Capture the Sun (Cheyenne Series) (13 page)

      
He chuckled. “It may look as though I am bleeding myself, but I am really trying to shave off my whiskers. I do it badly, I'm afraid.” With that he turned and continued to scrape the lathered beard off with sweeping strokes of the razor. Finishing, he wiped his face with a rag and turned back to her.

      
Now his countenance was smooth and hairless. So that was why some white men had great bushes growing on their faces and others had none.

      
“There, you see, smooth as any Cheyenne.”

      
“Until tomorrow,” she said with a smile curving her lips. “You must do this every day? It seems a great lot of trouble.’’

      
He grunted in agreement, then changed the subject, not wanting to dwell on his white heredity. “You must have been deep in thought to be so quiet back there. What troubles you, Wind Song?”

      
Hesitantly she looked up at him. How could she explain it to him? She was already embarrassed enough by what her sister had said yesterday. “Our father grows weaker each day, and I am the elder daughter. It is my responsibility...”

      
“To marry a strong provider to care for your family,” he supplied for her. “And Angry Wolf has offered, yet you do not like him. Surely there are others?”

      
“He has driven them off,” she spat furiously. “There is no other brave enough to stand against that one.”

      
Now. it was her turn to eye him speculatively. When he looked back at her, she lost her boldness and stooped to pick up the sloshing water bucket, refusing to meet his gaze any longer. “I must go. My sister will be calling for me.”

      
Despite his unwillingness to be drawn into Iron Heart's matchmaking, Hawk was attracted to the maiden and sorry for her plight. “Do you come here often—to think?”

      
She smiled dazzlingly as she began to walk toward the clearing, hefting the large bucket effortlessly. “Every morning,” she replied, adding to herself, Every morning from now on.

      
For the next several days Hawk came to the stand of alders to shave each morning, and Wind Song came to fill her water buckets. If accidental and infrequent, such casual encounters between young women and men were permissible under Cheyenne social customs. However, the regularity and premeditation of their meetings was a serious breach of tradition.
 

      
Hawk knew he was taking a real risk of being trapped into an unwanted marriage. Nevertheless, he found Wind Song's innocence and beauty captivating. He was scrupulously careful to keep the relationship on a conversational level, never allowing it to move toward anything physical. But the attraction between them was a palpable thing, and he knew he could have her if he wished to pursue her. Hawk held himself in check, honoring the strict morality of the People and the trusting naïveté of the maiden.

      
“What are white women like?” Wind Song asked him one morning as she lowered her bucket into the clear rushing water.

      
Hawk paused with his razor in midstroke. “Depends. Some are all right, I guess. Some are evil. I am afraid I have spent more time with the bad ones than the good. Fine ladies avoid half-breeds, you see.”

      
Sensing the bitterness in his voice and puzzled about his life in the white world, Wind Song said, “You are the son of a powerful white man. You have been to their cities and schools. You must look like a white man when you dress in his clothes. Why would these women not find you pleasing?”

      
He smiled at her unconscious compliment. “Oh,·I have a good education by Noah Sinclair's standards, but despite it, the easterners know me as an Indian. Anyway, most white women want a rich husband. I have been a drifter and gunman, Wind Song.”

      
“But you are his only son,” she said in puzzlement.

      
Hawk gave her a pitying glance, realizing how little she could imagine of the twisted, hateful ways of the
veho
. “I am his son, but for the last five years of my mother's life he never acknowledged her as his wife. He was ashamed of her. He and I always fought. We never understood or loved one another, even when I was a boy. I never expected to inherit his riches. Neither did any of the women in the territory think I would. I am a terrible prospect for a husband.”

      
“That is not true—” She stopped short as a crimson flush stole up her neck and over her face. “I—I must go. My father will be wanting to sit outdoors on this warm day. I must attend to him.”

      
He moved quickly to her side before she could pick up the heavy bucket and took her lovely face in one hand, tipping her chin up and looking into her green eyes. “I am sorry, Wind Song. I did not mean to embarrass you. You are innocent and honest. You do not know how to dissemble. Stay that way.” He kissed her softly on the lips, a chaste, tender gesture that was over quickly. Then he let her go.

      
Trembling both for what he said and did not say, she scooped up the water and fled with his kiss and warm breath still caressing her mouth.

      
Hawk swore and turned to gather up his gear from the ground. “Time to be moving on. You may just have outstayed your welcome, at least if you don't marry that girl,” he muttered under his breath, uncertain of what he should do, or even of what he wanted to do.

      
He knew he must confront Noah about the railroad land being bought by Circle S men and find out what that greedy fox was after. Then what? He was as confused as ever, still wondering if he had a true home anywhere.

CHAPTER SIX

      
As he rode back to the Circle S, Hawk recalled his last conversation with Wind Song. He had told her he was returning to Noah's ranch to try and help the People escape the ravages of the railroad, making it clear that he was uncertain of when he would return. He could promise her nothing. They had spoken of their mixed blood and what it meant to each of them.

      
“I never knew my grandfather, the Frenchman. At times I do not feel I have any white blood in me, yet I know I am different. My eyes are the strangest color and my hair curls at the ends when the weather is damp.”

      
“Your eyes are beautiful, like a clear pool after a summer rain, like the ocean,” Hawk responded.

      
“You have seen this...this great water—the ocean? I have only heard of it and of the big cities of the whites stretching along its side. And of boats that cross it to more great cities on the other side. Are there really so many tribes of white men?” Her eyes were wide with wonder and curiosity.

      
He smiled sadly. “Yes, too many tribes, all warring among themselves. The only thing they agree on is that all of them should exploit the red men. Sometimes I fear the People are doomed, Wind Song.”

      
“We cannot fit in their world, but you can. Why do you not go and live among them?” She said the words hesitantly, unwillingly, but she needed to understand the answer.

      
He considered. “I have spent my life between worlds, I guess. Part of me wants to be here, part of me cannot let go of the white ways instilled in me as a child. I really do not fit in either society. I still look for my place, I suppose.”

      
“The People will welcome you. You will always belong here, but it is up to you to choose if you want to be Cheyenne. The whites may not give you this choice. Do you want them to?”

      
Hawk pondered her question as he rode back to Circle S. He was sure Noah would never offer him a place in his world on any terms, but with friends like Frank and Kyle the young man already had acceptance. What else was there? Nagging thoughts of Carrie surfaced, her green eyes and Wind Song's melding together. What made him suddenly think of Noah's little fortune-hunting bitch of a wife? He swore and gave Redskin a kick.

      
At least he could salve his conscience about the lovely Cheyenne. Before he left the village, he asked his grandfather to take Wind Song and her sister under his protection when Standing Bear died. With the considerable influence of Iron Heart, she would not be forced into an unwanted marriage with Angry Wolf or anyone else. Of course, Hawk knew Iron Heart hoped his grandson would return to the People and marry Wind Song. The maiden wished it as well. He could feel it during the last weeks they had spent together, but his own desires were in turmoil.

      
What did he want? To be Cheyenne? To be white? An honored warchief or a respectable rancher? He scoffed at the probability of the latter. Beautiful green-eyed Carrie would see to it that he never inherited Circle S. He considered. No, in all honesty, Noah would cut him out of the will whether or not Carrie gave him white heirs.

* * * *

      
It was hot, the sun seeming to stand still in the brilliant azure sky at midday. Carrie shrugged and pulled the sticky yellow cotton blouse away from her breasts where it clung, wet and itchy. “How I'd love a nice, cool bath in that pool,” she thought aloud.

      
After having another argument with Noah, she had ridden all morning. In spite of his rough, loathsome nightly attentions, she still did not quicken. He had questioned her in humiliating detail about her monthly courses, which had begun again last week. Even if she hated him—and she was beginning to—it might be better to conceive a child of his. If she were breeding, at least he would leave her bed and give her peace. He would go back to his whore in Miles City. Noah had already made it clear that he found his wife's lack of response most unsatisfactory and told her she was a child in a woman's body.

      
Carrie shivered in revulsion, thinking of his wrinkled, flabby flesh and those clawlike, cruel hands roaming over her. Suddenly she was cold in the noonday heat. What might it be like if a young, lithe male caressed her instead of her old husband?
What made me think that?
Even though it was only a private thought, Carrie fairly twitched in outraged embarrassment. Of course, it was a thought that frequently haunted her in past weeks.
If only I'd been able to choose my husband, a man my own age...

      
Dejectedly she let Taffy Girl pick her way toward the edge of the water. It was a small lake, one of several on Circle S land, clean and sweet, wonderfully inviting in the heat of an August day. The surroundings were quiet and beckoning. No one would disturb her. Well, why not?

      
She answered her question by quickly slipping off her horse and vanishing into the thick willows by the pool's edge to shed her clothes. Young ladies in the cities of the east were never allowed to swim, but Carrie had learned when she was a child, still living with her parents. Her mother's cousin had a farm in St. Charles, a small town on the Missouri River. Carrie, a mere six or seven to her second cousin Hildy's ten, would slip off to a small pond behind the apple orchard. There Hildy taught her the unladylike art of doggy paddling, diving and playing like a young otter in the warm Missouri water.

      
The clear spring-fed Montana lake prompted memories of carefree childhood.
Why, oh why, did Mama and Papa have to die? Life was such fun back then
. Sighing, Carrie lay back and floated in silent reverie.

      
Suddenly her peaceful haven was disturbed when a horse whickered. It wasn't Taffy Girl who was tied on the opposite side of the alder trees. At once Carrie was alert, silently treading water over to a partially sunken log lodged against a small finger of land that jutted out in the middle of the pool. Behind the leafy cover the log afforded, she could watch undetected and see who had intruded on her private domain.

      
The minute she sighted the big red horse tied by the bank, she knew who it was. Then she saw him next to Redskin, in the process of stripping methodically. His gunbelt and knife already lay gleaming evilly on the lake bank. In wide-eyed wonder she watched as he slipped a buckskin shirt over his shoulders, baring the broad expanse of his chest. Dark coppery skin rippled with lean muscles as he bent over and pulled off one, then the other moccasin. When he straightened up and began to unfasten his breeches, Carrie knew she must look away.

      
But she did not. Never in all her young life had she watched a man undress. When Noah came into her room he did so under cover of darkness, shedding his robe by her bedside. Strange, she had never possessed the slightest curiosity about male anatomy—until now. Certainly she had never before seen such a specimen—in or out of his clothes!

      
Hawk stood still, stark naked in the warmth of the noon sun, then stretched like some barbarous bronzed god, worshiping and being worshiped by the sensual beauty of the hot day. He was long-legged and muscular in a lean, hard fashion, with black curly hair on his chest, forearms, and legs. Quickly she let her eyes skip over the core of his maleness and looked at his face; his eyes were closed as he raised his chiseled features and let the sun caress them. His shoulder-length hair gleamed with raven’s wing luster as he shook it and then began to stride deliberately into the inviting water.

      
In fascination, she watched his body gradually submerge until he began to swim in bold, strong strokes across the water toward the opposite bank. Then suddenly he vanished beneath the water while in the middle of the pool. Surely he was not drowning, she thought in panic! What should she do?

      
Carrie treaded water, holding onto the scratchy log, frantically considering what had happened. Just as suddenly as he had vanished, he surfaced—directly beside her!