Ice Princess Page 7

  "They's a passel of men you needs to be afeared of," he told her. "Like that there Pyzen Joe, he was one mean bassard." William still remembered the helplessness he'd felt when they were raping her. "Ain't never seen nobody better deserved a knife at his..."

  He wanted to bite his tongue off at the root when she made a sound, like a cut-off scream. He knew she was remembering, too.

  They had seemed so safe in Cherry Vale. Until that night....

  William had sensed the blow an instant before he had felt it. When he came to, he had no notion how long he'd lain unconscious in the pasture, but it had almost been too long. He'd crawled up to the cabin wall and used it to keep himself on his feet, for the night had reeled crazily around him. When he'd come to the woodpile next the door, he'd picked up a chunk of firewood.

  Easing up to the corner, he peered around. The three of them-- Pyzen Joe, Hattie, and his Flower--was standing in a circle around the fire.

  The bassard had a knife at Flower's throat.

  "You said you'd go if we gave you food," Hattie protested.

  "Changed my mind," Pyzen Joe snarled, twisting Flower's arm behind her still harder, so that her mouth tightened with the pain. "Gonna take the squaw. You, too. That Nigger don't deserve the both of you."

  "Please..." Hattie's eyes had turned toward the half of the cabin where her baby slept. "Please, don't..."

  William smashed the firewood against Pyzen Joe's skull with all his might. The renegade collapsed bonelessly.

  "You all right, Miz Hattie, Flower?" William gasped.

  Miz Hattie was on her knees in the dirt. Flower lay huddled into herself next to the unconscious renegade.

  William shook his head, fighting dizziness. As he stood holding to the solid log wall, he watched Hattie crawl to the renegade's side. She reached across him and picked up one of the large river rocks that formed their fire pit. As she raised it in shaking hands, William pushed himself away from the wall. He plucked the stone from her shaking hands. "No'm Miz Hattie. You don't wants to do that."

  "Let me," she said. "I must..."

  Before he could kill the bassard for her, Flower uncoiled. Her knife blade gleamed in the firelight. Bright blood spurted from a wide slash in Pyzen Joe's throat. He twitched once, then was still, his body sagging into a slack lump.

  William couldn't move, couldn't speak.

  Flower stared at the bloody knife for a long moment before dropping it into the dirt beside Pyzen Joe's body. She scrubbed her hands against her thighs again and again, even though they wasn't bloody. At last she raised her face and looked across the fire at William. Her gray eyes were round and blank, as if she was staring into the past.

  He reached to her, wanting to take her into his arms.

  But she shrank back. He let his hands drop to his sides.

  With a clumsiness far from her usual grace, Flower rose to her feet. She wiped her hands along the side of her skirt, then held them before her face and stared at them. "Blood," she whispered. "So much blood." Again she scrubbed them together. "I must cleanse myself," she whispered.

  "Flower," Hattie said, "oh, Flower..."

  "I am avenged, at last." Flower turned wide, blank eyes on them. "I am avenged, and now I must cleanse myself." She picked up her knife and slipped it under her sash. Three steps took her to the edge of the firelight, then she paused and looked back at them. Her lips parted, as if she was about to speak. But then she turned away.

  In two steps it was almost as if the night had swallowed her up.

  William disposed of the body, not honoring it with a grave. The other renegade who had pursued them had died under a cascade of falling rock, and Pyzen Joe ended under tumbled boulders as well.

  Much as he'd wanted to, he hadn't gone after his Flower. Not then. The other men were off fetching supplies, and he was the only protection for Hattie and her babe. Only a long time later, after Mist' Em had come home to Cherry Vale, had he been free to leave. By then winter had settled in, and he could only guess where Flower had gone...

  Now she was all huddled into herself, just like that other time. Putting aside how sorry he felt for her, William said, "There's somethin' I been thinkin' on. I never said anything, 'cause I figured you had enough hurt inside you."

  She didn't move, just lay there in a curled-up ball of misery.

  "Them bassards who raped you--"

  She screamed, so full of pain it like to broke his heart.

  "Who raped you," he repeated, not sparing her feelings, "they ain't no worse than lot of men down where I come from. No Nigra woman's safe, not back there."

  "It is not the same," she protested, her voice thin and shrill. "I am defiled forever!"

  "Hell, woman, any plantation's got as many quadroon brats as pickaninnies runnin' around. Most gals I knew, they spent time in the marse's bed--or flat on their backs in the dirt--and dam' few of 'em asked to be there."

  "It is not the same!" This time she screamed it.

  A coyote yipped, somewheres nearby, as if answering her.

  William forced himself to shrug, kept his voice hard and angry-soundin'. "Rape's rape. I don't see it matters whether six of 'em done you in a day or in a year. If you'd lived where I come from, you might'a been sold to one of them fancy whorehouses in Mobile or N'Orleans, you're so pretty. And I heard once that a lot of those women, they get chained to their beds until they gives up tryin' to escape."

  She lifted her face, pale and set in the faint light. "Why are you doing this to me, William? Why do you hate me?"

  Oh, God! "I don't hate you, woman." I love you! He bit back the words. "But I reckon you've been pickin' and scratchin' at your hurt all winter long and it's not healin' the way it ought. I was just tryin' to show you that you ain't the only woman in the world been treated real bad. Some of 'em dies of it, but the strong ones, they get themselves back together again and go on livin'."

  "I am not strong," she whimpered.

  "Woman, you is one of the strongest folks I ever met." Although it near killed him to do it, William turned his back on her and picked up his pack. Walking to the other side of where Windchaser and Hank were picketed, he spread his bedroll on the ground.

  What he'd done to her was cruel, just about the meanest thing he could do. But old Aunty Deed had told him once that the best medicine was the bitterest.

  He'd given Flower a dose of the strongest, most bitter medicine he could come up with. Now he'd just have to wait to see if it did her any good. She'd been eatin' herself alive with her grievin' and it had gotten to be more than he could watch.

  Chapter Five

  Konrad Muller hadn't had a good winter. First he'd lost the trapper with the gold in a blizzard, then his horse had stepped into a snow-covered burrow and broken its leg. Muller had made his way afoot back to an Indian winter camp at the mouth of the Umatilla. The damned savages had refused to take him in.

  He'd finally reached The Dalles on the first day of 1847, hungry, cold, and mad as hell. The last of the emigrants had gone down the river and the little settlement had been almost empty. He'd moved into an abandoned shack, not much more than a pile of rocks with a wood door and a leaky roof--and found himself work at the saloon.

  Here he'd been ever since, waiting for summer to bring more emigrants.

  He scowled as the man leaning on the bar looked pointedly at his empty mug. Only after Muller saw the color of money did he pour a refill.

  "I'm getting plumb tired of being at the beck and call of the likes of you," Muller muttered, not loud enough to be heard. Sam Bates had given him a bear jaw just last week for cursing at a customer. He'd mind his manners for a while yet, because he wasn't ready to leave town, even this miserable little settlement where the cold, dry wind pulled the breath right out of a man's chest.

  He cocked an ear at the talk at the poker table. They'd found the squaw this morning, and folks were still exclaiming on the viciousness of the killing.

  "...still alive when he found her, but she died purty
quick afterward. Must'a been layin' there bleedin' all night."

  "...jest an Injun..."

  "worried about who's next...many killings this winter...crazy..."

  He tossed his towel on the bar and opened the door to the storeroom. They'd talk and talk about law and order, but none of them would lift a finger to find whoever killed the Indian woman. And next time it happened, they'd talk again and do just as little.

  Once the back bar was restocked, he poured himself a beer and watched as men wandered in and out. Each day there were more new faces. With the coming of spring, traffic through town had increased, in both directions, but none of the travelers was the man he was watching for.

  Another coin had surfaced since the trapper had gone east. Three! Muller was more certain than ever that the trapper had a whole bag of them--worn, clipped, ancient. Muller had seen coins like them in the South Seas, during his brief and miserable stint aboard the trading vessel.

  Oh, there was other gold about. Eagles and foreign coins, mostly. Now and then somebody tried to pass on some wildcat money, but Konrad Muller wasn't anybody's fool. He was sure that many of the newcomers to the territory had hidden caches of silver or gold, but it was mostly spent on boats, not booze.

  As soon as this year's emigrants came through, his pockets would be a sight fuller than they were now. Till then, he'd bide his time.

  Sooner or later another one of those old Eastern coins was bound to show up. When it did, he was gonna be ready to trace it back to its source.

  He'd be rich, then. He knew he would.

  * * * *

  In the morning William was the first thing Flower saw when she opened her eyes. Big and dark and cruel. She would never forgive him for what he'd said to her last night. Never.

  He does not understand. Women of his people have no choice. They are slaves and must do as their masters command. Her mother had been a slave, before Ash-e-woo-dah, Goat Runner's father, had adopted her into the band. But she had never been mistreated.

  I am not a slave, and I had a choice. I could have fought until they killed me. But I was afraid. I did not want to die!

  No wonder William held her in contempt. She had done nothing to earn his respect.

  She feigned sleep as William crawled from his blankets. He brought the fire to life and filled the battered pot from his pack with water, setting it on rocks next to the flames. Then he disappeared from her view. In a few moments she heard the sound of splashing that told her he was bathing in the tiny pool fed by the seep.

  I will not speak to him, she told herself when she heard his footsteps approaching. He is cruel. Despicable.

  The next thing she knew, her blanket had been stripped from her.

  "Git yourself up, woman. Time's a wastin' and we got a ways to go today."

  Narrowing her eyes, she considered how best to cripple him.

  Before she could move, he'd opened her pack and pulled the parcel of coffee from it.

  "Put that back!"

  "Nope. If I ever saw a woman needed her coffee, 'twas you. It'll sweeten you up some." He dropped a handful of beans into the small spider she'd purchased at Fort Boise, held it over the fire.

  His back was to her, but she could see the tension in his shoulders. As if he were waiting for a knife to slide between his ribs.

  The buckskin shirt that had once been her father's fit him almost as well as his own skin. It strained at his broad shoulders, clung lovingly to the indentation of his spine. The broad belt cinched it at his slim waist, supple above tight buttocks.

  An infinitesimal flare of heat was born in her midsection. And died just as suddenly. He is a man. Big and strong. He could do whatever he wanted with you.

  Yes. He was a man, but a gentle man, one who had proved time and again that he meant her no harm. With him she was safe. She knew this, without question.

  Safe.

  No! Even William could not always keep her safe. He was too gentle for the wilderness, where civilization was often little more than a thin veneer over men's bestial natures.

  Only in a civilized land could she relax her vigilance, live as a woman should.

  Flower turned away and began replacing items in her pack. Even when he handed her a cup of coffee, hot and aromatic, she said nothing.

  Neither did he.

  When William tied the last packet on the mule, she faced him and spoke at last. "I have been thinking," she said.

  "Me, too." When she hesitated, he said, "You first."

  "I have decided that I will let you come with me to The Dalles," she said, then held up her hand quickly when he opened his mouth. "Only as far as The Dalles. Then you must promise to go back to Cherry Vale."

  He just shook his head.

  "William! Have you no care for your own safety!"

  "I reckon I'm man enough to decide for my own self when I's...I'm in danger."

  * * * *

  The westering road up the Burnt River was an ordeal. They stayed on the slopes above the creek whenever possible, but the steep hillsides drove them down as often as not. Flower's arms and face were scratched from her frequent encounters with stiff branches. William's face was grotesque with its mask of dried dust mixed with sweat. She had walked this way before, going east last year with Silas. More than once, as a child, she had traveled both directions along this route. She didn't remember it ever being quite as difficult as this time, with the fresh new growth of willow, alder and hardhack crowding the narrow river.

  They were nine days from Fort Boise when at last they stood on a divide and looked northward toward the valley of the Grande Ronde.

  "If we go that way," Flower said, pointing along the worn wagon road to the northwest, "there is a narrow canyon that we cannot avoid. This way is longer, but it leads to the home of my father's friend. I wish to say farewell."

  "You're the one knows the way," was all William said. He'd been quiet ever since his outburst at the hidden spring. She was still angry with him, but had to admit that she was glad to have him with her. She no longer woke, trembling, at the least sound in the night.

  Early on a drizzly afternoon they reached the log cabin where Jacques LaJeunesse and his family lived. No one answered her hail. A faint shimmer of heat above the chimney told her that the occupants had not been long gone.

  "You can camp behind the cabin," she told William, as she removed Windchaser's hackamore. "I will sleep with my friend, Marie." For one moment she felt guilty, leaving him outside in the rain, until she remembered how he hated a roof over his head.

  Once both animals were in the pole corral, she entered the cabin, left with the latchstring out as it always had been.

  Here she felt no danger, for she had spent many hours of her childhood happy here.

  Safe.

  When Marie and her father returned at dusk, Flower met them at the door.

  "P'tite Fleur! How happy I am to see you!" Loud, exuberant, and seeming many years younger than she knew he was, Jacques LaJeunesse caught her in his arms. His embrace was truly a bear hug, for he was even bigger and hairier than her father had been. Laughing, Flower disentangled herself and turned to greet his daughter.

  Marie was a few years younger than herself, but they had been the only two English-speaking girls in the Grande Ronde trappers' camp through several summers, and had become fast friends. Now she looked at Marie, and smiled at what she saw. "How beautiful you've become," she said.

  "Oui! Ma bebe, she is the prettiest girl in Le Grande Ronde. All the young men, they want to marry her, but she say no, not until they build her a house and bring her many horses."

  Marie blushed. In a soft voice, she said, "Papa is trying to get rid of me, but I won't go. Who would cook for him?"

  Once the excitement of meeting old friends had abated, Flower called to William. He came slowly around the corner of the cabin, his expression suspicious.

  Jacques' welcome was restrained and equally doubtful. Flower bit her lip, not knowing how to reassure them both. She w
anted Jacques to see what a good man William was.

  To make matters worse, William refused to come inside for supper.

  As they ate, Flower recounted her adventures since the last time she had seen them, the summer after her mother's death. Both Marie and Jacques were intrigued by the story of Buffalo's valley, where 'gold lay on the ground for the takin'.'

  "Where'd you get this black man?" Jacques asked her as they sat with their coffee after supper. "I worry you travel with him, me."

  "William is a good man, Uncle Jacques. He is kind and gentle, and he would do anything to protect me."

  "Hah!" Jacques took a moment to load his pipe. "Kind and gentle is it? Better he should be strong and mean. That is what you need to protect you."

  "I could not travel with a man who was mean."

  "But can he protect you, Flower?" Marie asked. "Now that more and more Americans are coming, a woman is not safe as she was when we were children. Hilaire and his friends had to run away last winter, because they fought with one who would not leave me alone."

  "The bastards called her squaw," Jacques said, disgust strong in his voice. "As if that meant she was a whore. I do not allow her to go from here alone, not any more."

  Remembering the clerk at Fort Boise, Flower nodded. "My father warned me that this would happen. He said that many white men look down upon of those other colors, and that we who are of mixed parentage disgust them the most."

  "The word on the wind is that even the missionaries do not trust the savage redskins," Jacques said. "There is unrest at Waiilatpu, because Whitman and the priests quarrel over who knows the exact way to heaven." He spat into the fire. "Sacre bleu! Does it make a difference a man believes, so long as he acts fittingly?"

  "At Lapwai, too, there was tension between the Catholics and Dr. Spaulding. My mother's people were confused and uneasy at their disagreements," Flower said. "Dr. Spaulding believes that the Hudson's Bay Company is using the priests to turn the Nez Perce against him and his church."

  Jacques shrugged. "This would not surprise me. But with or without the Company, the priests are hungry for Indian souls, just as are the American missionaries."