Wind Rider (42 page)

Immersed in her erotic daydreams, Hannah
failed to notice the flurry of activity within the
ranks of the patrol. It wasn’t until Gilmore rode
up and grasped her reins that she finally real
ized something out of the ordinary was hap
pening. Then she looked into Gilmore’s taut features and knew. Her gaze shifted upward,
scanning the wooded ridges surrounding them.

Then she saw them. A large war party of braves crested the hill in front of them. Even
from a distance she could see the garish
stripes slashing their bodies. In growing hor
ror, Hannah watched as they spread out in
attack formation, their feathered lances raised high in the air. Their ringing war cries echoed across the prairie, freezing the blood in her veins. Her hat fluttered to the ground, and
Hannah clung to the pummel as Gilmore raced her horse to a sheltered place behind
a rock.

“Stay here!” he shouted as he wheeled his horse around to rejoin his men, “and pray they haven’t seen you.”

Hannah knew better than to believe she
hadn’t been seen; Indians had keen eyesight. Her one salvation lay in the possibility that
Trent and his patrol would drive off the
war party. But the way things were going, it didn’t look as if that was going to hap
pen.

The battle was fierce. Trent was in the midst of it, his skill doing him little good against the
vast number of renegades. Before long Hannah
knew it was a losing battle. One by one the sol
diers fell beneath the fierce attack. The Indians
were inspired by revenge. Their mistreatment
by whites made them burn to avenge all the terrible wrongs done to them throughout the years. Hannah watched helplessly as the ranks
of the patrol thinned drastically. She prayed she hadn’t been seen and squeezed her eyes
shut to blot out the bloody slaughter. All of
the fallen men were good men, even Trent, in
his own way, and she couldn’t bear to see them
cut down in the prime of life.

Had Hannah kept her eyes open she would
have realized that she had, indeed, been noticed.
One of the painted braves scooped up her bon
net and rode into the hills, circling behind
her. She didn’t know she was being stalked
until she heard the horse crashing through
the underbrush toward her. Just before she
was snatched from the saddle, she opened her
eyes and looked up into the grotesquely painted
face and glittering black eyes of a fierce warrior.
Suddenly it all became too much for her. The stress of the past few weeks, the hardships of
traveling while pregnant, and now the Indian
attack, all combined to force the breath from
her lungs. With a gasping sigh, she fainted.

She did not feel the warrior scoop her from
the saddle and set her before him on his pony,
or see him place a hand upon her bright head, or notice that he did not rejoin his party, but grasped the reins of her horse and rode east
toward the Badlands.

 
*
     
*
     
*

Hannah came awake slowly, aware of the
bouncing rhythm of the horse beneath her. She
felt warm flesh at her back and saw brown
arms surrounding her, holding her in place in
the saddle. A small cry escaped her lips when she looked up into the Indian’s painted face.
His body glistened with the sweat of battle, and
she could feel his heart pounding against her
back. The flesh on one of his arms had been
mangled by a saber and his upper thigh had
been pierced by a bullet and was bleeding.

Sheer black fright swept over Hannah. What
did the Indian intend to do with her? Without Ryder to speak in her defense, would they torture and kill her? Or would they use her vilely and then kill her? Her body began to shake uncontrollably and she shielded her stomach
with her hands. She wanted to live. She wanted
Ryder’s child to live.

“Do not be frightened, Little Sparrow. I will
not harm the woman of my brother.”

Shock shuddered through Hannah as she
swiveled her head to take another look at the
fierce warrior. Beneath the paint, beneath the
blood and grime, the bold face looked vaguely
familiar. It wasn’t until the warrior smiled that she recognized him.

“Coyote!” She nearly wept with relief. “Thank
God.”

“Where is Wind Rider?” Coyote asked curi
ously. “Where is your husband? Why are you
not with him?”

Hannah sighed hugely. “It’s a long story, Coyote, and I’m not sure you will understand.”

“When we reach the camp of Red Cloud I will listen and judge for myself.”

“You’re taking me to Red Cloud’s camp?
What about the soldiers? Some of them may
be wounded. I must help them.”

Coyote gave her a startled glance. “No one
can help them now.”

Hannah stared at him. When she realized he
meant that they were all dead she sucked in
her breath sharply. “Oh, God. So many lives
lost.” She began to weep softly, praying that
her child would be spared these violent times.

“Do not cry, Little Sparrow. What we did is
right. The blue coats attacked a small Sioux camp consisting mainly of women and chil
dren. The white eyes must be taught that they
cannot kill our people without reprisal.”

No matter what Coyote said to justify the
killing, Hannah could not help feeling pity for
those poor soldiers who had just lost their lives
in battle. She continued to sob softly.

“You are weary, Little Sparrow. I will carry
you upon my horse while you rest. Later, you
can ride your own mount. It is a long way to the Badlands.”

Ryder saw the vultures circling long before
he came upon the battle scene. The bodies
were several days old and the stench was overpowering. Dismounting, he studied the
signs, examined the arrows protruding from the bodies, and determined that both Sioux
and Cheyenne had participated in the attack.
One by one, he turned the bodies over, rec
ognizing no one until he stared down into the
sightless eyes of Lieutenant Trent Gilmore. A cry of dismay escaped his lips; Hannah had
been with Gilmore. Mindless with fear, he went from body to body, looking for a feminine form
amid the sea of blue uniforms.

Relief shuddered through him when he realized that Hannah wasn’t among the dead. His
greatest fear now was that she had been taken
captive by hostile Indians. He gazed toward
the east, his face bleak. It was almost as if
Heammawihio
wished him to return to the
People. Resolutely, Ryder turned his horse
in an easterly direction and rode away. The
Indians had taken the blue coats’ horses and
all their gear. Without a shovel, he could not
bury the dead. The best he could hope for was that another patrol would pass this way soon
and find the bodies. When the patrol failed to arrive at Fort Laramie Ryder knew a search
party would be sent out to find them.

Hannah was pleased but embarrassed by the hearty welcome she received at Red Cloud’s
camp. Woman-Who-Waddles was ecstatic to
see Hannah again, and within a few hours all the
Indian words she had learned previously came back to her. She hadn’t yet revealed to Coyote
her reason for traveling without Ryder, for he
had fallen ill with a fever due to his wounds. His
wife, Summer Moon, was at his side constantly.
Woman-Who-Waddles had explained that Sum
mer Moon was the widow of White Feather,
Wind Rider’s adoptive father, and that Coyote
had joined with her after her period of mourn
ing and was raising White Feather’s son.

Hannah thought Summer Moon looked awfully young to have been married to Ryder’s father, but she said nothing; obviously, the
young girl was now devoted to Coyote. Hannah was also surprised to learn that Spotted Doe had
joined with Runs-Like-A-Deer and seemed quite
content.

When she’d arrived at Red Cloud’s camp Hannah had slept almost constantly for three days. Her total exhaustion did not escape
Woman-Who-Waddles, who shrewdly guessed
that Hannah was pregnant. When the old wom
an made mention of her condition Hannah
could not deny that she carried Ryder’s child.
When she asked for Woman-Who-Waddles’s
confidence in the matter, the old woman agreed.
Hannah also told Woman-Who-Waddles why she had been traveling with blue coats instead
of with her husband.

Woman-Who-Waddles clucked sympatheti
cally over Hannah’s plight and assured her
that Wind Rider would understand when he
learned the truth.

“He cannot learn the truth if he cannot find
me,” Hannah lamented sadly. “If he is not here,
then he is still with Zach and Abby at the farm.
I must go to him.”

“It is not safe to travel,” Woman-Who-
Waddles warned. “What if you had been
captured by Crow warriors? Or someone who
didn’t know you? You must remain with us until
Wind Rider comes for you.”

“He will not come.” Hannah’s voice carried the heavy weight of rejection.

“He will come. You carry his child.”

Hannah saw no reason to explain that Ryder didn’t know about their child.

During the following days Hannah pitched in
to help Woman-Who-Waddles with the mun
dane chores that were a part of every Indian
woman’s life. Summer Moon told her that
Coyote was recovering and would soon be
well. When she was allowed to speak with
him she hoped the Cheyenne warrior would
be as sympathetic as Woman-Who-Waddles
had been.

Since her arrival at the Indian village Hannah had occupied the same tepee that she and Ryder
had shared when they were together. She was
grateful for the privacy and believed that as long
as she and Ryder were considered husband and
wife, no one would bother her.

Hannah had been in Red Cloud’s camp near
ly two weeks before she saw Cut Nose. He had
been out raiding with a war party and had
just returned, victorious and crowing about his
brave feats. When he saw that Hannah was
alone and learned of the circumstances under
which she had returned to them he made sly
plans to claim her for himself.

Hannah was more exhausted than usual
that night. She ate dinner with Woman-Who-
Waddles and retired to her own tepee shortly
afterward. Because of the heat, which had built
up inside the tepee during the hot summer
day, she left the flap open. Stripping to her chemise, she lay down on her pallet and fell asleep almost immediately. The camp had just
settled down for the night when a lone figure
slipped into her tepee and carefully closed the flap behind him.

Cut Nose stood over Hannah, his body taut with the need to pound himself into this wom
an. If she resisted, he would have his way
with her and then kill her so she could not
accuse him afterward. Dropping to his knees, he stared into her sleeping face. Illuminated by the dappled moonlight finding its way through the smokehole at the top of the tepee, her hair
reminded him of the shiny coat of a fox, nei
ther red nor brown but a vibrant mixture of
the two.

Hannah was sleeping so soundly, she did not
feel Cut Nose lift a lock of hair that had fallen across her shoulder. Nor did she see the
gleam in his dark eyes as he slid them along
the length of her thinly clad body. The night was warm and she had kicked off the blanket. Her shift had ridden up, revealing a slim white
leg and shapely thigh.

Cut Nose’s mouth watered and his hardened
staff prodded against the apron of his breech-
clout. Untying the thongs, he tore it off and
flung it aside. Dropping to his knees, he placed
a hand over Hannah’s mouth.

Hannah awoke with a start, frightened and
disoriented. She sensed immediately a menacing presence and opened her mouth to scream,
but a pressure against her lips prevented the
sound from escaping. Her eyes widened with
terror when she saw the hulking form bending
over her. Cut Nose! She could see the feral gleam
in his black eyes and smell his arousal. Shaking
her head from side to side, she attempted to
convey her unwillingness, her revulsion. But
Cut Nose had never cared what Hannah wanted
or didn’t want. He only knew what he wanted.