Chapter 19 #3
Sloan laughed softly. “I’m afraid you’ve little hope of ever doing that. If he were to beat you too severely, your relatives could certainly protest and endanger his respect within the community. But you haven’t any relatives here. Skylar…”
“Yes?”
“Has he really hurt you so badly?”
She flushed uncomfortably. “No, he scared me halfway to death at first, but he’s never hurt me, it’s just that…”
“This meal with Crazy Horse is important to him.”
“And I intend to be a proper wife.”
Sloan smiled. “It’s too bad the three of us aren’t full-blooded Sioux. I could steal you away, leaving several good ponies as payment.”
“It appears to me,” Skylar said shrewdly, “that you are quite busy enough without a wife.”
“What? Ah…Earth Woman.”
“Is that her name? How fitting.”
“Ouch. You do have claws.”
“Well, I thought…never mind.”
“Watch those thoughts. Sioux men and women are like other men and women. Within the framework of society, some are simply better people than others. But morality is high here—”
“When a man isn’t wife-stealing.”
“Wife-stealing brings about a stigma.”
“Wife-beating.”
“Very few men beat their wives. And you tell me, are white men always kind and gentle with their wives?”
Her heart seemed to harden as she looked at him. She shook her head. “You’re right. White men can be monsters.” She inhaled. “Don’t you dare let him enjoy the day, Sloan. But you needn’t worry. I do intend to be the perfect wife.”
Sloan smiled. With a wave, he rode off to join his hunting party.
They rode for several hours on the trail of an elk herd.
Hawk used the time to talk with Crazy Horse and his cousins, finding it important to keep communication between them as open and complete as possible.
But after a while he found himself drawn back to Sloan, and they rode at the rear of the party.
“Tension in paradise?” Sloan drawled.
“You caused the tension this morning,” Hawk informed him.
Sloan raised a brow.
“She thought I was the man waiting for Earth Woman.”
“Why didn’t you just tell her the truth?”
“If she was going to be so quick to assume that I’d do such a thing, she didn’t deserve the truth.”
“Ah.”
“And I’ve never been able to get the truth out of her.”
“She lies?” Sloan queried, startled.
Hawk shook his head. “Not exactly. It’s just so damned frustrating not to know anything—”
“She’s on the run,” Sloan said simply.
“You think she’s wanted by the law?” Hawk demanded incredulously.
Sloan shook his head. He shrugged. “She was a little upset, asking me if Sioux women had some recourse against their husbands.”
“Really?”
“Well, did you threaten to beat her at a lodge pole?”
Hawk shrugged. “She wasn’t really threatened.”
“Maybe she’s not quite so sure of you—or herself—as you might think.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sloan shook his head. “I don’t know exactly—she’s not my wife. I can’t threaten to beat things out of her.”
Hawk exhaled with impatience. Sloan put up a hand to stop him before he could talk.
“She told me that you had never really hurt her—”
“Damn it, Sloan, that you would need to ask—”
“But someone did hurt her, Hawk. Someone who still scares her now. Someone in her past. Maybe she ran from a husband—”
“I’m her husband.”
“Hawk, I’m just telling you—”
“She was never married before.”
“How can you—”
“Unless she was married to a damned eunuch.”
“Oh. Well, there’s someone out there she’s running from. Maybe an abusive father, brother, uncle—who knows? She said that she knew white men could be monsters.”
“Monsters?” Hawk said.
“Yes.”
“Monsters?”
“Yes! Monsters.”
Hawk frowned, remembering the way she had awakened, screaming, from her dream. She’d refused to describe the nightmare that had plagued her.
Except that it had contained…
Monsters.
“What? Is that some kind of a clue?” Sloan demanded.
Hawk shrugged. “I don’t know. I will know soon enough. I’ve asked Henry to find out about her past for me. And she’s going to have a real monster in her life tonight if she’s rude to Crazy Horse. Me. I damn well guarantee you a monster!”
Sloan shrugged, then pointed ahead of them. “I think that our hunting party ahead may be on to something!”
“A party of Crow?”
“No, I think we’d have heard a war cry by now, were that the case. Though I just don’t get it. I didn’t understand the other night at all, and I can’t believe there are more Crows in the area. They’d have to be half insane. What in hell would they be up to, riding in this region?”
“I don’t know,” Hawk said. It bothered Sloan, it bothered him, but why, he couldn’t quite say. “It seems like a strange time. A damned strange time,” Hawk muttered.
Sloan glanced at him sharply. “Why? What more?”
Hawk looked quickly to his friend in turn. “A strange man approached Henry Pierpont. He had a Douglas ring—one that should have been buried with my brother. And I was asked to go to the Highlands—to a place we call the Druid Stone—on the night of the Moon Maiden.”
Sloan stared at him incredulously for a moment, then carefully lowered his eyes, composing his features. Hawk knew that he intended to weigh his words, to keep his friend from what might be false hope. “How could David be alive? You buried him yourself.”
“I buried a burned corpse, of that I am certain.”
Sloan shook his head. “Someone suddenly appearing. Saying that David might be alive? It sounds like a hoax. You shouldn’t get your hopes up, my friend.”
“How can I not go?”
“Because life is grave here. Have you thought that someone may want you dead now? Your brother has been gone more than five years, now your father as well. If you are killed, there is a clean sweep, and the title and rights to your Scottish estates may be very dear to someone else.”
“Indeed, I’ve thought of all the angles.”
“Including your wife, I imagine!” Sloan smiled suddenly. “Poor thing—after all this, she may not be Lady Douglas.”
Hawk nodded grimly. “Would it matter to her, do you think?”
“Would it matter to you that you were not Lord Douglas?”
“You know that it would not.”
“Nor do I think that it would matter to your wife. Hmm. Interesting. Is she your wife? If David proved to be alive? A Sioux warrior first, a bloody Highlander next. The poor woman could be sorry she ever heard the name Douglas.”
“She is my wife. Henry guaranteed me of that legality. Imagine poor David back from the grave—with a wild creature for a wife! Nay, the lady is mine. And I wish I dared believe we were not Lord and Lady Douglas. Still, Sloan, I wonder what she will think when she discovers that I may well whisk her back from Indian territory to drag her across the seas.”
“Hawk, I think you judge her too harshly. But then, I am afforded the luxury of my distance while watching you fall in love with the lady, so it is far easier for me to be generous.”
Hawk offered him an irritated scowl. “It’s best she’s becoming accustomed to the tipi, don’t you think?”
Sloan smiled, then sobered. “You can think of leaving here now—”
“I won’t leave while we’re in the midst of negotiations. But I admit, I am anxious to discover the truth.”
“You’d think that something going on here would tie in some way.”
Hawk arched a brow. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know…your mysterious new wife. Crow acting strange. And someone claiming that your brother is alive, after all these years.”
“I can’t imagine a connection between Scotland and the Badlands.”
“Nor Crow and your wife.”
“Scotland will wait. The Crow situation—especially as it now involves my wife—will not.”
“The Crow have always been our enemies, but they are an enemy we recognize. An enemy who is brave, who battles in our ways. We respect a warrior, they respect a warrior. I don’t know what it is about this that doesn’t seem right at all,” Sloan said.
“It was an absurd place for such a party to be,” Hawk mused. “Still…why the hell does it bother me so much?”
“Why the hell?” Sloan agreed. “The men are all dead,” he reminded Hawk.
Sloan was right. The Crow who had attacked Skylar were dead. The incident was over. Hawk looked at Sloan, then let out a sudden bird cry to the others ahead of them in the party, though a Crow might well recognize it as a false cry anyway.
But from up ahead, Crazy Horse called back softly. Sloan had been right. Crazy Horse and the others ahead had not come upon a party of their enemies. They had happened on the family of elks they had followed.
Hawk drew an arrow from the quiver at his back for his bow. He glanced at Sloan, who likewise had taken along his bow and arrows for the hunt.
With somewhat sheepish shrugs, they kneed their horses as they had done as boys.
They let out loud, whooping cries and raced after their prey like the wind.
The hunt was on.