And One Rode West

  Then why did her scent haunt him so? Why did he long to turn to her? Bury his face against her neck and the sweet-smelling silk of her hair and forget the frontier and the death that stalked it.

  He grit down hard on his teeth.

  Who am I taunting? Her? Myself?

  The answer was easy. He was the one in torment.

  But then, he was the one who had so foolishly fallen in love, lost his heart.

  And still he lay there, angered by his torment, his back to her.

  Pride. What a foolish vice. She lay beside him. She had waited for his touch. And just last night, it seemed, they had evoked the angels when they had made love.

  Damn his pride. He would hold her again.

  At last he turned, yet when he did, it seemed that she slept again. He felt her breathing, slow, deep, and easy. It was very dark. He smoothed some of the hair from her face and felt her cheeks.

  They were damp.

  Christa crying? She didn’t cry. Camerons didn’t cry. The men or the women. She had told him so. She had cried wretchedly and alone before leaving Cameron Hall, but not a tear had appeared in her eyes since. She was fierce, she was strong.

  “What in hell is this we have made for one another?” he whispered softly aloud. He slipped his arms around her and pulled her close against him, holding her as she slept. His hand fell beneath her breast. Her back lay against his chest, his hips curved around her derriere.

  The ache of his desire was not eased.

  But something within his heart was. She slipped beside him so easily. Curved against him naturally.

  It was good just to hold her.

  Last night she had felt their child moving. There would be a new life created. He shuddered, remembering Jenny.

  Jenny had died. With all his strength, he had to protect Christa. He had brought her to Indian territory. He should send her home.

  But he could not send her away. He could only keep her safe. By his life, he silently vowed to do so.

  He pulled her more tightly against him. He smoothed back her hair.

  The night passed on.

  Somewhere, a wolf howled.

  In time, he slept.

  Seventeen

  Long, seemingly endless hours of rain and very hard travel kept Christa from seeing much of Jeremy over the next several days. Despite the rain they held a steady pace, and although he seemed not to choose to share any of his important decisions with her, James Preston was polite enough to always keep her abreast of what was going on. Captain Clark had moved on, being one of the messengers of the West, so he was no longer around to entertain them. But many of the other men were very kind, and despite her words with Sherman, they didn’t seem to hold anything against her. Sergeant Jaffe had pointed a few men out to her, and to her surprise she learned that they had been wearing gray uniforms until just a short time ago. “Oh, we’ve an interesting army out here now, ma’am, that we do. A tough one! Half of these fellows have just spent four years shooting at other white men. They aren’t going to bat an eye when they raise their guns to shoot at red men.”

  Christa didn’t find that much of an encouraging thought. From the little that she did know about her husband, she knew that Jeremy was often appalled by the way his own army dealt with Indians. She knew that the reason he was so determined to move on was that he wanted to reach, occupy, fortify, and hold Fort Jacobson before harsh weather fell upon them.

  For three nights they found high ground by the river when it was very late. The tents were not set up, and Christa spent the nights with Celia—and a parcel of the pointer puppies—in their wagon. By the fourth day the rain had abated. They passed a reservation of Indians, and Jaffe told her that they were Caddo Indians. They were “half-civilized” according to the sergeant, and Christa dismounted from her horse, intrigued and determined to buy whatever they were selling. One of the women was wearing a long cotton dressing gown in very pretty cotton. One of the men was adorned with a brightly colored kerchief about his head. A little child—very little, Christa thought, perhaps just a bit more than a year old—came running out and crashed into her legs. She laughed, a pain touching her heart as she thought of how he reminded her of her nephews and her niece. She scooped up the little boy and swung him around as she had once done so often with John Daniel and the others. The child, like any child—white, black, or red—let out a peal of laughter. The Caddo woman smiled slowly. Christa returned the child, and with Jaffe’s help pointed out what she wanted to buy. They would soon be into an area where the majority of the nearby Indians would be Comanche and Kiowa, and neither tribe was an agricultural one. They followed the buffalo and made war upon their enemies, and supplemented their diets with berries and forage off the land. From the Caddo she bought numerous vegetables.

  A number of the men were there, too, buying what they could. Thanks to Jaffe and some of the other cooks, Jeremy’s men ate well, but army rations themselves were still rather sparse. A private in the army was paid thirteen dollars a month, Jaffe had told Christa. He was also allotted a weekly issue of salt pork, dry beans, green coffee beans, brown sugar, soap, and wheat flour. They were supposed to receive fresh meat twice a week, but since they had been hunting quite successfully—and since the buffalo kill—they had done much better than that. As far as fresh fruit and vegetables went, they were on their own. Even a number of the men who were known to gamble their pay before they received it were carefully buying up corn and greens from the Caddo.

  They had started up on the march again long before Christa heard from Celia that Mrs. Brooks and Mrs. Jennings were back in Mrs. Brooks’s ambulance praying for Christa’s soul. “They’re very upset about the way you played with the Indian child,” Celia told her.

  “You’d think they’d complain about the snakes and tarantulas instead of me for a while!” Christa muttered.

  “Oh, they complain about those too!” Celia assured her, and laughed. Christa was glad of Celia’s amusement. She had taken to the hardships of the last days very well. She was becoming a very well-adjusted cavalry wife.

  They traveled well over twenty miles that day and camped on the Washita River. Nathaniel and Robert Black Paw had set up her portable home, and she was brewing coffee just outside the tent when she paused. It was dusk, but she could see that a cavalry officer had come into the encampment leading a group of three Indians.

  There was something different about them, and it gave her pause. She rose slowly from the campfire, staring at the newcomers.

  The night was cool yet they wore no shirts. They were dressed in high skin boots and breechclouts. There were paintings upon their horses in red, and their faces were also streaked with the color. The lead rider was wearing a headdress created from the head and horns of a buffalo. There was nothing civilized or tame about them. The very way that they rode seemed to speak of their freedom on the plains and of their fierce determination to cling to that freedom.

  “Robert—” She turned quickly to her husband’s Indian scout.

  “Comanche,” he said softly. He had been watching the newcomers too.

  Her heart seemed to slam against her chest. “Why are they here? Were they captured? That can’t be, the way that they are riding. How do they dare ride into the camp like that?”

  Robert shrugged. “They’ve come to see the colonel. For now, they’ve come in peace. You do not need to be afraid.”

  She nodded. The Indians dismounted from their horses in front of the headquarters tent and disappeared within it.

  Christa tried to settle into the tent but she couldn’t do so. There was little for her to do. Robert had caught a prairie hare for their supper and quietly told her that he would tend to the meal himself. The bedding was arranged, the tent was comfortable. Celia was alone at last with her beloved James, and she certainly wasn’t going to go pay a visit to Mrs. Brooks or Mrs. Jennings. Some of the other wives were very nice, but she only felt really close to Celia.

  Nathaniel and Robert, ever concern
ed about her comfort, saw to it that after the long days of rain and mud the hip tub was brought in. She did relish her bath; she had felt almost as caked with mud as the earth itself.

  She almost wished that Jeremy would come in while she was in it, since finding her in a bath tended to give him an urge toward action rather than conversation.

  She was sure that she wanted to be held. To give in once again. To touch that shining pinnacle of paradise that came even here, in the wilderness.

  She was so nervous about the night to come, because she had barely spoken with Jeremy since he had returned from his ride out on the plain. He hadn’t touched her that night, and with the hardships of their ride, he had been a stranger since. It seemed that all she could remember was that he had called her “half-dead,” but she had surely given him all that she had to give.

  She left the bath, dressed, paced the tent, then sat at the edge of the bed. Jeremy still hadn’t come. She leapt up suddenly. He was usually angry with her anyway—it didn’t matter much if he wanted her with him or not now that the Comanche party had come. She was longing to see the Indians who kept even the most seasoned soldiers on edge.

  She threw a shawl around her shoulders and left her own tent behind, heading straight for the headquarters tent. Private Darcy was on duty outside of it.

  “Ma’am—” he began, ready to stop her.

  She waved a hand his way. “It’s all right, Mr. Darcy. I’m sure my husband won’t mind.”

  Her husband would mind, but short of holding her back physically, there was nothing Darcy could do since she was on her way into the tent. She paused just inside the flaps, surveying the scene.

  Captain Clark was the white man who had ridden in with the Indians. He was standing to the right of and just behind Jeremy. Two of the braves stood to the side of the desk. One of the Indians was speaking with her husband, and in an excellent English.

  “It was just months ago when we gathered, thousands of us, Comanche, Apache, Kiowa, Pawnee, and more, on the banks of the Washita, hearing about the things that would be offered to us by the Great White Father of the Confederacy.”

  Christa’s eyes widened as she realized that the man was talking about Jeff Davis.

  Jeremy, seated behind the broad traveling desk that could be so easily transported to a wagon, nodded sagely to the man before him.

  “The emissary from the Confederacy spoke to you in all good faith. But even as he was speaking, the government of the Confederacy was folding. Buffalo Run knows—”

  “Buffalo Run knows that things happen—like the massacre at Sand Creek. He was glad when he learned that you were coming, for he remembers you well and he feels that you are, perhaps, the only honest white man he has met.”

  Jeremy leaned forward. “Eagle Who Flies High, I am pleased that Buffalo Run feels that we can negotiate. I have been very distressed. It was not long ago that I rode out here with a company from my regiment to discover that a stranded company of men from another regiment had been annihilated. And just days ago, I came across dead men on the plain. Is this Buffalo Run’s message of good faith to me?”

  “Just as you do not control all white men, Buffalo Run does not control all Comanche braves.”

  “Ah, but Buffalo Run can exert influence,” Jeremy said.

  The Indian before him—a man of medium height but with a solid, muscular build—inclined his head. “So he will speak with you. And his brothers Setting Sun and Walks Tall will await here in equal good faith.”

  “I am agreed,” Jeremy said simply. He stood. The meeting had evidently been completed.

  The Indian turned. He had been about to walk from the tent but he stopped, standing dead still as he saw Christa. Jeremy, who had been involved with his exchange with the man he had called Eagle Who Flies High, saw her too. His eyes narrowed, his jaw tightened. Christa felt a flush suffuse her as the Comanche studied her thoroughly from head to toe.

  “My wife, Eagle Who Flies High,” Jeremy said. The Comanche didn’t really acknowledge Christa, he nodded to Jeremy.

  “She is a fine wife.” He studied Christa again in silence, turned back to Jeremy and bowed, then proceeded out of the tent, nearly brushing by Christa as he left. The other two braves followed him in silence, their dark eyes studying her with the same blunt appraisal.

  When they were gone, Jeremy’s wrath exploded. “What in God’s name are you doing here?” he demanded, his tone low but shaking with the effort to keep it so.

  “I just—”

  “Colonel, sir,” Emory Clark said, “surely it can’t be Mrs. McCauley’s fault to have stumbled upon us in the midst of—”

  “Emory, I’ll thank you to mind your own business!” Jeremy snapped, rising. He started toward Christa. “And you! You need to learn to stay out of business that does not concern you!”

  “But it does concern me!” Christa retorted, wishing that she had never come, and miserable for both herself and for poor Emory. “The Comanche—”

  “The Comanche are very fond of taking female captives!”

  Emory cleared his throat. “He’s concerned for your welfare, Christa—”

  “Emory! I’ll speak to my wife myself, thank you!”

  “Yes, sir.” Emory saluted. He didn’t look pleased. He strode out of the tent.

  “You didn’t need to be so rude!” Christa cried.

  “And you don’t need to behave so stupidly!”

  She stiffened, swung around, and strode out of the tent almost blindly. She nearly tripped over Private Darcy.

  “Christa!”

  She heard him, but she looked right at Private Darcy and pretended that she didn’t. Furious, she strode on through the field of tents until she reached her own.

  He was right behind, catching her by her shoulder, spinning her around. “Christa, don’t walk out on me like that again!”

  “Then don’t yell at me like that again!”

  “I’m just concerned—”

  “Then you shouldn’t have yelled at Captain Clark.”

  He threw up his hands. “Right. I wouldn’t want to yell at the poor dear fellow who so resembles Liam McCloskey!”

  “Oh!” she cried, and threw up her hands in aggravation. “You’re right! He is poor Captain Clark. He will forever have to pay because of that!” Angrily, she pulled the pillow from the bed and threw it at him, hard. He caught it and tossed it to the bed, advancing on her. She backed away quickly, but found there was nowhere to go. He was nearly upon her when she began talking. “My God, I didn’t mean to cause you difficulty!” she hissed out. “I didn’t know if you were staying out all night or coming in. I merely wished to see—”

  “You wished to see the Comanche!” he said.

  She turned away quickly, trying to keep her fingers from shaking as she poured him a brandy, handing it to him quickly. To her surprise, he took it from her fingers. His eyes were still hard, silver and gun-metal gray. She quickly tried to ply her advantage.

  “I’ve seen many of the Indians,” she said.

  “Not the Comanche.”

  “Yes, but they’re important to you. There’s so much that I don’t understand. What was he talking about? What was the Sand Creek Massacre?”

  “The Sand Creek Massacre,” he repeated. He walked around his desk, pulled back the chair, and sat in it, his eyes remaining on her sharply. “You never heard of it?”

  She shook her head. “There—there was a war going on.”

  “Yes,” he murmured, looking away. “All right, you want to know. War came, and half the men out here resigned to go with the Confederacy. More men were pulled back to fight on the front. Once there was a fairly decent man named Wynkoop at a place northwest of here called Fort Lyon. Under terms, some Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians had put themselves under his protection. Wynkoop was too decent a man. Somebody decided to get rid of him and a Major Anthony came out to take charge. Governor Evans of Colorado and a militia colonel named Chivington wanted a war. Anthony managed to get the In
dians to move away from the protection of the fort—he could attack them then. And he did. Chivington had given his men orders to attack all the Indians, to kill and scalp the big ones and the little ones because nits made lice. And so the men went in and killed, raped, maimed, and destroyed. A Captain Silas, a regular from Anthony’s army, refused to follow the order. He was murdered in Denver soon after. Anthony and Chivington tried to make it sound like a noble battle, and still the truth got out to whites and red men alike. Buffalo Run is not a fool. He has seen the past, and by that, he sees the future. He doesn’t trust many men.”

  Christa didn’t think that she could blame Buffalo Run, not after the story Jeremy had told her. He didn’t describe the slaughter in detail, but in his tone she could almost imagine what had happened and it had surely been horrible.

  “It seems that Buffalo Run trusts you.”

  Jeremy shrugged. “He tolerates me—more than he is willing to tolerate most white men.” He leaned forward suddenly, wagging a finger at her. “His men should have never seen you.”

  “But—”

  “They are a polygamous society. Buffalo Run has several wives and probably wouldn’t mind having another one.”

  “But—”

  “The Comanche can move like the wind. They like to travel down to Mexico and trade with the Spanish. They trade women just like they trade buffalo meat and hides. They like to rape their female prisoners first so that they give the Spaniards a woman who is soiled. It’s a way of being superior.”

  A chill was slipping over her. “But Jeremy, I came to the headquarters tent! I didn’t wander out into open territory.”

  “But you’ve done so before,” he reminded her tautly.

  She felt a chill seeping into her. “I won’t do so again,” she said uneasily.

  He was up suddenly, hands folded at his back, pacing the space between them. “See that you do stay close in!” he commanded. He stopped in front of her, his voice sharper than she had ever heard it to one of his soldiers. “Over the next few days, until my return, you must stay with Robert Black Paw. Always, always have him in sight.”