Wild Splendor (3 page)

Chapter 3

I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet!

—J
OHN
C
LARE

 

 

“You have come to the camp of the Navaho,” Sage said, his voice flat. “Why have you? What have you to say that you did not say while the white man was making decisions for you?”

Leonida blushed and lowered her eyes, embarrassed by how it must have looked when Harold had treated her so crudely in front of the Navaho people. Surely Sage thought that Harold made all of her decisions for her.

She wanted to spill out an explanation, to make herself look better in the eyes of this handsome Indian chief, but she felt that it was best left unspoken, at least for now.

“The white woman has the courage to ride unescorted beneath the stars, yet does not find her voice to answer Sage?” he prodded, reaching out a hand to touch her arm ever so gently.

His voice, the way it changed from flatness to soft caring, made Leonida's insides melt, as well as her reserve. “I answer to no one,” she blurted. “Today it might have appeared that I do. But in truth, since my parents' deaths, I have made all of the choices in my life. Perhaps they are not always the best, yet still I allow no one to speak for me.”

“But today you did?” he persisted, in his mind's eye seeing her humiliation when the white man had taken the necklace from her.

Leonida straightened her back and swallowed hard. “Today?” she murmured. “It all happened so quickly, I did not have time to think clearly.”

She wanted to tell Sage that moments after he had ridden away on his beautiful chestnut stallion she had put Harold in his rightful place. She wanted to tell Sage that Harold would never humiliate her again like that. Soon she would stop this charade with Harold once and for all.

“Are you thinking, as you say, ‘clearly enough' now?” Sage asked, his hand at her elbow urging her from her saddle. “You do not look as though you took much time to consider the clothes you would wear for a ride on horseback.”

His gaze swept over her as she slipped down from her saddle, seeing her as nothing less than beautiful in her blue satin gown, the magnificence of her breasts swelling from the top of it. He wanted to reach his hands out to her golden hair and run his fingers through its long ringlets, but refrained. The art of restraint had been well taught him as a child.

“The haste with which I left the fort did not allow my changing into something more appropriate,” she murmured, her cheeks heating up as she again felt his eyes roaming over her, stopping momentarily at her breasts. She had to wonder if he could see them heaving with the excitement of the moment.

She even wondered if he could hear her heart thundering wildly within her chest at being so close to this magnificently handsome man.

“This haste that you speak of,” Sage said, “will you regret having stopped to have conversation with a Navaho chief?”

Leonida smiled uneasily up at him. There was an ache in her heart that she could not quell. As she peered into the eyes of this Navaho chief, she was seeing his defeat, his future stolen away from him, his freedom stifled, just as though he were a wild horse taken from the prairie, tamed, and then placed in a pen.

The thought made her look quickly away so that he would not see the anger and humiliation for him in the depths of her eyes or the tears that she was fighting back. She was glad that the cloak of night hid her anguish.

“You look away,” Sage said, placing a finger on her chin and turning her eyes back to his. “Why do you?”

Leonida searched for the right words to say. “I—I feel suddenly awkward,” she quickly explained. “You see, I had no set plans for any destination tonight. I just needed to get away from the fort, to ride my horse and get a breath of fresh air.” She glanced at the campfire through the break in the trees, then smiled slowly up at Sage again. “I guess I should have seen the signs of the fire in the sky, which would have let me know of your campfire. But I didn't. I just happened onto your camp.”

The clouds slid away from the moon, showing Leonida the disappointment in his face. Had he actually thought that she had come searching for him? In truth, perhaps she had, unconsciously.

“But now that I am here, I would love to stay and talk a while with you,” she quickly added.

As he tethered her horse to a tree, Leonida looked over her shoulder at the campfire. “Perhaps we could join the others at your camp?” she murmured. “I would enjoy seeing your sister again.”

To her surprise, Sage took her by an elbow and began ushering her in the opposite direction, away from the campsite. With parted lips and widened eyes she gazed up at him, half stumbling as he continued guiding her through the forest, stopping at a creek that spiraled like a silver snake in and about the trees.

“Sit,” Sage said, nodding toward the ground. “No one will disturb us here.”

Leonida's stomach did a strange sort of flip-flop, and her heart skipped a beat as he gently pushed her to the ground, then sat down beside her. She smoothed her wrinkled dress with a hand as she stretched her legs out before her, feeling strangely at ease with this Navaho chief, even though she had only met him that afternoon.

Yet she could hear her father's warnings flashing in her mind: not to trust so easily, always to be wary of Indians, no matter their reputation. Little was actually known of what made their minds work, and to most, they were still vicious, heartless savages.

Leonida's own relationships with the Navaho Indians of this area had proven that the bigoted white people were wrong about them. That they were going to be forced to live on a reservation was an injustice she wished that she could right. But she was only one person, and a woman. The voice of a woman carried no weight.

“It's quite beautiful here,” Leonida murmured, breaking the silence. “I'm so glad to be here instead—instead of back at the fort.”

She swallowed hard and momentarily closed her eyes, trying to blank out the anger that welled up inside her every time she recalled Kit Carson's words, that it would be best for the Indians to be placed on reservations, that he saw no other choice but to force the Navaho to join the Mescalero Indians at Fort Sumner.

“It is a place of peace,” Sage said, leaning back on an elbow. As he stretched one long, lean leg out before him, the silver buttons on his trousers caught the rays of the moon in them. “But what Sage likes best of all is to sit on a knoll, watching the horses of my village feed, when others of my village like to sit down for smokes and gossip. Nature is where I would rather be than around a fire, speaking of others' private lives.”

“I have never been one who enjoys gossip either,” Leonida said, smiling over at him. What he had just said made her ever more aware of how wrong it would be to imprison such a man within the confines of a reservation.

He was a man who inhaled freedom as though it were the very air that he breathed. To take it away from him would be the same as snuffing life from him.

Yet there was nothing that she could do to change what was to happen. She would try to absorb every moment with Sage, for it just might be the last.

“I did not think that you would be the sort to meddle in others' affairs,” Sage said, returning her smile.

Those words stung Leonida to the core, for as badly as she wanted to meddle this time, she could not. Her words were powerless among men like Kit Carson and General Harold Porter.

She blinked her eyes to keep tears from splashing from them, then peered up at the heavens. Starlight, pale and cold, silhouetted the ragged oaks that stood tall and statuesque over her. She listened and enjoyed the sound of the water cascading over the stairs of stones in the cool stream, the rich bass of bullfrogs, and the rasp of crickets.

“I so love this time of night,” she murmured. “Just look at the stars. Aren't they beautiful?”

She turned her eyes away from the sky and peered into the darkness. “And just look at the fireflies,” she said, sighing. “Their cold sparks are like the fires of miniature lanterns blinking off and on in the night.”

She laughed softly and gazed over at Sage. “Now if it were midday, who could enjoy any of this?” she said. “There are always snakes to fear when the sun is high in the sky.” She hugged herself with her arms and shuddered. “If there is anything that I detest, it's snakes.”

Sage stared at her for a moment in silence, unnerving her, for suddenly his dark eyes seemed lit with fire. She relaxed when he began talking, friendly as before. She had thought that she had said something that had irritated him, yet was unable to touch on exactly what it might be.

“The Navaho have stories full of poetry and miracles about such things as you speak of tonight,” Sage said, looking away from her. He began picking up pebbles, tossing them one by one into the creek. “The stories are told by the elders of the Navaho villages in the wintertime when the snakes are asleep.”

He moved a hand to her cheek. “The desert country
is
full of snakes, poisonous and otherwise,” he said softly. “But to the Navaho, snakes are the guardians of sacred lore and will punish those who treat it lightly.”

Leonida's eyes widened and she swallowed hard.

“I did not know . . .” she murmured, strongly aware of his hand on her cheek, the heat of his flesh against hers. Feelings foreign to her began warming her through and through. “I'm sorry. I never meant to speak so unkindly of snakes. It's just that long ago, when I was a child, I was bitten by a rattler. I . . . almost died. A preacher was even brought to my bedside. He said many prayers to God before I began to recover.” She was torn with feelings when he drew his hand away and again began tossing pebbles into the water. “I imagine you have a Great Spirit that you pray to?”

“There are many spirits that we pray to, not just one,” Sage explained. “Their names are Changing Woman, Sun, First Man and First Woman, Hero Twins, Monster Slayer, Born of Woman, and White Shell Woman.”

Leonida's head swam as she tried to remember all of the names that he was giving her. She was quickly learning one of the main differences between her culture and Sage's, and knew that this was only the beginning.

“The primary purpose for Navaho ceremonials, or ‘sings,' is to keep man in harmony with himself and the universe,” Sage continued.

He laughed softly. “I see that what I have said confuses you,” he said, moving to an erect sitting position. He wanted to reach out and take her hand yet refrained, afraid that it might frighten or offend her.

In due time, he kept telling himself, in due time he would know the taste of her lips and the touch of her flesh. For now, words were enough, at least until she knew that she could trust him, that he wasn't a “savage.”

“Yes, I am confused,” she said matter-of-factly. “Yet I understand that there are many differences between your customs and mine, and I accept that.”

“Not only customs,” Sage said, his voice drawn. He rose to his feet and offered Leonida a hand, which she took and stood up beside him.

Her heart pounded when he kept her hand in his as they began walking slowly beside the creek, then headed back toward her horse.

“Sage's people see that white men are beginning to understand they did not mean to harm the Navaho,” he said. “The whites have their own ideas of law, and they carry them out just as carefully as the Navaho. The two ways are different and cannot keep clashing. It is good to think that warring is a thing of the past, an ugly past filled with hatred and bigotry.”

Leonida stiffened and did not offer a response. She knew that if she said anything now, it would come out all wrong. She did not want to be the one to bear sad tidings, knowing that he would find out soon enough. There was to be a meeting tomorrow at the fort, and he would be one of the many Indian chiefs in attendance.

There he would surely learn early enough the fate of his people.

“As you know, the language of the Navaho is not the only language used by my people today,” Sage said as he stopped beside her horse and began smoothing his hand over its sleek brown mane. “Sage's English is clear enough, is it not? It was learned from trading with white people and also from Kit Carson, with whom Sage has shared many smokes many times in the past.”

He turned to Leonida, pleased to be talking of his association with Kit Carson, not knowing that very man was planning a future for Sage's people that would drastically change his feelings for the “pathfinder.”

“Kit Carson has been known to me for many moons now,” he said, proudly squaring his shoulders. “Sage has watched Kit Carson lasso a wild horse and throw his rope with the sure aim of an arrow. Kit Carson was an agent for the Utes a few moons ago, and because he so well cared for them, they gave him the name ‘Father Kit.'”

He turned from Leonida and stared into the distance, thinking of tomorrow's meeting, when he would be clasping hands of friendship once again with Kit. Carson. He turned smiling eyes down at Leonida again.

“When the sun sits high in the sky tomorrow, Sage and many other Indian leaders will speak of peace and harmony again with Kit Carson and the leaders at the fort,” he said thickly. “We shall share many smokes. It will be a good time. Sage will then return to his home in the mountains content.”

His eyes became shadowed as he leaned down closer to Leonida. “There will be one thing missing in my happiness,” he said, gently touching her cheek with his callused fingers.

Leonida's heart seemed scarcely to be beating as she gazed up at him, his lips so close, his eyes so filled with something quite unfamiliar to her, yet seeming to reflect deep feelings for her. “What is that?” she asked, her voice breaking as she was forced to swallow quickly. Her motions were becoming overwhelmed with a delicious sort of languor.