"Don't use that kind of language in my presence," she whispered back. "How dare you?"

He jutted his chin at her. "I'll talk to you any damned way I want, you sassy little piece of baggage, and if you're smart, you'll damned well listen! Now, shut up! One more word, and I swear I won't be accountable."

Laura flinched but stood her ground. "For what? Striking me? Go ahead, Mr. Sheridan. I'm no stranger to a man's fists."

He had drawn so close that Laura couldn't fail to notice that his eyes had started to bug. She was so afraid that her legs felt watery. He was a big man. Bigger than Tristan by far. If he struck her using all that strength, he would probably shatter every bone in her face. But better that than letting him walk on every last shred of her dignity. Had he truly believed she was so stupid that she wouldn't find out about the free-woman ceremony?

"Well?" she challenged, wondering even as she did so if she weren't insane. "If you're going to strike me, don't keep me in suspense!"

"I ain't never used my fists on a woman in my life!" he shot back. "And I ain't gonna start with a little half jigger of a gal like you."

"Well, there's always that infamous razor strap of yours. I'm surprised you don't wear it looped over your belt."

"I just might start."

"Go ahead. Live up to my worst expectations. Which brings me directly back to this bogus marriage of ours. And don't try to scare me off the subject with dire predictions. I don't see any men lined up out here for a turn with Sugar Girl, and she's a free woman."

His lips drew back over gleaming white teeth. In a low voice so no one else might overhear, he said, "Is that what you want, darlin'? For me to make a free woman of you? For me to pass you on the prairie?"

"It wouldn't hurt my feelings any if you passed me. I think spitting on me is carrying things a little far, but I'm washable, and I'll gladly suffer even that if it's all part of the ceremony to make me free."

"Honey, you got it all wrong. We ain't talkin' about me passin' you by. We're talkin' about you bein' passed from man to man. Usually a whole goddamned soldier society of 'em." He flashed a feral smile. "The Cheyenne call it makin' free with a woman. It's a punishment. The very worst kind. It's what bastards who need shootin' do when their women make 'em real, real mad. If the woman livesand that's real rare after forty or fifty men make a feast of herthen the husband or almost-husband who tossed her to 'em spits on her like she's dirt."

Laura's legs buckled.

Deke shot out a hand to grab her by the arm and hold her up. His blanket slipped off one shoulder. "For the rest of that woman's life, she stays dirt. Like Sugar Girl is. A dirty woman no one wants. Not that she minds much. Because after bein' passed, her hunger for that kind of thing has kinda lost its edge. You know what I'm sayin'?

"For the rest of her life, she sticks real close to her own lodge unless someone else is with her. Because she never knows when she might happen upon another son of a bitch who figures there ain't nothin' real wrong with him draggin' a piece of dirt off into the brush and havin' himself a little fun."

Laura closed her eyes, feeling as though she might vomit.

"This ain't Boston, Laura. Folks don't live by the same rules out here. You're walkin' on thin ice during spring thaw. Do you got that?"

She was going to be sick. Horribly, violently sick. A picture of Sugar Girl's sweet face swam through Laura's mind, and bile crawled up her throat.

"You're gonna do what I tell you to do," Deke said in a dangerously smooth voice. "What I tell you, when I tell you. If I snap my fingers and say jump, I wanna see daylight under them feet of yours." He gave her a little shake. "Do you understand me?"

Laura gulped and nodded her head.

"Do you got any more questions? About Cheyenne customs and all? Like maybe what might happen if you make the fool mistake of tellin' Black Stone you don't accept my offer for you?"

"No."

"Look at me, dammit!"

She forced her eyes open and stared up at him through a blur of tears. Never had she seen him so furious. "No more questions," she managed.

His glittering gaze held hers. "You go back inside now, and in real simple English, you tell Black Stone you've been a stupid woman. That after talkin' to me, my offer makes you real big happy. You got it?" At her nod, he slowly relaxed his grip on her arm. "Then get to it," he bit out. "And when it's done, get your little butt back out here, 'cause I'm not finished with you yet. Not by half."

On legs that threatened to fold with every step, Laura made her way back inside the lodge.

Chapter 20.

*Laura's discussion with Black Stone entailed little more than apologizing and saying how big happy she was to accept Deke's offer. When she returned to the lodge, it was to find Sugar Girl badly shaken, which made Laura feel absolutely horrible. With the girl close to tears, both Star and Black Stone were otherwise engaged for a bit of time trying to comfort her. After that, a good thirty minutes were eaten up while Black Stone, who had now warmed to the idea of educating Laura to be a proper Cheyenne woman, more than likely because she had displayed such idiocy, explained the rituals of a wedding. Half of these she didn't quite understand, either because of the language barrier, which she was quickly learning could not be overlooked, or because the customs sounded so barbaric to her.

None, however, struck her as being quite so barbaric as the custom of a husband or "almost-husband" being given free rein over a woman's life, even to the extent that he could pass her among his acquaintances out on the prairie to retaliate if she displeased him. Comparatively, her marriage to Tristan was beginning to sound like heaven. At least social mores had restricted him to merely beating her when his mood turned foul.

Laura did not look forward to going back outside. If Deke had ears, he couldn't fail to know how badly she had upset Sugar Girl, which was bound to make him all the more angry. He wasn't finished with her yet, he had said. Not by half. What had he meant? Laura couldn't contemplate the possibilities without shaking. Here among these people, it seemed his power over her was even more absolute than Tristan's had been.

The most awful part of it was, Laura couldn't quite blame Deke for being so furious, if for no other reason than the pain she had caused Sugar Girl. And all for what? A last stand for her freedom? Now that she had had time to think about it, she realized how close she had come to landing herself in deep trouble, trouble Deke might not have been able to pull her out of. In view of that, his volatile reaction no longer struck her as being quite so out of line. He was one man against seventy, he had stuck his neck out for her, and she was playing child's games?

Laura felt like crying right along with Sugar Girl. She owed Deke an apology. No two ways about it. At the same time, she knew she probably wouldn't give him one. Saying she was sorrythat came easily if she did so as a mere courtesy. But in serious situations like this, when she had truly messed up, the thought of admitting it terrified her. Tristan had never failed to take any admission of wrongdoing from her as all the more reason to chastise her. To that end, he had played vicious little games, baiting her, trying to make her say the two words he most wanted to hear, damning words that lent all he did from that moment on a certain justification. I'm sorry. Laura had learned the hard way never to say those words unless he forced her to, and then only with great reluctance because she knew he would use them against her.

Deke was not Tristan. But the circumstances Laura found herself in tonight were reminiscent of a thousand others that had occurred during her first marriage. Deke was angry, just as Tristan had so often been, rightly or wrongly. She was at Deke's mercy, just as she had once been at Tristan's. A person didn't walk into that kind of a situation asking for it, and in Laura's experience, apologizing, even when she was wrong, was doing just that. Better to be defiant and brazen her way through than to crawl in, asking to be kicked.

When the moment finally came that Laura left Black Stone's lodge and stepped back outside into the darkness, her nerves were twanging like loose guitar strings. Still wearing the army-issue blanket draped over his shoulders, Deke was crouched by the dying fire, one knee elevated, his hands busy at some task she couldn't quite make out.

Because he gave no sign of having heard her come outside and because she was none too anxious for the second segment of their confrontation to occur, Laura hugged herself against the cold and remained frozen in the shadows beyond the firelight. Across the way, other fires crackled cheerily in the darkness, their amber glow illuminating the conical lodges behind them. Occasionally she saw people in silhouette passing to and fro.

Chief lay near Deke's feet, Laura noticed, his bone protected between his spread paws. In an attempt to bolster her courage, she tried to think positively. She had been terrified of Deke Sheridan from the first, and the man hadn't harmed her yet. There was every chance he wouldn't tonight.

Wrong. Those other times he hadn't felt proprietorial. He consider her to be a possession now, and he had given her fair warning of what he'd do if she tried to escape his clutches.

The dog's eyes gleamed when they caught the light and seemed to be fixed on her. If Chief knew she was standing there, Laura guessed Deke probably did as well. She supposed he was ignoring her to drag out the tension, to make her sweat, and she hated him for that. She would take whatever he decided to dish out. She had no choice. But must he torture her?

Well, enough of this. She wasn't a child to stand with her hands cupped protectively over her posterior, sniveling and pleading for clemency. Waiting and dreading what was to come had to be more awful than facing it. If the man was going to heat her, or worse, he could darned well get to his business.

She stepped forward into the shifting circle of anemic light. "I've finished speaking with Black Stone."

He didn't so much as glance up, just kept doing whatever it was he was doing as though he hadn't heard.

"I realize that you're probably angry," she added, determined to brazen it out. "However, in my own defense, I must point out that it was an honest mistake. Given the circumstances, it was natural that I might think you had hoodwinked me, and it hardly seems fair, since I've been coerced into this marriage, that I should be punished for having tried to extricate myself from it."

Laura expected him to begin ranting as Tristan had always done. These dialogues usually began with, "I've had it with you, Laura," and went downhill from there. She steeled herself for the first razorlike slash, fully prepared to argue in her own defense, to lay the blame for everything, including Sugar Girl's distress, at his door rather than her own. But Deke said nothing.

Laura clenched her teeth and peered through the elongated shadows to see. He held a whetstone on his upraised knee and, with light strokes, was working a finer edge onto his knife blade. On the ground in front of him lay a leather strop. From that, Laura surmised he didn't intend to debate the issue and that probably nothing she said would sway him. She stared at the strop for a long moment, then swallowed hard. So be it. He had a surprise coming if he thought she would grovel.

She curled and straightened her fingers. "Do you intend to use that on me?"

He hesitated before completing a pass of steel over stone. After a moment, he said, "I reckon I could do some shavin' on that tongue of yours. If all you could do was grunt and squeak, it might keep you outa trouble." He worked his mouth and spat on the rock, then made circular motions with the blade tip to spread the saliva. "Hell, knowin' you, you'd learn sign language just to spite me, and your hands'd be goin' at full gallop from dawn till dark."

Laura swallowed again. "I wasn't referring to your knife." He said nothing. She stepped closer. "Well? It appears that you've fetched your strop. I take it that you must intend to use it?"

"That's my knife strop, not my razor strap." He went on sharpening, never looking up.

"Knife strop, razor strap, wherein lies the difference?" Her voice sounded whiny even to her, and she wanted to kick herself.

"A big difference. My knife strop's a little shy on length. A short strop just don't make the right singin' sound. Not satisfyin', if you know what I mean."

"Satisfying?"

"Hell, darlin', if I'm gonna give you a lickin', I wanna have some fun while I'm at it."

Laura gaped at the back of his bent head. Fun? He wanted to have fun? Regathering her courage, which seemed to have scattered momentarily beyond her grasp, she said in a thin voice, "Well?"

"Well what?" He touched the edge of his knife blade to his forearm to see if the steel would shave, then he went back to sharpening. "I'll never cut reeds with my good knife again. Damned if I can work a fine edge back up."

Laura had had enough. "Deke Sheridan, you get up from there this minute."

"What for?"

"To go and get the right strap, damn it! The least you can do is get it over with."

"Don't go tryin' to order me around. I'll beat you when I'm damned good and ready, and not before."

"And when will that be?" she asked shrilly.

"When the mood comes over me." He finally graced her with a glare. "I ain't never seen anybody so all-fired anxious to get a lickin'. You don't got a fever again, do you?"

"I am not anxious. I'm just" She broke off to glare back at him. "My having to wait for the mood to come over you is an unnecessary torment."

His teeth flashed in a slow grin. "So suffer."

"You are despicable."

"I got that word down. You got a new one you can throw at me?"

Laura took a step toward him, her fists clenched at her sides. "You go and get that miserable strap right this instant!"

"It's clear at the bottom of my saddlebags."

"I don't care where it is. You go get it."

"It's..." He peered into the darkness across the way. "Hell, it must be thirty yards over there. Then I'd have to dig around in all that shit lookin' for it, and in the dark, mind you, 'cause there ain't a fire built. Then I'd have to walk clear back here, plus spend a few minutes gettin' my lickin' arm all warmed up. That don't count havin' to catch you. By the time I got all that done, I'd be flat wore out. It don't hardly seem worth the effort. Are you all that bent on it?"

Laura couldn't miss the twinkle that had come into his eyes. He quickly bent his head and went back to sharpening his knife, but not before she saw it and realized, bewilderedly, that he had no intention whatsoever of punishing her, with a strap or otherwise. She felt as though she had been pushing with all her might against a head wind. Her body, braced to go forward, suddenly had nothing to counteract its momentum. She staggered slightly, then regained her balance. A weak, half hysterical little laugh trailed up her throat.

"Don't push your luck, darlin'," he said gruffly. "I get real out of sorts when people laugh at me."

"II'm not laughing. Well, I am, but notit's just thatI thought surely you'd" Laura realized she was babbling like an idiot and gave up.

"I got me a real bad habit of sayin' stuff I don't truly mean when I get mad," he admitted in a gruff voice. "I reckon I owe you an apology." He made an abrupt swipe with his knife across the stone and then sighed. "What am I gonna do with you, Boston?"

At the moment Laura was more preoccupied with thoughts of what he wasn't going to do with her, and thanking the Lord.

"I damned near strangled on that last mouthful of coffee, I hope you know. Bein' around you is so excitin', I feel like I oughta buy tickets. What're you gonna pull next?"

"Nothing," she said weakly. "At least I don't have any immediate plans."

"That's a relief." He glanced up at her. "Can I take that to mean I don't gotta worry about what I'm gonna do with you?"

He wasn't the only one who was relieved. He truly wasn't angry? She felt as though someone had just plucked her off the crumbling edge of a ravine. Scarcely able to believe in her good fortune and hoping to keep him in this benevolent mood, she injected far more lightness into her voice than she might have otherwise. "I would hope. According to these people's customs, it would seem your options are limitless. I'd be just as happy if you didn't consider doing any of them, actually."

He smiled slightly, then tested his knife blade for sharpness on his arm again. "The Cheyenne customs ain't so bad. Not really. In time you'll see that things got a way of workin' out real fair for the womenfolk around here. Maybe even fairer than where you come from."

Still shaken by her narrow escape and feeling none too certain of him yet, Laura knew she should tread with caution. But tonight's revelations so incensed her, she couldn't stop herself from saying, "Fair? What happened to Sugar Girl was fair?"

She no sooner spoke than she regretted it. But to her surprise, Deke looked more amused by her indignation than irritated. He gave her a measuring glance. "No, Laura, what happened to Sugar Girl was far from fair."

"Yet it happened, and it happened among your precious Cheyenne people." After saying that, Laura winced at her own audacity and panned the darkness beyond the fire. For what, she didn't know. A loose bit of cloth to stuff in her mouth, perhaps?

To her amazement, Deke let the slur slide past. "Like anywhere else, there's bad apples and good. Sugar Girl's eldest brother gave her to one who was real rotten."

Laura heartily agreed. "Only an animal would" She broke off and swallowed the words. As Deke had suggested earlier, for once in her life, she was going to tie off her tongue.

"Go ahead and say it. I can see it's about to choke you," he said with a dry laugh.

"I'm afraid if I do, I'll make you angry."

He raised twinkling eyes to hers. "Honey, you've had my tail tied in a knot ever since I met you. Don't go changin' on me now. I won't know what to think."

"Well, I was just going to say that only an animal would do such aa monstrous thing to someone so sweet."

"And?" he pressed.

"And that a people who would countenance it ... well, I can't help but feel they're equally monstrous."

There. She had said it. Laura watched Deke for his reaction, uncertain what he might do. He didn't even bristle.

"Countenance meanin'?"

"Accept it. Put up with it." Since her saying that much hadn't riled him, Laura couldn't resist adding, "A brother who would allow such a thing to happen to his sister deserves to be shot! And so do all the others who partook in such an atrocity."

He held his arm up to the feeble firelight, blew softly on his skin, then squinted to see if he had shaved off any hair.

Growing more confident by the moment that he wasn't going to get angry, Laura added, "And Black Stone? Star isn't Sugar Girl's sister, is she? That can only mean Black Stone is her brother since she's living with him. Is he the same brother who allowed Sugar Girl and her sister to be betrothed to such a cruel man? Given his greater age, I can only think"