Tender savage (3 page)

Erica swallowed nervously, thinking the man's point well taken, for she had obviously waited much too long to

take her leave. She shrugged helplessly, hoping he would believe the truth. "Well, you must admit you were putting on quite a performance. You weren't bathing, nor swimming, but almost dancing in the water. Had anyone else been here they would have undoubtedly been as intrigued as I was." When he didn't laugh in her face for that remark, she seized what she hoped was becoming the advantage. "Had you taken the time to look around you would have seen me and gone elsewhere to do whatever it was you were doing. This is really your fault, not mine," she insisted proudly.

"My fault!" the Indian shouted in a hoarse gasp. He raked his fingers through his still dripping hair to push it out of his eyes aind called her a name he could not equal for foulness in English.

"Yes, your fault, and whatever it is you just called me I'm certain you are far worsel" Erica turned away, thinking she would be able to just walk off, but the man reached out to catch her shoulder with such force that he easily spun her back around to face him.

She had spirit, and he admired that, but the Indian would allow no woman to turn her back on him in the midst of an argument. "You must apologize," he commanded firmly.

Appalled by that demand. Erica straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin defiantly. "For what? For being here first?"

"You know why," the man replied coldly.

Erica clenched her fists at her sides. She had done her best to fit in in New Ulm, which was the very last place she wanted to be. Her life was so far from the one she wished to be living that she dreaded each new dawn, and now she had absolutely no desire to spend the rest of the afternoon arguing with some ill-mannered Indian. "All right, I am sorry I interrupted your privacy, but you had intruded upon mine first I"

While many of the German immigrants who populated New Ulm were fair haired, he had not seen any woman so blond as this one. Her curls reflected the sunlight with the sparkle of new-fallen snow, and her eyes were more blue than the river for which the state was named. Her nose had a slight upward turn, imparting a saucy air to all her expressions. Her lips had a delectable rose hue and the inviting

shape of a bow, but he did not like any of the words that poured from them. "You do not belong here. I do."

It had not occurred to Erica that she might be trespassing upon the Indian's land, and she hurriedly looked around for some sign of a house or cultivated gardens but saw none. "The Sioux reservation is much hirther up the river, isn't it?"

The Indian made an obviously derogatory response in his own language before replying in English. "I am not an animal who can be kept in a pen. I go where I please."

"Well, it just so happens that I also have that privilege, and if you'll excuse me I'll be going on home now." This time Erica hesitated a moment to be certain he would have no objection to her leaving in hopes of avoiding another bone-jarring blow to her shoulder.

"As soon as you apologize to me you may go," the Indian replied calmly.

"I already did apologize," Erica reminded him.

"No, that was no apology."

The man had relaxed sufficiently for his features to assume the more carefree expression she had glimpsed briefly in the water. No longer appearing so menacing, he wasn't merely good-looking but extraordinarily handsome. His skin was a warm bronze. His features were even and strong, and his teeth were a sparkling white she was certain would lend a heady masculine magic to his smile, if he were ever happy enough t<5 smile. His brows and lashes were as black as his free-flowing hair, but his eyes were g^'ay* not brown. When he had first come running up to her they had glowed with the same evil light as the polished steel of his blade, but now both his glance and stance had softened. The color of his eyes struck her as being odd, but she knew so little about Indians she had no idea what color his eyes should be.

The woman was regarding him with an open curiosity that the Indian found most offensive, and he urged her to speak her apwlogy and be gone. "Your dress is very fine. Do you not have thfe manners to match it? Surely you can apologize to me without insulting me at the same time."

"You needn't have drawn a knife on me," Erica pointed out accusingly. "That scarcely showed any manners."

"You should be grateful I did not use it," the man responded sullenly.

Erica doubted respectable white women did much apologizing to Indian braves, but since the man was such an obstinent sort, she feared she might never get home if she didn't let him have his way. What possible difference did it make? she asked herself. They would probably never meet again. She picked up her skirt to be certain she would not trip a second time as she gave him the most sincere apology she could bear to speak. "I haven't been in New Ulm long, and I'll make a point of staying close to town in the future. I'm sorry we met under such unfortunate circumstances, but you can be certain I'll avoid this part of the river in the future."

The merest shadow of a frown passed over the Indizm's finely chiseled features before he dismissed her with a curt nod and turned away. He went back to where he had left his belongings and when he glanced back over his shoulder, Erica was gone.

Holding her skirts well above her toes. Erica ran all the way back to the steamboat landing before adopting a more sedate pace. When she reached her aunt and uncle's home, she found her cousin seated upon the front stejDS attempting to whittle a small horse out of a block of wood. He was a strapping lad who towered above her in stature, but he always treated her with a respect bordering upon awe. She stopped in front of him.

"Hello, Gunter, what are you making?"

"It was to be a horse, but it looks more like a mule, I'm afraid," the boy admitted self-consciously. He had inherited his mother's fair coloring and finely shap>ed features, but the fact that he would one day be a remarkably handsome man had as yet escaped his notice.

"Call it a mule then, and no one will know what it was you intended." Encouraged by the warmth of his smile. Erica dashed on by him and ran up the stairs to her room. The homes in New Ulm were all remarkably similar two-story frame houses with dormer windows in the attic bedrooms. She had been given the guestroom on the second floor. As she sat down at the desk, ready to begin a reply to Mark she suddenly realized she had lost his letter.

"Oh nol" Erica leaped to her feet and shook out her skirt before reaching into her pockets. She left her apron on its hook at the store and carried the letter in her hand when she left there, but what had she done with it when she

had gotten up from beneath the tree in her futile attempt to escape the Indian? It had been in her hand then, too, she was certain of it. She feared she had dropped it when she had grabbed the man's arm to keep from falUng. It had been insanity to reach out to him, she thought now, since she could so easily have cut herself on his knife.

Erica slipped back down into her chair, her expression forlorn. She would have no choice but to go back and look for the letter, but it was too late to go again that day. She had told the Indian the truth: she never wanted to stumble across his path ever again. Now she would have to go right back to his part of the forest the very next day. She folded her arms upon the desk and rested her cheek upon them. If she didn't find the letter she would have no way to send Mark a reply. He might think she no longer cared— especially after the way she had left him.

During supper. Erica's mind wandered so often to that afternoon's confrontation that she finally decided she ought to leam something about the Sioux reservations without giving away the fact that she had actually met an Indian brave. Since her uncle was so knowledgeable, she spoke to him about it at the first lull in the conversation.

"From what I understand, most of the land around here used to belong to the Sioux, didn't it?"

Karl was surprised by that question, but he had been in Minnesota long enough to know the state's history. "Yes, but the government has talked them out of so much all they have left now are two thin strips bordering the south side of the Minnesota River. The Upper Sioux Agency is the farthest away. It's near the mouth of the Yellow Medicine River, and the Lower Sioux Agency is below the Redwood River. That's about thirty-five miles northwest of here, up past Fort Ridgely."

Britta was a pretty blonde, if not nearly so elegant a creature as her sister and niece. She adored her husband, but that did not prevent her from arguing with him upon occasion. "The government paid the Sioux for the rest of their lands, Karl, don't forget that."

Karl had a stocky build and the rolling gait of a bear. His features, while neither handsome nor distinguished, were pleasant, and he was so good-natured that Erica liked him immensely. He simply laughed at his wife's comment. "Oh yes, they were paid at thirty cents an acre. Under the

new Homestead Act the government is selling land at a dollar twenty-five an acre, so you tell me whether or not the Indians were cheated. Traders took a lot of the money to pay what they claimed the Indians owed them, don't forget that either. The Sioux were also promised annuities for fifty years, but Congress still hasn't voted them this year's money. After the poor harvest last fall, that's damn near criminal. The government's trying to make farmers out of them, but they are far better at hunting and fishing than anything else."

Erica nodded thoughtfully, thinking her uncle's points well taken. With the government treating the Indians so unfairly, it was no wonder the man she had met was so hostile. "Just how many Indians are there living on the two reservations?"

"About seven thousand, I think. Some of them have been p>ersuaded to become farmers, but not many. The others don't like them, call them 'cut hairs' for adopting the white man's ways. I'm thankful I'm not a Sioux, I don't mind admitting that."

Taking care to project a nonchalance she didn't feel. Erica asked one last question. "Do you ever see any Indians around here?"

"I've seen some down by the river," Gunter offered, eagerly joining in the conversation.

"Well, don't you dare go near them, young man," his mother cautioned sternly. "You just let them be. No one is pleased with the fact that they wander so far from the reservation, so don't encourage them by being friendly."

"I don't," the shy boy insisted as he again focused his attention squarely upon his plate.

Erica allowed the conversation to drift to other subjects, but what she had heard disturbed her. If they were thirty-five miles south of the closest reservation, the man who had given her such a bad time had no business being so close to New Ulm, regardless of his claims that he went where he chose. He was clearly no farmer if he traveled about. But perhaps his nomadic ways would work to her advantage. Maybe he would be some distance away by the following afternoon and she could go back to search for Mark's letter without having to worry about meeting him. She kept hoping that would be the case, but she spent a restless night fearing that it wouldn't be.

Mark Randall's well-tailored uniform fit him far better than the role of army officer did. Whenever he happened to catch a glimpse of his reflection as he passed by a mirror he was startled, for he had found the military clothing hadn't changed the way he felt inside. He backed President Lincoln wholeheartedly and thought it imperative that the Union survive, but when the war had begun he had thought that as an architect he would be of little value to the army unless they wished to put him to work building forts. Then one by one his friends had enlisted: attorneys, accountants, even college professors whom he knew could fire a rifle no more accurately than he. After the horrible losses suffered at Shiloh in April, 1862, his conscience had pained him so horribly for leaving the defense of the Union to other men that he had known he could no longer support the war effort with words alone. He had completed the work he had in progress as quickly as possible and had enlisted.

Since Erica held as strong views as he did about preserving the Union, he had not been prepared for the violence of their arguments after his enlistment. She had not wept, although he thought later it would have been far better if she had. After an initial stunned silence she had bravely accepted his decision and suggested they make plans to marry immediately. Since that was not something he would consider, from that day forward nothing had gone right between them.

That the carnage at Shiloh, in which more than seventeen hundred Union troops were killed and another eleven thousand injured, had also prompted her father to volunteer for the army had come as a further shock to Erica. Mark had not anticipated her father Lars's action, either, although he did not know how he could have changed his own plans once he had made them so that Erica would not have felt deserted by both her father and fiance.

Now that he had been assigned to General John Pope's command he knew he would soon see action, and plenty of it, for the man had made a name for himself as an aggressive commander in the West. Mark knew he would have scant time to write to Erica and wasn't even certain she would reply. He had learned the hard way that it was difficult if not impossible to reconcile his ideals with the demands of her love, but he prayed Erica would continue to love him as dearly as he loved her when she no longer had the passion of his kisses to keep his image alive in her heart.

The whole morning Erica inwardly debated the wisdom of returning to the river. If she went back to where she had ^ lost Mark's letter, she had no guarantee she would find it. Neither could she be assured she would not meet the arrogant Indian brave again. She wanted the letter but she didn't want to risk seeing him for a second time. Finally realizing she would never find the letter if she didn't conduct a search for it, she accepted the sorry fact that she had little choice in the matter. She would have to follow the same path along the riverbank, and if she chanced to meet the surly fellow who had given her such a bad time the previous afternoon she would simply step around him and go on her way.