Jeremy had said with conviction that he would be safe. He would return.
The troops moved onward while awaiting his return. The country they came upon grew more and more intriguing. They were upon the Canadian River, Nathaniel told her, at a place near the line dividing Indian territory and the upper part of Texas.
The river was fascinating, being full and broad sometimes, then seeming to disappear. Nathaniel showed her how the water ran beneath the surface.
In the afternoon they came upon the “Antelope Buttes.” They amazed Christa, being high tables of rock with the tops apparently perfectly flat. The sides of the buttes sloped precariously steep. The way that they dotted the landscape seemed so unique to her that she spent long hours staring at them once they had camped for the night.
It was because of this that when the sun ceased to sparkle so brightly against her eyes, she saw the pole sticking out of one of the buttes.
Curious, she rode Tilly to the headquarters tent. Weland was deep in conversation with Jennings and Brooks, charting their course for the next day, and no one noticed her at first.
“We are dragging our feet enough as it is!” Major Brooks said gruffly. “Colonel McCauley was the first to want to make haste. If he doesn’t return tomorrow, we must push on harder!”
“Gentlemen, I have followed his orders precisely, and see no reason to change my course of action,” Weland argued in return.
“Except that you can’t trust that Comanche half-breed, Buffalo Run!” Jennings insisted wearily. “Major Weland, if the colonel doesn’t return tomorrow, I’d say it’s very likely that he and the other men might well be dead!”
Christa didn’t realize that she had cried out until all three men stared at her. Weland was instantly on his feet. “Major!” he declared. “What a way to speak!” He rushed to Christa’s side. “And the colonel’s lady with child here in the wilderness. You should be ashamed of yourself, sir!” He forced Christa to sit. She saw him wink and shrugged.
“Oh, I do feel faint!” she moaned.
Jennings was quickly up, the poor henpecked man. “I’m sorry. So sorry, Mrs. McCauley! It’s just that we have the whole of the regiment to worry about.”
“Jeremy said that he’ll come back. He will,” she insisted.
“Yes, Mrs. McCauley,” Jennings said. He cleared his throat and twirled his mustache. “Well then, I’ll be on my way! Brooks?”
“Yes, yes, I’ll be joining you.”
The two majors left hastily. Christa burst into laughter watching them go. She smiled at Weland. “You were wonderful.”
“No, you were wonderful—getting them out of my hair like that!” His smile faded. “You are feeling all right? I promised Jesse a healthy nephew or niece, you know. And of course, if I let any ill come to you, Jeremy would simply hang me.”
“Oh, he would not!” Christa protested.
He stared at her, then smiled. “But he would! Well, never mind that now. Did you come to me because you were feeling sick or social—or both?”
She shook her head. “There’s something up on one of the buttes.”
He frowned. “What?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll show you.”
He accompanied her out, calling to a private for his horse. He rode with Christa to the last tent, from where they could see the pole that seemed to extend from one of the buttes.”
“I’ll have Robert Black Paw see to it,” Weland said. “I’ll ride back and have him sent for.”
Christa smiled. “Oh, there’s no need to do that!” She raised her voice, whirling Tilly around. “Robert! Robert, where are you?”
Weland glanced to her, his brows arched, as Robert sheepishly rode out from behind one of the tents. He pointed to the pole. “Do you think you can reach the top of the butte?” Weland asked him.
Robert Black Paw nodded, but he looked to Christa. “I’ll climb the butte. But—” He paused.
“I promise that I won’t leave Major Weland’s side until you return,” Christa told him.
That satisfied him. With a few other men, Robert started out for the butte. Weland and Christa paid a visit to Celia, trying to cheer her up. Then they returned to the headquarters tent and waited, engaging in a game of chess.
Weland took so long to move at one point that Christa sat back, staring at him.
“Robert knew what was on the pole,” he said.
Startled, Christa raised a brow. “Do you know?”
“I’m afraid I might.”
She didn’t have a chance to ask him what he knew. He was staring over her shoulder. She looked back to see that Robert had returned. He carried nothing with him, but stared at Weland.
“Whatever it is, say it, please!” Christa demanded.
“Christa, I don’t know if you should—”
“Oh, please! You both know that I will not pass out or go into fits of hysteria!”
“A scalp?” Weland asked.
“Yes, a scalp. A white scalp.”
She didn’t get hysterical, she didn’t pass out, and she didn’t shriek.
But she did panic. Cold, black fear filled her. She felt the first taste of bile and terror rise to her throat. “A white scalp. Oh, my God, Jeremy—”
“No, no! Christa,” Robert Black Paw said quickly, forgetting his customary manner and using her Christian name. He knelt down beside her. “It is a woman’s scalp. The hair is long and light.”
“Oh!” She locked her fingers together in her lap, holding them tightly.
“And how was it found?” Weland asked.
“Stretched out on a hoop, secured to the pole by sinew ties.”
“You think it’s a warning?”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you think that Jeremy is safe?” Christa whispered.
“Buffalo Run gave his word of honor. Jeremy will be safe,” Robert said flatly. Weland didn’t say anything at all.
Christa leapt up. She felt so nervous. She had to be alone. “I—I think I’ll go to bed then. We’ll probably rise early. I’m—I’m very tired.”
“Christa!” Weland said.
She paused, looking back at him.
“Jeremy will be all right.”
She nodded. Fear had begun to live within her. She could not control it.
In her own tent she paced up and down.
She felt the baby moving and bit her lip, wondering if Jeremy might have been able to feel the strength of the movement if he had been with her. She sat on the bed, remembering how he had withdrawn from her the night she had said the baby was moving.
He hadn’t told her then, but of course he had been remembering. Remembering Jenny and the child who should have lived.
She pressed her fingers to her cheeks. She was in love with a man whose thoughts were with someone else.
No. He had said she was the perfect cavalry wife. Her cheeks colored when she responded to him. She didn’t think she could do anything but respond now.
She stood up, poured herself just a touch of brandy, and sipped it. It warmed her.
She dressed for bed in warm flannel, then curled up on her pillow. She could see the campfires burning beyond the canvas. She had to sleep. She turned down the lamp.
The fires burned low. She had to sleep, for the baby. For their son or their daughter. A child who would grow in the new world. In Weland’s age of discovery. Sympathetic to the misfortunes of the South, sympathetic with the ideals of the North.
She closed her eyes and dozed.
Something was moving. She tried to awaken. All that she could see in the mist between wakefulness and sleep was the rise of the butte. And the pole upon that butte.
She could hear drums, she thought. War drums. She could see warriors, Comanche warriors, dancing to the rhythm of those drums.
Jeremy was there, staked out upon the dry earth. One of the Comanche braves, his face painted red, was bearing down on him with a razor-sharp knife aimed at his skull.
She awoke, gasping for a
ir, leaping from her bed. There was someone within the tent. A scream rose in her throat. The Indians had come!
Arms encircled her in the near darkness. “Christa!”
It was Jeremy. She gasped, trembling. She forgot that he had ever been her enemy. “Jeremy! Oh, Jeremy! You’re back! You’ve returned.”
He was startled by the vehemence of her greeting. He smoothed back her hair, determined to enjoy her welcoming of him rather than analyze it.
“I told you that I’d come back.”
“Yes, but they found a scalp!”
He didn’t tell her that many, many a scalp could be found in the West—and many, many of those Indian scalps taken by white men.
“I heard. I’ve seen Weland,” he told her. Still holding her, he tossed his hat from his head. She didn’t seem anxious for him to let her go. In the dim light he tried to study her eyes, but they were shielded by the darkness. Still, darkness couldn’t shield everything. Every time he left her and returned to her, he was struck anew by her beauty. Her skin was flawless, her face so delicately, classically, beautifully molded. And the softness of her! Her breasts were very large with her pregnancy, her belly just beginning to round with it. She was sweetly warm in his arms. He could hear the ferocity of her heartbeat, feel the unsteady rhythm of her breath.
“So you missed me?” he said lightly.
“I—” She paused, remembering the way that they had parted. “Of course I missed you,” she murmured. “You left me here alone with those horrible Brooks and Jennings people!”
He laughed, familiar with the slightly tart twist of her voice. She may have claimed to have surrendered. But she had never done so. He might be battling all his life.
His smile faded. He didn’t mind that. He didn’t mind the skirmishes, nor did he ever mind trying to win.
If only he could rid them of their ghosts!
If only she could love him in return. But he didn’t place his heart on a platter before her.
Camerons, among other things, could be ruthless.
“Well, I’m back now,” he told her softly.
Her smiled eased. She slowly withdrew her arms from about his neck. “Well, how did things go with the Comanche, with this Buffalo Run person?”
“I don’t want to talk about Buffalo Run or the Comanche at this moment.”
“Oh. Then, I … would you like wine? Brandy? A whiskey.”
“No, thank you.” He unbuckled his scabbard, casting it aside.
“I could make you some coffee—”
“There is only one thing I want,” he said flatly.
Even in the darkness, he could see the color that rushed to her cheeks.
“Oh.”
“Well?”
“Well?” she whispered.
“Am I being offered that for which I truly hunger?”
Her lashes fell. “You know that you can always take what you want!”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
Her lashes rose. There was a flush of fury in her eyes. “Why do you do this to me?”
“I wasn’t aware that I was doing anything to you. Yet!” he added with a smile. He touched her chin, lifting it. His eyes searched hers again. “You were all that I thought about the hours I was gone. I should have been concentrating on the importance of words spoken between Buffalo Run and me, but my mind kept wandering. I would close my eyes and see you here, naked, the fall of your hair about you, a sheen upon your flesh, the slightest curl of a smile to your lips. What have you done, Christa, bewitched me? Are Camerons so talented?”
She gazed at him, her eyes widening. She didn’t reply, and he pressed his point. “I’m hungry, Christa. Starving for the touch and taste of you. Tell me, do you offer yourself up as freely as you would pass out whiskey or wine?”
“I can’t play these word games!” she whispered.
He caught her arms, pulling her against him. “No games, Christa. Tell me! Will you come to me?”
“Yes!” she gasped. She truly couldn’t say anything more. But tonight, the darkness and her own hungers were her shield. She slipped her arms around his neck. She rose on her toes and kissed him. The long hours of worry and waiting added to the savoring hunger of her kiss, and he marveled at the feel of her in his arms.
He lifted her up, thanking God in heaven, and brought her to their bed. She said nothing more and he forced nothing more from her.
He had no desire to break the fragile magic.
It lasted through the night.
He felt her get out of bed. Still drowsy himself, he watched her with half-closed eyes. She was so graceful and supple, sliding from the covers in the pale dawn, tall and naked and elegant, no matter that slight rounding of her stomach. He enjoyed watching her when she thought that he slept, dousing her face in wash water from the pitcher on the trunk, shivering fiercely, then dressing as silently as she could, determined not to wake him.
He tried not to smile, certain that she would go out and start the morning coffee, then come back to him. At the moment, he didn’t care what time the regiment started moving. He’d earned his rest.
He watched her slip out of the tent and luxuriated in the comfort of his camp bed after the nights spent sleeping on the ground with his saddle as a pillow. She would return soon enough, bringing him coffee. The morning would be sweet.
He rolled over, glad to keep his eyes closed for a few minutes longer as he mulled over his days with Buffalo Run.
There were numerous bands of Comanche. They were all still friendly with the Wind River Shoshone, the tribe from which they had sprung and with whom they shared a common language. They had formed alliances with the Kiowa to create bigger raiding parties, but they fought the Utes—with whom they also shared their language. They acknowledged no central tribal chief or government, but each band recognized its own chief who might also hold some sway with the chiefs of other bands.
Buffalo Run was such a chief.
He was an intelligent man, a half-breed, a renegade. Many people thought that the Comanche were responsible for a majority of the white deaths in the West, but Jeremy didn’t feel that Buffalo Run enjoyed the spectacle of death.
He had simply watched what happened with white men and learned from the misfortunes of others. When Jeremy had sat with him in the four-poled conical dome of his tepee, he had listened to Buffalo Run and admitted that he was listening to a history that placed a dark cloud upon his own people.
“Think on this, McCauley!” Buffalo Run had said, waving a hand in the air to create a picture. “It was just eighteen forty-six when your General Kearny took Santa Fe, until then the capital of Spanish and Mexican New Mexico. Navaho raiders stole some of his beef and went on to raid the settlements. Yes, white settlers were killed. Yes, the Navaho stole thousands of sheep, cattle, and horses. But General Kearny began a campaign against the Navaho that ended with over eight thousand of their number becoming prisoners at one of your white forts. Since eighteen sixty-four they still reside there.”
“Perhaps it was Kearny’s way of warning other tribes that they mustn’t raid and steal.”
“Perhaps it is his way to trick other tribes into submission. I tell you McCauley, I have seen the white man’s ways. Your people will not be happy until they have annihilated mine.”
“Your mother was white,” Jeremy reminded him.
Buffalo Run smiled. He was a striking Indian. Despite his white blood, his eyes were an obsidian black, his features strong, bronzed, and clean-cut.
“I have never minded a white woman or child who lives with the Numinu,” he said, using the Comanche’s own term for the tribe. It meant “the people.” “They learn our ways and they become one with us.”
Jeremy had sat back then, still wondering why Buffalo Run had determined to have him come to his camp. He had been greeted as a friend. Buffalo Run’s three wives, two of them sisters and the third a cousin to the other women, had seen to it that he had been brought the best of their buffalo meat, clean water
, and a bottle of good Irish whiskey—one that had been traded for or stolen, he didn’t want to know which. He was an honored guest, but he was certain that Buffalo Run wanted something.
He did. “I’ve not brought you here to make promises that you cannot keep, nor can I give you promises when the Comanche are a free people.”
“Why am I here?”
“White men in gray uniforms have taken my youngest wife’s sister. I have promised to take her in as one of my own. I am a powerful man, able to care for many women.”
Jeremy nodded. A Comanche might take as many wives as he desired—and could handle.
Personally, Jeremy was certain that dealing with one vixen was enough.
“I hear that you have acquired a wife,” Buffalo Run said.
“Yes.” He didn’t know why he felt so uncomfortable.
“Eagle Who Flies High tells me that she is a very beautiful woman.”
He nodded again. “Yes.” He hesitated. “We are expecting our first child.”
“May you have a son.”
Jeremy refrained from telling Buffalo Run that he did not care if his child were a son or a daughter—he cared only that his child be born alive and that Christa endure the labor with her life and health intact. “Thank you,” he told the Comanche chief. “I still don’t understand—”
“I want my wife’s sister returned to me. I want you to go after the men in gray, and I believe that you will do so.”
“Men in gray must be Confederate soldiers. Turned outlaw perhaps,” Jeremy said. “I don’t know what I—”
“They stole Morning Star,” Buffalo Run interrupted, “and I would kill them, but they are armed with the Colt revolvers the Texas Rangers are so fond of using against us. I would lose many men. My braves are not afraid—to die in battle is the honorable way to die and a way to join one’s ancestors.”
Jeremy understood that. The Comanche believed in an afterlife—but that afterlife was denied men and women who died in the dark, who were strangled, drowned—or scalped. Burial ceremonies were important and sacred among the Comanche, and to die in battle was always the way for a warrior to fall.
“Then—”
“These men also held up the trading post just this side of Indian territory. They killed Joseph Greenley who was your friend, I understand. Eagle Who Flies High followed them. They also attacked a Union pay wagon, and slit the throats of the men who threw down their weapons.”