The Guardian (3 page)

Now, as if to mock him, fate had flung this helpless white woman across his path, giving him no choice except to take compassion and help her.

As he eased his leg over the pony's withers, the vile curses his drunken stepfather had screamed at his cringing mother echoed in his memory. Part of him wanted to shout them into the woman's ears, to let her know exactly what he thought of her kind. But when he finally cleared his throat and spoke, the words that emerged were simple.

“Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you.”

 

C
HARITY COULD NOT
have been more startled if the man's horse had opened its mouth and begun quoting from the Book of Revelations. She stared up into the stern bronze face, scarcely able to believe her ears.

“You speak…English.” She forced each word from her smoke-parched throat.

“Some.” He squatted beside her, his smooth-muscled shoulders blotting out most of the landscape. His hands worked a wooden stopper from the narrow neck of a seamless rawhide pouch—the bladder of some large animal, she realized.

“You are…Blackfoot?” Charity's dry lips cracked as she spoke.

“Arapaho.” His hand moved none too gently beneath her head, supporting her neck as he tipped the open pouch to her mouth. “Drink,” he said gruffly.

The water trickled into her mouth. She gulped it eagerly, not caring that it was neither cool nor particularly fresh but only that it quenched her burning throat. Her hand loosed its grip on the pistol in her pocket. Rueben had told her that the Arapaho were known as the Blue Sky people because of their kindly behavior toward outsiders. Unless this man was lying, he was not likely to harm her.

“Don't drink too much. It will make you sick,” he cautioned, pulling the bag away. When she moaned, he lowered her head and poured a little of the water into his palm. With an odd, rough gentleness, he smoothed the water onto her forehead, her cheeks, her throat and her cracked lips. She whimpered, wanting to lick the moisture from his hand, to take his long fingers in her mouth and suck them dry.

When he took his hand away and stoppered the bag, she tried to plead for more with her eyes, but he ignored her distress. “You can't stay here,” he said, glancing toward the trees.

Charity nodded, knowing what his words implied. She would have to get up, no matter how much it hurt. Bracing against the pain, she worked one arm beneath her and rolled onto her side. The strain of that simple
movement on the skin of her blistered back sent arrows of hot agony shooting through her body. A scream rose in her throat. She gulped it back. Their lives could depend on her keeping quiet.

For a moment she stilled, feeling the baby shift and resettle inside her. She heard the sharp intake of his breath as he bent to examine her back.

“How bad is it?” she asked.

“Bad, but I've seen worse.” He exhaled sharply. “I can do something to help, but not here.” He rose to his feet and moved around her so that he could look into her face. “Give me your hands,” he said. “It will hurt, but you must let me pull you up.”

“I know.” Charity extended her hands and felt his grip close around them. His fingers were long and sinewy, and his palms possessed the timeworn toughness of pliant leather. She held on, knowing she had no choice except to do as she was told. If she remained here, she and the baby would die.

Twisting, she bent her legs so that they would catch her weight and push her upward. “Ready,” she murmured. “Make it quick.”

“Now!”
He jerked her upward. She sucked her scream inward as the pain swept through her. On her feet now, she sagged dizzily against him. His body went rigid at her touch, as if a serpent had crawled across his chest. This man had not been happy to find her, Charity realized. To him, she was nothing but a danger and a burden, as much to be hated as to be pit
ied. Only some strange quirk of conscience had kept him from riding away and leaving her to die.

Seized by a flash of pride, she pushed herself away from him. “As you see, I'm quite all right!” she declared, swaying like a drunkard. “Get me to a safe place where I can rest. After that, you can wash your hands of me and be on your way!”

His anthracite eyes flashed her a look of cold contempt. “Don't be a silly child,” he snapped. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”

Glancing beyond the wagons, she noticed that he had brought a second horse. But that horse, a short-legged brown pinto, was wearing a loaded packsaddle with no room for a rider. Unless her rescuer planned to abandon his supplies, they would have no choice except to ride double.

He seized her wrist and pulled her toward his mount, then hesitated. Charity could guess what he was thinking. If she rode in front of him, the contact with her burned back would cause her excruciating pain. But her bulging belly would not allow her to fit easily behind him.

He deliberated for the space of a breath. Then, wasting no more time, he sprang onto the horse's bare back, shifted forward almost to its shoulders, and used his grip on her elbow to swing her up behind him. The sudden pull on her arm caused Charity to gasp, but the strain was brief. Without being told, she reached past the expanse of her belly and clasped his ribs. She felt
his body flinch at her touch, but he said nothing as he caught the lead of the packhorse and urged his mount to a gallop.

He raced the horses full-out until they reached the shelter of the trees. Then he slowed their pace to a walk, so smooth and stealthy that they glided like shadows among the bone-white aspens. Charity murmured a silent prayer for the dead she was leaving behind—kindly old Rueben, the young carpenter and mason and medic, the two grim women and their even grimmer husbands. And Silas, for whom she had not shed one tear.

Had she loved him? Perhaps she would never know. Her girlish notions of love had been crushed under the weight of guilt, duty and obedience, crushed by his self-righteous harangues and his cold indifference to her needs. After this ordeal was over, she might find the time to mourn him. Now, however, the only feeling left in her was the hunger to survive.

“What kind of man would bring a white woman to a place like this?”

The tall Arapaho's question, coming after such a long silence, startled her. His English, she noted, was very good, but spoken with a slight singsong quality, as if he had learned much of it from books.

“My late husband was a missionary,” she said, refusing to be put off by his icy tone. “And I do believe that's the longest string of words you've spoken to me.
Is that where you learned English, from missionaries? Are you a Christian?”

His only response was a derisive snort of laughter.

“I don't think we've been properly introduced,” she persisted, taking refuge in formality. “My name is Charity Bennett. You may call me Charity. And kindly tell me what I should call you.”

His eyes followed the flutter of a chickadee from branch to branch. “My Arapaho name means Black Sun,” he said. “And you ask too many questions, Charity Bennett.”

“Indeed?” She feigned mild outrage, using their verbal duel to distract her thoughts from the agony of her seared skin. “May I remind you that the first question was yours?”

“I did not know that moving one rock would set off a rock slide.” He guided the horses around a deadfall, his sharp eyes scanning the trees around them for any sign of danger.

“Why are you named Black Sun?” She grimaced as the horse jumped over a log, its motion shooting daggers up her back. “It must be an interesting story.”

He exhaled wearily, as if he had explained the name too many times before. “Not so interesting. I was born at a time when the moon shadow was passing across the face of the sun.”

“You were born during an eclipse.”

“Yes.”

“My mother always said that children born during
an eclipse had the gift of second sight. Do you have any special gifts, Black Sun?”

He did not reply, and for a moment Charity took his silence for dismissal. She was groping for a retort that would put him in his place when she realized that he had halted the horses and was leaning forward, his body taut and wary.

“What is it?” she whispered into the stillness.

“Shh!” he hissed. “Listen.”

Charity held her breath and strained to hear the sound that had alerted him. She could hear the wind that whistled through the aspens, making their long catkins dance and shimmer. She could hear the distant squawks from the awful ring of dead bodies and burned wagons they had left behind. But she could hear nothing more. Her ears were not attuned to the pitch of danger as his were.

“What is it?” she whispered again. “I can't hear—”

“Listen!”

She heard it then, the faint, galloping cadence of unshod hoofbeats, muffled by the soft prairie earth. Her pulse surged, pumping terror through her veins as she realized what it meant.

The Blackfoot were coming back and her life was in the hands of a man she scarcely knew.

B
LACK
S
UN
listened long enough to estimate the number of riders and judge their speed and direction. The party was small, very likely the same
Siksika
who'd burned the wagons. After hiding the stolen horses, they could have decided to return to the killing ground for more prizes, such as jewelry, clothing, knives and scalps. Drunk on victory, they would be in a wildly dangerous mood.

The white woman's fingers dug into his ribs as he swung his horses to the left, moving deeper into the trees. Had the young braves seen her lying beneath the wagon and mistaken her for dead? Would they notice that she was gone and try to trail her?

His spirits darkened as their peril sank home. The
Siksika
were known to be superb trackers, and Charity Bennett's pale, tawny hair would be a trophy worth pursuing. If the braves picked up her trail, they would be relentless.

Charity gasped as the horse swerved around a massive boulder. The woman was in terrible pain, he reminded himself. She was bearing up stoically, but in her
injured condition she could not travel fast or far. They needed a safe place to hide, where she could rest for a day or two while he treated her blistered skin.

And then what? Black Sun suppressed a groan as he thought of Charity's swollen belly. Judging from the size of her, she was less than a moon from giving birth. If he didn't get her back to her people soon, she would go into labor with no women or doctors to help her. If her labor went badly, she and the child could die. And even if things went well, he would be stranded in hostile territory with a helpless woman and a newborn baby on his hands.

What a joke Heisonoonin had played on him! He had asked for a vision to cleanse his spirit and make him one with his people. Instead this white woman had been flung across his path, bringing him nothing but danger and difficulty.

The
Siksika
were coming closer, making no effort to keep their presence a secret. Young and careless, they were laughing and singing about their victory. Had he wanted to risk it, Black Sun might have found a vantage point and tried to pick them off one by one with his arrows. But he did not make war on children—not even cruel, dangerous children like these. Right now, the only prudent course was to get himself and this woman out of their reach.

As they slipped through the trees, Charity clung to his back as if using his body to shield her unborn child. So far she had displayed remarkable courage. But her
strength wouldn't last much longer. They needed to find a safe place where the
Siksika
might not look for them.

Black Sun knew of one such place, a deep box canyon fed by springs and riddled with small caves. It was close enough to be reached before nightfall. But the canyon held its own dangers. It was sacred ground—sacred to the
Siksika,
to the Shoshone, to the Crow and to many other tribes, including his own people. To enter the canyon, especially in this season of renewal, would be to invite disaster and death.

Almost any place of refuge would be better than that forbidden canyon, Black Sun thought. But unless they could find another way to elude the
Siksika,
it might be their only choice.

So far, he had not taken time to cover their trail. But now that would have to change. Moving deeper into the trees, he began to wind back and forth, avoiding soft earth and patches of melting snow that would show the prints of the horses's hooves. When they crossed a shallow brook, he traveled upstream before emerging onto the bank again; and where the trail forked, he chose a treacherous path across a rock slide instead of keeping to the easy game trail below.

Even so, Black Sun felt uneasy. The tricks he'd used to cover the way they'd gone were simple ones, known to any good tracker. Worse, he could no longer hear the braves. Either they'd gone off in the opposite direction, or they had picked up his trail and were moving stealth
ily along it. Only by going back to scout could he be sure. And that would mean leaving Charity alone.

The sun lay like a burning coal above the trees. Daylight was fading, but the moon would be full tonight. A hunter's moon—and they would be the hunted, fleeing from shadow to shadow.

Their path had taken them into a small, rock-sheltered clearing. Black Sun halted the horses while he took stock of their situation. Would it be best to keep moving or to stop for some badly needed rest?

Charity moaned, her weight sagging against his back. Black Sun felt her start to slip sideways, down the flank of the horse. His hand flashed out, catching her arm before she could topple headfirst to the ground. She gasped with pain. Her closed eyes flew open.

“Where…are we?” she whispered. “What's happening?”

Black Sun made his decision. “We're stopping for now,” he said. “The horses need rest. So do you.”

“And what about you?” She blinked, still dazed and confused.

He eased her to the ground, then dismounted. “I need to know if we're being followed. You stay here with the horses. I'll take a shortcut back the way we came and see if those braves are on our trail.”

“And if they are?” She stared up at him, fully awake now.

“Then I'll come back and we'll keep moving. Otherwise, we'll make camp here and try to get some sleep.”

“You're leaving me here alone, then. For how long?” He caught the flicker of fear in her storm-colored eyes.

“Not long.” He strode to the packhorse, unrolled the buffalo robe he used for sleeping and arranged it in the lee of an overhanging rock. Opening a parfleche, he took out a strip of smoked venison and thrust it toward her. “Chew on this. I'll leave you the water bag, too.”

He had expected her to whine and argue, but she accepted the dried meat and took an experimental nibble. “What if you don't come back?”

“I'll come back. Just stay where you are and keep still.” He turned away from her and tied both horses to a nearby aspen. “Anybody who comes after you will have to deal with me first.”

The look she flashed him in the dying light did not reflect much confidence, but she said no more as he slipped off into the trees. When he glanced back, she was still standing where he'd left her, looking small and afraid as she clutched her swollen stomach. She was a spirited little thing, Black Sun reflected with grudging admiration. But nothing could change the fact that she was terrified and in pain. It would be foolhardy to leave her for long, but he needed to know whether they were being trailed. Both their lives could depend on that knowledge.

Forcing his eyes away from her, he set off through the trees at a silent run.

 

C
HARITY WATCHED
her rescuer until he vanished into the deepening twilight. Then, turning away, she eased
under the overhanging rock, sank onto one end of the buffalo robe and pulled the other over her belly to ward off the chilly wind.

There was no part of her that did not hurt. Her spine and pelvis ached from the jarring ride, and her thighs were raw where they'd gripped the horse's flanks. Her head throbbed, her eyes and throat burned, and the slightest movement of her arms pulled at the blistered skin on her back, making her want to scream.

There were no words for what she'd been through today. Her husband and companions had all been murdered, her wagon had been burned, along with all her meager possessions and the things she'd made for the baby, and now her savage rescuer had gone off and left her alone in this awful place. Right now, all she wanted to do was to cover her head, close her eyes and wait for death.

The firm jab of a tiny foot against her bladder startled Charity out of her despondency. She was not alone, after all, and this was no time to give up on life.

In the balance, she had much to be thankful for. She was alive. Her baby was alive. And although the burns on her back were miserable, the fire had spared her face, her hair, her hands and the rest of her body. Her burns would heal in time, as would her grief. Somehow her life would go on.

But only if she fought for it now, she reminded herself. Only if she refused to give in to the forces of pain,
fear and despair would she be strong enough to walk out of this wilderness alive.

The light had faded from the sky, leaving only the glimmer of emerging stars. From the hollow beneath the boulder, Charity could barely make out the chalk-white aspen trunks and the pale rumps of the horses beneath them. She could hear their big teeth munching the spring grass that had sprouted from under the fallen leaves. The sounds of their quiet breathing and the familiar aroma of their manure soothed her in the darkness.

She bit off a strip of the tough, smoky meat Black Sun had given her. Its salty taste stung her throat, but she chewed it hungrily, knowing how much her body needed the nourishment.

How long had Black Sun been gone? An hour? More? Charity stirred beneath the buffalo robe. The baby moved with her, shifting its small limbs in the confining space of her womb. What would she do if the tall Arapaho failed to return? He had promised to come back, and he struck her as too proud to break his word. He had even left the horses behind—surely he would have taken them if he'd meant to go off and leave her stranded. But sometimes the best of intentions could not be carried out. Any number of things could have gone wrong. By now he could be lying at the bottom of a cliff or serving as target practice for the young Blackfoot braves. By now, Black Sun could easily be dead.

Seconds crawled by at the pace of hours, and still he did not return. She would wait until first light, Charity resolved. Then she would take the horses, set her course toward the rising sun and hope for the best.

The baby fluttered and shifted inside her once more. How much longer would it be, she wondered, before she held her little one in her arms? A month? A week? Her grandmother had told her nothing about having babies, and the two grim, hostile missionary wives had been no help at all. She could only pray that the baby would be born in a safe place, with someone who knew how to help her.

She tried closing her eyes, but she was too miserable to sleep. Black Sun's lean, dark face seemed to float in front of her, his eyes blazing like an angry eagle's. Why did he hate her so much? He
did
hate her—she was certain of it. Even when he treated her kindly, she could feel the tension in him, the reluctance even to touch her. When he spoke to her, the contempt in his voice cut like a blade. Why, when she'd done nothing to harm him?

Was it because she was a white woman? That was the most likely guess. Black Sun's fluent English could only have been learned from living among whites. What could they have done to ignite the smoldering disgust she saw in his eyes every time he looked at her?

Charity tugged the buffalo robe up to her chin, shivering at the touch of the cool night breeze. Black Sun was a man of the most puzzling contradictions. If he
loathed whites so much, why had he taken on the burden of saving her life? It couldn't give him any pleasure, caring for a helpless, injured white woman, let alone one who was great with child. Clearly he hadn't wanted to take her along with him. Yet, he had.

A low peal of thunder rumbled over the western mountains. The wind freshened, carrying the smell of rain to her nostrils. Charity's heart sank. Most of the time she enjoyed rain, but she was miserable enough already without being soaked to the skin. Where in heaven's name was Black Sun? Why hadn't he returned?

As the rim of a full moon rose above the treetops, an anxious snort from one of the horses riveted her attention. Both animals seemed nervous. They were tossing their heads, rearing and stamping, becoming almost frantic as they tugged at their tethers.

Charity crept out from under the overhang and peered through the trees. She could see nothing, but the sudden sound that ripped the darkness turned her blood to cold jelly. It was a high-pitched scream, almost like the scream of a woman. But it wasn't a woman. Charity knew, because she'd heard the same scream one night on the wagon trail. Once heard, it could never be forgotten.

It was the cry of a great, golden cat. A mountain lion. A cougar.

Panic welled in her throat. She gulped it back. The cat would likely be after the horses, not her. Rueben had
said that cougars were usually afraid of people. But she was alone, and if the beast picked her out as the easier prey, she would have no way to defend herself.

Only then did Charity remember the little single-shot pistol in her pocket.

As her fingers reached down and closed around the cold iron grip, the cougar screamed again. The big cat was close, very close. Panic-stricken, the horses snorted and reared. She could see the whites of their wild eyes by the light of the rising moon. There was no time to check the firing mechanism. She could only hold the tiny weapon at the ready and pray that it would work.

In a flash of sheet lightning, Charity spotted the cat. It was crouched on top of the boulder where she'd been resting, its sleek tawny head thrust forward, its fangs bared in a snarl. It was a huge animal, and there was just one shot in her little gun. What if she only wounded it, leaving it in pain and more dangerous than ever? How could she take such a chance?

The cat's steely muscles tensed like springs as it inched forward. Then, like an arrow shot from a bow, it leaped into the air.

Thunder echoed across the sky as Charity pointed the pistol and squeezed the trigger.

 

B
LACK
S
UN HAD FOUND
the
Siksika
braves camped in a meadow at the edge of the forest. They'd been feasting and laughing around their campfire, so careless that they hadn't even posted a lookout. To teach the young
fools a lesson, he had removed the hobbles on their ponies, allowing the animals to wander off. The youths would be a long time rounding up their mounts in the morning.

Satisfied that the braves were not trailing anyone, Black Sun slipped back the way he'd come and broke into a ground-burning lope. He had covered about half the distance to the spot where he'd left Charity when he heard the sharp explosion of a gunshot.