Sagebrush Bride (28 page)

That wasn’t all there was to it, and Cutter knew
it, but he didn’t push it. He gave her a little reassuring squeeze, letting her
know that, and then kissed the back of her head with a sigh. Hearing a
smothered sniffle, he asked, “You’re not gonna start regrettin’ already, are
ya?”

Elizabeth shook her head, cursing herself for a
sniveling idiot. Why, she wondered, were her emotions so near the surface
lately when they never had been before? She’d always prided herself on being so
clear headed, so strong. What had happened to her since meeting Cutter?

“Good,” he whispered, turning her suddenly, and
planting a kiss on the tip of her breast. “ ‘Cause I’m not through with you
yet.” Positioning himself over her once more, he suckled her gently, and with a
whimper, Elizabeth arched toward him, amazed that he could so quickly stir her
body to life, awed that his could recover so quickly when her own felt so
bone-deep sated.

Almost reverently, he ran his rough hands along
the length of her, chasing chills up her spine as his fingers moved up her arms.
He pinned her hands to the blanket, and stroked the inside of her palm with his
scarred thumb.

The last coherent thought Elizabeth had was that
Cutter McKenzie was very, very good at driving away demons, while ironically,
Cutter wondered whether he was actually seeking to drive away hers... or his
own.

Cutter wasn’t certain what sound it was that
roused him. Normally he was a very light sleeper and came awake fairly alert,
but not this time. His mind was still cobwebbed from an exhausted sleep. His
ears strained to pick up sounds, but nothing was immediately discernible.

Still, his instinct told him someone was there.

He could smell the intruder’s scent in the
rain-cleansed air. Despite the fact that he sensed the presence, knew it was
there, when his eyes adjusted finally to the darkness, he was jolted to make
out the expressionless face hovering so close above his and Elizabeth’s huddled
forms.

Silver flickered in the moonlight, and he held
himself still.

He knew at once that it was one of the three
Indians he’d spotted along the bluff-top, and his eyes quickly scanned the
area. He could make out the other two still mounted. They’d remained at least
ten yards away, along with the dead Indian’s horse—silent watchers.

Though his adrenaline surged, Cutter resisted the
urge to leap to his feet. He cursed himself for his recklessness. Hell, he’d
forgotten the Indians were even there. And because of that fact, the advantage
was theirs.

And they both knew it.

His gun wasn’t but a foot above his head, but if
he dove for it now, he’d be wearing the Indian’s blade through his windpipe
before the thought ever finished crossing his mind. Very slowly, Cutter removed
his hand from under Elizabeth’s back, trying not to wake her in the process.
It’d be better if he didn’t.

“Your woman makes you careless,” the Indian said
matter-of-factly, in his thick Cheyenne tongue, admonishing Cutter with a
careless wave of his knife.

“But she has fire in her spirit, and in her
hands,” Cutter returned just as coolly, “and that is worth a dozen deaths to
any man.” His gaze never left the Indian’s. He met the man eye to eye, leaving
his thoughts open for the Indian to know.

The Indian nodded sagely, sheathing his knife
suddenly. “I had a woman with fire once, but she was slain by the
Ooetane
.” Elizabeth stretched lazily
beside him, and the Indian jutted his chin at her. “She knows the ways of our
people,” he said, but it was more an astonished question than a statement of
fact.

Inopportunely, before Cutter could reply,
Elizabeth chose that moment to open her eyes.

Seeing the strange Indian hovering above them,
Elizabeth choked back a terrified scream, but it remained to be seen in her
eyes. The Indian’s face contorted.

Elizabeth understood nothing of the exchange
between Cutter and the Indian. All she knew was that the Indian sounded irate.
And suddenly Cutter turned to her, his look accusing.

“You put white sage on the tomb?”

“I—I what?” she stammered. Instinctively she
gathered up the blanket to hide her nakedness. Cutter, on the other hand, sat
facing the Indian, as naked as the day he was born. Elizabeth doubted he spared
it so much as a thought. He appeared so calm, and it seemed incredible that he
could remain so utterly composed when she herself was suppressing a
bloodcurdling scream. Clutching her end of the blanket to her bosom
protectively, she inched her way to Cutter’s back, taking refuge there.

“He wants to know about the sage,” Cutter repeated
brusquely, without turning. “Did you put it there?”

A thousand tortures visited Elizabeth’s mind,
every horrible tale she’d ever heard in reference to the
Indians—ridiculous as they may have seemed when she’d first heard them.
They cut out tongues, shaved scalps, kidnapped women and children, stole away
their souls!

“Oh, God have mercy—not on purpose, Cutter!”
Her fingers dug into his bare shoulders as the Indian gave her a skeptical
look. “I swear it! I really meant no harm!” she declared to the Indian,
panicking. “I—I just gathered a handful of blossoms without thinking!”
His expression didn’t soften. “I—I didn’t know!” she insisted.

Cutter sighed impatiently, shaking his head.
“Lizbeth.”

“What!”

“Shut up.” The command was no less convincing for
the soft way it was spoken. Nor was it unkind. His cockeyed smile returned as
he turned to speak to the Indian in his own tongue. The Indian nodded once, and
responded briskly, then grinned broadly as Cutter added something, more.
Suddenly the Indian burst out laughing, and stood to walk away.

“What did you say to him?” Elizabeth demanded at
once.

“Nothing you care to know,” Cutter told her
honestly, giving her a quick once-over. Satisfied that all her choice parts
were well covered, he turned again to watch the Indian mount up and listen to
his bantering with the others. At once all three burst out laughing, and
glanced again at Elizabeth, all of them nodding appreciatively.

Cutter smiled, sharing a rare moment with his
mother’s people—not his mother’s tribe, but it didn’t matter. The
connection was still there. He watched their easy camaraderie with a mixture of
envy and pride—felt their unspoken grief for their friend. Not one of them
looked back to the travois where the dead man lay, but their body movement told
Cutter that they were more than aware of him, and their voices were subdued, as
though in deference to his eternal sleep. Even their laughter held a note of
sorrow.

As they turned away, Elizabeth started to see the
crudely constructed cradle hitched up behind the riderless horse. A dark form
lay there unmoving, swaddled in rags, and her heart wrenched painfully. She
clasped the blanket more tightly to her bosom. It was the dead Indian, she knew
without being told.

They’d come to claim him.

“You did them an honor,” Cutter told her. “The
white sage purifies. By placing it upon the tomb, you have kept the wicked
shades at bay until they could prepare him for his journey to
Seyan
.” His gaze held hers briefly, then
skittered back to the Indians. “They separated in the storm.” His Adam’s apple
bobbed, and then his eyes, glittering strangely, returned to meet hers. “They
know you tried to save him, when you didn’t have to.”

Elizabeth didn’t know what to say. She could sense
the profound emotion bottled so deeply within him. Though she felt compelled
to, she didn’t look away. “
Seyan
?”
she asked huskily, her voice sounding strange.

“The place of the dead,” Cutter replied softly.
“Those who die follow the Hanging Road above to
Heammawihio
.”

Not about to attempt a pronunciation of that one,
Elizabeth nodded. Shuddering, she watched as Cutter threw his head back and
scanned the heavens, reminding her of a lone wolf baying at the moon. And the
moon—she couldn’t help but follow his gaze upward—it was so big in
the sky tonight, yet appeared so solitary. Like Cutter. Bigger than life, yet
despite his infuriating nonchalance, there was an inherent loneliness about him
that struck at her heart. “Hanging Road?” she asked in a whisper.

“The Milky Way,” Cutter clarified with another
quick glance her way.

Elizabeth’s brow furrowed, and she nodded. “Oh.”
In silence they watched the trio make their way to the bluff, their horses
picking their way expertly in the darkness. “And where are they taking him
now?”

“Home,” Cutter answered gruffly. “They’re taking
him home.” And a part of him grieved over that place he’d never know. That he’d
never known.

“Did they explain how it was that he was wounded?”
Elizabeth ventured again.

“No.” Cutter’s eyes never shifted, though by now
the trio was no longer visible through the blackness. “Didn’t ask.”

“Well, what did they say?” Recalling their strange
words, the length of their conversation, she was dying of curiosity over them.

As Cutter turned to her, the shadows disappeared
from his eyes. He grinned slowly, his teeth gleaming white in the night. “He
wanted to know why you spoke so sharply in their presence—did you hate
them for the color of their skin?”

“Of course not!” She choked on her shock. “W-What
did you tell them?” To her mind, it was certainly nothing to grin about!

Cutter chuckled. “I told them no—that you
didn’t.” His glittering eyes gave him away.

“That’s not all you told them,” she accused him,
slapping at the back of his head wrathfully. “What else, Mr. McKenzie?”

“Damn, woman, if you ain’t heavy-handed!” he said.
And then he held out his hands to ward her off. “I told them you always spoke
so sharply,” he said quickly, “and that you made love like a yellow-eyed she-wolf...
and that if they didn’t believe me, they could check out the mile-long marks on
my back—stings like the devil!”

Gasping with outrage, Elizabeth mustered enough
indignity to smack Cutter again, this time a bit harder. He caught her wrist
effortlessly. “You didn’t!” she protested breathlessly, her face heating
fiercely. A reluctant smile trembled on her lips.

Cutter’s shoulders began to quake, and then he
laughed outright.

“Oh, you couldn’t have!” she cried. “Tell me you
didn’t!”

Cutter’s laughter bowled him over, and he fell
back on the bedroll. Hooting hysterically, he peered up at Elizabeth’s, “‘Fraid
so,” he told her, barely able to speak without breaking into chuckles.

Elizabeth shook her hands free and would have
smacked Cutter yet again had the voice not startled her from it.

From somewhere along the bluff-top, the Indian’s
disembodied voice resounded clearly in the night.

“
Néá'eše
!” he said
with passion, and as he continued to speak, his voice sounded almost an eerie
echo to her ears. It sent chill after chill racing down Elizabeth’s spine,
though she had not an inkling what was being said. At the end of the
pronunciation, all three Indians began to whoop. She searched for them
frantically along the bluff-top, but could see nothing, could only guess at
their actions.

They seemed agitated over something.

Cutter’s laughter stopped abruptly, and he, too,
shuddered as their sounds faded in the night—only, not out of fear.
Without warning he reached up, seizing Elizabeth passionately into his arms,
feeling never more connected to someone in his life.

“What did they say?” she whispered anxiously, her
lips so close to his that they could have been sharing the same breath.

For the longest moment, Cutter couldn’t respond,
could only lie there feeling her heart throb against the beat of his own, his
chest feeling near to bursting with pride. Taking a deep breath, he stroked her
back reassuringly, and gazed into her expectant face. There was still the
slightest twinge of laughter in his tone when he spoke again.

“He said thank you.”

“And?” Elizabeth prodded, knowing all those words
couldn’t possibly have amounted to one simple phrase.

Cutter smiled, holding her tightly, anticipating
her outraged reaction. “Yeah, well... he also said... Black Wolf, who is gone
from among us, was my brother, but—” a quiver sped through him, raising
the hairs on his arms “—she who claws at man’s back shall forever be
called my friend.”