No Other Man (28 page)

Hawk had given his combatant a chance. His ancient and
traditional enemy slipped down the length of his body and fell dead at Skylar's
feet.

It all happened so quickly. So quietly.

Hawk reached out for her, aware that her hands were bound behind
her back. He plucked her up by both shoulders, spinning her around so he could
cut the rawhide bonds with his knife. He paused for a just a split second.

"You'd nearly worked through them," he said, surprised.

Her knees were wobbly; she was afraid she wouldn't be able to
stand, afraid that tears of relief would suddenly spill from her eyes. But he
spun her back around again, staring at her, assessing her quickly and gravely.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded. "You came just in time."

"I've been here."

"What?" She almost shrieked the word before his
hand clamped down over her mouth.

"I had to wait for a few of them to drift off!" he
whispered in return. "I know that I'm just supposed to up and die for
you, but it wouldn't have done you any good if I would have walked right in and
been shot by the guard."

"All he has is an Enfield!"

"Enfields can kill! Believe me, I've seen a few men
downed by Enfields!" he told her. "Skylar, we have to argue later;
we've got to get out of here now."

He started walking, pulling her along. She stepped upon a
particularly sharp rock, and despite her will to be silent, she cried out
softly. He turned back, staring at her. "I'm sorry!" she hissed.
"It hurt."

"What are you doing barefoot?"

"I was after your stupid mule, remember?"

Something suddenly whistled by her ear. A knife stabbed the
earth by their feet.

"Sweet Jesu!" Skylar breathed. She grit down on her
teeth when Hawk pulled his Colt from the holster at his hips, quickly firing off
several rounds. The reverberations were deafening. A cry in the night assured
her that at least one of the Crow war party had been hit.

She gasped when he swept her up, carrying her then as he
hurried away from the rocks. She swallowed hard as he stepped over the body of
the Crow guard who had been carrying the Enfield.

"Duck!" she suddenly heard.

Sloan was before them, falling to his knees. Hawk went
instantly downward to a hunching position. An arrow flew past them, slamming
into a tree beyond. Sloan, still on his feet, fired off several shots. Skylar
heard a shriek of pain. Hawk spun around, his Colt raised, just in time to stop
the warrior who was about to pitch his entire weight against him. The man went
down in absolute silence. Another warrior followed behind him, tomahawk
raised. Hawk fired again. The second warrior fell upon the other.

Skylar closed her eyes tightly, biting back a wave of purely
hysterical screams. God, the death and mayhem seemed to be all around her.

"Do we finish it?" Sloan asked.

"Do we have a choice?" Hawk queried in return.

Still clinging to Hawk, Skylar began to shake. She raised
herself against him, grabbing his shoulders. "Let's go, let's just
go—"

"Skylar, they'll come after us. All
the way," Hawk told her.

"There can just be two men left alive. They—"

"Skylar, these Crow are very far from home. They were
pushed from these lands a long time ago. They're on a war party. They've come
for something. They may not be alone. There could be many more warriors who
might join up with them. Perhaps they've come to raid the whites—to most
Indians, there is far more profit in stealing from white settlements than
there is in raiding other tribes."

"Let's just go—" she insisted again, but Sloan cut
her off.

"Skylar, you don't understand. You humiliated that warrior
who accosted you by the brook. You struck him. That was like a woman counting
coup against a brave. He's dead, but sometimes humiliation is worse than death.
Don't you understand? They might come after you until they've found a way to
take you."

Her agreement or disagreement didn't matter any more. Arrows
suddenly began to land again, so near them that her skirt was shot through and
pinned to the ground. Despite herself she screamed, only to find Hawk pressing
her down to the ground and rising over her. He didn't get off a shot; one of
the Crows threw himself against Hawk and then went rolling into the dust and
earth.

"Stay down!" she heard Sloan command when she would
have risen. The second surviving warrior came catapulting over her, striking
Sloan. All four men were now engaged in life-and-death battles, rolling in the
earth around her.

She couldn't stay down any longer. She jumped to her feet,
then dove back to the earth for Hawk's Colt. How many shots remained? She had
no idea. The gun seemed hot and heavy in her hand. She tried to aim it. She
looked over at Hawk and one brave, Sloan and the other. They all twisted and
rolled so frequently and so fast she was afraid to fire. She might kill one of
them.

Hawk was suddenly on his feet, along with the one brave. They
circled one another. Skylar raised the Colt. Just as the brave went rushing for
Hawk, she fired.

She heard Hawk cursing. The brave was slumped against him.
She shook, thinking she had killed the brave. Hawk pushed the man from him. He
fell on his back and she saw that he had been stabbed in the heart.

Hawk was clasping his arm. She saw him staring at her, but it
was too dark to read his expression.

"I shot—"

"Me!" he announced. "Get down!" he
suddenly commanded.

She did as she was told. She saw her husband's bloodied knife
go whipping past her, just in time to prevent the last surviving Crow from bringing
a rock crashing down on Sloan's head. Sloan, too, had been prepared. The Crow
died with one knife in his back, another through his heart. Staring at him
with horror, Skylar dropped the Colt and backed away, her hands upon her face
as she fought the waves of blackness engulfing her.

"Uh-humm!"

She drew her hands from her face. Hawk was coming toward her,
one hand clasped over his arm. "Did you miss the man trying to kill me—or
was your aim just a little off and you hit my arm instead of my heart?"

She rushed toward him, feeling absolutely hysterical at this
point. She slammed both fists against his chest. "Oh, God, oh, God, how
can you ..."

"Hey! Shh . .. shh ... it's all right, I was teasing. I
think. Skylar, it's all right."

She buried her face against his chest. "It's not all
right. There are dead men everywhere."

He lifted her chin. "Did you want us to be the dead
men?"

She shook her head. "No!" Suddenly, no words would
come. Shaking she threw herself against him again. Over his shoulder, she could
see Sloan collecting their knives from the body of the Crow brave.

"Oh, God," she whispered again. "Can we go?
Can we just go now, please?"

"Not
quite yet," Sloan said. He had come to stand behind Hawk. He touched her
cheek, offering her a dry smile.

"But—"

"We haven't scalped them yet," he told her.

"What?" she cried.

"Skylar, he's teasing you," Hawk assured her.

"Of
course. Neither Hawk nor I have scalped an enemy in almost twenty years."

Hawk
disengaged himself from her. "Skylar, we're going to bury them."

She
looked at him uncertainly. "Indians don't—get buried, do they?"

Sloan
cast Hawk a glance. "Sometimes. Most Plains Indians scaffold their dead,
but occasionally, the dead are buried in shallow graves near cliffs. Not that
that particularly matters at the moment. We don't want what happened here to
be obvious to other warriors who might be meeting up with this war party."

"Oh," she murmured.

"Think
you can watch the horses?" Hawk asked her.

She
nodded. She didn't think that the horses were going anywhere; Hawk and Sloan
just wanted to keep her busy.

She
started to walk with Hawk again and winced, her feet in desperate pain by then.
He picked her up again, telling Sloan briefly that he'd leave her with the
horses and be right back. He carried her to a cove of trees just fifty feet
down a slope. Among the trees stood Tor, Sloan's horse and her own roan. He set
her down atop the gelding. She stared down at him.

"You got the horse back from the Crow?" she said.

He
patted the roan's neck. "Nutmeg is a fine animal," he told her.
"Important to me."

"You
got the horse back before you came for me?" she whispered.

A smile
twitched at his lips. "We didn't know how many braves there were here. And
we didn't want to be followed.

The
Indian ponies are scattered ahead of us; we'll take them to my grandfather's
band along with the cattle."

"You
rescued the horse before you rescued me?" she repeated.

Again, he laughed. "At least I didn't shoot you."

"Oh!"
She was about to ask after his wound, but it was still too galling that the
horse had mattered more than her.

"You went for the horse!" she repeated.

He
shrugged. "Among the Sioux, one man's family may pay a husband with a
horse if one of their kind steals that man's wife. Both are actually
property."

"I should have aimed better!" she warned him.

But he
still smiled. He stood very close to her, his fingers moving very gently over
her injured foot. "Sloan went for your horse and the Crow ponies," he
told her. "I came straight for you. I watched, and I waited. I told you
before, my love, that I'd kill any man, red or white, who threatened to take
what was mine."

She
felt very warm suddenly, still shaken by the events. His voice had been very
intense. She wanted him closer, yet she was suddenly so afraid in a different
way that she wanted to back off as well.

"So,"
she murmured lightly, "did you kill them for me, or for the horse?"

He
reached up, touching her cheek. The moonlight caught his eyes, and they
glittered strangely against the rugged lines of his handsome features.

"Both, my love," he murmured. "Both."

He
turned and left her, ready to join Sloan for their burial detail.

Sixteen

When they rejoined Willow, he had moved their camp farther northwest
and alongside a different little stream. The eight Crow ponies they'd taken
were tethered with their own, and the cattle were gathered in a makeshift
corral.

The
coffee was perking away. They had Meggie's biscuits, along with a few
waterfowl Willow had snared. Skylar also took a huge sip from the bottle of
brandy Hawk had handed her. When they had finished eating, Willow on watch all
the while, she realized that Hawk was staring at her, smiling slightly.

"Smudge on your nose," he told her.

She
lowered her lashes, biting her lip. Smudge everywhere, she thought. Her
clothing was torn and dusty.

"Stream's
just about thirty feet down that way," Sloan said.

"Want to wash up?" Hawk asked her.

She nodded, rising.

"Want some fresh clothes?" he asked her.

"I brought my own," she told him.

"Ah,"
he murmured, nodding. She thought that he was smiling again. She pointed to her
blanket bundle, lying now near a tree next to her roan's saddle.

"Allow me," Hawk said, going for
the bundle. He took her arm. Sloan, nibbling at a blade of grass, lay back
against his own saddle, smiling slightly as they left.

When they reached the stream, Skylar knelt down, sliding her
fingers into it. She shivered. The water was cold.

Hawk was behind her. "You don't have to douse yourself
in it," he told her, handing her the bar of sweet-scented soap he'd taken
from her bundle.

She shook her head strenuously. "I do!" She could
still feel the touch of too many hands upon her. Maybe he couldn't understand
that. Maybe he could.

She stood, stripping quickly in the cool night, and plunged
into the water. Gasping and shivering, she scrubbed herself with the soap. Hawk
waited beside the stream with a blanket. When she couldn't stand it anymore,
she rose.

He clasped her with the blanket, wrapping it around her and
pulling her close to him. Despite the warmth and the comfort he offered her,
she was shivering wildly.

"There were so many dead men!"

He sighed, running his fingers over her hair. "We are
warrior societies," he told her. "Crow boys grow up knowing that
they will fight, that they might meet death in battle or on raids. They are a
very brave enemy. Sioux children are also taught that they must fight their
enemies. Neither are they afraid of death."

"They are harsh societies."

"It can be a harsh world, Skylar. I entered a white war
where brothers fought brothers, fathers might have faced their own sons. Can
our battles on the plains be any more harsh?"

She fell silent, then whispered, "I was so afraid."

"It's over."

"The one with the black-painted face. He might
have—"

"He wouldn't have. Skylar, I was there. Yes, I was
watching, taking care. Assessing their strength and trying to give Sloan time
to get the ponies. But I was there. No

matter
when he might have tried to touch you, he couldn't have done so. He was doomed
by his very interest. Come on, let me help you get dressed. Sloan will take
second watch, but I must take third. We need to get some sleep."

She was
still cold, but she managed to stop shivering long enough to let him help her
slip into the new chemise, pantalettes, and dress. He noticed the red rings
chafed into her wrists by the ropes. He pressed his lips against the pulse at
one of her wrists and then at the other. "Do they hurt?"

She
shook her head, pulling her hands back. "What about you—where I shot
you?"

He
smiled, shaking his head. "Flesh wound. You barely grazed me."

"Let me see it."

He
sighed, pulling back the ripped flap of his shirt. She had just grazed him, but
there was still a nasty gash on his arm.