she charged him, a crazed mule began kicking out viciously with his rear feet. The second kick caught the miner in the head just as he stretched across the muddy earth to reach the gun. In seconds, he was dead.
“Bitch!” a blond-bearded miner roared at Serena. “You’re gonna die!” And he jerked up his trousers.
Serena saw the miner lunge for the closest weapon—a limb of a tree that was twice as long and thick as the one she carried. A baby, no more than three months old, lay in a cradleboard on the ground between the miner and herself. The baby was in danger if she charged the miner.
The blonde scooped up the limb, his blue eyes gleaming with hatred as he whirled back upon the red-haired woman. “You’re dead, bitch!” he roared.
Unleashing further rage, Serena threw her weapon as hard as she could at the miner, and ran forward to pick up the child. Escape! We have to escape! The miner ducked her poorly aimed tree limb and scrambled after her. Her legs rubbery from fatigue, Serena tripped over the hem of her long skirt. Holding the baby to her breast, she fell forward. At the last moment, she twisted to her side. Her shoulder and hip took most of the impact, absorbing the shock of the fall instead of the baby.
“No!” Evening Star shrieked, running toward the miner who stalked the red-haired one and Redwing’s infant daughter. She lifted the branch, hoping to frighten away the half-dressed miner. It was no use! Despair filled Evening Star. She increased her forward speed, hoping to protect the white woman and her sister’s daughter. Too late! Too late! Evening Star saw the miner raise the limb like a mighty sledgehammer above his head as he loomed over the crouching white woman. As she struggled closer, Evening Star could see the defiance and hatred in the white woman’s eyes as she faced her enemy, unafraid. To her bosom she clutched the cradleboard, protecting Redwing’s daughter.
Serena stared up into the blond miner’s angry blue eyes. Her hatred of him as a man knew no bounds. His arms were thick and hairy, looking more like oak than human appendages. He was built like a bull. As he raised the limb that would strike and probably kill her, Serena no longer cared. What mattered was the tiny baby clinging to her breast. It was a good trade, she thought in those seconds that slowed to a crawl as she saw him lift the club to kill her. Her life wasn’t worth living. But the baby had a chance, undefiled and untouched by whites.
Something commanded Serena to look beyond the miner who would take her life. An eerie calm filled her as she lifted her eyes to a hill not far away from where she knelt. An Indian warrior on a black horse appeared at the top, his bow drawn back, the arrow pointed down at her. At that moment, the sun brimmed the horizon, sending blinding shafts of light across the land, illuminating the warrior in blinding radiance. Serena had expected herself to feel revulsion and hatred for the Sioux warrior because he was a man. She felt anything but that. There was a calmness about him, an energy that radiated from him just as the sun’s rays enveloped him and his horse. He was dressed in buckskin, his thick black hair in two braids, with brown and white golden eagle feathers attached to his head.
Serena watched the limb coming down to strike her. She saw the warrior draw back the bow to release the arrow. Who would kill her first? Suddenly, she felt acceptance of her death. Her eyes never left the warrior’s grim, chiseled features. His face was as hard and rugged as the cliffs along the Irish Sea. There was no forgiveness in the lines around his broad, generous mouth or in the narrowness of his sable eyes that glittered like those of a barely tamed wild animal. The look in those eyes, in that split second, when they made direct contact with her, changed. No longer were they hard. Instead she not only saw, but felt his concern and anguish over her predicament. A shaft of warmth, of hope, shot through her. Why would he care? I’m a stranger. A white woman. Confused, Serena’s last conscious thoughts revolved around that feeling that gave her hope and courage when she had none left herself.
Black Wolf released the arrow. With a grunt of satisfaction, he saw it strike the miner in the back of the neck. But not before the miner had struck the white woman who protected Redwing’s child. Angry that he’d not arrived moments sooner, Black Wolf sank his heels into his mount and galloped down the hill, while loading another arrow into his bow. In twenty-five years of hunting, Black Wolf had never missed a target from the back of his favorite buffalo runner, Wiyaka. Squeezing his long, curved thighs against the ebony mare, he guided her with astonishing precision between the women and children, his targets the last two miners.
Satisfaction soared through Wolf as his arrows struck their targets cleanly and with deadly accuracy. He pulled on the rawhide jaw cord of the mare, whirling her around. What greeted his eyes broke his pounding heart. His oldest sister, Redwing, lay unmoving, a red stain eating up the front of her buckskin dress. The miner who lay dead at her side had a broken neck.
As he dismounted, Black Wolf heard another cry. He saw his sister Evening Star drop a tree limb and race toward him, arms outstretched.
“Wolf! They attacked us out of nowhere!” she sobbed, throwing her arms around him. “We never heard them coming.”
Wolf held his youngest sister of seventeen. They were surrounded by carnage. Six women and four children had gone out to hunt roots along the river. Something they did once a week to help feed the village. His eyes grew stormy as he swept his gaze across the inert bodies of the miners. “Why did they do this?“ he croaked.
“It’s always the same,” Evening Star wept. “Why can’t the wasicun, the white man, leave us in peace? Redwing!” she wailed. “They killed her!”
Bile crawled up into Wolf’s mouth. His lips thinned. Redwing’s throat had been slit and she had been raped. Squeezing Evening Star gently, he whispered hoarsely, “Come, we must get help. You must mount Wiyaka, and ride to the village. Get five warriors and extra horses.”
Wiping tears from her round face, Evening Star pointed to the left. “She saved us, Wolf. The white woman charged the miners like ten warriors. She was swinging that oak limb as if it were a war club. If not for her, Redwing’s baby would have been killed. I don’t know if she was a member of their party or not. She struck like a thunder being, surprising all of them.”
Wolf stood there looking at the white woman, who lay unmoving, the cradleboard beneath her body. “Ride for help, Evening Star,” he commanded. “I will do what I can until they arrive.“ Boosting her onto the black mare, he took his medicine parfleche from the rear of his cottonwood saddle. “Hurry!” he ordered, slapping the horse on the rump.
As soon as Evening Star disappeared over the hill, Wolf turned to those who needed him. As medicine man, his life revolved around the well-being of his people. Little Swallow, his twenty-six-year-old sister, limped toward him, her face etched in pain. She too, had been raped.
“Wolf,” she pleaded, “see to Redwing first.”
“She’s dead.”
Little Swallow winced as if struck. At her side was her daughter of three. “Then take care of the others first. I will be fine.”
Wolf reached out. “Your daughter?”
Little Swallow knelt down, examining her distraught daughter. “She is all right. She ran and hid in that bank of willows when the miners attacked us. All she has are some scrapes and bruises.”
Nodding, Wolf turned his attention to the other two Indian women. One had a broken arm, the other suffered a broken jaw. Swallowing his hatred of the wasicun, Wolf couldn’t erase his curiosity about the woman with the red hair. She was a warrioress, challenging her own kind. Why? Weren’t all whites like these miners?
He placed the broken arm between willow bark and then wrapped it with rawhide thongs
