Wyoming Tough

Chapter THIRTEEN




TANK AND CANE MET THEM at the emergency room. They hugged their pale, worn brother and choked up at the thought of how close he’d come to death.

“You let her come out after me alone,” Mallory accused them.

“You can thrash us when you’re better. Honest, we’ll break you a pine limb,” Cane promised.

Tank grinned. “But look what she did. She saved you.”

Morie beamed. “Yes, I did,” she agreed. “Despite the best efforts of my brother and mother and father and your brothers and Darby.”

“We’re all relieved,” Cane said, smiling at her. “But she did what none of us could have done. Bascomb would have shot us on sight….”

There was a commotion in the hall followed by angry footsteps and a loud voice.

“Dad!” Morie exclaimed, because she recognized that voice.

King Brannt stormed into the examination room with flashing black eyes, trailed by a hospital clerk and a resident.

“Oh, Dad!” Morie ran and hugged him close. “I’m okay. It’s all right!”

“Where is he?” They could hear Shelby’s voice in the hall.

“Just follow the trail of bodies,” Cort answered with a laugh.

“Mom! Cort! What are you doing here?” she exclaimed, hugging them, too.

“We were ten minutes behind you,” King said, “but we couldn’t get anybody to tell us anything, and they—” he pointed at Cane and Tank “—wouldn’t answer their damned phones. I had to yell at a detective and a sheriff to find out anything!”

“You shouldn’t yell at people. It’s undignified,” Shelby said gently.

He glared at her. “It’s justified when you’re scared to death that your daughter’s been killed!”

The resident and the hospital clerk belatedly understood King’s rampage. They smiled and left. The resident was back in a minute, however, to check out Mallory.

“Exposure, dehydration, some evidence of bruising on the ribs and a dislocated shoulder, but the tests don’t reveal any broken bones or internal injuries,” he told them. “You were very lucky, Mr. Kirk. Far luckier than your assailant. They’ve just taken him to the local hospital for an autopsy.”

“What?” King exclaimed.

“Killed himself,” the resident explained. He looked at Morie and shook his head. “If my wife had done what you did tonight, I’d have eaten her alive verbally before I hugged her to death. Does foolhardy behavior run in your family?”

“Yes, it does!” Shelby volunteered, pointing toward her husband and her son.

“Well, Mr. Kirk will be all right,” the resident said with a smile. “He just needs rest and something for pain and a little patching up. We’ll take care of that right now.”

“Patching up,” Mallory muttered. “It’s just some cuts. I get worse than this doing ranch work every day.”

“Me, too,” King agreed, approaching him with his hands in his pockets. “Got kicked by a bull two days ago and had to have stitches.”

“I got stepped on by one last week,” Mallory said. “Damned things do it deliberately.”

King stared at him. “You’d better be good to her.”

“I will,” Mallory replied quietly.

“You bet he will,” Tank seconded. “Or we’ll make him divorce her and I’ll marry her and be good to her.”

“She can marry me if she decides to get rid of him.” Cane jerked his thumb toward Mallory. “I still have most of my own teeth and I can do the tango,” he claimed with a straight face, because he’d heard from Mallory about Morie’s fascination with the dance.

“I’m learning,” Mallory protested. “It takes time. I need somebody to teach me.”

Morie pursed her lips. “I think I’m up to that.”

Mallory’s dark eyes twinkled. “I think I’ll learn even faster if you teach me. And there are a few things I can teach you, too.”

“There are?” she asked, with mock fascination.

“Yes. Like how not to go riding off into the dark looking for escaped convicts!” he burst out. “What if he’d killed you?”

“Then I guess you’d have to find somebody else to teach you how to tango,” she said simply.

Mallory let out an exasperated sigh.

“See?” King asked him. “Now you know how it’s going to be. I’ve put up with it since she was old enough to stamp her foot at me and say no. It’s your turn now.”

Morie just laughed.



SHE DIDN’T GO HOME with her family. She moved into the big house at the Kirk ranch, into her own room, and Mallory bought her a beautiful set of rings, but emeralds instead of rubies. He wasn’t duplicating the Fortune 500 heir’s offering, he assured her. They were engaged although he’d never actually asked her to marry him. Shelby was helping with invitations. The ceremony would be held at the ranch in Texas.

The night before they flew back, Mallory held her in his lap in the recliner in the living room, after his brothers had discreetly gone to bed. He kissed her hungrily.

“I’m starving,” he groaned as his hands found their way under her flimsy blouse and molded the soft skin. “I’ve never been so hungry in all my life.”

She smiled under the warm press of his mouth. “Me, either.”

“But we’re going to wait anyway.”

She laughed. “Yes.”

He lifted his head. He was breathing hard. “Remind me again why we’re going to do that, when nobody else does?”

“Just because the whole world’s doing it, doesn’t make it right in the view of people of faith,” she replied simply. “I want a wedding night. A real one. Not an after-the-fact one that just comes after the wedding ceremony. I want oceans of lace in the gown I choose, the excitement of the ceremony and the reception, and the anticipation of how wonderful it’s going to be during the night ahead. There’s only one first time. Mine is going to be exactly the way I want it. Period.”

He sighed. “Principles are very cumbersome sometimes.”

She leaned forward and nibbled his lower lip. “You’ll be happy you waited.”

“Are you sure about that?” he mused.

She nodded. “Positively.”

“All right. I’ll have a cold shower and a colder beer and go to bed.”

“Good man.”

He made a face. “Not willingly.”

“You’re a good man,” she disagreed. “And I’ll be very proud to be your wife.”

He smiled. “My beautiful Morena,” he whispered. “Married to the ugliest tough man in Wyoming.”

“Liar,” she chided. “You’re the most gorgeous man alive to me.”

His eyebrows arched. “Me?”

“You. It isn’t the way you look that makes you gorgeous. It’s the man you are.”

He flushed.

She grinned. She kissed him again and got to her feet. “We leave first thing in the morning. Mavie and Darby have to come, too, you know.”

“They know, too. They’re packed already.”

She was somber for a moment. “I’m really sorry about Gelly. They say she’ll probably do twenty years if they convict her.”

“I’m sorry I blamed you,” he replied, hugging her close. He sighed. “I had a close call there. She really had me with blinders on.”

“You woke up in time, though. That’s what counts.”

“I suppose it does.”



THE WEDDING WAS THE BIGGEST event Branntville could remember since Shelby Kane married King Brannt. The guest list was incredible. It included famous movie stars and television newsmen, sports stars, politicians and even European royalty.

Daryl was on the guest list. He had come by earlier to congratulate them, and to tell Morena he was happy for her. He hadn’t been offended that Morena sent the rings back instead of returning them herself, especially when he knew what she’d risked to save Mallory’s life. He was just happy that she was safe.

However, he added ruefully, now that he was no longer engaged, his enthusiastic parents were once again offering him as an entrée to any eligible young woman. He was resigned, he told her, to being hunted. But who knew, they might find him someone really nice. Like his friend Morena. Mallory stood by, not very patiently, while they spoke. But Daryl shook hands with him and after a few minutes, they were all smiling.

As they settled into the wedding ceremony, Morena, in a designer gown that one of Shelby’s former colleagues had made up for her, was radiant and so much in love that she seemed to glow. Her black hair, festooned with pale white pearl flowers, was loose around her shoulders under a veil of illusion with pearl highlights that covered her face. Her gown was traditional, with puff sleeves and a keyhole neckline, a long train…and it was accented with imported Belgian lace. Her jewelry was some of the finer pieces from her mother’s collection along with a borrowed jeweled hair clasp from her shy maid of honor, Odalie Everett, who walked down the aisle tall and proud on the arm of Cane Kirk to stand with Mallory, pointedly ignoring Cort Brannt along the way.

The organ sounded the “Wedding March” as Morena walked slowly down the aisle of the ranch chapel to Mallory Kirk, who was standing at the altar with both his brothers as best man. She carried a bouquet of white and yellow roses tied with yellow ribbon. She looked at Mallory and almost tripped at the expression in his dark, loving eyes. What a long way we’ve come, she thought.

She looked up at him and the rest of the ceremony went by so quickly that she almost missed it. She let him put the ring on her finger, said the appropriate words and peered up at her new husband as he lifted the fingertip veil from her face and saw her for the first time as a wife. It was an old, beautiful tradition that both had looked forward to, in a time when tradition was routinely trampled and ridiculed by the world at large.

“My beautiful wife,” he whispered, and smiled as he bent to kiss her with tender reverence.

She kissed him back, sighing as if she had the world in her arms. And she did.

The reception was fun. They fed each other cake, posed for pictures for the press and the photographer who was documenting the wedding, and danced to the live orchestra playing contemporary tunes.

“What a long way we’ve come,” Mallory murmured into her ear as he waltzed her around the room.

“Funny, I was thinking that when we were standing at the altar,” she exclaimed.

“Reading each other’s minds already,” he teased.

She nodded. Her eyes searched his. The electricity between them arced like a live current. She caught her breath at the intensity of feeling there.

“Not yet,” she whispered.

He nodded, but his eyes never left hers. “Not yet.”



TWO LONG HOURS LATER, they climbed into the limousine that was taking them to San Antonio, where they were spending their wedding night. The next day, they were off to the Caribbean, to a private island owned by a friend who was loaning them his estate for a week. It would be a dream honeymoon. Nothing to do but learn about each other and lie in the sun. Morena was looking forward to it.

They checked in to the suite Mallory had reserved. The bellboy was tipped. The door was locked. The phone was unplugged. Mallory took Morena by the waist and looked into her eyes for so long that she gasped with the feeling that passed between them.

He reached out with a long forefinger and traced a path around a nipple which quickly became erect. She gasped.

“I’ve dreamed about this for weeks,” he whispered.

She nodded, breathless. “So have I.”

He bent and nuzzled his nose against hers. The pressure of his finger increased, teasing and withdrawing. “You made me wait,” he whispered with patient amusement. “Now I’m going to make you wait.”

His mouth opened on hers. He kissed her slowly, with a mastery she was only just beginning to recognize. His big hands were deft and sure as he peeled her out of the exquisite dress and the slip and bra underneath. He kissed his way down her trembling body to her panty line as he eased the last flimsy scraps of clothing from her. His mouth opened on her flat belly and she cried out as his hands moved lower.

He let her go long enough to turn down the bedcovers. He lifted her, kissed her tenderly and laid her on the cool sheets. His eyes made a meal of her nudity as his hands went to his coat. He removed it, and then the tie. He dropped them onto a chair and smiled as his hands worked buttons on his shirt to disclose a broad, muscular chest covered with thick, curling black hair.

She thought about how that was going to feel against her bare breasts and she moved, helpless, on the sheets, shivering a little at the intensity of his gaze.

He chuckled softly. “Anticipation is fun,” he murmured.

“Says you,” she teased, breathless.

He removed his shoes and socks, his belt, his trousers. Then, slowly, the black boxer shorts he fancied.

She stared at him with red cheeks. She’d seen photographs. Most women had, at some point, even if it was only by looking over a classmate’s shoulder at a magazine. But she hadn’t dreamed that men looked so, so…

As she looked, he began to swell from the pleasure of her rapt gaze, and she did gasp.

He eased down beside her on the bed. “As you might have guessed,” he whispered in a voice gone husky with desire, “I’m a little better endowed than most men. But I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Bosh.” His mouth smoothed over her firm, pretty little breasts. “Of course you are. It’s the first time.”

“Of course I am,” she agreed huskily. “You don’t mind…?”

He lifted his head and looked at her with open shock. “What?”

“I read this article,” she said. “Some men said they wouldn’t touch a virgin because they didn’t want to have to worry about complications…”

“They did?” His hand slid down her belly and he smiled as she tried to withdraw when he touched her. “Easy,” he whispered. “This is part of it. Don’t be embarrassed. It’s natural, what you’re feeling.”

She didn’t know what she was feeling. Shock, at first, at being touched in a place where she only touched herself when she was bathing. And then, more shock, because when his hand moved, there was so much pleasure that she cried out and clutched at his arms.

“Unexpected, was it?” he teased gently. “Oh, it gets better.”

His mouth opened on her soft breasts while he touched her, tasting and exploring in a veritable feast of the senses that lifted her in a helpless arch toward the source of all that delight.

“This may be a little uncomfortable,” he whispered at her mouth as his hand moved again.

She flinched at first. But when she realized what he was doing, she didn’t fight. She lay back, biting her lower lip, until he finished.

When he lifted his hand, there was a trace of blood. He reached beside the bed for a box of tissues and wiped it off, looking into her eyes the whole time.

“It wasn’t bad,” she whispered.

He nodded. “It will hurt less, now, when I go inside you,” he whispered, moving down against her. He nudged her legs apart matter-of-factly, looking down. “I’ll go slow.”

“Okay.”

She lifted her arms to him and welcomed the warm, slow crush of his chest against her breasts. She gasped as she felt him at the secret place, the dark place that had never known contact such as this. Her nails bit into his hard arms as he nudged at her gently.

He reassured her. “Nothing to be nervous about,” he said softly. “Nothing at all.”

His hand moved in between their bodies and touched her. This time she didn’t flinch. She lifted up to it and shivered as pleasure throbbed into her like molten fire. She moaned and closed her eyes, so that she could savor it.

The pressure grew little by little, tracing and teasing, and then firm, and insistent, and maddening.

“Please!” she cried.

“Yes.”

His hand moved and his body replaced it. He moved into her deliberately, confidently, resting on his forearm as he positioned her for even greater pleasure and guided her movements.

She sobbed. The tension was growing, building. She couldn’t think. She could barely breathe. She focused on his face, coming closer, moving away, on the rhythm that brushed her against the mattress with every slow, deep thrust of his hips. She shivered as the pleasure kept building and building and building, breath by aching breath, until the whole world reduced itself to the sound of their bodies sliding against each other, the faint scraping sound of the sheets as they moved over them, the building rasp of their breathing.

“Mallory,” she sobbed, arching, shuddering.

“Now, baby,” he whispered, and the rhythm increased and his body became demanding, as control slipped away. “Now, now, now!”

She cried out, clutching him as she moved, too, desperate to twist up and meet that hard thrust, make it deeper, make it harder, make it, make it, make it…blaze up…like a furnace!

Her teeth bit into him as she climaxed, her body convulsing in a tense arch as she drowned in pleasure she’d never dreamed could exist. She was barely aware of his own rough movement, the hoarse cries of pleasure at her ears as he went over the edge with her. They clung together in ecstasy, as passion spent itself over a space of heated, mad seconds.

And even then, they couldn’t stop moving. She ground her hips up against his, pleading for more.

“Oh, don’t stop,” she pleaded.

“I can’t,” he whispered in a hoarse chuckle. “Sweet. So damned sweet. I thought I was going to die of it!”

“Me, too!”

He lifted his head as he moved down against her, watching her pleasure grow all over again. Her response delighted him, made him feel ten feet tall. She showed no sign of wanting to stop at all.

“Go ahead, gloat,” she whispered unsteadily.

“I love you,” he whispered back, and kissed her hungrily. “My brave, beautiful, unbelievably sexy wife. I’d die for you.”

She hugged him close. “I’d die for you.”

His mouth crushed down over hers. “I’m spent, baby,” he whispered against her lips. “But I can last a little longer. I’ll pleasure you as long as I can, okay?”

She wasn’t hearing him, or understanding him. She was in the grip of a fever so hot she thought she would burn to death. But finally, finally, she shuddered one last time and the tension snapped. She collapsed under him with a trembling sigh.

He rolled over beside her and gathered her close. “Satisfied?”

“Yes. I don’t understand,” she whispered into his throat.

“Women take longer than men do,” he explained. “But a man spends himself and it takes time for him to be able to go again. Women last a lot longer in passion.”

“Oh.”

He lifted his head and searched her eyes. “You were right.”

“I was? About what?”

He kissed her eyelids. “About waiting.” He looked at her solemnly. “Right now, I’m sorry that I ever had a woman in my life before I met you.”

She touched his mouth gently. “I’m not sure I’m sorry,” she whispered drily.

He lifted both eyebrows.

“You are very, very good in bed,” she mused. “From a beginner’s standpoint, I mean. I was afraid,” she confessed. “I’d heard some horror stories from other women about wedding nights. Especially about men losing control and hurting them badly.”

“Oh, I couldn’t hurt you,” he replied softly and kissed her again. “I love you too much. It had to be good for you, or it wouldn’t have been good for me at all.”

She smiled lazily and moved against him, but suddenly she winced.

He lifted an eyebrow. “Sore?”

She flushed.

He laughed indulgently. “It’s a side effect of headlong passion and abstinence. Not to worry, a couple of days’ rest and we’ll be back to normal. Meanwhile,” he added with a chuckle, “we might consider ordering food and watching something on pay-per-view. What do you say?”

She sat up, gingerly, and nodded. “That might be a good idea.”

He stood up, stretched and then grinned at her admiring gaze, picked her up and carried her into the bathroom. “But first we can have a nice relaxing shower and play doctor!”

She burst out laughing. Not only was marriage a passion feast, it also seemed to be the most fun she’d ever had.



A WEEK LATER, THEY WERE doing the tango in an exclusive club in Jamaica, right on the beach.

“I told you I’d learn quickly with the right teacher,” Mallory teased, kissing her ear as they moved around the room.

“Yes, and you did.”

“So did you,” he whispered outrageously.

She peered up at him mischievously. “I bought this book today.”

“You did? A book?” He leaned down. “What sort of book?”

“It’s a detailed book about how to, well, how to do stuff. With your husband.”

“I don’t have a husband,” he groaned. “What about me?”

“It’s a book for a woman about how to do stuff with her husband,” she informed him. “It’s very detailed.”

“Does it have pictures?” he asked with wide eyes.

She glared at him. “It doesn’t need pictures.”

“Then, can you demonstrate it for me?” he added, and his dark eyes were twinkling.

She laughed out loud. “Oh, I think I can do that.”

“Now?” he asked, stopping in the middle of the dance floor.

“Here?” she asked, horrified.

“How dare you?” he huffed. “I’m a decent, upright man, I am.”

“You can’t be upright while I demonstrate this book,” she pointed out. She pursed her lips. “You have to be in a reclining position.”

“This is getting better by the minute. Shall we go?”

He held out his arm. She put hers through it with a chuckle. “By all means. It might take some time,” she added as they left the room. “I’m not sure I’ve got it down pat just yet.”

“I promise not to complain, no matter how long it takes,” he assured her with laughing dark eyes.

It did take a very long time. But he kept his promise. He didn’t complain. Not even once.





Next month, don’t miss

THE SAVAGE HEART by Diana Palmer

This classic historical, set in Montana

and Chicago, Illinois, is available

for the first time since its original

publication in 1997!

Turn the page for a sneak peek of the romance between

Tess Meredith and Raven Following…





Prologue




Montana

Spring 1891

THERE WAS LIGHTNING in the distance where dark clouds settled low over the buttes. Spring storms, all lightning display at first, were common here, and Tess Meredith loved to watch them—especially now that she had a companion who seemed to have a legend about every one of these natural occurrences…and every unnatural one, too.

But even more than watching summer storms with her new and treasured friend, Tess liked to ride fast, hunt and fish, live in the outdoors enjoying nature and what she called “adventure.” Her father despaired of her ever marrying. Who would appreciate a young woman who had such accomplishments, not one of which had anything to do with traditional domestic occupations?

Today Tess looked quite different from the way she usually did and quite grown-up for a fourteen-year-old. Her blond hair was piled neatly on top of her head, rather than flying free; she was wearing a long cotton dress with a high neck, rather than rolled-up dungarees and one of her father’s shirts. Polished lace-up shoes replaced the scuffed boots she always wore. Her father had beamed when he’d seen her earlier. Of course, he wouldn’t say a chastising word to her on the subject of her dress or her unladylike pursuits. He was far too kind to do such a thing. It was the kindness in him, so deep and so sincere, that made him such a wonderful doctor, Tess believed, for many who practiced medicine had skill, but few had his way with patients.

She sighed and glanced over at Raven Following, the only man she’d ever known who treated her as an equal, not a silly child—or worse, a silly girl. He was a Sioux who had lived at Pine Ridge until about eight months ago. His shoulders, wide and powerful, did not move under the buckskins he wore. His long, thick black hair was braided and wrapped with narrow bands of ermine skins, and his strongly boned, handsome face was free of expression.

Looking at him, Tess was filled with melancholy and curiosity. What did Raven see? He seemed to see all manner of things around and in the far distance that she couldn’t. Sometimes it was difficult for her to believe he was only six or seven years older than she.

“Are you scared?” she suddenly asked.

“A warrior never admits fear.”

She smiled. “Oh, pardon me. Are you nervous, then?”

“Uneasy.” His lean, graceful fingers held a stick that he alternately toyed with and used to draw symbols on the ground. Now he was idly moving it from hand to hand. “Chicago is far away from here. I’ve never been to a white man’s city.”

“Papa says you’ll be educated there and afterward you can get a job. He knows a man who will give you work.”

“So he has told me.”

She touched his shoulder lightly. He didn’t like to be touched, not since he’d been so badly wounded in the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, where the fury of the Hotch-kiss guns of the soldiers had taken the lives of more than two hundred of his people, including his mother and two sisters. But Tess’s touch was different, and, she thought, tolerable to him, since she’d helped nurse him through the agonizing recovery from having his body riddled with U.S. Army–issue bullets.

“It will be all right,” Tess said, her voice gentle and, she hoped, reassuring. “You’ll like Chicago when you get there.”

“You are so very sure of that?” His black eyes were glittering with humor.

“Of course! After Mama died and Papa told me he was going to take a job doctoring on the reservations, I was scared to death. I didn’t know anybody out here, and I had to leave all my friends and relatives behind. But once I got to the West, it wasn’t bad at all.” She rearranged her skirt. “Well, it wasn’t too bad,” she amended. “I didn’t like the way the soldiers treated your people.”

“Neither did we,” he said drily. He paused, studying her, finally looking intently into her clear green eyes. “You father will be relieved when I am gone. He permits me to teach you things, but he grimaces when he sees you doing them.”

“He’s old-fashioned.” Tess laughed. “And the world is changing.” She looked at the distant buttes. “I want to help it change. I want to do things that women have never done.”

“You already do things that few white women do—skin a deer, track a doe, ride without a saddle, shoot a bow—”

“And sign and speak Lakota. All thanks to you, Raven. You’re a good friend and a good teacher. How I wish I could go to Chicago with you. Wouldn’t we have fun?”

He shrugged and began to draw symbols in the dust at his feet.

How graceful his hands were, Tess mused. His fingers were strong, yet lean, and his wrists were so finely boned, they appeared delicate beneath the long corded muscle of his forearm. He leaned forward, and her gaze traveled over his back. Tess winced. Beneath the buckskin shirt his flesh was puckered and pocked with scars, scars that would be there always to remind him of Wounded Knee.

It was a miracle, Tess’s father Harold had said, that Raven survived. Half a dozen bullets had torn into his upper back; one had punctured his lung, causing it to collapse. And that was not the worst of his injuries. Harold Meredith had done everything his medical training had taught him and then some to save Raven’s life, but at last he’d sought the help of a practitioner from a tradition far different from his own: he smuggled a Lakota shaman into Raven’s bedchamber.

Whether it was Harold’s or the shaman’s skill—or the skills of both—they would never know. But soon the Great Spirit smiled, and Raven began to recover. It was a long and painful journey back to health, and through it all Tess was at Raven’s side.

“Will you miss me?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said, smiling easily. “You saved my life.”

“No. Papa and your shaman did that.”

Raven Following was not a demonstrative man, but now he took her small white hand in his large dark one and held it. “You did it,” he said firmly. “You saved my life. I lived only because you cried so hard for me. I felt sorry for you and knew I could not be so rude and thoughtless as to disappoint your hopes by dying.”

She chuckled. “That’s the longest sentence I’ve ever heard from you, Raven—and the only one the least bit deceitful.” Her eyes sparkled.

He stood up, stretched lazily, then pulled her up beside him. His gaze slid over her flushed face. She was almost a woman, and she was going to be very pretty, perhaps beautiful. But she worried him. She felt things so deeply…with such strong emotion.

“Why?” she asked suddenly. “Why, why?”

He did not need to ask where her thoughts had carried her. Without hesitation, he said, “Because of what the Lakota did to Custer, I think. I have reflected on Wounded Knee for several months now, Tess. Some of the soldiers who opened fire on us, on the children—” his body stiffened for a moment as if he might be hearing once again the wails of terror and screams of pain from those children “—some of those soldiers,” he went on, “were from Custer’s surviving companies.” He looked at her intently. “I was six when we fought Custer, and I remember how the soldiers looked there, on the battlefield. Many of the women had lost sons and fathers and husbands to those men. My own father died there. The women took out their grief on the bodies of the dead soldiers on the Greasy Grass. It was bad.”

“I see.”

“No. And it is good that you don’t,” he replied, his face curiously taut. “I teased you before, Tess, but truly I would not have lived if you and your father had not been so brave…and so swift.”

“We left for the battlefield the instant we heard there had been fighting and that many were dying on that frozen ground.” Tess shivered and tears filled her eyes. “Oh, Raven, it was so cold, so bitterly cold. I shall never forget it, and I thank God we found you.”

“As I thank the Great Spirit that you and your father rescued me and tended my wounds and hid me in your wagon until we were out of South Dakota.”

“Lucky that Dad was being transferred to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. It was easy to pretend we’d found you on the roadside in Montana near Lame Deer. No one ever questioned our story—well, not to our faces anyway.”

He smiled. “I was not so lucky in my decision to visit my cousins in Big Foot’s band, though, was I?”

She shook her head. “You could have been safe in your lodge in Pine Ridge….”

“And my mother and sisters, too.” His voice had trailed off. Now, suddenly, he shook off his enveloping grief. “Come,” he said, “let us go back. Your father will be wondering where you are.”

She started to protest, but his gaze was even and quiet, and she knew that it would be like talking to a rock. She gave in with good grace and smiled at him.

“Will we ever see you again after you go?” she asked.

“Of course. I’ll come back and visit from time to time,” he promised. “Don’t forget the things I’ve taught you.”

“As if I could,” she replied. She searched his black eyes. “Why do things have to change?”

“Because they do.” In the distance, the sky became misty as the threatening clouds released a curtain of rain.

“Come. The rain will overtake us if we don’t hurry.”

“One more minute, Raven. Please, tell me something.”

“Anything,” he murmured.

“What did Old Man Deer do when we sat up here with him last week?”

Raven’s body stiffened slightly and he glanced away. “He performed a ritual. A very sacred one.” He looked fully at Tess. “It was a way of protecting you,” he said enigmatically. Then he smiled. “And we will say no more about it now.”