Wild Splendor

Afterwards, they lay snuggled together. Leonida was stroking his perspiration-laced back. “I know that you have told me not to thank you for anything,” she whispered. “But, darling, I can’t help but thank you for what you did tonight. I understand why you were determined that we make love.”

He whisked her into his arms and gave her a kiss filled with heat, his body arching against hers as he drew her against him. Again he plunged himself into her. This time she responded without any hesitation, or with any thought of why she had ever shied away from him even for a moment.

* * *

Having succumbed to the need for sleep, Chief Four Fingers and his warriors had stopped and were now sleeping soundly in a canyon, unaware that they had been surrounded by soldiers. When the chief felt the nudge of a rifle barrel in his back, he awakened with a start, then slowly turned and looked up and saw Kit Carson standing over him. A soldier beside him held a rifle aimed at the Kiowa chief.

A commotion drew his gaze away. He scowled when he discovered his sentries being herded into the camp at gunpoint, their hands raised high into the air.

“Got a mite careless, didn’t you, Chief?” Kit said, chuckling low as Chief Four Fingers emitted a growl of anger. “I’ve had a hell of a time finding the Navaho. You’ve just handed yourself over to us on a silver platter, it seems. That’s not like you, Four Fingers. I’d have thought you’d be the last Indian this easy to find. But it’s about time. I’ve wanted the Kiowa no less than the Navaho. Once you’re all rounded up neat like, I expect the settlers will be able to sleep at night without their fingers wrapped around the barrel of a shotgun.”

“Get to your feet, Injun,” Lieutenant Nelson ordered Four Fingers. “You’ve a long way to travel to get to the reservation. You might as well get started now while the sun is low in the morning sky. You’ll be wishin’ for the shade of a canyon again soon enough.”

Chief Four Fingers moved slowly to his feet, looking guardedly around him, then glared down at Kit Carson. “Let us have council between us,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion. “There is information Four Fingers can trade with you in exchange for Four Fingers’ freedom. My band of Kiowa is less in number than Sage’s Navaho. Would you not rather capture them instead?”

Carson looked up at Four Fingers. “It is my intention to place the Kiowa and the Navaho on reservations,” he said blandly. “It is not my intention to make a bargain with one for the other. So, no council this time.” He motioned with his head toward the other herded-up Kiowa. “Join the others. As of today, your rank is no greater than those others who will walk the many miles with you to the reservation in New Mexico.”

Chief Four Fingers’ eyes narrowed. He leaned down closer to Kit Carson’s face. “The white woman who is now married to the Navaho Sage is not worth bargaining over?” he hissed. “Chief Four Fingers can direct you to Sage’s stronghold, where this woman and other white captives are being held. Is not that information worth the release of us few Kiowa? What harm can we wreak on the white pony soldiers in comparison to what Sage has already done? Give your word that I and my warriors can ride freely onward, then I give my word to you that I will give you accurate directions to Sage’s stronghold.”

Carson’s eyes widened with interest. He kneaded his chin, his eyes locked with the Kiowa chief’s. “You say that Leonida is now Sage’s wife?” he asked, confused by this bit of news. “How do you know this?”

“Chief Four Fingers trades with Sage,” he said. “I sought to trade for the beautiful white woman. Sage refused. He called her his wife. She spoke nothing against his declaration. So she is his wife.”

“You say you saw her,” Carson said, inhaling a quivering sigh. “That means you do know where Sage’s stronghold is.”

Chief Four Fingers nodded. “That is so,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “I will give you directions. You will give me and my warriors freedom. Do you not think it is a fair enough exchange?”

Carson’s eyes shifted, staring at the chief’s hand on which he displayed only four fingers. Then he looked slowly up at the chief again. “I vowed long ago that if I ever caught up with you, I would hang you,” he said. “Severing a finger from your hand was not enough vengeance for me for what you did so long ago against me. Although I have not written about it in my journals, and it is not something I have broadcasted for the world to know, my marriage to a lovely Indian maiden lasted only long enough for you to steal her away, rape her, and then leave her dying at my doorstep. I caught up with you after she told me who had done this to her, but it was a cursed day for me when you escaped after having only the one finger cut from your hand. I had meant for you to lose your fingers first, then suffer long and hard before I cut out your heart.”

“That was long ago when we both were young and foolish,” Four Fingers said, again unemotionally. “I had not yet been assigned my adult name. Because of you, I was appointed the name Four Fingers because it defined so well my appearance to those who would come across me on outings. So you see, white man who disfigured this Indian, at the age of twelve winters this act I am guilty of came as a careless prank of a youth trying to look big in the eyes of the older warriors. This was a challenge I could not say no to. If so, I would have been viewed as a woman in the eyes of the older warriors. I was next in line to be chief. I could not be labeled a ‘woman’ and be a chief in the same lifetime.”

“Yes, I know all of that,” Kit Carson said, his voice sounding exhausted.

“And you also know the worth of my information today about Sage’s stronghold,” Chief Four Fingers urged. “Forget the past transgressions of this Kiowa chief. This is today. Sage could be yours today. Is he not worth many times over one Kiowa chief and his few warriors?”

“Yes, it is true that you are worthless to me, except dead,” Kit grumbled. “But right now you are more valuable to me alive.” He leaned on his rifle, shaking his head at being forced into a decision that he did not lik

e. But he had to put the women and children first.

“Tell me where Sage’s stronghold is, and by God, I give my word that you can ride free,” Kit said, inhaling a deep breath. “But you’d best ride hard and get hidden again, for once I am through with Sage, I’ll be looking for you. The next time nothing anyone says will keep me from finally avenging the death of my beautiful Indian bride. Now, damn it, Four Fingers, draw me a map in the sand, then get the hell out of my sight.”

Four Fingers knelt down beside Kit. He accepted a stick from a soldier and started drawing the directions to Sage’s stronghold in the sand, then stopped, startled when Kit placed a firm hand on his wrist.

“You’d better be leading me to the right place,” Kit drawled threateningly. “If not, Four Fingers, you’ll have hell to pay once my men and I catch up with you again.”

“Sage means nothing to me,” Four Fingers reassured. He jerked his wrist free and began drawing again. “Except dead.”

Once the map was completed and Kit Carson recognized the mountain, he was stunned. He had ridden past it many times. Not once had he seen the glint of a rifle barrel, or any sign of sentries on the cliffs, keeping watch. He looked suspiciously over at Four Fingers. “You are certain this is the mountain?” he questioned.

Four Fingers rose to his full height. He turned and pointed toward the purple haze of Sage’s mountain in the distance. “Yonder, one half day’s ride away, you will come to Sage’s mountain,” he said sternly. “There you will find peach trees, many fields of crops, and grazing sheep in a canyon at the foot of Sage’s mountain.” He turned to Kit. “Once there, it is up to you to decide how to reach Sage’s stronghold. Chief Four Fingers can only do so much. Your pony soldiers must do the rest—if you wish badly enough to take Sage prisoner.”

Kit Carson stepped back and allowed Four Fingers to walk away from him. He watched as the Kiowa chief mounted his horse, then rode away, his chin held high.

Kit hurriedly mounted and gave the orders to the soldiers. They rode long and hard, and when evening was drawing nigh, with its dark and brooding shadows across the land, Kit was finally at the base of the mountain.

Moving onward, Kit soon found the vast peach orchards, the fields, the grazing sheep. High above this valley was the true encampment of the Navaho.

Upon further investigation, Kit discovered it would be impossible to travel the paths that led so high up, into the Navaho camp, without being picked off one by one by the Navaho sentries. The straight cliff walls rose more than a thousand feet above the valley floor.