Chapter 15
The next few weeks passed in a manner that left Sabrina completely baffled…and more and more tormented.
Sloan was polite and courteous to her, but he spent a great deal of time with the other men in the officers’ quarters and worked late every night.
Willow arrived with the rest of Sabrina’s clothing and belongings, and she was glad to see him. She felt that Sloan watched her intently as she greeted Willow, but what was on his mind, she didn’t know. He hadn’t been sharing his thoughts with her.
Willow and Sloan stayed up very late, talking.
When she had a chance to speak with Willow herself, she anxiously asked him questions about her sister and Hawk.
Once, she caught Sloan watching her, studying her, and she was surprised the next evening when he told her that they could take a few days for a trip to Mayfair to visit Skylar and Hawk.
While they were at Mayfair, Sloan spent the nights talking to Hawk until the wee hours of the morning; she was asleep by the time he came to bed.
Sabrina was delighted to be with Skylar, who was growing rounder every day.
As Sabrina and Sloan were getting ready to leave, Skylar, who wanted to walk out with them, had difficulty getting into her coat.
When Sabrina laughed sympathetically, Hawk teased, “You’ll be in that shape soon enough yourself, I’ll warrant, and you’ll think twice about laughing then! ”
She’d ceased laughing when she noticed that Sloan was looking at her. “Sabrina isn’t certain about raising a family on the frontier,” Sloan had said lightly; then he had urged her to hurry.
They didn’t spend a romantic night in the tipi. Willow accompanied them to the fort because they were bringing back Hawk and Skylar’s wedding gift to them—a beautifully carved grandfather clock with the motto “Time Waits for No Man” inscribed on the face.
Custer returned to Washington. The officers and men at the fort worked on the prong that would be leaving from Fort Abraham Lincoln.
Sloan was informed that he’d officially receive his promotion to lieutenant colonel in a ceremony scheduled for the end of summer, and winter passed into spring with very little difference.
The days could suddenly be warm, and then the temperature would pitch down well below freezing.
Yet it wasn’t the weather that left Sabrina so very cold. Sloan had distanced himself from her. She could remember a time when she had been dismayed that he pursued her so relentlessly. Now…
He was courteous. He was even charming in the company of others. Yet it seemed that he had tired of her, just when she had realized how much she wanted…his warmth.
But just when it seemed that life with Sloan had become a living hell of inner torment, life became worse.
Because hell was better with him than without him.
Sloan was being sent out on an intelligence detail. General Crook was claiming a victory against the Sioux. He believed that he had come upon Crazy Horse’s camp, and that his men, under Reynolds, had destroyed the camp. He was hoping for a first and telling victory in the Great Sioux War.
Sabrina found out that Sloan would be leaving the fort through Sergeant Dawson, who came to her with a message from Sloan, asking her to pack his belongings for a trip that might last several weeks.
Although she usually enjoyed doing domestic tasks for her husband, this one she undertook with a heavy heart.
She was afraid for him to go.
She was folding extra shirts to pack into his bedroll when she felt a prickling down her spine and looked up to discover that he had come back to their quarters.
He stood leaning against the archway, watching her with grave, dark eyes as she went about her task.
She was unnerved when she saw him there.
“There’s—coffee,” she told him.
“Thanks.” He turned away, going to the Dutch oven and pouring himself coffee.
“They believe that Crazy Horse’s camp has been destroyed?” she asked.
Sloan sipped hot black coffee, turned back to her, and shrugged.
“No one claims to have killed Crazy Horse, and I’m personally not so certain that Crook attacked any Sioux.
The soldiers encountered an encampment and killed Indians.
Crook had split his troops, staying behind to guard army supplies with four companies while six companies of men followed an Indian trail.
Though Crook is claiming a victory, it sounds as if the attack was a pathetically mismanaged affair.
Reynolds’s troops were divided into three battalions of two companies each, under three captains: Noyes, Mills, and Moore.
It seems that only Mills led the men with any competency, and though they effectively destroyed the camp, they were counterattacked, and as it happened, a number of wounded men were left behind to be scalped alive by the Indians. ”
“Oh, my God!” Sabrina breathed.
He didn’t seem to hear her. “If I’m right, they attacked Cheyenne who were simply living in the unceded lands, causing the government no harm.
And now, like the reservation Indians who have been starved out by corrupt contractors, those Indians will travel northward for help from the Oglala or Hunkpapa people, and the ‘hostiles’ will amass a larger force than any White commander will ever believe. ”
“I don’t understand; why are you going out?”
“To find out exactly which Indians Crook attacked.”
“Oh,” Sabrina murmured. With the last of his belongings folded into his bedroll, she stood idly with her arms crossed over her chest. She looked at Sloan, who continued to watch her gravely.
“Won’t there come a time when you’ll no longer be able to straddle a fence?
” she asked him. “The Whites will want the truth about what you discover. And if the Sioux think that you are going to betray them to the Whites, won’t they be forced to kill you, regardless of your having been their friend? ”
“I don’t believe that I’ll encounter any Sioux,” Sloan told her. He set his cup down. “The coffee was good.” He strode past her, picking up the bedroll she had packed for him. “Thank you,” he told her briefly; then he turned, striding toward the door once again.
She realized that he was leaving then—right then.
She followed after him. “Sloan?”
He paused, turning back.
“Be careful.”
He nodded, the touch of a smile about his lips. “I’m always careful. I’m good at what I do.”
“But things are changing.”
“Yes, they are. But behave, my love,” he said lightly. “I’ve no intention of conveniently getting killed. I will be coming back.”
He stepped outside. The door closed. She stared after it for a long moment, then raced toward it. She flung it open in time to see Sloan talking to Lieutenant Blake as he mounted up on Thomas.
Sloan, who had been listening to Blake, turned. She hesitated on the porch, then hurried down the steps to the two men.
“Ah, Mrs. Trelawny! Excuse me. I’ll leave you two alone.”
Before he walked away, Blake saluted Sloan, who returned the gesture. Then Sloan looked down at Sabrina.
For a moment, she was tongue-tied. Then she told him quietly, “That was a horrible thing to say.”
“What was that?”
“That you will not conveniently get killed.”
He smiled suddenly, the wicked, roguish smile that he could somehow cast so compellingly. “Well, I don’t intend to get killed.”
“Obviously, you didn’t mean that it would be convenient for you—but rather for me.”
“So it would not be convenient for you?”
“I told you, that’s a horrible thing to say!” Sabrina persisted.
“All right, then. I’m sorry. And I’m glad that you’re anxious for my return.”
“Naturally, I want you to return alive and well.”
“Good.” He leaned toward her, his hands balanced on the pommel of his saddle. “And naturally, I want you to be alive and well—and here!—when I get back.”
“Where would I go?” she asked him.
“I don’t know. But no excursions, do you understand?”
She saluted, staring at him. She wanted to say something more; she didn’t know what.
She didn’t want him just riding away this way.
It seemed so…cold. She wished that they’d been angry, that she might have been so irresistible the previous night that he’d swept her into his arms, so she could then carry that memory with her into the days and nights ahead, when she lay awake praying that he was alive.
And not with an Indian mistress.
He pulled on Thomas’s reins, moving away from her. “No excursions, Sabrina.”
She stood in the yard, watching him ride away. Soldiers saluted him as he passed by; he saluted in return.
He didn’t look back.
After a few minutes, she shivered and went back inside.
She was suddenly very tired, and she went into the bedroom to lie down.
It didn’t matter, she realized. Sloan was gone, and it didn’t matter if she lay there all night, staring at the ceiling.
There was nothing she really wanted to do—until he returned.
The fort was a flurry of activity as wagons were prepared, mules and cattle bought, and men drilled. In the first few days after Sloan left, Sabrina felt entirely listless, as if she had no energy at all.
But the women who were fast becoming her friends wouldn’t leave her alone.
She was invited to dinner, lunch, coffee, to reading circles and sewing bees.
Feeling very lonely, she accepted the invitations.
Marlene, often at the same functions, watched her with a secretive smile that Sabrina found annoying.
She did her very best to ignore Marlene, reminding herself that Sloan didn’t lie, and he had said that Marlene was an “old” acquaintance.
Marlene was his past. She was careful, any time she was in Marlene’s presence, to pine for Sloan’s return. It wasn’t a difficult act.
Newspapers continued to contain damning political stories about graft and corruption.