For the Love of Suzanne (12 page)

“The guards have them,” he sputtered.

He raised the pistol and hit the man in the head
as hard as he could, causing him to drop to the floor with a thud. He
didn’t waste any time and ran outside into the battle zone
where guns were being fired and people were dying. When he got back
to the jail, the guards were all dead and the cell door was open. He
could barely see inside, but it was easy to see it was empty.

Where was Suzanne?

In a frenzy, he ran back up the steps and outside
where the soldiers were being slaughtered with hardly a fight. There
was so much chaos, dust, and death and the smell of blood was
pungent. Under normal circumstances, he would have been satisfied
that the attack was going so well, but he was busy scanning the faces
of the fallen women, looking for Suzanne.

The women who had survived were being lined up
outside Annalee’s saloon. They would be marched to the village
and made into slaves. He knew death would be better for them, but
Chief Tall Deer was already looking them over and picking out his
favorites, despite all the fighting, yelling and screaming going on
around him.

Cody whistled for his horse as he ran through the
crowd of Indian men as they dragged dead soldiers behind their newly
acquired horses and desecrated the bodies of others. The massacre had
been quicker than he had ever imagined it could be. From the looks of
the dead who were strewn all over the fort, there were very few
Indian casualties and no fatalities. It had been a good night.

When he reached the women, he was alarmed to see
Suzanne leaning wearily against the hitching post being checked for
quality. Chief Tall Deer raised her lip to look at her teeth, then
squeezed her breasts and her arms to see if she was muscular and
looked at his son with a smile.

“This one is fine. Yes?”

Walking Bull nodded with a smile. “She is
fine.”

“I take her,” he said grandly.

Cody had arrived just in time to hear that and his
heart sunk. He was too late. Chief Tall Deer had already staked his
claim.

He could feel Suzanne’s fear and fatigue.
She had no strength left and was at the mercy of the madman chief and
his madman son. “You cannot take her,” he interceded
seriously as he went to stand beside her. “She is of yellow
hair. She is evil.”

Tall Deer and Walking Bull both laughed.

Cody felt he was losing ground. Apparently, being
blond wasn’t held in reverence anymore.

“No,” Suzanne said weakly.

He was still scrambling for a way to get her into
his care. He could picture her hanging from a tree with her eyes
gouged out like the woman he’d come upon not so long ago. She
wouldn’t survive Tall Deer’s brutality. She was much too
delicate for that. She wasn’t meant to be enslaved and
tortured. She was meant to be loved and cherished and she wasn’t
going to be getting any of that. He feared for her life.

Tall Deer pushed Cody aside and grabbed Suzanne by
the hair, making her fall to her knees. “Horse!” he
ordered gruffly and shoved her face down into the dirt at the feet of
the bay stallion next to him.

She was weak from lack of food and water and the
growing baby was taxing her system. She somehow regained her feet and
reached for the horse, but it moved and she fell again.

Tall Deer and Walking Bull burst into laughter and
drank more whiskey from the bottles they’d stolen from the
saloon. They watched her try to get up and kicked her in the
backside, sending her face-first into the dirt.

Cody knew he shouldn’t interfere, but did it
anyway. He went to her and helped her to her knees, holding her hand
and grasping her elbow. “You have to get up,” he murmured
to her urgently.

“You like this woman. Yes?” Tall Deer
asked Cody.

He looked at the tall man. “I do.”

“Well, she belongs to me,” he roared
with laughter and drank more whiskey.

Walking Bull pulled a bloody knife from its sheath
and pointed it at Cody in anger. “Leave her be,” he
sneered.

Suzanne clung to Cody’s arm weakly, her back
still toward the two men. “Don’t let them take me,”
she begged weakly.

His heart was breaking, but he had no choice. “I’m
sorry,” he told her softly and eased her to the ground. “This
woman is not well,” he told Walking Bull coolly.

“Fine,” he spat with an angry wave of
his arm. “She see medicine man.”

“She is very beautiful. Yes?” Tall
Deer queried of Cody in a slurred voice.

He didn’t want to agree even though, through
the grime, cuts, and bruises, she was still the most beautiful woman
he’d ever seen. He didn’t want to add to her agony; if he
told the chief that he did think she was beautiful, he and Walking
Bull would hurt her in the most heinous ways and would mar her beauty
so that no man would ever look at her again. “She is not
beautiful,” he said coldly. “She is a white woman and
looks like a white woman.”

“You are a white man also, Black Fox,”
Tall Deer said casually, slapping his face mockingly. “But you
are of our race as well and you have done much to help. I give you
any woman except her.”

He shook his head. “I want no woman,”
he muttered.

The other warriors had the other women mounted on
their horses in front of them and were anxiously waiting to leave
with their new slaves and their whiskey.

Cody didn’t actually take a count, but he
could see that Annalee was not with the other women nor was Mika. It
saddened him to think the child had been killed, but was grateful
that Suzanne had survived. She was in a hell of a situation now. It
wasn’t going to be an easy thing to do, but he was going to get
her away from the chief as fast as he could. Her life depended on it
as well as the life of her child.

Walking Bull heaved his slave onto his new horse
as Tall Deer was looking at Suzanne who was still on her knees,
trying to get up. He did not help her, but looked at Cody. “Horse,”
he said coldly.

He didn’t hesitate and helped her back to
her feet by the arm and around her waist. “Do everything he
says no matter what,” he whispered to her with urgency as he
lifted her onto the bare back of the white horse, pressing a quick
kiss to her cheek.

Suzanne couldn’t respond, but felt that
fleeting kiss. It gave her the strength and courage to go on. She
hoped he would help her if it got to be too much, but knew she
couldn’t count on him. He was with his people now and she was
the property of who, she assumed, was Chief Tall Deer.

Tall Deer leaped up behind her and smiled at Cody.
“She is very beautiful. Yes?”

He couldn’t respond and resisted the urge to
touch her blood-caked ankle as it hung limply against the big horse.
She’d lost her shoes and her feet were a mass of dirt, cuts,
and bruises, but that’s how her entire body was. It was obvious
she’d been mistreated by Major Richards which served only to
infuriate him even more. He vowed Richards was going to pay dearly
for this.

The deranged chief rode away with Suzanne,
laughing and waving his whiskey bottle in the air.

Suzanne was too tired to care.

Cody watched them with sadness in his heart and
determination to get her back. He would not rest until she was safe
in his arms again.

Cody had spent the remainder of the night trying
to identify bodies. He intentionally left Richards in his quarters,
tempted to put a bullet in his head, but that was too good for the
man. He’d take care of him later.

“Did you find anybody you know?”

He was looking at the half-dressed corpse of
Annalee. She’d obviously been raped. She was beaten and bloody
in her extremities and blood still oozed from her mouth. He’d
found little Mika not far from the saloon with half of her head blown
off, upsetting him even more. He couldn’t tell who had shot
her, but the fact remained she was just an innocent child. He hated
it when children died.

He looked at the only real friend he had in the
village. Lone Wolf had been his first friend when Cody and his mother
had first returned to the Chiricahua after his father died. Together,
they’d learned to track, hunt, and to sustain themselves in the
intense desert heat with the help of Lone Wolf’s father. They’d
both gone on to the white man’s school and spoke excellent
English and knew how to read and write. Lone Wolf was now married to
one woman who he loved very much and had three young sons, all of
them making him proud.

Cody finally nodded as an answer to his friend’s
question. He never liked death or destruction or hunting other people
even if they were soldiers. He gestured toward Annalee. “She
was somebody I knew. She ran the saloon. Did you find anybody you
knew?”

“No. I didn’t come here often. The
soldiers were too cruel,” he said with a heavy sigh as he
looked around at the dead bodies and the smoldering fires of the
buildings that were in ruins.

“Yep,” he said with definition. “They
were.”

“What about the soldier who is there?”
he pointed toward Major Richards’ quarters.

He followed his friend’s arm and shrugged
indifferently. “Death is too good for him.”

He was taken aback at his friend’s unfeeling
attitude. It was so unlike him. “He, too, is cruel?”

“Yes. I haven’t decided what I’m
going to do with him. I may just leave him and let him find his way
back to civilization.”

“He will not survive, Black Fox,” he
said seriously.

“I don’t care. He hanged one of my
friends, who was a lieutenant, and abused my—I mean, Chief Tall
Deer’s new slave. Death by my hand is warranted, but maybe I
should let God take care of him.”

“Ah,” he said slowly with realization.
“She is your woman.”

“I have no claim to her,” he muttered.

“I saw you outside of the village with her.
You didn’t bring her to your lodge. Why?” he asked
curiously.

He shrugged.

“Tell me,” he urged, knowing that Cody
Black Fox was a very private and secretive person, but they’d
done a lot together in the past and he respected him. “I am
your friend.”

He knew he was and looked at him pensively. Lone
Wolf was a couple of inches shorter than Cody and Lone Wolf’s
hair barely covered his neck where Cody’s was between his
shoulder blades. Other than that, they were dressed similarly in dark
pants, painted faces and chests, moccasins, and headbands.

“It’s wrong for me to take a white
woman. It’s wrong for me to take an Indian woman. It’s
wrong for me to take
any
woman. I am a half-breed. I belong nowhere,”
he said with a little bitterness in his voice.

“You have to put that aside, Cody,” he
said compassionately. “If you love this woman, being a
half-breed will not matter.”

“Only in fairy tales. She does not love me,
Lone Wolf. I am a dirty half-breed to her,” he said sadly.

“I don’t know that to be true, my
brother.”

“Regardless, it doesn’t matter
anymore. She belongs to Chief Tall Deer now,” he muttered.

He gave a visible shudder. “Poor woman.”

He nodded.

“I know Lame Bird would be your wife,”
he offered hopefully.

He shook his head. “I will not do that to
her. I’d better go take care of the major,” he murmured,
giving his friend a pat on his shoulder, before walking away.

Much to his dismay, the major had already been
murdered. He had a dozen arrows sticking out of his chest, a bullet
wound in his forehead and his throat had been cut.

“I hope you begged for your life, you son of
a bitch,” he sneered at the dead man and went back outside
where Lone Wolf was waiting. “You can go back. I need to bury
the child.”

“I’ll help you.”

“The rest of them can go to hell as far as
I’m concerned, but a child is innocent and deserves better,”
he told him as they stepped over gory bodies on their way to the now
empty stables, hoping to find shovels.

He nodded. “Yes.”

It took them a little while to dig the grave deep
enough to keep scavengers out of it, then lowered Mika’s little
body into it and covered her face with a piece of her dress. Both men
said short prayers rendering her spirit to the next world with wishes
for a good journey.

The sky was beginning to lighten with the promise
of another hot day when they finally headed back to the village.
Neither said anything as their hearts wept for the loss of a little
child who had been completely innocent. Such atrocities were not
unknown in their own village and they silently relived the pain for
her sake.

Cody added Mika’s death to the long list of
reasons he had a guilty conscience.

Suzanne was not allowed to sit, eat, or bathe as
she so desperately needed to do. Instead, she was put to work
cleaning the Chief’s lodge as he had his way with one of
Annalee’s girls a short distance away. She tried to ignore the
woman’s screams and sobs as she fought with him, which seemed
only to encourage him. She heard him slap her hard and make her cry
out until all of her sounds were muffled.

She did not watch, but she could hear everything.
It scared her. Cody had told her to do everything the chief said
without question, but she knew she could not,
would not
, have sex
with this beast. She would die first and, considering she had nothing
to offer her baby anymore, death would be a blessing.

She was horrified when another man came in as the
chief was getting off Annalee’s girl because she knew what his
intentions were when he carelessly dropped his pants. She kept her
back to them as she covered her mouth and wished she could close her
ears as the two men exchanged brief words and laughed. She cringed
when she heard the old chief slap the younger man on the back as if
to congratulate him. These men were no better than animals.

The chief flung her around so she faced the
younger man. He was shorter than the chief, heavier with a fair
amount of flab in his belly, black hair that hung to his shoulders,
potted skin on his face, an overly large nose, and a mean look in his
dark eyes. He made her want to run, but she knew that was impossible.
“You watch,” the chief commanded her, pointing to the
younger man who promptly lowered himself between the other woman’s
legs.