Chapter 1

Early March 1867

Department of the Platte

Trouble comes out of the west. Or so Hunter Jalbert's old Arikara Indian grandfather had taught him in the years when Hunter was struggling to prove himself as a warrior. Enemies loomed out of the lingering daylight for a final attack. Wild animals stalked down from the mountains in the dark. Whirlwinds tore out of the western sky.

Today trouble took the form of a white woman.

Hunter scanned the hills around the little draw where they'd agreed to exchange their wagonload of goods for a Cheyenne captive and felt the itch of premonition down his back. As sure as hellfire burned, they'd been set up for annihilation here.

A hundred Cheyenne warriors could be massing on the far side of the ridge. A score more might have their rifles trained on them from the outcropping of dun-colored rocks just off to the north. And here they sat—twelve troopers, two mule skinners, a captain and a scout—visible as gravel in an open palm.

When the messenger came to the fort offering to trade for an Indian captive, Hunter had urged Major McGarrity to negotiate a safer place to make the exchange. But McGarrity hadn't listened.

Drew Reynolds, the new spit-and-shine captain who was leading the patrol, hadn't heeded his warning, either. Hunter sliced a glance in Reynolds's direction. Word was that he had attended West Point and proved himself a hero in the war back East. But things were different here. Nothing the captain had seen fighting Rebs would prepare him for the way these tribes made war. Nothing he might have experienced in the battles between the North and South could teach him about the trickery and barbarity he'd face fighting Indians. And Reynolds was proving himself too arrogant to consult someone as lowly as his half-breed scout.

Well, the captain would learn, Jalbert found himself thinking. If an arrow didn't get him first. If the Indians didn't scalp the lot of them.

It is a very good day to die.

The warriors' creed flashed through Hunter's mind, as much a part of him as his breathing or his heartbeat. It calmed him, enervated him. It made the waiting more difficult.

Just when they were ready to give up their vigil to the blowing and the cold, a party of Cheyenne emerged from a crease in the hillside to the right of the rocks.

Hunter stiffened in his saddle and shifted his gaze to where Reynolds sat his big bay gelding. "Hostiles, sir."

"I have eyes," the captain snapped. Reynolds turned and shouted the order. "Stand ready."

Hunter saw the troopers free the flaps on their holsters and limber up their carbines. As the Indians approached, he did the same.

There were about a dozen Cheyenne in the party that cantered toward them. Because they were riding two abreast, it took a moment for Jalbert to spot the woman in their midst. She rode as tall as some of the men, discernible from them only in the way her buckskin skirt flapped against her legs and by her ornate, high-pommeled saddle. As the party rode closer, Hunter could see that the woman's complexion was baked nearly as dark as the men around her, that her hair, slicked into braids with bear grease and dusted with vermilion along the part, was nearly black.

Hunter's breathing thickened with renewed suspicion. If this wasn't a white woman the Cheyenne had come to trade, then they were dead men. They might be dead men even if she was.

"What do you make of this?" Reynolds asked almost begrudgingly. He must be having doubts about the woman, too.

"I think we play it out," Hunter answered.

As the Indians made their way along the draw, Jalbert shivered, wanting to spur his horse forward, to ride in shooting and howling like the warrior he'd trained to be. But years of fighting both Yankees and Indians had taught him patience.

The party of Cheyenne stopped less than a dozen yards away. The leader, a strongly built man wearing a war shirt trailing scalps and thick with beads, dismounted and motioned for the woman to do the same. Leaving their horses, they made their way to a midpoint between the two factions.

"Goddamned savages want us on foot," Hunter heard the captain mutter as he swung out of his saddle. "Come along then, mixed-blood," he added. "I'll be needing you to translate."

Biting back his reply, Hunter dismounted and followed Reynolds across the snow-dusted grass. The captain paused a few feet from where the Cheyenne stood with the woman at his side.

"I am a representative of the U.S. Army sent from Fort Carr, as you requested. Is this the captive you've come to exchange?"

The warrior acknowledged Reynolds first then inclined his head in Hunter's direction. The captain's eyebrows lifted when Hunter accepted the greeting as a matter of course. But then, Jalbert had been working with the army since '64 and had earned a certain reputation among the tribes.

Though the brave seemed capable of understanding Reynolds's words, when he answered it was in his own tongue, accompanied by the appropriate sign language.

"I am Standing Pine, warrior of the Cheyenne," Hunter translated as the Indian talked. "This is the captive we have come to trade. Have you brought sugar and flour and meal as we asked? Have you brought ammunition?"

"There is no ammunition in the wagon," Reynolds answered brusquely. "As you well know, the army has refused to trade for powder and shot you redskins can use to attack the stage stations and wagon trains."

Reynolds's tone was belligerent, his words inflammatory. Hunter leveled a quelling glance at the officer. Hadn't anyone told this man there was nothing to be gained by antagonizing the Cheyenne? Didn't the captain want the woman freed?

"We need ammunition to kill buffalo," Standing Pine insisted. "It has been a hard winter. The hunting has been poor. We only seek to feed our families."

"Well, I have no ammunition to give you," Reynolds said, and turned away.

"There is food for your families in the wagon," Hunter put in, addressing the Indian, halting Reynolds where he stood. "There's flour and meal and bacon, potatoes and onions and canned fruit. There's cloth in colors that will please your women, knives and axes and cooking pots. Would you turn all that away for the sake of powder and shot?"

The brave paused a moment to drink in Jalbert's logic.

"Surely such goods would be welcome," Hunter added.

After a moment, Standing Pine inclined his head. "It is true that the Cheyenne would welcome such gifts. I must see for myself what you have brought."

With a nod, Reynolds granted permission for the Indian to approach the wagon.

The brave crossed the swath of grass to where it stood. He pushed back the flapping tarpaulin and looked at the boxes and barrels and sacks inside. Apparently what he saw among them pleased him, for when Standing Pine returned, there was satisfaction in his face.

"We will accept what you have given us in return for Sweet Grass Woman."

Hunter had begun to nod in agreement when Reynolds spoke up. "How do we know that this is indeed a white woman? She could be some squaw you're passing off on us for the promise of gain."

Hunter stared at Reynolds in astonishment. What he lacked in diplomacy, he made up for in pure arrogance.

Yet the Cheyenne met his demand with surprising equanimity. The woman had been standing with her face averted and her shoulders bowed, as if she were attending the words her betters spoke but never once acknowledging them. At a mumbled command from Standing Pine, the woman raised her head.

The woman's features were strong but more finely drawn than most Indian women's were. She had a firm chin and a mouth that didn't seem meant for smiling; a short, straight nose with a spattering of freckles; and brows that flared at the corners like a bird on the wing. The eyes that locked with Hunter's were pale, clear green, ringed by a corona of some mysterious darker color that was neither green nor gray. As he stared, Hunter did his best to plumb the depths of her. He found no warmth nor joy, no fear nor enmity. Her passivity assaulted him, decimating some fundamental belief about the light that should live in a woman's eyes.

And then he realized what they had done to her. High on her left cheekbone someone had marked her. A tattoo the size of a silver dollar spread like a star burst against her skin, deep blue lines radiating outward from a small hollow circle.

Beside him, Reynolds sucked in his breath. The captain wouldn't have seen an Indian tattoo before. He wouldn't know that they were worn as adornment as often as punishment. He would only see the disfigurement, the humiliation of being marked.

Even Hunter, for all his experience, tingled with shock.

Yet not so much as a ripple of acknowledgment disturbed the stillness in the woman's eyes. Either her captivity had turned her impervious as the surrounding hills, or she had retreated deep inside herself.

After a moment Reynolds seemed to recover. "Very well," he said. "I can see that the woman is white. We will take her back to the fort. You may have the goods."

Standing Pine nodded, accepting the trade, and motioned two of his men toward the wagon. The muleteers who had been driving jumped down from the seat and untied their mounts from where they had been tethered to the back. The Indians took the soldiers' places, slipped the brake, and turned the wagon back toward the rocks. The other Cheyenne fell in behind.

Standing Pine watched them go. When the wagon had disappeared, he caught up the white woman's wrist and thrust it in Reynolds's direction. "She is yours now," he said.

Hunter saw the captain flinch, sensed his reluctance to contaminate himself by touching her. Reynolds's reticence fired something bitter and hot in Hunter's chest.

Goddamn the man for considering himself superior! Goddamn him for refusing to touch her! How could Reynolds revile a woman who had done nothing to warrant it, a woman who must have suffered barbarities no white man could even imagine? Hunter had lived with the white's scorn for so many years, he thought he was immune to it. Reynolds's treatment of the captive made him realize he was not.

Then, just as Hunter moved to claim her, Reynolds reached out and closed his fingers around the woman's arm. He dragged her forward and a little way behind him in a gesture of both possession and instinctive protection.

"Since our transaction is completed, go in peace," Reynolds said, dismissing Standing Pine.

"I will go," the man answered, and spun away. He gathered up the reins to the woman's horse, jumped onto his own, and prodded it to a run.

Hunter recognized Standing Pine's retreat for what it was. The brave was getting out of the line of fire.

With certainty humming in his veins, Hunter swung his gaze to the west. Three score of Cheyenne warriors bristled along the top of the ridge.

"Indians!" he shouted, and ran for his horse.

* * *

"Treacherous bastards!" Drew Reynolds pulled and fired his pistol as the war party swept toward them. He jerked the woman in the direction of his horse. "Might have known we couldn't trust these goddamned redskins!"

In the few seconds it took to cover the yards of snow-speckled grass, Drew Reynolds weighed his options. He could order the men to hightail it for the fort, nearly six miles away. They could dig in where they were and make a stand, or take cover and hold the Indians off while someone rode for reinforcements.

"Into the rocks!" he ordered, and waved his men toward the seam of broken hillside off to the north.

The woman at his side hung back as the troopers spurred their mounts away. Her resistance dragged Drew's attention from the enemy galloping toward them.

"Stupid squaw!" he shouted at her. "Don't you appreciate being rescued?"

Giving no sign she understood, the woman continued to twist against his grip. Drew cursed, shifted his hold to her middle, and flung her up on his horse's back. To prevent her from scrambling down the opposite side, he clamped his hand around her lean, muscled calf and hauled her back into the saddle. Before she could squirm away, he caught up the gelding's reins and swung up behind her.

As Drew prodded his horse toward the rocks, the air around them trembled with the thunder of hoofbeats. Whoops of bloodlust swelled at their backs. Arrows hissed past. Drew bowed his body around the woman and rode for both their lives.

A barrage of covering fire erupted from the rocks as his horse scrambled up the slope. The blast and smoke of a dozen carbines rolled over them. Drew looked back just in time to see several Indians pitch off their horses.

Tightening the reins, Drew breached the perimeter of broken stones and guided his mount into the relative safety of several towering boulders. He pulled the woman to the ground as he dismounted.

"What do you know about this, woman?" he demanded, rage whining in his head. He tightened his grip on his captive's arm and forced her to her knees. "Were you part of their plan to lure us here?"

Wide green eyes stared up from that dark, disfigured face.

"If my men die because of you..."

"Captain?"

Drew shuddered and turned.

Jalbert came striding toward them. "The hostiles are pulling back."

Drew nodded in acknowledgment. He loosened his hold on the woman's arm. "Do you mean the raiders are gone?"

"I'd say they're forming up for another go at us," the man replied.

Drew nodded, took a breath, and scanned the field before him. In the long, grassy dip between the hills, the Cheyenne were riding in circles, building momentum for the next attack.

Serendipity had given him and his men a far better field position than he had any right to expect. Before them lay a swath of level plain and the cover provided by the rocky hillside. Behind them the ground rose steeply, the earth crumbling away at the crest like a breaking wave. Drew had always liked fighting with a hill at his back, but today they'd have to keep a careful watch. If the Indians who had gone off with the wagon circled back, they could pin his men down in a cross fire.

"You two troopers, get up to the lip of the hill," Reynolds ordered, then motioned Jalbert to follow them. "Make sure they keep their eyes open. We don't want those red bastards getting the drop on us."

As Jalbert went to do as he'd been bidden, Drew continued to assess their position. Behind the impromptu breastworks, his men could hold the Indians off for a while, at least. He'd made certain they were issued extra ammunition before they left the fort this morning. Yet against such numbers, the rounds and their position could do only so much. They needed reinforcements.

Still clinging to the woman's wrist, Drew crept forward to where his sergeant crouched in the lee of a waist-high pillar of crumbled stones. "Prepare to send a rider to the fort," Reynolds instructed in an undertone. "Pick your best man, Sergeant O'Hearn, and give him the fastest horse we've got."

"That'd be yours, Captain."

"Then let him take it. Have him head for the top of the hill and circle east. Let Major McGarrity know we need reinforcements. Tell him we'll hold on here as long as we can."

As the wiry sergeant scuttled away to do the captain's bidding, Jalbert resumed his place behind the rocks.

"The sentries are posted at the rear, sir. I took a good look around up there myself. There isn't anything to see for miles. My guess is that Standing Pine headed straight for the village with those supplies."

"Very good," Reynolds answered, his attention shifting again as the riders who had been circling at the far end of the draw began to form up for another charge.

"Captain," Jalbert asked, reclaiming Drew's attention, "what about the woman?"

Reynolds turned to where the Indian captive crouched in the shadow of the jumbled stones. What was going on behind those empty eyes? he found himself wondering. Where did this woman's loyalties lie?

Without answering Jalbert, Drew shifted the pressure on the woman's arm, forcing her down beside him, onto her back. He jammed his knee between her legs, pinning the drape of her buckskin skirt to the ground.

"I think it's best, Mr. Jalbert," he answered, "if I keep her here with me."

Reynolds saw the distaste in the scout's dark face as he turned to go, but it didn't matter what such a man thought. Drew had learned early how treacherous Indians could be—and he wasn't sure he could trust this one any more than the rest.

As the beat of the Indian charge grew louder, Drew glanced down, addressing the woman. "I don't know what you think or what you want, but until this is over, you just lie quiet. If you give me so much as a lick of trouble, you'll wish you'd stayed with the savages."

He wasn't sure she understood his words, but his meaning seemed clear. The woman closed her eyes and turned her face away.

Then the horsemen charging up the valley claimed all of Drew's attention. It was as if the Cheyenne rode in some primitive ballet: the horses and riders a blur of grace and speed, of fury and daring, sweeping toward them over the windswept ground.

His appreciation didn't stop Drew from snatching up the sergeant's rifle, notching it into his shoulder, and sighting on one of the lead horsemen. The brave and his mount went down hard. More riders swarmed in his place, circling and firing. One of the men to Drew's left fell back, an arrow in his shoulder. He heard Sergeant O'Hearn cursing farther down the line. His hat was gone and blood was streaming from a gash at his hairline.

Still, the troopers held their own. Five or six Indians rushed their left flank and were driven back. A few breached the rocks and the line of soldiers. From the corner of his eye Drew saw Jalbert shoot one of the braves from his horse. He wrestled a second to the ground and dispatched the man with the war club Drew had seen tied to his saddle. Reynolds gave an almost imperceptible nod. The mixed-blood could be trusted, at least this far.

Then, as if by some prearranged signal, the Indians withdrew.

"Hold your fire!" Drew shouted, and quickly reassessed the situation. He knew his men could never bear up under continued attack. They were hopelessly outnumbered, and wounds had begun to take their toll. One of the muleteers lay dead, and two more men were moaning in agony.

"Jalbert," Drew called out and waited for the scout to appear. "Is there another way out of here?"

The scout spared a glance for the woman, then shook his head. "Even if we were able to retreat a few at a time, it would end up a race back to the fort. And carrying our wounded, we couldn't win."

Reynolds acknowledged the half-breed's assessment. They were safer here than they would be if they left the cover of the rocks. Still, this was damn grim business.

Already the band of riders at the far end of the draw was winding up for another attack.

Then from the south came the sound of a bugle. Both Drew and Jalbert perked up like hounds on point. The familiar notes of the call to arms drifted to them, clearer than before.

The Indians seemed to hear it, too. The whirlwind of riders began to unwind as a column of bluecoats emerged from the dip of land to the south.

"It's Captain Parker," Jalbert reported, climbing to his feet to watch the fresh troops fan out to the right and left. From behind their makeshift breastworks, a cheer went up. "Parker must have been out on patrol when our man reached him."

"The Cheyenne see Parker, too," Drew observed, rising to stand beside the scout. Relieved of his weight, the woman who had been sprawled beneath him curled and drew her knees up to her chest.

As the line of soldiers advanced, the clot of warriors at the far end of the draw scattered in all directions like a good break on a billiard table.

Parker's troops pursued them, but from where Reynolds stood he could see that they'd never catch the Indians. He was beginning to appreciate the army's frustration at the way Indians could disappear into this country like barn mice into a hayloft.

At the midpoint of the draw, Captain Parker left the main body of his men. These seasoned troops would ride down the hostiles as best they could.

Reynolds bent and caught the Indian captive's wrist. He pulled her to her feet as Parker approached. "Well, whoever you used to be, madam," Reynolds told her, "whoever you are now, I'm taking you home. And God help you when we get there."