He ran a thumb and forefinger along the blade's edge. "Black Stone had nothin' to do with nothin'. Get that straight outa your head. He just helped pick up the pieces after the dust got settled. He ain't even blood-related to Sugar Girl. He adopted her. Goin' on five years ago now."

"Adopted her?"

"Yep. Her eldest blood brother, he got killed, and her other blood brothers wasn't much. It was decided, given what happened, that Sugar Girl shouldn't oughta be left there with the mean-hearted bastards."

"Oh." Laura pressed her knees together to steady her stance. "Well, that's something anyway." She glanced uneasily around. "Which lodge do her blood brothers live in?"

"Don't. Sugar Girl came from another band. Black Stone, he's a soldier chief, you see. And his band has a lot of truck with other bands. That's how we come to know Sugar Girl and"his knife blade grated loudly on the whetstone"her sister. It's kinda a long story. Just rest assured, things was set right. As right as they could be, anyhow. Some things can't never be undone total, I reckon."

"Set right?"

"If it'll ease your mind any, the sons of bitches who raped Sugar Girl and her sister is all dead. You can't set things much righter than that, now, can you?"

Laura clamped her arms around her waist again. "Black Stone? He avenged her?"

"Nope. His hands was tied. Cheyenne men don't turn against one another with intent to let blood. It's against the law, and Black Stone's a real rule-abidin' sort."

"And what of a law to protect Sugar Girl?" Laura demanded. "Or is there even such a thing?"

"There is. Laws here bein' what they is and not writ down, it's left up to the female relatives of a wronged girl to decide a punishment."

That so surprised Laura that she blinked. "The women here get to sentence the men?" she asked incredulously.

"Not sentence, exactly. And not in all cases. But when a girl is wronged, they decide the punishment and then they carry it out."

"You're kidding."

"I told you things work out real fair around here."

Laura could scarcely believe her ears. Being a Cheyenne woman suddenly didn't sound quite so bad. No white women Laura knew of were granted such authority, not under any circumstances, wronged girl or otherwise.

"You mean Sugar Girl's female relatives killed the men?"

"No. They might've, I reckon, but the cowards hid till the storm blew over. The way our law goes, the avengin' women only get one crack at metin' out a punishment, so if the man or men they're after ain't around, they can't go back later and light into 'em."

She should have known there had to be a catch. "A man must've come up with that twist."

He chuckled. "I reckon. Probably a man who crossed a woman once and found out she still held a grudge fifty years later. There had to be a rule of some kind to protect us fellas."

"Men who wrong young girls don't deserve protecting."

"I'd agree with you there, darlin', but there's wrongin' and then there's wrongin', and sometimes, when the wronged girl is someone well loved, it ain't easy to look at it clearheaded." He bent to pick up his strop, then set his blade to it for a moment. "For instancehere among the Cheyenne, a man's considered guilty of wrongin' a girl if all he does is mess with her knots. Measurin' things in shades, triflin' with her knots is gray, and passin' her on the prairie is black."

"Did you say knots?"

Clearly disgusted with the dullness of his knife, he shook his head, tossed down the strop, and ground his blade against the stone again. "Yeah, knots. Cheyenne girls wear chastity belts made outa rope. No decent girl ever leaves her lodge without her rope, and her mama ties them knots her own secret way so she'll know if anybody touches 'em. There ain't a man in this village, me included, that ain't fiddled with a few knots in his day."

He cast her a lambent glance. "If you'll pardon me for bein' despicable, it'd be a hell of a thing to get killed for fiddlin' when you never got around to doin' nothin' more. That twist in the law you think's so bad gives boys who fiddle a crack to hide in until the mad mamas and aunties work out their anger on things that can be replaced. Boys' lives can't be. If there wasn't no twist, there'd be boys, even if they did no more than feel, who could wind up dead six months later at the hands of angry women who laid in wait to get 'em."

"I see."

"From the way you're frownin', I take it you think dippin' a finger in the honey is a shootin' offense."

Laura's cheeks flamed. Just when she thought she was growing accustomed to Deke's crude language, he shocked her again. "No."

"Then what?"

"I was just trying to pictureoh, never mind."

"What?"

Laura couldn't stand the curiosity. "How on earth can a rope be used as aa chastity belt?"

"It'd be easier to tie one on you than explain."

"I'll pass."

He laughed at that. "Damn. It might've been kinda fun to fiddle with my own knots." He spat on his whetstone again. "To lasso it quick, darlin', a chastity rope does a real fine job of holdin' a girl's legs together. You start watchin', and you'll see lots of young gals steppin' short as they go about the village. That's cause they're trussed to the knee."

Laura glanced over her shoulder. "Are you serious? What a misery!"

"The biggest misery of my young life, and that's a fact."

"I meant for the poor girls."

"Yeah, for them, too, I reckon. But worse for the boys. All them pretty little gals who can't run, and they don't dare touch 'em after they catch 'em. All they can do is wrap 'em in a blanket and wish." His cheeks creased in a mischievous grin. "Which reminds me why I borrowed this goddamned blanket. It'd be a downright shame not to catch you in my blanket at least once before weddin' you."

Laura threw a startled glance at the blanket. "You, um, were going to tell me what Sugar Girl's female relatives did to avenge her?"

His grin turned wry. "Ah, yes. Since the men went into hidin', the women had to be content with rippin' hell out of their lodges, breakin' their stuff, and shootin' their horses."

"Someone must not have felt that was enough. The men responsible ended up dead."

"Yep."

"If the women didn't kill them, who did?"

He gave the knife a vicious twist on the whetstone. "A rebel, a man who already walked apart from the People."

Something about the stillness of Deke's expression made Laura's senses go on alert. "Did you know him?"

"I reckon. Sort of, anyhow. He was never an easy man to get a fix on. I never quite understood the things he done, or how come he went about doin' 'em like he did." He shrugged. "Lookin' back, it still don't make real clear sense."

Morbid curiosity had the better of Laura. "What did he do?"

Deke sighed. "I guess it wasn't so much what he did but that he took so long to do it." He glanced up at her. "If he was gonna kill Sugar Girl's brother and all them other bastards, he should've done it the first time, right after they done what they done to her sister. But instead he made a half-assed stab at it, got himself in all kinds of dutch with the People, ended up banished, and didn't come back to finish what he started until years later when it happened again to Sugar Girl."

Laura felt as though a hand were squeezing her heart. Deke Sheridan, a man who loved his people so deeply yet didn't stay with them. Could it be? Or was she imagining the shadows in his eyes? Before he continued, he laughed softly, bitterly.

"By that time, I reckon he must not've figured he had anything to lose, him bein' banished already, and all. The way I saw it, though, he got his guts up a little too late for that girl in there." He jabbed with his knife toward the lodge. "Killin' all the sons of bitches didn't make Sugar Girl's nightmares stop, and it didn't dry her tears. Kinda what us cowboys call bringin' in the hay after it rains."

"Well, at least he did something," Laura said carefully. "Even if he did do it too late. That's better than all the other men who did nothing."

"All told, he killed twenty-two Cheyenne men. Some of 'em he had to track down, and it took him months. When he got around to murderin' those last few, he couldn't even lay it off on bein' crazy mad. Cheyenne folks found that real hard to justify. Like I said, Cheyenne men don't turn on their own. It's a hard and fast rule."

Alert to his every expression, Laura said, "So the rebel was banished because he broke that rule?"

"He could've got back in good standin', I reckon, but he was a stubborn fellow. Wouldn't say he was sorry. Wouldn't make amends with gifts to the dead men's families." He drew his knife from the stone and gazed at the firelight reflecting off it for several seconds. "He knowed what he was doin' when he done it, I guess, and must've figured the punishment fit the crime."

"Did you? Feel the punishment fit the crime, I mean?"

"It's the Cheyenne way."

"That isn't what I asked."

He rubbed at a smudge on the blade. "It wasn't for me to say, Laura. In this world, in any world, it takes bein' sorry to get forgiven, and he wasn't." He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. "That rebel ... he was in love with Sugar Girl's sister, you see. Crazy in love, like only young folks can be. She and him made plans to marry the last time he saw her. He was from another band, and while he was away from her tryin' to catch himself enough horses for a bride price, her brother gave her to the other man. The mornin' of the weddin' she tried to"

He broke off and swore, leaning close to the fire to see where he had nicked himself on the thumb. After a moment, he jiggled his hand and went back to sharpening.

"Anyhow, she tried to run off from her new husband," he finally said, his voice thick and gravelly. "Folks thought she was tryin' to reach the boy she loved. But her husband caught her, and in a rage, he passed her on the prairie."

"Oh, my God." Laura felt sick. "Andthe men who raped herthe abusive treatment killed her?"

"No." He gazed into the fire. "After they got done with her, she crawled off and went to a special trystin' spot where her and the boy had been meetin' all that summer. A real pretty spot," he added almost wistfully, "under a big ol' oak tree by a little stream. She hung herself from that tree with her chastity rope." He fell silent. "Without her purity she would've been considered dirt, and I reckon she couldn't bear the shame of that. Couldn't bring herself to face folks."

Laura willed Deke to meet her gaze so she might read the expression in his eyes, but he kept his face carefully averted.

"The boyhe found her. But too late. Too late to tell her he didn't care about her bein' passed, to late to tell her that he loved her anyway and they could make the shame a memory."

Laura couldn't speak. There was nothing to say.

"Anyhow, him bein' young and kinda a hothead, he set out to kill all the bastards that'd done such a terrible thing to her. He wasn't no match for better'n twenty blooded warriors, so he failed and got the beatin' of his young life for his trouble. They damned near killed him."

"And in addition to all that, he was banished?"

"Sort of. Told to make amends with the warriors he tried to kill, anyhow, or he'd have to leave. Somehow he couldn't never find it in his heart to do the first, so he done the second."

"And then came back years later to avenge Sugar Girl?"

Deke smiled slightly. "I reckon you could say he matured out and turned a little meaner than he was at seventeen. On the second try, he made the bastards crawl before they diedlike they'd made the girl he loved crawl. After killin' all of 'em, he sure as hell couldn't say he was sorry, not with their blood drippin' from his hands. In the end, I reckon he saw that there was an apartness deep down inside him, that his soul sang a different song than that of his people. He decided he had to walk his own way. He comes back now and again to see his loved ones, but he don't never stay."

Laura studied his dark face, frustrated by the shadows. Was he telling his own story in the third person? Or was she imagining things? "Little wonder he didn't feel sorry. The world is surely a better place without animals like that running around in it. That rebelwhy, the way I see it, he should be commended for what he did, not ostracized."

"Ostracized?"

"Banished. Cut off from his people. How horribly unfair. I admire his courage. And I think it's sad his people don't!"

He chuckled. "Well, if I ever happen across his path again, darlin', I'll make sure you get a chance to shake his hand."

"I shall do so, I assure you. And pat him on the back as well." Still trying to read his expression, Laura asked softly, "What were you doing while he avenged Sugar Girl and her sister?"

"Scratchin' my head. He was one puzzlin' fellow."

He sheathed his knife and passed behind her to get some firewood. After positioning the new logs in the flames, he straightened the blanket around his shoulders and turned toward her. "Enough about all that. I brung this blanket out here for a reason, and unless I get to it, the night'll go to waste. Since we're gettin' hitched come mornin', it's now or never."

Laura gazed up at him, still uncertain, still wondering. If he had been that boy of long ago, he showed no sign of it now. His eyes twinkled with mischief, and his mouth twitched at the corners as though he were suppressing a smile. Yet so much of the story fitted him. A rebel. Deke Sheridan was definitely considered to be that in both the Cheyenne and white worlds. He was also a man who walked apart. And last, but not least, he could have easily gone gunning for twenty-two men and been successful at killing them.

Last night she remembered him saying he had been away from the Cheyenne for fourteen years. He looked to Laura as though he were about thirty. But he could be thirty-one. If so, he would have been the age of that boy fourteen years ago.

Laura's thoughts were jerked back to the present by his slow approach. She eyed the blanket nervously. "What, exactly, are you planning to do with that blanket?" she asked.

"Court you the Cheyenne way," he said silkily as he continued to advance on her. "You can try to run if you want. Catchin' a woman is all part of the fun."

"I can't run," Laura reminded him, growing uneasy in spite of herself. "My legs are still too weak."

"Really?" His silvery gaze ran the length of her. "You know, Boston? This might prove real interestin'. I ain't never caught a gal in my blanket who wasn't wearin' no rope."

"Perhaps I should go ask Star for one."

"You do, and I'll wring your pretty little neck with it," he said with a chuckle.

Chapter 21.

*Having a man come up from behind and envelop her in a blanket seemed highly improper to Laura, not to mention perilous since he was inside the blanket with her. Deke clutched the wool in one fist, which left him one arm free to hug her waist. He drew her close almost instantly, much as he had last night to search for stars, only this time Laura had nothing to preoccupy her, nothing to make her forget that large, heavy hand curled so warmly over her ribs.

For a minute, panic surged through her. She began thinking of all the many things he might do, that no one in the village would be likely to intervene, that his power over her was frighteningly absolute.

Then she caught herself and mentally backed up to their earlier confrontation, she convinced he meant to punish her, he with no such intention. In that instant of recollection, something happened inside Laura, nothing miraculous, or momentous, or even so marked she could identify what it was, but it happened nonetheless. A recession of the panic, a deliquescence of her fear.

In that moment two things became clear to her: one, that, come what may, Deke's power over her was absolute, and nothing she did would change it, and two, that he had proven her wrong at every turn thus far, and because he had, she owed him an opportunity to prove himself yet again.

So it was that Laura did not grab frantically for Deke's hand where it rested over her midriff and side. Neither did she hug her breasts. Arms dangling limply at her sides, her body relaxed against his, she simply stood there and waited.

And waited...

He only continued to hold her, his hand firmly anchored where he had first placed it, his chin resting atop her head. No subtle or not-so-subtle forays with groping fingers. No rib-crushing hold. No wet, hungry kisses.