Sioux Slave (5 page)

“Tie his ankles, too,” Kimi said, remembering the soldier's attempt to escape before morning. She had told no one about that, but she wasn't sure why. Yes, she was. Because it would mean his death.

Wagnuka frowned and shook her head. “Daughter, you will regret this. It is not seemly to have this naked man in your lodge.”

“Man? Hinzi is only a beast of burden,” Kimi laughed coldly. “What are you so afraid of, Mother?”

The old woman hesitated. “I–I–nothing. I only know that the whites always bring our people grief. To have this one here will surely bring us even more trouble—or more soldiers. We should have killed him so we wouldn't have to worry about him escaping and bring troops back to our camp. I will get us food.” She went outside.

Kimi knelt by the half-conscious man. His thigh still bled a little. It looked bad to her. If it weren't cleaned and bandaged, he could lose that leg, and a slave with a bad leg was useless as a horse with a broken leg. The beast always had to be destroyed. She looked at him lying there, his eyes closed. She had mixed feelings toward him now because of the bravery he had just shown though seriously injured. He was no white devil; he was only a man after all, with all the weakness and wants of any man.

His eyes flickered open and he looked up at her, seemed to struggle to find the words. “Thanks.
Pilamaya.
You saved me back there.”

Kimi shrugged, understanding more of his drawling words that she had thought she knew. She answered coldly in a mixture of Lakota and English. “Don't thank me yet. They were right, you know. A gelded slave is a more submissive, more docile animal to deal with.”

Just a flicker of anger and defiance flashed through his blue eyes and he cursed softly under his breath. “If I ever get loose, you cold chit, we'll see who's submissive and who's the master.”

“What? What did you say?” She must have imagined his words. It was unbelievable that he might still be so arrogant and defiant when he was helpless in her power.

He smiled ever so slightly. “I think you understand more English than you let on.”

Maybe she did. Kimi didn't question that. Many of her people had learned to speak a little. She took a deep breath to control her anger and brushed the hair from her eyes. “You're filthy! I wouldn't keep a pet dog as dirty as you. You will smell up my lodge.” She got a gourd of water and a little of the soap weed the tribes farther to the south had given her. Now she knelt by him and hesitated.

There was pain in his handsome face, but a trace of defiant triumphant still. “Don't be afraid to touch me. I'm tied down and harmless.”

“I am not afraid of you,” she snapped. “If I were, I'd geld you. I still might.”

A flicker of fear crossed his face although he struggled to keep it immobile. Men, she thought. What was it about men that made their manhood more valuable to them than their lives?

She took the soap and a scrap of his ragged uniform and began to wash him. His skin felt warm under her hands. When she washed across his wide chest, his eyes closed, and he smiled ever so slightly and his maleness hardened. Kimi felt her face flush like fire. He was much bigger when aroused than she could even have imagined. She heard her mother coming, grabbed a buckskin garment that had belonged to Mato, threw it across his maleness to conceal it. She could only be thankful that the lodge was semidark.

Wagnuka entered, stared at their captive curiously. “I brought some stewed meat as a gift to you from Gopher. I think he would consider taking you as a second wife when a little time has passed to make it respectable.” She gestured toward the captive with a sneer. “Do you intend to waste it feeding him?”

“He'll hardly be of any value as either a slave or a hostage if we let him starve to death,” Kimi said carelessly as if it didn't much matter to her one way or another.

Her mother snorted in disgust and handed over a steaming gourd. “He doesn't look like he'll survive. No matter. I have told some of the other women I will help with the tanning of some hides.” She left the lodge and Kimi listened to her footsteps fade away.

Kimi held the gourd and took a few bites with the horn spoon. The meat tasted hot and delicious. The soldier watched each bite that went into her mouth.

“You must learn to be obedient,” she said, seeing that he watched her. “If you beg nicely like a puppy, perhaps I will give you a few bites.”

“Go to hell!” Only a muscle twitching in his temple betrayed his anger.

“Very well, you may watch
me
enjoy it.” She answered coldly and continued to eat. The scent of the cooked meat filled the lodge and he sighed and turned his face away. He looked weak and she remembered he was wounded and really should be fed to give him strength, but she steeled herself. When this slave learned to obey his mistress, then she would feed him.

She ate half the bowlful, waiting for him to change his mind and beg. She decided she could be as stubborn as he was. His face looked pale in the semidarkness, but he did not ask. Kimi hesitated. If she did not give him something to eat, in his weakened condition, he might die.

“Here,” she lied, “I find I have more than I can eat after all.” She put her arm under his head, lifted him and held the horn spoon out to him.

He shook his head. “I–I do not beg.”

Kimi was the one who now wished she knew some of the white man's curses so she could use them. “Eat,” she commanded, “before I change my mind and let you starve.”

She held the spoon to his lips, and he wolfed it down so fast she was afraid he would choke. After a while, he looked a little stronger and sighed with apparent relief. Kimi was only too aware of the warmth of his head on her bare thigh where the doeskin shift had scooted up.

He shivered ever so slightly.

“Hinzi, are you cold?”

“I do not beg for clothes, either.” His voice, though weak, was defiant.

“I need a fire anyway for what I must do next.” She went about building a small fire in the fire pit, pulled the bloody bandage off, and looked at the wound. It looked bad. Kimi pursed her lips, shook her head.

“What–what are you going to do?” There was sweat on his face again as if he had already guessed.

“That wound must be cleansed and it keeps bleeding.” She took her knife and laid it with the blade in the flames.

“What do you think you're doing?”

“I'm going to sear that wound to stop the bleeding.”

“No, damn it, no! I want an army doctor!” He tried to pull loose from the stakes that held him, but they were driven deep.

“Stop that! You're making the wound bleed again.”

He only struggled harder and began to curse in that Southern drawl.

“You must not make noise, that will bring everyone running and they might change their minds. I'll try not to hurt you.”

“Don't give me that! You're looking forward to it, you savage little bitch!” He fought the thongs that held his powerful muscles prisoner.

Kimi hesitated, a little afraid of his strength and his fury. If he managed to pull free, his expression told her he wouldn't hesitate to kill her. Yet she had to cauterize that wound. “I'll give you some leather to bite on. White men put bridles on their beasts of burden.”

When he opened his mouth to protest again, Kimi put a leather strap between his teeth and tied it in place even as he tried to spit it out. He would need that leather, she thought almost sympathetically, to keep him from biting his own tongue when that hot steel touched that wound.

“Stop fighting. You don't realize how lucky you are.” Kimi picked up the hot knife gingerly. “The others wanted to geld you; I'm trying to keep you from losing your leg.”

He struggled to get the leather out of his mouth, fighting to break free. His blue eyes flashed fire at her, amid muffled threats of what he would do to her if he got loose.

Kimi hesitated, looking from the wound high on his thigh to the glowing blade in her hand. “You're helpless; you can't stop me. If you don't lie still, I might accidentally put this burning knife on your manhood.”

At those words, he stopped struggling and lay still as death.

Kimi gritted her teeth as she knelt by him and looked first at his naked manhood, then at the bloody wound on his thigh. She wasn't sure she had the nerve to do this, but it had to be done to stop the bleeding. She felt a little sick and swallowed hard. She looked down into his eyes. His virile, muscular body shone wet with perspiration. Very slowly she lowered the glowing knife toward the wound. She thought he would turn his face away so he couldn't see her do it, but he glared into her eyes.

Kimi took a deep breath, stilled her shaking hand, and applied the fiery knife against the wound in Hinzi's thigh.

He groaned, gasped, and bucked against his restraints, but he was powerless to stop her. The hot blade sizzled in the wet blood and the smell of burning flesh almost gagged her. She was going to be sick. No, she couldn't get sick, she had to finish this for his own good. Out of sheer desperation, she kept the glowing blade against the wound while his muscular, naked body arched and struggled against his bonds. Then mercifully, he fainted.

Kimi sighed heavily with relief and shook all over. At least now she could finish what needed to be done without worrying about him breaking free.

After she had applied healing herbs, she wrapped his thigh in a scrap of trader's cloth. She took the gag from his mouth, reached for some cool water, and began to bath his face very gently.

His eyes opened slowly as if he weren't sure where he was as he looked up at her. “Lenore? Lenore, darling?”

A woman. He looked up at her and called some white woman's name. For some reason, it annoyed her. “I am called Kimimila–butterfly.”

His face twisted with pain and anger as he seemed to realize where he was. “I must be delirious. For a moment, you almost looked like ... Damn you, you little savage!”

“You are either very brave or very reckless,” Kimi said, “I should beat you for your words.”

A look crossed his face and Kimi shook her head. “Don't think about trying to escape. You can't even walk and it's a long way to any soldiers' fort. Your only chance of surviving is to be very obedient and behave like any slave so that you anger no one or they might change their mind and order you killed.”

He didn't answer, either too weak or perhaps turning over the wisdom of her words in his mind. Anyway, staked out as he was, he didn't have a great deal of choice in the matter. As a man, all this must gall him, she thought–especially as a white man who seemed as if he were used to having people obey his orders without question.

 

 

Rand looked up at the girl. In the semidarkness, her face was shadowed, but from his hazy memory of the camp circle, he knew that she was pretty. In his delirium he had mistaken her for the elegant Lenore Carstairs. Lenore had black hair, too. Wouldn't his fiancee be furious at the comparison? There was something unusual about this savage little bitch that pulled at his mind: What was it?

An unusually pretty Indian girl, he thought, with ebony braids and dark skin, but not nearly as dark as the others. His throbbing leg made his mind a blur.

At least he was alive, if only temporarily. Maybe that was something to be grateful for. He had fully expected to be gelded, scalped alive, and then slowly tortured to death with fire. From the mixed bits of Lakota and English he'd heard, he understood they were keeping him alive as a hostage and maybe to be used as a slave.

Rand shuddered at the thought. How ironic that a man who was heir to one of the biggest plantations and thoroughbred farms in Kentucky, complete with several hundred blacks, was a slave himself in this camp.

Rand tried to clear his mind enough to think about his options. Even if he got the ropes off, he couldn't travel far with that wound. He needed to bide his time until his leg healed enough to escape.

He watched the girl finish with the bandage. She resumed washing his body. He pretended to be unconscious so he could observe her without her realizing he did so. Very pretty and probably not more than fifteen or sixteen and a widow in mourning, judging from the cuts on her arms and her torn clothes. The Indians mated them young, he thought in disgust. A girl that age back home would be in school.

He felt her washing his naked skin and sighed. It felt so good, even though he was trussed and couldn't move. He was at the mercy of her whims, he knew. Whatever she did to him, probably no one in the camp would care or question. If she decided later to slash his throat and let him bleed to death, or geld him, torture him, or whatever, no one around here knew or cared that he was Randolph Erikson of Randolph Hall plantation or that he came from money and social position. In this camp, he was going to be a lowly slave, and he was helpless to do anything about it until his leg healed. A man who couldn't walk could not escape.

Her hands moved gently down his naked body as she washed him. He closed his eyes, tried to forget the throbbing pain of his thigh and concentrate on her hands touching him. In his mind, he imagined her as the slave, doing as she was ordered, washing every inch of his body while he lay back lazily and enjoyed it. It was also very arousing to have his wet, soapy flesh stroked by her small hands.

When he managed to escape, he might kidnap this girl and take her with him. Kimimila. Butterfly. Her small hands caressed his skin. Yes, Butterfly was a good name for her. If she were in a fancy brothel, she could earn good money for herself doing just what she was doing at this very moment, tantalizing a man with her velvet touch. He should be ashamed of himself for what he was thinking. It wasn't gallant at all. Besides she wasn't much more than a child.