Cheyenne Captive

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

  Mrs. Willard had sent the colonel down to the root cellar to bring up some apples and when he did not come back right away, Gray Dove suggested that he might be having a hard time finding them and she would go down and help him search.

  She went down the stairs, knowing perfectly well that he was down there drinking whiskey. She had found the bottle one time hidden behind the potatoes. The colonel looked up in annoyance as she came down the stairs and attempted to hide something behind his back.

  “I know about the bottle, sir,” she said softly and winked at him in a conspiratorial manner. “But don’t worry, I won’t tell!” She took a deep breath, knowing it made her growing breasts strain against the old calico dress.

  He brought the bottle from behind his back almost timidly. “What are you doing down here?”

  “I told your wife I would come down and help you look for the apples,” she answered. “Mrs. Willard was about ready to come down herself and I didn’t think you would like that.” She smiled as if they were partners in a plot. It came to her that she was taking a chance. He might fire her on the spot, but somehow she didn’t think so.

  He gave her a long, searching look as she reached past him in the crowded dimness of the cellar. As she reached for the apples, she very deliberately brushed her breasts against his blue uniform. He jerked back as if touched by a hot flame but she appeared not to notice.

  Looking into the pale, watery eyes, she rubbed against him. Then she stepped back and almost laughed, for he was looking at her with a searching look as if seeing her for the first time.

  “I think Mrs. Willard wanted some jam, too,” she said, “but it’s on the top shelf and I can’t reach it. I might if you would help me up—”

  Wordlessly, he put hot, trembling hands on her narrow waist and lifted her to reach the shelf. When he put her down, she rubbed innocently against his leg as she turned back toward the stairs.

  “I won’t tell a soul about the bottle, sir,” she whispered. “I’m sure your wife doesn’t really understand. you.”

  The next morning was Tuesday and the colonel breakfasted alone as he had an early inspection on the parade ground. As Gray Dove served his coffee, she managed to spill a little cream on his thigh. “Oh, I’m so sorry, sir. That was so clumsy of me. Here, let me clean it up!” She took a napkin and rubbed the spot on the inside of his leg over and over and pretended not to see the sudden bulge of his manhood near where her fingers stroked.

  Again, he simply stared at her, but she noticed his hands trembled as he held his knife and fork. Her plan was working as she had anticipated. She intended to seduce the man and then she would have something to blackmail him with.

  Later that morning, when the lady had gone to her Bible study, Gray Dove was changing the sheets on the colonel’s bed when she heard the side door open. She smiled a little to herself and went on slipping the clean case over the pillow.

  He came into the room.

  “Oh, sir!” she feigned surprise. “You’re early and I don’t have your lunch ready yet.”

  “Quite all right.” He coughed, running a nervous hand through his gray hair. “Is my wife gone to her religious study?”

  Gray Dove nodded. “Yes, sir. She won’t be back for hours.”

  He nodded lamely and she looked in disgust at his pot belly. “I—I came back for something I forgot,” he stuttered.

  She shrugged as if she believed him and managed to brush against him as she moved around the bed, smoothing the blankets.

  She stopped in front of him and looked into his eyes with her lips parted in a way that was appealing. “Can I help look for it, sir? What was it, your gloves?”

  “Yes,” he mumbled, “my gloves, yes!” He seemed to be torn by indecision and she knew that at any moment he might lose his nerve and stride out of the room and her chance would be lost forever. Gray Dove would have to make the first move.

  Very slowly she put her hands on his thin chest and looked into his weak, watery eyes. “Did you really come back for me?” she purred.

  For a moment, she thought he would turn and run but finally his damp hands went to her shoulders. “God help me! You’re only a child!”

  “I’m almost fifteen,” she whispered, “and many Indian girls my age are already married. And it’s not as if I were a virgin. Remember, I was raped by all those Pawnee!”

  “Yes, I know,” he stammered, his soft hands moist and damp on her shoulders. “It’s not as if I were despoiling you. After all, you’re just a savage little animal who doesn’t understand civilized behavior—”

  His voice trailed off and he hesitated again. She was going to have to do it all, she thought disgustedly. Her full, warm lips reached up to kiss his thin, cold ones and she rubbed herself against him from breast to thigh as she did so.

  With a strangled cry, he threw aside all inhibitions and jerked her against him, kissing her in a wet, sloppy manner that almost made her retch. She pressed herself against his belly so hard she could feel his thin legs shaking.

  She reached up and unbuttoned her faded dress, sending it cascading to the floor at her feet. She wore nothing under it for she had been so sure he would return this morning.

  She pulled him down with her on the bed and he was like a crazy man, smothering her lush body with wet, slobbering kisses as the metal buttons of his uniform cut into her tender flesh. “You Jezebel, you!” he gasped as he fumbled with the buttons of his pants. “You little brown Jezebel!”

  She feigned passion as she helped him with the buttons. “No, Colonel, it’s just that I have hungered for you, the Big Chief of the soldiers, ever since I came here! The other soldiers of this fort have wanted me but I wanted only you!”

  She had to help him with his pants since his thin hands shook so much he could hardly unbutton his trousers. He didn’t bother to remove his jacket as he kicked the pants aside and fell across her on the bed, pulling her legs apart.

  He was no doubt ashamed of his body, she thought, and wondered with revulsion if he had gray hair all over his chest as he did on his head. Indian men had hardly any hair at all on their smooth, muscular bodies.

  His thin legs were covered with hair and his man’s thing so small she almost laughed aloud but instead she said, “You are built like the big stud bull of the buffalo and I am eager to have you fill me.”

  But as he fumbled inexpertly to enter, his seed came in a rush on her thigh and he turned crimson with humiliation. “I—I’m sorry! It is always this way. I can’t seem to help it!”

  She reached up to stroke his sweating face. “It is all right,” she comforted him. “I will teach you how to stop this and we have much time ahead of us to love each other. Your wife is gone every Tuesday morning and I will leave my door open at night....”

  The next morning at the breakfast table, the colonel said to his wife as Gray Dove served the coffee, “You know, Mabel, I’ve been thinking and you’re right as usual about this Indian girl. It really is our duty to try to educate the savages and she has no place to go. Anyway, my dear, your health is much too delicate to do all that cleaning and scrubbing. We might even take her with us to Virginia when we go this spring since she doesn’t eat much and you would be the only lady in Richmond with a real Indian maid.”

  “Why, John!” She beamed. “I’ve been telling you that all along. And we don’t have to pay her. She’s satisfied to work for just room and board. And won’t my Missionary Society ladies be just green with envy when they see the savage whose soul I’ve saved?”

  Now through the early spring, the colonel’s lady worked Gray Dove a little harder since her husband had acquiesced about keeping the girl. It seemed to Gray Dove that all she did was polish stoves but she put up with the hard work patiently. When she got to the white’s city of Richmond, she would figure out another way to make money, for she was very clever.

  Every Tuesday morning, she entertained the old colonel, sometimes even in the root cellar. He never got much better sexually and somet
imes she had to grit her teeth to keep from scolding him in her sexual frustration. But she was smart enough to feign satisfaction and he always smiled shamefacedly and sometimes slipped her a little money. This she carefully saved toward the time she would start a new future in the place called Virginia.

  She never left the fort with the Willards. It was that month the Cheyenne call Matsiomishi and the whites know as April that her father came riding into the fort to trade, having long assumed his whole family was dead. She had no interest in returning with him, of course, but there rode with him the most exciting, virile Cheyenne Dog Soldier of about sixteen years or so that she had ever seen.

  He hardly noticed her, but when she saw him she fell deeply in love for the first time and dreamed of becoming his woman. He was of the Hevataniu band and it had been them the Pawnee Knife Lance soldiers under Bear’s Eyes were riding to attack that fateful day in the autumn when her family’s path had crossed the Pawnee’s. His father, War Bonnet, had been killed in that attack, she learned, but his half-grown son had fought bravely and the Cheyenne had succeeded in repulsing the Skidi and driven them in retreat back to their own country up on the Platte.

  Even now, she remembered how the sun had gleamed on his fine, rippling muscles, his handsome high cheekbones. His back and face were scarred and she wondered about that, never knowing how it had come about. She only knew it was something terrible that was buried in his past among the whites.

  She was so charmed by him, although he gave her no encouragement, that she thought of nothing else but returning to the Indian camp in hopes that the young Cheyenne Dog Soldier might take her as his woman. She didn’t even mind that her father beat her up and took her small cache of coins she had saved and bought whiskey with it.

  The Willards were leaving for Richmond the next day. The colonel’s lady had gone off to tell her friends good-bye and left ironing and, of course, the endless stove polishing for Gray Dove to do.

  The Indians were ready to ride out when Gray Dove made her final decision. She decided Virginia mattered not at all to her if she had a chance to become the Cheyenne’s woman and she ran back to the quarters to gather her few belongings.

  The colonel came in as she gathered her things. “Where are you going?” he asked. “The stage doesn’t leave until tomorrow.”

  “I’m going back with the Indians,” she answered coldly. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders. “You can’t!” he stammered. “I—I don’t know what I would do without you. I love you, Gray Dove! You can’t leave me. I thought you loved me, too.”

  “Love!” she laughed bitterly. “What you call love is like being mounted by a steer! A gelding! Do you hear! I am sick to my stomach every time you touch me! I can hardly wait to get away from you!” She brushed his bewildered hands away. “You stupid old fool! Do you think I could ever really care for you!”

  He collapsed in sobs on the settee and Gray Dove smiled coldly, enjoying the fact that she had wounded him deeply. She gathered her things and looking around, decided to leave a message for Mrs. Willard, a message she could not mistake.

  Running back in her room, she took the Black Book from the washstand and tore the pages out, scattering them in a frenzy. Next, she took the black stove polish and carefully poured it all over Mrs. Willard’s white blouses that were waiting to be ironed and then all over everything in the house until she used it up.

  The colonel still sobbed, a broken man on the settee, as she gathered her things and left, not even bothering to say good-bye.

  She ran to join the departing Indians.

  That had been ten long years ago....

  The thought of Iron Knife brought her back to the present and she realized she had been sitting here motionless for nearly an hour by the pegged-down buffalo hide, the scraper idle in her hand as she remembered the past. For ten years now, she had schemed to become the woman of Iron Knife although she occasionally crawled into the blankets with another warrior if he offered gifts. But her heart belonged to the big Dog Soldier. She had given up a chance at an easy life in the white civilization to stay near Iron Knife, never giving up hope that someday he would realize that she was the right woman for him.

  The white bitch called Summer Sky came out of Pony Woman’s tepee just then and Gray Dove glared at her in fury. As long as that pale one was in this camp, Iron Knife could see no other.

  She would have to get rid of the yellow-haired one, she vowed. There was no other answer. Savagely, she scraped at the hide and smiled to herself. She had just decided how to rid the camp of Summer Sky forever!

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gray Dove laid her plans carefully and waited several days to take action. She figured it would take her maybe two days to ride into Fort Smith and maybe two days back. The war party might be gone a week or more which gave her plenty of time to do something about Summer before the men returned. Then she would feign ignorance when anyone wondered about the girl’s disappearance.

  In the meantime, the Jesuit priest came to the camp as he made his rounds among the plains tribes in the name of his god. The Indians trusted the frail, saintly man who came and went on his mule and he had free access to all the camps.

  She watched from afar as Summer called the old priest into her tepee. Gray Dove hoped she might be asking for help in escaping, but in her heart she was sure the white girl planned a wedding ceremony. The thought made Gray Dove grind her teeth in jealous fury.

  So she made her plans, and late one chilly afternoon when no one was around she mounted her dun-colored pony and rode toward Fort Smith.

  It was night as she reached the fort at the junction of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers on that rocky bluff the French traders called La Belle Point. The harvest moon shone on the small jumble of brick and stone buildings as she rode into the settlement.

  Gray Dove wondered if there really was a big reward out for the missing girl. No matter, reward or no, she determined to hand the girl over to the soldiers and get her out of Iron Knife’s arms forever. She wanted this badly enough to risk the anger of the old Cheyenne chiefs. Besides, if she handled this right, no one would ever know where Summer went or who was responsible for her disappearance.

  Light shone from the saloons as she rode down the main street. Raucous noise and piano music drifted to her ears. She realized it must be that weekly ceremony the whites called “Saturday night.”

  Uncertainly, she paused in front of a saloon and dismounted, listening to the crash of chairs and glass from inside. A woman screamed and men roared challenges so Gray Dove realized a fight was in progress. She knew a soldier chief called a “colonel” was probably in charge of the fort, but she wasn’t sure where she would find this chief on a Saturday night.

  As she stood there, trying to decide what to do next, a big man strode out the swinging doors of the saloon, rubbing his knuckles in satisfaction. “Shoulda finished killin’ the sonabitch!” he drawled as he came down to the hitching post for his horse and seemed to see Gray Dove for the first time.

  In the light streaming from the saloon doors, she saw a big man in his middle forties. She could smell him even though she couldn’t see him clearly and she thought immediately of the old “Mountain Men.”

  “A squaw!” he exclaimed, looking her over as he swayed on his feet. “A sure ’nuff dogeatin’ squaw. This must be my lucky night!”

  She watched as he pulled out a Lucifer match from a small match tin and lit a cigar with unsteady hands. In the sudden glare of the flame she saw he had small, mean eyes and streaks of gray in his beard. He wore a western-type hat with two feathers in the brim and a rough, fur vest.

  “Come here, missy, let me look you over.” His ignorant drawl was more a threat than an invitation. She thought from his accent that he was from someplace in the South like the Willards.

  Touching the small knife hidden in her clothes for reassurance, she moved closer. “I need to see the colonel of this fort. Is he in the saloon?”<
br />
  He looked at her a long moment as he smoked his cigar. “You speak pretty good English for an Injun,” he said. “Whata you want with the colonel?”

  “Is he in there?” she persisted, annoyed now.

  “Hell, no, he ain’t!” The man shook his shaggy head, leaned against the hitching post. “The colonel and some of the officers is off at some big meeting and left that snot-nosed Captain Baker in charge. That kid don’t know enuff to pour piss outa boot with directions writ on the heel!”

  She moved closer. “You will take me to Captain Baker?”

  “Tonight? Gawd Almighty, woman, I ain’t gonna risk botherin’ an officer this late at night! He’d skin me for sure. They don’t pay us scouts much but it ain’t worth losin’ for wakin’ up the captain!”

  “You’re an army scout?” She put her hand on his beefy arm and deliberately brushed her big breasts against his rough shirt. “Maybe you could point out the captain to me in the morning?”

  The man shrugged. “Why would I? I never do nothin’ extra ‘les there’s somethin’ in it for me.”

  She wondered if the scout had any money on him as she brushed against him again. “We could go somewhere and talk.”

  He took a deep draw on the smelly little cigar and she remembered that at the Nebraska fort she had heard the cigars called “stogies” because the drovers of the big, Connestogacovered wagons of the settlers favored them.

  “Hell, honey.” He grinned at her. “I think I could find something better to do with you than talk.”

  She winked and smiled agreeably. “I’d like some of the white man’s whiskey.”

  He guffawed as he took her arm. “If you ain’t the uppitiest little bitch I’ve seen in a long time! You know they ain’t gonna serve an Injun gal whiskey.”