Savage Tempest

Sighing heavily, she turned and walked past him again into the tepee. After slipping her shoes on, she left again, her head held high.

She found a wooden bucket beside the corral, and a shovel made of bone. She was glad that the day was not yet unbearably hot, as it had been yesterday. She hurried through the chore, all the while imagining that the stink of manure was soaking right into her pores. It seemed to take forever before she had hauled the last load to the river and dumped it into the water.

She eyed the manure as it floated away, making a note never to put one foot in the river there, or downstream, where the other women were dumping their buckets of manure into the water.

She cringed when she wondered whether the manure might float down to where the women bathed daily. If so, might she step into a pile while walking out into the water for her bath?

She shook such a thought from her mind and returned the bucket to the corral. She took the time to stop and stroke her steed’s sleek mane, seeing that someone was taking good care of Swiftie, and wondering who it might be.

Surely it was High Hawk, for he did seem to have a deep love of all horses. She was afraid that she had lost the horse to him, but she would change that when she found a chance to flee.

She turned when she felt someone’s presence behind her.

She frowned when she found Blanket Woman standing there, her arms folded across her chest.

“What now?” Joylynn asked, sighing heavily.

“You do not think you are finished for the day, do you?” Blanket Woman snapped.

“No, so what is it you want of me?” Joylynn said tightly. “What chore must I do now to earn my . . . keep?”

Blanket Woman slapped the handle of a hatchet into Joylynn’s hand and gave her a wicked smile, causing Joylynn’s face to lose its color.

CHAPTER NINE

“Do not look as though I was going to use the hatchet on you,” Blanket Woman said, cackling as she saw Joylynn’s horrified expression.

“I did not think so,” Joylynn said, trying to ignore Blanket Woman’s continued obvious dislike of her “Are you going to tell me what I am to do, or am I supposed to guess? I’m not a mind reader, you know.”

“The hatchet is used to remove bark from cottonwood trees,” Blanket Woman said, this time matter-of-factly. She placed the handle of a basket in Joylynn’s hand. “You are to bring the bark back in this basket and feed it to my son’s horses.” She harrumphed. “And also the one that you call yours.”

“That horse is mine,” Joylynn protested, not wanting to believe that Swiftie belonged to someone else. “It has been mine for many years. My horse and I went through all kinds of adventures together when I worked as a Pony Express rider.”

“I know of such things as the Pony Express. But I have heard that only men carry the white man’s written words from place to place, not women,” Blanket Woman said, searching Joylynn’s eyes. “Surely you lie to impress this old woman.”

“I don’t care what you think about anything I do or say. I did not tell you that to impress you,” Joylynn said flatly. “It

just slipped out, that’s all.”

But in truth, she had told the older woman about her being a Pony Express rider in order to let her know that she was dealing with a woman of strength, stamina and spirit.

Yes, it had taken all of those traits to ride for the Pony Express, and she would always be proud that she had been able to handle the job.

“Just . . . slipped . . . out?” Blanket Woman said, squinting into Joylynn’s eyes in wonderment. “What is such talk as that?”

“White people’s talk, that’s what,” Joylynn said, then turned and gazed into the forest of cotton-wood trees and walked away from Blanket Woman. She was determined to get a good amount of bark in order to prove that she could do whatever task the older woman assigned her.

But when she started trying to cut long strips of bark from a tree with the hatchet, she realized how hard it was. The bark stubbornly clung to the tree’s trunk, giving only an inch at a time as Joylynn tried to slice it away.

When the hatchet slipped, barely missing Joylynn’s leg, she stepped quickly away from the tree.

She turned with a start when a twig broke behind her. Someone was approaching her through the trees.

Her eyes widened when she found High Hawk’s brother coming toward her, smiling. She held the hatchet at her side as he kept approaching, his one leg dragging as he struggled to walk as straight as possible. It was obvious that he was embarrassed by his appearance. He looked into her eyes one moment, smiling, then down at the ground, his smile erased, the next.

“Good morning, Sleeping Wolf,” Joylynn said as he stepped up to her.

She felt awkward, not knowing what else to say to him.