Untamed (35 page)

Bang wondered if he would enjoy living among his long-lost loved ones as much as he'd enjoyed his life here on earth.

Chapter 21

Just as he thought he had Wolf Lies Down in his grasp, the warrior rolled, taking Daniel with him, and pinned him flat against the floor. Raising his knife high above his head, the Cheyenne swung it downward in a vicious, slashing motion. Daniel caught the man's wrist at the last minute, then bent it forward, forcing him to continue the arc he'd begun. The blade glanced off the warrior's ribs, and then buried itself in his guts.

At almost the same moment, a terrific explosion rattled Daniel's eardrums. He pushed the wounded Indian away from his body, then rolled to his feet and saw that Josie was facing the ladder, her back to him. Halfway up to the loft, Stump Horn dangled from the steps, a look of surprise on his face. Then he suddenly fell away from the ladder and hit the floor with a soft thud.

"Josie?" Daniel said, trying to piece the events together. "Did you just fire my gun?"

"I pulled back the hammer." Sounding dazed, she turned with the Peacemaker still clutched between both hands. Blood ringed one side of her throat, half of a macabre necklace. "I pulled back the hammer."

"Josie—my God. Don't move."

She pitched forward despite his instructions, and Daniel had all he could do to reach her before she hit the floor. After he'd gathered her into his arms and carried her to the bed, he sat down beside her to examine the wound more closely.

On the floor a few feet away, Wolf Lies Down groaned in agony.

"Papa," a small voice from above suddenly whispered. "Can we come down now?"

"No," Daniel said sharply. "I'll let you know when it's safe to move."

Josie, who was semiconscious, fluttered her lashes, but didn't open her eyes.

"A knife," she murmured. "That savage has a knife."

"Shush." Daniel pressed the edge of his pillow against her throat, checking the flow of blood. "Don't talk and don't move."

"But he's going after the twins."

"The twins are fine." Had she saved the lives of his boys? Daniel's throat tightened with unfamiliar emotions, and he had to swallow hard just to breath easily again.

"Am I hurt?" Josie whispered.

"Just a little," he lied, embellishing the tale so she wouldn't realize how close she'd come to meeting her maker. She was in shock now, but the pain would come soon enough, and along with it, the memory of Stump Horn's knife at her throat. "You hurt your shoulder when you fell."

"Silly me." Incredulously enough, she smiled. "I guess I must have fainted or something."

The fact that Josie had passed out was nothing short of a miracle, the one thing, near as Daniel could figure, that had saved her life. Wiping the wound clean, he took the pillow away from her throat. Blood was oozing now, not pulsing out of the cut, which meant that Stump Horn's knife had slipped as she fainted, costing him the angle on her jugular as well as the opportunity for a quick kill.

Daniel parted the cut with his fingers, gauging its depth and severity, and finally got a reaction out of Josie.

"Ow, that hurts," she cried. "What did you do to my neck?"

"You have a little cut there, but it's nothing. I'll just get something to clean it out. Don't move."

He rose, grateful that she'd closed her eyes and showed no signs of arguing with him, and then paused to take a look at the fallen warrior. Wolf Lies Down was barely hanging on to his life. With another glance at Josie, who was resting comfortably, Daniel hurried to where the Indian lay.

"Wake up, man," he said in rapid Cheyenne as he hunkered down beside him. "Where is your family, your women and children?"

The warrior cracked his eyelids. Then he stupidly used most of what was left of his strength to hurl a wad of spit.

Daniel wiped his cheek, and then took Wolf Lies Down roughly by the shoulders. "Don't be a damn fool. Its too late to save your miserable hide, but your family still has a chance. Where are they? Tell me so I can save them from certain starvation."

Daniel could feel the warrior's life ebbing beneath his fingertips, and worried that the same thing might be happening to Josie. He raised his voice in frustration. "They don't have to die, dammit. I promise if you tell me where your family is, they won't have to live on the run anymore. Now where the hell are they?"

The light in his eyes dimming with each breath that he took, Wolf Lies Down finally whispered directions to an area at the southeast fringes of the reservation. The spot was about five or six miles from Daniel's cabin, but in this weather, he figured it might as well have been a hundred.

"You will save them?" Wolf Lies Down eked out.

"I promise that I'll find them and make sure that they are returned safely to the tribe." Then, with a feeble nod, the formerly great warrior died in Daniel's arms.

"Now, Papa?" asked Bang.

"No!"

Since he rarely shouted at the boys, the rebuke startled Daniel almost as much as it did his younger son. But with two dead warriors and Josie bleeding all over his bed, he figured the twins would be better off viewing the carnage from above than from close up. Leaving the problem of what to do with the bodies for later, Daniel grabbed a few clean cloths, a needle and thread, and a bottle of whiskey before returning to Josie.

By then she was moaning and clutching her throat. "It hurts," she whimpered. "Why does it hurt so much?"

"Here," he said, filling a capful of whisky and bringing it to her lips. "Drink this and you'll feel better in no time."

Josie wrinkled her nose at the smell, and then shuddered slightly as the alcohol bathed her tongue. Daniel refilled the cap and brought it to her lips again, repeating the process until she lay there grinning at him in a drunken stupor. Then he poured a thin river of whisky along the wound, and got busy with the disagreeable task of sewing her neck back together again.

As he worked, flinching each time his needle pierced her delicate skin, Daniel thought about the odd way they'd come together and how much she'd come to mean to him over the past few weeks. He'd been so certain that he didn't want another woman in his life, so damned determined to send Josie back to where she'd come from, that he could hardly believe how possessive he felt toward her now. She was his, and not simply because Father van der Velden had said so. His because Daniel wanted her, now and forever.

It was with a little stab of guilt that he glanced up to where his sons lay peering down as he worked on Josie's neck. He'd never felt so strongly about their mother. Never had he been so utterly solicitous of her either, or so damned frustrated when he couldn't get her to see eye to eye with him. With Tangle Hair, Daniel had simply walked away whenever an argument came to a stalemate. With Josie, he felt compelled to fight to the bitter end. Surprisingly enough, he got almost as much satisfaction when she emerged the victor as when he did.

Daniel wasn't quite sure why things were so, but it sure as hell wasn't because Josie was the perfect wife. He'd drawn many comparisons between her and Tangle Hair since the day they first met, and until recently Josie had always been eclipsed by her Cheyenne counterpart when it came to matters of hearth and home. Why should it be that this inferior wife had such a strong hold on hire, a bond that made him feel as if he'd been mated for life?

Just asking himself that question finally clarified the main difference between the two women. Daniel had felt affection for Tangle Hair, and a definite sense of duty. But before Josie, he'd never known what it was to love.

* * *

It was dark in the cabin when Josie came around again, even though the flame from a single candle flickered at the table. Her head felt fuzzy, as did her tongue, and a dull ache bumped against the back of her skull. A sharper pain, more of a sting or a burn, bubbled at the side of her neck. She gently eased her fingers across the area, feeling a series of odd little bumps that felt as if she were petting the back of a very long centipede. Then suddenly she remembered the knife at her throat and realized what those tiny knolls represented—stitches.

Josie's eyes flew open in horror. Indians surrounded her bed as she'd feared, but the big round eyes staring at her belonged to Bang and Two Moons. One at each side of the mattress, they appeared to be standing guard over her, a sneaky little pair of pisspots disguised as miniature sentries.

Surprised to hear her own voice sounding so weak, she asked, "Where's your pa?"

One of them, Josie was too disoriented to figure out which, said, "In the barn. Food to animals."

She closed her eyes, relieved to know for sure that Daniel was all right. "Have you fellahs had your supper yet?"

A long silence, save for the slight rustle of their buckskin shirts, told Josie that the boys were either nodding or shaking their heads. She was suddenly too tired to open her eyes, so she said, "Yes or no?"

"Yes, Ma Jofess." More rustling of buckskins. Then a husky voice again, but closer, at her ear. "Stump Horn and his knife meant to kill us. You put the big bullet in his heart."

Josie had to think about that for a minute before it made sense. Then she remembered taking Daniel's gun from the shelf and firing it at one of the savages. Her eyes flew open again.

"Are you two all right?" she asked, looking from one to the other.

They nodded in unison. Then the boy at her ear—Bang, she thought—lifted the animal-shaped bag at his neck, gave her a shy smile, and said, "Is not bad medicine. Is from my belly."

Again it took her a minute, but Josie finally decided that he must be referring to his umbilical cord, and that his mother had sewn it inside the bag as part of a Cheyenne ritual.

"Thank you for telling me," she said, pleased by the child's small offering of friendship. "I guess in that case it's only fair to let you know that my cookies aren't poisoned, and never were."

"Pa said so to us." Two Moons, who'd been silent but curious until then, slipped back into his usual belligerent attitude. "You lie."

Josie's weary gaze flickered over the boy, noting that his large dark eyes still burned with something akin to hatred whenever he looked at her. Bang muttered something to him in Cheyenne, and Two Moons responded with a series of quick, biting words that sounded as if they were curses or the like. Josie didn't need to understand the language to know that the twins were arguing over her, and that the hatred Two Moons felt carried far more clout than his brother's tiny show of sympathy. Bang struggled against his twin's arguments for a moment, but then dissolved into tears about the same time his father came back into the cabin.

"Oh, hell," Daniel said, shrugging out of his jacket. "Now what?"

Two Moons quickly ran to him, babbling in his native language and pointing to Josie. Daniel glanced at her and frowned. By then Bang was at his side telling his version of the trouble. When the second twin finished, Daniel said something to both boys in Cheyenne that sent them scurrying up the ladder, leaving him alone with her.

"You saved my boys," he said, sitting down beside her. "I'll never be able to thank you enough. Never."

She wanted to shrug, but thought better of it. Her cheeks were warm with embarrassment. "Anyone would have shot that no-account heathen for going after helpless children with a knife."

"It wasn't just anyone. It was you."

There was something too intimate in Daniel's voice, too profound for Josie to face or accept. She closed her eyes.

"Try to stay awake a little longer," he said. "How are you feeling? Throat hurt?"

Her eyes popped open. "It stings a little, but it doesn't hurt near as much as the inside of my head does. What did you give me to drink?"

"Whiskey." His mouth twisted into a sideways grin. "Want some more?"

Josie's stomach rolled. "No, thank you. I could use a little tea. I don't suppose you have any?"

Daniel shook his head. "Sorry, fresh out. How about some ham and fried potatoes? I cooked some up for supper earlier. There's plenty left for you."

At the very thought of food, Josie's belly clenched in painful spasms. "No," she said. "All I want is to rest a while." Then she closed her eyes again, this time intending to keep them that way, and settled deeper into the pillow.

"Don't go to sleep on me, Josie. Not yet." He gently patted her cheek. "I have to talk to you."

With a carefully controlled yawn, one that didn't pull her stitches too much, she rubbed the weariness from her eyes and said, "Can't it wait until morning?"

"Morning is what I want to talk about." He rose and began to remove his clothing. "I know you're in a certain amount of pain, but that cut isn't very deep. It seems to me that you should be able to tend the animals by tomorrow night. What do you think?"

"I suppose I could if I had to, but why would I have to? You've hardly let me near the barn since we got back from the mission."

Stripped down to his woolen drawers, Daniel blew out the lamp and slipped beneath the blankets beside her before he answered. "I have to head out first thing in the morning to try and find the women and children those two renegades left behind. I may not make it back before nightfall."