Savage Beloved (20 page)

“Come and see,” Two Eagles said, taking her by the hand and leading her toward the children. “The children are enjoying one of their favorite sports.”

“Sport?” Candy said, arching an eyebrow. “How can that be called a sport?”

“You will soon see,” Two Eagles said, chuckling. When they reached the children, they stood to one side, yet close enough to witness what they were doing.

“There are so many ants,” Candy said, shuddering, for she despised the tiny crawling creatures. The children, however, were somehow amusing themselves with them.

“Ants live in the huge hollow thorns of the bullhorn plant, and one need only touch a leaf or stem and ants will rush to defend the plant,” Two Eagles said.

Candy watched as what seemed an army of ants rushed out after one child touched the plant. Then the ants went back into hiding, only to reemerge as another child touched the plant.

The children seemed endlessly amused by this game, giggling as again and again they caused the
ants to emerge, to attack whatever was disturbing their home.

Two Eagles and Candy watched awhile longer, then went back to their lodge, where food awaited them.

While they had been gone, someone had come and brought them a large tray of vegetables, fruit, and meat. They were both famished after having made love twice in such a short time.

As Candy ate, she became immersed in thought, wondering where Hawk Woman was today. She had not been with the women who had gone for the corn, nor had Candy seen her outside her lodge.

She gazed in wonder at the food.

Had Hawk Woman brought it?

Was it even safe to eat it?

Then she realized just how foolish it was to suspect such a thing, for Hawk Woman would not harm her chief. Candy resolved to enjoy the food with Two Eagles, smiling as the man she adored fed Shadow a piece of meat.

She was concerned about her wolf.

Shadow had been acting differently, of late. She was quiet, not romping around outside as she had always done at the fort.

Shadow slept most of the time now.

Candy recalled Spotted Bear’s belief that Shadow might have mated with White Wolf. If so, Candy wondered how soon the pups might be born.

“I’m concerned about Shadow,” Candy said. “Have you noticed how she sleeps most of the time?”

“It is a sign of contentment,” Two Eagles said, stroking Shadow’s thick fur. He smiled at Candy. “She will be alright,” he said softly.

Candy returned his smile, then her mind drifted back to Spotted Bear. Often she had wanted to tell Two Eagles about having been helped by Spotted Bear, and how lonely he was, with only wolves sharing his life.

Some day she wanted to get the courage to tell Two Eagles her secret about the man who now saw himself as a Ghost. Oh, surely Two Eagles would take pity on him and bring him back into his world.

Yet there was the chance that Two Eagles might be offended that Candy had spent time with Spotted Bear, a man banished from their people. He might be even more angry that she had kept the truth from him.

“You are in such deep thought,” Two Eagles said, placing a finger beneath Candy’s chin and bringing her eyes around to meet his. “Do you have something you wish to talk about?”

Feeling as though he had read her thoughts, Candy almost blurted out the truth to him, but she couldn’t take the chance. She wanted nothing to spoil this happiness that she had found with him. Having Hawk Woman to worry about was enough!

“I still can’t help worrying about Shadow,” she said, hiding the truth.

“Whatever will be will be,” Two Eagles said. “You live your life, Shadow will live hers. It will be for her to choose and for you to accept.”

“Yes, I know,” Candy murmured, nodding.

She smiled as Two Eagles brought a piece of apple to her lips.

She opened her mouth and let him feed it to her. Deliciously sensual feelings swept her all over again, and she wanted nothing now but his arms around her.

She ate the piece of apple, then reached her hands to his cheeks, bringing his mouth to hers. “You taste much better than the apple,” she whispered against his lips.

He shoved the platter of food aside and swept his arms around her. He lifted her and carried her back to their bed.

Again they made soul-satisfying love.

The sacred fruit forbidden!

Some cursed fraud
Of enemy hath beguiled thee.
—John Milton

Several days had passed and the harvest was completed. Everyone was pleased, because it had been a very fortunate planting season.

Candy was with Two Eagles taking a leisurely ride on their steeds in the early evening. Candy was feeling especially happy that she had participated in the harvest.

She now knew not only how to harvest corn, but also beans and pumpkins.

As she rode in the shade beside the river with Two Eagles, where tall cottonwoods stood like sentinels over the water, she recalled what she had done to help. She wanted to fix it in her memory until the
next harvest season, for she never wanted to disappoint Two Eagles by failing in her duties as his wife.

After harvesting all the corn and preparing it for storage for the winter, the women had picked the beans. Still in their pods, the beans had been spread out upon a hide pegged to the ground. When the beans had dried, they were beaten with a stick to release them from the pods. Finally the beans were winnowed and then packed in bags.

After the pumpkins had been harvested, all the women sat down together in the shade of trees. Each woman took several pumpkins from the pile and prepared them in the traditional Wichita way.

The first step was to peel the pumpkins. Then some were cut spirally into strips from top to bottom, while others were cut into rings and hung on a cross-pole to dry.

After the whole pumpkin had been stripped, there was a disc left at the bottom, which was known as the “Sitting One.”

The pumpkin pieces were then left to dry for about a day. Afterward, the women gathered again to complete the process. The pumpkin strips were braided and formed into mats, which were left out in the sun to dry.

Two of these that Candy had helped to make lay even now in Two Eagles’s tepee, a reminder of how much she had already learned. She was eager to prove that she was worthy of being a Wichita chief’s wife.

There were other, less pleasant memories of the past days, too. Hawk Woman had not worked in the
communal garden with the others. Instead, she had strutted around the village with her hands and clothes clean, her golden hair hanging down long and beautiful to her waist.

“What makes you frown?” Two Eagles asked, bringing Candy back to the present.

“I’m sorry,” she said, laughing softly. “I did not mean to think so hard on things. I
am
enjoying riding with you on this beautiful evening, but I couldn’t help thinking proudly of all that I managed to learn these past several days while helping with the harvest.”

“I would have preferred it if you had not gone away from the village without me there to protect you,” Two Eagles said, his voice drawn. “But I understand your need to prove to the people of my village that you are not the sort to sit by and watch while others do the work.”

“No, I would not want to get the reputation that Hawk Woman has,” Candy blurted out, her eyes wavering when she realized what she had said. The spiteful words had crossed her lips before she thought them over.

“You mean because Hawk Woman did not join the harvest,” Two Eagles said, drawing rein.

Candy followed his lead by stopping her horse, too. She gazed into his eyes, hoping that he would not think less of her for criticizing Hawk Woman.

“Yes, I still cannot help being curious about how Hawk Woman can sit idly by while the other women work so hard,” Candy murmured. Her eyes lowered. “Even I.”

She was not about to mention her hair, how she had been forced to have hers cut while Hawk Woman’s hung so beautifully down her back.

She might have already said too much about the woman; she didn’t want Two Eagles to think she was jealous.

Two Eagles dismounted as Candy slid from her saddle. He came and took her reins, then tied both horses to the low limb of a tree.

“
Suk-spid
, come. Come and sit with me beside the river,” Two Eagles said, taking one of Candy’s hands. “I have brought you here to share an unusual sight with you.”

His gaze moved approvingly over her; how sweet she looked in a new dress that one of the women had made for her. Many of the women had brought dresses for Candy since she had none of her own.

That was one of the next things she would learn to do—sew her own clothes and learn the fancy bead-work that would decorate them.

She had proven to be an astute student of all that was shown her, so he knew that the ability to sew clothes for the two of them would come quickly, too.

Two Eagles found a soft, velvety cushion of green moss and sat down on it with Candy beside him. The lowering sun was sending streamers of light down through the leaves overhead. Not far away a wood thrush sang its lovely song.

“What do you want to show me?” Candy asked, searching his eyes.

He gestured outward, across the water. “Follow my eyes and see what I have marveled over so
often,” he said, now looking at a sand dune in the center of the river.

Candy looked where he was pointing and gasped. “What sort of island is that?” she murmured.

“It is no island,” he said, dropping his hands. He raised his knees and wrapped his arms around them. “It is what is called a sand dune.”

“In the Kansas River?” Candy asked. She looked quickly over at him. “How did it get there? It is so beautiful.”

As he began explaining, she gazed again in wonder at the sand formation in mid-river.

“This has been here for as long as my people have made their home on this land,” Two Eagles said. “It is there because of war between wind and land. Trees that once grew in the lee of the dune have now been entombed by it as the wind shifted the sand. They are called Ghost Trees because they still stand there, dead but not decomposed.”

“But there are huge cottonwood trees there, very alive,” she said. “Surely some are fifty feet tall.”

“But you will notice that most of their height is hidden under the sand,” Two Eagles said. “When their limbs were enshrouded by sand, they shot down roots and new trees sprouted.”

“I see so many other things,” Candy murmured. “Plants that one wouldn’t normally see in Kansas.”

“I have gone there by canoe, and, yes, there are a wide variety of wild plants, their seeds planted there by the wind,” he said. He looked over at Candy. “There are many other things there to marvel over, too.”

“Tell me,” Candy said.

“I have seen a prickly pear cactuses cozy up to arctic bearberry,” he said. “Southern dogwoods bloom just down the dune from northern ash pines.”

Candy’s eyes widened when several great herons and eastern woodpeckers took flight from the sand dune. “It seems to be a paradise,” she murmured.

When Two Eagles did not respond but instead looked solemnly at her, she wondered what had caused the change.

“What is it?” she asked softly.

“I brought you here, alone, to tell you something else,” he said. “I believe it is time to explain to you how Hawk Woman came to be among my people, and why she must be protected at all times from being seen by white people.” Two Eagles took Candy’s hand and held it on his lap. “While she is safely inside the boundaries of my village, where no white man can come without permission, I feel the woman is safe enough. She only leaves the village long enough to bathe, and the sentries posted at strategic points keep all the women safe by the river. I am the one who made the command that she not work in the fields with the rest of the women. She must be guarded against the man who would probably kill her if he ever found her.”

“Who is this man that Hawk Woman fears so much?” Candy asked.

“When I found Hawk Woman, she was called by the name Sara Thaxton,” Two Eagles said. “She was dehydrated, sunburned, and terrified. She knew not
that I was a friend, even when I told her in her own language that I was.”

“But you brought her to your village anyway?” Candy asked, searching his eyes.

“Not until she felt comfortable enough to tell me what had happened to her. Only then did I bring her to the village,” Two Eagles said, nodding.

“What had happened?” Candy asked.

“She had been part of a wagon train,” Two Eagles said. “She became the lone survivor after Sioux renegades attacked and killed everyone and burned the wagons.”

“But how could she have survived if everyone else had been killed?” Candy asked.

“Just like you, she managed to escape,” Two Eagles said. “She was trying to find a safe shelter when two wagons happened along, one driven by a man named Albert Cohen, and the other by a woman he introduced as his wife.”

“But she ended up being saved by you,” Candy said. “How? What happened to that man and his wife?”

“Before I found her, she had been forced to travel with Albert Cohen and his family,” Two Eagles said. “At first she was happy they’d found her, but when she discovered who was inside the two covered wagons, she became alarmed. There were eight women and several children, and she was told that those women were his wives, and the children were borne of those wives and were all his, too.”

“The man had eight wives?” Candy gasped, her eyes widening.

“He professed to have eight wives,” Two Eagles said, nodding. “You see, he explained to Hawk Woman that he was of the Mormon faith, whose belief it was that a man should take several wives to bear him many children.”

“Yes, I have heard of this practice,” Candy said. “So what then did Hawk Woman—I mean Sara Thaxton—do?”

“She was mortified by this man who had such power over women. Hawk Woman then asked why he and his family traveled alone, and not with other Mormons,” Two Eagles said. “He explained to her that he had been banished from the Mormon people for something he had done, but he refused to tell Hawk Woman what that was.”