Wild Splendor

“Thank goodness,” she murmured when she saw that they were. She watched the soldiers stirring up screens of dust as they prepared their horses for traveling. When a stagecoach rumbled into the courtyard and came to a stop beside the crowd of waiting passengers, fear gripped her heart. She didn’t have much time. And even if she did escape from the house without Harold seeing her, how could she board the stagecoach without being caught?

Again she looked at the billowing dust from the horses, then at the stagecoach, partially hidden by the dust.

A thought came to her.

“That’s how,” she whispered. “If I hurry quickly enough.”

She grabbed her travel bag and began cramming clothes into it, not stopping to fold them neatly. That would come later, when she was far from the clutches of General Harold Porter.

Once her bag was bulging with whatever she could get into it, Leonida started to go to her door, then stopped short when she remembered the necklace. Setting her bag down, she went to her dresser, opened the drawer, and took the necklace from it. She gazed into the mirror and secured the necklace around her neck, sighing when she recalled the two times that Sage had placed it there.

She could still feel the touch and the heat of his fingers. She closed her eyes, allowing herself to recall the thrill of his kiss.

Then she was jolted back to the present when again she heard the commotion outside her window. She did not have any time to waste.

It had not been her destiny to love Sage, nor had it been his to love her.

She went to her door and unlocked it. Scarcely breathing, she peeped around the corner. When she saw no activity in the corridor, she rushed from the room, through the parlor, and out the front door.

She was soon lost in the haze of dust and even had to feel her way across the courtyard. When she reached the stagecoach and found that she was the last to board, she threw her travel bag up to the driver and took only a moment to glance over her shoulder toward the house that her father had so lovingly shared with her.

Then with tears warming the corners of her eyes, she hastily boarded the stagecoach.

“Lord have mercy, Leonida,” said Carole, the mother of a five-year-old son, as Leonida squeezed onto the seat with them and two other children and women fitted tightly together. “I was wondering when you were coming. I thought you weren’t going to make it. The stagecoach should be leaving any time now.”

“Yes, I know,” Leonida said, giving Carole a wavering glance. Then she looked slowly around her at how many were squeezed in. Besides Carole’s son, Trevor, who was snuggled onto his mother’s lap, his eyes wide with fear, there were four other adults and five children, squashed into a space hardly big enough to breathe, much less move.

It was obvious that this flight was an act of desperation. The fear of Indians was quite evident in the depths of each of their eyes.

Leonida herself was not all that afraid, for she was too angry and disgusted with Harold to consider that she had as much reason to be afraid as those settlers whose lives had been snuffed out the previous evening.

And she knew that no matter how many soldiers escorted this stagecoach, if Indian renegades wanted to stop the stagecoach and murder everyone, they could.

“Leonida, are you afraid?”

A tiny voice brought her out of her deep, troubled thoughts. She looked down at Trevor and put a hand on his brow, smoothing a lock of raven-black hair out of his eyes.

“Am I afraid?” she said, gazing down into wide, dark eyes that reminded her of someone else’s eyes in their darkness.

Sage.

Oh, if she could just forget that she had ever met him.

Her hand went to her throat, where the squash blossom necklace lay. As long as she had that necklace with her, she would always be reminded of Sage.

“Well, are you?” Trevor persisted, reaching a hand to Leonida’s arm, giving it a slight shake. “Leonida? Tell me.”

Leonida turned to Carole. “Can I hold him for a little while?” she asked, reaching out to Trevor.

Carole nodded and moved Trevor into Leonida’s arms. Leonida snuggled the child close, even though she was already almost too hot to breathe. “Honey, let’s not talk of being afraid,” she murmured. “Let’s make this story time instead. Would you like me to tell you and the other children stories to get your minds off your fears? My father was a master storyteller. I’d love to share some of his stories with you.”

Carole smiled warmly over at Leonida, as did the rest of the mothers. All of the children chimed in at the same time, telling Leonida that they wanted to hear her stories. Leonida began telling the story of the frogs who ate too much bread and blew up like balloons and floated away, and the one about twin rabbits that had nothing better to do than to eat the flowers in the gardens in the cities; because of this habit they were turned into flowers themselves.

Leonida continued telling her special stories until the children had all drifted off into a sound sleep. Left awake were the mothers, within whose eyes lay the haunting fear not only of what lay before them but also of what they had left behind them—their beloved husbands, left to settle the differences between the whites and the redskins.

Leonida lifted Trevor over onto Carole’s lap, then leaned her face closer to the window, trying to inhale a breath of fresh air. Her mind was not on any soldier; instead it was on the handsome Navaho chief whose life was soon to be turned topsy-turvy.

Chapter 6