Cheyenne Captive (28 page)

Gray Dove relaxed against her pillows. She had a feeling that no matter what the colonel himself thought, a decision had already been reached. Even the White Chief had a superior commanding officer, she thought as she looked at the stern woman.

She didn’t much like the colonel, either, when she met him. She had a feeling that he was one of those men who never quite did well at anything he tried and had been sent to this out-of-the-way post because the Big White Chiefs in that place called Washington didn’t know what else to do with him.

Colonel Willard was as cold and tight-lipped as his wife and seemed to have only two topics of conversation: how much he liked killing Indians and how wonderful it would be next year when he retired and returned to this place called Virginia where he could grow cotton and tobacco and watch the slaves do all the work. It began to dawn on Gray Dove gradually as she fitted herself into the household that there was money and land but it belonged to Mrs. Willard’s family.

Gray Dove quickly became so useful around the house that Mrs. Willard was overheard to say time and again, “I declare! I just don’t know what I did before she came. Why, she’s just as handy as a third arm. And she doesn’t eat as much as a negra would, either.”

Mrs. Willard was a lazy person,
Gray Dove decided as she slaved away day after day, keeping all the washing, ironing, and cleaning done up. The colonel’s wife had a particular thing about stoves and stove grates and Gray Dove seemed to spend hours with the messy black polish, going over the wood parlor stove. Gray Dove made sure she was so useful that Mrs. Willard couldn’t possibly manage without her. It freed the lady for time to write long letters home to her friends and which she read to Gray Dove about how she was saving the savage souls and all her trials and tribulations among the heathen.

Gritting her teeth, Gray Dove learned to smile ingratiatingly and parrot verses the lady taught her from the Black Book. Sometimes, Mrs. Willard took her along when she went to Ladies’ Bible Class every Tuesday morning for the officers’ wives. She liked to have Gray Dove recite verses so she could show off her missionary zeal.

But she didn’t take her often, for as she told the girl, “There’s so much housework to be done!”

Gray Dove was glad to have the lady’s castoff dresses, but as the weeks wore on, it dawned on her one day that the clothes were increasingly tight across the chest and waist. She paused in her endless stove polishing to face the realization that she must be pregnant by one of the Pawnee braves.

This fact threw her almost into a panic and she was not quite sure what to do. She felt Mrs. Willard would send her away and she didn’t want to go back to her drunken father’s tepee. In spite of all the housework, this was a much easier life she led and she fully intended to stay in the white world. She had already begun to work out in her mind how she would manipulate Mrs. Willard into taking her with them when the Willards returned to this place called Virginia next year.

She knew the colonel already hated her because she was Indian. He seemed to hold all brown people responsible for his being in what he referred to as this “Godforsaken spot.” She knew that if he hadn’t been helplessly emasculated by his wife’s money and family power, he would never have allowed Gray Dove to stay. She decided she must do something about this unwanted pregnancy before her swelling belly was noticed. And if she wanted to go to Virginia, she’d better figure out a way to work herself into the colonel’s good graces, too.

So one night soon thereafter she waited until everyone on the post seemed to be asleep before she sneaked out into the cold, frosty night and stole a rusty scrap of wire from the blacksmith shop. Then she went out to a field where the horses grazed and lay down flat on her back.

What she was about to do was forbidden in most Plains tribes. In fact, the soldier societies of the Cheyennes had been known to whip women with their quirts if they aborted a child. But the Indians would never know, for she never expected to go back among them again. To the child itself she gave no thought, for it was a product of rape by the hated Pawnee and it stood in the way of her own future. She did not intend that anything or anyone ever come before her own welfare. With the old, faded dress pushed up past her hips to avoid bloodying it, she spread her legs and poked and probed with the wire at her womb.

She shivered with the cold as the pain started and she wadded up the dress hem and stuffed it between her teeth to stifle her cries of anguish so she would not be heard by anyone at the fort. She knew she must get rid of this parasite in her womb and be back in the colonel’s quarters by dawn to avoid detection. Never had she known such agony, not even when the Pawnee had raped her and she began to think the spasms of pain would never end. But finally there came a rush of hot fluid and it was over. She lay in the grass in her own blood for a long time before she could get the strength to stand and stagger to a nearby horse trough to wash herself. Then she stuffed dried grass inside herself and her underwear to stem the telltale flow.

In revulsion, she kicked a little dirt over the bloody evidence and staggered back to the fort. It was almost dawn when she managed to avoid the sentry and crawled back to her bed.

Mrs. Willard grumbled a little the next day when Gray Dove said she was too sick to work. The lady put one cold hand on the girl’s forehead and said it must be something that was going around. She hoped Gray Dove wasn’t going to lie abed for more than one day, she sniffed, for no one could expect a lady of gentle birth like herself to scrub floors and polish stoves.

Gray Dove managed to get to her feet the second day and go back to work on the stoves, for she dared not anger the colonel’s lady. The officer himself made a very pointed remark as Gray Dove served the dinner about how ridiculous it was to have savages in the house when he had been sent by Washington to kill them.

She thought about it later as she ate her own supper of cold leftovers in the kitchen. Her body was still weak and she was in no condition to be thrown out into the cold weather or try to travel all the way back to the Arapaho, even if she could find them. There was always a chance they had again joined up with their old friends, the Cheyenne, and might have made one of their nomadic moves.

Again, the colonel was pressuring his wife to let Gray Dove go and she began to worry that the lady might do just that. It occurred to her that the colonel was just a man after all, probably with a man’s appetites. Now that she thought of it, she never heard him go down the hall past her room to his wife’s at night. She decided that she could use her ripening body to insure her place in the household and she put her plan into action a few days later.

Mrs. Willard had sent the colonel down to the root cellar to bring up some apples and when he did not come back right away, Gray Dove suggested that he might be having a hard time finding them and she would go down and help him search.

She went down the stairs, knowing perfectly well that he was down there drinking whiskey. She had found the bottle one time hidden behind the potatoes. The colonel looked up in annoyance as she came down the stairs and attempted to hide something behind his back.

“I know about the bottle, sir,” she said softly and winked at him in a conspiratorial manner. “But don’t worry, I won’t tell!” She took a deep breath, knowing it made her growing breasts strain against the old calico dress.

He brought the bottle from behind his back almost timidly. “What are you doing down here?”

“I told your wife I would come down and help you look for the apples,” she answered. “Mrs. Willard was about ready to come down herself and I didn’t think you would like that.” She smiled as if they were partners in a plot. It came to her that she was taking a chance. He might fire her on the spot, but somehow she didn’t think so.

He gave her a long, searching look as she reached past him in the crowded dimness of the cellar. As she reached for the apples, she very deliberately brushed her breasts against his blue uniform. He jerked back as if touched by a hot flame but she appeared not to notice.

Looking into the pale, watery eyes, she rubbed against him. Then she stepped back and almost laughed, for he was looking at her with a searching look as if seeing her for the first time.

“I think Mrs. Willard wanted some jam, too,” she said, “but it’s on the top shelf and I can’t reach it. I might if you would help me up—”

Wordlessly, he put hot, trembling hands on her narrow waist and lifted her to reach the shelf. When he put her down, she rubbed innocently against his leg as she turned back toward the stairs.

“I won’t tell a soul about the bottle, sir,” she whispered. “I’m sure your wife doesn’t really understand. you.”

The next morning was Tuesday and the colonel breakfasted alone as he had an early inspection on the parade ground. As Gray Dove served his coffee, she managed to spill a little cream on his thigh. “Oh, I’m so sorry, sir. That was so clumsy of me. Here, let me clean it up!” She took a napkin and rubbed the spot on the inside of his leg over and over and pretended not to see the sudden bulge of his manhood near where her fingers stroked.

Again, he simply stared at her, but she noticed his hands trembled as he held his knife and fork. Her plan was working as she had anticipated. She intended to seduce the man and then she would have something to blackmail him with.

Later that morning, when the lady had gone to her Bible study, Gray Dove was changing the sheets on the colonel’s bed when she heard the side door open. She smiled a little to herself and went on slipping the clean case over the pillow.

He came into the room.

“Oh, sir!” she feigned surprise. “You’re early and I don’t have your lunch ready yet.”

“Quite all right.” He coughed, running a nervous hand through his gray hair. “Is my wife gone to her religious study?”

Gray Dove nodded. “Yes, sir. She won’t be back for hours.”

He nodded lamely and she looked in disgust at his pot belly. “I—I came back for something I forgot,” he stuttered.

She shrugged as if she believed him and managed to brush against him as she moved around the bed, smoothing the blankets.

She stopped in front of him and looked into his eyes with her lips parted in a way that was appealing. “Can I help look for it, sir? What was it, your gloves?”

“Yes,” he mumbled, “my gloves, yes!” He seemed to be torn by indecision and she knew that at any moment he might lose his nerve and stride out of the room and her chance would be lost forever. Gray Dove would have to make the first move.

Very slowly she put her hands on his thin chest and looked into his weak, watery eyes. “Did you really come back for me?” she purred.

For a moment, she thought he would turn and run but finally his damp hands went to her shoulders. “God help me! You’re only a child!”

“I’m almost fifteen,” she whispered, “and many Indian girls my age are already married. And it’s not as if I were a virgin. Remember, I was raped by all those Pawnee!”

“Yes, I know,” he stammered, his soft hands moist and damp on her shoulders. “It’s not as if I were despoiling you. After all, you’re just a savage little animal who doesn’t understand civilized behavior—”

His voice trailed off and he hesitated again. She was going to have to do it all, she thought disgustedly. Her full, warm lips reached up to kiss his thin, cold ones and she rubbed herself against him from breast to thigh as she did so.

With a strangled cry, he threw aside all inhibitions and jerked her against him, kissing her in a wet, sloppy manner that almost made her retch. She pressed herself against his belly so hard she could feel his thin legs shaking.

She reached up and unbuttoned her faded dress, sending it cascading to the floor at her feet. She wore nothing under it for she had been so sure he would return this morning.

She pulled him down with her on the bed and he was like a crazy man, smothering her lush body with wet, slobbering kisses as the metal buttons of his uniform cut into her tender flesh. “You Jezebel, you!” he gasped as he fumbled with the buttons of his pants. “You little brown Jezebel!”

She feigned passion as she helped him with the buttons. “No, Colonel, it’s just that I have hungered for you, the Big Chief of the soldiers, ever since I came here! The other soldiers of this fort have wanted me but I wanted only you!”

She had to help him with his pants since his thin hands shook so much he could hardly unbutton his trousers. He didn’t bother to remove his jacket as he kicked the pants aside and fell across her on the bed, pulling her legs apart.

He was no doubt ashamed of his body, she thought, and wondered with revulsion if he had gray hair all over his chest as he did on his head. Indian men had hardly any hair at all on their smooth, muscular bodies.

His thin legs were covered with hair and his man’s thing so small she almost laughed aloud but instead she said, “You are built like the big stud bull of the buffalo and I am eager to have you fill me.”

But as he fumbled inexpertly to enter, his seed came in a rush on her thigh and he turned crimson with humiliation. “I—I’m sorry! It is always this way. I can’t seem to help it!”

She reached up to stroke his sweating face. “It is all right,” she comforted him. “I will teach you how to stop this and we have much time ahead of us to love each other. Your wife is gone every Tuesday morning and I will leave my door open at night....”

The next morning at the breakfast table, the colonel said to his wife as Gray Dove served the coffee, “You know, Mabel, I’ve been thinking and you’re right as usual about this Indian girl. It really is our duty to try to educate the savages and she has no place to go. Anyway, my dear, your health is much too delicate to do all that cleaning and scrubbing. We might even take her with us to Virginia when we go this spring since she doesn’t eat much and you would be the only lady in Richmond with a real Indian maid.”

“Why, John!” She beamed. “I’ve been telling you that all along. And we don’t have to pay her. She’s satisfied to work for just room and board. And won’t my Missionary Society ladies be just green with envy when they see the savage whose soul I’ve saved?”