Cheyenne Captive (2 page)

His fellows nodded approval, but Iron Knife shook his head and barked orders in Cheyenne. The others fell back, but not Angry Wolf. His enraged face showed he had no intention of giving up this tasty morsel before he had tasted it. He exclaimed angrily and pushed the half-breed with his open hand. The other pushed back. Summer clutched the shreds of her dress against the rain as she slowly stood up and watched the shoving turn into a full fight.

They wrestled, grunting from the exertion as they went to the ground, and the others urged them on. Even the two sentinels came off their ponies to watch the fight. The struggle was as old as time and Summer tingled with excitement in spite of herself, knowing as females always do that this battle was for possession of her body.

Whoever won would do as he wished with her, and she would have no say in the matter. There was something primitive unfolding before her, something that frightened her civilized soul, yet made her blood race.

Furtively, she glanced around. The men were all intently watching the fight, ignoring her completely. The ponies strayed across the prairie, munching grass while their rawhide bridles dragged behind them. A red and white pinto caught her eye a few hundred feet to one side. If she could reach that pony, there was a forest on the other side of the rise that she might lose herself in.

She took a slow step sideways, then another. As she moved, she waited for the braves to notice, but they were too intent on the struggle. The time was now!

She whirled, jerked up her crinoline petticoats and fled in a dead run across the buffalo grass. She was going to make it! Her heart pounded in her dry throat as she ran, knowing from the sounds behind her that she had not yet been missed. She lost one of her tiny, expensive shoes as she ran, and burrs and stones tore her small feet, but she paid no heed and kept running. Her crinolines impeded her long legs, yet she ran on.

Behind her, the sudden hue and cry told her she had been missed. Confusion and shots rang out, though she did not stop or look back. The startled pony jerked up, snorting. She wrapped her fingers in his mane and tried to mount. The pony reared in confusion, tossing her to the ground in a heap of torn petticoats.

And then they surrounded her. The big Appaloosa thundered by, and a strong arm reached out and swept her from the ground. She found herself gasping for breath against the big, scarred chest of Iron Knife. He cradled her effortlessly in his arms while the snorting stallion pranced. The horse’s lunge threw her naked breasts against his buckskin shirt. She tried to recoil from the heat of his body, but he held her tightly.

“Don’t fight me, Little One.” He spoke perfect English, smiling with white, even teeth. “Don’t you know Indian ponies mount from the right side? That’s why he threw you!”

He looked deep into her eyes. “I have fought Angry Wolf and won you. Now, you are mine to do with as I please!”

Summer’s mouth fell open. “You speak English and you have white blood!”

He smiled wryly at her. “My mother was stolen from a wagon train, and I spent five years in the white man’s schools when we were recaptured by the Bluecoats!”

“You will help me?” she asked hopefully, “because I am white, like your mother—”

“I am Cheyenne like my father,” he declared firmly, grasping her waist, “and I will treat you as a spoil of war, a prize from a raid!”

She knew she was no match for him, but she fought bravely anyway as the horse danced around and the other warriors laughed and hooted. Rain fell in a fine mist as the brave held both her small wrists in one big hand and reached for a rawhide thong to tie her hands behind her.

Completely helpless now, she could only lean against him while the stallion’s lunging threw her soft breasts again and again against his hard chest. She was both humiliated and terrified as he took his buffalo robe and wrapped it about his wide shoulders, enclosing her in its warm folds. He shouted an order, and the group moved out.

His hands felt like fire on her bare skin under the robe, and she struggled weakly but was helpless to resist his exploring fingers with her hands tied behind her.

“Be still, woman!” he whispered. “A man may rightly feel that which belongs to him!”

She tried to spit at him and he cuffed her across the face, but very gently. Even she could see he was holding back the force of tense, powerful muscles.

He smiled down at her. “Soon I will make better use of that soft mouth,” he chided, holding her firmly as the horse broke into a canter.

Trembling, Summer felt the heat and the hardness of every inch of his brown body as he pulled her tighter against him, and the mist became a steady downpour. He covered her face with the robe, and she was warm against his great chest. Hours passed, and her weariness and her wound made her doze in spite of herself.

It was near dusk when the band rode into an Indian camp. No one came out of the tepees in the rain, and the riders scattered, her own captor dismounting in front of a large tepee painted with dragonflies. Swinging her lightly from the pony, he carried her inside and dumped her unceremoniously on the floor while he knelt to build a fire in the fire pit. Finally he faced her, studying her heaving, naked breasts. Rain had soaked both their clothes as he’d brought her from the horse to the tepee. Summer struggled against her bonds, but she was helpless and she knew it. She tried to cry out, but his hand covered her mouth, muffling the sound. She paused and the hand moved slowly across her cheek, down her slender throat, and brushed oh so gently across one rose nipple. Her pulse raced unexpectedly. Her whole sexual experience consisted of one or two chaste kisses behind the palms at the annual Debutante’s Ball. Her eyes held his, and it was he who looked away, pulled the big knife from his belt.

“Please don’t kill me,” she asked simply, knowing she couldn’t stop him. He paused, the firelight gleaming on the blade.

“I will never hurt you, Little One,” he promised with a shake of his head, “nor will anyone, as long as I draw breath.” He reached, and with one lightning move, cut the bonds that bound her wrists behind her.

Summer crouched, ready to run past him.

“Not so fast, my frightened little deer,” he said, smiling. “Now, you are going to repay me for saving you from having your throat cut. And I expect you to be very, very grateful!”

“You said you wouldn’t hurt me!” she cried.

He shrugged. “What’s one more man to a saloon girl? Do you think I do not recognize what you are? I said I wouldn’t hurt you, I didn’t say I wouldn’t love you!”

Terrified, Summer stared up at him, knowing he was about to take her virginity.

Hungrily, Iron Knife stared back at the half-naked blonde poised for flight in the middle of the tepee. Almost twenty-five winters had he seen, and in all those years never had he desired a woman so much as this one.

She shivered in her wet, gaudy dress and the movement brought him back to reality.

“I will get you dry clothes,” he grunted, suddenly uncertain. It had been a long, long time since he had lain with a white woman. That red-headed whore had worn a scarlet dress, too.

The girl bristled, and her chin came up stubbornly. “I demand to see whoever is in charge! My name is Summer Priscilla Van Schuyler of
the
Boston Van Schuylers, and I demand to be returned to Fort Smith at once!”

Iron Knife smiled incredulously as he wiped the rain from his weathered face. What spirit she had, this Little One! Here she was, a helpless captive, miles from her own kind and within minutes of being mated, and she was making demands!

“Summer,” he murmured, “a good name for one with hair the color of the white man’s ripe wheat, eyes the color of Hiriutsiishi skies, the hot month you call July.”

Memories came flooding back of the five years in a small Texas village. “I shall call you Summer Sky,” he announced dramatically, touching his own broad chest. “And I am Iron Knife, son of War Bonnet, once a great chief of our people.”

“Then I demand to see this War Bonnet!” She tossed her mane of golden hair. “Maybe he has enough sense to know you just can’t pull a Van Schuyler off a stage and get away with it! Why, Father will have Senator Wilson and half of President Buchanan’s cabinet out looking for me!”

“My father is dead.” He shook his head regretfully. “Killed by the hated Pawnee when I was a youth. And you, you will demand nothing!”

He grasped her shoulder roughly. “The council will no doubt meet tomorrow night to decide this issue. Until then, you are mine!”

She jerked from his grasp and he saw a flicker of fear in her blue eyes, replaced quickly by haughty anger. “Don’t touch me.

He shrugged. It would be a long, cool night and he had much experience with women. Before morning, he would have her gasping beneath him, digging her nails into his whip-scarred back. Her protests were lies. She could not be a virtuous woman, traveling alone, wearing that sensuous dress. He had spent five years with the Whites before his mother died, and he knew their customs. This Little One was either a whore or a dance-hall girl. The thought brought back a half-repressed memory of that other time and place, and the red weals on his back seemed to burn again as they had when he was but a boy of thirteen....

“I will get you some dry clothes,” he said again, abruptly banishing the memory as his hand reached up to touch his broken nose. The mob of white men would have killed him, he thought, had it not been for his brave mother holding them at bay with her shotgun....

“Do not try to run, little Summer,” he admonished from the tepee entry, “you are many miles from this place called Fort Smith, and deep inside the Indian Territory. It is rainy and almost dark outside, and no one here would help you, knowing you belong to me!”

He stepped outside and paused a moment, listening. The rain had stopped, and dusk spread over the camp. The camp crier rode around the circle of tepees, telling the news of the stage coach raid, the white captive. He called the men to Council tomorrow night to discuss this. Iron Knife yawned and sniffed the fresh, wet smells of the rain. The Cheyenne were far south and east of their usual track this year. They followed the great herds of buffalo that seemed fewer each season as the white man moved deeper and deeper into the Great Plains that the Cheyennes had roamed for generations. The ten great tribes of the Tsistsistas scattered farther and farther, dependent on much meat. But with the buffalo fewer, the warriors were raiding into eastern Indian territory to steal the fat cows and horses of the Five Civilized Tribes.

The camp was quiet now at dusk, the tepees arranged in a great, orderly circle, each opening facing to the east. In the inner circle of the Dog Soldiers’ lodges, he heard casual talk and laughter. Somewhere, a dog barked. Roasting meat smells drifted from his uncle’s lodge as he entered and nodded silently to his cousins, Two Arrows and Lance Bearer, who had stood ready to back him in the fight with Angry Wolf.

He addressed the plump wife of his father’s brother. “Pony Woman, I have need of a dress and some very small moccasins and food.” He gestured toward the cook pot that simmered over the fire pit. “When will my uncle be returning to camp from the Chiefs’ Council?”

“In the morning.” Pony Woman rushed to get the things he had requested. “Do you need medicine, too? Is the woman hurt?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Angry Wolf cut a small place on her arm. It is good you think of this.”

She gathered up the things from her parfleche bag, and he took them and returned to his tepee.

The blond girl had collapsed in a heap on the floor, but she struggled to her feet as he entered and again tried to pull the frayed cloth over her creamy breasts.

“Here, put this on,” he ordered, holding out the buckskin dress as he set the small pot of broth by the fire.

She took the dress, hesitated. Then her little chin went up stubbornly. “Please step outside while I change.”

He considered a moment, torn between admiration for her spirit and amazement at her arrogance. For a dance-hall girl, she seemed terribly spoiled and used to ordering people around.

“I will not step out,” he decided, sitting down cross-legged. “The whole camp would laugh when they heard of Iron Knife’s being ordered about. He shook his head. “No, I want to see what it is that I risked my life for this morning, whether what I have won is worth almost killing a fellow Dog Soldier for.”

“Then I’ll wear this wet dress all night!” Her eyes flashed, although he could see she was weary, and her arm was smeared with dried blood.

“You are my woman,” he announced flatly, “and you will put on these dry clothes before you become sick. Do you want me to pull those wet things from your body?” He half rose from the floor, and she stepped backward, tears filling her eyes and dripping down the long lashes.

Iron Knife softened, remembering his own mother, Texanna, so much like this woman. But his hunger was stronger than his pity. Summer was his to enjoy, at least until the Council made another decision. With such a body as her soft curves hinted at, why should she be hesitant to let him gaze upon it? No doubt many white men had seen her nakedness, and she would not deny him because he was an Indian.

She looked at him a long, searching moment, then turned her back to him and began to change. The flickering shadows half hid, half revealed her loveliness as the torn dress and petticoats fell in a heap at her feet, and she pulled the buckskin dress over her head.

Iron Knife stared in wonderment. Even in the dim light, he was struck by the pale smoothness of her skin, the blond hair hanging almost to her slim hips. He watched the fine legs, the curve of her soft, full breasts. His sudden intake of breath caused her to jerk the dress down to her thighs, and she whirled to face him.

“Are you satisfied?” she asked defiantly, and stepped out of the crumpled red dress.

“I am more than satisfied,” he murmured, abruptly aware of his manhood under the skimpy loincloth. Slowly, he got to his feet, his dark eyes never leaving her pale blue ones.

“For such a prize, a man might be willing to kill a dozen brave warriors, even though he would be exiled by his people. Now I finally know what it was that made my father love a white girl, why no one else could ever replace her in his heart.”

He pulled his own wet buckskin shirt off, hung it by the fire, revealing to her for the first time the two big scars on his chest from the ordeal of “hanging from the pole” that his Sioux brothers called the sun dance and his people called the Medicine Lodge ceremony. He half turned to reach the pot of broth, and felt her eyes on his scarred back.

“Long ago, some white men took a horse whip to me.” He answered her unspoken question as he dipped the steaming, rich broth into two gourd containers he kept by the fire pit.

“Oh.” She paused, but her tone revealed much sympathy, perhaps a feeling for all hurt things. “Why?” she asked. “Why would they do that?”

He left the question hanging on the air unanswered.
Because
of a red-headed dance-hall girl in a scarlet dress,
he thought.

But he only thrust a gourd of food at her. “Here, eat!”

He watched her as she sat on the floor and drank the soup daintily. She obviously had not eaten in a long time, but she didn’t gulp, he noticed. She had the manners of a fine lady. For a long time, he studied her soft, delicate hands and looked again at the torn dress in a heap on the floor. It was a whore’s dress, but a fine lady’s petticoat. He knew good lace from his mother, who had supported them both with her sewing after the Texas Rangers forced them to go back to the white family who had lost her.

Summer’s accent was strange, too, and he knew that she was not from any place he had ever been, and he did not know the whereabouts of this place she called Boston.

She finished the tasty broth and wordlessly returned the gourd to him. He set both gourds by the fire and reached out to take her hand. Immediately, she stiffened.

“Let me see your wound,” he commanded, jerking her arm to him. “If I do not do something, you will get the sickness the whites call ‘blood poisoning.’”

She relaxed and let him study the cut. He was keenly aware of the smell of the fire, the small movement of her breasts as she sighed.

His own hard hands sweated holding her small one. There had been many women to share his blankets, but none who he desired as he desired this one. Gently as his big hands could, he took a scrap of cloth from her torn dress and water from the water skin hanging from one of the tepee poles and washed the blood from her arm. Then, he treated it with maheskoe, the dried root of the red medicine so favored by his people. Perhaps tomorrow he had better call the medicine man with his spells and chants to make sure she healed well.

Now he clasped her fingers and slowly pulled her toward him.

She stiffened again. “If you touch me, I’ll scream!” she threatened, her blue eyes flashing.

He grinned and fingered the big brass object he wore as an earring. It was a button from a cavalry officer’s jacket. The bone whistle hanging from his neck was made from the wing of an eagle. All Dog Soldiers wore one.

“You cannot scream with my lips devouring yours.” He chuckled. “Do you think there is any army of Bluecoats waiting outside to rescue you? Do you not know how many of them I have killed before we signed the peace treaty?”

She scrambled to her feet and tried to move toward the door. He held on to her arm. “If you run outside, away from the protection of my big blade,” he patted the knife in his belt, “Angry Wolf and the others will catch you! Do you want me or all of them? Do not play the innocent with me! Iron Knife has been much with women, and I will fire your blood as no white man has ever done in the past.”

He jumped up and jerked her roughly to her feet, holding her against him, reveling in the clean smell of her hair. “You are mine!” he whispered, feeling his heart pound in his great chest, feeling his manhood rise. “You are mine as my lance is mine! As my horse is mine!”

“How dare you!” She seethed as she struggled to pull away. “Do you know who I am? My father owns the biggest fleet of whaling ships on the Atlantic coast! He is very rich and will pay well to get me back unharmed! If you will send a ransom message to Fort Smith, he will send gold! A lot of gold!”

“I have no need of gold, I have need of you,” he grunted, pulling her to him. “My body has much need of you!”

She clawed and fought him as his hot mouth claimed her cool, trembling lips, firing his blood as he forced her mouth open. He kissed her deeply as she made little whimpers of protest in her throat.

Her arms were pinned helplessly to her sides now with his iron grip but she struggled anyhow. He lifted her off her feet, bent her backward, and felt her heart pound as her firm breasts jutted against him, for she wore nothing under the buckskin shift.

“Do not fight me, Summer,” he warned against her lips. “Do not feign innocence to tease me. I am wise to the way of white whores. I learned that bitter lesson many years ago. You should be proud that a mighty warrior like me has chosen you.

He swung her up lightly in his arms and moved toward the buffalo robe bed on the floor. “I will make love to you as no man ever has, and by morning you will never want to leave my side.”

But now she wept softly, desperately, as he lowered her to the soft fur. “Please, don’t!” she wept. “Oh, no, please—”

He hesitated, not used to such protest.

“I’ve never had a man! Please, no, not like this!” Her bravery had finally collapsed, and she wept.

He had never had a woman weep before. They had all been eager to part their soft thighs to accept his throbbing manhood; even the red-haired whore....

Still he was excited by the white girl’s struggles and protests, and his Indian half urged him to take her passionately now just as he had dreamed of doing ever since he had first seen her on the prairie hear the overturned stage. He did not believe her, of course, but his pride was stung that she was refusing him that which no doubt many white men before him had tasted.

“Do not try to fool me!” he protested. “You wear a whore’s dress. Do not tell me you have never had a man.”

“I traded for the dress,” she wept, brushing back a blond lock. “I had run away. I knew they would be searching for me in my fine blue silk and bonnet, and I would arouse suspicion traveling alone. No one would notice a dance-hall girl traveling by herself, especially if they were all looking for a girl dressed in blue.”

He knelt and put his big hand under her small chin, turning her face up to him. “How can you be a rich girl?” he challenged. “You wear no jewels.”

“I sold them all in Fort Smith to a saloon keeper to get money for my stage passage.” She wiped her eyes. “I told you I was running away!”