"You're not going to die," he said firmly, giving her a shake. "You're—"
A rattle at the door made Storm Dancer look up, his voice cutting into silence. A key was being jiggled in the keyhole, then the knob was turned. "God a' mercy," a young woman swore from the hallway. "Have I locked myself out?" She jiggled the doorknob hard and hit the door hard with something. The chair slipped slightly.
Storm Dancer lay Rachael on the bed and ran for the door. Just as he hit the chair with his foot, the maid in the hall peered through the crack in the door and the air was rent with a high-pitched piercing scream of terror.
Storm Dancer slammed the door shut and adjusted the chair. This was just what he had wanted to avoid. He could hear the girl shrieking as she ran down the hallway proclaiming the house was under Indian attack.
Storm Dancer knew it would only be a matter of seconds before others came. He ran back across the room and pulled Rachael into his arms. "I'm taking you home now, Ki-ti-hi," he told her. "You must hold onto me." He raised her hands to clasp them around his neck, but they fell useless to her sides.
"Can't," she breathed.
"You must, he insisted glancing at the door. He could hear commotion below now. The household was springing into action.
He looked back at Rachael who was nearly unconscious again. There was no way she could hold onto him while he climbed down the brick wall and he couldn't get to the ground without the use of his hands. The house was already alerted to his presence so he couldn't go out from inside. He thought about jumping, but it would probably mean death to both of them.
There was a man with a deep voice at the door now ramming it with a large object. The girl was still shrieking and there were others in the hallway. Several dogs barked and growled behind the door.
Storm glanced at the sheet that lay damp on the bed. He would tie Rachael to him, that's what he would do. He yanked his bow and quiver from his back. Another bang came at the door and this time wood splintered. Storm Dancer jerked the sheet off the bed and tossed Rachael's unconscious form over his shoulder, looping her hands around his neck. He wrapped the muslin sheet around them both, securing her body to his and then tied her wrists securely around his neck.
The door splintered again. Storm Dancer could hear Gifford's voice now as he came barreling down the hallway to take control of the situation. "Don't let them get away," he shouted. "Those filthy savages are kidnapping my wife!"
Storm Dancer sprang off the bed and ran, his weapons in his hands. His movement was awkward with Rachael tied to his back, but he could manage. Just as he stepped up to the window, the door gave way and instinctively Storm Dancer spun round to face his enemy and protect his wife tied to his back.
He sensed the pistol even before he saw it and his fingers found the arrow and notched it in a breath's time. He released the arrow from his waist and it flew straight and true slicing through the middle of the burly man who had broken down the door. The man screamed and fell back, clutching the arrow that protruded from his stomach. His pistol fell to the floor and misfired filling the room with black powdered smoke and its acrid smell.
Storm Dancer slipped barefoot through the open window and out of the corner of his eye he spotted the coward, Gifford. "You red son of a bitching bastard!" Gifford shouted lifting a musket to his shoulder, so crazed with rage that he didn't seem to care that in taking aim on Storm Dancer, he also took aim at Rachael.
Storm Dancer grasped the rope at his feet and flung his body into the night just as the musket exploded in the window.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The blast of the musket surrounded Storm Dancer until there was nothing but the shattering of brick, the echo of the shot and the smell of a full charge of black powder. He swung out through the air, praying the rope held, because if it didn't, he and Rachael would both fall to their death.
There was a moment just after Gifford fired that Storm Dancer felt himself suspended in midair without the security of the tug of the rope or the solidity of the brick wall. For that instant it seemed as if he were flying. He thought of the tales his grandfather Shaakan had told him of the shaman who could fly and he wondered if this was what it felt like.
In a blink of his eyes Storm Dancer felt the rope catch and jerk him upward and in toward the wall. Shards of windowpane and crumbled brick still flew through the air as the soles of his bare feet hit the brick so hard that it jarred his teeth. Without wasting an instant he began to climb down the wall with Rachael still tied securely on his back.
"Come back here, you son of a red bitch!" Gifford screamed at the top of his lungs. "Reload! Reload!" he shouted to someone.
Storm Dancer did not take the time to look up. He was nearly to the second story windowsill now.
"I'd sooner see my wife dead than carried off by heathens!" Gifford shouted from overhead.
Storm Dancer felt the glass panes with his bare feet and dropped onto the windowsill.
"Christ, get out of there!" Thomas shouted from below.
Storm Dancer looked down as he jerked his rope from its hold on the third story and began to coil it in. Thomas waited below astride a stolen horse, holding another by its reins.
"He's going to fire again!" he screamed.
"Thomas Moreover, you son of a bitch," Gifford screamed hanging out the third story window. "I'll have you hanged for kidnapping my wife!"
"Catch me first, you sorry son of a bitch!" Thomas shouted shaking a fist.
Storm Dancer had just turned to lodge the rope hook into a crack between the header bricks when he looked up to see Gifford turn out of the window. When he swung back, it was with a loaded musket rifle on his shoulder.
Without thinking, Storm Dancer let the rope fall from his hands. With the lithe spring of a mountain cat he leapt into the air and out of the range of fire. Gifford's musket hit its mark where Storm had stood only a second before, blasting away the glass, wood frame, and surrounding brick of the window. Rachael's arms tightened around Storm Dancer's neck and she screamed a scream of nightmarish terror as they hurled toward the earth below.
Storm Dancer fell with Rachael tied on his back for what seemed an eternity until finally his bare feet hit the dewy grass. He landed on the ground hard in a crouch, using his bent legs to absorb the weight of his fall. "Shhh, ki-ti-hi," he soothed rubbing her bare arm as he ran for the unsaddled horse Thomas held for him.
Storm Dancer leapt onto the horse and jerked the reins from Thomas's hands. He sank his heels into the mount's flanks and whirled it around through the garden toward a manmade wall of boxwood.
"Stop them! Stop them!" Gifford shouted from what remained of the third story window. "They've stolen my wife and my Arabian horses, the bastards!"
Storm Dancer lifted the horse's reins murmuring to him in Algonquian. The horse sailed over a six-foot-high length of boxwood hedge and into the obscurity of night with Thomas and mount a length behind.
In a bed of moss and leaves, Storm Dancer spread a wool blanket from the supplies Thomas had brought along for them. Then gently he lay Rachael down. Her breathing was still shallow and she had not regained consciousness since they had leaped from the window.
Though Storm Dancer and Thomas had little fear Gifford and the authorities would catch up with them, they had ridden at full speed out of Philadelphia and deep enough into the forest that no one would find them.
Upon their arrival, Thomas busied himself setting up camp and caring for the horses while Storm Dancer dealt with Rachael. After settling her on the blanket, he took a clean rag dipped in spring water and bathed her flushed face.
"Storm?" Her voice was barely audible, but he was certain she had called him.
"Ki-ti-hi, I am here." He brushed her cheek with his fingertips and with great effort she lifted her hand until it covered his.
"You came for me . . . Was afraid . . . Said you were just dream . . . Said—"
"Hush, my wife. You are safe now. That man shall never lay hands on you again."
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"Dying, Storm." She squeezed his hand, but her strength was no more than that of Ka-we-ras's.
"You're not dying."
"Am. Don't know what's wrong." She rolled her head in confusion and picked at her nightgown. "Take off. Take off filthy thing."
"You want me to take off the sleeping gown?"
She pulled at the buttoned and tied collar. "Hot. Can't breathe. My . . . my tunic in bag."
She wanted to wear her own clothing. He understood. "I can take it off," he assured her as he began to loosen the ties. "Just lay still and rest."
"Don't . . . don't let them take my . . . my body. Want . . . " she exhaled but didn't inhale.
Storm Dancer grabbed her by the shoulders, suddenly more frightened than he had ever been in his life. "Rachael . . . Rachael!"
At long last she took a shuddering breath and he sighed in relief. He dipped the cloth in the cold water again and began to bathe her exposed chest as he unbuttoned its buttons.
"Storm?"
He smiled. "Rachael, Wife."
"You have to promise."
She was still talking about dying. "You will not die. I won't let you," he whispered.
Her eyelids fluttered and slowly lifted until she was looking at him by the dim light of the campfire. Her pupils were dilated and glassy. "If I die you'll bury me here in the woods under the trees. You won't let them put me in a churchyard."
He thought for a moment. He didn't want to admit that she might be dying, but if he were in her place, he would want to know that he would be laid to rest in the right spot—a place where he belonged. He owed it to her. "I promise," he whispered.
She smiled a faint smile as her eyes closed. "I love you, Dancer of the Storms. Care for our son and tell him . . . " She took a deep breath. " . . . Tell him I loved him as if he had been born of my own body."
Storm Dancer leaned over to kiss her lips. They were cool. Too cool. "Sleep and speak no more of dying," he whispered.
She lifted her hand to brush back his hair that fell across her cheek, and then her hand fell as she drifted into unconsciousness.
Storm Dancer fought the moisture that gathered in the corners of his eyes as he made himself busy removing Rachael's sleeping gown. He bathed her flushed body and redressed her in the extra doeskin tunic he had carried in his bag for her.
The fact that there seemed to be nothing he could for her infuriated him. But he didn't know what was wrong with her. He had never seen such a strange illness. It was as if she had taken a medicine man's sleeping potion she could not awaken from—
Storm Dancer suddenly rocked back on his heels and glanced into the flames of the fire. A sleeping potion stronger than one he had ever heard of? A poison? Had the coward poisoned her? He looked back at her gray, drawn face. It was very likely.
When Thomas returned from a walk around the perimeter of the camp he found Storm Dancer crouched by the fire, one hand resting on the pulse of Rachael's wrist. "How is she?"
Storm Dancer glanced at her and then back at the fire. "Not good. Her heart has slowed until it seems it will not beat again, yet it does." He paused. "I think she was poisoned."
"Poisoned!" Thomas knelt to get a better look at his sister now dressed in a doeskin tunic with her hair neatly braided and a necklace of polished stones and sea shells around her neck. "Who would—" he cut himself off before he completed his statement. "Langston." He looked up at Storm Dancer. "But why?"
"He claimed her as wife and yet they were not wed. Rachael broke their engagement in the carriage just before they were attacked by my brother and his men." Storm Dancer had told Thomas briefly the story of Rachael's capture earlier.
"I knew they weren't married! I just knew it!" Thomas came to sit beside Storm Dancer as he contemplated the new information. After a moment he shrugged. "The money. It can only be the money." He raised his hand, splaying his fingers. "As soon as that bastard Langston got back to Philadelphia he had a marriage certificate and death certificate drawn up for Rachael by a friend in the courts and then demanded the remainder of her dowry."
"He thought her dead by my brother's hands the night he abandoned her in the forest. When she appeared alive at his door he had to dispose of her."
"Quickly," Thomas added. "Before she proclaimed him the liar and cheat that he is."
Storm Dancer looked at Rachael who lay perfectly still, her chest rising and falling in a slow, uneven pattern. "Liar, cheat, and murderer, perhaps."
Thomas rose slamming his fist into the palm of his hand. "If she dies, I will kill Langston."
Storm Dancer gazed into the flickering flames of the fire. "You and I together, my brother. You and I both."
The entire night Thomas and Storm Dancer sat vigil over Rachael. Twice more she stopped breathing and twice Storm Dancer shook her until she gasped for air. Just when it seemed she was near death, color began to return to her face. By some miracle, by dawn she was asking for water and weakly proclaiming hunger. Thomas and Storm Dancer saw no explanation to her strange recovery except that she had been poisoned by continual doses of a drug, an opiate no doubt, and now that she was no longer in Gifford Langston's care, she would recover.
By the following day Rachael could sit up well enough, leaning against a tree trunk, that she joined the men she loved most in the world in the evening meal.
"I still can't believe you're alive, Thomas," she breathed. Her voice was weak, her movements unsteady, but she was still the Rachael Thomas knew and Storm Dancer had come to know.
"I have no trouble believing it," he teased. "I was never dead to begin with."
"But he told me you had drowned at sea." After what she'd been through she couldn't stand to speak Gifford's name. "He told me they'd not even recovered your body."
"The bastard. It was a cruel thing to do." Thomas offered her a cup of steaming herbal tea Storm Dancer had brewed especially for Rachael to help her get her strength back. Now that the poison had worn off, she had only to fight the withdrawal symptoms that made her shaky and nauseous.
"The question is, what do I do now?" Rachael said thoughtfully.
"Do?" Storm Dancer turned to look directly into her sky-eyes, eyes he had feared would never look upon him again. "You do nothing. As soon as you are well enough to travel, we leave for the village and our son."
"Oh, no." She gave a defiant laugh. "The stinking dog took my money, he told me vindictive lies, and he tried to kill me with some sort of opiate. I want revenge."
Storm Dancer took the cup she held out to him. "You will not risk your life again for coin."
"Our village needs the horses and supplies to get across the Ohio."
"I need you more, ki-ti-hi," Storm Dancer answered evenly.
Rachael looked up at Thomas. "I've never known my husband, a shaman, to back down under siege before." She said it teasingly, but there was a challenge in her voice.
"I do not back down!" Storm Dancer answered. "But I know what is important and what is not. Your life is more important to me than all the wealth in this world and I will not risk it."
"We don't have to risk any lives. All we have to do is go into the city," she glanced mischievously at Thomas, "and frighten him a tad. We use the right persuasion and I know he would return my money gladly."
Thomas couldn't resist a handsome smile. "It just might work."
Storm Dancer looked from Rachael to Thomas. "You conspire with my ill wife against me?"
Thomas poked Storm Dancer playfully with a stick. "Not against you. Against that bastard, Langston."
"It would be easy," Rachael soothed, pushing away from the tree so that she could loop her arm through Storm's. The thought of revenge made her feel stronger. "I've already got a plan." She kissed his bulging biceps above his copper arm band.
"I'll not be a part of it!" Storm Dancer tried to ignore her tender touch. "I'll take you back to the village if I must tie you to my back, Wife."
"But isn't that what we agreed to, Storm," she said gently. "Th
at there would be no more force. That I would be allowed to make my own decisions?"
He exhaled slowly. He didn't like the idea of returning to Philadelphia, not one bit. He had to get Rachael back to the village, home where he understood his surroundings, home where he could protect her. "Yes, this is what we agreed but—"
"But nothing. It's my money and I want it back. I want to go west with our people and I want to help them get there safely. Will you take me to Gifford, Storm? Will you help me put an end to this life once and forever?"
He turned his moccasin in the dark, pungent humus stalling. "I do not like this, but I will take you, Wife." He looked up at her, his obsidian eyes filled with concern. "This man will take you because of his love for you, not for want of your coin."
Rachael raised up on her knees and rested her hands on his broad, bare shoulders so that she looked directly into his raven eyes. "Fair enough." She kissed him, her lips lingering against his, not caring that her brother watched. When she drew back, she turned to Thomas, a smile turning up the corners of her mouth. "Do you want to tell him our plan or shall I?"
Thomas tapped his clay pipe on his boot heel with a chuckle. "Oh, no, it's your idea, I simply gave input." He lifted a hand. "Be my guest, Sister. Your husband awaits."
A week later, Thomas, Storm Dancer, and Rachael rode into Philadelphia under the cover of dusk. Rachael, having gained back her strength, rode horseback behind Storm with Thomas taking the lead. They rode through alleys directly to Gifford Langston's majestic brick home and dismounted in a line of sycamore and poplar trees on the rear of his property.
Storm Dancer dismounted, but before he could help Rachael down, she sprang from the horse's back and landed gently in the cut grass. She wore her doeskin tunic and her dark hair flowing down her back. Across her cheeks and forehead she painted the lines and symbols of her adopted family with paint from Storm's paintpot. She insisted on painting Storm Dancer as well with blue and red markings across his face, bare arms, and chest—for effect, she'd insisted. Even Thomas sported two diagonal blue lines across one cheek as an icon of his bravery.
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