He stopped walking, released Martay’s hand, turned, and lifted her up to sit atop a flat piece of stone, directly below a slanted shaft of hazy sunlight. He stood facing her, his hands resting on her knees, and continued. “I talked with my mother and my grandfather often in this peaceful place.” His face was in shadow; Martay could not read his expression, but his voice was low, soft as he said, “I told them of the things that were happening to our people; I asked Grandfather for advice.” Night Sun fell silent, his hands moving restlessly up Martay’s trousered thighs.
“And did he give it?” she asked softly.
Night Sun’s bronzed face abruptly came out of the shadow. “Yes,” he said, his black eyes somber. “Walking Bear told me I should always listen to Gentle Deer. He said that I must go to my white father, study at the white man’s school, and learn his numbers and letters.…” His wide shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly and his throat contracted. “Because the sundown of Lakota Coyote—the Sioux Nation—was quickly reddening the western sky.”
Martay touched his dark cheek. “Tell me about your white father, darling. Is he …”
“James Savin died a couple of years ago,” said Night Sun with no emotion. “He was a wealthy man; now I’m a wealthy man. Or will be next month when I turn twenty-five.” He climbed up on the rock to sit beside Martay. “Savin was a trapper when he met my mother. He came into our village, saw her, wanted her, and took her, failing to mention that he had a wife back east.” Night Sun smiled suddenly and casually pushed the hair back from his forehead. “My father was a great charmer, Martay. The People, including Walking Bear and Windwalker, fully approved of James Savin.”
Martay reached for Night Sun’s hand; held it in both of hers atop her lap. “And your mother, she fell madly in love with James Savin?”
“So they tell me. It must have been love, because after only one short winter with Savin—a few weeks—she never gave any of the braves a chance. She remained faithful to James Savin until the day of her death.”
“How sad,” said Martay, imagining the hurt and loneliness the Indian woman had endured. “Did you see your father often?”
“From the time I was six years old I was sent east to spend time with him each summer.”
Night Sun, warmed by the love and understanding flowing from Martay, told her things he had never told another living soul. With no trace of self-pity, he admitted that he had been miserably out of place in his father’s fine eastern mansion. Said there were so many strange new things to learn in the white man’s world that he was far more frightened there than he had ever been riding his pony alone on the plains.
He told of the understandable resentment of his father’s wife toward him; said Mrs. James Savin was unable to hide her dislike for the half-breed son, a product of her husband’s infidelity with the “dirty squaw woman.”
“She said those words to you?” Martay was horrified.
“Only on those occasions when she lost her temper because I had clumsily knocked over a priceless vase or had come upon her so quietly, I scared her.” Night Sun laughed then, and added, “Or for any of a dozen other equally annoying transgressions.”
Night Sun continued to smile easily, but Martay’s heart hurt for a frightened little boy alone in a strange world he did not understand, subjected to the coldness of a bitter wife who saw, every time she looked at his dark face, the eyes of the other woman. The pretty Indian woman who had shared her husband’s bed.
“I don’t like Mrs. James Savin,” said Martay heatedly, angry with the faceless woman for taking out her pain and frustrations on an innocent child.
“Constance Savin is dead,
Wicincala.
She contracted influenza five years ago and lingered three weeks.” He glanced at Martay. “She wasn’t really a mean woman; put yourself in her place.” He shrugged.
Martay did. She imagined being married to Night Sun and having him go away while they were still newlyweds. Of his making love to another woman. Of fathering a child that was not hers.
“I would have been very hurt and very jealous.”
“Exactly. And Constance Rood Savin was embarrassed as well. She was refined and genteel; came from an old monied family. It must have been a nightmare for all her upper-crust friends to find out about me.”
Martay was shaking her head. “I’m surprised your father … that is …”
“Me too. Most men would never have acknowledged my existence.” Night Sun leaned against the wall of rock behind them and pulled Martay back against him. “I want to know more about you. Tell me about your mother. Was she as pretty as you?”
Martay smiled and snuggled to him. “My father said she was the most beautiful woman in all California. That’s where they met and married.” She looked up at Night Sun. “You’re not the only one who is wealthy. I own producing gold mines throughout Northern California and the Sierra Nevada. My mother left them to me.”
Martay, always a talker, enthusiastically told Night Sun of her childhood in the Chicago mansion, of missing the mother who died when she was four, of being spoiled and catered to because the staff felt sorry for a motherless little girl whose military father was always away.
She admitted that as she grew up she did pretty much as she pleased and had decided, early on, against marriage and motherhood in favor of a life of travel and adventure.
“And do you still feel that way?” asked Night Sun in that voice that could woo seductively and caressingly; or command in such a way as to compel obedience.
Martay turned in his arms. “No! I want to be your wife and have your children.”
He smiled and put a hand to the slender column of her throat. “Ah, can I ever really capture a spirited woman in whose veins a rover’s blood flows?” His fingers stroked downward.
Her emerald eyes flashing, Martay said forcefully, “I’m not a rover! I just want to be your wife.”
He gently tipped her head back, bent, and kissed the hollow of her throat. Against the sensitive flesh he murmured, “I hope a bit of the rover remains, my sweet. A wife of mine may find it necessary to do a bit of roaming.” His tongue wet a small patch of ivory skin, then he blew gently on the dampened flesh.
Her breath growing short, Martay said, “I’ve no objection to roaming, so long as you roam with me.”
Night Sun pushed her loose red shirt off a fragile shoulder and kissed the side of her throat, his lips moving to the curve of her neck and shoulder. He whispered, “Have you any objection to my mouth roaming over you?”
She laughed, breathlessly. “We don’t have … the bedding’s outside.”
“Mmmm,” he murmured, continuing to caress the tempting pale flesh he was baring. “I’ll bet we can manage without it.”
Martay soon found out they could manage quite well without their buffalo furs. In minutes Night Sun had undressed her and himself. He draped his shirt over the rock where they had sat, allowing it to fall over the edge, like an embroidered scarf adorning a side table. He then turned Martay about so that her back rested against the shirted rock.
He said, “I’ve been wanting to do this,” pulling her up on tiptoe, “since the night we danced at Lone Tree and Peaceful Dove’s wedding.”
“Do what?” she sighed, her heart racing, her breasts flattening against his warm chest.
Night Sun hunched down and entered her while she gasped and threw back her head. “This,” he said. “I’ve wanted to make love to you while we’re both standing.”
“W-why …?” she whispered, not really caring, already glorying in the strange and wonderful sensations evoked by this strange and wonderful new position.
Rising once more to full height, Night Sun said, “When we danced, you fitted against me so perfectly.” He slipped a hand around her right thigh, gently lifted her leg up and hooked it over his supportive arm. “I wondered then if you’d fit on me as perfectly as you fitted against me.”
Martay was beginning to take panting little breaths as Night Sun filled and stretched her and pleasure spread rapidly, astonishingly, from that heated place where their bodies were joined to encompass her entire being.
“And … do … I?” she managed, short of breath.
“My Martay,” was all he said, but she knew the answer was yes. And looking directly into her eyes, Night Sun made love to her standing there in a filtered shaft of honeyed golden sunlight that embraced their bare, linked bodies.
“Night Sun, this is … this is … wonderful,” sighed Martay, her arms looped around his neck, diamonds of perspiration dotting her face, throat, and breasts.”
“Isn’t it,” he said, and bending, gave her an openmouthed kiss as his taut, lean buttocks rocked rhythmically to her.
Highly excited, feeling as though she were literally being speared by Night Sun’s hard, piercing lance, she loved every thrilling second of the unorthodox mating. Their damp bodies slipped and slid and did indeed fit perfectly. And Martay, femalelike, fleetingly worried, in the middle of her growing ecstasy, that she was not as fresh as she should be, that the perspiration of sexual excitement might be unpleasing to her lover.
Night Sun, the veins in his neck and arms standing out in bold relief, his chest drenched with sweat, read the foolish doubt in Martay’s emerald eyes.
Thrusting deeply, he murmured, “You look and feel and smell like heaven.”
They spent the night in the cave, choosing a spot for sleeping where slices of silvery moonlight made the thick darkness around them less forbidding. Still, Martay clung tightly to Night Sun and slept with one eye open, wondering about bats and other night creatures that shared their quarters.
Sunrise seeping down to them was a welcome sight to her, and Night Sun didn’t have to ask twice if she would like to ride on for an hour or so before eating breakfast.
They continued to drop steadily south, in no particular hurry, until at midmorning Night Sun pulled up on the big black, stood in the stirrups, and grinned.
“We’re there,” he announced.
“We’re where?” said Martay.
“The
Minnekahta.
The Place of Warm Waters.”
Martay squinted and saw in the distance a white vaporous cloud rising from the rocks. “Night Sun! May I bathe in the warm waters?”
“That’s what they’re for,
Wicincala.
Come.” He kicked his horse into a trot and Martay anxiously followed.
She oohed and aahed with pleasure when she sat carefully down in the moccasin-shaped bathtub scooped out of the rock. And she squealed with childish delight when Night Sun splashed in with her. Seating himself behind her, he pulled her back between his bent knees and Martay lay comfortably relaxed in the hot, steamy water with her back resting on his chest.
“This is luxury,” she said. “Like a real honest-to-god bath in a real roomy tub.”
His dark head resting against the rock tub’s edge, Night Sun, his black eyes closed, arms wrapped around Martay’s waist, teased, “Is that what you prefer?”
She said, “Don’t tell me you don’t wish for it now and then, because I won’t believe you.”
He grinned, eyes remaining closed. “I did live in your world long enough to be seduced by some things.”
“Ah-ha,” she said, hugging his strong, slippery arms. “What else did you get used to?”
“Let’s see,” he mused lazily, opening his eyes and bending to sprinkle kisses over Martay’s wet shoulders. “Aged brandy. Fine cigars. Silk sheets. Good music.”
Martay clucked her tongue accusingly and raised a hand up to caress the damp hair by his ear. “I thought so. You’re a fraud, my handsome half-breed friend.”
“I’ve thought the same of myself many times,” he said, lifting his head.
Martay quickly turned about in his arms. “Night Sun,” she said anxiously, afraid she had gone too far; had hurt him, “I was teasing you, darling. I know that you are …”
“Caught between two worlds, Martay,” he interrupted, his black eyes intense. “I know that. I don’t fully belong in either.”
“That’s not true! I’ve seen you in the village, you are one of them. You’re a respected Lakota chieftain and you …”
“Am I? I’m not so sure. There have been times when I am not certain I would have returned to the Dakotas if not for my grandmother.” He toyed idly with Martay’s damp golden hair, twisting gleaming strands around his long fingers. “You guessed correctly. I grew soft in the East, and while some whites made it clear that I was not welcome in their presence, my fellow student and good friend, Drew Kelly, never minded that I was half Indian. “Nor,” Night Sun added teasingly, “did the ladies.”
Martay made a face. “I’ll just bet they didn’t!” She smiled then and told him, “Night Sun, you aren’t soft, you’re human. There are good things in both worlds; they are just different, that’s all.”
“Well,
Wicincala,
one thing is certainly the same, whether here in The Hills or in Chicago, Illinois.”
“Really? What is it?”
He wrapped her wet hair around his hand, urged her head back against his shoulder, and kissed her. “Making love.”
She smiled. “That’s true, I suppose, but I’d like, someday, to make love to you in a Chicago bed just to prove the point.”
“I’ll see to it,” said he. “In the meantime, how do you feel about making love here in the
Minnekahta?”
Martay stared at him, “Is that possible?”
“And pleasurable,” he smilingly assured.
She laughed happily and gave his wet, sensual mouth a kiss. “Who needs silk sheets?”
It was their final morning in the Black Hills.
When they rose, they would leave behind this lush, private world of splendor. And in twenty-four hours Night Sun would head south for Denver to face General William Kidd.
It was not quite sunup, but Night Sun was wide-awake. Martay was sleeping peacefully beside him, turned facing away, backed up against him, her warm back and bottom pressing his side. He eased up onto an elbow and looked at her.
A bare white shoulder peeked from under the warm furs; her golden hair was a silky mass of tumbled curls around her sleeping face. She looked as innocent as a child, and as helpless; and he wondered, for the thousandth time, if he hadn’t been grossly unfair to her.
Snatching her from a world of ease had been abhorrent enough, but then to make love to her when she was alone in his camp and vulnerable. That was unforgivable.