Savage Surrender

by Colleen French

  Rachael's gaze was riveted to Storm Dancer's. "I don't like this. I don't like it at all."

  "Perhaps he has repented of his sins. It can happen, Wife."

  She glanced at Broken Horn who stood speaking quietly to Pretty Woman. "I have no doubt of that. The question is can Broken Horn change? Can he be trusted?"

  "We have but to feed them and give them a place to lay their heads. I will tell Broken Horn that he may rest a day or two and that then he must go. I will offer him the hospitality of my wigwam as is only right, but I will tell him that too much bad medicine has passed between us. He cannot stay and he cannot go west with us."

  "You can forget all he did to you so quickly?" She studied Storm Dancer's handsome bronze face, trying to understand. She had a fierce sense of protectiveness that encompassed not only Ka-we-ras, but her husband as well. She wanted to protect Storm Dancer from the pain of the past, but from future pain as well."

  "I have not forgotten. I cannot even say that I have forgiven, but as the shaman of our tribe I must be a good example to others. I must show compassion though I may not feel compassionate."

  She set her jaw. "You have to trust when you don't feel trustful?"

  Storm Dancer looked at Broken Horn who was staring up at his own scalp lock that flew from the lodgepole. "He cannot harm us here in the midst of our people. Once I was in his camp, but now he is in mine."

  Rachael wanted to argue the point further, but she could see that it would be of no use. It was that sense of right and wrong that was so strong in Storm Dancer, in all of the people of the Lenni Lenape, that would govern here. She reached up to touch his cheek. "Very well, Husband. I will offer our guests the hospitality of our firepit. Many of the wigwams have been taken down with families sharing so they will have to sleep with us tonight."

  Storm Dancer glanced at his brother and sister-in-law. "Better that I can watch him." He looked back at her. "Rachael." He waited until her gaze met his. "I would not jeopardize your safety if I thought for a moment he might harm you or our son."

  "I know that." She lifted his hand to kiss his knuckles. "I'll make something for them to eat right away while you take them to Starlight and Shaakan. They will want to know their daughter is dead."

  That evening a light rain began to fall. Rather than eating in front of the wigwam out where Rachael felt safer, she was forced to serve her evening meal inside. Broken Horn and Storm Dancer carried on a light conversation throughout the courses of roasted venison, corn bread, and boiled peas while Pretty Woman sat an arm's length behind her husband in silence. She was not rude to Rachael, but she was by no means pleasant.

  After dinner while Rachael cleaned up the pewter dishes Storm Dancer had brought her as a gift from Annapolis, Storm Dancer and Broken Horn smoked their pipes. Ka-we-ras wandered about the wigwam sailing a wooden boat through the air. When Ka-we-ras, being the curious toddler that he was, climbed into Broken Horn's lap Rachael had to suppress the urge to snatch her child from him and run. Broken Horn had done nothing wrong in deed or word since he had come to the camp, but Rachael still couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that had plagued her all day.

  She thought to try and talk to Storm Dancer about her concern, but she knew he wanted so badly to believe his brother regretted his past actions that she just couldn't bring herself to speak out against Broken Horn. After all, she had no proof, only a few lurid glances that could have been imagined and a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. Storm Dancer was the shaman, she told herself. He could foretell the future in waking dreams. Surely he would know if Broken Horn meant harm.

  Rachael was thankful when it finally came time to turn in for the night. With most of their belongings packed and ready to go west, there was plenty of room in the wigwam for comfortable sleeping arrangement. Storm Dancer put Broken Horn and Pretty Woman on the far side of the wigwam while Rachael, Storm Dancer, and Ka-we-ras slept near the doorway. Once the lamp was blown out and Ka-we-ras had settled beside Rachael, she crawled over to rest her head on her husband's broad shoulder.

  "I told you he means us no harm," Storm Dancer said in a voice meant only for her ears.

  "He's done nothing wrong. That's true enough."

  Storm hugged her, kissing her forehead. "You are safe here with me. Now, sleep, Wife. Tomorrow my brother leaves. He thinks to look into the trapping here along the Chesapeake. He understands the thinking of the English-manake. He would do well."

  Rachael lifted up on one elbow. "I think I'll sleep next to Ka-we-ras if you don't mind."

  He smiled in the darkness. "I will miss the feel of your body against mine."

  "I'll just feel better if I know he's safe," she whispered.

  He kissed her again, but this time his lips lingered over hers. Finally he said, "If that is what pleases you, Wife, I can do without your warmth this one night."

  Rachael gave Storm Dancer another quick kiss and then crawled the four feet back to Ka-we-ras's pallet. When she lay her head beside her son's, he was already asleep, his tiny fingers locked around the wooden boat given to him by the uncle he would never know. For a long time Rachael lay awake staring through darkness at Storm Dancer, thinking about him and the love she had for him. Finally she drifted off to sleep.

  Sometime in the middle of the night Rachael heard Ka-we-ras stir and cry out. Thinking he was having a nightmare she reached out to pat him, her eyes still closed.

  When he screamed, her eyes flew open in fear, her entire body stiffening. Something was wrong.

  Rachael automatically turned toward Storm Dancer as she reached for her frightened toddler.

  Her own scream of terror rent the night air. Broken Horn stood over Storm Dancer, a jagged-edged knife stained dark with blood clutched in his hand. Storm Dancer's neck and chest were pooled in dark liquid.

  Rachael was petrified for the safety of her son, but the rage inside her was stronger. Whirling around on her knees she shoved Ka-we-ras through a narrow tear in the hide between the wigwam floor and wall that had gone unsewn in the midst of the busy week. "Run for Tuuban," she screamed. The little boy scooted through the hole and out of Rachael's arms and she turned to face her husband's murderer.

  She leaped up, the knife she had left near her pillow in her hand. "You killed him!" she screamed in fury, flailing the weapon. "You killed my husband and now you'll die!"

  Broken Horn threw back his head in laughter. "I have come to take what is mine. I take back my scalp lock from the lodgepole and with it my luck and now I take you as mine!"

  Rachael was slowly coming toward him in a crouched position, with her center of gravity low to the floor. It was the way to stalk a predator and it suddenly seemed instinctive. "I would sooner turn the knife on myself than let you touch me!" she shouted, ignoring the hot tears that ran down her face.

  "Brave words for a woman who is once again a slave!"

  Rachael leaped forward slashing at Broken Horn's chest and leapt back again before he could reach her. He cursed in the darkness, touching the gash she had sliced at his breastbone. "Caution, bitch," he warned. "You will pay dearly for each injury you cause me. Put down the knife and we go."

  "You lied, Husband!"

  Rachael turned to see Pretty Woman coming toward them, a musket clenched in her trembling smallpox-scarred hands. "You said you would not take her. You said you came to kill them both, to rid yourself of the bad luck they gave you."

  "I lied," Broken Horn sneered. "She was mine the day I took her from her carriage and she will be mine until the day she dies or I kill her! Now put aside the musket before it misfires and you shoot me in the leg!"

  Pretty Woman shook her head, waving the loaded musket. "No. You cannot have her. I am your wife. I have stayed at your side when you were ill. I fought wolves to get you meat. I gave birth for you again and again. I am your wife! I am your woman! There can be no other woman!

  Rachael took a step back and felt the saplings of the wigwam frame press into her back. She had nowhere to go, and now
she faced two deadly adversaries. She could hear dogs barking in the village and the sound of men's voices. Bare feet raced across the compound toward her. Ka-we-ras had reached Tuuban and sounded the alarm.

  Rachael's gaze flicked from Broken Horn to Pretty Woman, who was now pointing the musket at her. She wasn't certain who the greatest threat was, but she surmised that it was Pretty Woman. The woman was clearly mentally off-balance. "Don't shoot," Rachael said, holding up her hands. "I don't want him. I don't want your man. Take him and go."

  "He is obsessed with you! He walks half a world to find you! I cannot let you live!"

  "Put down the musket or I will strangle you with my bare hands!" Broken Horn threatened, furious at his wife's disobedience. "I will have any woman I please and this white bitch pleases me!"

  Pretty Woman shook her head, seemingly dazed. "No. It can't be. I am wife to Broken Horn of the Mohawks." She pulled back the trigger with her thumb. "He will have no other wife, not ever again."

  Rachael braced herself for the point-blank shot of the musket. She knew it would kill her, but she was numb. She couldn't call out, all she could think of was Storm Dancer lying unconscious on his sleeping mat, his life's blood flowing onto the floor. He had wanted to believe in his brother so badly that he had mislaid his trust and for that he would die.

  Rachael saw Pretty Woman's finger flick over the trigger.

  "No!" Broken Horn bellowed as he threw himself between Rachael and Pretty Woman. "Don't kill her! She's mine!"

  The musket ball hit Broken Horn's chest and shattered beneath his rib cage covering Pretty Woman and Rachael in bloody gore. He fell backward under the blast of the black powder knocking Rachael down and pinning her to the floor.

  Screaming in shock, Rachael dragged herself from beneath Broken Horn's shattered body, just as Tuuban and several other braves ripped open the wigwam door.

  Tuuban lifted his bow to his shoulder to kill Pretty Woman, but she had already thrown the musket to the ground and was cradling her dead husband's body, wailing in an eerie voice.

  Dazed, Rachael crawled toward Storm Dancer. She leaned over him, sobbing. There was so much blood. She knew he couldn't possibly still be alive. Without thinking, she took the corner of a blanket and pressed it to the gash in his neck that still flowed freely with blood. "Get help," she cried. "Get Shaakan and Starlight. Storm Dancer is hurt! He's hurt badly!" She pushed back her hair from her face. "Dead maybe."

  Tuuban knelt beside Rachael and pressed his ear to Storm Dancer's chest. He paused for a moment and then lifted his head. "He yet lives. His heart yet beats for you, Rachael."

  She wiped the tears that blinded her. "That's not possible. There's so much blood! He slit his throat!"

  By this time someone had lit the lamp that hung in the rafters and by the light of the candles Rachael could see the deathly pallor to Storm Dancer's skin. His breathing was shallow, his face a mask of gray.

  "Keep holding that tightly," Tuuban said lifting the corner of the blanket from the gash in Storm Dancer's neck and then replacing it. "The bleeding has slowed."

  Rachael looked up at Tuuban in confusion. "He might live? You mean he might be all right?"

  "Stay with him. Shaakan will bring his medicine bag. My friend the Dancer of Storms will not leave you without a fight."

  Only a week later Rachael stood at the head of the line of travoises watching Storm Dancer give final orders before the village began the first leg of their journey. He was pale and he moved slowly, his neck covered in bandages, but he had insisted he was well enough to travel.

  There seemed to be no explanation as to why he had not bled to death except that it had only been a matter of a minute or so from the time Broken Horn had cut Storm Dancer, to the time Rachael applied pressure to stop the bleeding. If it had not been for the fact that Ka-we-ras had seen what happened and cried out, Storm Dancer would never have lived.

  Storm Dancer came slowly toward Rachael, his son's hand in his. "We are ready, Wife."

  "We're ready," she repeated. Looking out over the few wigwams they would leave behind, she shaded her eyes to see Pretty Woman seated before a cold firepit. "Are you certain we should just leave her?"

  Storm Dancer looked back at Broken Horn's widow. She had cut off all her hair until it was nothing but jagged spikes. She had covered her face in ashes and cut off two of her own fingers before Storm Dancer removed all weapons from her reach. Pretty Woman now sat cross-legged before the empty firepit, rocking back and forth and calling in Iroquois to her dead and buried husband.

  Storm Dancer lifted Ka-we-ras onto his shoulder and turned away from Pretty Woman, leading Rachael by the hand. "There is nothing that can be done for her. She has been her own worst enemy. If she is to come out of her madness, it will be on her own. We cannot help her, or feel responsible for her crimes."

  Rachael sighed knowing he was right. "Very well." She smiled, pushing away all thoughts of Broken Horn, of Gifford, of Ta-wa-ne . . . of all the bad things that had ever happened to her. Today was the day to begin anew.

  Rachael turned to Storm Dancer and reached up to stroke his broad bronze cheek. In many ways he still looked the savage to her, but she loved him, more than life itself. "Lead us on, Husband," she said, smiling up at him and their son.

  Storm Dancer leaned down to brush his lips against hers. "You lead."

  "I don't know where we're going."

  "West, Rachael-wife" he teased. "And wherever thou will goest, I will go." He took her hand and lay it on his chest so that she could feel his heartbeat. "Wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people . . . your heart my heart."

  Ka-we-ras clapped his chubby little hands in laughter as his parents sealed their love with a kiss.

  Epilogue

  Spring, 1763

  Somewhere in Ohio Country

  Rachael raced around the wigwam and bolted into the open grassy field with Ka-we-ras and Storm Dancer hot on her heels. The little boy was laughing so hard that he could barely run. Finally his father scooped him up and draped him across his shoulders.

  "Two against one! It's not fair," Rachael protested over her shoulder. She ran barefooted, her hair flowing down her back, through the high grass of the open field as hard as she could, knowing they were gaining on her.

  The land called Ohio country was distinctly different from that of the land near the Chesapeake Bay. Here, the forest was less dense and there were open fields of grassland that seemed to stretch for miles. Here, across the Ohio River, they had settled only a mile from a Shawnee camp. With the help of the pack animals and the supplies bought in Annapolis they had reached their destination healthy and ready to begin a new life far from the dangers of the white men.

  Storm Dancer caught up to Rachael in a few easy strides, and the little boy squealed with laughter when his father caught his mother by the shoulders and twirled her around, forcing her to the ground. Storm Dancer then plucked his son from his shoulders and lifted him down onto his mother's chest.

  "Enough! Enough! You win," she declared, laughing so hard that her sides ached.

  Storm Dancer dropped down onto Rachael, sandwiching Ka-we-ras between them. Laughter bubbled up out of the little boy. Then he spotted an orange butterfly and scrambled out from between his parents to chase it.

  "Don't go far," Storm Dancer warned, lifting up to look out over the waist-high grass of late spring. You'll be lost and I'll have no one to go fishing with me."

  Rachael grasped Storm Dancer by a handful of the leather of his sleeveless vest and pulled him down until his nose touched hers.

  "And what is it you want, Wife?" he growled playfully.

  "A kiss. I demand a kiss."

  His lips met hers and their tongues touched in a sensuous dance of love. "If I am the winner, should I not be making the demands?"

  She laughed, her fingers going to the binding of her leather bodice. "I thought to shed this for the summer," she told him, arching a feathered eyebrow. "What do you
think?"

  He watched her as she pushed back the soft leather to bare her breasts, his dark eyes pooling with desire. He leaned over to touch the tip of his tongue to one dark nipple. "This man could grow used to this."

  She traced the scar that banded his neck. Thoughts of Broken Horn and all that had taken place in the last two years had faded from her mind until they were nothing but a distant, dim memory. "And you won't mind me baring myself to the others?"

  His hand glided over her breast and she sighed, letting her eyes drift shut. "They may look as long as they do not touch."

  "No, no, it's all right, Husband." She grabbed the edges of the unlaced bodice and covered herself, feigning modesty. "You're right. It's best I not take on all the customs of your people at one time."

  Storm Dancer sat up, straddling her and grasped the two edges of the bodice. He yanked them so hard that the seams tore and he ended up with two handfuls of leather.

  Rachael broke into laughter as he leaned over to bury his face between her breasts. The sun felt wickedly warm on her bare flesh and his nearness made her tremble with pleasure. She threaded her fingers through his inky black hair and lifted his head until he was staring directly into her eyes. "Say it," she whispered.

  "I say it a thousand times a day. I am a warrior, a shaman to my people," he said gruffly. "I cannot—"

  "Say it," she whispered, a husky catch in her voice.

  "I love you," he murmured fiercely, lowering his mouth to hers. "I will love you until the heavens come down to lift us, until we become two stars twinkling in the night sky."

  Rachael smiled as her eyes drifted shut beneath the glare of the hot sun and the feel of his mouth. She wasn't certain what heaven felt like but she hoped it would be just like this.

  The End

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