by Georgina Gentry - Iron Knife's Family 01 - Cheyenne Captive
The one called Hawk Wing looked at her with hot eyes and ran his tongue nervously along his lips as he watched her. “I would like to sample her.”
Bear’s Eyes grunted contemptuously. “She is not a woman but a child without enough width to her hips or big enough teats to give any man pleasure.”
“But she is a pretty child,” the big-eared one argued in Pawnee, his eyes never leaving her naked body. “If we aren’t going to save her for the sacrifice, what does it matter to take a few minutes to turn this little Arapaho bitch into a woman?”
The others laughed and nodded in agreement as they crowded around.
“Well ...” Bear’s Eyes hesitated. “We need to get to our camp on further down the Kizkatuz, that which the La-chi-kuts call the Platte River, but I suppose a few minutes more won’t hurt.”
She smiled up at him and he seemed to reach a decision after looking around the circle of lusting faces. “We can only travel a few more miles before sundown and aren’t going to hit the Cheyenne camp until dawn. So we will take a few minutes to enjoy this pretty and you, Hawk Wing, may be first since you counted the most coup this day.”
The other needed no urging. He jerked off his loincloth and grabbed her, throwing her roughly to the dirt. Always, she would remember the feel of the rough, gritty soil under her naked back and the bruising grip of his hands forcing her slim thighs apart. She wanted to please him, hoping he might beg for her life. But when she saw his naked manhood jutting out she was afraid and did not think her small sheath could take his sword’s length.
He struggled to force himself into her and the pain was so great she thought she was being torn apart, but she bit her lips and did not scream for she did not want to anger the men.
Still he tried vainly to take her while the others laughed and hooted at his efforts. “Hawk Wing is a poor marksman! Let one of us show you how to pierce the target!”
“She is so small!” he panted as he threw the whole weight of his body behind his manhood. She could not keep from crying out as she felt something tear. Then he plunged his great length into her and she felt she was being impaled against the ground. She could not help but weep as he drew out and plunged into her again. Gray Dove could feel his manhood throbbing deep inside her. She could not keep from whimpering and writhing under him at the pain as his mouth bit her small breasts.
In another moment, she felt him gasp, shudder, and collapse on her body with his great weight. She trembled, hoping she had pleased him enough. He scrambled to his feet, displaying his manhood triumphantly, covered with her virgin blood.
Bear’s Eyes used her next and wiped himself off with her long black hair. Then the others took turns until she reeked of their spilled manseed.
“Enough!” Bear’s Eyes said finally. “We have played the dog with this small bitch already too long! Hawk Wing,” he ordered in Pawnee, “cut the girl’s throat and add her scalp to your belt!”
“Could I not take her once more first?” he argued. “It was good to feel a woman’s body clasp my manhood so tightly. I would like to use her just once more before I kill her!”
Her body was one ache of agony but she smiled at Hawk Wing, trying to buy more time for herself, pretending she did not understand what was being said.
“Look at her smile!” Bear’s Eyes sneered. “She thinks she has saved her life with her body and that her life is to be spared!”
Hawk Wing looked at her and licked his lips. “Just one more time?”
The chief shrugged. “Have it as you will. The rest of us are moving out and you can join us after a while when you finish with the girl and kill her. We will leave your paint horse for you and you know where we will camp tonight.”
The big-eared one grinned, nodding. “I will enjoy her again,” he said in Pawnee, “and then cut her throat and join you!”
Bear’s Eyes mounted his horse. “Because you have shown much bravery today, I grant you this! But do not take long!”
Hawk Wing nodded, his eyes on Gray Dove’s face. She smiled at him, promising him many things with her eyes. Against the whole war party she had no chance. Against one man, she might figure out a way to survive. The other Pawnee hooted and made ribald comments as they mounted and rode out. She and the big-eared Pawnee stood looking after them as they rode away. She smiled at him again as if she did not know he was supposed to kill her when he finished.
Gray Dove was instinctively a survivor and she had just learned two things about men that would serve her in good stead the rest of her life. One was that men often let lust interfere with their judgment and the other, that a man at the height of his passion is as helpless as a newborn colt. This second thing she counted on heavily now as she looked toward the Pawnee with his sharp knife in a scabbard at his waist.
Very slowly, she moved toward him, forcing herself to smile as she watched the war party disappearing over the horizon. She reached out to touch his manhood and made a complimentary remark about his size in Arapaho. He grinned back at her and she stood on tiptoe to kiss him as she had seen the easy squaws who hung around the fort do the soldiers.
He kissed her eagerly, his wet mouth all over her face as she rubbed her small, naked breasts against his chest. He gasped in pleasure and surprise and grabbed for her, but she stepped out of his reach, flaunting herself, stalling for time. She wanted the war party to be as far away as possible before she made her move. She teased him as long as possible before he lost patience and grabbed her, throwing her down on her back to mount her. She arched herself against him as if swept by passion. It was agony to take his length but she knew she must please and distract him.
Wrapping her slim legs around him, she urged him in even deeper, offering her small breasts up to his slobbering kiss as she made sure she would be able to reach his knife.
She dug her nails into his back and whimpered as if enjoying this act. He breathed deeper, gasping into her mouth as she kissed him. As his passion mounted, she shifted her narrow hips to give him deeper penetration.
Abruptly, he moaned aloud and stiffened. And in that brief moment of climax, when he was temporarily unconscious and helpless in her arms, she reached down for his knife. Savagely, she rammed it up to the hilt between his shoulder blades and muffled his scream with her kiss.
She saw his eyes widen in his sudden horror and he struggled to break free of her deadly embrace. But she kept him locked within her legs and smothered his cries with her mouth so that he could not call out after his friends.
After a moment, she pushed his still jerking body to one side and slid out from under him. Coldly, she looked down at him. “You are a stupid food!” she declared to the jerking body. “With no more brains than a rutting buffalo!”
Then she spat on him and turned to catch the paint horse that had been left for the warrior. He had taken her virginity, she thought in bitter satisfaction. She had taken his life. It was a fair exchange,
Her small body was one raw nerve of agony but she must manage to mount up and get away from here before the dead man’s friends came back looking for him. Weakly, she pulled the deerskin shift over her head and mounted the pinto. Flies swarmed over the dead bodies of her family as she surveyed them and held back the tears that would do no good. There was nothing she could do for them now and she must save herself. Her mother had died because she had stopped to help the others, Gray Dove thought. Her mother was a weak person. She herself would survive because she would always put herself and her own welfare first.
She gave only a brief thought to the Cheyenne the Pawnee were riding to attack. She might ride to warn them but she knew none of them and they were nothing to her. Let the Cheyenne look to themselves as she was learning to do. For only a moment, she considered riding back to the Arapaho encampment but she was not sure she could ride that far and, besides, with the death of her mother, the link had been broken. She hated her drunken father and did not want to go back to him. The white fort was not very far away so she rode there.
; She was almost fainting when she finally reached it and a red-haired sentry came out as she slid from the paint pony to the ground and collapsed.
The sentry ran off and soon he returned with a sour-faced white woman. As she opened her eyes, Gray Dove knew she did not like the gray-haired woman with thin, unsmiling lips, but she recognized her and knew the woman’s husband was the Big Chief of the fort so she tried to smile appealingly up at her.
“Pawnee war party!” she gasped. “Family all killed!” That was not quite true, of course, but this seemed an opportune time to improve her lot and she decided to do so.
“Poor thing!” the woman said. “Bring her to my quarters and get someone to go for the post doctor!”
When she awakened, she was in a clean, white bed at the colonel’s quarters and it was very comfortable and warm. It occurred to her that it might be nice to stay with the whites permanently.
The doctor had a white mustache, yellowing around the edges, she noted as he examined her torn body. “How many of them were there?”
“Fifteen or twenty.” She sighed and the doctor looked sympathetic.
The colonel’s wife entered the room then and her lips pursed in disapproval. “Men! That’s all they ever think about!”
“Well now, Mrs. Willard.” The doctor scratched his mustache. “You really can’t expect savages on a war party to behave differently.”
“I wasn’t thinking just of Indians,” Mrs. Willard snapped. “Now, what on earth shall I do with her?”
He shook his head doubtfully. “I honestly don’t know, dear lady. She said her family is dead and no Arapaho brave would want her now for a wife. Perhaps you had better discuss this with the colonel.”
“You know how the colonel hates Indians!” she declared in a soft drawl. “Although I keep telling him it’s our duty to try to do a little missionary work among these poor savages; to teach them about God.”
Gray Dove did not like the white woman. She sensed that in her own way, the colonel’s wife was as hard and cold as she herself. But she also saw where her advantage lay.
“Let me stay with you, kind lady!” she begged pitifully. “I can cook and clean for you and you can teach me about your God.”
The woman reached over and picked up a big, black book off the washstand and seemed to be considering.
“You can teach me from your book,” Gray Dove said and managed to squeeze tears from her eyes. “And someday, I will go out and help you spread the word of your God!”
“Well,” said Mrs. Willard self-righteously, “I don’t see how I can pass up a chance like this to help spread the Gospel. Besides, I certainly could use some help around here. I never did housework before we came to this awful Nebraska Territory but we had to sell all three negras when we left Virginia. Got a nice price for them, too, but it was too bad we had to split up their family to sell them.”
The doctor looked as if he were about to say something and then changed his mind. “Maybe you’d better talk this over with the colonel.”
“But here is a lost soul!” the woman exclaimed, clutching the black book. “Don’t you see? I’ll be doing missionary work and I could certainly use a little household help for just the cost of her room and board.”
Gray Dove relaxed against her pillows. She had a feeling that no matter what the colonel himself thought, a decision had already been reached. Even the White Chief had a superior commanding officer, she thought as she looked at the stern woman.
She didn’t much like the colonel, either, when she met him. She had a feeling that he was one of those men who never quite did well at anything he tried and had been sent to this out-of-the-way post because the Big White Chiefs in that place called Washington didn’t know what else to do with him.
Colonel Willard was as cold and tight-lipped as his wife and seemed to have only two topics of conversation: how much he liked killing Indians and how wonderful it would be next year when he retired and returned to this place called Virginia where he could grow cotton and tobacco and watch the slaves do all the work. It began to dawn on Gray Dove gradually as she fitted herself into the household that there was money and land but it belonged to Mrs. Willard’s family.
Gray Dove quickly became so useful around the house that Mrs. Willard was overheard to say time and again, “I declare! I just don’t know what I did before she came. Why, she’s just as handy as a third arm. And she doesn’t eat as much as a negra would, either.”
Mrs. Willard was a lazy person, Gray Dove decided as she slaved away day after day, keeping all the washing, ironing, and cleaning done up. The colonel’s wife had a particular thing about stoves and stove grates and Gray Dove seemed to spend hours with the messy black polish, going over the wood parlor stove. Gray Dove made sure she was so useful that Mrs. Willard couldn’t possibly manage without her. It freed the lady for time to write long letters home to her friends and which she read to Gray Dove about how she was saving the savage souls and all her trials and tribulations among the heathen.
Gritting her teeth, Gray Dove learned to smile ingratiatingly and parrot verses the lady taught her from the Black Book. Sometimes, Mrs. Willard took her along when she went to Ladies’ Bible Class every Tuesday morning for the officers’ wives. She liked to have Gray Dove recite verses so she could show off her missionary zeal.
But she didn’t take her often, for as she told the girl, “There’s so much housework to be done!”
Gray Dove was glad to have the lady’s castoff dresses, but as the weeks wore on, it dawned on her one day that the clothes were increasingly tight across the chest and waist. She paused in her endless stove polishing to face the realization that she must be pregnant by one of the Pawnee braves.
This fact threw her almost into a panic and she was not quite sure what to do. She felt Mrs. Willard would send her away and she didn’t want to go back to her drunken father’s tepee. In spite of all the housework, this was a much easier life she led and she fully intended to stay in the white world. She had already begun to work out in her mind how she would manipulate Mrs. Willard into taking her with them when the Willards returned to this place called Virginia next year.
She knew the colonel already hated her because she was Indian. He seemed to hold all brown people responsible for his being in what he referred to as this “Godforsaken spot.” She knew that if he hadn’t been helplessly emasculated by his wife’s money and family power, he would never have allowed Gray Dove to stay. She decided she must do something about this unwanted pregnancy before her swelling belly was noticed. And if she wanted to go to Virginia, she’d better figure out a way to work herself into the colonel’s good graces, too.
So one night soon thereafter she waited until everyone on the post seemed to be asleep before she sneaked out into the cold, frosty night and stole a rusty scrap of wire from the blacksmith shop. Then she went out to a field where the horses grazed and lay down flat on her back.
What she was about to do was forbidden in most Plains tribes. In fact, the soldier societies of the Cheyennes had been known to whip women with their quirts if they aborted a child. But the Indians would never know, for she never expected to go back among them again. To the child itself she gave no thought, for it was a product of rape by the hated Pawnee and it stood in the way of her own future. She did not intend that anything or anyone ever come before her own welfare. With the old, faded dress pushed up past her hips to avoid bloodying it, she spread her legs and poked and probed with the wire at her womb.
She shivered with the cold as the pain started and she wadded up the dress hem and stuffed it between her teeth to stifle her cries of anguish so she would not be heard by anyone at the fort. She knew she must get rid of this parasite in her womb and be back in the colonel’s quarters by dawn to avoid detection. Never had she known such agony, not even when the Pawnee had raped her and she began to think the spasms of pain would never end. But finally there came a rush of hot fluid and it was over. She lay in the grass in her own blood for
a long time before she could get the strength to stand and stagger to a nearby horse trough to wash herself. Then she stuffed dried grass inside herself and her underwear to stem the telltale flow.
In revulsion, she kicked a little dirt over the bloody evidence and staggered back to the fort. It was almost dawn when she managed to avoid the sentry and crawled back to her bed.
Mrs. Willard grumbled a little the next day when Gray Dove said she was too sick to work. The lady put one cold hand on the girl’s forehead and said it must be something that was going around. She hoped Gray Dove wasn’t going to lie abed for more than one day, she sniffed, for no one could expect a lady of gentle birth like herself to scrub floors and polish stoves.
Gray Dove managed to get to her feet the second day and go back to work on the stoves, for she dared not anger the colonel’s lady. The officer himself made a very pointed remark as Gray Dove served the dinner about how ridiculous it was to have savages in the house when he had been sent by Washington to kill them.
She thought about it later as she ate her own supper of cold leftovers in the kitchen. Her body was still weak and she was in no condition to be thrown out into the cold weather or try to travel all the way back to the Arapaho, even if she could find them. There was always a chance they had again joined up with their old friends, the Cheyenne, and might have made one of their nomadic moves.
Again, the colonel was pressuring his wife to let Gray Dove go and she began to worry that the lady might do just that. It occurred to her that the colonel was just a man after all, probably with a man’s appetites. Now that she thought of it, she never heard him go down the hall past her room to his wife’s at night. She decided that she could use her ripening body to insure her place in the household and she put her plan into action a few days later.