She drew her hands from her face. Hawk was coming toward her, one hand clasped over his arm. “Did you miss the man trying to kill me—or was your aim just a little off and you hit my arm instead of my heart?”
She rushed toward him, feeling absolutely hysterical at this point. She slammed both fists against his chest. “Oh, God, oh, God, how can you…”
“Hey! Shh…shh…it’s all right, I was teasing. I think. Skylar, it’s all right.”
She buried her face against his chest. “It’s not all right. There are dead men everywhere.”
He lifted her chin. “Did you want us to be the dead men?”
She shook her head. “No!” Suddenly, no words would come. Shaking she threw herself against him again. Over his shoulder,she could see Sloan collecting their knives from the body of the Crow brave.
“Oh, God,” she whispered again. “Can we go? Can we just go now, please?”
“Not quite yet,” Sloan said. He had come to stand behind Hawk. He touched her cheek, offering her a dry smile.
“But—”
“We haven’t scalped them yet,” he told her.
“What?” she cried.
“Skylar, he’s teasing you,” Hawk assured her.
“Of course. Neither Hawk nor I have scalped an enemy in almost twenty years.”
Hawk disengaged himself from her. “Skylar, we’re going to bury them.”
She looked at him uncertainly. “Indians don’t—get buried, do they?”
Sloan cast Hawk a glance. “Sometimes. Most Plains Indians scaffold their dead, but occasionally, the dead are buried in shallow graves near cliffs. Not that that particularly matters at the moment. We don’t want what happened here to be obvious to other warriors who might be meeting up with this war party.”
“Oh,” she murmured.
“Think you can watch the horses?” Hawk asked her.
She nodded. She didn’t think that the horses were going anywhere; Hawk and Sloan just wanted to keep her busy.
She started to walk with Hawk again and winced, her feet in desperate pain by then. He picked her up again, telling Sloan briefly that he’d leave her with the horses and be right back. He carried her to a cove of trees just fifty feet down a slope. Among the trees stood Tor, Sloan’s horse and her own roan. He set her down atop the gelding. She stared down at him.
“You got the horse back from the Crow?” she said.
He patted the roan’s neck. “Nutmeg is a fine animal,” he told her. “Important to me.”
“You got the horse back before you came for me?” she whispered.
A smile twitched at his lips. “We didn’t know how many braves there were here. And we didn’t want to be followed. The Indian ponies are scattered ahead of us. We’ll take them to my grandfather’s band along with the cattle.”
“You rescued the horse before you rescued me?” she repeated.
Again, he laughed. “At least I didn’t shoot you.”
“Oh!” She was about to ask after his wound, but it was still too galling that the horse had mattered more than her.
“You went for the horse!” she repeated.
He shrugged. “Among the Sioux, one man’s family may pay a husband with a horse if one of their kind steals that man’s wife. Both are actually property.”
“I should have aimed better!” she warned him.
