Mary Connealy (78 page)

W
ade dressed the wounds of five people. Three he expected to die within hours. They were gut shot and there was nothing that could be done. Two others had a chance, if infection didn’t set in.

He’d counted nineteen dead.

The two who were less seriously wounded were still bad off. One, a half-grown boy, had a bad bullet graze cutting his leg and a gunshot wound in his shoulder. The other was an older woman, gray haired and whipcord lean. She bled from her temple. Wade had figured her for dead until she began moaning. Wade noticed when the moans at last penetrated Glowing Sun’s grief.

Wade was surprised she remembered as much English as she did. Though she’d rediscovered much of the language of her birth while they’d been together in the fall, now she seemed to speak it with little effort. He wondered if she’d secretly practiced it over the winter. He also wondered if she’d thought about him.

Glowing Sun ended her chant and lurched to her feet, leaving her mother’s side for the first time, turning toward the others who were hurt. “I didn’t know anyone else was alive.” She rushed toward the old woman just as Wade got to the woman’s side and dropped to his knees.

One whole side of the woman’s head was matted with blood.

“We need more bandages.” Glowing Sun pulled her knife from behind her back and slit the soft doeskin of her skirt. Wade hadn’t seen the knife since she’d slashed at her kidnapper.

The woman’s eyes fluttered open. She focused on Glowing Sun and struck.

A hard blow knocked Glowing Sun backward. The woman rolled to her side and lunged, shouting words Wade couldn’t understand.

Wade caught the woman by the waist and flipped her onto her back on the ground. Assuming she was panicking as Glowing Sun’s mother had been, Wade spoke soothing words to the struggling woman. “Glowing Sun, talk to her in Flathead.”

Glowing Sun lay on her back as if dazed.

The woman swung a clawed hand at Wade’s face.

He caught her wrist in midair and she swung with her other hand. Wade was close enough that the blow landed on his back and did no harm. “Glowing Sun! Make her understand I want to help her.”

Then Wade realized the woman, swinging her free fist, pounding on his back as he wrestled with her, was looking at Glowing Sun with clear eyes. Not like Glowing Sun’s mother, who was delirious. This woman was absolutely clearheaded in her attempt to hurt both of them. But mainly Glowing Sun.

“What’s the matter with her?”

Glowing Sun regained her place at the woman’s side and shouted harsh words at the woman.

The woman yelled back.

Pinning the woman’s free hand, Glowing Sun continued her war of words.

The woman struggled, kicking and wrenching her body wildly. She screamed as if they were killing her. Wade held on doggedly. Only her wounds kept the woman from possibly winning this fight against both of them. She was older than they but wiry and strong and fierce. At last she quit fighting them. Her muscles went lax and she fell silent.

Glowing Sun spoke more calmly.

The woman listened then replied.

Glowing Sun’s face crumpled as if the words stabbed knife wounds into her soul. Releasing her hold on the woman, Glowing Sun looked at Wade. “Let her go.”

Wade arched a brow at Glowing Sun and held on. There was no attack from the woman’s free hand, so warily, Wade did the same and leaned back on his heels.

The woman closed her eyes, covered her bloody face with both hands, and began the wailing that sounded like grief, much like Glowing Sun’s mother had. But Wade knew this woman wasn’t crying for her own impending death, but for the death of her people.

Glowing Sun jerked her head in a way that asked Wade to step away from the woman. They moved to the other wounded, accompanied by the death song.

Two of the surviving Flathead people had died while they worked on the angry woman. Wade prayed over the third but held out hope only if God supplied a miracle. As they finished binding the leg of the half-grown boy, Wade finally asked, “What was that back there?”

Glowing Sun gestured and Wade followed her to the far end of the village, away from the singing. “That is the mother of my…my …” Glowing Sun furrowed her brow as if searching for the English term. “Naw’.”

“Naw’? What’s that?”

Hesitantly she said, “Husband?”

Wade controlled his expression only because this day had been so laced with shocks he was numb. He remembered all too well Glowing Sun swinging up on the back of a horse and riding away last fall. He’d come only moments after she and Wade shared their first and last kiss. As she rode away, she had looked back with longing, but still she’d made her choice.

It had cut Wade’s heart out. He looked around at the devastation and found the man he sought. Dead, sprawled on his back, a tomahawk in his hand and so many bullet wounds it was clear it had taken a lot to kill him. “And she’s angry at you?”

“She blames this massacre on me because they didn’t hurt me. Instead they tried to take me with them.”

“That’s ridiculous. If they did leave you alive, they had terrible plans for you. And this killing is because they’re evil. That’s not your fault.”

Glowing Sun looked at the death surrounding them and caught a handful of her white-blond hair, twisting it as if to yank it out of her head.

Wade knew no one could deny what he’d said. The evil was too huge, too ugly. “She’s got no reason to hate you.”

Glowing Sun yanked that razor-sharp knife with the slender blade from behind her back. “She has objected to me joining her family from the first.”

“So you are married? Were married?”

She raised the knife to hack at her hair.

“Stop!” He caught her wrist.

Glowing Sun pulled against his iron grip. “Why do you stop me? Do you wish to
own
me because of my hair? Or
love
me? Or
hate
me because of it? I would rip it from my head, cut it away.”

“No, I don’t love you because of your hair.” Before this morning’s madness he would have said he loved her because of her heart, her fiery spirit, her courage, and, yes…her beauty. But he’d seen a savage side of Glowing Sun today as she’d slashed at her kidnapper. He realized he didn’t know her well enough to claim something as deep and profound as love. But he wanted to know her. Wanted to love her.

“We don’t have time for you to fuss with it. Let’s bury your dead and tend to the injured.” Wade wanted to ask about her husband. Had they been married before he’d rescued her from kidnappers last fall? And what did it matter anyway? Except that it meant he’d kissed a married woman. And more important, at least as it showed her character, the married woman had kissed him back.

“Where did you come from?” Glowing Sun dropped her hair without slashing it off.

“I’ve been living in the mountains. In a miner’s shack.”

“Nearby?”

“Near enough to hear the gunfire.”

Glowing Sun looked around the village until her eyes landed on her husband. “Wild Eagle.” Tears filled Glowing Sun’s eyes as she looked away. The tears overflowed as she pointed at two children lying dead, side by side. “And that is my brother and my sister.” Her voice broke.

She lifted her chin as if drawing courage straight from her spine. “My father is dead beside him. Better my mother is dead now than to face life without her beloved husband and children.”

“And what of you? Now you face life without anyone.” Except him. Glowing Sun had him whether she knew it or not.

“You speak truth. There is no time now for anything but seeing to my people.”

The sun rose high as they worked, exchanging few words. Glowing Sun carried water as her patients cried out with thirst and pain.

The older woman roused herself soon enough and, despite her ugly head injury, began tending the boy who had a chance at survival. She refused to let Glowing Sun or Wade near him.

The smoke dissipated as the tepees finally burned to the ground, leaving only the reek of ash and the scent of blood.

“We need to bury them.” Wade turned from the living to face the dead. “What can we use for a shovel?”

Glowing Sun nodded then squared her shoulders and approached her mother-in-law. They began to speak quickly. Wade wasn’t sure anymore if the words they exchanged were harsh or if the guttural language just sounded like it to his untutored ears.

At last Glowing Sun returned to his side, tears in her eyes that told him all he needed to know. “She refuses to let us touch them. She said she needs to go to the Bitterroot Valley and fetch a holy man to sing for them.”

“We can’t just go away and leave them lying here.”

“It is more the way of my people than to bury them. We believe people return to the earth when they die. Some tribes burn their dead on pyres. Some leave bodies to the elements, allowing the earth to reclaim them.”

“Which will you do?”

Glowing Sun shook her head. “It isn’t for me to say. She believes they died murdered, their souls stolen. I believe they died in battle. That is a noble death. It will be up to the holy man.”

Wade didn’t like it. But he wasn’t about to add to Glowing Sun’s distress. He walked to the side of the unconscious woman who lingered despite her devastating wounds.

“I’ll respect your traditions, Glowing Sun.” The sun lowered in the sky, and Wade knew it was too late in the day to begin the journey. “We’ll head for the Bitterroot Valley tomorrow.”

“Do not call me Glowing Sun,” she snapped. “Wild Eagle’s mother told me I’ve dishonored the name and my tribe.” She walked along beside Wade and knelt by the injured woman’s side, glancing over her shoulder to see if this would earn her a rebuke. “I remember my white name and will only answer to it from now on. Abby. I don’t remember the rest of it, but maybe it will come back.”

Glowing Sun’s…Abby’s…mother-in-law ignored them, as if she knew the woman they hovered over was beyond being hurt by them. “She can do this, Glow…uh…Abby? She can decide how to treat
your
parents after their deaths? Decide to strip you of your name?”

“We respect age. To defy her now would only deepen her contempt and anger. And she’s badly hurt, despite her refusal to let me help with the boy. I won’t make things harder for her.”

As they knelt, Wade realized that the woman’s shallow breathing had ceased. Her tenacious hold on life had been severed. Glowing Sun drew a blanket over the face of the young woman who had never regained consciousness.

“We’ve done all we can.” Wade rose and came around the woman to Abby’s side.

“You would leave me?” Abby looked desperately at him.

“No!” Shocked that she’d even think it, Wade rested his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get some sleep and set out in the morning.”

“Set out where?”

“The Bitterroot Valley.” Wade would see Abby home, though it hurt to send her so far away.

“Have you nowhere you need to be? Don’t you own a ranch?”

“My father owned a ranch, not me. No, I can go along with you and see you safely home.”

Abby looked at her village.

High mountains rose up on the north and a waterfall cascaded down into the valley, feeding the stream that cut through the center of the village. That stream flowed red with blood. The smoldering ruins of the village made a mockery of the lush grass and newly leafed forest that grew along the valley’s rim.

“There’s nothing left here.” Wade resisted the urge to pull her into his arms and comfort her. “Not for you, not for anyone.”

Sid Garver charged his horse up the last hard mile of the trail into his canyon hideout.

The animal faltered, heaving, exhausted from the hard run as Sid spurred it on, desperate to get under cover after being seen at the Indian village. As he neared the well-concealed crevice that led into the heart of this mountain, he heard a shout from behind.

He reined his horse in, fighting the bit of the mustang that he’d been pushing past its limit for two hours.

Hoofbeats behind him stopped. He wheeled his horse to see Harvey wriggling on the ground like a landed trout.

“How ’bout I just shoot him, Sid?” Paddy O’Donnell had a big smile on his face. He swiped his mouth like the thought of emptying his gun into a friend made him drool with pleasure. “He’s gonna be heavy to haul inside, and he’s slowing us down.”

They hadn’t been slowed down at all. Harvey had stuck his saddle for this wild ride away from the Flatheads they’d slaughtered. But Sid wasn’t entirely opposed to Harv dying. Harv had bought into this fight by grabbing that woman. They should’ve killed her like the rest. They could have cleaned out that trash then rode away and come back in a month. No one would have tied them to that massacre.

Sid swung down off his horse, nearly kicking the quiver and arrows that hung from his saddle horn. He’d grabbed them on an impulse, stripped them off the body of a big warrior. It had suited him, taking this trophy of their kill. Sid could understand the bloodlust that led a man to take scalps.

Ground-hitching his horse, Sid strode to Harv’s side. It was obvious the man had been bleeding like a stuck pig the whole time they’d been riding. Sid hadn’t looked back or offered to help.