Wild Splendor

She jumped with alarm when someone came upon them from behind. She wrenched herself away from Sage, then laughed softly and relaxed when she found sweet and frail Pure Blossom standing there, the squash blossom necklace held between her hands.

“Yours,” Pure Blossom said, holding the necklace over toward Leonida. “Take. Please take and keep.”

In her mind’s eye Leonida was recalling the very instant when Harold had taken the necklace from her. It gave her much pleasure that she was being given a second chance to have it, and to defy him at the same time.

“It is so lovely,” Leonida said as Pure Blossom draped it across her fingers, then stepped back, smiling from ear to ear.

Leonida turned to Sage. “I know that your sister speaks good enough English, but how can I say ‘thank you’ to her in Navaho?” she asked.

“Thank you is not usually spoken in words, but performed instead with deeds,” Sage said, then smiled. “But you are not Navaho. You can say Uke-he to my sister.”

Leonida turned back, smiling. “Uke-he, Pure Blossom,” she murmured.

Flattered, Pure Blossom nodded, then ran back to the campsite and joined the others.

“Your sister is so sweet,” Leonida said, admiring the necklace.

“All of my people are good,” Sage said, then took the necklace from Leonida’s hands and stepped behind her. Leonida could not help but tremble when his fingers touched her neck as he fastened the necklace.

When he stepped around in front of her again, his fingers now on her shoulders, Leonida’s breath was stolen as he moved his lips toward hers, his dark eyes burning like fire. As his lips covered hers in a quivering, lingering kiss, everything within her seemed to blend into something sweet and wonderful.

Yet, fearing these tumultuous feelings, knowing that Sage would soon be gone, she wrenched herself free and quickly mounted her horse and rode away before he had a chance to ask her why.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she knew that she would never forget the hurtful questioning in his eyes as she rode away. It was as though she was the one who was going to betray him, or even that she may have already been guilty of it.

Her hair loose and flying in the wind, her silk dress hiked past her knees, Leonida bent low and rode hard out into the open, away from the creek, away from the wondrous, sweet sounds of night, and away from the man that she now knew she loved with all of her heart and soul.

“Why?” she cried to the heavens. “Why did I ever have to meet him? Why did I have to fall in love?”

Her heart seemed to drop to her feet when she caught sight of a horseman riding toward her in the distance.

“Harold,” she gasped, drawing the reins tightly. As her horse skittered to a sudden stop, she tried to straighten her hair, and then her skirt, dreading the questions and even more the answers that she might have to give him.

While she tried to make herself more presentable, her fingers came in contact with the necklace, and she groaned.

“I will not allow him to remove it from my neck twice,” she finally decided, lifting her chin stubbornly.

She gave him a cold look of defiance when he wheeled his horse to a stop beside hers.

“What is the meaning of this?” he said in a feral snarl, frowning at her. “Where the hell have you been? And look at you. You look like some wild thing, your hair all blown, your lovely dress all wrinkled and soiled.”

She refused to tell him where she had been, or with whom, knowing that it was enough for him to know that she had fled because of what he was planning with Kit Carson and the others.

She saw him turn pale and his eyes widen with horror when he discovered the necklace around her neck. “My God, woman, isn’t that the same necklace . . . ?” he said.

He reached a hand toward her to yank it off.

Leonida covered the necklace with her hand. She glared over at him. “Don’t you dare,” she threatened, then rode away from him, at least for the moment smiling triumphantly.

Chapter4

. . . the sunflower turns to her god when he sets,

The same look which she turned when he rose.

—THOMAS MOORE

The mountain shapes were softer than the skies. Canyon wrens darted in and out of the mesquite, trilling their startling but melodious songs.