But he still smiled. He stood very close to her, his fingers moving very gently over her injured foot. “Sloan went for your horse and the Crow ponies,” he told her. “I came straight for you. I watched, and I waited. I told you before, my love, that I’d kill any man, red or white, who threatened to take what was mine.”
She felt very warm suddenly, still shaken by the events. His voice had been very intense. She wanted him closer, yet she was suddenly so afraid in a different way that she wanted to back off as well.
“So,” she murmured lightly, “did you kill them for me, or for the horse?”
He reached up, touching her cheek. The moonlight caught his eyes, and they glittered strangely against the rugged lines of his handsome features.
“Both, my love,” he murmured. “Both.”
He turned and left her, ready to join Sloan for their burial detail.
CHAPTER 16
When they rejoined Willow, he had moved their camp farther northwest and alongside a different little stream. The eight Crow ponies they’d taken were tethered with their own, and the cattle were gathered in a makeshift corral.
The coffee was perking away. They had Meggie’s biscuits, along with a few waterfowl Willow had snared. Skylar also took a huge sip from the bottle of brandy Hawk had handed her. When they had finished eating, Willow on watch all the while, she realized that Hawk was staring at her, smiling slightly.
“Smudge on your nose,” he told her.
She lowered her lashes, biting her lip. Smudge everywhere, she thought. Her clothing was torn and dusty.
“Stream’s just about thirty feet down that way,” Sloan said.
“Want to wash up?” Hawk asked her.
She nodded, rising.
“Want some fresh clothes?” he asked her.
“I brought my own,” she told him.
“Ah,” he murmured, nodding. She thought that he was smiling again. She pointed to her blanket bundle, lying now near a tree next to her roan’s saddle.
“Allow me,” Hawk said, going for the bundle. He took her arm. Sloan, nibbling at a blade of grass, lay back against his own saddle, smiling slightly as they left.
When they reached the stream, Skylar knelt down, sliding her fingers into it. She shivered. The water was cold.
Hawk was behind her. “You don’t have to douse yourself in it,” he told her, handing her the bar of sweet-scented soap he’d taken from her bundle.
She shook her head strenuously. “I do!” She could still feel the touch of too many hands upon her. Maybe he couldn’t understand that. Maybe he could.
She stood, stripping quickly in the cool night, and plunged into the water. Gasping and shivering, she scrubbed herself with the soap. Hawk waited beside the stream with a blanket. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she rose.
He clasped her with the blanket, wrapping it around her and pulling her close to him. Despite the warmth and the comfort he offered her, she was shivering wildly.
“There were so many dead men!”
He sighed, running his fingers over her hair. “We are warrior societies,” he told her. “Crow boys grow up knowing that they will fight, that they might meet death in battle or on raids. They are a very brave enemy. Sioux children are also taught that they must fight their enemies. Neither are they afraid of death.”
“They are harsh societies.”
“It can be a harsh world, Skylar. I entered a white war where brothers fought brothers, fathers might have faced their own sons. Can our battles on the plains be any more harsh?”
She fell silent, then whispered, “I was so afraid.”
“It’s over.”
“The one with the black-painted face. He might have?—”
