Chapter 15 #3
The brave pulled the water gourd from her lips, tossing it aside. For another few minutes, he studied her. Then, to her horror and amazement, he suddenly grabbed her bare ankles, jerking her so that she was drawn down to lie flat on her back in the dirt.
She started to shriek. He clamped a suffocating hand hard over her mouth.
With her hands still caught in the rawhide bands behind her back, she was almost powerless to struggle.
His weight and form were between her legs, his hands were upon her, ripping her pantalettes.
She tried desperately to twist and squirm, since there was no denying the man’s intentions at this point.
She could barely breathe. The pressure he put against her mouth was great.
When she tried to rise, his weight merely pushed her back down.
She could barely even kick or thrash, he had pushed her thighs so far apart.
His hand slipped. She bit into his fingers with a fury that drew blood and a curse.
She saw his face lowering furiously before hers.
He raged at her in his own tongue, still keeping his voice low.
She inhaled to scream again, hoping that she might create trouble among the men, cause them to fight each other and forget her.
She never managed to scream. The side of his hand clouted her head.
She fell back, dazed, only very dimly aware that she was nearly stripped of her pantalettes.
Then quite suddenly, she saw a flash of silver. She stared at a knife. And that knife was set at the throat of the Crow on top of her. She looked up at a hard, bronzed, merciless face.
“Hawk…” She could barely form his name. No matter. Something inside of her gave rise to a staggering happiness. He lived.
And even as the simple joy of that thought filled her, her attacker was wrenched from atop her.
The Crow faced Hawk, whipping out a knife of his own from a sheath at his hip.
For a moment the knives glittered in the glow of the moonlight.
Then there was no contest. Hawk moved like lightning.
Again, his knife flashed. The Crow still held his high.
The knife remained high in the air. The Crow fell forward, onto Hawk.
Hawk had given his combatant a chance. His ancient and traditional enemy slipped down the length of his body and fell dead at Skylar’s feet.
It all happened so quickly. So quietly.
Hawk reached out for her, aware that her hands were bound behind her back. He plucked her up by both shoulders, spinning her around so he could cut the rawhide bonds with his knife. He paused for a just a split second.
“You’d nearly worked through them,” he said, surprised.
Her knees were wobbly. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stand, afraid that tears of relief would suddenly spill from her eyes. But he spun her back around again, staring at her, assessing her quickly and gravely.
“Are you alright?”
She nodded. “You came just in time.”
“I’ve been here.”
“What?” She almost shrieked the word before his hand clamped down over her mouth.
“I had to wait for a few of them to drift off!” he whispered in return. “I know that I’m just supposed to up and die for you, but it wouldn’t have done you any good if I would have walked right in and been shot by the guard.”
“All he has is an Enfield!”
“Enfields can kill! Believe me, I’ve seen a few men downed by Enfields!” he told her. “Skylar, we have to argue later. We’ve got to get out of here now.”
He started walking, pulling her along. She stepped upon a particularly sharp rock, and despite her will to be silent, she cried out softly. He turned back, staring at her. “I’m sorry!” she hissed. “It hurt.”
“What are you doing barefoot?”
“I was after your stupid mule, remember?”
Something suddenly whistled by her ear. A knife stabbed the earth by their feet.
“Sweet Jesus!” Skylar breathed. She gritted down on her teeth when Hawk pulled his Colt from the holster at his hips, quickly firing off several rounds. The reverberations were deafening. A cry in the night assured her that at least one of the Crow war party had been hit.
She gasped when he swept her up, carrying her then as he hurried away from the rocks. She swallowed hard as he stepped over the body of the Crow guard who had been carrying the Enfield.
“Duck!” she suddenly heard.
Sloan was before them, falling to his knees.
Hawk went instantly downward to a hunching position.
An arrow flew past them, slamming into a tree beyond.
Sloan, still on his knees, fired off several shots.
Skylar heard a shriek of pain. Hawk spun around, his Colt raised, just in time to stop the warrior who was about to pitch his entire weight against him.
The man went down in absolute silence. Another warrior followed behind him, tomahawk raised.
Hawk fired again. The second warrior fell upon the other.
Skylar closed her eyes tightly, biting back a wave of purely hysterical screams. God, the death and mayhem seemed to be all around her.
“Do we finish it?” Sloan asked.
“Do we have a choice?” Hawk queried in return.
Still clinging to Hawk, Skylar began to shake. She raised herself against him, grabbing his shoulders. “Let’s go, let’s just go—”
“Skylar, they’ll come after us. All the way,” Hawk told her.
“There can just be two men left alive. They—”
“Skylar, these Crow are very far from home. They were pushed from these lands a long time ago. They’re on a war party.
They’ve come for something. They may not be alone.
There could be many more warriors who might join up with them.
Perhaps they’ve come to raid the whites—to most Indians, there is far more profit in stealing from white settlements than there is in raiding other tribes. ”
“Let’s just go—” she insisted again, but Sloan cut her off.
“Skylar, you don’t understand. You humiliated that warrior who accosted you by the brook.
You struck him. That was like a woman counting coup against a brave.
He’s dead, but sometimes humiliation is worse than death.
Don’t you understand? They might come after you until they’ve found a way to take you. ”
Her agreement or disagreement didn’t matter anymore.
Arrows suddenly began to land again, so near them that her skirt was shot through and pinned to the ground.
Despite herself she screamed, only to find Hawk pressing her down to the ground and rising over her.
He didn’t get off a shot. One of the Crows threw himself against Hawk and then went rolling into the dust and earth.
“Stay down!” she heard Sloan command when she would have risen. The second surviving warrior came catapulting over her, striking Sloan. All four men were now engaged in life-and-death battles, rolling in the earth around her.
She couldn’t stay down any longer. She jumped to her feet, then dove back to the earth for Hawk’s Colt.
How many shots remained? She had no idea.
The gun seemed hot and heavy in her hand.
She tried to aim it. She looked over at Hawk and one brave, Sloan and the other.
They all twisted and rolled so frequently and so fast she was afraid to fire. She might kill one of them.
Hawk was suddenly on his feet, along with the one brave. They circled one another. Skylar raised the Colt. Just as the brave went rushing for Hawk, she fired.
She heard Hawk cursing. The brave was slumped against him. She shook, thinking she had killed the brave. Hawk pushed the man from him. He fell on his back, and she saw that he had been stabbed in the heart.
Hawk was clasping his arm. She saw him staring at her, but it was too dark to read his expression.
“I shot—”
“Me!” he announced. “Get down!” he suddenly commanded.
She did as she was told. She saw her husband’s bloodied knife go whipping past her, just in time to prevent the last surviving Crow from bringing a rock crashing down on Sloan’s head.
Sloan, too, had been prepared. The Crow died with one knife in his back, another through his heart.
Staring at him with horror, Skylar dropped the Colt and backed away, her hands upon her face as she fought the waves of blackness engulfing her.
“Uh-hmm!”
She drew her hands from her face. Hawk was coming toward her, one hand clasped over his arm. “Did you miss the man trying to kill me—or was your aim just a little off and you hit my arm instead of my heart?”
She rushed toward him, feeling absolutely hysterical at this point. She slammed both fists against his chest. “Oh, God, oh, God, how can you…”
“Hey! Shh…shh…it’s all right, I was teasing. I think. Skylar, it’s all right.”
She buried her face against his chest. “It’s not all right. There are dead men everywhere.”
He lifted her chin. “Did you want us to be the dead men?”
She shook her head. “No!” Suddenly, no words would come. Shaking she threw herself against him again. Over his shoulder, she could see Sloan collecting their knives from the body of the Crow brave.
“Oh, God,” she whispered again. “Can we go? Can we just go now, please?”
“Not quite yet,” Sloan said. He had come to stand behind Hawk. He touched her cheek, offering her a dry smile.
“But—”
“We haven’t scalped them yet,” he told her.
“What?” she cried.
“Skylar, he’s teasing you,” Hawk assured her.
“Of course. Neither Hawk nor I have scalped an enemy in almost twenty years.”
Hawk disengaged himself from her. “Skylar, we’re going to bury them.”
She looked at him uncertainly. “Indians don’t—get buried, do they?”
Sloan cast Hawk a glance. “Sometimes. Most Plains Indians scaffold their dead, but occasionally, the dead are buried in shallow graves near cliffs. Not that that particularly matters at the moment. We don’t want what happened here to be obvious to other warriors who might be meeting up with this war party. ”
“Oh,” she murmured.
“Think you can watch the horses?” Hawk asked her.
She nodded. She didn’t think that the horses were going anywhere; Hawk and Sloan just wanted to keep her busy.
She started to walk with Hawk again and winced, her feet in desperate pain by then.
He picked her up again, telling Sloan briefly that he’d leave her with the horses and be right back.
He carried her to a cove of trees just fifty feet down a slope.
Among the trees stood Tor, Sloan’s horse and her own roan.
He set her down atop the gelding. She stared down at him.
“You got the horse back from the Crow?” she said.
He patted the roan’s neck. “Nutmeg is a fine animal,” he told her. “Important to me.”
“You got the horse back before you came for me?” she whispered.
A smile twitched at his lips. “We didn’t know how many braves there were here. And we didn’t want to be followed. The Indian ponies are scattered ahead of us. We’ll take them to my grandfather’s band along with the cattle.”
“You rescued the horse before you rescued me?” she repeated.
Again, he laughed. “At least I didn’t shoot you.”
“Oh!” She was about to ask after his wound, but it was still too galling that the horse had mattered more than her.
“You went for the horse!” she repeated.
He shrugged. “Among the Sioux, one man’s family may pay a husband with a horse if one of their kind steals that man’s wife. Both are actually property.”
“I should have aimed better!” she warned him.
But he still smiled. He stood very close to her, his fingers moving very gently over her injured foot.
“Sloan went for your horse and the Crow ponies,” he told her.
“I came straight for you. I watched, and I waited. I told you before, my love, that I’d kill any man, red or white, who threatened to take what was mine. ”
She felt very warm suddenly, still shaken by the events. His voice had been very intense. She wanted him closer, yet she was suddenly so afraid in a different way that she wanted to back off as well.
“So,” she murmured lightly, “did you kill them for me, or for the horse?”
He reached up, touching her cheek. The moonlight caught his eyes, and they glittered strangely against the rugged lines of his handsome features.
“Both, my love,” he murmured. “Both.”
He turned and left her, ready to join Sloan for their burial detail.