Tales of Western Romance (26 page)

Grunting softly, he tried to sit up but the
movement sent a sharp pain through his head and he slumped to the
floor, breathing heavily. Glancing around, he saw that he was lying
on a bed of straw in a stall. He had no memory of how he had gotten
there.

Caught up in a haze of pain, he closed his
eyes. He was on the brink of sleep when a woman’s face rose in his
mind. She had large gray eyes fringed with long, dark lashes and
skin lightly browned from the sun. Her hair was black, or maybe
dark brown, drawn back in a braid that reached her waist.

When he woke, the woman in his vision was
staring down at him.

“
It’s brown,” he murmured.

“
I beg your pardon?”

“
Your hair,” he said. “It’s
brown.”

The woman frowned at him. “You speak
English.”

“
Of course.”

When he tried to sit up, she put her hand on
his chest. “Lie still. You’re badly hurt.”

“
Where am I?”

“
My ranch, the Slash Bar R.”

Blue Hawk blinked at her. “I remember now.
That man who was with you, he shot me.”

“
Yes. Who are you and what were you
doing on our ranch?”

“
I’m Daniel Blue Hawk, and I didn’t
know it was your ranch.” Something had gone wrong, he thought.
Terribly wrong.
Instead of sending him back in time to the
Cheyenne, Fox Hunter’s magic had sent him to this woman’s ranch.
Judging from the way she was looking at him, and the fact that he
was tied up, he’d be lucky to live long enough to return
home.

“
You don’t talk like any of the Indians
I’ve ever met. Did you go school back east?”

He laughed softly. “No.”

“
Why were you up on the hill
nak…without any clothes?”

“
We were…I mean, I was making a
sweat.”

“
What does that mean?”

“
It’s a Cheyenne ceremony, sort of a
purification rite.” A rite that had gone terribly wrong. “So, how
about turning me loose?”

“
And have you murder us in our beds? I
don’t think so.”

“
Murder you! What are you talking
about?”

“
I don’t know who you are or where you
came from. But one thing I do know is that you’re an Indian, and it
was an Indian who killed my father.”

“
Well, it wasn’t me!”

“
So you say.”

Blue Hawk looked up at her, wondering how a
woman who had eyes the soft gray of a mourning dove could be so
hard-hearted. “Why did you bring me here? Why didn’t you just leave
me up on the hill to die?”

“
I thought about it.”

“
But you decided you wanted to stick
the knife in me yourself?”

Her face paled at his words. Rising, she left
the barn without another word.

Blue Hawk stared after her, his thoughts
troubled. He had expected to return to his father’s people, to
spend time with the Cheyenne, to discover who the woman he had seen
in the sweat lodge was and what part she had to play in his
journey.

Now, not only had he been shot, he was being
held captive by a woman who had no love for Indians, and apparently
no intention of letting him go.

So, what did she plan to do with him?

A number of unpleasant possibilities followed
him to sleep.

* * * * *

Lynnie sat at the kitchen table later that
night, a cup of coffee cradled in her hands, her thoughts on the
Indian in the barn. What was she going to do with him?

She wouldn’t have this problem if she had
just let Jase kill him. She wouldn’t have batted an eye if the
Indian had been a threat, but to kill a man, even an Indian man,
when he was helpless, well, that just didn’t sit right. You
couldn’t call killing an unconscious man self-defense. It was
nothing short of murder, and she didn’t want that on her
conscience.

Which left her with a wounded Indian who had
to be dealt with, one way or the other. She supposed she could have
Jase take him into town and drop him off at the sheriff’s office.
Of course, that would be the same as killing him.

Why were there never any easy decisions?

If only her father was still alive. Even
though she was capable of running the ranch, there were times when
she thought how nice it would be to let someone else make the hard
decisions once in a while. Thinking along that line brought Jase to
mind. He would be only too happy to take control of everything,
including her life and the ranch.

Rising, she went to the window and looked
outside. Maybe she should just marry Jase and get it over with.

But she didn’t love Jase Abbott. Or Henry
Russell. And since her disastrous affair with Patrick Rawlings, she
wasn’t sure she wanted to get involved with another man now or ever
again.

Muttering under her breath, she dumped the
rest of her coffee down the sink, then quickly filled a plate with
leftovers. If she wasn’t going to free the Indian, then she would
have to feed him.

* * * * *

The scent of cooked meat roused Blue Hawk.
Opening his eyes, he saw the woman was at his side again, a covered
tray on the floor beside her.

“
I brought you something to eat.” She
lifted the cover, revealing a plate of roast beef, mashed potatoes
smothered in brown gravy, boiled carrots, and a slice of
bread.

“
Are you going to untie me so I can eat
it?”

“
No.”

He glared at her. Almost, he was tempted to
tell her to toss it all to the hogs, but it smelled too good, and
he was too hungry to argue.

She cut a piece of beef, speared it with a
fork, and offered it to him.

Feeling foolish, he opened his mouth.

He refused to meet her eyes while she fed
him. Did she really think he would attack her if she untied him?
Even if he was so inclined, and he wasn’t, he was far too sore and
too weak to do so.

He finished every bite, drank the glass of
water she offered him, and realized that he needed to relieve
himself, though how he would manage that with his hands bound
behind his back was beyond him. One thing was for certain, he
didn’t want her help and he wasn’t going to ask for it!

He squirmed under the blanket.

“
Is something wrong?” she asked. “Are
you in pain?”

“
Yes, ma’am. Not there,” he said
between clenched teeth when she started to examine his
wound.

“
Where then?”

“
How about sending one of your hired
hands in here?”

“
Whatever for?”

“
Because…” He swore under his breath.
“Because I need to relieve myself right quick!”

She stared at him a moment, then hurried out
of the barn

Blue Hawk grinned, pleased somehow, that he
had rattled her.

Minutes later a tall, lanky cowhand entered
the stable. He quickly untied Blue Hawk’s hands and feet, then
stood back, his gun drawn, and motioned for Blue Hawk to precede
him.

Wrapping the blanket around his waist, Blue
Hawk left the building.

Eyes narrowed against the sun, he walked
until they were a good distance from the barn. He got his first
look at the ranch while he watered one of the trees. The house was
two stories high. A wide verandah spanned the front and wrapped
around one side. Flowers grew in front of the porch and lined the
roadway that led up to the house. Two buildings stood to the left.
He figured the smaller one was the cookhouse for the hired hands
and the larger one was the bunkhouse. Several corrals held
livestock. Chickens scratched in the dirt near the road. A couple
of hound dogs were sprawled in the shade near the porch. A cowboy
was working the kinks out of a piebald horse in one of the
corrals.

Walking back toward the barn, Blue Hawk
weighed the odds of making a break for it. Not good, he thought.
Still, he wasn’t looking forward to being tied up again.

As though sensing his thoughts, the cowboy
poked Blue Hawk in the back with the muzzle of his pistol.

Inside the stable, with his hands and feet
bound again, Blue Hawk wondered why he hadn’t just stayed in Bear
Valley where he belonged.

Chapter 6

I stood beside Shadow, my arms folded, my
fears growing.

“
Gone?” I said. “What do you mean, he’s
gone? Gone where?”

Fox Hunter leaned heavily on a thick wooden
staff. I knew from his expression I wasn’t going to like whatever
he said.

The old warrior took a deep breath. “He has
traveled the road into the past.”

I looked at Shadow, then back at Fox Hunter.
“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

“
He came to me because he wanted to
know what it was like to be a warrior.”

“
Yes, yes, I know…”

“
Hannah.” Shadow’s voice stilled my
tongue. It was impolite to interrupt an elder when he was
speaking.

“
I told him he could not learn the ways
of a warrior on the reservation,” Fox Hunter went on. “There is
only one way to learn, and that is to live among the People in the
old way.”

A bone-deep coldness seeped into me as I
waited for Fox Hunter to go on. I knew, in my heart, that I didn’t
want to hear any more.

“
We made a sweat,” Fox Hunter said. “I
told Blue Hawk he must concentrate on the thing he desired
most…”

I shook my head. “No.”

“
I felt the distance between us grow
larger and larger,” the old warrior said. “For a moment, I saw an
image on the lodgeskins.”

“
What kind of image?” I
asked.

“
A woman’s.”

I looked up at Shadow. “A woman? I thought he
wanted to be a warrior.”

Shadow put his arm around my shoulders. “A
good warrior needs a woman.”

I looked at Fox Hunter again. “Tell me, where
is my son?”

“
He has traveled the Ghost Road into
the past.”

I stared at the old man. “Into the past? What
are you saying?”

“
You know what I am saying,” the old
warrior said. “Look into your heart.”

“
I don’t believe you. It’s impossible.
People don’t travel back in time.” I shook my head. “Why are you
telling me this nonsense? Where is Blue Hawk?”

A horrible thought occurred to me. What if
Blue Hawk was dead?

Fox Hunter’s gaze met mine. “It is as I have
said. Blue Hawk has traveled back to the time of his
ancestors.”

I looked at Shadow again. “It isn’t possible.
Is it?”

He nodded. “If one knows the way. If one
believes, all things are possible.”

“
But…but how will he get
back?”

“
That is up to him,” Fox Hunter said.
“He knows the way. He must decide whether to travel the road
back.”

I moved out of Shadow’s arms. “Did you know
about this?” I asked.

He nodded slowly.

“
And you let him go? Shadow, how could
you? What if he’s killed? What if he can’t find his way back? I’ll
never forgive you if something happens to him, do you understand
me? Never!”

Not wanting to cry in front of the two
warriors, I turned and ran into the house.

Going into the bedroom, I fell face down
across the bed and cried as I had not cried in years. It couldn’t
be true. There was no such thing as time travel, everybody knew
that.

And yet, try as I might to deny it, I knew it
was true.

Blue Hawk no longer existed in the world as I
knew it. The thought that he might be killed, that I might never
see him again, cut through me like a knife. For the first time in
my son’s life, he was completely on his own, without family or
friends to come to his aid should he need help.

My son, my baby, was somewhere in another
time and place, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Chapter 7

Keeping his movements as light as possible to
ease the pain in his shoulder, Blue Hawk stared up at the ceiling
while he slowly worked his hands back and forth in an effort to
slip free of the rope that bound his wrists. Of course, the rough
hemp abrading his skin caused a whole new source of discomfort, but
he did as his father had so often advised. He accepted the pain and
moved on. So, where the hell was he? Fox Hunter had told him to
concentrate on what he wanted most, he thought ruefully, and
getting shot and being tied up in a barn wasn’t even in the top
two.

Blue Hawk frowned. If learning to be a real
warrior was what he wanted most, what the devil was he doing here?
And if that wasn’t what he wanted most, then what was? He glanced
around, taking in his surroundings. Maybe this
was
where he
was supposed to be.

He shook his head, wondering where that damn
fool notion had come from. And yet, he couldn’t ignore the fact
that the woman who held him prisoner was the same woman whose face
he had seen on the wall of the sweat lodge. He couldn’t begin to
guess what that meant.

So, here he was, in the past, he thought, and
frowned, wondering how far into the past he had gone. Judging from
what he had seen and heard, he knew he had traveled back in time
far enough that the Indians, or at least some of them, were still
living off the reservation. What if he found his father’s people
and his father was still there, living among them? Talk about an
awkward situation! What would it be like to see his father as a
young man?

Shadow, once known as Two Hawks Flying, had
been a formidable warrior in his youth. He had engaged in many
battles against the whites. He had fought against General Crook,
and against Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the battle at the
Little Big Horn. Two Hawks Flying had known many famous warriors,
men like Crazy Horse and Gall and Sitting Bull. Two Hawks Flying
and Hannah had even spent time with the infamous Apache leader,
Geronimo. He had seen the world change, seen the Sioux and the
Cheyenne driven off their hunting grounds and confined on
reservations, and yet his father had never surrendered his pride or
his manhood. He had held fast to the teachings and customs of the
Cheyenne and now he was a man respected by all who knew him. Blue
Hawk had always admired his father, and his mother, as well. Hannah
Kincaid had stood beside her husband through good times and bad,
had fought beside him when necessary. She was a remarkable woman
and Blue Hawk had always hoped to find a woman like her, a woman
filled with compassion and tenderness, a strong spirit and a
fighting heart.