Capture the Sun (Cheyenne Series) (10 page)

      
Even her horsemanship was slightly improved, although she dreaded being balanced precariously on the back of a bouncing, pitching beast, prey to prairie dog holes, scratchy brush, and sudden noises that might cause the half-controlled horse to skitter and unseat her. Nevertheless, Kyle had actually complimented her the day before when she had doggedly kept her seat after her horse stumbled.

      
So pleased was Carrie in recalling her success that she approached the big barn by the corral almost eager to mount. Then she saw Hawk leading her small tan mare and immediately changed her mind. However, before she could turn and flee, his long-legged stride caught up with her. A thin, sardonic smile hovered about his lips.

      
“You're late.” The voice sounded bored rather than accusatory. He stood still, letting the mare's reins trail negligently in one hand while he inspected her outfit from head to toe. It was her particular favorite, a long, full riding habit made of rust-colored broadcloth.

      
The smirk turned to a disgusted scowl. “Lady, you have too many clothes on.” With that startling pronouncement, he proceeded to slip his wicked-looking knife from its sheath on his left hip. He dropped the reins and stepped closer to her.

      
Carrie was frozen. Unless an earthquake swallowed her, there was no way she could move of her own volition.

      
In one lightning movement, he grasped the train of her long riding skirt from her hand where she held it to keep it from dragging in the dust. Just as swiftly he fanned it out arid sliced off the whole thing in a neat incision, leaving the skirt one even length, just above the ankles.

      
Fright quickly turned to fury as she watched him calmly slip the knife back into its resting place and heard him say in a low silky voice, “Now, why did I just know that you wouldn't scream?”

      
“You sadistic brute!” Looking down at the unhemmed ruins of her expensive habit, she ground out the words, wishing her vocabulary were equal to the situation.

      
A blinding white smile slashed across his dark face, and he laughed as he picked up the filly's reins. “You couldn't ride
this
while carrying all
that.
” He gestured from the saddle to the excess of her skirt piled in a rusty heap on the ground.

      
For the first time Carrie noticed the saddle on Taffy Girl. It was a regular western stock saddle, not the sidesaddle she had been using.

      
As if reading her mind, he said, “If you want to look ladylike on a dangerous contraption like that sidesaddle, you can fall and be dragged, breaking your beautiful little neck for all I care. But if you want to ride like western women do, I'll teach you. Kyle told me how you nearly fell when Taffy shied yesterday.”

      
“But I didn't fall, and he praised me for keeping my seat so well,” she retorted hotly, perversely angry that his common sense should so closely parallel her own thinking about women's riding gear.

      
He stood patiently, looking at her as if she were a half-bright child being indulged in a temper tantrum. Without a word she grabbed the reins from him and stomped over to the left side of the mare. When she reached one booted foot up and placed it in the stirrup, she felt his hands span her waist as he effortlessly lifted her into the saddle. Grudgingly, she admitted feeling a foot in a stirrup on each side of the horse gave her a sense of security. However, his hands on her waist did just the opposite.

      
“Two stirrups feel comfortable, don't they?” That damn echo of her thoughts again! When she failed to respond and sat mutinously still, chin pointed determinedly forward, he shrugged and turned to swing gracefully on his large bay stallion.

      
They rode in silence, broken only when he issued a few terse commands to her about how she pulled on the reins or distributed her weight in the saddle. Nitpicking, she sniffed to herself, but made the necessary adjustments.

      
Finally, uncomfortable with her own silence and the feeling of his eyes on her, Carrie turned to look at him and said, “Why did you volunteer to take me riding today?”

      
He turned his face in profile, looking straight ahead as he replied levelly, “Maybe I wanted to see if you scare easily, or maybe I wanted to keep you away from Kyle.” He turned to meet her stare head-on now and stated, “He's become rather smitten, or hadn't you noticed?”

      
That shocked her, and unwittingly she let out a small “Oh,” before she could stop herself. “That's absurd! Kyle's a smooth-talking, forthright Texan, not some lovesick college boy.” Thinking of the tough bandy-legged Hunnicut next to Gerald Rawlins, she almost laughed at the ridiculousness of the comparison.

      
“You underestimate your charms, Carrie.” He paused before he said, “Then again, maybe you don't. After all, what's one crude Texas cowhand for the baron's wife to take notice of?”

      
Carrie flushed in fury for the second time in an hour. Damn the hateful man! He was insufferable, unbearable! She groped for a word that was adequate. Bastard! There, she'd found a good word. Now, if only she had the courage to say it out loud!

      
After seething for a few hundred yards, she realized he was enjoying taunting her, reveling in her temper and embarrassment. She decided to go on the offensive.
 

      
“Why do you have such a low opinion of me? I understand about the inheritance, that Noah might cut you out if I have children.” She found the last words difficult to say.
Lord, I don't want Noah's children!
She quickly continued, “But I'm not to blame for what he does. I didn't even know he had a son before we arrived at Circle S. I'm only a pawn in his game, just like everyone else.”
Like you.

      
Hawk's face was stony. He grated out, “Next I suppose you'll tell me you married a man over twice your age because you respected him so much. Maybe he reminded you of your daddy! How gullible do you think I am, lady? He's a rich, old man. You thought you could wheedle and manipulate him, but, baby, you're sitting in a high-stakes game with a penny-ante poke. He'll flay your pretty gold-digging hide and hang it out in the sun to dry.”

      
So he thought she had ensnared Noah for his money and then been beaten into submission! The gall of the man, the abysmal ignorance! Yet a small voice taunted her:
It is true that you act like a whipped dog around Noah.
Had he truly broken her spirit? With these confusing thoughts tearing at her, Carrie dug her heels into Taffy Girl's sides and rode ahead, ignoring the insensitive oaf who would never believe the truth.

* * * *

      
For the next couple of weeks Carrie saw little of Hawk except at unavoidable dinner-table encounters. One riding lesson sufficed. Once having drawn the battle lines, it seemed father and son decided on a wary, unspoken truce, at least in her presence. They discussed the rustling, the new shorthorn cattle Noah had brought from Oregon, weather, roundup, all the usual things she supposed that cattlemen talked about. She was seldom included in the conversation, but learned a great deal from listening.

      
Hawk and Kyle would ride off together and be gone for several days at a stretch. Sometimes a few other men rode with them. Carrie was uncertain about the nature of their mission, but suspected it had to do with the livestock thefts. She wondered what they did when they apprehended a criminal.

      
If she saw less of Hawk and the other hands, she saw far more of Noah than she wanted, for he visited her room every night. After arising at dawn to ride out and oversee the vast ranch, as well as making frequent overnight trips to Miles City, how did he have the energy left to bed her?

      
Perhaps she would not have minded it as much if only he would have paid some attention to her in other ways, done something to show her he at least considered her a person instead of a brood mare. However, he did not. She was left to her own devices daily. He ignored her every attempt to show him how she was adapting to western life.

      
Frank confirmed Hawk's statement that many western `women rode astride. Every day after her dramatic lesson with Hawk, she rode Taffy Girl, accompanied by Frank or one of the other hands he assigned, and she always rode astride.

      
Carrie never told Noah about her newly acquired skill, practicing until she was sure she could acquit herself competently. Perhaps this was the way to make him proud of her. She had to try something. As it turned out, she had chosen the wrong thing.

      
“Ladies ride sidesaddle! Indian squaws ride astride! Where the hell did you get that rig, and who taught you?”

      
Noah's infuriated accusation rang across the stableyard. Several hands overheard, but they quickly pretended they had not and hurried off to do chores in the farthest reaches of the barns and stables.

      
Tears welled up in her green eyes, but they were as much from sheer frustrated anger as from disappointment. She had planned to surprise him with her western skill, but he wanted her to be a proper eastern lady. Now, if she confessed where she learned to ride astride, it would only start more fighting between Hawk and his father. Suddenly a thought struck her. What if Hawk knew how Noah felt about women riding astride? Had he set her up deliberately?

      
Well, damn them both! She was fast becoming a good rider, and she wouldn't go back to the old way for anyone. “I see nothing wrong with my using a safe saddle. Last week when we were in Miles City I even saw a pattern for a split riding skirt in the modiste's book. I was thinking of ordering several.” She spoke quietly, amazed at the steadiness of her own voice.

      
Noah's face darkened to a fuchsia red as he looked down at the set determination in the eyes of his slim, beautiful young wife. Where had the frightened little tenderfoot gone? God, he would have no repeat of Lola's defiance.

      
He grasped her right arm with an iron grip and carefully propelled her toward the house. Carrie flinched from the pain of his grip, but refused to demean herself by making a scene. Woodenly they walked back to the big house to argue·in private.

CHAPTER FIVE

      
The sun cast an arc of pink and red light across the eastern sky, followed by deep, hot yellows and golds bathing the lodges of Iron Heart's people in warm summer light. Like all Cheyenne villages, this one was constructed with the tepees in a horseshoe shape. The open end of the horseshoe faced the rising sun, as did the door of each lodge.

      
It was nearing the summer solstice, and more and more bands were meeting on this warm plain for great feasting and solemn ceremonies, but the hunt was not as good as it had been in years past. The great masses of shaggy buffalo were thin, and thinning even more. So were the People. Smallpox and cholera decimated them while the bullets of the
veho
destroyed the sacred buffalo. Still, it was once more summer, and those who were left rejoiced.

      
Iron Heart, now in his seventy-sixth year, was still a robust man, having survived the, ravages of the white man's diseases, a Crow arrow, and several bullets from both Indians and
veho.
Age had not stooped his shoulders nor dimmed his vision. He stood six foot four inches, and his black eyes were as piercing as they had been when he first counted coup as a boy of fifteen. Standing in the door of his lodge, he stretched while he watched the birth of a new day. It never ceased to awe him, as the mighty hands of the Powers sundered the blackness and thrust in the light each morning.

      
He heard a procession of giggling young maidens, some from his village and some from adjacent bands, venturing in search of summer berries. Iron Heart continued to watch the eastern sky expectantly. It was not only the sunrise that held his attention, but something more. He had a dream last night, and his dreams were seldom wrong. Hunting Hawk was coming back to his people. He felt it in his bones. It was time.

      
By midafternoon the old man's vigil was rewarded when a lone rider appeared on the horizon. Even before he could distinguish the tall rider he recognized the huge bay stallion of his grandson.

      
Hawk looked at the village, spread across the rich grassy prairie in a neat geometric design, clean and orderly, in union with nature. In his mind he contrasted it with the ugly sprawl of Miles City. Kneeing Redskin gently, Hawk rode briskly into the embrace of the lodges and their people. Many had come out to greet the half-blooded grandson of Iron Heart. Most were friendly, but a few of the young bucks in the warrior societies were hostile. Hawk was bareheaded and dressed in a simple buckskin shirt, pants, and soft moccasins. He wore only his knife, no sidearms, as a symbol of respect for the village he entered as a brother. The big bay carried no saddle. In Cheyenne society, only the women and old men rode with saddles.

      
Hawk slid effortlessly off the stallion and stood face-to-face with Iron Heart in front of the elder's lodge. They clasped arms gravely. “It is good to be home, Grandfather.”

      
“It is good to have you here, Hunting Hawk.” There was a look of peace in the old man's eyes as he ushered his daughter's only son into the lodge. This would be a private reunion. Time enough for feasting tonight. There were things that must be said.

      
“The village looks prosperous. I counted ponies like waves on the sea as I rode in, even buffalo and elk hides drying in the sun.” Hawk looked at the clean, functional interior of the tepee with its hard-packed earthen floor, soft grass-stuffed beds and willow backrests. The cooking pot outside had been full of a thick antelope stew. He was relieved hard times had not yet struck this band.