Cheyenne Captive Read Free Page B

the half-naked blonde poised for flight in the middle of the tepee. Almost twenty-five winters had he seen, and in all those years never had he desired a woman so much as this one.
    She shivered in her wet, gaudy dress and the movement brought him back to reality.
    “I will get you dry clothes,” he grunted, suddenly uncertain. It had been a long, long time since he had lain with a white woman. That red-headed whore had worn a scarlet dress, too.
    The girl bristled, and her chin came up stubbornly. “I demand to see whoever is in charge! My name is Summer Priscilla Van Schuyler of the Boston Van Schuylers, and I demand to be returned to Fort Smith at once!”
    Iron Knife smiled incredulously as he wiped the rain from his weathered face. What spirit she had, this Little One! Here she was, a helpless captive, miles from her own kind and within minutes of being mated, and she was making demands!
    “Summer,” he murmured, “a good name for one with hair the color of the white man’s ripe wheat, eyes the color of Hiriutsiishi skies, the hot month you call July.”
    Memories came flooding back of the five years in a small Texas village. “I shall call you Summer Sky,” he announced dramatically, touching his own broad chest. “And I am Iron Knife, son of War Bonnet, once a great chief of our people.”
    “Then I demand to see this War Bonnet!” She tossed her mane of golden hair. “Maybe he has enough sense to know you just can’t pull a Van Schuyler off a stage and get away with it! Why, Father will have Senator Wilson and half of President Buchanan’s cabinet out looking for me!”
    “My father is dead.” He shook his head regretfully. “Killed by the hated Pawnee when I was a youth. And you, you will demand nothing!”
    He grasped her shoulder roughly. “The council will no doubt meet tomorrow night to decide this issue. Until then, you are mine!”
    She jerked from his grasp and he saw a flicker of fear in her blue eyes, replaced quickly by haughty anger. “Don’t touch me.
    He shrugged. It would be a long, cool night and he had much experience with women. Before morning, he would have her gasping beneath him, digging her nails into his whip-scarred back. Her protests were lies. She could not be a virtuous woman, traveling alone, wearing that sensuous dress. He had spent five years with the Whites before his mother died, and he knew their customs. This Little One was either a whore or a dance-hall girl. The thought brought back a half-repressed memory of that other time and place, and the red weals on his back seemed to burn again as they had when he was but a boy of thirteen....
    “I will get you some dry clothes,” he said again, abruptly banishing the memory as his hand reached up to touch his broken nose. The mob of white men would have killed him, he thought, had it not been for his brave mother holding them at bay with her shotgun....
    “Do not try to run, little Summer,” he admonished from the tepee entry, “you are many miles from this place called Fort Smith, and deep inside the Indian Territory. It is rainy and almost dark outside, and no one here would help you, knowing you belong to me!”
    He stepped outside and paused a moment, listening. The rain had stopped, and dusk spread over the camp. The camp crier rode around the circle of tepees, telling the news of the stage coach raid, the white captive. He called the men to Council tomorrow night to discuss this. Iron Knife yawned and sniffed the fresh, wet smells of the rain. The Cheyenne were far south and east of their usual track this year. They followed the great herds of buffalo that seemed fewer each season as the white man moved deeper and deeper into the Great Plains that the Cheyennes had roamed for generations. The ten great tribes of the Tsistsistas scattered farther and farther, dependent on much meat. But with the buffalo fewer, the warriors were raiding into eastern Indian territory to steal the fat cows and horses of the Five