still she seemed very desirable to him with her pale skin and the way her full breasts jutted against his chest.

  To his surprise, his man’s thing came erect and hard and he felt an unaccustomed ache in his groin. All he could think of now was topping her as he had seen war parties do with captive women.

  Kate stepped back and looked him up and down with appreciation in her eyes.

  “Now, that’s more like it!” she purred as she came to him and pulled his face down to hers to kiss. He would always remember the reek of cheap perfume and the taste of whiskey on her lips.

  Instinctively, his hands came up to pull her against him, for he was more a man than a boy. His arms held her tightly as he kissed her and she moaned against his mouth and pulled him toward the dirty, rumpled bed.

  With his superior strength, he grabbed her and almost threw her on the bed, fumbling in his eagerness to mount her. But she resisted his attempts to open her thighs.

  “Take it easy, my young brave,” she whispered, kissing him, “you’re not gonna get it off that quick like the animals who pay me for it!” She kissed the corner of his mouth. “I’m gonna teach you how to love a woman and make her like it! I’m gonna teach you what I want you to know from the best whore this side of the Mississippi. Then you’ll always know how to please a woman!”

  And Kate did teach him, he remembered with gentle affection. It was a long time that day before she would let him enter her and by then he was aching with his need for release and she was whimpering and gasping. Even now, he remembered the smell of her perfume as he finally took his first woman and became a man. He remembered how he had ground himself against her, trying to plunge even deeper as she made grunting noises and dug her sharp nails into his muscled back.

  She locked her legs about his lithe body and arched her breasts against him and he could feel her deep sweetness locking on him as she came.

  Finally, she released him and looked up at him. “You’re better than I dreamed you would be,” she whispered, “and virile enough and young enough to give me all I want. You drop by often, you hear? Just make sure that bum of a scout ain’t around when you show up. He’d be madder’n hell if he caught me givin’ it away, especially to an Injun!”

  He was eager to take her again and she was eager to have him. He remembered now that they were locked in each other’s arms, intent only on the pleasure of their union, when, abruptly, there was someone else in the room.

  He heard the door fling open and a cry of outrage as the big scout strode to the bed, jerking him up and slamming him across the face with a stick of stove wood as Jake threw him to the floor.

  “You rotten Injun bastard!” Jake screamed as he beat him about the head. “It ain’t enough that your old man took Texanna from me, now I catch his bastard son toppin’ my fancy woman! Gawd almighty! I’m gonna kill both of you for this!”

  Iron Knife winced even now, remembering the pain as the big scout slammed him hard against the wall and he could feel the blood from his broken nose and torn face dripping down his naked body.

  He could remember the shrill shriek of the woman as Jake Dallinger uncoiled the big drover’s whip he always carried.

  The woman backed away. “The kid was rapin’ me, Jake, honest he was! You know I wouldn’t let no Injun touch me, no matter how much he paid! You know that!”

  Jake slapped the woman hard and the boy struggled to his feet. He knew he should help the woman, but he was no match for the big, hard-muscled scout and he had no weapons, while the bearded man had a knife and the giant whip. He swayed on his feet, fighting off unconsciousness while the man beat her.

  Weakly, he managed to grab his clothes and stagger out the door toward home. Behind him, he could still hear the woman screaming, “It was rape! Honest to God, the kid was rapin’ me!”

  He did not think he would ever manage to put on his pants and crawl home. Falling Star was almost unconscious when Texanna found him in the yard. He remembered his mother washing the blood off his face and dragging him into the house.

  It was dark when the mob of drunken cowboys led by Jake Dallinger came with their torches. Kate had been found brutally raped and murdered, they said, and the mob dragged the boy away to tie him up in the town square to whip him....

  Jake Dallinger, he thought, grinding his teeth. Jake Dallinger and his whip. . . .

  That had been twelve years ago, he thought now as he stood staring into the darkness after Summer. He had never trusted another white woman after that or even told anyone outside his own family how he came by the terrible scars. He had never meant to tell Summer any of his past, and now he had blurted some of his secrets to her. Sometimes he was more white than stoic Indian after all.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a small boy who ran up to him, speaking Cheyenne so rapidly he could not understand all the child said.

  “Stop and tell me again more slowly.” He smiled gently at the boy.

  The child glanced wildly behind him.

  “Come quickly, great warrior!” he shouted, gesturing. “Your woman fights with the bad Arapaho girl and I think one is going to kill the other!”

  Chapter Ten

  Humiliated by Iron Knife and horrified at his confession about the murder of the dance hall girl, Summer fled blindly through the darkness toward the tepee. A shadow loomed across her path, someone blocking her way. She hesitated, her heart pounding as she recognized the voluptuous form.

  Gray Dove put her hands on her hips and smiled. The full harvest moon lit her features. “Where are you going, White Girl?”

  “None of your business!” Summer retorted. “Get out of my way! I know now you are my enemy and that you lied to me, sending me into a trap and trying to get me killed!”

  “Have you told Iron Knife about our little bargain?”

  “No!” Summer said. “I intend to deal with you myself and don’t need his help in this. No doubt he would do something terrible to you for tricking me and sending Angry Wolf to kill me!”

  “Speaking of Angry Wolf,” the other glared back at her, “he has not been seen since that afternoon. I wondered wh
at has happened to him?”

  “Maybe he has gone off with the renegade Dog Soldiers!”

  “Has he now? And no doubt, up at the Dog Soldier camps on the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers, they think he changed his mind and decided to stay here.”

  “Perhaps a Pawnee war party—”

  The other snorted derisively. “Not likely, although I’ve heard rumors that Pawnee have been sighted a few days north of here.”

  Summer tried to shake her head casually. “Perhaps the forest fire . . . anyway, what is all that to me? I know nothing of Angry Wolf.”

  “Do you not?” The dark girl peered threateningly into her face. “I say that you do know what happened to him. That somehow, as he was trailing you, you caught him by surprise and killed him.”

  Now it was Summer’s turn to snort in disbelief. “No one would ever believe that. I am not strong enough or clever enough to kill a fierce Dog Soldier.”

  Gray Dove gave her a long, searching look. “No, you aren’t. Not unless you had some help.” She seemed to be thinking aloud. “I saw you coming back to camp riding double with Iron Knife.”

  Summer felt her pulse quicken. “Surely you can’t think he has anything to do with the disappearance.”

  “He is strong and clever enough to kill the other. He must have been involved.”

  Summer’s heart hammered, wanting to protect him even if he had murdered the saloon girl. “But you can’t tell the Council or anyone else what you suspect without revealing your part in the plot.”

  The dark girl glared at her in fury. “You are right, of course! If I could put all the blame on you, I would have already gone to the old chiefs, but I will not endanger Iron Knife or reveal that I was involved. I love him too much to see him banished from the camp over his minor, passing fling with a captive.”

  “I’m not a minor fling!” Summer argued. “He is serious about me. He intends to marry me!”

  “Does he? I have not heard any such announcement. I think he only plays with you. But should he really think of marrying you, I will kill you or get you out of this camp somehow. Perhaps I will yet think of a way to blame you for Angry Wolf’s death without involving either myself or the man I love!”