Deke knew it would take Black Stone time to accept Laura. As far as that went, Deke was still reeling himself. His wife? Once this initial shock wore off, he would push Black Stone to acknowledge the marriage. But for now, with so many of his own emotions to handle, dealing with Black Stone's feelings was simply too much. It was enough that his brother had agreed to return the child. "It lays my heart upon the ground to cause your woman pain," Deke said in a gravelly voice. And it was the truth. How he wished there were another way. "I have great hope that she will find comfort in holding your firstborn son in her arms, and that her breasts will not ache for long over this second loss."

His eyes glistening with unshed tears, Black Stone nodded. "Firstborn or second, the pain is great." A slight smile finally touched his lips. "I should have seen the truth of it, yes? When the traders handed the child to me, I sensed the rightness, and when I gave the infant to my woman, it was as though her arms had never been empty. Now I know why. I loved the child so easily because he was yours."

Deke nodded. For better or worse, the lie was truth, and the truth was the most complicated of lies. He had just laid claim to a woman he doubted would ever willingly submit to him, and a child he had never seen.

Black Stone took a deep, bracing breath, pushed to his feet, and said, "Well, my brother? We have a travois to build to carry this whiskey-haired burden you have acquired."

Deke glanced at Laura. A burden? Black Stone had no idea just how great a trial she might yet prove to be. He rose and met his brother's gaze. "As you say, we have a travois to build. To carry my wife."

Black Stone shrugged, his expression conveying that only a crazy man would honor a white woman in such a way. "Think of it, my brother. By tomorrow at this hour, you'll be eating Medicine Woman's cooking."

Deke winced, for his Cheyenne mother's skill ran to herb gathering and tending the sick, not food preparation. "You and Star will invite me and my woman to supper often, yes?"

Though Black Stone's eyes still reflected the bitterness of his feelings toward Laura, he was clearly determined to put a bright face on it for Deke's sake. He laughed heartily and rubbed his broad chest. "We will invite you, but only if you treat me nice."

"Does that mean I have to lose to you at arm wrestling?"

"And also at cards and checkers."

Indians. Laura saw them, heard them, smelled them. They rode horseback all around her in the rainbow-colored clouds, their dark, painted faces indistinct, their black hair glistening in golden light. Sometimes treetops and blue sky swirled around her. At other times, she felt certain her bed was bouncing and jiggling. Crazy, so crazy. How had she come to be surrounded by fierce warriors?

Oddly, she wasn't frightened. Deke Sheridan was with her. At moments he seemed to be walking beside her. Only she was lying down, so that couldn't be. At other times, all seemed to go still and his face appeared above her, his ice blue eyes aching with concern, his hands gentle as he tipped a flask to her lips and bathed her skin with coolness. During those quiet times, Laura saw no warriors and wondered where they had gone. They always seemed to return, however. It didn't matter. Deke was there, and he had promised to stay with her. He wouldn't allow the redskins to kill her. She wasn't certain how she knew that. She only sensed that it was so. And in her swirling dreams of shimmering colors, that was enough to comfort her.

So exhausted he could scarcely hold his shoulders erect, Deke drew his stallion to a stop on the rise above Cougar Flats. Laura slept peacefully on her litter behind him. The afternoon was warm. There was no urgency to get her down to the village. As he always did when he came back to the People, he could afford to steal a few moments before he went in to face them.

He fixed his gaze on the mountain park below where conical lodges peppered the shady aspen glades and vast sweeps of green grass. Smoke canted lazily in the breeze to find the sky in trailing ribbons of gray. The myriad smells of roasted meat, coffee, stews, puddings, and even popcorn teased his nostrils. Dogs yapped. Children squealed. Laughter rang out.

Home. The word meant different things to different people, but for Deke, home was this village, wherever it happened to be. Seeing it again filled him with a bone-deep yearning for a world forever lost to him. These people, so simplistic, so in harmony with nature, were a part of him as no other ever could be. Shakeka S'ski-si-coh'Flint Eyeshis Cheyenne name, which he wore with intense pride, was also his greatest heartache, for there was an inescapable truth in his people's belief that a man's eyes were the pathways to his soul.

Though Black Stone's young wife was probably anxiously awaiting his arrival, Deke's adopted brother paused on the rise beside him. Deke wondered if Black Stone was putting off the moment when he would have to tell Star she must return the white boy child to his mother.

"It is the same, yes?" Black Stone whispered in Cheyenne.

Deke's throat tightened as he met his brother's gaze. It seemed Black Stone had lingered, not to put off the inevitable, but to share in this moment of intense gladness and pain. Deke should have known. Hadn't it always been thus, he and Black Stone, thinking as one? Now Deke had betrayed himfor a woman who probably wouldn't understand or appreciate the seriousness of what he had done, or the sacrifice.

"Yes, it is the same," Deke agreed in a tight voice.

"The snow surrenders to spring and summer grass, the grass gives way to pah-co-tai', the autumn, and then the snow comes again. The seasons are ever changing. You and I change. But the village, it is always"Black Stone smiled"the same."

"It is good to have one thing that does not change," Deke noted wryly. "Is this your way of saying the fingertips of age have traced my face?"

Black Stone grinned and glanced back to be certain Laura was resting peacefully. Then he bent his ebony head to toy absently with his pinto's reins, which he held lightly in one hand. When he looked up, his obsidian black eyes ached with sadness. "Your marriage ... to this woman with whiskey hair. It may set your feet on a path even farther away from us."

Deke had thought of that and knew it would probably be so. Laura, the fancy-mannered lady from Boston, would never enjoy coming here for prolonged visits, and Deke would not feel comfortable leaving her behind to come without her. "Yes, a path farther away from you," he admitted.

"It is your wish? To stay away and become only a name we mention in stories told to children by our winter fires?"

Deke swallowed hard. "It isn't my wish, Black Stone. Never that. But you know how lonely my way has been."

"You could have married a Cheyenne woman."

Deke stiffened. "My heart wandered that way once, long ago. I cannot walk backward in those footprints."

"Sugar Girl, sister to the one you once loved, has become a very beautiful woman, and this is her twentieth summer. After all you sacrificed to avenge her, I always hoped that one day you would see her as a man does a woman, that you might be the one to lead her back into the sunshine and give her the right to hold her head high again."

Deke knew of another beautiful girl who walked in shadows with shattered pride as her companion, and it was her hand he wished to hold. He glanced back at Laura. "I love Sugar Girl, you know that. But not in the right way. Some other man will cross her path and find that he can't keep going his own way unless she walks beside him. It will be that man who will be able to take the sadness from her eyes, not me."

"And from where will this man come?" Black Stone asked bitterly. "None of the young warriors ever look her way when choosing wives. You know that. It will take a man who cares nothing for the chattering of women. Someone who won't care if he is called 'he who walks in old moccasins.' You are the only warrior I know who could pretend not to hear the sharp tongues, who would wear the old moccasins with pride."

Frustration welled within Deke. "I'm not the man for her, Black Stone. She accepts that. I accept it. Yet you cannot? If it is meant to be, a special man will be sent by the Great Ones. If he cares for her in the way I mean, he'll be determined enough to win her heart. You will see. But that man is not me."

Puffing air into his cheeks, Black Stone nodded, his expression one of reluctant acceptance. After a moment, his smile returned. "I hope this special man crosses the girl's path soon and takes her to his lodge. She eats more than two growing boys. I'm afraid she will soon be as large as Many Stomachs. Perhaps that is why this man you speak of won't continue to walk his own way after he crosses her path. Because he won't be able to get around her."

"Sugar Girl?" Deke chuckled at that and shifted his grip on his horse's reins. He felt more ready now to go into the village and face his memories. "Last winter when I saw her, she was as thin as a willow."

"She is still thin. Star thinks she must have great holes in the bottoms of her feet. All the food runs straight through her and out onto the ground."

"She still loves sugar and molasses?"

Black Stone's mouth quirked. "We have changed her name?"

Deke knew that was an answer in itself. Still smiling, he fixed his gaze on the lodges. "It is time, Black Stone. If I linger here much longer, my mother will be told of my coming and walk out to meet me on her shaky old legs."

Black Stone thrust out a hand to grasp Deke's arm. "You will linger one more moment? As a favor to me, the brother of your heart?"

As much as he loved Black Stone, Deke sometimes found his tenacity irritating. Once the man sank his teeth into a bone, he seldom turned loose of it without harsh words. "I will spare you a moment, my brother, but not my ear. Not if you hope to turn my heart away from this woman I now call wife. It is done. We have a son. Your warnings come too late."

"You have not yet formally made her your wife according to our ways. As it stands now, you have sipped the milk but not purchased the cow. It is not too late to change your mind. Keep the child and send this worthless woman back to her white family dishonored. No one here will think less of you for this, not over a whiskey-haired female who is dirt beneath our feet. She is as nothing to us."

The harsh words were ones Deke could not ignore. As chief of the Horse Soldiers, Black Stone commanded great respect, not only in this band but throughout the Cheyenne nation. His disgust for Laura would be contagious if he expressed it openly. The People would forever scorn her, Deke couldn't let that happen, for a woman scorned was a woman spit upon. There was even a possibility that Laura might suffer physical abuse from the other squaws when Deke wasn't near at hand to protect her.

A man could dig his own grave with lies; Deke already felt as though he were dyinga little at a time. There were no choices, though, not now. He had picked his path, and now he had to walk along it. He jerked his arm from Black Stone's grasp. "If my woman is nothing to you, I am nothing to you. Get yourself away from me. Your face is no longer one I wish to look upon."

With that, Deke jerked on his stallion's reins and headed down the slope, feeling with every step that he was wading more deeply into quicksand.

"Flint Eyes! Flint Eyes!"

The cry rang in Deke's ears a hundred times and in as many different voices. Star and Sugar Girl saw him first, and both launched themselves into his arms for a hug of greeting. Male hands clapped him on the back. Children who were old enough to recall his prolonged visit last winter jostled one another to cling to his legs. Flint Eyes. Shakeka S'ski-si-coh'.

Several curious youngsters gathered around the litter when Deke drew his horse to a stop near a lodge that bore a large painted bear, the sign of medicine, on its flap. Touching the black's shoulder in silent command for it to stand fast, Deke strode quickly to Laura, waving the youngsters away.

"Scoote Nipe! Scoote Nipe! Whiskey! Whiskey!" they cried excitedly.

One little scamp of about ten summers pulled a knife from his belt. "Ni oui-thai-ah', my hair!" he proclaimed, and advanced on the litter.

"Mat-tah', no!" Deke barked. "Equiwa neewa, the woman is my wife!"

A collective gasp rose around Deke, and he realized what he had said a little too late. A ring of shocked faces, belonging to both adults and children, stared at him in astonishment. Glancing toward the lodge, he saw his mother standing in the doorway, the brightly painted flap nudged aside by one frail arm. More snow had touched her hair since he had seen her last winter, and the months had also etched lines more deeply into her skin. A thin, bony skeleton with grizzled braids hanging over her stooped shoulders, that was what she had become.

But to Deke, she was beautiful. He looked into those warm, liquid brown eyes and felt warmth enfold him. "Neegah, my mother," he whispered.

"You have not forgotten me?" she asked saucily.

"Nevernot even when I am dust in the wind."

She planted gnarled hands on her hips. "It seems you have walked the path of forgetfulness, you who calls me mother! Is it not the way to at least direct a mother's gaze toward your chosen one and ask for her words of wisdom?" She wagged a scolding finger. "Bring me a puppy I have never seen, Flint Eyes, and I will smile. A pony I have never seen! But a wife? And a yellow-hair, at that?"

After going for so many days without sleep, Deke had to wonder if he could even carry Laura into the lodge. A quarrel with his mother right now was more than he could contemplate. He knew the way around her temper and took it. "She may be dying, this woman I call wife."

"Then take her off somewhere. I don't want dead offal outside my door."

Deke pretended to search for a place to dump her. "Where? Under the trees over there ... that would be a fine place for the wife of Flint Eyes to die, yes? Or to the horse posture? That would be a fine place. She is offal, this mother of your first grandson."

Chobeka Equiwa, Medicine Woman, narrowed her eyes on Laura's pole face. "Say this to me again? The mother of my grandson?"

Deke managed a weary nod. "My heart is heavy with shame. To bring you such a one? You are right. I cannot expect you to save her, though that is what I hoped. I am a stupid, ungrateful, disrespectful son."

Medicine Woman hobbled a bit closer to have a better look. After giving Laura's frame a measuring glance, she snorted. "A twig! No fine, strong warrior could be borne by such a skinny thing as that." She threw up her hands. "Always, I say to you, look first at a girl's hips! And what do you choose? Not a fine, strapping female to bear you healthy sons, but a twig."

"You're right. I'll throw her away. She's an ugly thing anyway."

Medicine Woman shook her head. "And have my grandson blame me for letting his mother die? Ach! I can't believe I raised such a rock head. Get back, get back!" She placed a palsied hand on Laura's forehead. "There is fire inside her."

"I know. Why else would I bring her here to you?"

"Because you have no sense. How could you drag my daughter-in-law about when she is afire like this? Do you think I can work miracles?"

"No. It was foolish of me to think you could."

"She will surely die, being handled so roughly. Men! If I put all your brains in a bucket, I couldn't make soup."

As weary as he was, Deke had to work at hiding his smile. "I'll just haul her over to the trees and let her die there."

"You will bring the poor thing inside my lodge, that is what you will do. And then you will stay away so you can do her no more harm." She shooed away the children. "Hurry, Flint Eyes. I must tend her. There is no time to waste."

Deke scooped Laura up into his arms, taking care that the blankets didn't fall away from her nude body.

"Don't drop her, you clumsy man." Medicine Woman hovered anxiously as Deke strode to the lodge. "Such a small one, Flint Eyes! Let us hope she is stronger than she looks. What is it that ails her?"

"She had the baby only a week ago. There is fever in her belly, and her breasts became caked." As Deke lowered Laura onto his mother's bed, he quickly apprised Medicine Woman of the treatment he had administered to Laura to keep her alive this long. "She is much better than she was, my mother. Much better. I believe she is past the most dangerous time."

"Perhaps it was I who raised you after all. You have done well," she said with relief. She touched Laura's forehead again. "You are right. The fire does not rage. I would say it is about to burn out." She lifted perceptive eyes to Deke's. "But if she journeys back to wellness, my son, why does she sleep this sleep of death?"

Deke quickly explained that he had kept Laura sedated since the onset of her illness. "She is very shy," he said lamely.

Medicine Woman's gaze sharpened. "With her husband?"

The question tripped him up. He started to reply, then shut his mouth, rubbing wearily at his forehead.

"Flint Eyes, whenever you rub your head like that when I am talking to you, I know it is to keep me from seeing into you." She grabbed his wrist and drew his hand aside. "Look at your mother and explain this shyness."

Deke couldn't find any words. Lying wasn't something that came easily to him, and never to this woman. She had taught him better at the end of a switch when he was seven years old.

"Ach, Flint Eyes. What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into this time?"

Chapter 13.

*Laura awoke as though from a long and very deep sleep. For a while she simply stared at the small fire, not caring to move, her predominant feeling one of separateness. The shadows beyond the fire didn't seem real. Her body felt as though it belonged to another. Her memories of how she had come to be here were a confusing jumble, none of which made sense, and all of which eluded her when she tried to examine them.

Slowly she began to notice small things. A can of coffee and a pot of something that smelled like venison stew simmered on the coals. A rifle and bow were leaned against the leather wall opposite her. Next to the gun rested Deke Sheridan's Stetson and gun belt. Chief slept nearby, his large head pillowed on his paws, a fresh deer leg lying inches in front of his nose. Along the wall behind him were a trunk, a neat pile of parfleches, and a stack of pots and pans. Suspended above him was a clothing rod, from which hung a woman's leather dresses.

Where was she?

Laura tried to remember, but everything was a jumbled swirl of images, all confusing, Deke Sheridan's dark face and strangely light blue eyes the only constant. Pain. She remembered feeling on fire with pain, and then cold, so cold that her body jerked and her teeth clacked.

Not at all certain she had the strength, she pushed part way up. Her body trembled at the effort, and she felt momentarily dizzy, a sensation that slowly passed. She ran a hand down the front of her blouse, which felt more roomy across the bust, the cloth crisp as though it were freshly washed. Her breasts no longer felt tender.

She prodded herself gingerly and detected no sign of fullness. Her eyes closed on a rush of dread. Her milk had dried up. Her baby! How was she to feed him once she found him? She struggled more erect, and the brightness of the fire went into a slow rotation. She waited for the swimming sensation to subside, then pressed a hand against her middle. No pain. It was the oddest experience, as though she had blinked and been healed of all her hurts. Had she been unconscious? And if so, for how long? She searched her surroundings. It all seemed familiar, yet she had no recollection of having spent time here. A round room of some sort? No, a Cheyenne teepee. Oh, dear God, she was in the Indian village.

Pictures flashed in her mindof Deke Sheridan, of an abandoned mine. Fevershe had been stricken with fever, and he had gathered plants to brew a remedy. Tea. A bitter yet sickeningly sweet concoction that had nearly gagged her. And dream medicine. It all came back to her, slowly, piece by piece. Being coerced to drink the tea, feeling strange.

And then a jumble of senseless images...

Weary beyond words, Laura sank back onto the thick layer of furs that served her as a bed. Outside, she heard voices ringing out, those of men, women, children. Pots clanked. A horse galloped past. A dogfight erupted, the snarls quickly silenced by a yelp. Indians. Speaking gibberish. All around her. Fear lanced through her, but she couldn't hold on to it. She was too exhausted. Though she fought to keep them open, her eyes drifted shut, and blackness closed around her.

"Good evenin', lazybones."

Laura blinked and searched for a face to go with the voice. Slowly one came into focus. Darkly handsome, with high, sharp cheekbones, a stubborn chin, a jaw delineated with corded tendon, a full mouth, hard yet strangely sensual. Handsome? How odd that she should think of Deke Sheridan in those terms. Yet she couldn't deny the truth of it. With shorter hair and more conventional clothing, he would be devastatingly attractive.