been taken captive instead of…well, instead of being killed…I like to think if she’d been found that someone would have opened their home and hearts to her the way we’ve done for this poor child here.”
Joe knew he may have opened his home to her, to Deborah, but it was only because his mother wanted it. Even in the shadowy hallway, his mother’s scar was visible.
He might open his home, but never his heart.
Hattie said good-night and disappeared behind her own door. Joe lingered in the hall, listening. He was about to close his bedroom door when he heard soft footfalls in Mellie’s old room. Then a soft thump or two and he knew without a doubt, the girl was trying to open the window.
He crept closer and halted outside the door, held his breath and listened. The footsteps stilled, but he heard the hush of breath directly on the other side of the door. The girl was standing there, separated from him by thin planks of wood.
If she thought he was going to give her the chance to walk out, or worse, to try and kill them in their sleep, she had another think coming.
Barely breathing, he waited until he heard her bare feet against the floor again. He waited to hear the bed ropes creak, but the sound never came.
He walked back to his room, pulled off his boots and grabbed the pillow off his bed. Then he went into the sitting room, picked up the rifle he kept by the front door and carried it back into the hall and stopped outside the girl’s door.
The pillow hit the floor. He hunkered down, lay the gun on the floor and stretched out beside it. He wasn’t a stranger to sleeping without the comfort of a bed. He’d spent weeks sleeping on the ground during roundup.
But tonight, he doubted he’d sleep at all.
Eyes-of-the-Sky stood in the middle of the small place where the woman had left her. She’d been forced to change into another garment. The woman gave her to understand, with gestures and signs, that this one was meant for sleeping. The cloth was light as air and the color of a billowing cloud.
In this private space there was a place to sleep, soft and high up off the floor. There was a container of water on a big wooden box that hid clothing from view. The woman, who kept pointing to herself and repeating, Hattee-Hattee, had taken the glass that held a flame captive when she walked out. Now the room was drenched in darkness.
Though Eyes-of-the-Sky could look outside and see the huge shelter where they kept the horses, the stars in the sky, the sliver of moon beyond the big slick glass, there appeared to be no escape. She tried softly pounding on the wood around the glass, but couldn’t make it move. She knew if they heard her break the glass, the man would come running.
She’d known when the man, Joe, was outside the door. She heard his footsteps, heard him breathing slow and steady. Her breath caught in her throat. Her heart began to pound.
Wadding the soft white fabric in her hands, she knelt and slowly crept to the door on hands and knees. She lay on the floor, pressed her cheek against the wood and tried to see through the crack between the door and floor.
It was too dark to see anything, but she knew that Joe was out there. She could not see him, but she sensed his presence.
Tonight, there was no escape.
She waited a few moments more, then she crawled back to the sleeping place, pulled off a covering and wrapped it around her shoulders.
So tired she could barely sit upright, she pressed her fingertips to her temples. The white woman had not stopped talking all day. The sound of her words was tormenting. She knew not what the woman was saying, and yet the longer Hattee-Hattee spoke, the more the words wormed their way into her mind.
Tonight, the woman had sat in a chair that rocked back and forth, holding a heavy block on her lap and chanting a tale of some kind. The words had flowed over Eyes-of-the-Sky, over and through her until she was forced to rub her fingers in circles against her temples.
It was all too much. Too raw and foreign and confusing.
Finally, when she could no longer fight her exhaustion, she stretched out on the wood beneath her. Every bone in her body ached. She longed to sleep, but her troubled mind would not quiet.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the Blue Coat raid all over again, smelled the blood, the smoke. Heard the screams.
Not again.
The confusing thought came out of nowhere.
Not again.
She stuffed her fist against her mouth, refused to cry. She refused to show weakness, even here, alone in the dark. She would not shame those who had gone before her.
She would bide her time. She would remain on alert and wary of these strange people with their gruff language and their big wooden lodge from which there was no escape.
Most of all, she would be on guard against the white man with bitterness in his eyes. She’d seen the same look on the faces of the Comanche warriors who had no hope for the future. Men who had lost all hope for the Nermernuh.
She feared him far more than she did the woman. He had nothing to lose.
She promised herself never to give in. As soon as she was stronger, she would try to run, to find who, if any, of her people were still alive.
But now she was so very weary. She closed her eyes on a sigh.
Daybreak was soon enough to start planning an escape.
Chapter Six
H attie rose early the next day and nearly stumbled over Joe asleep in the dim morning light of the hallway. She woke him gently, half-afraid he’d awaken with a start and grab his shotgun.
He was mumbling and grumbling his way to his own room when she knocked on Deborah’s door and then slipped inside the bedroom.
Deborah’s eyes were suspiciously red and swollen, as if she’d cried herself to sleep. It was the first and only sign of vulnerability and loss that was apparent.
Hattie noticed Joe didn’t look as if he’d fared much better. When he sat down at the breakfast table, there were dark shadows in the hollows beneath his eyes and he moved as if his back was stiff as a cedar plank.
Hattie was amazed at how the girl shadowed her all week. Deborah was complacent and willing to do whatever task she was shown though she’d yet to utter a word.
Those first few days, Joe didn’t trust the girl enough to do anything that involved straying too far from the house. He was convinced she would try to escape, but time wore on and Deborah continued to placidly follow Hattie around, silently doing her bidding.
Hattie knew it was better to let her hardheaded son come to terms with the situation in his own time, so she didn’t push. She waited him out and sure enough, a week after they had brought the girl home, he began to fall into his old routine and ventured farther from the house and barn.
They’d been hit by spring showers for the past two days, but he’d still ridden out to cull the Rocking e cattle from the commingled herds closest to home.
Driving
