Capture the Sun (Cheyenne Series) (36 page)

      
Last winter he had come to live with the People, full of some nameless hurt that had driven him away from his father's place. He had not sought her out as she had so fervently prayed for, but had kept to himself until her father's death and her own bold words to him this spring. Did he love his father's wife? She, Wind Song, was his wife, yet Hawk had never told her that he loved her. Even before Angry Wolfs jeering insinuations, Wind Song had harbored secret doubts.

      
One day she awakened to hear him tossing in his sleep, crying out indistinct words in the white tongue. Most she could not understand, but a few she knew—the names of Carrie and Noah! The next morning she worked up her courage to speak some of what was burning in her heart.

      
“Do white men love their women more than Cheyenne?”

      
He was shaving, a morning ritual he performed in the confines of their lodge, not wanting everyone to observe this necessity brought about by his white heredity. Slowing the deft strokes of the razor, he replied, “What makes you ask that?”

      
“My father had two wives, my mother and her sister. He was always kind to them, but when they died, well, I just never thought he was nearly as saddened as he was when my brother died. I—I just wondered what you had observed in their world.”

      
Thinking of Noah and how he treated his wives, Hawk grimaced. “I think it depends on the man, Wind Song. Some Cheyenne love their wives and daughters. Some white men don't. Love is love, red or white.”

      
“I do not think so. If a white man may take only one wife, he must value her...differently.” She floundered for a way to direct her questions without being so obvious.
Do you love me, Hunting Hawk?

      
He smiled despite the sadness in his eyes. “Is that why you married me, Wind Song? For my white half?”

      
Taking a deep breath, she said, “I love you because you are Hawk. No other reason. If half of you is white, half is Cheyenne. I love all of you.”

      
“But you're afraid I'll take a second wife like your father did?” He wiped his face free of soap and stepped over to take her in his arms. “Don't be. I will have no other wife.”

      
“No Cheyenne wife,” she said, stung despite his assurances because he still had not told her he loved her.

      
“What is that supposed to mean?” His face became shuttered.

      
“Nothing,” she murmured quickly, realizing she could not bear to hear the truth. She held on to him tightly, kissing his neck and rubbing her face on his chest. Even as they embraced, they both knew what lay unspoken between them.

      
As the weeks passed, Hawk busied himself hunting, often staying away overnight. When he slept by their hearth, sharing her bed, Wind Song often heard his nightmares. Sometimes he would awaken and reach out to her for solace in the darkness. Other times she would stop his cries with her mouth, willing him to forget the past and the white woman who called to him.

      
One day when Hawk was away, after Angry Wolf's hateful words to her, Wind Song sought out Iron Heart in his lodge. With a leaden heart, the shrewd old man listened to her, knowing what she was leading up to with her carefully chosen words. She had the right to know the truth, he finally concluded sadly.

      
“You must be patient and hold your love for him strongly, Wind Song. In time he will grow to love you, too. He has much to learn of love and belonging. All his life has been spent being pulled in two directions at once.”

      
She swallowed, nervously fingering the long fringes of her tunic sleeve. “He is still pulled to them, to her?”

      
They both knew who the “her” was. He sighed and puffed on his pipe as he considered what to tell her. “Be secure in knowing this. She is lost to him forever. Not only is she wife to his own father, but now she carries the father's child.”

      
Wind Song's head flew up. “Does Hawk know this?”

      
“I told him. It was a hard thing to accept, but in time he will know his bond to her is forever broken. You must give him unconditional love. Do not let outsiders come between you; not Angry Wolf, not even the harmless words of a child.”

      
With tears in her eyes, Wind Song nodded. He was wise, knowing the doubts that assailed her from so many quarters. “I will never stop loving him, Grandfather. Do not fear.”

      
After that, Wind Song used every opportunity to draw Hawk to her for making love. She offered her body. She knew it pleased him and fulfilled his male needs, and she prayed he would quickly plant his seed in her. If they had a child, he would sooner forget Carrie Sinclair.

      
Then one night in the midst of fierce, wild passion, as he spilled himself deeply inside his wife's body, he cried out Carrie's name. The instant it happened he knew what he had done.

      
For months he had tried to block Carrie from his mind, but found, perversely, as the time for her travail neared he thought more and more about her being delivered of Noah's child. The surcease he found in Wind Song's embrace was sweet but fleeting. He took her often, feverishly spending his frustration in passion, only to have Carrie's tear-ravaged face haunt him afterward. Now he had done that which he dreaded above all else.

      
He looked down at his wife's stricken face. Her huge green eyes were dark with pain and unshed tears. Gently he withdrew from her and rolled over onto his back. After a minute, he reached over and stroked her cheek. She flinched and turned her eyes away.

      
“You look into my eyes and you see hers. You caress my body and you feel hers.” Her words were spoken rapidly in a soft, low voice, thick with tears.

      
He lay still, his thoughts in turmoil, his spirit crushed with guilt and remorse.

      
“Did—did you ever lay with her?” There, it was spoken. She had to know.

      
“One night,” came the dreaded answer. “Since our marriage I have touched no other woman;” he added softly, defensively.

      
With rising anger, she replied, “I would understand if you went to the harlot's lodge outside our village when I am in the moon hut. That is a man's physical need only, but your very faithfulness mocks me. I have your body, but she has your soul!”

      
“Wind Song, I am sorry. I have never meant to hurt you,” he said helplessly, watching the crystalline tears stream down her cheeks. “You asked me once if I would ever take a second wife. I said no. I meant it then and I mean it now, but maybe I am more Cheyenne than white.” He continued stroking her cheek, drying the trail of her tears with his fingertips.

      
She turned her face to him once more, a puzzled expression shadowing it. “What do you mean?”

      
“I will not lie to you. I fell in love with my father's wife. Maybe part of me will always love her. I do not know. But she is forbidden to me. I need love, a woman of my own. You have given me the treasure of your heart. I will not cast it away. I will learn to love you, Wind Song. Perhaps I already love two women, as is the Cheyenne way. But you are my only wife. This I swear to you.”

      
She turned swiftly into his waiting arms, sheltered, comforted, crying. “I will make you love me, Hunting Hawk. This I swear to you!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      
Carrie lived in hellish misery during the weeks following her confrontation with Noah. Mrs. Thorndyke, the only other person who knew the scandalous secret, hovered like a miasmic fog, filling the house with her spite. Carrie became a virtual prisoner. Noah ordered the housekeeper to bring her meals to her room, allowing her one brief spell of exercise each afternoon when he accompanied her on a walk through the garden. Other than that, she was confined to the house and watched by the housekeeper every waking moment. Each night a cowboy guarded the French doors to her room. Noah told them Carrie, fretful and imaginative as her confinement neared, was worried a thief would try to break in.

      
To avoid suspicion and scandal, Carrie was allowed to visit with Feliz and her daughter, Estrella, but that was the extent of her freedom.
He is afraid I'll run off, in my condition,
she thought to herself in hysterical amazement. As if she had anywhere to go. Numbly, she waited.

      
Carrie thought of confiding in Feliz, but decided it would only add to her burdens uselessly. She was as powerless in the household as Carrie. Now that Frank was dead and Hawk and Kyle gone, no one could challenge Noah and his angel of wrath, Mrs. Thorndyke.

      
The doctor, Feliz and Estrella would be present when the child was born. Surely Noah could not hope to silence them all, even if the child was Cheyenne. No, he would throw her out, destitute and disgraced, but he could not possibly carry out his threat to kill her and her child. Praying this was true, she spent the last weeks of her pregnancy caged up in the ranch house, desperate in fear and loneliness.

      
Oh, Hawk, why did you leave me? I would have gone anywhere with you.

      
In mid July since Carrie showed no signs of being ready to deliver, Noah decided to go to Miles City on an overnight business trip. She felt more at ease, even if Mrs. Thorndyke and her guards did not relent in their vigil.

      
With a good thick steak and six shots of whiskey under his belt, Noah felt better than he had in a long time. Now he lay back on the red velvet of Charlene's bed watching her undress. She was Clancey's fanciest whore, and Clancey's was the best house in town. What a piece! Her long yellow hair hung in curls across her large, heavy breasts. Her round hips were soft and white, inviting his hands to pinch and squeeze the marshmallowy flesh. She posed and pouted, playing her striptease for all it was worth, tantalizing him as he enjoyed the show. He knew what she would do next.

      
She sauntered boldly to the bed and began stroking his partially erect shaft. She scolded, teasingly, “Too much likker makes ole Jack here a bad boy. I'm just gonna have ta punish him.” She lowered her thick, reddened lips and opened her mouth to envelope him.

      
Noah relaxed, then tensed as she began her skilled ministrations. Finally, as the whiskey wore off, he impatiently grabbed.her and rolled her on her back, pulling the interfering remnants of his clothes from his body. Then he straddled her and plunged into the dark nest of curls, panting heavily with his exertions. Damn, it felt good to be in control. He had not done it this way in quite a while, but he was not so old yet he couldn't if he wanted to!

      
In midthrust, a sharp, tearing pain grabbed his chest, then another, in rhythmic, agonizing contractions, more regular than the ancient exercise he was performing. His skin grew suddenly wet and cold, and his arms felt numb. He was dizzy, so dizzy, and he heard Charlene's voice as if from a great distance.
 

      
“You look funny, Noah, plumb peeked. Here, let me up.”

      
“No, damn her!” The words rasped from his throat, ripped out on his last expelled breath. “I've got to—now—I...”

* * * *

      
The sheriff rode out the next morning very early to break the news to the widow. He considered how best to tell the pretty young missus, her being pregnant and all. Word of the old cattle baron's demise in Charlene Creely's bed was already all over Miles City, and Sheriff Woods knew sooner or later she would hear the truth. Cowardly, he decided it would not be from him. As gently as he could, he told her that her husband had suffered a heart attack and had died instantly. Doc Lark had confirmed it.

      
Rather than the hysteria he expected, given her condition and all, the young widow simply asked, dry-eyed and calmly, where and how they had found him. After squirming for several seconds, Sheriff Woods coughed and said Mr. Sinclair had been upstairs in Clancey's place when he died. He reddened as soon as the words were out. Surely even a lady like this must know what kind of place Clancey ran.

      
Carrie did. But she also knew immense, triumphant relief. He was dead and her child was safe! She was safe. Thank God! It might be blasphemy to be grateful for her husband's death, but she could not stop the inadvertent silent prayer of thanks from escaping heavenward. It was ironic that Noah had died with one of his whores. Call her a whore for having one night of love with a man, would he? After all his nights at Clancey's and other places like it from Helena to Chicago, Carrie felt a tremendous satisfaction in knowing that the reputation he was always so concerned with had been ruined by his own actions, not hers.

      
However, as she was soon to find, there was a double standard for morality. Her lack of grief at his funeral shocked people. Indeed, her stoic dignity at the graveside service made tongues wag in the town. They were willing to forgive a man his little peccadilloes with Clancey's girls, especially considering his wife was so far along in her pregnancy. But for the young widow to be dry-eyed, calm, and radiantly beautiful, that was unnatural, sinful, wrong.

      
It was only the beginning of her conflict with the town. The day after the funeral, Carrie went to Jebediah Cooper's office and demanded the will be read. She had to know if Noah had done anything to jeopardize her position at Circle S or her child's birthright. In her heart of hearts, she wanted Noah's attorney to tell her that the ranch still went to Hawk. But that was not to be. Shortly after bringing her to Montana; Noah had had a new will drawn up. Everything went to her and her children. He had not changed it since learning of her relationship with his son. He did not plan to die, and doubtless intended to act only if the baby was not his, an unlikely event from all standpoints.