Lance’s sister was scarcely any more friendly. Huwuni, which meant Dawn, had two sons of her own, as well as a daughter—a mere baby whom she carried on her back strapped in a cradleboard. Huwuni refused to let Summer look at the child, and laughed at her effort to make pemmican, which was concocted by pounding wild berries and walnuts together with dried meat and then adding tallow and marrow fat.
“You are a worthless wife,” Dawn observed disdainfully, according to Short Dress’s translation.
Fights Bear’s other two wives said something similar, only their remarks were more subtle. Summer needed no translation, though, to know that she didn’t measure up to their standards.
Their scorn made her feel so unworthy, so alone—and at the same time, more sympathetic toward Lance’s struggle to gain acceptance in her world. Such blind bigotry was no worse than what Lance had endured from whites for so many years.
Yet Summer gritted her teeth and bore the adversity with grim fortitude. She was determined not to shame Lance before his people, or give his grandmother the satisfaction of defeating her. Besides, her sister was no doubt suffering worse as a captive, Summer knew. She could endure any hardship as long as in exchange she could expect help in rescuing Amelia.
To her infinite gratitude, the search had begun. As agreed, Fights Bear had sent out emissaries to various neighboring bands with the power to negotiate for Amelia’s release. In the interim all Summer could do was wait—and work.
At least Lance seemed sympathetic. When he joined her in bed the second evening, he no longer appeared bent on revenge, thankfully showing no intention of repeating his mortifying, maddening, deliberately suspended seduction of the previous evening. And when she rolled nervously on her side to give him plenty of room and couldn’t stifle a muffled moan, he reacted with concern.
“What is it?” he murmured in the darkness.
“Nothing.” Summer shook her head ruefully. “Perhaps I’m not as strong as I thought. My muscles aren’t accustomed to hauling water and wood, at any rate.”
He didn’t reply, but a moment later she felt his callused hand glide up her bare back. Summer tensed as his fingers closed gently over her shoulder, fearing a repetition of last night, with him leaving her aroused and unfulfilled. Instead Lance began slowly to knead her sore muscles. Summer stifled another groan at the discomfort, and yet his careful ministrations had an incredibly welcome effect.
She closed her eyes gratefully and let her head fall back, savoring the texture of his work-roughened palms massaging her skin, the feel of his long, hard, sensitive fingers tracing the curves of her shoulders…her arms, her back…pressing gently…lightly rubbing in slow, rotating strokes…magically relieving the tight, knotted muscles. It was sensual and yet soothing, as if he wanted nothing more in the world than to comfort her.
After a time she could feel the tautness and tension draining out of her, the pain begin to dissipate…could feel her aching body relaxing enough to sleep.
She saw little of Lance during the days, although she knew he’d been hunting because he brought back two bucks for the women to skin and butcher. Comanche warriors, she learned from observation and from the loquacious Short Dress, bore the responsibility for hunting game and making raids, and that was about all. A warrior saw to the safety and well-being of his family and therefore his band, but the only duties he performed regularly were caring for his weapons and his horses.
Otherwise a warrior spent his time lazing about the camp, smoking and talking, playing games or engaging in sporting feats, or engrossed in personal grooming. A man might fill endless hours simply combing and greasing and braiding his long hair, Summer learned to her curiosity and resentment. She herself was afforded only moments each day for her own grooming. In contrast to a husband, a Comanche woman had little time to preen; her life was occupied by endless, back-wrenching work. And she received little appreciation for it. Indeed, a warrior seemed to show his horses greater affection and consideration than he did his wives.
Short Dress didn’t seem to mind the inequities, however. “It is our way,” she said with a shrug. “A horse carries a warrior into battle and to hunt the buffalo, whereas a woman is only good for unimportant tasks.”
Working alongside Short Dress did at least give Summer the opportunity to learn more about Comanche customs, some of which made her wince—like eating the raw liver and heart of a freshly killed buffalo (considered a delicacy) and drinking its warm blood or curdled milk from its udder. The first time she saw the dozens of dried human scalps hanging from a lodge pole in Fights Bear’s tepee, she recoiled in horror. The grisly sight brought home more than anything else just how brutal and ruthless a people the Comanche were—a fact she had momentarily forgotten while accepting Fights Bear’s hospitality.
As a Texan she’d always deplored the Comanches and their murderous ways, yet after listening to Short Dress, Summer began to realize that from their viewpoint, they were fighting for sheer survival. Not a single person in the camp hadn’t had at least one immediate family member killed by whites.
“Wasp Lady has lost many relatives,” Short Dress said sadly. “Her husband and several sons, as well as two granddaughters. Can you not understand why she looks at your white skin and sees only an enemy?”
Furthermore, acts that white society often considered barbaric, Comanche culture viewed as only natural and right, many of which were rooted in spiritual beliefs. The taking of a scalp, for example, wasn’t done for the purpose of torture, but because it destroyed an enemy’s soul and prevented it from returning to the world and plaguing the People, which was more effective than killing the body.
To the Comanche, their code of behavior was simple. They raided for horses to increase their wealth and prestige, took Mexican and white captives as slaves to make their work easier and to bear their children, and made war to avenge a wrong or to turn back the tide of white immigrants. They hated passionately the settlers who had overrun their hunting grounds and driven the buffalo from the plains, leaving their children to starve, and decimated their camps with epidemics of cholera and smallpox. They especially abhorred the Texans, who had dishonored treaties and claimed their lands and forced them onto crowded reserves. Texans were enemies to be fought to the death.
Lance’s mother had discovered that bitter truth shortly after arriving in Texas, Summer knew from what her brother had once told her. Charlotte Calder’s white family had been killed in a Comanche raid, while she was taken captive by their leader. Short Dress knew little about Lance’s mother, however, since their rescue had occurred long before the Mexican woman’s own captivity.
Working with the women, though, did allow Summer to learn more about the enigmatic man she had married. Her third day in camp, she was put to work with a bone knife, scraping a deer hide that had been staked out on the ground, a task that abraded her knuckles raw and strained her back. Kneeling beside her, Short Dress was softening another hide with a mixture of animal brains, tree bark, and grease as she explained how Lance had become a Comanche.
“I had been with the band three years when he arrived in camp,” Short Dress said with a smile. “I remember Pakawa called for a feast to celebrate the return of his son to the People.”
According to Short Dress, young Lance had come searching for his heritage and his father. He’d been accepted guardedly into the band, yet as a boy, he’d endured the cruel taunts and scorn of the other youths, for he couldn’t ride half as well, or shoot a bow and arrow at all, or steal horses from under the nose of an enemy. He’d worked like a demon, though, to become a worthy warrior, practicing hour after countless hour until he could hold his own with all but the most skilled boys his age.
And he’d had good teachers. His father, Pakawa, which meant Kills Something, had been a great war chief, a position of leadership that was earned by deed, not inherited, in the Comanche culture. His older brother, Fights Bear, who had also accepted responsibility for training Lance, had eventually become a war chief.
“Lance wouldn’t talk about his father when I asked,” Summer admitted, “except to say that he was dead. Do you know how it happened?”
Short Dress glanced cautiously over her shoulder. “The People do not care to speak of the dead, but I will tell you since you ask. Pakawa was the bravest of warriors. Sí, the People still sing songs about his courage. One day he led a war party against the white soldiers, and allowed his son, Sharp Lance, your husband, to accompany him for the first time into battle. Kanap-Cheetu was not called Sharp Lance then. It is a name of honor, for only the bravest warriors are allowed to carry a spear into battle.
“But that day the evil whites had too many guns. Pakawa’s medicine was not good. His chest was pierced by a white bullet. Kanap-Cheetu took up his father’s lance and shield and stood over the fallen body of Pakawa to protect him from the blows of the white soldiers, until they could be driven away. It was a great deed—there is none greater to us. Sharp Lance’s bravery was much talked about among our people. But he cared nothing for that. His grief was great when Pakawa died. Afterward he had a powerful vision. It told him to return to the whites, his mother’s people. Wasp Lady agreed he must follow his vision and gave her blessing.”
Greatly intrigued, Summer mentally filed away the tale to ask Lance about when next she saw him.
The next time came that afternoon, although she had no chance to speak to him, for he was engaged in some kind of sporting contest o