Savage Skies (2 page)

“I am very aware of all of this,” Blue Thunder said, slowly nodding his head. He moved his hand from Gray Eyes' shoulder. “Now is the time to look forward, not backward.”

“I should have listened to you about the smallpox,” Gray Eyes said tightly. “I never should have gone to that trading post, but the hunt seemed too good to ignore. I had the best pelts I'd seen in many moons. So did all of my warriors. Their pride matched mine. We were blinded by that pride, my friend. Now many of those valiant warriors are no longer with us.”

“You must leave behind such regret and look forward to the future,” Blue Thunder encouraged. He gazed intently into his friend's eyes. “Where there is hope, there is a way. I will do everything I can to help you build on that hope.”

“Blue Thunder, my best friend in the world, instead of bringing my people great riches, I brought them the greatest misfortune,” Gray Eyes said thickly. “Even more devastating than war! My people have gained nothing by intimacy with whites but disease and heartbreak.”

“Smallpox has destroyed the lives of many people with red skin,” Blue Thunder said, slowly nodding. “Like you, too many of our people chose to ignore the dangers of associating with whites. The price paid has been hard to bear.”

“I am grateful I had a friend such as you to help in our time of trouble,” Gray Eyes said. He placed a hand on Blue Thunder's muscled shoulder. “You have always been a true friend. How can I ever repay you for such friendship?”

“No payment, or thanks, is needed,” Blue Thunder said as Gray Eyes slowly lowered his hand from his shoulder. “
Hakamya-upo
, come. Come with me now. I will go outside and announce a quick council. We will meet and discuss how we can get the best of the renegades. Big Nose has been a thorn in my side for too long. Some even say he was the one responsible for the death of my wife. It is time for him to be stopped.”

“
Ho
, it is time to rescue my warriors,” Gray Eyes said, stepping from the tepee with Blue Thunder. “I have prayed to
Wah-con-tun-ga,
the Greatness who looks down over us all, that he will help make the wrongs suffered right.”

“After our council we will leave to track down Big Nose and those who follow him. We will bring home the warriors taken by them,” Blue Thunder said, walking alongside Gray Eyes to the center of the village. There, Blue Thunder would make his announcement about the council and why it was being held.

He turned to Gray Eyes. “We will also retrieve your horses,” he promised.

“
Pila-maye
,” Gray Eyes said, humbly thanking Blue Thunder.

I believe love, pure and true,
Is to the soul a sweet,
Immortal dew.

—Townsend

A cool breeze wafted through the bedroom window, fluttering the sheer curtains over the bed as Shirleen Mingus folded clothes, then slid them into her embroidered travel bag.

A keen sadness swept through her at the thought of what life was forcing upon her. After traveling from Boston with her husband and three other families to settle in Wyoming, Shirleen was now planning another journey. She wished she were back where she had been the happiest.

And that had been before she had met and wed her husband, Earl.

While courting Shirleen, he had been a consummate actor, for he was nothing like the man he'd appeared to be when she had accepted his hand in marriage.

Even her parents had been fooled.

Although they had not wanted their
seventeen-year-old daughter to move so far away, fearing they would never see her again, they had felt satisfied that she would have a good husband who would treat her with love and respect.

She would never forget those last moments with her papa. He had run his fingers slowly through her long, red hair as he peered through tears into her green eyes, saying that he feared the long journey out west would be hard on her because she was so petite. He had called her his tiny, pretty thing, so slender that he could place his hands around her waist, his fingertips meeting behind her.

But when she had reassured him that the man she was marrying loved her with all of his heart and had vowed to protect her, and that she had no doubt he was capable of both things, her father had given his final blessing.

Now she was twenty-one and had learned the hard way just how wrong she had been about the man she'd married. He had been abusive to her ever since they'd arrived in Wyoming, taking the belt to her at every opportunity. He beat her when he found the slightest fault in anything she did around the house, or with their daughter Megan. He believed she would never leave him because her parents were too far away for her to flee back to their protective, loving arms.

But Earl was wrong. At this very moment, while Earl was on his way to the trading post with his two neighbor friends, Shirleen was
taking advantage of this opportunity to flee from someone she considered a madman.

She was going to escape this life she abhorred.

She was not sure where she would go, for she did not have the money to travel back to Boston. But no matter what, she must flee this man who she feared might one day kill her.

The dear Lord above would guide her to a better, safer place.

Her Bible, her prayers, and her daughter were all that had kept her going these past months when Earl had beaten her daily, all the while using foul curse words that their daughter Megan overheard.

Now and then, the sweet child used one of those words herself because she had no idea that it was wrong to speak them. Her papa had said those words. That made it alright in her young mind.

A tugging at the skirt of Shirleen's dress brought her out of her deep thoughts.

She turned and gazed down at her four-year-old daughter Megan. The child's blue eyes and golden hair had been inherited from her father, while her tininess had come from her mother.

Shirleen had been married at the age of seventeen and had become with child soon after, while on the grueling trip to Wyoming.

A small grave had been left beside the road on the day Shirleen's abused body aborted that first child.

While their traveling companions were fetching water from a creek, Earl had taken exception
to her soft complaint about the heat. He doubled his right hand into a tight fist and hit Shirleen so hard that she had fallen from the wagon, landing on her stomach.

Within the hour she had aborted the child and had learned what the word
hate
meant, although she had been taught that hatred was sinful.

But she had hated Earl from the first time he'd hit her right up until this morning when he had given her the usual punch before setting out for the trading post.

Their friends had never learned what sort of man Earl was, for he had put on a good show, appearing to be the most thoughtful of husbands while they were around. But he treated Shirleen like a punching bag when they were alone, when he was not lashing her with his horrible belt.

“Mama, can I go and play with the baby chicks? Can I?” Megan asked, her blue eyes wide as she gazed up at Shirleen.

Seeing the innocence of her child, Shirleen swept her daughter into her arms. Megan was one of the reasons Shirleen knew she must leave. Earl had never beaten the little girl, but Shirleen had no doubt that he would once Megan was older. She and her daughter must be far away from him before that happened.

“Oh, how I love you,” Shirleen murmured as she gave Megan a soft hug. “You are all that I have in this world, and I must protect you, darlin'. We are going to leave soon, Megan. We
are going on an adventure together. We are going on that adventure today.”

“Papa not go?” Megan asked, stroking her tiny fingers through her mother's long, red hair.

“Papa not go,” Shirleen said, nodding. “But that is alright. We will have fun without him.”

“Can we take the baby chicks with us?” Megan asked, searching her mother's eyes.

“No, I don't think so,” Shirleen murmured. She fought back the tears that came so easily these past days at the thought of what she must do, and the dangers of doing it.

They lived in a wild land, where renegade Indians roamed and killed every day.

But that was the chance she must take in order to survive. She was sure that one day Earl's meanness would end in her death.

What then would become of her precious daughter?

The thought of Megan living alone with such a man as Earl turned her insides cold. He was capable of all sorts of cruelty.

“But I love the chicks, Mama,” Megan whined. “Don't you?”

“Yes, but I love you more, and you are all that I want to take with me on our exciting journey,” Shirleen said, still trying to make the trip ahead sound like fun to her child.

“Can I go now and play with the chicks?” Megan asked, squirming out of Shirleen's arms.

Shirleen pushed herself up to a standing position, placed a hand at the small of her back, which ached from her morning beating, and
nodded. “Yes, you can go now and see the baby chicks, but be careful when you pet them,” she said softly. “Like you, they are tiny and fragile.”

Shirleen walked Megan from the bedroom to the front door of their four-room log cabin.

“Wait, Megan,” she said. “It's cool this morning. You'd better wear a wrap.”

She reached for a sweater she had recently finished knitting for Megan. As Megan had watched, Shirleen had embroidered tiny baby chicks on the upper left side of the sweater.

She knelt down and placed the sweater on her daughter, securing the top button, then stood and watched Megan run from the house, squealing with delight at the prospect of holding one of the tiny chicks again.

Not trusting anything her husband did these days, Shirleen peered from the door to check that the front gate was closed so that her daughter could go no farther than the yard.

She sighed with relief when she saw that Earl had latched the gate.

Now Shirleen must hurry to finish packing. The time had finally arrived. She was actually going to flee this marriage she so despised.

These past two days, it had been difficult to find moments to prepare for her departure without Earl becoming aware of it before he left for the trading post.

But she had managed to prepare a bag of provisions, which included food, clothing, blankets, and other necessities. She had hidden
them beneath her bed, ready for the moment when she would leave.

She knew that she must travel by the fastest means possible in order to get as far as she could before her husband found her missing. Consequently, she had chosen to make her escape on horseback. Using a buggy would slow her down too much.

She had made a little sack from leather to put her daughter in, which would hang from the side of the horse, while on the other side she would fasten their sack of provisions.

Breathless now that the moment was finally at hand, Shirleen hurried to the bedroom and fell to her knees beside the bed. Her hand trembled as she reached beneath the bed and pulled the rest of her belongings from beneath it.

Her heart pounding, she secured a shawl around her shoulders, a bonnet on her head, then gazed at a rifle that she knew she must take with her. Who was to say who or what might become a threat?

Although she did not know how to fire a rifle, she knew that just having a gun would provide some protection. Most men would leave her alone if she was pointing a rifle at them.

As for wild animals, she'd just have to pray that she could shoot the rifle well enough to scare them away with the report of the firearm.

She grabbed it, then stepped out on the porch with Megan's travel bag and her own, and the sack of provisions.

She sucked in a deep breath and felt the color drain from her face when she saw that the front gate was no longer closed, but gaping open. She also saw that the baby chicks were running free all over the yard.

Worst of all, Megan was nowhere in sight!

Panic filled her, and she dropped her bags and the rifle and ran from the porch, crying Megan's name.

Then she almost fainted from fear when more than one flaming arrow flew past her, slamming into the barn, which soon caught fire.

“Megan!” she screamed as she ran in the direction of the open gate. Sudden whoops and hollers filled the air, while the sound of horses' hoofbeats rumbled like the thunder of a horrendous summer storm.

Tears rolled from Shirleen's eyes at the realization that Megan was gone. Oh, Lord, surely she was dead, and Shirleen was living her own last moments of life.

Suddenly she stopped, frozen stiff, when the Indians, their faces painted with black and red war paint, rode out of the shadows of a great stretch of trees just beyond her fence.

She watched, wild-eyed, as their horses leaped over the fence and thundered toward her.

The last thing she knew was paralyzing fear for Megan. Then a club hit her across the back of her head, rendering her unconscious.

Behind her, and on past her yard, fires raged as the nearby homes and barns were set afire
by the flaming arrows, while people Shirleen had grown to love as much as brothers and sisters fell, one by one, at the hands of the murdering, heartless renegades.

And then there was silence.

More firm and sure the hand
Of courage strikes,
When it obeys the watchful
Eye of caution.

—Thomson

Blue Thunder and Gray Eyes and Blue Thunder's warriors rode across the land. They were searching for any signs of the Comanche renegades led by the fierce and fearless Big Nose. These renegades were giving the Comanche people a bad name, leaving a swath of bloodshed behind them wherever they rode. But Blue Thunder had a more personal reason for wanting to hunt them down. He had reason to believe that they might be the ones responsible for the brutal rape and killing of his lovely young wife, Shawnta.