Witch Dance (5 page)

Winston Mingo didn’t miss a single nuance of the exchange between his sons, not Cole’s triumph at having finally bested his twin brother at something, nor Eagle’s sense of having sacrificed too much for his vision.

“Speaking of building, Dr. Colbert is building a new clinic.” Winston said, watching his sons’ reactions.

He’d been doing that a lot lately, watching, weighing, judging. Cole’s expression darkened, and Winston shifted. Only part of his discomfort was due to Cole’s reaction. No matter what he did these days, it seemed that he couldn’t get comfortable. Dovie had sewed a cushion for his chair, even though he had told her the rain would ruin it. But she’d shushed him, and every morning he saw her checking the weather before she marched outside and arranged the bright red cushion in his favorite outdoor chair.

Eagle leaned forward, excited at the news . . . as Winston had hoped he’d be.

“He’s moving back, then?” Eagle asked.

Clayton Colbert had left tribal lands twenty years earlier and had never come back except for summer vacations with his blue-blooded Bostonian wife.

“No, he’s helping a young protégé of his, Kate Malone.”

“A white woman,” Cole said. “We don’t need her.”

Her skin was like lilies, creamy and cool to the touch. Eagle remembered it well. Too well.

“It seems to me that we need every clinic we can get,” he said, “. . . and every doctor.”

“We have a hospital.” Anger curled through Cole like smoke.

“Only one,” Winston reminded him. “And it’s too far from Witch Dance for convenience.”

“What does convenience matter if we lose sight of who we are? They’ve come here in droves with their white skin and their holier-than-thou attitudes. They’ve raped the land and corrupted our young, then gone back to their posh lives, convinced that they’ve done their duty on the
reservation
.”

Twelve years had been too long to stay away. Eagle was seeing a brother he didn’t know.

“How do you know Kate Malone is like that?” She’d been sobbing like a child when he carried her from the river, then defiant as a wildcat when he’d questioned her commitment.

Kate Malone with hair bright beyond imagining. He’d wanted to touch it. Only the certain knowledge that doing so would be like crossing a bridge, then blowing it up behind him, had stilled Eagle’s hand.

“Because she’s not one of us,” Cole said.

“Embracing new ideas and new people doesn’t necessarily mean we must lose sight of the old ways.”

“You sound awfully passionate for someone who hasn’t been around in twelve years.” Cole turned his fierce scrutiny toward Eagle. “Or is your defense personal?”

Having a twin was like having a second soul, a second conscience. Cole had always been able to ferret out his secrets. Though why he should keep his encounter with Kate secret was a mystery to him.

His silence damned him.

“You embrace her, Eagle. I have family duties.” Cole stalked toward the house without looking back.

Disquieted, Eagle left his seat on the redwood picnic table and walked to the fence to look out over the pasture. The stallion that had been a gangly colt when he left flung up his head and flared his nostrils, catching Eagle’s scent. Restless, the stallion trotted around the enclosure, his mane and tail flying out like flags as he increased his pace. In the last rays of the dying sun his polished coat gleamed as black as patent leather.

“He’s magnificent,” Eagle said as his father came up beside him.

“He’s still yours. So are the three mares.” Winston nodded toward a paint, a sorrel, and one beautiful mare so startlingly white, she looked like a ghost emerging from the shadows that gradually darkened the land.

Eagle whistled, never dreaming he’d get a response. The white mare whinnied, then tossed her mane and cantered to the fence.

“You remember me, don’t you, Mahli?” Eagle stroked her silky muzzle.

“You always did have a way with horses.”

“It’s one of the things I missed most while I was away—the horses.”

“Mahli will be receptive soon. If I were you, I’d breed her to the black.”

Winston was not a man to speak about issues closest to his heart until he’d had time to let his instincts kick in. He talked instead of horses and ranching and Eagle’s immediate plans.

“I’ll take a few weeks off—perhaps the entire summer—before I open offices. The land is calling to me in a voice as seductive as a woman’s.” Eagle smiled. “I’m going to set up camp at the Blue River tonight.”

“Dovie will be disappointed. She’d expected you to stay at the house, at least for a while.”

“I’ll make my peace with her.”

“Good. I don’t want to get on your mother’s bad side.” Winston smiled, recalling the many times he’d gotten on Dovie’s bad side and ended up sleeping downstairs on the couch. His bones were too old and stiff for that now. Besides, he still liked the feel of Dovie’s soft body curled against his. He slept better, somehow, just knowing she was there.

Winston studied his son. Some deep secret pleasure was hidden in his eyes.

“You know the woman . . . Kate Malone?”

“Yes. Her clinic will benefit our people.”

“She’s not of our blood.”

“You see too much, Father.” Solemnly Eagle placed both hands on Winston’s shoulders. “I am Chickasaw. I will never mix my blood.”

Satisfied, Winston nodded. “May the Great Spirit guide you.”

Eagle made his peace with his mother, then said good-bye to the rest of the family and rode off toward the shadowed mountains. The land was alive with scents and sounds. He rode bareback, the way he loved best, feeling himself one with the night-seeking creatures.

When he came close enough to hear the whisper of the river, he pitched camp. Although it was the middle of summer with heat rising from the earth and warm winds blowing across the land, he built a fire. There was something mystical about a fire, something powerful.

As his ancestors had done before him, Eagle opened himself to the fire so its strength could transfuse his soul. It was not a conscious move on his part, but an instinctive one. Myths and legends aside—and Eagle knew them all—there was a basic truth in the act of transfusion. A man’s psyche was affected by his surroundings on levels he never dreamed. Beauty transfused harmony; ugliness, hatred. Nature transfused peace; mechanization, strife.

Stripped naked, Eagle paid homage to the four Beloved Things above in Muskogean, the ancient tongue of his people; then he spread his blanket under the stars, letting peace and harmony flow through him. Flames from his campfire leapt upward with a brightness that rivaled Kate Malone’s hair.

The newly arrived medicine woman intruded so suddenly in his thoughts that desire caught him unaware. And he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was nearby that perhaps her nearness had led him to his campsite, and that she had already transfused his soul when he’d first touched her. When he’d carried her from the river.

He lay on the blanket, staring at the stars, with Kate Malone heating his blood like a flame.

 o0o

The watchers had moved closer, a small, tight band of them, standing as silently as the trees that bordered the clinic. Dr. Clayton Colbert gave them no more than a passing glance.

It was the man on horseback who held his attention. Eagle Mingo.

Everybody in Witch Dance and for miles around knew him, firstborn of the Chickasaw Nation’s governor, preceding Cole from the womb by mere seconds, dragging his reluctant brother by the heel, some said, emerging with a lusty war whoop that made every nurse on the maternity floor stop to listen. He’d been gone since he was eighteen, and twelve years had honed him to the lethal, keen edge of a knife blade.

Riding on his fine black stallion, he sliced into Clayton’s consciousness and stayed there, striking sparks. Every nerve ending quivering, Clayton glanced at Kate. The lure of Eagle Mingo shone in her eyes. She stood motionless, the hammer hanging forgotten in her right hand, watching him as if destiny had come a-riding.

The black bile of despair clogged Clayton’s throat. His grip tightened on his own hammer as Eagle dismounted and strode toward the lumber skeleton that would soon be a clinic.

“Kate.” Eagle stood tall and magnificent before her.

She flushed as if he’d kissed her. The intimacy in his voice was more riveting than the most searing embrace she’d ever imagined.

“What brings you to the clinic?” she asked.

“I’m looking for the doctor.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Yes. This.” He held out a bouquet of Indian paintbrush, freshly plucked. “On behalf of my people, welcome to Witch Dance.”

His skin drew hers like a magnet, and when she reached for the flowers, she couldn’t let go.

“Thank you.”

She had turned to liquid. Neither her hands nor her feet would move. Eagle closed her fingers around the fragile flower stems; then, stepping back, he nodded in the direction of the watchers.

“Are they causing trouble?”

“No. Only observing.”

“I spoke with them. They’re merely curious.”

“I hope so.”

“When they become accustomed to the idea of the clinic, they’ll leave.”

His bow was formal, but there was nothing remotely formal about his eyes. His burning gaze held Kate as her tongue flicked out and wet her bottom lip. Eagle watched as if he were guarding a recently staked gold claim.

Envy and despair rendered Clayton helpless. There was a low moan like an animal in pain. To his horror, he realized he’d made the sound. Not only that, but he’d shown his true colors to Eagle.

Clayton felt himself shriveling under Eagle’s intense scrutiny. He wanted to trot off to his house like a whipped puppy and pee in the middle of the rug. Instead, he held his ground, returning the fierce stare with his head high.

They were like two proud bucks—one hoary with age, the other virile with youth—rutting after the same doe. The air was thick with challenge.

In a quicksilver shift Eagle nodded formally toward Clayton, then mounted his horse and galloped away.

The entire encounter couldn’t have taken more than three minutes, but Clayton felt as if he’d been wading through quicksand for three hours. His hands shook as he poured himself a cup of water.

“You know him?” he said when he was finally calm enough to turn toward Kate. The glow of Eagle Mingo was still on her skin.

“I met him yesterday at the river.”

She didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t dare ask.

“Well . . . it’s good that the governor’s son approves of your being here.” Blackguard. Liar. Clayton squashed the paper cup and water ran over his hands.

“Let me get you another.” Kate laid her flowers on the sawhorse and gave them one last, lingering caress. Fresh envy slashed at Clayton.

“Your face is flushed.” Kate’s hands were cool when they touched his, cool and tender as the stems of flowers. “You’ve been working too hard. Sit over here and rest.”

She led him to a shade tree with the same care he’d seen her lavish on the old people who populated the hospital wards. He wasn’t old—sixty, with most of his hair and his body gone only slightly to fat—but he must seem ancient to her, abloom as she was with youth and lust.

His gut clenched again as she plopped down beside him and stretched out her bare legs, tanned now from the sun. Smiling, she patted his arm affectionately, as if he were an elderly uncle or a favorite pet.

God, how he hated it, that casual touch . . . and how he loved it. That was his burden to bear, his cardinal sin: He was in love with her.

His wife knew.

“Don’t lie to me, Clayton,” she’d said before he left. “You’re not building this clinic because of altruism. You’re building it so you can lure
her
to your side.”

“I’m building a clinic to help my people.”

“You had no people until you met me. And don’t you ever forget it.”

How could he? She never let him.

Sitting in the shade with the scent of Kate making his old sap rise, he thought of Melissa Sayers Colbert, the woman he’d left behind. Elegant, sophisticated, with the kind of cool beauty that drew second glances. Patron of the arts, chairman of numerous foundations, and benefactor to the underdog—including an outcast half-breed Chickasaw named Clayton Colbert. He owed his medical degree to her and his fancy Beacon Hill house and his chairmanship of the Department of Endocrinology.

He’d been a broken-down trick rider in a Wild West sideshow when she found him sleeping on a pier in Boston Harbor. Melissa Sayers of the Sayers Chocolate fortune had a habit of slumming in her chauffeured white stretch limousine.

She’d meant to give him a hot bath and a square meal and send him on his way. Then she’d discovered that cleaned up, he had the kind of sex appeal that was hard to resist.

Melissa Sayers didn’t even try. For six months he’d lived in her penthouse surrounded by every luxury he’d ever imagined. Did he want a new suit? All he had to do was ask. A new car? No problem. All it cost him was a few hours of sexual performance, much like a trained tiger.

Later she’d discovered that he had a mind to match his body, and she’d decided to keep him. Permanently.

She gave him respectability and success, but the price was too high. In the end, it cost his dignity.

He felt a cool hand on his forehead.

“Are you all right, Dr. Colbert?”

Dr. Colbert.
Not even Clayton. Kate saw him as her mentor, her friend, perhaps even a father figure. But he didn’t dare put so much as a fatherly arm around her shoulder.

“I’m fine, Kate. I guess I need to rest.”

“You shouldn’t be working in this heat. I’ll walk you to the house.”

He was selfish enough to let her. Walking along in the drift of her perfume, feeling the brush of her thigh against his, was a simple pleasure he could steal without her ever knowing.

“I wonder if we should hire a crew to help with the building, Dr. Colbert?”

“You think I’m too old, Kate?”

“It’s not that. The work will go faster and . . .” She flushed at her lie. “You’re certainly not
old
, but perhaps you’re too old to be working so hard in this heat.”