Savage Beloved (5 page)

“Father—”

“Candy, for heaven’s sake, go on,” he finally said through the door. “Go and tell Malvina I’ll be there soon.”

Having heard the same response countless times before, knowing that “soon” meant perhaps another thirty minutes, which would be the ruination of Malvina’s delicious meal, Candy started to say something else, but decided not to.

It wouldn’t matter.

Her father was set in his ways.

If he wanted more time before eating, he would have that time, no matter that it would also make Candy eat the same cold food as he!

Disgruntled, she went back to the dining room and settled in a chair just as Malvina came and poured her a cup of tea.

Candy admired Malvina’s patience so much. Even though her many hours of slaving over the stove might be for naught, Malvina said no more about the absence of Candy’s father.

“Father will be here soon,” Candy offered, then looked up in surprise as he came into the room and took his place at the table, opposite Candy.

She always admired how neat he looked in his blue uniform. He even kept the brass buttons on his jacket polished. And his thick, golden hair, worn to his shoulders, framed a handsome face that sported a small sliver of a mustache.

Although he had proven to be calculating and cold at times, even cruel, as evidenced by the way he had treated the elderly Indian, he had kindness in his blue eyes. She would never forget how they’d softened with love and pride when she was a small child and loved sitting on his lap.

Even now he could give her a look that melted her heart.

Candy smiled softly at Malvina as she began ladling food onto her father’s plate, then served Candy.

To try to make Malvina feel better about the
rapidly cooling food, Candy ate several bites, then smiled at her. “Delicious,” she murmured.

“It’s too cold,” Malvina fussed, as she poured Candy’s father a cup of hot tea.

“Malvina, I believe you’ve made your point,” Candy’s father grumbled. “I’ll try not to be so late next time. It’s just that I have a lot on my mind with the upcoming move.”

“Do you have your trunk packed and ready, Malvina?” Candy asked as she stabbed beans onto her fork.

“Yes’m, I do,” Malvina said, frowning. “But I must say, I do hate this movin’ ’round from place to place. I just get used to a kitchen and then I’m gone from it.”

“I’ll make sure you have the best kitchen in Arizona,” Candy’s father said, giving Malvina a grin.

“That’d be nice,” Malvina said, then left the dining room.

Candy and her father ate in silence for a while, but after a few minutes Candy just couldn’t help speaking her mind. What the old Indian had endured ate away at her heart, and she was scared to death to think of the Indians retaliating.

“Father, I just can’t forget that old Indian and the condition he was in as he was taken from the fort,” Candy blurted out. “Just think of how he must have looked to his people when he arrived home. They surely will be out for blood. We should all leave here as soon as possible.”

Her father paused before taking another bite of turkey. He glared over the table at Candy. “Yes, there
could be repercussions over what happened to that old man,” he said thickly. “And I was a fool to have abducted the wrong man. How was I to know that the chief had a brother who looked exactly like him? It was an honest mistake, Candy, but intolerable.”

“Don’t you think you should tell everyone to hurry their packing so that we can leave soon?” Candy said. “I just have a feeling that something terrible is about to happen.”

“Am I to guide my actions by your feelings?” her father spat out. He slammed his fork on the table. “Just leave it be, Candy. Do you hear? Leave it be.”

“Well, I have one more thing to say about the matter,” Candy said, shoving her plate away. She had suddenly lost her appetite. “I’m just so glad you aren’t planning another abduction. I was afraid that you would decide to go and abduct the new chief.”

“I’ve lost interest,” her father said, sipping his tea.

“Father, do you know anything about this new young chief?” Candy asked. “I’ve heard that Indian chiefs are like our president, and that the Indian people can’t do anything without them.”

“Yes, that’s how they are looked upon and treated,” he said. “That’s why I abducted the man I thought was the chief. I wanted to gain control by showing that I could abduct him from right beneath his people’s noses.”

He shrugged. “But that’s water under the bridge,” he said. “I couldn’t care less now what that band of Wichita do. I made a mistake and must learn to live with it.”

“Father, when I talked with the old Indian, he spoke so highly of his nephew, and how he would make a great chief one day,” Candy said solemnly. “And now it seems that day has come.”

“You actually spent time with the old man?” her father said, his eyes filled with sudden rage. “When? Why?”

“You were away from the fort and everyone else’s attention was on other things,” Candy said. “I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to talk with him. I . . . I . . . felt so sorry for him.”

“Sorry?” he shouted. “Don’t you know how many innocent white people have been slaughtered by Indians?”

“I have heard the Wichita are not among those who slaughter white people,” Candy said. “The old man said that his nephew, who is now chief, is a highly moral man who seeks peace, not war, with whites.”

She swallowed hard. “Father, you know what you did to that old man was wrong,” she said guardedly. “He told me that it would be hard to find any people of a finer nature than is possessed by his people, the Wichita.”

“And will you still say that about them if they decide to get back at us for what we did to that old coot?” her father snapped.

“Surely they won’t retaliate,” Candy murmured, trying to convince herself, while in truth it turned her heart cold to think of what might happen because of her father’s actions.

“Not if what the old man said about the young chief is true,” she added.

“And since when would you believe a savage . . .” her father began, but stopped, alarmed when a spattering of gunfire and barbaric war cries outside interrupted him.

Candy flinched with alarm at the sound.

Her face drained of color as a cold, stabbing fear entered her heart.

And then she screamed wildly when an arrow shattered the dining-room window and pierced her father’s chest. With a look of shock on his face, he clutched his chest and fell to the floor.

Panic and grief filled Candy’s very being as she went and knelt over her father to feel for a pulse. She could hardly believe that only moments ago they’d been eating and talking.

And now?

What her father had most feared, but would not admit to, had come to pass.

There was no heartbeat, no pulse. He was dead!

“Oh, Father, what am I to do?” Candy cried, staring blankly at the arrow and the blood that oozed from the wound, spreading along his jacket as if the fabric were a sponge soaking up water.

She knew that she couldn’t stay there any longer.

Her father was dead.

She could do nothing for him now.

She had to think of herself and Malvina, for the war cries, the whooping and hollering and shooting, continued outside the cabin.

“Malvina!” she cried as she looked down the corridor toward the kitchen, just in time to see Malvina stumble from the room, clutching an arrow that had pierced her back and was protruding through her chest.

“Go—” Malvina managed to say before she fell to one side, dead.

Candy gasped in horror. In a matter of moments she had lost the only two people left to her to love.

She was now alone.

Or would she die, too, in the next few minutes?

She knew where she must go, if she could only get there quickly enough. At any moment another arrow could slice through a window and claim her own life. Or an Indian could burst into the cabin and drag her away and . . . violate . . . her, then kill her!

All of her positive feelings about the Wichita had just been swept away in a heartbeat, for she had no doubt it was the Wichita who had come to retaliate for what had been done to one of their own.

She lifted the hem of her dress and ran hard down the corridor to the library at the far back of the cabin.

Breathing hard, she shoved a portion of a braided rug aside and saw the handle to the trapdoor that had been placed there to make escape possible if something like this happened.

She lifted the trapdoor, went a few steps down, then closed it behind her. She knew that when it was closed, the rug that was nailed to it would fall into place, hiding the trapdoor beneath it.

Trembling, she reached around for a lantern and
match, and soon had light to guide her onward to the passage ahead.

She held the lantern out before her and fled through a long underground tunnel that had been dug long ago for such an escape.

When she was almost at the end, she stopped to catch her breath.

She winced as she heard the thud of horses’ hooves overhead and continued gunfire and screams.

She knew that she must wait a while longer, and then, when all became quiet and she was sure that the Indians were gone, she would go on to the end of the tunnel and, hopefully, make a successful escape.

She breathed hard and sobbed as she recalled the sight of her father on the floor, dead, and then Malvina.

In all reality, she doubted that she would come out of this alive either.

It didn’t matter which tribe had come today to slaughter those left at the fort. It might be the Sioux, who had been on the warpath for some time now, and who were the most warlike of the tribes in the area, or it might be the young chief who had decided to seek revenge despite his usually peaceful nature. In either case, she doubted they would allow anyone to come out of the attack alive.

She thought back to the old Indian and how he’d spoken so favorably and lovingly of his nephew. A part of Candy wished that the attack was being led by Chief Two Eagles, for if she did somehow survive
this ambush, might not he take pity on her, a mere woman?

Then another thought came to her.

She sobbed out the name Shadow.

Her pet wolf!

Was . . . she . . . also among the slaughtered?

It, past escape,

Herself, now; the dream is done,
And the shadow and she are one.
—Robert Browning

As the sun lowered further toward the horizon and the air quickly cooled, Two Eagles sat on his black stallion, stunned silent by what he had just witnessed.

Just before he and his warriors had reached the fort, they had spotted many Sioux on horseback, looking fearsome in war paint. Screeching the war cry, the Sioux had sprung out of hiding and attacked the fort as Two Eagles and his men stayed back, in hiding, amid a thick stand of cottonwoods.

They had witnessed a full massacre. It appeared that no Sioux had died as the warriors rode away now, singing their victory songs. For no empty-saddled
Sioux horses were among the many riderless horses that followed the warriors—horses they had stolen from the fort.

Ho
, the Sioux had come and killed, and departed victorious, before Two Eagles had been given the chance to claim the same victory for himself and his warriors.

Wearing his breechclout and moccasins, he had his powerful bow slung across his left shoulder and a quiver of many arrows on his back. His thick, black hair hung loosely down his back to his waist as Two Eagles gazed from one of his warriors to another.

He saw the same shock on their faces that he felt within his own heart, knowing it was mixed with disappointment that they had been outdone again by the Sioux.

Two Eagles watched the Sioux ride away from the massacre until they were totally out of sight.

A strange sort of quiet had descended over the fort. The breeze rustling the leaves of the cottonwoods overhead was the only sound now, except for a horse that suddenly whinnied, and another responding in kind.

“My chief, what are we to do?” Running Wolf asked as he sidled his horse closer to Two Eagles’s.

Two Eagles did not respond right away.

He gazed hard at the fort and listened to the silence. Only moments ago the air had been split by war cries, screams of pain, and the sound of hundreds of arrows being loosed from their bowstrings.

“My chief, should we retreat now and return
wissgutts
, home?” Running Wolf asked, again trying to draw his chief’s attention. “It is done. All are dead. That should be enough, do you not think?”

Two Eagles turned his head quickly and gazed angrily into his sentry’s eyes. “Do you think it is enough?” he asked thickly. “Do you not recall any reason besides besting the pony soldiers that brought us here this evening?”

Running Wolf’s face twisted in puzzlement, and then Two Eagles saw that his warrior finally remembered the chore that still lay ahead of them.

He spoke no more of it now, for he knew it was no longer necessary to say it aloud. The knowledge of what he was thinking was visible in the eyes of his warrior.

He looked past Running Wolf at the others.

He raised a fist in the air. “Come with me,” he said in a low voice that would carry to his men but would not travel on the wind to the crafty ears of the murdering Sioux.

It would be a double victory for the Sioux if they realized that the Wichita were so near. They would surely defeat their traditional enemies, for the number of warriors that rode with the Sioux chief were double those who were with Chief Two Eagles.

Two Eagles kneed his
arrus
, his horse, snapped his reins, and rode onto the parade grounds, which were easily accessible because Fort Hope had no protective walls around it.

Urging his steed to a slow lope, as did those who rode beside and behind him, Two Eagles gazed from
one dead white man to another. They were sprawled on the ground in their own spilled blood, making a gruesome spectacle. When he had covered the full length of the parade grounds, Two Eagles stopped.

He wheeled his horse around and again studied what the Sioux had left behind.