She never knew.
Abruptly, he turned her to face him and said, his tone flat, his face devoid of expression, “Back to the cabin.”
“You told me I’d be free by now,” she said, her brilliant green eyes accusing. Stinging raindrops peppered her upturned face, her bare throat and shoulders, the tight, low bodice of her dress.
His jaw hardened.
He didn’t answer. He picked her up and carried her back across the rocks, down the path, and into the shack as lightning cracked above their heads and echoing thunder quickly followed. He ducked in out of the rain and set her on her feet.
She tried again. “It’s been twenty-four hours. You promised you’d let me go.” She raised her voice so he could hear above the sudden summer storm.
“I lied,” he said coldly, failing to explain that he was as baffled and disappointed as she. He could not imagine why General William Kidd had not come for his only daughter. He had waited for the General all day yesterday, couldn’t believe it when night fell and still he had not come.
“You red bastard!” Martay shouted, and came at him. He held her off with one muscular forearm, neither swayed nor upset by her tirade. Actually, he much preferred this screeching, clawing little hellion to the calm, quiet woman that had stood in his arms moments ago. He’d never been moved by loud, ill-mannered females; found them anything but attractive. So he was glad she chose to behave like a brassy bitch.
Quickly bored with her screaming and scratching, he unceremoniously grabbed both her wrists in one of his hands, dragged her to the cot, and flung her down on it. When she started to rise, he placed a spread hand directly atop her heaving chest and said, “Stay down, Captive. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She stayed down.
He was cold and uncommunicative for the remainder of the day, as though he were angry with her. It seemed to Martay, cautiously watching him, that his physical appearance changed before her very eyes. The harshly planed, handsome face grew harder still, the stark features more severely defined. The high, slanting cheekbones struck her as more prominent, the shadows beneath them deeper, darker. The full, sensual mouth had thinned noticeably and the black eyes had grown more scarily mean. He looked, and acted, more Indian than ever.
Fierce. Cruel. Hostile.
* * *
The long day passed and his mood did not soften. They shared a meal in strained silence, and when it was finished Martay was glad when he went outdoors to sit on the stoop. Night came and with it uneasy sleep and unanswered questions. Why was he so angry with her? Why hadn’t he released her?
The third day of her captivity was no better. The Sioux was sullen and silent. And Martay didn’t dare bother him. His dark countenance was so forbidding, she stayed as far from him as allowed and nervously lowered her eyes when he loomed near. But it rained again in the afternoon and he came inside to sit and stare glassy-eyed at her.
On the fourth day her nerves were so raw, she jumped every time he moved. Her menacing captor neither looked nor acted like the same man she’d awakened to see on the first morning in the cabin. That first day he’d at least been civil, talking to her, and at odd moments he had seemed, and acted, almost like a white man. No more. He was all Indian, silent and mean and terrifying.
Martay was miserable. Her white silk dress was soiled and tight and uncomfortable. Her hair was a dirty, tangled mess, and she felt as though it had been four weeks since she’d had a bath instead of four days. Since her captivity began, she had done nothing more than sponge off her face and hands and throat from a pan of cold water. She hated him; he had bathed every night and, she suspected, again in the afternoon while she napped, and she hated him for it. He went about clean and comfortable while she suffered.
By noon of the fifth day Martay knew he was planning something, though she didn’t know what. She cringed when he came toward her, a rope looped over his shoulder. Her spirit not yet broken, she rose to meet him.
“You will not tie me up and torture me, you bloodthirsty bastard!” she shouted, her emerald eyes blazing fire, though her heart hammered with fear.
Paying no more attention to her than if she were a cranky three-year-old, he pushed her back down, knelt before her, put the satin slippers on her feet, and led her out of the shack. Outside, the big black was tethered close to the shack. It stood shaking its head and whickering. Ignoring the whinnying stallion, the Indian guided her past and into the rocks.
“Where are we going?” she demanded, stopping.
“Down,” was his one-word reply as his fingers tightened on her upper arm and he forcefully impelled her across the treacherous terrain. Martay labored down a narrow, steep slope, dislodging small rocks that kicked up more rocks, causing a dusty avalanche below that rose to choke her. Coughing and gasping, she stopped stubbornly, only to feel a firm hand on her shoulder and the order to “keep going.” She did, though her legs were already weak and the sun was harsh and the thin air hot.
The rising spires of the sandstone cliffs were narrowing, the path becoming increasingly harder to traverse. In her dainty dancing slippers and form-fitting skirt, it was next to impossible for Martay to go farther. She glanced back at the Indian, her eyes looking for understanding. His answer was to pluck her from the rocky ridge and toss her over his left shoulder as if she were a sack of grain.
She bellowed in outrage, the sound of her shrieks echoing through the rocky crevices. He paid no attention. He continued agilely down the stair-stepped ledges, pausing when he came to the first dangerous drop.
“Hold on,” he commanded, and when she objected, he turned sideways so she could see the precarious path he meant to carry her down. It was a six- or eight-foot drop down to the next ledge. Knowing he meant to jump to it, Martay obediently wrapped her arms around his trim waist and shut her eyes.
With one arm around her legs and a splayed hand clamped firmly on her bottom, the Indian leapt to the rocky shelf below and Martay made not one sound, though his hard, muscled shoulder was digging into her stomach and her breasts were bouncing against his deeply-cleft back.
Gritting her teeth against the discomfort and the fear, she intermittently opened and closed her eyes, dizzied by glimpses of rushing rock and clear blue sky seemingly sailing past her in an upside-down world as the surefooted Indian leapt from rock to distant rock as agilely as if he were a sleek mountain cat.
A few scary moments after their frightening descent had begun, he was lowering her to her feet in a wide, level valley. And while she was shaken and drained and perspiring and laboring for breath, the exasperating Indian stood there looking as cool and composed as if they had been out for a Sunday stroll in the park.
Martay was far too spent to put up a fuss when he let the rope slide from his right shoulder and stepped closer.
“Here,” she said loudly, and thrust out her wrists to him. “Tie me up, gag me, beat me, I don’t care anymore.” She defiantly threw back her head, “You hear me, Indian? Do you?” As usual, he did not answer, so she shouted all the louder. “I just don’t care!”
The Sioux gently pushed her toward a tall pine, drew her arms around its trunk, and tied her hands with the rope. He stepped away.
She glared at him. “What?” she said, hatefully. “You’re not going to gag me? Surely you don’t mean to … to … where are you going?”
He was walking away from her, his back to her, toward the rocky ramparts they’d come down. Over his shoulder, casually, “To get the horse.”
“To get the … are you crazy? That horse couldn’t possibly make it down those rocks! No horse could.… Are you listening to me?” He wasn’t. He was already beginning the climb back up. “Come back here,” she shouted, “don’t you dare leave me alone!”
The only answer she got was the showering of pebbles slipping down the mountain, loosened by his moccasined feet as he nimbly climbed. Martay squinted in the sunlight, watching, until finally she lost sight of him. Letting her head fall to her chest, she sighed, thinking that the mute, ill-tempered Indian was not only mean, he was stupid.
True, he had obviously gotten her and the horse up the rocky mountain, but he surely had taken a less forbidding path back on the other side. There was absolutely no way he could get that horse down … down …
Martay lifted her head, looked up, and her heart rose to her throat. There at the very pinnacle of the tallest upthrust of rock, the big black stallion with the Indian astride stood perfectly still, outlined against the cloudless blue sky. The pair appeared to be a magnificent statue, poised there, unmoving, the stallion’s black coat and the Indian’s black hair shimmering in the brilliant sunshine.
What happened next was impossible to believe, though she saw it with her own eyes. The Indian leaned low over the horse’s neck and spoke into its ear. Immediately the big brute started down the series of jutting precipices, leaping from one ledge to the next, fearlessly jumping six- and eight-foot bluffs, his hooves heavily striking stone the only sound in the afternoon stillness.
That and the thunder of Martay’s heart.
Awed, transfixed, she watched the amazing pair drop steadily lower, expertly taking plateau after plateau, wondering as she watched if the next leap would be the one to shatter the horse’s spindly legs. She expected, at any second, to see horse and rider plunge to their deaths at her feet.
Half disappointed that it didn’t happen, half relieved as well, she tried to appear unimpressed when the Sioux rode the mighty stallion right up to her, threw a long leg over its back, and dropped to the ground. The horse lowered its proud head and gently nudged her with his velvet muzzle. He made soft, neighing sounds, and Martay couldn’t help herself; she smiled and murmured softly, “Yes, boy, you were grand. Wonderful. You must surely have wings on your feet.”
“And me?” said the Sioux, revealing for the first time a human side. Typically male, he was almost boyish in wanting her approval, his face softening minutely as he slipped the rope from her wrists, freeing her.
Martay didn’t care what he wanted, or needed. Bringing her hands up to pat the stallion’s smooth face, she said hatefully, “You’re a fool. You might have killed this magnificent animal.”
“I never kill beautiful creatures,” he said pointedly, his black eyes impaling her.
She peered up at him. “What do you do with them?”
“Take them home,” he responded, drawing the reins over the mount’s head, and swinging back up into the saddle. The horse, anxious to be off, danced in place, nickering, and Martay thought for a moment the Indian intended to ride away and leave her. But he nudged the stallion closer, reached out a long arm and hauled her up, placing her across the saddle in front of him.
“You … you’re going to take me home?” she ventured hopefully, grasping at the thin thread of hope, wondering if she dared.
He nodded. “I’m taking you home.” She smiled at him, a great rush of happiness sending color to her pale cheeks. Then he added, coldly, “My home.”
“Your home?” she echoed dumbly, her smile slipping as the truth dawned. “You most certainly are not taking me to your home, Indian!” She raised a hand to strike at him.
He caught it easily and, pressing it flat against his chest, said, “Stop calling me Indian. I’m no Indian. Indians are from Calcutta. We are The People.”
The blaze in his black eyes made her immediately contrite. Martay nervously replied, “Well, I don’t know what else to call you. You’ve never told me your name.”
“Hanhepi Wi.” he said. “My Lakota name. Night Sun in your language.”
“Night Sun.” She repeated the name, pulling her hand free of his imprisoning fingers. “Now that I know yours, I’ll tell you my …”
“Miss Martay Kidd,” he interrupted, “or do you prefer ‘Golden Girl’?”
Her lips fell open. For a long moment she stared at him. “But how could an Indian … I mean … you’ve known all along? How could you possibly? I’ve never seen … what do you … where are you taking me?” A terrible tightness was gripping her chest.
“I told you, we’re going home. Home to the Powder River and Paha Sapa country.” He could tell by her expression that she had no idea where the Powder River or Black Hills were. He said, “North to the Dakota Territory, Golden Girl.”
And he kicked the black into a canter.
13
T
he President of the United States of America, Rutherford B. Hayes, from his Oval Office in the White House in Washington City, authorized the following: A punitive military mission against parties, known or unknown, involved in any way in the abduction of Miss Martay Kidd of Chicago, Illinois, from the Denver, Colorado, home of Colonel and Mrs. Thomas Darlington.
The President, appalled that such a foul deed had befallen the child of the country’s bravest, most respected general, dispatched additional United States cavalrymen to the state of Colorado. Five days after Martay’s disappearance from the Darlington estate, thousands of troopers, from as far away as California and Texas, were scouring the mountains and canyons and plains of Colorado with orders to “find her alive.”
Virginia Senator Douglas Berton, close confidant of President Rutherford Hayes and father of the distraught Major Lawrence Berton, had himself boarded a train for the mountain city within an hour of hearing the news. The senator, his right leg lame from a riding accident suffered years before on his rolling Virginia horse farm, could not head up into the wilds with the others, but his presence in Denver helped defuse an otherwise volatile situation.
It was only natural for the fiery General William Kidd, beside himself with worry, to blame the major who had foolishly left his daughter alone and vulnerable. General Kidd was furious with young Berton, as well as with the two big, burly bodyguards who had been charged with the responsibility of “keeping that child safe.”
The general had refused to listen to the flimsy excuses of the two military guards. Their passionate please for understanding—“Sir, we could not go inside; we weren’t guests at the party. There was no choice but to remain outdoors. We followed the pair right up to the front door of the Darlington mansion. What more could we do? Be reasonable, General”—fell on deaf ears.