Comanche Woman (49 page)

The day was over too soon. When she was leaving, Sloan reminded Bay to be sure to talk with Walker, and Bay promised she would. But Bay hadn’t counted on her pregnancy making her so tired. She lay down on the bed to rest after supper, and when she woke up it was Monday morning and Long Quiet had already gone to work with his
vaqueros
.

The week was nearly over before Bay found the right moment to talk with Long Quiet, and then their mood was so good that they ended up making love instead. Time slipped by, and the Sundays came and went.

If Long Quiet hadn’t been so loving, if she hadn’t felt so loving in return, perhaps Bay might have felt more urgently the need to clear up the misunderstanding that had marred their first days together.

But as the days became weeks and the weeks became months, it seemed to Bay that Long Quiet must have finally realized that she loved him for himself.

Every Sunday Sloan, Cruz, and Cisco came to dinner. Sometimes, if the weather was nice enough, Bay packed a basket of food and they ate under the old oak as they had the first day. The Sunday before Christmas was such a day. Bay had risen early, but even so, Sloan was already on her doorstep.

“What are you doing here already?” Bay asked.

“I thought maybe today we could have a—”

“—picnic,” they finished together.

They laughed companionably. It had been quite an experience for Bay getting to know her older sister better. She liked what she’d found. It was still hard to assert herself with Sloan, but Sloan seemed to have developed a sensitivity to Bay’s feelings. Bay wasn’t sure which of the two of them had changed more. She only knew it was like finding a long-lost friend who’d been right there under her nose all the time.

“I’m way ahead of you,” Bay said, threading her arm through Sloan’s and walking her sister inside. “I’ve already got fried chicken, baked beans, some cheese, fruit, and an apple pie packed in a basket.”

“Sounds wonderful. Cruz and Cisco should be here anytime now.”

Almost as she spoke, Cruz rode up on his horse with Cisco planted in the saddle in front of him. That was something new, since Cruz usually brought the little boy in a carriage.

“Isn’t Cisco a little young to be riding like that?” Sloan challenged.

“He’s taken to riding like a bird to the air. All Spaniards are practically born on horseback,” Cruz replied, not at all perturbed by Sloan’s remark. Then, sensing Sloan’s real concern, he comforted, “Besides, I have a tight hold on him. He’s safe.”

That seemed to be all the reassurance Sloan required, Bay noticed. Whether Sloan knew it or not, her trust in Cruz had doubled, and then doubled again over the past months. She wondered if Cruz was as trustworthy as all that. There was no doubt he cared about Sloan and about Cisco. But would he end up hurting Sloan? Would he be willing to give up Cisco when the day came that Sloan asked to have her child back, as Bay became more and more convinced she would?

Cisco squirmed in Cruz’s arms trying to reach Sloan, until Cruz let go and the little boy launched himself into his mother’s arms. Sloan hugged her son to her, rocking him back and forth as the two of them murmured to one another in a mixture of Spanish and English. Sloan was learning her son’s language as he learned hers.

Seeing their happiness made Bay feel poignantly the loss of Little Deer, and she turned away from the pain. “I’ll get Walker and we can go,” she said.

They rode out to the gigantic oak and set their blanket in the sun, knowing they could move it to the shade as the mild winter day warmed even more. Sloan placed the basket of food in the shade and said, “Who’s ready for a walk?”

“I think I’ll lie here in the sun,” Bay replied as she stretched out on the blanket.

Long Quiet lay down beside her and said, “A nap sounds good to me.”

“Pick flowers,” Cisco said, heading at a toddler’s run for the blossoming winter sage on the hill.

Sloan grinned and turned to Cruz. “Guess we’re going for a walk.”

Cruz held out his palm to her, and after a moment Sloan put her hand in his and they headed for the spring.

“They look good together, don’t they?” Bay said to Long Quiet as Cruz and Sloan strolled away together.

“Not matchmaking, are you?”

“Why not? I can remember when Sloan wouldn’t let Cruz within two feet of her. Now they’re holding hands. Anybody can see they’re attracted to one another. Surely you’ve noticed it.”

“Yes, but Cruz is dealing with a woman who doesn’t know what she wants.”

“That never stopped you,” Bay said with a laugh.

A serious Long Quiet answered, “I guess you’re right.”

Beads of perspiration had formed above the bow of Bay’s lip and Long Quiet entertained thoughts of what it would be like to kiss them away. In a moment his thoughts were transformed into action as he leaned over his wife and lowered his lips to hers. “You’re a sorceress,” he murmured. “You’ve cast your spell on me.”

Sloan turned to call a request to Bay to join them and saw that she was otherwise engaged with her husband. Although it was doubtful Bay would have noticed her attention at that point, Sloan gave her sister the privacy she herself would have desired in the same situation.

However, Cruz didn’t miss the blush that rose on Sloan’s face at finding her sister making love to her husband in broad daylight. “It is the way of lovers,” he said, “not to notice the rest of the world.”

The memory of stolen moments with Cruz’s brother, Antonio, swamped Sloan. Fleeting impressions of halcyon days, when she’d forgotten anything existed but the two of them, merged with memories of a darker time, when she’d learned that the man she loved had used her without her knowledge to carry messages in a sinister plot against the Republic of Texas.

Cruz damned himself for the agonized look on Sloan’s face and sought a distraction that would keep her from remembering a time he wanted to forget as much as she did. “Why don’t we take Cisco and go exploring?” he said.

“That sounds like fun,” Sloan agreed readily.

Cruz scooped the little boy up in his arms, much against the child’s wishes, and strode toward a hillock that would take them out of sight of the other couple. Once over the hill, he set Cisco down again and the little boy trudged away to explore on his own.

“Sloan, we have to talk,” Cruz said, catching her hand before she could follow Cisco.

Sloan kept her eyes on her adventuresome son, letting none of the anxiety she was feeling show in her face. She couldn’t, however, seem to stop the trembling that was giving her away.

Cruz led Sloan to a grassy mound, barely shaded by a scraggly mesquite, and pulled her down to sit beside him.

“What do you want, Cruz?” Sloan asked, hoping that by taking the initiative she could control the conversation.

“Only to tell you that you’re a wonderful mother for Cisco.”

Sloan clutched her hands together in her lap. “I don’t know how you can say that. I abandoned my child at birth, then didn’t see him for more than two—”

“That’s enough, Sloan.”

“—years, after which I—”

Cruz closed Sloan’s mouth with his. His lips were soft on hers, gentle, seeking.

At first, she was too shocked to do anything. Then she found herself responding. Had she wanted this? His lips sought more, and his tongue came searching for the inner softness of her mouth. She shivered with wonder at the feelings bolting through her. It was so different from Anton—

Sloan panicked, jerking her head away and staring into Cruz’s deep blue eyes as though he were a stranger. She wasn’t supposed to feel anything ever again, and especially not for this man. He was the brother of her lover, the uncle of her child. And they had an agreement!

She scrambled to her feet. “How dare you. You promised,” she hissed. “No touching. None!”

“Cebellina, I—”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses,” she spat. “I heard enough of them from your brother.”

Cruz stiffened as the blood fled his face. Sloan was so enraged she never even noticed as she continued, “You Guerreros think all you have to do is snap your fingers and a woman will lay herself down for your pleasure. Well, not me. Damn you.
Not me!
”

Sloan turned and ran, heedless of her direction, which was away from the site of the picnic, away from her son. Cruz raced after her, had almost caught up with her, when they were both halted by the sound of a child’s shriek, followed by an awful silence.

“Cisco!” Sloan turned back in the direction they’d come, with Cruz at her side. Gasping for breath, the pain in her side making her limp with the effort to keep moving, Sloan finally reached the place they’d left Cisco.

Her eyes searched the terrain for her child and widened in horror when at last she spied him.

Long Quiet had found the taste of his wife so enticing he thought he could easily spend the rest of his life kissing her. His body was strung as taut as a bowstring with need, and Bay had teased him mercilessly by refusing to let him unbutton her dress to suckle her breasts. He’d retaliated by kissing her through the calico. He could feel the pebbled tips of her breasts with his teeth and tongue through the wet cloth. Bay was writhing with need beneath him, and he was certain she wouldn’t be able to resist his entreaties much longer.

When Long Quiet first heard Cisco’s shriek he ignored the sound, because the little boy had often shrieked with laughter, and he very much did not want to be disturbed. But his mind would not release the sound, and he realized all at once that this shriek had been different. It had been a shriek of terror.

He grabbed his gun from the blanket nearby and raced in the direction of the child’s cry. He froze when he saw Cisco’s body crumpled in the dry prairie grass, a Comanche brave kneeling beside the child with his bloody knife poised above Cisco’s scalp. Long Quiet was astonished when the Indian’s visage, distorted by his blood lust, lifted slightly at Long Quiet’s appearance, and he recognized the face of his friend, Two Fingers, with whom he’d hunted often in the past.

“Two Fingers,” he shouted. “Hold!”

Two Fingers, startled to hear his name called by a
tabeboh
, a hated White-eyes, paused long enough to try and identify the intruder. “Long Quiet?”

“Yes.”

The Indian’s lip curled over his upper teeth in a grotesque grin of pleasure. “You are just in time to share the moment of my revenge,” he said, his guttural voice dripping with hatred.

“Revenge for what?”

“I take this boy’s life to pay for the death of my son, Forked River, at the hands of the White-eyes.”

“I am sorry your son is dead,” Long Quiet said. “But I cannot allow you to take your revenge on this innocent child.”

“Cannot allow?” Two Fingers raged. “It is already done. It needs only the scalping to satisfy my promise of revenge to the mother of Forked River.”

“No.”

Two Fingers looked from the gun in Long Quiet’s hand to his friend’s flinty gray eyes. “You will not kill me,
haints
. We have ridden too many trails together. You are Comanche, a True Human Being. A Comanche does not kill his brother.”

Long Quiet watched the malicious grin widen on Two Fingers’ face. What Two Fingers said was true. Must he choose, then? Was there no way he could avoid taking one side or the other? Would he have to kill his Comanche friend to save a white child’s life?

“The boy is my nephew by marriage,” Long Quiet said solemnly. “Will you kill one of my family?”

Two Fingers hesitated, clearly distressed by Long Quiet’s pronouncement. “I am sorry this one fell beneath my knife. But I must have revenge for my son’s death.” Seeing no understanding in Long Quiet’s eyes, Two Fingers demanded, “Have you become a White-eyes? Have you forsaken The People?”

“I have taken a
tabeboh
to wife, and I will live here among the White-eyes. As I am both Comanche and White, so will my son be of
both
peoples.”

“At least you will have a son,” Two Fingers snarled. “Mine has been killed by the White-eyes.”

“I shall share my son with you, then,
haints,
” Long Quiet said, his voice soft. “Will that not be a better balm to your wife’s grief than the scalp of another’s child?”

“What?”

As Two Fingers narrowed his eyes suspiciously Long Quiet continued, “When my son has passed six summers I will send him to stay awhile in your tipi.”