Savage Beloved (29 page)

She watched him go with his wife into the shaman’s lodge, leaving Hawk Woman alone, with no one guarding her.

Her heart thumped wildly when she saw everyone rushing to stand outside the shaman’s tepee, concerned about the little girl’s injuries.

Realizing just how easy it would be to leave, Hawk Woman didn’t waste another minute.

Although she knew she would be forced to leave the safety of the village without a weapon, this was a chance she had to take. Hawk Woman opened the flap more widely and took another quick look around her.

She still saw no one anywhere except outside the shaman’s lodge.

Cackling beneath her breath, she sneaked from the tepee, stepping lightly, then ran around the side until she was safely at the back where no one would see her.

She stood there for a moment, panting, her eyes on the corral. She knew that if she was to get far away before Two Eagles returned home, she had to use one of his horses.

She smiled cunningly again, for although she had not ridden a horse since she had came to Two Eagles’s village, she knew her skills would not desert her. Her father had taught her how to ride a horse almost the minute she could walk.

Realizing that the people’s interest in the injured child could last for only a short while, Hawk Woman ran to the corral and chose one of the fastest steeds.

She took the roan from the corral and planned to walk the horse until she was far enough from the village that the sound of his hooves hitting the earth would not be heard. Once she did mount the steed, she would waste no time. She would ride hard and long until she found someone who would provide protection as she traveled toward civilization.

But she would be careful this time whom she approached. The last time she had asked for help, it
had gained her nothing but a life of drudgery with Albert Cohen.

“And a daughter who never knew me,” she said stiffly.

She glanced down at her attire. Anyone who saw her would question the way she was dressed. She would say that she had been held captive by Indians and had succeeded in escaping their clutches.

Smiling, she knew that part of her story would be true, for she had had no choice but to escape the Wichita.

When she was far enough from the village, Hawk Woman mounted the horse bareback and sank her heels into its flanks, sending it into a thunderous gallop across open land.

Feeling free with her golden hair flying in the wind, as it had when she was a child riding her father’s horses, Hawk Woman closed her eyes. She thought of yesteryears and times precious to her.

She couldn’t believe how she had changed into someone vile and mean . . . someone who had even planned to do murder. As a child, she had been a good clean person.

She had even learned many verses in the Bible and attended Sunday school every Sunday with her parents.

She opened her eyes, her jaw tightening when she recalled who had changed her.

Albert Cohen.

He had made her into someone vile and mean, but deep inside herself she still held a portion of that child her parents had adored.

Tears filled her eyes. How she wanted those times back again. But she knew it was impossible to go back. Both her parents had perished and she had been forced to find a way to live on her own.

That need had brought her to the point where she had been taken in by Albert Cohen and his syrupy words.

She shook her head to clear it of these thoughts. Now all she should be concerning herself with was getting as far away from the Wichita village as possible. Therein lay her true danger, for once the Wichita discovered that she had escaped, warriors would be searching for her high and low.

She rode hard until the moon climbed high in the dark heavens, and even then she continued. She was afraid to stop for the night. She must find the strength to ride until she found someone who would take her in.

“There has to be something out there for me,” she whispered to herself.

That thought, which gave her a measure of hope, made her continue onward. Then she caught sight of a flickering ahead that caused her to draw a rein and stop. She saw a campfire through a break in the trees. Her heart leapt with gladness, for surely fortune had smiled on her. Here was a fire, where she might camp for the night and perhaps even find food.

But she had to be wary. She must get close enough to take a good look, and then decide whether to show herself.

She dismounted and grabbed the reins, then walked stealthily into the shadow of the trees with
the horse. She stopped abruptly when she saw two wagons that she recognized.

“Albert’s,” she whispered to herself, everything within her going cold.

She peered intently ahead, trying to see who sat around the fire.

When she saw only women and children, she felt even more nervous. Albert must be up to his usual nightly game of choosing one of the women and taking her to his blankets in the back of one of the wagons. The others would sit by the fire, trying not to think of what he was doing to the chosen one.

Someone else came to mind. “Penelope,” she said, peering harder to see if she could see a girl her daughter’s age among the children.

But it was too dark and everyone was sitting too close together to see clearly. The aroma of baked rabbit wafted toward Hawk Woman, making her stomach ache with a hunger she had felt only one other time in her life . . . when she had fled Albert Cohen and had gone days without food before Two Eagles had found her.

Then someone else came to mind. Candy! Apparently, Two Eagles hadn’t found the wagons in which his woman was being transported.

She smiled wickedly as she thought of Candy being the one in the wagon with Albert.

“Little Miss Prissy, how do you feel now that you are no longer in the arms of your Indian lover?” she hissed.

But again she thought of Two Eagles. He was surely somewhere close, searching for Candy, and
Hawk Woman didn’t want to be the one he found instead.

She gave the children one last look, again thinking of her daughter, then shrugged. She wasn’t born to be a mother anyhow. Albert had actually done her a favor by cutting her ties with her daughter.

And now she had also cut her ties with the Wichita people.

“It was never meant to be,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “I’ll find a new life somewhere, where I’ll be appreciated.”

The most important thing now was to get farther away from this area.

She walked her horse away from the campsite, then swung herself onto it again. She cackled into the wind as she pushed the steed into a hard gallop.

You kissed me! My heart, my breath, and my will
In delirious joy for a moment stood still.
—Leigh Hunt

The moon had replaced the sun in the sky. Night sounds were all around Candy as she rode with Two Eagles on his steed. Exhausted from her long ordeal, she cuddled against him, safe within his arms.

She closed her eyes and tried to blank out the worst of her abduction. She was thankful that Albert Cohen hadn’t had a chance to rape her.

Thank heavens she was back with her beloved one, safe and untouched.

Yes, she was the lucky one to have gotten away from that fiendish man before he ruined her life, as he had ruined so many.

The children. She would never forget the haunted, empty looks in their eyes. When they grew old
enough to have families of their own, they would find it hard to explain how they had been conceived and raised.

But, fortunately, thanks to Two Eagles, those children had been given a second chance. Although they had lived a degrading life up till now, they did have a chance now of bettering themselves.

“We are almost home,” Two Eagles said, interrupting Candy’s train of thought.

She sighed and gazed up at him. “I’m so glad. I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired,” she said. “I hope I will have no more ordeals like this. All I want is to marry you and bear your children. I want to be at your side as you lead your people. I hope nothing else will stand in the way of our happiness.”

“We will marry
nahosah
, tomorrow, after you have a good night’s rest,” Two Eagles said, smiling at her. “My woman, soon you will be my wife.”

“I feel as though I already am,” Candy murmured, smiling.

“And I already see myself as your husband,” Two Eagles said thickly.

“When I was a small girl I envisioned myself having a big wedding and walking down the aisle of a church dressed in white,” Candy said softly. “But I no longer have such fantasies. I am living real life with the man I adore. And I
will
be dressed in white on my wedding day . . . the whitest of doeskin.”

“No one could be as lovely as you, no matter what you wear,” Two Eagles said, leaning forward to brush soft kisses across her brow. “You are my Painted Wings.”

“Yes, Painted Wings,” Candy said, sighing. She smiled up at Two Eagles. “I shall never forget my mother’s reaction to the name. She actually accepted that I had a new name. I imagine she understood, once and for all, just how much I resented having been given a name that embarrassed me.”

Candy snuggled closer to Two Eagles and rested her cheek against his powerful chest once again. “It was so good to see my mother again,” she said. “After she fled into the night, to escape not only my father but military life in general, I did not want to think about what sort of trouble she might find out there on the trail all alone. Of course it is horrible that she was forced to endure life with Albert Cohen, even if for a short while, but at least she was still alive.”

“And now she will finally find the sort of life that she hungered for,” Two Eagles said. “You must always think that she will be happy in her new life, especially now that she is free of Albert Cohen.”

“But there are many more like him out there who prey on women,” Candy said, shuddering. “Still, I do believe Mama will be alright. She is perhaps the strongest-willed person I have ever known. I still can’t believe she stayed with my father as long as she did.”

The low sound of thumping drums came to Candy in the soft night breeze, causing her to lift her head from Two Eagle’s chest.

She gazed ahead, where she could now make out the shine of the river in the distance; the moon lent the water a white, magical sheen.

She could smell the smoke of the outdoor fire that was always burning, morning and night, in the center of the village.

She also caught the scent of venison cooking over someone’s cook fire.

A serenity she had never known before swept through Candy. She was finally home again.

Yes, home.

This was her home now, and would be until she was placed among the Wichita in their burial grounds.

She hoped that she would take that path to the hereafter before Two Eagles, for she wasn’t certain she could bear wrapping him in his finest furs and lowering him into the ground, never to see his smiling face again.

She shivered at the thought and shook herself out of her morbid reverie.

This was a time for rejoicing. She was home again, safe and sound, and her man had said that he would be taking her as his wife tomorrow.

“Tomorrow,” she whispered.

“Did you say something?” Two Eagles said, bringing her eyes to his.

“Yes, I said ‘tomorrow,’ ” she said, smiling sweetly into his eyes. “I have waited all my life for tomorrow, for it was destiny that led me to you. That I am finally seeing my destiny fulfilled causes a sweetness inside me I can’t describe. I am so happy, Two Eagles. So very, very happy.”

“That day, when I saw you crawling along the ground after the Sioux massacre, even then I knew
that destiny had brought us together. But I would not allow myself to think further about it, for at that moment I had other plans for you,” he admitted. “I saw you as the opportunity to avenge what your father had done to my uncle, even though I did not know you were that man’s daughter. That I had found someone alive from the massacre, who was somehow aligned with that murderous fiend, was enough for me.”

“I am so glad that it was not you or your warriors who attacked the fort that day,” Candy said, closing her eyes to shut out the images of Malvina and her father with arrows in their bodies.

For a moment Two Eagles’s insides tightened. If the Sioux had not arrived that day ahead of the Wichita, it would have been Two Eagles and his warriors firing those deadly arrows from their bowstrings.

He did not like thinking about keeping anything from his woman, but he could not chance losing her, or her respect, were he to tell her the truth about that day.

No, he would never tell her. It would be a secret that would go to the grave with him.

He was glad that events had turned out as they had. If he and his warriors had arrived earlier than the Sioux, who was to say whether his Painted Wings would have lived through the ordeal? If not, both his and Candy’s destinies would have been denied!

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen stars shine as brightly as tonight,” Candy said as she gazed at the
star-speckled sky. “There is a star in the northern sky that seems much brighter than usual.”

“That star in the north is known as the ‘Ghost Bear,’ ” Two Eagles said. “It is said that a man who was traveling in the far north came upon another man who said, ‘This is my burial place. I live in the far north. If you accept whatever I offer you, I will give you power. You shall have power over the herbs to cure people, for I am a medicine man. If an accident should happen, or if sickness should arrive, I will give you a way to heal. In your doctoring you should look to the sun, for my powers are derived from him. Before you begin doctoring, offer me smoke.’ The man was then informed that it was the Ghost Bear who was talking to him, and upon looking again, he saw that it
was
a Ghost Bear. The man looked back and the Ghost Bear had become a star. That star is the one you see tonight that is the brightest of them all.”

“I shall always remember that when I gaze upon that North Star,” Candy said. “I want to share something with you that I had once thought about that brightest star in the heavens.”