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  Mary Beth didn’t hear what he had just said. She could hardly believe her eyes. She had recalled a field of flowers, but what she now saw spread out before her wasn’t the same. This was twice the size. It was a wildflower delight.

  Everywhere she looked she saw a different sort of flower. There were carpets of purple, white, yellow, pink, and blue.

  She drew rein and quickly dismounted.

  She stood in the midst of the flowers, still in awe of the loveliness that surrounded her. For the moment she was able to forget the ugliness of life that she now knew so well.

  “They are so beautiful!” she said, sighing. She turned and smiled at Colonel Downing. “Thank you for allowing me to come here. I am not only enjoying the opportunity to collect flowers for our marriage, but also just being here where it is so lovely.”

  “You are a delight,” Colonel Downing said, dismounting. He took the large gunny sack to Mary Beth and held it open for her. “Pick to your heart’s content. I shall hold the bag for you.”

  Mary Beth smiled, then began plucking away. While she was picking the flowers, she caught a movement in the trees where a thick stand of cottonwood stood only a few feet away from her.

  Her heart skipped a beat when she saw another movement, but she dismissed it, thinking it must be a deer out on its morning search for food.

  Then the movement stopped. If it was a deer, perhaps it had stopped to eat some autumn berries.

  She resumed picking flowers, then saw a scattering of small purple asters that grew on into the forest.

  She stretched her neck and saw that they went far along the ground beneath the trees. She had always adored asters. They grew along the riverbank behind her cabin in Kentucky.

  She turned quickly toward Colonel Downing. “I have collected enough of the larger flowers,” she said, carefully placing the last of them in the bag. “I have spied a favorite flower of mine which I would love to use for my hand bouquet at the wedding.”

  “Asters are your favorite, eh?” Colonel Downing said, a haunted look in his eyes. “They were my wife’s favorite as well. She, too, carried a bouquet of asters on our wedding day. She chose white over purple.”

  For a moment Mary Beth almost saw the human side of this man as he spoke about a time in his life that had been so precious to him. She felt empathy for him, then quickly reminded herself the sort of man he was.

  He was an Indian hater. He was planning to kill Brave Wolf.

  “I’m sorry I reminded you of your wife and . . . and . . . your wedding day,” she murmured. “Would you rather I not gather asters for our nuptials? If not, I will understand.”

  “No, I would like you to carry them,” he said, resting the bag on the ground. “I shall wait here while you pick them. But do not go so far that I cannot see you. I do not have to remind you of the dangers.”

  “Yes, I understand,” she murmured. “I shall be quick about it.”

  She sighed when she moved among the starry little flowers growing in the forest. They reminded her of her home and David, who always picked a bouquet for her when they were sitting on the riverbank, fishing for an evening meal.

  She fell to her knees and carefully picked one after another. Then a movement a few feet away from her made her heart skip a beat. If it was a deer, surely it would have bolted by now.

  But instead, whatever it was had moved closer.

  Hoping it was not a renegade, Mary Beth started to cry out for the colonel, then stopped and gasped. Relief flooded her senses when she saw who it was.

  Brave Wolf!

  He was standing in the shadows where only she, not the colonel, could see him.

  Excited, yet troubled at the same time as to how she could go to Brave Wolf without alerting the colonel, Mary Beth rose slowly to her feet. Her knees were trembling as she gave Brave Wolf a quivering smile.

  Then she thought of a plan. She turned to Colonel Downing, who was still watching her, and who, fortunately, had not seen Brave Wolf yet.

  “William, I have a problem,” she said, frowning.

  “What sort?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I need to answer a call of nature,” she said, forcing a grimace on her face to make her suffering look real. “Can you please turn your eyes away while . . . while I . . . well, you know.”

  She could see how uneasy that made the colonel, and how his face flushed.

  He laughed nervously, then nodded. “Do not be long about it,” he said. “Remember the dangers.”

  “I will not feel right doing it . . . here . . . so close to you,” Mary Beth said, again forcing a grimace so that he would believe she was desperate for relief. “William, please understand that I will only feel right if I step farther into the trees. Please, oh, please understand that I am a shy woman.”

  “I have not spied anything suspicious, so I believe it will be safe. Yes, my dear, go as far as you must to feel comfortable with your . . . er . . . chore,” he said, his face reddening even more.

  “But please turn your back,” she said, ducking her head to pretend shyness. “I have never been in such a predicament before. I am . . . oh, so . . . embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be,” the colonel said. He quickly turned his back to her. “Hurry on, Mary Beth. Please get it done as quickly as possible. I shall worry about you every moment my eyes are not on you.”

  “Yes, I understand, and I appreciate your concern,” Mary Beth said.

  She dropped her handful of flowers and nodded toward Brave Wolf as a way to tell him to meet her halfway.

  She ran into the woods then and flung herself into his arms.

  “I can’t believe you are here,” she said, only loud enough for him to hear. “Why did you come? It is like a miracle sent directly from heaven.”

  “I was concerned,” he said thickly. “I had to make sure you were safe.”

  “Thank God you did.”

  “What about David? Did the colonel and his soldiers find your son?” he asked.

  She hung her head. “No,” she said, her voice breaking.

  He lifted her chin with a finger. “But you are safe now,” he said. “You are here for me to touch, for me to hold.”

  She framed his face between her hands. “I have something I must tell you,” she murmured.

  She explained about the colonel’s plans, her own scheme to learn the details of the attack, and how the colonel had a wedding planned.

  Mary Beth saw the hatred in Brave Wolf’s eyes and was not surprised.

  “But nothing he has planned for me will happen now,” she said, reaching up and hugging Brave Wolf.

  “We have to get the colonel to come into the forest,” she said. “We must make sure that no one from the fort sees what we are going to do. When he gets here, you can tie him up, and then we can leave! By the time the soldiers find him, we will be safely at your village. You can get your warriors ready for the attack.”

  Then her smile faded. “As soon as the colonel is found, he will bring his soldiers to your village,” she said, her voice drawn.

  “No one will find him for a while,” Brave Wolf said. “We will have time to prepare ourselves to stop the slaughter that he has planned.”

  “Call for him,” Brave Wolf then said. “Pretend that your skirt is caught on briars. He will come to help you.”

  While Brave Wolf readied his rifle, she shouted at Colonel Downing.

  “William, oh, William, I am afraid that I am in trouble in another way!” she cried. “My skirt is caught on dreadful briars. I . . . I . . . can’t get it freed. Can you come and help me?”

  She held her breath when he shouted back that he was coming.

  Brave Wolf hid behind a tree. A moment later Colonel Downing appeared with a rifle in his left hand, a questioning look on his face when he saw that she was not even near briars, much less caught in them.

  “What . . . ?” he said, then gasped and dropped his rifle as Brave Wolf stepped from hiding, his rifle aimed at the colonel’s c
hest.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Colonel Downing growled as he raised his hands in submission. He glared from Mary Beth to Brave Wolf. “There is no way in hell you could’ve planned this. It’s just my damn luck that this savage happened along at the right time for him to take advantage of the situation.”

  “Mary Beth, rip off the hem of that dress you are wearing so that we can use it to tie him,” Brave Wolf said, his rifle still poised, his jaw tight, his eyes lit with fire as he glared at the colonel. “And washechu, white man, while she is doing that, start walking ahead of me.”

  “You won’t get away with this,” Colonel Downing growled as he walked onward, stopping for only a moment to give Mary Beth a cold glare. “You are nothing but a whore, an Injun-loving whore.”

  Mary Beth ignored him as she ripped big lengths of the bottom of the dress away. The colonel gasped and went pale at the way she was treating his late wife’s dress.

  “Move onward,” Brave Wolf growled at the colonel. “We have some distance to cover before I tie you and leave you bound to a tree. I have to make certain that it will be a while before you are found.”

  Mary Beth came up beside Brave Wolf with several strips of the dress. “Our horses are back there,” she said, nodding toward another section of trees, where she and the colonel had left their steeds tethered in the shade.

  “We will get him secured, then retrieve both horses,” Brave Wolf said, still following the colonel. “We will take the colonel’s horse with us to the village.”

  “No one will know where to look for me,” the colonel said, his voice a low whine.

  “That’s the general idea,” Mary Beth said. “And there obviously will be no wedding tomorrow. Even if Brave Wolf hadn’t arrived today, I still wouldn’t have married you. I had planned to escape from the fort tonight. It sickens me how you are planning to attack Brave Wolf and his people.”

  “You’d not have gotten far,” Colonel Downing said, his voice filled with rage. He looked over his shoulder at Brave Wolf. “You will pay dearly for your mistake today.”

  Brave Wolf only smiled, for he would be prepared for the soldiers’ arrival. Thanks to Mary Beth, he knew there would be a war between them.

  The colonel glared at Mary Beth. “Everything you promised, everything you said, was a lie?” he demanded, still stunned at her role in what was happening. “You purposely lied to me so that you could learn my plans? You never meant to marry me?”

  “I’m surprised you ever thought I would,” Mary Beth said. “How could you not see the loathing in my eyes when I looked at you?”

  “You will die alongside the savage heathens,” Colonel Downing growled out. “You . . . will . . . regret ever having humiliated me. I will enjoy killing you myself.”

  “Those are foolish threats for a man who is at the mercy of a savage Crow chief,” Brave Wolf said, his voice filled with sarcasm. “I could kill you now and no one would ever find your body. The animals that roam this forest would see to that.”

  “You wouldn’t kill a bound man,” Colonel Downing said, his voice breaking.

  “You see me as a heathen savage, so why would you not believe me capable of doing that to you?” Brave Wolf said, his voice tight.

  Colonel Downing’s eyes wavered; then he looked away from them and walked on.

  “It is not much farther now,” Brave Wolf said, glancing at Mary Beth. “I know a perfect place to leave him.”

  She sighed heavily, glad that things had worked out for her and Brave Wolf, but worried about the colonel’s wrath when he was found and rescued.

  She only hoped that Brave Wolf had a lot of allies who would stand beside him, for she thought there were more soldiers stationed at Fort Henry than the Crow in Brave Wolf’s village.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Every lover is a warrior,

  and Cupid has his

  camps.

  —Ovid

  “At this moment I feel so many different things,” Mary Beth said as she cuddled against Brave Wolf before the fire in his lodge. “I feel thankful for having met you, relief that I am here again with you, and sadness over my son not being safe with us. And I cannot help being afraid over what is to come . . .”

  She couldn’t finish what she was going to say. She hated even thinking about what might transpire after the colonel was found. She knew that the anger Colonel Downing felt would motivate an attack even more vicious than he had previously planned against Brave Wolf’s people.

  “I feel many things myself,” Brave Wolf said. He softly stroked her arm as he gazed down at her nakedness. He was always in awe of her beauty, the sweet curves of her body, and the lusciousness of her breasts which would one day nourish their children.

  “None of those emotions include fear,” he said. “I am confident that when the colonel does manage to get free and come for vengeance, we will be ready.”

  “There are so many of them,” Mary Beth gulped out. “And . . . and . . . there was such hate in their eyes when they saw me dressed in Indian attire. If the colonel would have allowed it, I believe they’d have killed me.”

  She reached a hand to her throat and softly stroked the spot where the bruise was now yellowing. “I have proof of their hate . . . of their loathing,” she said. She had told Brave Wolf of the attack on her. “Had I not thought quickly enough, I would be dead now.”

  He bent low and brushed kisses across her neck, then rose over her and blanketed her with his body. “My woman, no man will ever touch you wrongly again,” he said, his body pressed softly against hers. “I will never allow you to be put in that position again.”

  “The evil man is . . . is . . . still out there somewhere with the same hate in his heart for me,” she murmured, sighing with pleasure when Brave Wolf slowly slid his shaft into her warm wetness, her folds opening to him as though they were the petals of a flower opening to the beckoning of the sun.

  “Let me repeat, my sunshine . . . you are safe,” Brave Wolf whispered against her lips as he withdrew again. “Close your eyes. Think of only good things. Think of where our bodies take us when they are intertwined. We have time to share these precious moments. Even as I speak I hear more and more friends coming into my village to join with my warriors. Together they will stand up against the Fort Henry soldiers and make certain they never again make the mistake of coming to my village. My warriors are meeting at the council house. I shall join them soon. But for now, you are the center of my attention. I ached for you so while you were gone.”

  “As I ached for you,” Mary Beth said, smiling into his eyes. Then her smile faded. “Brave Wolf, the United States Government might see what you are planning to do as wrong. What if they do? The whole United States cavalry could come down on your people.”

  He brushed a gentle kiss across her lips, then smiled into her eyes. “I am in the right, and the United States Government will see that I am when a report is sent to them about what has happened,” he said. “I know the President well, and he will understand that I have been pushed into such an action as this. He knows my love of peace.”

  He placed a gentle hand on her cheek. “When the President receives word about how Colonel Downing has broken our treaty, it will be the colonel who will be reprimanded, not me,” he said. “He will be stripped of his command.”

  “But things might have changed since the Battle of the Little Big Horn,” Mary Beth said, closing her eyes in ecstasy as he once again thrust into her, then withdrew. “The President might see all Indians as responsible.”

  “He is a smart, just man and he will only send the cavalry to punish those who killed the whites on the battlefield,” Brave Wolf said, wanting to feel the wonders of their bodies locked together, and how it made a sweet peace throughout him. “It was General Custer who went for the fight and caused it. Not the warriors who downed him.”

  “Let us talk of it no longer, at least not now,” Mary Beth whispered. She twined her arms around his neck, bringing his lips
to hers, giving him a long, deep kiss as he entered her and their bodies moved rhythmically together.

  She drew her lips away for a moment and said, “Do you not know? We are the only two people in the universe.” She closed her eyes in total ecstasy as he kissed her again, this time with an almost desperate, hungry need.

  She was overwhelmed with the joyous bliss of the moment.

  They clung.

  They rocked.

  They kissed, their mouths urgent and eager as she moved her body sinuously against his.

  Brave Wolf felt a rapturous spinning sensation rising up within him, flooding his whole body with the warmth and beauty that making love with her created.

  He swept his arms around her and drew her even closer to him. The softness of her folds was warm against him as he thrust more deeply within her.

  Unable to hold back any longer, he gave one last thrust, then clung to her as their bodies quivered and their sighs of total pleasure blended against each other’s lips.

  “I do not want to let you go,” he whispered against her cheek as they lay breathless together. “I want to believe that the only thing that is real is what we have together. I do not want to leave this lodge and be reminded of what lies ahead. I pray to the First Maker above that I will have the ability to win my fight for the rights of my people. I wish that I could blink my eyes and the fight would be over and you and I were able to resume a life that is sweet and good and filled with peace.”

  “That is the way it shall be as soon as that evil man is taken care of,” Mary Beth said, stroking his cheek with a gentle hand. “My love, soon it will be over. We will go to bed each night not having to worry about what Colonel Downing might have in mind for us next. He will have no men to command. He will no longer be a colonel.”