Maddie’s heart jumped to her throat and began to pound. Whatever the man did to her, she had to bear. She could not risk Laurel’s being hurt.
She realized from the way he looked at her that he knew what she was thinking. And Maddie could tell that her revulsion wasn’t displeasing to him. “Come over here and give me a kiss.”
It was perhaps the longest walk of her life as she went toward him and tried to prepare herself for touching the man.
It was at that moment that an arrow went flying toward the man. It missed his head by only an inch and stuck into a tree a foot away from him.
The man’s reactions were slow, Maddie was glad to see. She had thrown herself to the ground while the man was still standing and staring stupidly at the arrow. Maddie looked up at the arrow and saw that it was Crow, and she felt some tears of joy come to her eyes.
“Get down,” she said to the man. “Indians.”
She looked at the naked fear on the man’s face and knew that he, like most of the men now in the West, was from the East. His knowledge of Indians was what he’d heard around campfires at night—stories that were the equivalent of ghost stories and had about as much to do with the truth as ghost stories.
“What is it?” he whispered, fear in his voice.
“I hope we aren’t being attacked. How are you at surviving torture?”
He turned to look at her, his eyes wide. “Torture?”
“I’ve heard that the Indians around here have vowed to kill all white men they catch out alone. Their hatred of the white man has increased since the white man has been taking the sacred yellow rock from their land.” She hoped that Hears Good was close enough to hear, because if he was, he was having a good laugh over this. Any Indian who had an ounce of brains knew that a good horse and rifle were worth all the yellow dust in the world.
“I’m getting out of here,” the man said, and started to get up.
She caught his pant leg. “Wait! I want to see my sister.”
“You’re more fool than I thought you were if you think I’d bring a kid like her out here.”
Maddie felt panic rising in her. It didn’t matter that her father’s friend, Hears Good, was near her, not if the man didn’t have Laurel. She grabbed him by the shirtfront. “Where’s my sister?”
“How the hell do I know? I’m just a messenger.” He jerked away from her, but she caught him again.
“Where is she? Who does know about her? Who has her?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” He gave her a shove that sent her sprawling, then started running up the hill.
Maddie was right behind him. “You said that you’d have my sister here.”
As he mounted his horse, he looked down at her. “You oughta be glad I didn’t bring her, what with Indians all around.”
She grabbed his bridle. “You don’t have her, do you? This is all a joke. Laurel is safe somewhere and I haven’t been told.”
The man reached into his canvas pants. “Here,” he said, and flung something to the ground, then jerked the bridle out of her grasp. “I’ll see you in the next place. Bring something else. Bring gold.” He started to rein his horse away, but then, with a nervous look around, he glared down at her. “None of this ain’t any of my business, and I don’t care nothin’ about any of you, but, lady, I’ll give you some advice: They don’t like that army man of yours snoopin’ around. They don’t like it at all, and if he sticks his nose where it don’t belong, that little girl is gonna be killed. They’re a mean bunch.”
Maddie grabbed the bridle again. “Have they hurt her?”
“Not yet they ain’t, but then, you been obeyin’ them so far, ain’t you?” With that, he reined his horse away and started traveling west as fast as the terrain would allow him to move.
Maddie stood there, stunned for a moment, and then she began to frantically search the ground for what the man had thrown down. It wasn’t difficult to find. It was a dirty linen handkerchief tied into a knot. She sat down and, with shaking hands, carefully untied the knot.
When she had it unwrapped, she drew in her breath. There, lying on the linen, was the gold and sapphire ring that Maddie had sent Laurel from Italy just last year. Their mother had written that Laurel was so proud of the ring that she never took it off.
Carefully, Maddie rolled the linen back around the ring and held it in her palm. She wasn’t going to cry; she wasn’t even going to allow herself to feel. They did have Laurel.
She looked around her at the trees in the fading light. “Hears Good?” she said softly, but no one answered. Right now what she most wanted was to see and talk to someone familiar. “Hears Good,” she said louder, but still no answer.
She puckered her lips and gave a whistle that imitated the call of the mountain lark, but no answering call came to her.
When she tried to stand, she found that her legs were shaking. Unsteadily, she made her way to the tree where the arrow was. She pulled it out and looked at it. It had the two tiny marks on it that were Hears Good’s symbol.