Evelyn had noticed, too, that his arm was clamped about her middle, not higher up or lower down. It held little significance to her until, at one point, when he was leaping a low log, his grip slipped and his arm slid up over her bosom. He instantly jerked it back down.
For an abductor he was being awfully considerate. Evelyn tried to twist to see him better, but he shook her, lightly, and growled words in a tongue with which she was unfamiliar.
From time to time during their flight, Evelyn glimpsed the others. One was a middle-aged warrior, another a woman of comparable age. Husband and wife, Evelyn suspected. The last of her green-clad attackers was a girl not much older than she was, who kept glancing at her with what Evelyn would swear were looks of sympathy.
Then came the point at which the older man and woman separated from the younger woman and the warrior holding Evelyn. By then Evelyn knew help was on the way. She had heard her mother shout her name, and as surely as the sun rose and set, her father and brother would not be far behind.
Evelyn almost felt sorry for her kidnappers. Her father and Uncle Shakespeare were two of the best trackers alive. Everyone said so. As for Zach, he might not be quite the tracker they were, but he once trailed Evelyn over a thousand miles to save her from an enemy. Nothing short of dying would stop her brother from rescuing her.
Now the warrior holding her stopped and turned. So did the girl. Distant hoofbeats had alarmed them. They briefly consulted, and the girl picked up a small boulder and fled in one direction while the warrior took another. When he leaped off a bank into a stream, water splashed Evelyn’s face and dress. To her bewilderment, he eased her higher on his chest to spare her from becoming soaked.
What kind of Indians were these, anyhow? Evelyn wondered. Their green buckskins were unusual. The four were not Crows, not Cheyenne, not Blackfeet, Utes, Arapahos or any other tribe she had come across, that was for sure.
The warrior was moving as fast as her weight allowed, his legs kicking arcs of spray with every stride. His breathing became labored, a sign he was near the end of his endurance.
On the right side of the stream the bank fell away. High grass fringed somber woods. Her captor waded out of the stream, adjusted his hold on her, and wound in among stately spruce. His green moccasins squished for a while and then stopped. Shortly thereafter, he stopped and released her.
Evelyn had no warning. She fell on her side, on her elbow. Pain speared up her arm. Wincing, she twisted to gain her knees and run off but her captor upended her onto her back. She slammed down hard, taken aback by the violence. A sharp retort was on the tip of her tongue.
The warrior loomed over her. He relieved her of both pistols and her knife.
As Evelyn had surmised, he was tall and well-muscled. She had not guessed how young he was. A mane of raven hair fell to his shoulders. In every respect other than his green buckskins, he was just like warriors from every other tribe Evelyn had contact with, except that in all the years Evelyn had lived in the mountains, and among all the tribes she had met, she had never set eyes on anyone anywhere near as handsome.
Evelyn blinked in surprise, not at his features but at her reaction to them. She had no business admiring his good looks. She was his prisoner, for pity’s sake. But his dark, piercing eyes, his fine eyebrows and small but perfect nose, his full cheeks and the set of his jaw, combined to paint a portrait of as attractive a young man as Evelyn ever beheld. She looked away, horrified by the feelings that rippled through her, feelings new and alien and more than a little frightening.
Apparently convinced she would not try to run off, the young warrior stepped back. He had a rifle slung across his back, an ammo pouch and powderhorn slanted crosswise across his chest.
“Consarn me.” Coughing to clear her throat, Evelyn asked, “Who are you? Do you speak English?” He made a chopping motion with his hand, as if to signify he did not comprehend. She tried Shoshone. She tried the few words of Crow she knew. She confidently tried sign language.
The young warrior stood and stared.
“You don’t know sign?” Evelyn was flabbergasted. “Where are you from? The moon?” For some reason that struck her as humorous and she laughed.
Degamawaku of the Nansusequa fought down a wave of admiration. Here she was, unarmed and at his mercy, yet she showed no fear. Her eyes, those wonderful, special, lovely green eyes, were bottomless pools in which he felt himself sinking. With an inner wrench, he tore his gaze away.
“What’s the matter with you?” Evelyn asked. “Are you sick?”
He had gone unaccountably pale.
Dega sensed she thought something was wrong with him. He took another step back, his mind in a jumble. The effect she had on him was disquieting. “Are you a medicine woman?” he asked thickly.
Evelyn yearned to understand. If she could find a way to communicate, she could find out why the four of them had jumped her, and why he had carried her off. She made bold to sit up. When he did not object, she went to stand, but he thrust her own knife at her and she stayed where she was. “Maiku,” she said. All right. Why she spoke Shoshone, when she so rarely did so even to her own mother, was a mystery.
Dega was appalled. He had not meant to jab at her with the knife. His hand had moved on its own. Retreating a few paces, he squatted and set the knife and her pistols on the ground. “I am sorry,” he said, knowing full well she could not understand. “I do this for my father and not for me.”
Evelyn placed her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. Since he was making no effort to harm her, she would patiently await her parents and her brother. The thought jarred her. Zach might shoot the young warrior dead on sight.
Dega saw her head come up and her eyes narrow. He glanced over his shoulder, thinking someone was sneaking up on him, but no one was there. Her green eyes were boring into him like twin lances. “What?” he asked.
Touching herself, Evelyn said her name. She repeated it twice, slowly.
“Ev-lyn,” Dega said. No word in the Nansusequa tongue resembled it in any way. Her name was special, like her eyes. He touched his chest. “Dega,” he said several rimes, then realized he had used his familiar name, the name only his family and loved ones were permitted to use. Everyone else must call him Degamawaku.
“Dega.” Evelyn rolled the name on her tongue. She liked the sound of it. Encouraged by his readiness to share, she smiled, spread her arms wide as if to embrace him, and said warmly, “Friend. Hainja.”
Shock rocked Dega. Among his people, when a man or woman looked the other in the eye and spread their arms as Evelynn had just done, it was a sign of the deepest, most abiding love. She had to have another reason. When she did it a second time, he studied her face, her posture, her whole bearing. He detected genuine warmth, which, in its way, was almost as astounding. How could she be so nice to him after how he had treated her?
“Friend,” Evelyn said yet again. “Hainja” She smiled her broadest smile to accent her point.
Dega managed a thin smile in return. He did not know what she expected of him, and that troubled him. It could be she wanted him to let her go. But he intended to hold her there until dark, then take her to the clearing where his family was camped. That was the plan his father had come up with in case any of them were separated from the others.
His father. Dega had always been an obedient son. He was devoted to his parents, as custom called for. Among some tribes the old were left to fend for themselves but not among the People of the Forest. It was Nansusequa tradition that the aged and infirm were to be looked after by their children.
Dega diligently did all his parents asked of him. But this latest, the idea his father had of wiping out the valley’s inhabitants so that their family could claim the valley as their own, was not the Nansusequa way. It was not Dega’s way. He could never kill this gentle girl in front of him. He liked her too much.
Yet another bewilderment. How could he like her so much, Dega asked himself, when he hardly knew her? But he
could not deny she did something to him. She stirred him, deep down, in a manner no one had ever stirred him before. Stirred him so greatly that he broke out in a sweat, which in itself was rare.
Dega started to raise a hand to his brow. Maybe he was sick. He did not feel hot but he might have a fever. He certainly felt warm. That would explain his erratic thoughts, his erratic emotions. He was not himself. He only thought he liked the girl. Then she smiled again, and those green eyes of her lit with a glow he could not fathom, and he knew as surely as he had ever known anything that he did indeed like her, and liked her a lot.
Evelyn was listening for hoofbeats or shouts. That she had not heard either in a while was mildly troubling, but she still expected her parents or her brother to eventually appear. I will be patient, she told herself. I will show this warrior that I am the friendliest person who ever lived, and he will not want to hurt me. To demonstrate her friendliness she began to point at things and say what they were, in Shoshone, not English.
Dega enjoyed the diversion. It took his mind off why the girl was there and what his father would want done to her. When she pointed at things and said their names, he would point at them, too, and say what they were in his tongue.
The shadows slowly lengthened. They sat and smiled and taught one another the languages they spoke, or, in Evelyn’s case, one of the two languages she had learned as a child but infrequently used until today.
Neither realized how long they sat there. Time was suspended on the mutual buoyance of their interest. Their real interest, not their languages, which were a convenient means to an end.
Then Evelyn’s stomach growled. They both heard it. She squirmed with embarrassment, and Dega was upset that he had let her go hungry for so long. As her captor, he was responsible for her needs.
Dega stood. He touched his own stomach and then his mouth and said, “I will find food for you. Come.” He beckoned.
Evelyn understood and rose. He turned to lead her into the woods and she pointed at the grass at his feet. “What about those?”
The flintlocks and her knife. Dega had forgotten about them. He picked them up. He would rather have his hands free, but they were hers and he could not leave them there. She came up beside him and Dega tensed, thinking she would try to take them from him. But no, she merely walked at his side. Out of the corner of his eye he drank in the vision of her beauty. She was exquisite, this captive of his.
The stream was their first stop. Dega stood guard while Evelyn drank and washed her face and hands. When she was done, they bore west along the stream and had gone only a short distance when a perplexing sight brought him up short.
Something had crossed the stream. In the soft earth were its tracks. Tracks the likes of which beggared belief. They were small circles, with no pugs or claws. The thing had approached the water on the other side, forded, and come up the bank on the same side as Dega and Evelyn. Where it came out of the water were two furrows in the soft earth, in addition to the circles.
Evelyn remembered the circles near the cabin. “What are those?” she said out loud. She hunkered to examine them.
Dega joined her. His shoulder brushed hers as he squatted, but she did not seem to mind. He ran a finger along a furrow and it came up slick with mud. The tracks were fresh. So fresh that whatever had made them must be nearby.
Straightening, Dega scanned the forest. He had not realized it before, but the birds and lesser animals had fallen silent. Unease crept over him but he shook it off. He was a man, not a boy, and men did not succumb to nerves.
Evelyn was peering into the thick tangle of vegetation, too. She had that feeling again, that feeling of being watched. Experience had taught her not to ignore it. She followed the tracks up the bank. At the top the furrows disappeared and circles led into the undergrowth.
Going back to the water’s edge, Evelyn examined the furrows more closely. They were not tracks, as such, but more like drag marks. Each was about the width of one of her knees. She bent low to the ground. She found no claw marks or pads but she did find something: a few gray hairs. Delicately plucking one with her fingernails, she held it up in the sunlight. Her father or Shakespeare might be able to tell what kind of animal the hair came from, but she could not. To her, hair was hair. Gray could be anything from a wolf to a rabbit. She looked up. Dega was watching her. “Here,” she said, and held the hair out to him.
Dega carefully took it. Their fingertips brushed, and a sharp tingle shot up his hand and half his arm. By the way Evelyn jumped, he knew she had felt it, too. He smiled self-consciously, then inspected the hair. Evelyn stared expectantly at him, apparently hoping he could identify it. He used one of the words she had taught him earlier. “Gai.” No.
They had delayed long enough. The sun was low in the west and Dega wanted to reach the clearing before dark. He turned to lead the way, and his arm tingled again, although in a different manner, when Evelyn grasped his wrist. He regarded her quizzically. She motioned at the strange tracks, then at the woods, and said words he did not yet know.
Evelyn was trying to tell her handsome captor about her feeling of unease. “Danger,” she said, and slid a finger across her neck as if she were slitting her throat.
Dega gazed into the dense woodland. So she felt it, too. He set off and she fell into step beside him, walking so close their arms rubbed now and again. It made it hard for him to concentrate. Which was silly. It was only an arm.
The horizon swallowed the sun. Soon twilight shrouded the mountains.
Dega came to the clearing, only to be knifed by disappointment. It was empty. The embers of the fire were cold. No one else had arrived yet. He sat on a log and pondered what to do. He was worried. His parents and Teni should have been there by now.
The dead fire and the log and other signs told Evelyn this was where Dega and the others had been camped. The charred coals were directly under the overspreading boughs of a pine so that when smoke rose it was dispelled by the branches and could not be seen from far off.
Evelyn did not sit down. Her unease had grown. Since finding the tracks by the stream, she’d had the impression, vague but persistent, that they were being followed. That they were being stalked. She touched Dega’s shoulder and gestured at the dark wall of encircling vegetation, a wall that would soon be pitch black.
Just then, so clear they both heard it, a twig snapped.
Dega was erect in a twinkling. He moved toward the edge of the clearing. Twigs did not break by themselves. Something was out there. That was what the girl had been trying to tell him. It could be anything. Deer. An elk. A porcupine. Or it could be whatever had made the tracks by the stream.
Evelyn strained her eyes for a hint of movement. She rose onto the tips of her toes, she crouched, but nothing. She was starting to rise when she glimpsed—or thought she glimpsed—a pair of eyes reflecting the last of the fading light. They were almost as low to the ground as she was. Mere slits that somehow filled her with dread so potent, she froze. Then she tilted her head to try to see them better, and the slits were gone.
Dega was watching Evelyn as much as the woods. He liked watching her; her exquisite face, her unconscious grace, the vital sheen to her hair. He saw her start, and instantly squatted to try and see what she saw. “Hagai?” he whispered, which was the Shoshone word she had taught him for “what.”
Evelyn forgot herself and answered in English. “Something. I don’t know. An animal, I think.”
Her tone, ripe with apprehension, affected Dega. Clasping her arm, he stepped back from the trees until they were in the middle of the clearing. Their eyes met yet again, and Dega came to the decision he had made when he first saw her but which he had denied ever since. He held out her knife and pistols.
Evelyn looked at them, then at him. “Thank you,” she said softly, her cheeks unaccountably warm. She slid the knife into its sheath. She checked both pistols to verify they were loaded and ready, then slipped one under her belt. “Now let it come.”
; Dega unslung his rifle. Suddenly it did not seem adequate. He wished he had a bow and arrows. With a bow he was skilled. With the rifle he was like a child taking his first steps.
Another sharp crack came out of the woods. Only this one came from the opposite side.
Evelyn and Dega whirled. The click of Evelyn thumbing back the pistol’s hammer was distinct.
Dega pressed his cheek to the rifle. The twigs had been snapped on purpose. Whatever was out there wanted them to know. An animal would never give itself away. “It is a man,” he said aloud.
Night was descending with typical swiftness. Gray became black. Random shadows became an inky soup. Stars speckled the firmament but the moon was absent, and without the moon the dark was thrice compounded. The ink flowed out of the vegetation and enveloped the clearing.
Evelyn could barely see Dega. He was a silhouette, a profile. She sidled closer. So they could protect one another, she told herself.
A rustling sound came from their left. Again they spun. The thing was circling them. Evelyn had heard her father say bears would sometimes circle prey before attacking, but in her bones she knew this was no bear.
Suddenly there was a rush of movement. Something long and thin arced out of the brush. Dega fired. He did not expect to hit it but he did. He heard the thwack of the lead ball, and the long, thin thing fell to the ground almost at their feet.
Evelyn guessed what it was before she bent and picked it up: a tree limb. A limb that had been trimmed of shoots and leaves. It was straight enough and thick enough to serve as a spear but neither end had been sharpened. Throwing it at them seemed pointless. All it had accomplished was to make Dega waste lead.
Then another purpose occurred to her. The flash of Dega’s rifle had shown exactly where they were. Evelyn stiffened and turned to warn him, but before she could open her mouth there came a swish and the fleshy chock of cold steel slicing into human flesh.
Agony exploded in Dega’s right shoulder. With it came the moist sensation of blood on skin, his blood on his skin. He staggered but did not fall. His right arm became so numb, he could not hold the rifle. It clattered as it hit.
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