The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series) (39 page)

      
She pulled the robe more protectively around herself, unable to frame a reply as he knelt in front of her and reached out, taking a long silky strand of her water-darkened hair. He raised it to his lips, then tugged gently on it, pulling her head lower, her lips nearer his own. The steam from the hot pool surrounded them in billowing wispy clouds. Water lapped softly as a lover's moan while he ran his other hand along the planes of her face, tracing the delicate symmetry of brow, temple, cheekbone and jaw line. Then his fingertips found her lips, which were moist and trembling.

      
Kneeling on the soft earth in front of her, he breathed her name and drew her down into his embrace. When his lips touched hers, she reached out blindly, cupping his beard-stubbled jaw in her hand while he slipped an arm beneath the robe to press her firmly against his body. She felt the sleek soft glide of the wolf pelts against her bare breasts and the tips instantly hardened into aching nubby points. As he deepened the kiss, their arms entwined, loosening her robe, which slipped with a heavy whoosh around her legs.

      
Icy air pricked her back and buttocks, which were alternately scalded by the fiery heat of his fingers skimming along her pale skin. She reacted at once, pressing her hands against his chest. Her fingers sank into the wolf pelts as she broke away from him and seized her fallen robe. She held it in front of her like a shield, shivering and breathless. “No, Chase.” Her voice was hoarse, soft with despair.

      
“Whether or not you lie with me, Phillips will never accept you back.”

      
“But I would know what we had done and my conscience is the only thing I have to live by, Chase.” When she pulled her robe around her and stood up, he did not try to stop her from leaving.

* * * *

Everyone in the village turned out to celebrate with the families of Blue Eagle and Kit Fox. As was the custom, the bride was dressed in her special finery, made by Blue Eagle's mother, a bleached white doeskin dress with long double fringe, decorated with elk teeth and beads. She wore large silver hoops in her ears, a beaten copper necklace and bracelets and her hair was plaited in two heavy gleaming braids which were coiled at the sides of her head with beautiful white beaded ornaments worked into them. She was mounted on a sleek white mare, led by her brother Plenty Horses with Granite Arm walking proudly at her daughter's side. They approached the new lodge where Blue Eagle and his family stood waiting and the public presentment was made.

      
The look exchanged between the young warrior and the lovely maiden was achingly tender as he led her inside the lodge they would share. As everyone around them laughed and talked, eager for the feasting to begin, Stephanie stood to one side with several of Kit Fox's other friends. When she looked across the path the lovers had just taken, her eyes met with Chase's. The raw sensual hunger in their black depths sent a jolt of fire coursing through her veins.

      
She stood frozen, terrified of the answering emotion his naked vulnerability brought forth, unable to break eye contact. The crowd of people around them seemed to vanish as if they were the only two on earth, male and female, made for each other. Her heart hammered in her breast as she hugged herself protectively. Every instinct she possessed screamed at her, urging her to dash the few steps into his arms. But she could not.

      
Tears stung her eyes as the hopelessness of their situation washed over her. Chase slowly walked up to her and stood a respectable distance away, only reaching out one hand to trace the silvery trickle of a teardrop down her cheek, “I'm sorry, Stevie,” he said simply, not knowing what else he could do, how he could explain his feelings to her—feelings he himself did not fully comprehend.

      
“Why? Why did you leave me behind in Boston? If only you'd come to me first, asked me to go west with you.”

      
“And live in danger, poverty, moving from town to town while I searched for my family?”

      
“Do you think my life as the wife of an ambitious junior officer has been easy? I've spent years in far less comfortable surroundings than these.” She gestured to the circle of buffalo hide lodges, drawn tight against the winter's chill. “I've lived with spiders and snakes and alkali dust so thick it frosted the window glass—when we were lucky enough to have window glass. I've moved half a dozen times from post to post, been threatened by hostile Indians, drunken miners and cutthroat outlaws. I've learned to survive, Chase...but I had to do it without you.”

      
“I couldn't have asked you to chance this sort of life—to live with the Cheyenne,” he replied defensively.

      
“Now is a hell of a time to think of that, isn't it?” she snapped. Anger began to purge the crushing weight of her melancholy longing. “Red Bead thinks I'm managing passably well.”

      
He smiled sadly. “You are. Perhaps that's why I finally admitted to myself that I still needed you. I do need you, Stevie.”

      
She shook her head, backing away from him. “It's too late, Chase. Please, don't do this...if ever you loved me, on the honor of that love, don't ask me to come to you.”
For I cannot say no.

      
This time it was Chase who turned and walked away, leaving her standing alone with the distant sounds of reveling from the marriage feast echoing around her. The thought of food sickened her. Stephanie turned and walked into her lodge to think...and to plan.

* * * *

      
The fire in his lodge burned low as Chase sat alone staring into the glowing red embers, trying to see the future. What should he do about Stevie? Desire for her had become a constant ache, not only tightening his groin but his heart as well.
I love her. I still love her
.

      
He always had, even though he had not really known it back in Boston. She was right. He should never have left her behind to fall prey to the likes of Hugh Phillips. Now they were both trapped by her marriage vows to the butchering bastard. If he had killed Phillips, the murder would have stood between them, but with him alive, her rigid sense of civilized morality kept her bound to a man who had brought her pain and shame.

      
Although she was too proud to admit it to him, Chase was certain she knew about Hugh's predilection for cheap whores. Besides which, he was a vicious drunk. The thought of him raising a hand to her while in his cups was enough to turn Chase's blood to ice.

      
If she were Cheyenne, there would be no question of her divorcing such a husband. But Stephanie was white, Boston bred of stern Congregationalist stock where the scandal of divorce was an unthinkable sin and vows, no matter how cruelly betrayed by a spouse, could never be revoked. In so many ways Chase felt the Cheyenne way was far superior. White customs were often foolish, sometimes destructive.

      
“I have chosen one path, she another,” he murmured into the dying embers. As the night wore on the flickering light gave him no answers. Sounds from the feasting died away gradually. Kit Fox and Blue Eagle slept in one another's arms this night.

      
Chase had been alone since childhood when his father died and his mother sold her soul to save his life. For a brief while when he rejoined Black Kettle's band as a youth, he had hoped for a woman and children, a place to belong. But that had been wrenched away from him at Washita. After that, in so-called civilization and even here with his people, he had resigned himself never to take a wife.

      
Stevie had turned his world upside-down. He had no doubt that she desired him as he did her. If he came to her he could take her...for a night. But in the morning she would look on him with reproach and scourge him with silent guilt. “The Powers must not have fated us to be together,” he whispered, reaching for his sleeping robes.

      
He rolled down into the thick pallet of furs and stared out the small smoke hole at the apex of the lodge. Stars winked down on him offering what comfort they could. Sleep would not come. Then the sound of footsteps on crunching snow and a discreet cough broke the silence outside the lodge. Chase recognized Stands Tall's voice and wondered why his uncle had returned so late, for he had said he would spend the night with Elk Bull's family.

      
“You may enter, Stands Tall,” he called out in greeting, glad of the company.

      
“You are certain I do not disturb you,” the older man said before lifting the flap.

      
“I am alone,” he replied wryly.

      
With a grunt of acceptance, Stands Tall slipped inside. At once his eyes swept the area. “Then she is not with you, your bronze-haired woman.”

      
A swift frisson of unease snaked down Chase's spine. “Why would she be here? She has refused me and I would not force her.”

      
“She is nowhere in the camp. When all the feasting was done Red Bead could not find her. She has searched every lodge. A pony is missing, some food and a rifle, too.”

      
Chase cursed beneath his breath as he began to dress. This was what he had feared ever since he brought her to his people—that she would try to escape and wander off into danger. After they reached the safety and isolation of the winter camp and she seemed to adapt to the life here, he had begun to relax his vigilance. Stupid of him! “She can't have gotten far. There is a moon tonight. I'll bring her back,” he said, reaching for the Winchester that was always close at hand.

      
“It is calm now but Red Bead says a storm gathers in the mountains to the west. It will come upon us before morning,” Stands Tall replied gravely.

      
Chase's heart froze. Red Bead had never been mistaken about the weather and Stephanie was out in the wilds of the Big Horns alone, at the mercy of the savage wilderness!

Chapter Eighteen

      
The snow was growing deeper, hurled by winds that howled like a berserk banshee. Stephanie had lost all sense of direction after the snowfall began. At first the gentle flakes had just covered the old snow, obscuring the packed-down trail the warriors had made entering the valley. Looking at the pass ahead, illuminated by a patch of faint starlight, she had held to her course. But when the snow thickened and the winds picked up, the world around her quickly turned into a swirling white vortex sucking her deeper and deeper into its freezing maw.

      
She had brought along a flint and a bit of dry punk with which to start a fire but she could find no shelter, much less enough wood to stoke the flames into life-giving warmth. In spite of the sturdy buckskins and heavy buffalo robes she wore, her freezing limbs began to grow numb. She knew she would soon topple from her horse. Then as abruptly as it had begun the blizzard stopped.

      
Stars once more illuminated a fairy landscape of tall cedars and pines jutting skyward, set against the steep walls of the majestic canyon, Their black-green arms were laden with snow. Somehow her horse had made its way to the opening of the pass. Before her stretched a vast series of lower foothills crisscrossed by hundreds of narrow ravines, wild rocky country covered with dense stands of evergreen and dried mountain grasses, mantled in white with dark patches of bare earth where the winds had randomly swept it clean of snow.

      
As if a banshee wielded a broom,
she thought with whimsical humor. From here on how could she choose a course? She had no idea of the tortuous route the Cheyenne had taken into this wild high elevation. This country was the most awe inspiringly beautiful and desolately isolated she had yet encountered in her extensive western travels. The better plan now was to camp and keep from freezing to death. Once she lost all sensation in her hands, she would be doomed to die alone in this wilderness, her bones left for scavengers to pick.

      
Hugh would not mourn her. Would Chase? She knew he would be killingly angry when he learned of her escape. Would it not have been better to give in to him than to take this desperate gamble? She forced the useless thought away and scanned the area for a likely place to build a fire. A small clearing swept clean of snow lay at the side of the steep mountain wall to her right. She turned the weary horse in that direction.

      
Within half an hour she had scavenged enough wood for a small fire and sat watching it blaze to life on the frozen ground, grateful for the survival skills so hard won in her months with the Cheyenne. She took a bundle of food from the pack she had hastily gathered, and began to chew on a frozen strip of buffalo jerky. Gradually it softened in her mouth and the smoky flavor made her stomach growl in anticipation. After only a few bites she grew too tired to chew more and dug for a bit of Red Bead's soft pemmican. It, too, was hard and icy. Placing it near the fire, she gathered her buffalo robe around her and rolled up in it, curling around the feeble warmth emitted by the low flames.

      
Half-frozen, physically and emotionally exhausted as she was, sleep claimed her all too quickly. Then came the dreams, of Chase and Hugh with the reverend thundering denunciations in the background as the two men fought over her. Chase's grandfather called her the Whore of Babylon and the malevolent figure of Burke Remington stood at his father's side smiling chillingly. As she sank deeper into frozen lethargy, the images faded, replaced by a frighteningly alien scene.

      
Two huge wolves, one iron gray, the other a blinding pure white, lunged at each other, snarling with hate so palpable it crackled. They tore at each other, backed off and circled, then went for each other's throats again, and yet again, until both were bloodied and panting. She was hovering above them, a disembodied observer to the contest, yet her breathing quickened with fear every time the white wolf received another wound.