The Guardian (16 page)

Custom forbade him to untie the knot and look inside the pouch. But that would not be necessary. Only one thing could possibly be that heavy for its small size.

It had to be gold.

C
HARITY OPENED
her eyes to see Black Sun kneeling next to the cradleboard. He was looking down at Annie, his fingers toying with the amulet pouch that had been his birth gift to her.

Still basking in the warmth of last night's love, Charity stretched and yawned. “You'll spoil me, letting me sleep so late,” she said with a happy little laugh.

He looked up at her then and she saw the expression on his face. Her heart turned leaden.

“Why didn't you tell me you'd found the gold in the canyon, Charity?” His voice was like the brittle ice that covers water after a sudden freeze.

She gazed at him, unable to answer. In the past day and night, she'd given no thought to the nugget, or to what she would tell him about it. Now she realized that, in not telling him, she had made the worst mistake of her life.

“Did you think I'd stop you from taking it?” He spoke softly, his tone more damning than if he'd screamed at her. “Is that why you kept it from me? Is that why you hid it in the one place where I'd told you I would never look?”

His eyes stabbed into her like sharpened flints. She knew he was waiting for her answer. But how could she explain that the gold meant nothing to her now, that all she wanted was to stay in the West—with him? After what he'd just discovered, he would never believe her.

“The gold was for Annie,” she said. “From the very beginning, when I found the nugget in the water, it was always to be for Annie.”

“But you never meant to keep the secret of the gold to yourself, did you? If you had, you'd have told me about it.”

She shook her head, feeling sick and trapped but determined to tell him the truth. “Not at first. I was planning to return to the East, as I'd promised, and I knew I'd need money to provide for myself and Annie. The nugget would have given me enough evidence to file a mining claim and sell that claim to the highest bidder.”

“You would have sold the canyon? The gold meant that much to you?” His face looked gaunt, almost gray in the pale morning light.

“You knew about it, didn't you?” she asked. “You knew the gold was there all along.”

“All the people who call the canyon sacred know the gold is there,” he said. “But what good is gold to us? Can we eat it? Can it keep us warm? Can it make medicine to cure us? No, we leave the gold in the rocks and streams, where it belongs. We would never destroy sacred ground to get it, as white men would.”

He rose to his feet, turned and walked away. Then,
as if he'd decided on another attack, he spun around to face her again.

“I had a dream last night,” he said. “A dream about the canyon and how the whites had destroyed it in their greed for gold. Now I believe it was more than a dream. It was the future I saw, and it has already begun. I began it myself when I took a white woman into a sacred place.”

“No!” Charity clambered to her feet, reeling as if he'd struck her. “Take the nugget back, Black Sun! Things have changed—
I've
changed since I took it! I don't want it anymore!”

He shook his head, his eyes cold and sad. “What's done can't be undone, Charity. The nugget belongs to Annie now. And even if you swear to keep the secret forever, we both know the gold in the canyon will be found in time, as more whites move west.” He sighed, his shoulders drooping in resignation. “Keep the gold. Use it as you planned, to make a new life for yourself. If someone's going to profit from the canyon, better you and Annie than some stranger. As for the rest, I can forgive you for wanting the gold and taking it, but not for trying to hide it from me.”

With a final shattering look, he turned his back on her and strode off to tend to the horses.

Charity stared after him, feeling as if every drop of her blood had been drained away.
I love you!
she wanted to shout after him.
The gold doesn't matter! Nothing matters except having a life somewhere with
you and Annie!
But those words, she knew, were the last ones he would want to hear from her.

Annie had begun to fuss for her breakfast. Charity fed her while Black Sun, avoiding her gaze, cleared the camp and loaded the horses. Today he shared the bundled gear and provisions between the two animals, making it clear that Charity and Annie were to mount the packhorse while he sat his tall dun gelding. From now until he left them, he would ride alone.

The sunrise that morning was a glory of amber sky and rose-tinted clouds, crossed by a skein of white snow geese flying north in their elegant
V
formation. The spring grass was a green-gold tapestry, glittering with crystal beads of dew. For Charity, however, there was nothing in her vision but the sight of Black Sun's rigid shoulders, veiled by his wind-tangled raven hair, moving along the trail ahead of her.

She ached to nudge the pinto to a trot, to catch up with him and force him to listen. But what could she say, when the very core of truth condemned her? She had indeed taken the nugget with idea of filing a claim and selling the mineral rights to the canyon. And she'd kept it hidden for the exact reason Black Sun had stated—the belief that he would try to stop her.

That she'd since changed her mind, that she no longer cared about the gold, meant nothing to him now. She had betrayed his trust, and he would never forgive her.

The days passed in uneasy silence as they followed
a path that wound alongside the Oregon Trail. Charity was beginning to recognize things she'd noticed on her way west with the wagon train—a fast-running river with a graveled ford, a rounded knoll, a stand of dead, beetle-infested lodgepole pines.

Even when they made camp, the tension stood like a wall between them. He spoke to her as little as possible, giving brusque answers to the questions she asked. He was never harsh or angry, just so remote that he might as well have been a hundred miles away.
Look at me!
she wanted to shout at him.
Scream at me! Call me names! Anything but this awful silence!
But that, she knew, was not Black Sun's way.

With every day the chance increased that they would meet a wagon train or come to a white outpost where he could leave her and Annie. Their parting would come as a relief, Charity told herself. Anything would be easier to bear than this miserable standoff.

She knew better than to believe such thoughts. But self-deception was easier than facing the truth—that when Black Sun rode away from her for the last time, her heart would begin to die.

The day she'd dreaded came sooner than either of them had expected. Late in the afternoon of the fourth day, they crested a rise that overlooked the Oregon Trail. There, some distance below them, rolling along in single file, were four covered wagons.

Except for its small size, the wagon train looked ordinary enough. When she shaded her eyes and squinted
into the afternoon sunlight, Charity could see the teams of big bay draft horses that pulled each wagon. She could see the mounted outriders moving along ahead of the train and behind it. On the seat of one wagon, she glimpsed a figure in a sunbonnet.

Charity had been staring at the wagons for more than a minute before it struck her they were not moving westward. These travelers were headed east.

Why? she wondered with a flicker of uneasiness. Had they parted company with a larger wagon train and decided to turn back? Were they the survivors of an Indian attack, limping their way to the nearest outpost? Or were they simply traders, out to bargain with whom ever they met on the trail?

Black Sun had stopped beside her. He gazed down at the wagons, saying nothing.

“They're headed in the right direction,” Charity said, trying to sound flippant. “Do you think they'd have room for a woman and a baby?”

At first he did not reply, and for a moment her hopes soared that he would forgive her and ask her to stay. Then he exhaled. “We need to make sure you'll be safe first,” he said.

Charity's spirit plummeted once more. “You musn't go down there with me. My husband shot the first Indian he saw out here. These people could do the same.”

“And they won't take kindly to seeing you ride in with me, either.” Black Sun's words sounded as if
they'd been dipped in lye. “It might be best for you to tell them you were captured by murdering savages and managed to escape.”

Charity watched him, too heartsick to speak, as he scowled down at the wagons. “We'll keep our eyes on them until they make camp. If things look safe enough, I'll send you and Annie down to them on the packhorse. If you feel comfortable going on with them, turn the horse loose and send him back to me.”

“And if I don't?” Charity's voice emerged as a hoarse whisper.

His throat moved as he swallowed. “If you think you should leave them, just mount up and ride the pony back to me. Either way, I'll stay close by until he comes.”

She nodded her understanding and they moved down the slope together, keeping to the trees. He was taking great care to see that she and Annie would be safe. Charity knew she should be grateful for that, even though the thought of leaving him tore her apart.

Viewed at closer range, the wagon train looked even more promising. The travelers appeared to be families. Women in faded sunbonnets drove three of the wagons while the men trotted their fine-looking mounts alongside. Charity even glimpsed a long-eared tan hound loping along behind the horses.

Charity kept her silence. She could hardly plead to stay with Black Sun if he didn't want her. It was time she grew up and accepted reality, she told herself. She
did not belong in Black Sun's world. Like the Thunderbird and the mortal woman, they could not live together. But unlike the lovers in the legend, there could be no reunion for them in the sacred canyon. There could be no children who would grow up to enrich the earth. Their time together was over.

One thing only was left in her power. She had long since decided not to exploit the gold. She would honor their love with a promise to keep the canyon's hidden riches a secret. That promise would be her final gift to Black Sun.

Dusk was closing in by the time the wagons pulled into a circle and halted for the night. Neither Charity nor Black Sun spoke. It was time to say goodbye.

Black Sun had already divided up the things that each would take. Except for the buckskin shirt, which she needed, Charity had wanted only her own rags and the cradleboard. But he had insisted she take one of the buffalo robes and the smaller knife. He'd also returned Rueben's tiny one-shot pistol, which she'd agreed might be worth something in trade. She had tucked the weapon under the padding in the cradleboard for safekeeping.

Now they faced each other in the twilight. Both of them were mounted, which prevented any attempt at an awkward and heart-rending embrace.

“I'll never forget you,” Charity whispered, fighting tears. “You gave me back my life.”

“Then live it well,” he replied huskily. “Goodbye, Charity Bennett.”

He gave the rump of her horse a light slap and before either of them could say another word, Charity found herself moving downhill through the trees, toward the open plain.

 

B
LACK
S
UN WATCHED HER
vanish into the dusk, her pale hair catching the last glint of sunset. He had known all along that this moment would come, that he would lose her, but he had not known that watching her ride away would be like the slow rupturing of his heart.

He would wait and watch, of course. But he knew Charity would not come back. She had too much pride for that, and he had wounded her too deeply.

He'd had every right to be furious with her, Black Sun told himself. After all her talk of trust and honesty, Charity had betrayed him and hidden the truth. When he'd declared that he could not forgive her, he'd meant every angry word. But even then, he'd been wrong. In the days since their quarrel, his heart had forgiven her a hundred times over.

He would remember her with nothing but love.

As for her claiming the gold, it was a battle he had stopped fighting. He had seen enough of white people to know that, by the time Two Feathers was a man, the land would be overrun by them. If his dream had been a true vision of the future, the canyon was doomed. Knowing that Charity had used its wealth to make a better life for herself and Annie would at least give
him some consolation. But it could never be enough to fill the emptiness in his heart.

During their days on the trail, riding in silence, sleeping apart, he had yearned to take her in his arms and love away the bitterness between them. But that would only have made things more difficult. In taking the gold, Charity had proved that she belonged with her own kind. He'd had no choice except to send her back. His pretense of anger was the only thing that had made it possible to let her go.

Now she was gone, swallowed up by the darkness. Where the wagons had circled for the night, he could see the flicker of a campfire. Soon she would reach the white travelers. A missionary's widow with a fair, blue-eyed baby—if they were decent people, they would surely take her in. The packhorse would come back riderless and he would never see her again.

Easing his tired body off the horse, Black Sun stretched his limbs, then settled himself on the trunk of a fallen tree to wait.

 

C
HARITY SLOWED
the horse to an ambling walk as she neared the camp. She needed time to collect her thoughts and to calm—outwardly, at least—her churning emotions. There was also one final task she needed to perform before sending the little packhorse back to Black Sun. She would do that now, while she had time.

The cradleboard hung against her back, suspended from her shoulders by the carrying straps. Slipping it
free, she swung it around to where she could reach it with both hands. Annie opened sleepy eyes, gazing up at her in the darkness.

“Someday you'll understand, my little love,” Charity murmured as her fingers loosened the knots that fastened the laces of the amulet pouch to the cradleboard. “You and I were never meant to be rich. But that doesn't mean we can't be happy. We can dance and sing for free, and if we work hard, we'll have everything we need, I promise you.”