Clint raised his hand and backhanded Soft Wind across the face. “Shut up, squaw,” he grumbled as he untied the ropes around Lauralee’s ankles. “Mind your business. This has nothing to do with you.”
Soft Wind rubbed her aching jaw as she backed away from Clint. She eyed the woman again, then Clint, then without further thought, ran from the cabin.
Clint ran to the door. “Come back here, you bitch!” he shouted, then fell facedown halfway in and out of the door when Lauralee came up from behind him and butted him in the back with her throbbing, aching head.
Clint scrambled to his feet. He looked desperately through the trees and saw that he had lost sight of Soft Wind, then looked quickly at Lauralee as she tried to run past him.
“You ain’t goin’ nowhere,” Clint said, grabbing her by the arms, backing her up toward the bed. “You’re mine. All mine.” He laughed throatily. “I bet that Injun is goin’ wild about now, wonderin’ where you are, and who with. He won’t find me. My cabin is well hid. No one knows about it except for me and Soft Wind . . . and . . .”
He looked over his shoulder, having almost forgotten about Brian Brave Walker.
But when Lauralee kicked at him with her moccasined feet, he knew that he had enough on his hands here in the cabin. Let Soft Wind go. He’d be glad to be rid of her. And she knew enough not to tattle on him. He had warned her often enough about never telling anyone about how he treated her and the kid.
“Seems not only my kid, but now my wife, has run out on me,” Clint said, laughing boisterously. “Well, I was glad to be rid of Brian Brave Walker. I’m just as glad that my squaw is gone.” He leaned into Lauralee’s face. “Since you were so willin’ to be Dancin’ Cloud’s squaw, surely you won’t mind bein’ mine.”
Lauralee’s head was spinning. Not so much from pain, but from discovering that this man was Brian Brave Walker’s father!
Now she understood all too well why Brian hated and mistrusted white people so much. Surely he had been terribly mistreated by his father who was a white man!
She wished that her mouth wasn’t gagged. She had so much that she wanted to say to Clint McCloud!
Instead, she closed her eyes and prayed that Dancing Cloud would find this cabin and rescue her from this vile man. As she lay there she could not help but relive over and over again the rape and the murder of her mother all those years ago. She could hardly bear to think that she might follow in her mother’s footsteps and be victimized by the very . . . same . . . man. He surely would not want her to live to point an accusing finger at him.
* * *
Sobbing and frightened, Soft Wind ran blindly through the forest. She looked continuously over her shoulder, fearful of the moment that her husband would catch up with her. He would kill her. She knew that he would kill her. Had he not told her often enough that he would if she left him?
Even when he had left her for weeks and months at a time she had been too afraid to leave. She had known that he would search until every stone in the forest was upturned to find her.
“My people!” she sobbed, gazing up at the smoky haze that circled the mountain. “So near, yet so far. I must not go to them. I will bring danger to their very doorsteps!”
She stumbled over the roots of a tree that grew gnarled across the ground, then regained her balance and ran onward. “Brian Brave Walker!” she cried. “My son! My son! Where are you, my son? My baby. Where did my husband take our baby?”
She ran up a steep path. When she heard the sound of horse’s hooves behind her, she made a sharp turn and ran at breakneck speed through the trees.
Then her breath was stolen away and she screamed as she came to the brink of a cliff that plunged into a chasm cut by an ancient stream. She tried to stop, to steady herself, but toppled over and found herself hurtling through space.
She grunted with pain as she fell hard against the rocks below, her head making a cracking sound as it fell back against a boulder.
The black void of unconsciousness followed.
Dancing Cloud drew a tight rein and listened. His eyes narrowed. He had just heard the bloodcurdling scream of a woman.
“Lauralee?” he whispered, his blood turning cold at the thought of what may have happened to her.
He wheeled his white stallion around and edged his horse through the denseness of the forest and followed the route of the scream. He stopped again when he saw a cliff a short distance away.
Securing his horse’s reins beneath a rock, he ran to the ledge and looked downward. He was too high up to tell who lay on the rocks far below him.
Breathless, his pulse racing, he began making his way down the side of the cliff. . . .
Chapter 29
While we live, in love let us so persevere,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.
—ANNE BRADSTREET