And One Rode West (51 page)

But the splendor that night seemed as savage as the beat of the drums. Desire soared within him, then burst in a violent climax. He felt her shuddering beneath him, felt the explosion within her. “My love …”

The words escaped him. He didn’t know if she heard him or not. It didn’t matter. He grit his teeth, feeling the final thrust of his body, the last of the little explosions that shook him.

For a long while he held still. Felt the satiation fill his body. He lay down beside her, sweeping her damp, cooling body into his arms.

She started to speak.

“Shh!” he said softly. “We have the night.”

She curled against him. She touched his cheek, but
her eyes would not rise to his. “I can’t!” she whispered. “I don’t think it’s possible to forget this fear long enough to … make love.”

He smiled. “Give me a chance!” he said softly, and they both remembered another night he had made such a request.

She rose up, trying to see him in the flickering gold light. “Jeremy, I know that I betrayed you. I have no right to ask you to understand, but you can’t know the whole of it. Dr. Weland—”

“Is dead,” he told her flatly.

She inhaled sharply. There was a glaze of tears in her eyes. “Then you know? He killed Robert Black Paw.”

Jeremy hesitated. “Robert may still be alive. It’s possible.”

“Oh, God!” she whispered. “Oh, God! I pray that he is!”

Her words were fervent, and he knew that they were honest. He prayed himself that the man who had been his good and loyal friend through so many things might still be alive.

But Robert seemed distant now. The cavalry encampment might have been a million miles away. The real world was here, in this tepee, with the sound of the drums all around them, the flickering fire bathing them in its gold light, and the promise of the violence that would come with the daylight.

“Jeremy—”

He reached up to her, threading his fingers through her hair, amazed himself that he could want her again, so desperately, so quickly.

It might be all that he would have.

“Come here,” he whispered, pulling her head down to his. His lips just a breath from hers, he told her, “We haven’t that long.” He rose, pressing her back down to the furs. But she moaned deep in her throat, protesting, tossing her head. He released her captive lips,
and she looked up at him, her eyes wide and incredibly blue, her hair wild and entangling them both.

“Jeremy, you said that you might die. I don’t understand—”

“I am to meet Eagle Who Flies High in the morning. We will fight for you. With knives.”

She gasped, and a tremble shot through her. “You—you can’t meet him. He could so easily kill you—”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence!”

She shook her head raggedly. “Oh, my God, Jeremy, it’s just that he’s an Indian, a savage—”

“He is a savage? Jesu! You should have seen the way your friend Jeff Thayer killed poor Joe Greenley and the Union soldiers on the pay wagon!”

She swallowed hard, her lashes falling over her eyes. “I didn’t know, Jeremy—”

“It doesn’t matter!” he said roughly. “Not tonight.”

He tried to capture her lips again, but she was speaking quickly. “Don’t you see, it does matter?” she whispered. “Damn you, Jeremy, I don’t want you to die for me! I don’t want you to die for honor, not for my sake. I forced you into marriage, I—”

“Christa! You’re carrying my child!” he reminded her.

She fell silent, inhaling, her lashes once again covering her eyes. She stared at him. “Before you came, I asked Little Flower to make sure that the baby was brought to you in the event of anything happening to me. She would have helped me. She—will help me get the baby back to you if choose to leave now—”

“Christa, if I wished to, I couldn’t leave now. My honor is at stake here, my credibility. I cannot go.”

“But—”

“Christa! The night is short, the hours wane. Dawn will come soon enough.”

“Dawn?” she whispered miserably.

“I have to prepare.”

“Then you have to sleep!” she cried out fervently.

“I will sleep,” he said. He threaded his fingers forcefully through her hair. “I will sleep soon enough.”

“I—”

“Shush, Christa!”

She had no chance to disobey for his lips seized hers firmly, and the kiss was deep and demanding, stealing the breath from her.

When he finally dozed, she stared down at his face, biting her lip, feeling tears form and fall. She jerked back, lest her tears hit his flesh.

If something happened to him tomorrow, she wouldn’t want to live. Once she had loved Liam, but never like this.

“Don’t die!” she whispered. “Please, don’t die! I cannot live without you!”

At long last, she lay down beside him, certain that she would never sleep.

Yet she did.

Jeremy awoke with the first light of the new day. He stared down at the woman entangled with him. Her flesh was so ivory and soft against the brown fur, her hair so black and richly cascading, her face so beautiful. Her abdomen seemed more rounded this morning; in the midst of this chaos, their child grew.

He leaned low against her and reached out and touched her cheek. It was damp. Tears lay upon it.

Tears she had been shedding for him.

He kissed her forehead, then silently drank in the beauty of her curled before him once again. He placed his hand upon her belly and wondered in sudden awe if he had actually felt movement. Life. If he were to die, he prayed God that Christa and his child might live. Gently, tenderly, he pressed his lips against the flesh of her abdomen, and then he rose. He hastily gathered his clothing, then left the tepee, moving on to Buffalo Run’s home so as to prepare.

* * *

When Christa awoke, she heard the chanting and the cheers. She lay staring into space for a moment, and then she remembered.

She leapt up and found her doeskin dress and shimmied into it. She was afraid that Basket Woman would be waiting just beyond the tepee to stop her, but she was too desperate to care. She burst out of the tepee and found that she was not going to be stopped at all.

It seemed that all of the Comanche, Basket Woman included, were attending the fight.

She raced through the line of tepees until she came to a spot before the river where a circle had been drawn in the earth. The men were both there, surrounded by the tribe.

She hardly recognized her husband at first. He was dressed in a simple breechclout and nothing more. His flesh had been so rubbed with bear grease that it seemed nearly as dark as Eagle Who Flies High. When Christa reached the gathering, they were parted by a medicine man who danced between them, chanting and sprinkling herbs upon the ground. He carried a bear paw. He called something out and Eagle Who Flies High stepped forward, presenting his back to the man. The shaman brought the bear claw tearing down the Comanche’s back. Bright streams of blood appeared. Eagle Who Flies High stepped back. He hadn’t made a sound, nor had he flinched. He appeared smug and well pleased with himself.

Jeremy stepped forward, turning his back to the shaman.

Christa cried out.

A hand clamped upon her arm. Dancing Maid was beside her, shaking her head. Christa opened her mouth to speak and then fell silent. She closed her eyes, feeling a numbing terror steal over her. She heard the Comanche give out a roar of approval and she
opened her eyes. Blood was streaming down Jeremy’s back. Her knees grew weak.

“Oh, God!” she whispered. “Please don’t let him die, please don’t let him die …”

A drumbeat sounded. The shaman left the circle.

Knives in hand, Eagle Who Flies High and Jeremy slowly began to circle one another.

Twenty-four

The two men lunged at one another simultaneously. There was a curious sound as their greased bodies smacked together. For a moment, they hovered in the air, then they were down on the ground, rolling. A streak of blood appeared on one arm, and for a moment Christa couldn’t figure out to which fighter the arm belonged. She cried out again. The blood was dripping from Jeremy.

“You mustn’t cry out so!” a voice suddenly warned in her ear. Little Flower was at her side. “Please, Christa, you will distract him.”

She bit her lip. She wanted to go back to the tepee, she wanted to look away. She couldn’t bear to do so, but neither could she bear to look.

The two men tore away from one another. Once again, they were up on their feet. Circling. Stalking.

Jeremy was a cavalry officer, she thought. Trained to fight from the saddle. He was excellent with a Colt and with a saber. But the Yanks and Rebs hadn’t fought their battles with greased bodies and razor-sharp knives.

Jeremy and Eagle Who Flies High appeared to be evenly matched. Both men were superbly muscled, agile, and alert to the slightest movement from the other.
Jeremy was slightly the taller of the two, Eagle Who Flies High was stockier. Christa bit her lip, praying that the Comanche’s added weight would not make the difference in the end.

Eagle Who Flies High made another flying lunge at Jeremy. The two men went down.

The Indians gathered tightly around the circle. Christa couldn’t see anything. She tried to burst through the crowd. “Dear God, dear God, please! I’ll do anything, I’ll tend the sick, I’ll work for the poor—I’ll be nice to Yankees everywhere. Oh, God, please, I’ll never ask another thing of you, just let him live, please, please, let him live …”

She weaved her way through bodies, but was blocked again. She tried to twist through, and fell to the ground, plowing through the dust to land at the edge of the circle where the men were fighting.

A gasp escaped her. Tears welled into her eyes. Jeremy was down. A red gash had been cut across his chest; another sliced his shoulder. His eyes were closed; he lay on his side, prone, in front of her.

“Dear God, no!” she cried in pain and anguish. “Jeremy …”

From some distant fog, he heard her call his name. He fought the pain that seared through him. Fought the exhaustion. So much blood was draining from him now, it was making him weak. He had made a few strikes too. Eagle Who Flies High had to be hurting. Jeremy had cut him soundly about the hip and struck deeply into one leg.

But still, he hadn’t been able to fight the dizziness. Death had not seemed so horrible until he had heard her voice.

He could see her, yes! Christa thought. He was not dead!

His lip curled suddenly. “I won’t fail you, Reb!” he whispered.

He pulled up to his knees. Christa suddenly felt herself wrenched to her feet. She was being held back by one of the braves. She wasn’t going to be allowed to come close anymore.

“Please!” she cried. But the brave did not intend to release her. She could see the men moving again. Circling, coming closer and closer to one another.

A war whoop shook the air. Someone had lunged once again. She could see the bodies entangled upon the earth. Flailing, fighting, one man gaining an advantage, then losing it.

Damn! The bear grease made fighting nearly impossible. Every time Jeremy thought he had a good hold on Eagle Who Flies High, the man slipped between his fingers.

But then, the grease worked to his advantage just as well. He saw the warrior’s dark eyes on him, sizing him up as they both paused.

Jeremy grit his teeth. They were both losing blood. The blood dripping into his eyes from the wound on his forehead was blinding him. He had to win. He could see many things in Eagle Who Flies High’s eyes. The Indian hated him. Hated that he had come to him in peace so many times. He could be a war chief now. As powerful as Buffalo Run. This fight was over many things, with Christa the main prize. And the Comanche coveted the woman.

Eagle Who Flies High had chosen the weapons. He had known his own expertise with the knife. Just as he knew that most cavalrymen were adept with their swords and guns. He had known he had the weight advantage. He had known he was a proud, fierce, good warrior, a strong fighter.

But he hadn’t realized that weapons wouldn’t matter, that fear wouldn’t matter, that nothing would except Christa.

Love could be the strongest weapon of all.

He would not die.

“McCauley!” the Comanche taunted. “Come, McCauley, taste my steel. Taste it deep in your throat!”