Ice Princess Read online

  He knew if he mentioned how she must have needed them just as much, she'd deny it. He'd lost track of the times last summer she'd turned away, keepin' all her pain to her own self. It was as if her heart had frozen into a solid block of ice when those bastard renegades laid hands on her.

  She didn't answer for a long time. Her breathing got even and regular as the shudders stopped shaking her body. Her eyes were open, though, for he could see them gleaming in the dim light from the half open door. He forced himself to be patient.

  "I could not stay," she said at last. "Do you forget what I did?" Another shudder. "Twice." Her fingers curled into claws, then clenched into fists.

  William ached to hold her close, even as he knew she would not allow it. Instead he sat, dumb, seeking the words to give her peace.

  "I killed them." Again the jerky motion of her left hand, as if she clenched a slender object--a knife's shaft. "And I would do it again.

  "I would...do...it...again!"

  Even in the dark he could see how empty her eyes was, as they stared at scenes invisible except in her memories.

  "Not ever'body's like them renegades." He wanted to promise her that he would keep her safe for always. Except that William knew that he couldn't ever make that promise, knew he'd not be able to keep it.

  He said the only thing he could. "I wants you to be my woman." As he heard his own words, he knew they were weak, when she needed strength.

  "Oh, William." Her words were soft. She stretched out a hand and patted his arm.

  "Reckon I'd like you to come with me," he told her, "back to Cherry Vale." Now that he had found the home he'd sought for so long, he wanted to live there the rest of his life, to raise strong sons in the rich valley where he had already begun building the first home he'd ever really had. He belonged there, as he had never belonged anywhere before. It was where he was meant to live out his life.

  "Oh, William," she said again, and buried her face in her hands.

  "Didn't reckon you'd want the likes of me," he said, fighting to contain tears of his own. Silas had told him a man didn't weep like a babe. "But I had to ask."

  He waited for her answer a long time, until her breathing grew even and slow. He reckoned she wasn't gonna give him an answer. Wiping a hand across his face--he didn't want her to see what a weakling he was--he stood up. With a deep sigh, he left her alone, pulling the door closed behind him.

  He'd knowed, all the way up to Lapwai and back down here again, that it was a fool's errand. Even if all that was hurtin' her got itself healed, she wasn't for the likes of him. A fine woman like her wouldn't ever want an ignorant Nigra like him.

  Maybe his mammy had wanted him, but he couldn't even remember her. And his marse had wanted him, for he was a strong young buck, able to work all day in the hot sun. He'd heard Marse once, talking about the price of slaves--five hundred dollars for a good field hand.

  Five hundred dollars had been more money than he'd even been able to imagine, he who'd rarely had more than a few pennies to his name.

  Now he had riches more than he'd ever dreamed. Land. Gold. Freedom.

  But without Flower, what difference did it make? He'd found his kingdom, but he'd have no queen to share it with.

  * * * *

  Flower woke in the dark cabin, alone.

  Alone? Of course she was alone. That was why she'd come here, to be alone with herself, to learn to live with her great shame, with the suffocating guilt that she had not been able to escape, no matter how fast or how far she'd run. But no! She wasn't alone, not any more.

  William. He'd come for her. He wanted her to marry him.

  The ache in her heart was much like when her mother had died. Her father had left her with friends, advising her to go to Lapwai, where her mother's family was. "Time you was to learn yore roots, gal," he'd said. "I cain't take care o'you like I should, and yore grandpa, he allus wanted you to know where your ma come from, afore she got took by the Bannock."

  But Lapwai had been one more place where she did not belong, for she was neither red nor white. Her mother's people had been strangers, her father's had called her pagan.

  She lay, dry-eyed and hurting, in the lower bunk. The fire had died, for she'd slept heavily and deeply, and the cabin was cold. She would need to bring in more wood before rebuilding the fire, for only kindling lay on the hearth.

  With a sigh she rose and pulled on the ragged wool coat she had found forgotten in the hidey-hole at the back of the cabin. If only William had not come. Or if he would go away, back to Cherry Vale where he belonged. He wanted from her more than she could give. More than she would ever be able to give.

  Flower bit her lip, determined not to yield to the self-pity sitting in a painful lump at the back of her throat. If she ever gave way to it, she would probably not stop weeping for days. Thus far she had controlled her tears, not shedding them since the day she'd first lain beaten and bleeding, after Pyzen Joe and his five vicious companions had finished with her.

  She had come closer to a sense of belonging in Cherry Vale than she had in any of the many places she'd lived. Perhaps if her soul had not been so wounded, she would have made a home there, with Emmet and Hattie, Silas and William. They had not seemed to notice the color of her skin, unlike most of their countrymen, who saw the union of white and red as the vilest of sins, who saw the offspring of those unions as subhuman, beneath contempt.

  The isolated little settlements inhabited by men of the Hudson's Bay Company had not been typical of the civilization they represented. At Fort Vancouver, her parentage was the norm. She had known no children with white mothers. There had been many like her at the Rendezvous she'd attended as a child, light-eyed or pale-skinned children with mothers of the Bannock, Paiute, Lacota, or Nez Perce. She had been practically grown before she learned that not all white men loved their Indian children, not all white men respected their Indian wives.

  The first time she'd been called a half-breed, she'd not even known she'd been insulted.

  Still shivering from the iciness of the water she'd used for her ablutions, Flower opened the door. Nothing moved except a few juncos, hopping about in the debris under the willows. There was no sign of William. She pulled the door closed and went toward the tall cottonwoods that extended down to the river. The trail through the woods was almost overgrown and, as usual, she avoided following it. Each time she went this way, she chose a different path, not wanting to leave traces of her passing.

  After setting her snares--three among the woods, three more along the riverbank where tall rushes and sedges were a favorite refuge of the ducks and geese she hoped to capture--she pulled her fish traps out from the clump of willow where she'd hidden them. Whether William had left her--the thought brought a strange, empty feeling to her belly--or whether he was simply off hunting, she had to restock her larder.

  In a few weeks she should be able to depart. The buds on the cottonwoods were fat and sticky and the willows had a green mistiness to them, as if their emerging leaves were shining of their own accord.

  The length of her journey would be the same, whether she walked or rode. Riding, she could carry supplies and not be so dependent on what she could snare, pick, or scavenge as she traveled. Goat Runner still had Windchaser, the spotted mare she'd ridden from Lapwai, so she must go to the Bannock village to ask for her mare's return. To do so, she would have to speak to Goat Runner.

  She was not certain she could do that, without showing her fear. So perhaps she would walk to Fort Vancouver. Even if her will was weak, her legs were strong. They could carry her a long way.

  The fish traps were quickly set. She would return tomorrow and see if the big, silver fish had taken the bait of fat grubs she'd dug from under the remnants of her woodpile. Flower slipped among the thick cottonwood trunks, careful to watch both the path ahead and her back trail. Still, she was taken unawares when William stepped from behind a tree.

  Her knife was in her hand before she realized it.

 
; "Lawd a'mighty, woman!" He stepped back, well out of her reach. "What for you pull that pig-sticker on me? I ain't meanin' you no harm."

  She glared at him. Didn't he understand the danger to her, here alone in the woods? "You startled me," she said, "jumping out at me like that."

  "Wal, I figured you'd be more skairt if I was to come up and knock on your door," he said, falling in beside her.

  She noticed that he walked as carefully as she, avoiding open soil where his moccasins might leave a track. He walked as the men she'd known all her life, putting his toes down first, testing the ground before trusting it with his full weight. He watched his sides as well as ahead of him and frequently cast quick glances behind. Flower relaxed her constant vigilance slightly, knowing that four eyes always saw much more than two.

  They walked together in silence until they were almost to the cabin. Then William stepped aside and bent, picking up two jackrabbit carcasses. "They ain't much meat on 'em," he apologized, "but they was all I could get with the sling." He touched a leather strip dangling from his belt. "I didn't see any cottontails, only a skunk, an' I didn't figure you'd want that for supper."

  Had he almost smiled again? Flower found herself wishing he would.

  She quickly skinned the gutted hares, cutting them into pieces to fit in her cooking basket. William's shoulder-slung pouch yielded cat-tail root and succulent greens--the tiny plants Hattie called "miner's lettuce." He went to his pack, dug about, and pulled out an oiled paper packet, which he handed to her.

  She unfolded it. "Salt! Oh, William, how I have missed salt!" Dipping a finger into the white crystals, she licked it, closing her eyes with the pleasure of it. Carefully she added a pinch to the water covering the hare.

  Using two flat sticks, she retrieved a large stone from the edge of the fire and dropped it into the water. Steam exploded upwards, and when it cleared, she saw, with satisfaction, that the water in the basket was close to simmering. She nudged more stones close to the coals to heat, for the stringy flesh of jackrabbit took a long time to cook.

  William stayed outside, coming in only when she called him to eat. Even though she did not feel threatened, Flower wondered if he understood how crowded she found the cabin with him in it.

  No. He had never liked being indoors. That was all.

  After supper he sat for a while, staring into the fire. Flower watched him, once again struck with how very still he could be. She had finished cleaning up and was preparing for her bath when he finally spoke.

  "I'll be stayin' with you," he said, his voice gentle but full of certainty. "Least 'til you decides what you is gonna do."

  "No!" The word exploded from her before she could stop it. A few days--that was all right. But to be constantly with him--never! She did not need to be reminded every day of all the renegades had stolen from her.

  "Yes'm, I reckon I am. Or if you don't want me with you, then I'll just have to make me a camp up there somewheres--" He waved in the general direction of the foothills behind the cabin. "--and keep my eyes on you."

  "But what if I choose to leave? What if I decide to go somewhere else, where I will be safe?" What would he do when she told him just how far she intended to go?

  "Woman, I'd go anywheres in the whole wide world with you," he said, his voice deep and resonant. "Just you ask me."

  She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to.

  Chapter Two

  Flower woke one morning and it was spring. She felt it even through the thick log walls of the cabin, smelled it in the draft seeping under the door. She pulled the door open and breathed deeply of the air, sweet with rebirth, heavy with the scent of new growth.

  William was nowhere in sight, but she knew he was nearby. Since his arrival he had never been out of earshot, nor had he often let her out of his view. He had learned, though, to leave her to herself until she sought him out.

  She picked up the bag of fine sand and the fragment of soaproot. Carrying the rabbit skins she had cured during the winter, she went to the bathtub her father had been so proud of, an oval, rock-lined basin about three feet deep. It caught and held the steaming water as it gushed from the hillside, then overflowed into a shallow stream that gurgled down the slope toward the river. Willows and assorted shrubs lined the stream, and here and there along its banks grew a few of the yarbs her mother had planted many years ago.

  She was soaking, relaxed in the hot water, when William called. Not to her.

  She heard his deep voice but the words were indistinct. A voice answered, a lighter voice, with unfamiliar cadences. She listened, straining her ears, until she could no longer contain her fear. With trembling fingers, she pulled on her dress and, leaving her drying skins and the soaproot, she slipped into the screen of willows on the opposite side of the tub. In a few moments she was far enough away from the cabin that she could no longer hear the voices.

  Flower cowered in the thicket, memory overcoming her. She had been here before. She had hidden in the willows while William spoke to another stranger.

  The day grew warm and the sun was suddenly high in the sky. She lay where Silas had pushed her, wondering if the boy had not reacted with unnecessary concern. He had caught her hand, had pulled her behind him, saying, breathlessly, "Men. Strangers. Don't trust 'em. Keep watch and go to Em if they don't leave." He'd shaken her. "You hear me? You'll go?"

  Flower had nodded. She found it hard to believe that here, so far from the usual haunts of whites, she would be in danger. No Bannock would harm her, once they knew she was Peaceful Woman's daughter, Buffalo's Jones's child. And Blackfeet were not likely to be here, not in the summer when they were far away in the plains, hunting buffalo.

  Then there were shouts, a gunshot, a scream of pain. She wriggled through the willows, creeping to the edge of the clearing so she could see. And wished she had not.

  "Flower! Where is you?"

  She hunkered deeper into her hiding place. They must not find her again.

  "Flower! Consarn you, woman, where is you?"

  The past disappeared and she was back in a gulch in the hills above her father's cabin. It was spring, not summer. She was soiled, no longer the young and innocent woman she had been an age ago --less than a year ago.

  She stayed where she was, for the voice answering William had been masculine. She wanted no other man to speak to her, wished no man to look at her with desire in his eyes. William called again, and still she did not answer.

  Flower lay, shivering, in her hiding place. Her buckskin dress, wetted from her dripping body, remained damp. The gulch was narrow and soon the westering sun warmed it no longer.

  She must have dozed, for she did not hear him come to her, did not see him enter the gulch. The scream burst from her throat as he touched her shoulder and then she was fighting again, kicking and squirming in his grasp.

  And he released her. "Damnation woman, you is the skairtest thing I ever seed. It's just me. Just William. I come...came to get you for supper."

  She forced herself to relax, to straighten out of her self-protective crouch. "Is he gone?"

  "Is who...oh, you mean the feller who come lookin' for his mule?"

  She nodded, feeling faintly foolish; yet knowing she could have acted no differently.

  "Yes'm, he's gone. I sent him off to the Injuns. If they's a mule anywheres about, they'll know where it is." His eyes glinted, but his face remained sober.

  "And they will not tell him," she said, wondering what it would take to bring a real smile to his face.

  "If I had me a mule, I'd sure not tell anybody where I got him," William agreed, "and that there Goat Runner, he sure do like his horses."

  They walked down the hillside together, William reaching out to help her over the tumbled black boulders at its base. She took his hand without thinking, and only later realized that she had not shied from his touch. Was she healing? Or was it simply because this was William, who had always treated her gently and with respect?

  William worried that Flo
wer was still so fearful. Hattie had cautioned him that she was changed by the brutal treatment she'd received at the hands of the renegades, had warned him that she might be a long time healing.

  She might never heal, Hattie had warned, but he wouldn't believe that. Sooner or later Flower would once again be the strong, gentle woman who'd captured his heart with her shy, sometime smile.

  He wanted her with every bit of himself. Wanted her in his bed, wanted her beside him in the fields he'd cleared back in Cherry Vale. Wanted her beside him all the days of his life, and beyond, if there was anything more.

  He watched her from the corners of his eyes as they walked down the easy slope to the cabin. Her shiny hair was short and shaggy -- he mourned the long tresses she'd worn before--and her skin was pale copper, with faint rosy blushes on her cheeks. He'd seen the Injun women in Goat Runner's village, and she didn't look much like them. Her hair wasn't night black like theirs, but showed red fire in the sunshine. Her eyes were a clear, cool gray, just like ol' Buff's had been. But now her eyes was cloudy with hurt, and her lips that had once smiled so sweetly at him seemed to have forgot how.

  That afternoon Flower worked again on the elk hide she would use for moccasins. The trapping of the young bull had tried her skill and patience, and she was proud that she finally had succeeded. William settled on a section of log near her and honed his big knife. My father's blade, she realized.

  "Your pa, he was a fine man," William said, as if reading her thoughts, "but you never say much about your ma."

  "My mother was Nez Perce, but she knew little of their customs," Flower said, not pausing in her work. The porcupine fat she'd rendered was not her first choice for treating the leather, but it would suffice. "When she was very young, she was stolen by the Bannock. Sees-in-the-Dark and Camas Blossom adopted her. Not until I was half-grown did she meet her birth family again. And then it was by accident.

  "My father and his partner had decided to winter on the headwaters of the Clearwater, and on our way there we stopped at Lapwai. Peaceful Woman, who had never spoken of her life before she was adopted, recognized her father, an old man by then. She learned of sisters and cousins, but she never knew them well. She had turned her back on her Indian heritage when she married my father, shunning even Goat Runner, her adopted brother. Once she told me that the days of the People were numbered, and that in my lifetime the Americans and the British would replace the Indian across the land."