Savage Tempest (8 page)

But the loathing in Blanket Woman's eyes made Joylynn think better of offering her anything. Probably, Blanket Woman would laugh at her for trying to be kind. She seemed the spiteful sort, someone that Joylynn could never like.

“Watch what you are doing,” Blanket Woman snapped as she paused. They were digging the earthen wall with hoes made of bone, stopping occasionally to carry away bowls full of earth. “If you do not do this in the right way, the wall will tumble back down and we will have to start all over again.”

Joylynn paused and gave Blanket Woman a wary stare, taking time to wipe the perspiration from her brow. She could feel the wetness of her hair as it clung to her neck. Her dress was soaked and clung
to her body, causing Joylynn to be afraid that someone might notice the slight swell of her belly.

She kept pulling the dress away from herself, but she was afraid that Blanket Woman was astute enough to notice her pregnancy.

“Are we almost through?” Joylynn asked, feeling bone-tired and sleepy.

She used to be able to ride all day, even into the night, without stopping to eat or rest.

Now? Because of her pregnancy, she could hardly go a few hours without needing both!

“
Ho
, we are almost finished. It should not take long now,” Blanket Woman said, also wiping sweat from her brow. “Soon we will lay hides at the bottom, and the sides will be lined by grass to keep the contents dry.”

Joylynn noticed that the cache was shaped like a bottle with a narrow neck, and decreased in size toward the top.

“To load the cache, a hide will be laid out near the pit so that one end will hang over the mouth. I will sit there while I place the harvest inside,” Blanket Woman said, resuming digging and nodding to Joylynn to do the same. “Large baskets of corn will be placed there as well as many strings of braided corn. Also there will be a number of strings of dried squash. The braided corn will be laid on the floor and along the sides of the cache, the shelled corn will be placed inside that, and squash will be inserted in the middle.”

She paused, wiped sweat from her brow, then resumed digging and talking as though she felt the need to talk to forget the drudgery of the moment. “After the cache is full, a circular cover made of thick skin from the flank of a bull buffalo will be placed over the top,” she said. “Next I will lay down a layer of dry grass, and over this I will place puncheons, which are strong planks designed to make sure that if a horse steps on the cache, he will not go through it. Over the puncheon I will place packed earth, and above this, ashes and refuse to disguise the location of the cache.”

“Why would you want to disguise where it has been dug?” Joylynn asked, again pausing to wipe perspiration from her brow.

“So that strangers who might come in the night to steal from the Pawnee cannot find it,” Blanket Woman said, looking quickly over her shoulder and smiling when High Hawk came walking toward them.

He stepped up next to Joylynn and gazed at her. He saw her flushed cheeks and perspiration-soaked hair, but said nothing about it. It was good to have her there to help his mother. Blanket Woman seemed older of late, and not as able to do things as she did only a moon ago.

“And so there you are, sweat-free, doing nothing, while your mother and I are scorching hot from digging this damnable cache pit,” Joylynn blurted out as she placed her left fist on her hip and
glared at High Hawk. “I see now why you brought me to your home. I am to be your slave.”

“No, I did not bring you here to be a slave,” High Hawk said, impressed by her fiery spirit. He was amazed that she would stand up to him, her captor, when she had no idea what he might do to her for her defiant attitude. He gestured toward his mother, who had again paused to wipe sweat from her brow. “You are just doing what all Pawnee women do, and they are not slaves; or would you call my own mother a slave?”

“Well, yes, I would,” Joylynn snapped back. “And must I remind you that I, Joylynn, am not Pawnee!”

He gave her a half smile, then walked away and entered the huge council house at the edge of the village, while Joylynn turned and gave Blanket Woman an angry stare. Then she went back to helping the elderly woman, because she knew she had no other choice. And the faster she worked and got this pit finished, the sooner she could rest.

After the last of the dirt was carried away and the cache pit was finally finished, Blanket Woman stepped up to Joylynn and took the bone hoe from her. “Go to the river and bathe with the rest of the women,” she said tightly. “I shall join you there soon.”

Joylynn's heart skipped a beat as she gazed at the river, where the other women were already gathered. Then she glanced at Blanket Woman, who was walking away from her with the digging tool.

Finally she looked down at her tummy. If she bathed in the river with the rest of the women, surely they would be able to tell that she was pregnant.

She thought of not going to the river, of returning to High Hawk's tepee instead, but knowing how vile she smelled, she knew she had no choice but to bathe.

“Come with me,” Blanket Woman said as she returned to Joylynn, grabbing her arm. “You will bathe. You will not stink up my son's lodge.”

Joylynn sighed and walked with her until they reached an isolated place in the river where the women were undressed and already in the water.

She stepped back from Blanket Woman, who was removing her own clothes, but Joylynn still made no move to unfasten her dress.

“You . . . will . . . bathe!” Blanket Woman snapped as she glared at Joylynn. The older woman stood there before her unashamed, totally nude. She grabbed the hem of Joylynn's dress and started to raise it up over her head, but Joylynn yanked it away from her.

“I refuse to go nude in the water with you women,” Joylynn said, then ran into the water fully clothed.

She saw the incredulous looks the women gave her, but she ignored them and splashed herself with the wonderfully refreshing cool water. She dipped her hair down into it and rubbed her fingers through the wet strands.

She was the last one out of the water, for she was
truly enjoying the coolness and refreshing wonder of it.

When she finally left the river, she went back to High Hawk's tepee, glad that he hadn't returned yet.

She hurried out of her wet clothes and dug inside her travel bag, taking from it a clean dress. She removed her hairbrush from her bag and brushed her hair until it lay neatly over her shoulders, then shoved the brush back inside the bag.

Feeling so tired and sleepy, she spread out a roll of blankets at the back of the tepee, away from the fire, and lay down. Gratefully she breathed in the fresh air coming from where the lower part of the buckskin hide had been rolled up.

Then she noticed another change. While she had been gone, High Hawk had removed all of his weapons from the lodge. He had probably taken them to his parents' tepee for safekeeping. She supposed he had thought better of leaving them so handy for Joylynn's use.

She had yet to see her own rifle since she'd arrived at High Hawk's tepee. Surely he had put it, with the rest of his firearms, out of her reach.

Too tired to think any more about these things, she slept for a while, only to be awakened again by Blanket Woman, who'd brought a maize cake and shudock berries for her to eat.

After her meal, Joylynn stretched out again on the blankets and found comfort and solace once more in sleep.

She wasn't aware of High Hawk coming into the tepee and resting on his haunches beside where she lay. She didn't know that he reached a hand to her hair and ran his fingers through it.

“I have never seen anyone so beautiful,” he whispered to himself. He smiled. “Or so feisty.”

He liked both things about this woman. For now, she was his captive. But soon he hoped to change her status among his people!

Light spiraling down through the smoke hole above her awakened Joylynn. She realized that she had slept the entire night, and this time without nightmares.

She would have thought that her nightmares would have doubled as her mind replayed not only images of the highwayman and the rape, but also her abduction by the Pawnee. But in any case, she was glad that she had had a good night's sleep.

She turned slightly to the right, finding a blanket hanging on a rope strung from one side of the tepee to the other. High Hawk must have placed it there last night while Joylynn slept.

She was surprised that he had recognized her need for privacy. She was touched by his thoughtfulness.

Her pulse raced and she tried not to make a sound as she slowly lifted the blanket so she could look beneath it.

Her eyes went instantly to High Hawk, who sat before a newly built fire, his back to her.

He had no idea that she was awake as she slyly watched him while he prepared his hair for the day ahead of him. He was already dressed in a shirt and leggings of fringed buckskin that set off his splendid physique to advantage.

To Joylynn's eyes, he was uniquely handsome, and she had to fight the feelings that were growing within her.

She felt something for him that she had thought she would never feel for a man, especially since the horrible rape.

But she had never met anyone like him before . . . noble, gentle, and thus far, a gentleman as far as she was concerned. The blanket he had hung between their sleeping quarters proved just how gentlemanly he was toward her, making her almost forget that she was his captive.

She continued to watch him as he smoothed his thick, raven-black hair back from his face with deer marrow, then slid a beaded headband in place.

She drew in a quick breath, giving herself away. Her eyes met and held High Hawk's as he turned and found her there, obviously watching him.

But he didn't have a chance to say anything, for a woman's voice outside the tepee distracted him. “I have brought food for you and your captive.”

He opened the entrance flap and thanked the woman as he took the platter of food from her.
Bringing it inside, he set it down on blankets spread out before the fire.

High Hawk turned toward Joylynn, who was still watching him. He smiled and beckoned with a hand. “Come. Sit and eat with me,” he invited.

Dressed in the same clothes she had put on immediately after her bath in the river, and very aware of the wrinkles in her dress, Joylynn rose and sat down beside the platter of food, while High Hawk sat on the other side.

She eyed it all hungrily, seeing an assortment of vegetables, small flat cakes and fruit.

As High Hawk dished out the food on separate wooden plates, Joylynn hurriedly ran her long, slender fingers through her hair in an effort to remove the tangles from it.

High Hawk glanced quickly at her as he prepared their plates, wishing it were his fingers moving through her hair. He recalled how soft it was last night when he had taken the liberty to touch it while she slept.

He had ached to do more than that. He had wanted to kiss her!

But he was an honorable man and he would not take advantage of a woman as she slept, even if she
was
his captive. He knew most of his warriors would feel they could do as they pleased with a captive. But he wasn't just anyone. He was a man who would one day be a proud Pawnee chief. And he wanted the respect that was due an honorable, proud chief.

He wanted
her
respect!

Joylynn had not noticed High Hawk's longing glances. She was oblivious to everything but getting food into her stomach.

She took a plate from him and ate. As soon as her hunger abated, Joylynn eyed him cautiously.

“Has your father returned from the buffalo hunt yet?” she blurted out, bringing his eyes quickly to her. “I know that your mother was worried. I'm sure you were, too.”

Surprised by her sudden question, and her apparent concern about whether or not his father had returned, High Hawk paused in his meal and gazed into her beautiful green eyes.

Then he shook his head slowly back and forth. “No,
Ahte
has not arrived home yet,” he said. He set his plate aside without finishing all the food on it.

He glanced over his shoulder at his closed entrance flap, and then into Joylynn's eyes. “I am worried,” he admitted. “Yet I have known my father to be gone for seven sleeps when hunting the buffalo. Surely he is all right now, as he has always been before.”

“I hope he is all right,” Joylynn murmured. She popped a blackberry into her mouth and enjoyed the tantalizing juices as she chewed.

Then she pushed her plate aside and gazed at High Hawk again. “Your mother and you have talked of your one brother,” she murmured. “Are there any other brothers or sisters?”

“Our family numbers four,” High Hawk said. “Only two sons were born to my
ahte
and
ina
. My brother, the older, has taken much time from my
ina
, because he was born with a twisted back. It is sad that he cannot do as others his age do. But I have tried to make up for it by taking him with me whenever possible.”

“I'm sure he appreciates it,” Joylynn said, finding it odd to be sitting there discussing such things with the man who was her captor.

But the longer she was with him, the less she felt like a captive.

It was as though she were just there as a friend, discussing things and enjoying his company.

But it was foolish to think that way, for she knew that soon he would be giving commands about the things he wanted her to do.

Yesterday it was helping to dig the cache pit.

Today? She hated thinking what the chores might be!

“I will always remember how my brother watched as I learned the skills of a warrior,” High Hawk said softly. “Before I was twelve winters of age, I was assigned to stalk a deer. My brother tried to join me, but found it too hard and had to return home.”