worried Joe would make good on his threat to leave.
They stopped before four filthy women huddled together on the floor, their backs against the wall. It wasn’t until they were nearly upon them that Joe realized the women were bound together, hand to hand, foot to foot.
Except that the oldest had muddy blond hair, they bore no resemblance to white women at all. Dressed in fringed deerskin gowns, their hair parted and plaited into long braids, there was nothing about them that indicated they were anything but Comanche.
Who had they been?
Who were they now?
“So many,” Hattie whispered.
Joe knew she believed no one was ever beyond redemption, but this? These women had been carried off into another world, a savage, brutal world. Was there anything left of their former selves to be saved?
Jesse stared down at the unfortunate women. “If female captives aren’t made slaves or adopted into the clan, they’re sold and traded many times over.”
None of the former captives made eye contact with Joe, Hattie or the captain, nor did they look at one another as they sat shoulder to shoulder, each imprisoned in her own misery.
The oldest, the blonde, rocked back and forth with her eyes closed, a strange, demented smile on her face. Her fingers picked endlessly at her skirt.
Ceaseless moaning came from a heavyset woman beside her with sun-damaged, puffy cheeks and matted, reddish-brown hair. The tip of her nose was missing. She stared across the room with unseeing eyes, her face slack and devoid of expression. Whatever haunted her now was trapped in her mind and not this room.
A girl of around twelve years slowly looked up at them. Joe’s breath caught when he noticed all the fingers of her left hand were missing and had been for some time. The stumps were healed over, her skin tanned to a golden brown. He tried not to stare and failed miserably.
When their gazes met, the child’s lips curled. She bared her teeth like a feral animal.
“She’s from outside Burnet. Taken two years ago. Her parents are on the way to get her,” Jesse explained.
“What if they don’t want her?” Joe wondered aloud.
“She’s someone’s girl, Joe,” Hattie said with assurance. “Their baby. If you were a father you’d know. They’ll still want her.”
He doubted he’d ever be a father. Doubted he had the strength it would take to confront what this battered child’s parents would be facing. Doubted he could accept such a burden. Hattie was speaking with a mother’s heart. For years now he’d been certain he didn’t even have a heart anymore.
“The girl we intend for you to take is over here.” Jesse’s words reminded Joe of why they’d come. Staring at the maimed, feral child, he knew giving in to his mother’s request had been a big mistake.
Jesse led them over to a boy tied beside yet another young woman. About ten years old, with a head full of white-blond hair, the male child cried without making a sound. Tears streaked his face and dripped down his chin. He was near naked, wearing only a rawhide breechcloth and well-worn moccasins.
Beside him, a trim young woman in a fringed and beaded tanned deerskin skirt and shirt matted with dried blood sat with her head hanging down, her hands clenched in her lap. Intricately beaded moccasins covered her feet.
“That’s her,” Jesse said.
“The slender one?” Hattie asked. “Why, she’s no bigger than a minute.”
Joe glanced away from her bare, shapely ankles and calves and focused on her bound wrists and clenched hands. She appeared to be anywhere from her late teens to early twenties and from where he stood, she could pass for full Comanche. Her skin was a golden, nut-brown. Her arms looked strong and firm, as if she was used to heavy work. Her hair was dark brown, but upon closer inspection, he saw it was shot through with reddish-gold highlights.
He tried to imagine taking her back to the ranch, settling her into his sister’s room.
Turning his back on her.
What is my mother thinking?
“How do you know she’s not a half-breed?” he wondered aloud.
Jesse hunkered down into a squat, gently put his hand beneath the girl’s chin. She didn’t resist or try to pull away as he forced her head up.
When she stubbornly kept her eyelids shuttered, Jesse commanded, “Look up.”
Slowly, the young woman raised her thick, silky lashes and insolently stared back at Jesse. Her focus drifted away from him and locked on Hattie. She sat there in silence, staring at Joe’s mother for a few long, curious heartbeats. Finally, she turned her gaze on Joe.
It struck him that her eyes were the purest, most radiant blue he’d ever seen—the color of a mountain lake in the morning sun, the sky on a crystal-clear day. And those unusual, incredible eyes were filled with both the deepest of sorrows and more than a hint of unspoken hatred.
A chill rippled down his spine and in that instant he felt he was looking into the cracked mirror he used for shaving.
The girl’s eyes were not the same color as his own, but they certainly reflected all the hurt and misery he’d seen and suffered since the night the Comanche raided the ranch.
The night he hadn’t been there to fight and die beside his father and his sister. The night he hadn’t been there to save his mother.
The night he’d never forgive himself for.
Chapter Four
T he whites towered over Eyes-of-the-Sky where she sat on the floor, her head down, her eyes dry, her body nothing more than a hollow shell. Her body might be here, in this dim, vast lodge of wood that echoed with the voices and heavy footsteps of the whites, but her spirit had flown.
Above her, they spoke in hushed tones. Straining to shut out the garbled foreign sounds without covering her ears, she willed herself to sit completely still, to become as invisible as the breeze that threaded itself through the tall prairie grasses.
One of the men squatted before her, took her by the chin and forced her to look up.
The dreaded soldiers had been doing that all day. One after another. Making her look them in the eyes, each time stealing more of her spirit, more of her will.
Each reacted differently. Some frowned and shook their heads, clearly disapproving. Others showed surprise, their own eyes growing wide with shock when they met hers.
Without trying, she’d learned one cursed white word over the past few hours.
B’loo.
Whenever they looked into her eyes, they said, “B’loo.”
Now three new ones stood over her. An older woman whose pale face remarkably turned even whiter beneath the red splotches on her cheeks when Eyes-of-the-Sky looked at her. The white woman wore a headpiece that almost hid a long,
