Savage Beloved (6 page)

Except for the slight whispering of the breeze, nothing could be heard. There were no sounds; just the strange silence that came after a massacre.

His gaze then went to the buildings that lined one side of the fort, homing in on the main cabin that stood in the center of the parade grounds. Two Eagles knew it was the home of the colonel, as well as the main headquarters of the fort.

He looked slowly and carefully from one building to the other for any signs of life.

All he saw was how the red sunset reflected from the glass of those windows that had not been broken by Sioux arrows. The light seemed to spread like bloody stains.

“All are dead, do you not think?” Running Wolf asked as he again came and rested on his steed beside Two Eagles.

“We must be certain,” Two Eagles said flatly. He nodded toward several of his warriors, one at a time. “You go and check all the buildings but the one that stands alone. I will go there myself.”

“And what then, my chief?” Running Wolf asked. “Do we leave the buildings as they are, or do we burn them?”

Two Eagles looked in the direction of the fleeing
Sioux, then gazed into the eyes of his questioning warrior. “We will burn everything. It would be best to do it before full night comes. Otherwise, the reflection of the fire in the dark heavens might bring the Sioux back to see what causes it,” he said tightly.

His gaze moved around him, studying each building more carefully, then he frowned as he again focused on the one in particular that set his heart afire with anger. He would never forget how these white pony soldiers had treated his beloved uncle, or forgive the man who had been in charge at this fort.

Colonel Creighton.

“Running Wolf, you come with me to the main headquarters building,” he said thickly. “It is there that we will find our reason for remaining here tonight.”

Everyone knew what he was referring to.

They nodded, then went their separate ways as Two Eagles and Running Wolf approached Colonel Creighton’s cabin.

When they arrived at the main headquarters of the fort, Two Eagles drew rein and dismounted, nodding to Running Wolf, who did the same. They walked up the two steps that led to a closed door.

Being prepared for anything, even the possibility that somehow someone in this building might have come through the attack alive, Two Eagles yanked his large, sharp knife from the sheath at his right side, then with his free hand opened the door. The resulting creak sounded ominous in the stillness of the evening.

Two Eagles stepped inside with Running Wolf close behind him, his own knife ready in case it was needed.

But silence again ruled, with only a whistling sound coming through the broken glass of the windows.

Seeing many arrows lodged in the walls on the left side of the corridor, Two Eagles realized just how angrily the Sioux had fired them from their bowstrings.

He wondered what these pony soldiers had done to this band of Sioux to create such hatred.

He did not think about that for long, for he had spotted someone on the floor in a room to his left, where candles had burned down to their wicks on a sprawling table covered with a white cloth. He could see food on platters and cups turned over, from which a brownish liquid had spilled onto the white cloth.

But most of his attention was on the man who lay lifeless there on his back. An arrow had pierced the strange-looking medals on the man’s blue jacket, and blood had stained them.

Two Eagles looked cautiously from side to side.

When he felt sure that no one else was left alive there, he stepped into the dining room and knelt beside the dead man.

An instant revulsion flowed through his veins, for he was looking onto the face of the very colonel he had despised. This man had the blood of his uncle on his hands, for Short Robe had told him that Colonel Creighton, himself, had made some of the
scars on Two Eagles’s uncle’s back when he had heartlessly beaten him with the whip.

“And so the Sioux took the satisfaction of killing you from me,” Two Eagles said between clenched teeth as he glared at the dead colonel. “But the important thing is that you are dead and can cause no other man humiliation or pain.”

Hardly able to look on the face of the white man any longer, Two Eagles hurried to his feet and went out into the corridor where Running Wolf was kneeling beside a woman and studying her as though he had never seen a woman before.

Two Eagles went and knelt beside him, now understanding why his warrior was so curious about the woman. None of his people had seen many black-skinned people, and here one lay in a pool of blood, an arrow protruding from her chest.

He watched Running Wolf reach a hand to the woman’s face, then draw it quickly away.

“Her skin is soft to the touch, but . . . but . . . so cold,” he said, visibly shuddering.

“Her skin is cold not because of its color, but because she is dead,” Two Eagles said solemnly. He placed a hand on Running Wolf’s shoulder. “
Hiyuwo
, come. Let us find what we came here for and then return to our village. I have had enough of this place. Never before have I seen as many dead as I have here today. It is good that our people are not a warring people, for I would not have the stomach for such as this.”

“Nor would I,” Running Wolf said, swallowing
hard. “It is good that we have solved our problems in a peaceful way. But today . . . ?”

“
Ho
, we had planned to leave that peace behind us today in order to avenge my uncle and those of our friends who were terribly wronged by Colonel Creighton and his men,” Two Eagles said, rising. He looked at the doors that lined the corridor. “Let us find what we are here for, quickly.
Hiyu-wo
, come. Follow me.”

They hurried from room to room until they finally found the one they sought—the colonel’s study.

“It has to be here,” Two Eagles said stiffly. “Our scout, Fire Eyes, who the colonel did not know was a friend to us, saw it here.”

Together they began searching, throwing books from shelves, opening and emptying the drawers of a massive oak desk, until they came to a closed, windowed piece of furniture.

Slowly Two Eagles opened the glass doors, again finding books that stood stiffly, side by side.

Angry that he still had not found the jar with the chief’s head in it, Two Eagles began tossing books from the shelves.

He stopped short, his eyes wide, when the lowering sun’s rays came through a broken window and settled on a jar that had been hidden behind the books. It was covered by a maroon scarf.

“This . . . must . . . be it,” Two Eagles said as he slowly pulled the scarf away.

His stomach churned when he found eyes, locked in a death’s stare, looking back at him, from sockets
that had sunk into the bone. Only a few remains of flesh clung to the skull.

Two Eagles swallowed hard, turned his eyes away and closed them. Then he looked at Running Wolf, whose stomach had betrayed him after only one look at the face of an old friend.

Running Wolf was bent over and vomiting.

Then, breathing hard, Running Wolf wiped his mouth clean with the back of a hand and gazed in apology at his chief.

“Do not feel
wakan
, bad, about what you did,” Two Eagles said, reaching a comforting hand to Running Wolf’s bare shoulder. “My stomach rebelled, too, but just did not go as far as yours did.”

“How could the white leader do this terrible thing to such a wonderful, admired, and powerful chief?” Running Wolf asked, gulping hard. “Please cover it. I do not want to look into those eyes ever again. There . . . there . . . is such pain there. Think of the misery he endured before . . . before—”

“Do not say any more,” Two Eagles said thickly, quickly covering the jar with the scarf. Slowly, almost meditatingly, he wrapped the fabric securely around it.

When he turned to leave, his eyes settled on something else that the sun’s rays seemed to purposely illuminate. He gasped when he saw several scalps hanging along the far wall.

Among them were two that he readily recognized. There was no doubt whom they belonged to.

His mother and sister!

Theirs had a unique trait that no other scalp hanging there had.

His mother’s black hair had had one wide streak of gray that went straight down the back of the scalp, as had his sister’s. She had inherited this trait from her mother.

Anger seethed inside Two Eagles as he placed the jar on the desk, then went and took those two scalps from the others and attached them to the belt of his breechclout. Now he could take them where they belonged . . . to the graves of his mother and sister. Finally their bodies would be complete in their final resting place.

He grabbed the jar up and held it securely, for he was glad to have found it. Now he would be able to return it to his close allies and friends. The head of their chief could finally be placed with the body!

Instead of returning to the part of the house where the colonel’s body lay, Two Eagles and Running Wolf went through a back door and hurried to their steeds. Two Eagles never wanted to see that man again, especially now that he knew it was the colonel who had stolen his mother and sister away and murdered them.

Anger still flashing in his eyes, Two Eagles placed the jar inside the huge buckskin bag that he carried with him at all times at the side of his horse.

He placed the scalps there, too, then went and stood before his warriors.

“Do not leave anything of these people standing!” Two Eagles shouted, knowing that enough time had
elapsed so that the Sioux could not hear him. “Burn it all! Burn everything!”

He mounted his steed and sat stiff-backed in his saddle as he watched torches being thrown on first the main building, and then the others. When they were all aflame, he wheeled his horse around and rode away, his warriors close behind him.

He had gone only a short distance before he was stopped by an unusual movement in the brush. There was just enough light left for him to see a woman crawling along the ground.

From this vantage point, he didn’t see any blood on her person, nor did she seem injured, so he assumed that she was crawling in an effort to keep him and his warriors from seeing her.

Suddenly he saw her stop and look over her shoulder. She had spotted Two Eagles, who was now riding toward her.

Candy’s heart was thudding with fear as the handsome young Indian, who was scarcely clothed, now slowly circled her.

She noticed a scar on his face, beneath his lower lip; it slightly marred his perfect, noble features, as did the tattoos on his hands. She bit her lip when she realized where her mind had taken her. There she was in mortal danger, her father and Malvina behind her now in the burning building, and she was thinking about how handsome this Indian was.

But she had never considered any Indian handsome. She had always thought they all looked alike.

But now?

Up this close?

She knew how wrong she had been.

Yet how could she forget, for even one moment, that this man was responsible for the death of many people, among them her father and Malvina?

She gazed at him now with contempt, with hate, as he stopped beside her.

“Stand,” he said in perfect English. “Or do you prefer to continue crawling like a lowly snake along the ground?”

Knowing that she had no choice, yet so afraid she was not certain her knees would support her when she did try to stand, Candy slowly pushed herself up from the ground.

She stood straight-backed, her chin held firmly high, as she tried to prove that she was a woman of spirit . . . of courage . . . despite the danger she was in. She knew that one arrow could snuff her life out, as so many lives had been ended this evening at the fort.

Two Eagles knew this woman must be related to one of the men who lay dead now at the fort. Yet he couldn’t help noticing her tininess, and the attire she wore, which was so different from what his Wichita women wore. And her eyes. They were beautiful and the same color as the sky. And he could hardly take his eyes off the golden color of her hair.

But it was her show of courage, of spirit, as she stood so boldly before him, her hands now moving slowly to her hips in an act of defiance, that truly awed him.

He had always thought that white women were
weak, especially in the presence of their enemy, the red man.

But this woman was different, much different from the one who lived among his people now. That woman, who was called by the name Hawk Woman, had come crying and screaming and begging for her life when she had been found wandering alone on the prairie.

It had not taken her long to realize, though, that those who had come to her rescue were not there to kill her or take her scalp. She lived now among his people, a part of them.

He had ignored Hawk Woman’s many invitations to join her among her blankets, for there was nothing about her that appealed to him.

But this woman standing before him now?

Everything about her seemed to draw him near. She could change his mind about white women and bedding with them.

He saw her as someone he would enjoy sleeping with, and . . . more.

“What name are you called by?” he asked, his voice tight.

Candy tried to keep her voice from quivering, for thus far she had proven to be strong in the eye of danger, although inside herself she felt like a mass of quivering jelly.

“Candy,” she managed to say in a murmur. “My . . . my . . . name is Candy.”

She did not dare speak her last name to this red man, for surely he had come to the fort to kill her colonel father.

If this warrior knew her true identity, he might snuff out her life in one blink!

She saw how his eyebrows lifted when she said the name Candy.

She had received similar responses many times before when she told someone her name; she understood this Indian’s reaction to it.

Suddenly Two Eagles reached down and whisked Candy up from the ground and onto his horse.

Holding her around the waist before him, he rode away.

Breathless at how quickly he had done this, and stunned to know that her fate surely lay in the hand of this one Indian, Candy felt her fear mount as they rode from the ruined remains of the fort.