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  So Wide the Sky

  The Women's West Series

  Book One

  by

  Elizabeth Grayson

  Award-winning Author

  Published by ePublishing Works!

  www.epublishingworks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61417-718-0

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  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2015 by Elizabeth Grayson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Cover by The Killion Group www.thekilliongroupinc.com

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  Dedication

  To Renee Witmer and Carolyn Villeneuve, the women who became the sisters I never had.

  Acknowledgements

  Acknowledgments are wonderful things. They give authors a chance to say thank you to the people who enable us to do what we do.

  As always, the research people must come first. I could never have written So Wide the Sky without the material and expertise provided to me by Eleanor Alexander. Her skill in gathering information on the Kiowa, Arikara, and Cheyenne, and her willingness to play "what if" helped me turn a photograph and an idea into a full-blown novel.

  As always Charles Brown of the Saint Louis Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri, St. Louis came through with just the research I needed—this time on life in the Western forts.

  Joyce Schiller of the Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge, Massachusetts once again gave me several lovely tidbits about objects from the period that enhanced my characters' world.

  I would also like to thank my former colleague, speech therapist Sheila DeGraffe, for being willing to turn her considerable expertise to defining a fictional character's speech pathology.

  In preparing to write this book I have relied on my husband Tom, not only as fellow adventurer on the Wyoming prairie, but as consultant on military uniforms and accoutrements. I would also like to express my appreciation for his sticking by me when the road was bumpy and full of unexpected twists and turns.

  As usual, Eileen Dreyer deserves a big thank you, for service above and beyond. As do Kim Bush, Linda Madl, Libby Beach, and Tami Hoag. Without you guys, doing this wouldn't be half the fun.

  And last but not least, a special thank you to Debbie Pickel for her friendship, her wonderful warm heart, her words of encouragement, and for holding my head.

  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."