Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (7 page)

      
“Cheyenne women are modest. They lower their eyes in the presence of a warrior,” he could not resist jibing when she returned his perusal.

      
“I'm not a Cheyenne woman, and since I've heard you called Not Cheyenne, you're no warrior either,” she snapped back.

      
He raised the empty bowl in a mocking salute to her. “Touché, Turquoise Eyes. Now bring me some more.”

      
As she snatched the bowl and stormed off, Sees Much said, “You delight in angering Her Back Is Straight. Why, I wonder?” he added in that rhetorical fashion he often employed.

      
“You had some sort of vision about her; that's why Leather Shirt sent the raiders to capture her. You tell me.” He looked from Sees Much to Leather Shirt, waiting.

      
“I knew you would come with guns to ransom her,” Sees Much replied serenely.

      
“We have need of weapons. The buffalo are scarce, our enemies plentiful—white eyes with the Iron Horse and our ancient foes the Pawnee,” Leather Shirt said.

      
Before Cain could question further, Sees Much interjected, “Our scouts have seen signs of a large raiding party on Lodgepole Creek. It would not be safe for you to leave with the woman now.”

      
“Her grandfather is worried about her. He wants her back as quickly as possible. She's already been missing for over a month.” Cain knew rumors about her captivity would leak out if he didn't get her back soon.

      
Leather Shirt shrugged. “You would be a fool to face the Pawnee alone with a silver-haired woman. Her scalp would make a fine trophy, but you have always done as you wished.”

      
The rebuke in the old man's voice was plain. Cain cursed silently, then said, “I'll wait until the Pawnee leave the Lodgepole.”

      
Leather Shirt remained impassively silent, but Sees Much smiled.

* * * *

      
Later that night, Roxanna tossed and turned fitfully on her pallet. Over the past weeks she had grown used to sleeping with only a thin layer of pine boughs and a buffalo robe between her and the hard ground. Tonight, however, she could not seem to settle down.
Cain
. She knew the half-breed was the reason for her malaise. That harsh scarred visage materialized each time she closed her eyes. She shuddered just thinking about spending days alone with him while they traveled farther into the wilderness to meet Jubal MacKenzie.

      
Perhaps Isobel Darby wasn’t so bad after all.
She rolled over and closed her eyes, willing herself not to see Cain this time. Finally, sleep claimed her.

      
Sees Much watched the girl’s restless dreaming on her pallet. When she whimpered softly in her sleep, he moved silently to her side and placed his hand gently on her forehead.

      
“Shhh, daughter, you will wake the others. Come with me.”

      
He rose and quietly lifted the door flap of the lodge and disappeared through the entry way. Roxanna awakened quickly, relieved to be free of the nightmare world. She followed him outside and down to the bank of the stream. The full moon illuminated the way.

      
Sees Much was waiting for her, seated on a large flat boulder. She seated herself at his feet. Roxanna looked up into the face of the old man who, for over a month now, had been both her captor and her protector. It was a strong face, but a kind one. Sees Much had told her that he had learned the white man's tongue from his nephew. From the day of Roxanna’s arrival in camp he had assured her that she would be safe and eventually would be returned to her own people with her “honor” intact. Roxanna remembered how she had laughed a secret bitter laugh at the old man's concern for an honor that no longer existed.

      
She had grown genuinely fond of Sees Much and learned to trust him. He treated her as a daughter. Indeed, she lived in his lodge with his two unmarried granddaughters. Willow Tree and Lark Song had quickly adopted her as a sister. In fact, the rest of the old shaman's band seemed to consider her as one of their own. She shared the work with the other women, but she also shared their simple pleasures and was free to roam inside and outside the camp at will. She had felt oddly content—until Cain arrived, which was bizarre, since he had been sent by Jubal MacKenzie to rescue her.

      
“What troubles Her Back Is Straight?” asked Sees Much.

      
“I...I had a dream,” Roxanna murmured.

      
The old man nodded and patted her shoulder affectionately. “A very great bad dream to frighten such a one as you, child.”

      
Roxanna looked again into the gently smiling face and chuckled softly. But her good humor quickly died. “Yes, it was a great bad dream, Sees Much.”

      
“Tell me.”

      
“I was standing on a low rise watching a small herd of buffalo...like the one we saw last week. Suddenly, on a rise directly across from me...but far off, I think, I saw a speck...or something like that.” Roxanna paused to gather her thoughts. “Anyway, the speck began moving toward me... It got bigger and bigger until I could see that it was another buffalo. The herd was between me and it, but the herd just parted and my buffalo—”

      
Sees Much interrupted, “Your buffalo?”

      
Roxanna nodded and then quickly shook her head. “Yes...well, I don't really mean mine.

      
The old man again patted her shoulder. “Forgive me, Her Back Is Straight. It is wrong to halt the telling of a dream. Go on.”

      
“The herd parted and the buffalo came toward me. He came right up and stood in front of me. He was beautiful...so very beautiful. I wanted to touch him. To run my hand through his great shaggy black mane. I looked into his eyes and I knew that he wanted me to touch him.”

      
The girl paused again before continuing. “I forgot to tell you that in the dream it was dark. Suddenly the sun shone and I could see there was something wrong. Blood was dripping down along the great shiny horns of the beautiful buffalo and I became afraid... He seemed to be angry...maybe hurt. He backed away and began to paw the ground and shake and toss those great bloody horns...and you woke me.”

      
For a long time both the old man and the young woman were silent. Then Sees Much began to talk, almost in a whisper.

      
“You have dreamed of the Lone Bull. Sometimes he has been driven from the herd by the others. Sometimes his spirit tells him to go his own way. Yet his path will always cross and cross again the path of the herd. He is of the same kind as the herd, yet he is not of the herd.”

      
The old man was silent. Roxanna waited for him to continue and when he did not she asked, “It must be important that his horns were bloody. Why were his horns dripping with blood?”

      
The old man looked at her with an odd expression on his face. “I am not certain, daughter.”

      
For the first time since she had known him, Roxanna was sure that Sees Much was not telling her the truth.

Chapter Four

      
The next day Roxanna learned that Cain had secured her release from Leather Shirt in return for the rifles, but they would not leave the safety of the Cheyenne camp until the Pawnee moved on.

      
“I understood from reading newspapers—our talking leaves—that the Pawnee were friendly to whites, that the Union Pacific hires them to protect railroad workers,” she said to Willow Tree as they gathered wood for the morning cookfires.

      
“Pawnee old enemy of People. They watch here,” she said, pointing to the distant rock escarpment from which a rider could easily look down on the camp by the river. “You go from here, they think you belong to People. Kill.”

      
The way Willow Tree eyed Roxanna's long silvery braid did not reassure the white woman. Shuddering, she applied herself to her task. After all she had survived, a few more days with the Cheyenne would not be so bad, especially when she considered how much she dreaded the journey ahead with Cain.

      
Troubling thoughts about last night's dream returned. How vivid it had been—and how strangely Sees Much had responded when she described it to him. Secretive...and almost pleased! She resolved to confront him again as soon as an opportunity presented itself when they were alone. Just then Lark Song came dashing up, her dusky cheeks flushed with excitement. “Weasel Bear back!”

      
Weasel Bear was a leader of the Dog Soldier Society, the man whom old Leather Shirt had dispatched to capture her. He was considered to be quite a catch among the young women of the band. But Roxanna thought there was a sullen cruelty about him, especially when he looked at her, as if she were an insect he longed to grind beneath his moccasins.

      
“He found buffalo—a day's ride! We are breaking camp to go after them. There will be a great hunt and feasting!” Lark Song said breathlessly in Cheyenne, then translated haltingly for Roxanna’ s benefit.

      
The women quickly finished their task and returned to the camp, which was humming with excitement. Roxanna knew the buffalo herds were growing scarcer and more difficult to find due to white encroachment. She had read about the huge beasts moving by the tens of thousands in great undulating waves across the open plains. It would be exciting to see an actual hunt.

      
All around her the women of the village were busy dismantling lodges. They used the long poles and sewn-together skins from them for travois on which all the parfleches containing cooking and eating utensils and sleeping gear were packed. Young girls watched over the small children, keeping them out of harm's way, while their mothers and elder sisters broke camp. Everyone seemed to work together, as efficiently as a well-oiled machine. Young boys were dispatched by the leaders of the warrior societies to round up the horses, while the older men gathered up all the sacred medicine pipes and other religious paraphernalia. The warriors armed themselves, ready to guard the band's journey to better hunting grounds.

      
Cain watched Alexa pitch in, helping Sees Much's granddaughters roll up the heavy buffalo hides covering their lodge. She fit in amazingly well, eager to help and uncomplaining as Willow Tree issued orders for more strenuous tasks. Alexa continually surprised him, first with her startling beauty, then her fierce temper, now her toughness. She was a survivor, no doubt about it, spoiled St. Louis belle or no.

      
“Will you join in the hunt, Not Cheyenne, or have you grown soft as a woman living among our enemies?” Weasel Bear taunted. His eyes followed Cain's and he added slyly, “Your white blood calls to the pale one, but she will not have a mixed-blood even if he is a cut hair.”

      
Cain's scar seemed to writhe as the muscles of his jaw clenched. He had hated Weasel Bear since they were small boys. The Dog Soldier had joined Cain's Cheyenne brother in tormenting a young half-blood. “The woman is nothing more to me than I to her. I will be paid very well to return her to her family. Do not think to interfere. I have already spilled Cheyenne blood. I would not shrink from doing it again.” He saw the blaze of fury in Weasel Bear's eyes and smiled chillingly.

      
“You will not hunt, then.” Weasel Bear spit on the ground in contempt.

      
“Oh, I will hunt. Sees Much and Leather Shirt are old and have need of the meat.” Cain watched Weasel Bear's face darken with rage at the rebuke. As the nearest kinsman who was a fit young warrior, Weasel Bear had the responsibility to provide for the two old men.

      
“I will see they do not go hungry, unlike you who cannot wait to return to the white eyes.” He turned his back on Cain and stormed away.

      
“You have made a dangerous enemy,” Leather Shirt said, coming up to stand beside Cain.

      
“There is nothing new in that,” Cain replied, weary of confrontation. “He is only one among many.”

      
“Is your father, His Eyes Are Cold, among those many? You belonged to him, and he deserted you.”

      
Cain looked into the old man's fierce black eyes, so like his own. They were unreadable...like his own. “I do not belong to anyone,” Cain said flatly.

      
“Will you spill more Cheyenne blood, as you have boasted?”

      
“I do not boast. I warned him to stay away from the white woman, that is all.”

* * * *

      
Roxanna finished packing the travois, which groaned under its heavy load. One of Forked Ear's little boys sat crying nearby while his harried mother and sister strapped a heavy cook pot onto their load. Roxanna approached the toddler and sat down, offering the consolation of her lap. Eagerly he climbed onto it and cuddled, sucking his thumb contentedly.

      
As she stroked his shiny black hair, she gazed across the crowded camp, her eyes straying until they rested upon Cain. He looked even less civilized this morning, having changed into the buckskin breeches and shirt so often favored by frontiersmen. The soft worn leather clung indecently to his slim long-legged body, the decorative fringe fluttered in the breeze, seeming to beckon seductively with every move he made. His shirtfront was open, revealing that black hairy chest, and his feet were ensconced in high laced moccasin boots with soft soles. If he could walk so silently with hard-soled riding boots, how much more soundless would he move now! Just thinking about the humiliating scene in the water yesterday brought stinging heat to her cheeks. How would she endure their forthcoming trip together?