Homecoming

When their gazes met, the child’s lips curled. She bared her teeth like a feral animal.

“She’s from outside Burnet. Taken two years ago. Her parents are on the way to get her,” Jesse explained.

“What if they don’t want her?” Joe wondered aloud.

“She’s someone’s girl, Joe,” Hattie said with assurance. “Their baby. If you were a father you’d know. They’ll still want her.”

He doubted he’d ever be a father. Doubted he had the strength it would take to confront what this battered child’s parents would be facing. Doubted he could accept such a burden. Hattie was speaking with a mother’s heart. For years now he’d been certain he didn’t even have a heart anymore.

“The girl we intend for you to take is over here.” Jesse’s words reminded Joe of why they’d come. Staring at the maimed, feral child, he knew giving in to his mother’s request had been a big mistake.

Jesse led them over to a boy tied beside yet another young woman. About ten years old, with a head full of white-blond hair, the male child cried without making a sound. Tears streaked his face and dripped down his chin. He was near naked, wearing only a rawhide breechcloth and well-worn moccasins.

Beside him, a trim young woman in a fringed and beaded tanned deerskin skirt and shirt matted with dried blood sat with her head hanging down, her hands clenched in her lap. Intricately beaded moccasins covered her feet.

“That’s her,” Jesse said.

“The slender one?” Hattie asked. “Why, she’s no bigger than a minute.”

Joe glanced away from her bare, shapely ankles and calves and focused on her bound wrists and clenched hands. She appeared to be anywhere from her late teens to early twenties and from where he stood, she could pass for full Comanche. Her skin was a golden, nut-brown. Her arms looked strong and firm, as if she was used to heavy work. Her hair was dark brown, but upon closer inspection, he saw it was shot through with reddish-gold highlights.

He tried to imagine taking her back to the ranch, settling her into his sister’s room.

Turning his back on her.

What is my mother thinking?

“How do you know she’s not a half-breed?” he wondered aloud.

Jesse hunkered down into a squat, gently put his hand beneath the girl’s chin. She didn’t resist or try to pull away as he forced her head up.

When she stubbornly kept her eyelids shuttered, Jesse commanded, “Look up.”

Slowly, the young woman raised her thick, silky lashes and insolently stared back at Jesse. Her focus drifted away from him and locked on Hattie. She sat there in silence, staring at Joe’s mother for a few long, curious heartbeats. Finally, she turned her gaze on Joe.

It struck him that her eyes were the purest, most radiant blue he’d ever seen—the color of a mountain lake in the morning sun, the sky on a crystal-clear day. And those unusual, incredible eyes were filled with both the deepest of sorrows and more than a hint of unspoken hatred.

A chill rippled down his spine and in that instant he felt he was looking into the cracked mirror he used for shaving.

The girl’s eyes were not the same color as his own, but they certainly reflected all the hurt and misery he’d seen and suffered since the night the Comanche raided the ranch.

The night he hadn’t been there to fight and die beside his father and his sister. The night he hadn’t been there to save his mother.

The night he’d never forgive himself for.

Chapter Four

T he whites towered over Eyes-of-the-Sky where she sat on the floor, her head down, her eyes dry, her body nothing more than a hollow shell. Her body might be here, in this dim, vast lodge of wood that echoed with the voices and heavy footsteps of the whites, but her spirit had flown.

Above her, they spoke in hushed tones. Straining to shut out the garbled foreign sounds without covering her ears, she willed herself to sit completely still, to become as invisible as the breeze that threaded itself through the tall prairie grasses.

One of the men squatted before her, took her by the chin and forced her to look up.

The dreaded soldiers had been doing that all day. One after another. Making her look them in the eyes, each time stealing more of her spirit, more of her will.

Each reacted differently. Some frowned and shook their heads, clearly disapproving. Others showed surprise, their own eyes growing wide with shock when they met hers.

Without trying, she’d learned one cursed white word over the past few hours.

B’loo.

Whenever they looked into her eyes, they said, “B’loo.”

Now three new ones stood over her. An older woman whose pale face remarkably turned even whiter beneath the red splotches on her cheeks when Eyes-of-the-Sky looked at her. The white woman wore a headpiece that almost hid a long, jagged line of shining, puckered skin—a scalping scar.

Eyes-of-the-Sky forced herself not to study the woman’s head covering, for the sight of it disturbed her almost as much as the scar. She looked straight into the woman’s eyes until she saw the one thing in them that reignited her anger.

Pity.

The woman was sorry for her, for Eyes-of-the-Sky.

She didn’t want the scarred woman’s sorrow or her pity. She didn’t need these people to pity her. She was Eyes-of-the-Sky, daughter of Gentle Rain and Roaming Wolf. A daughter of the Nermernuh. Beloved of White Painted Shield.

She turned away from the woman’s pity to look up at the young white man beside the woman. The only likeness they shared was the determined cut of their jaws. Eyes-of-the-Sky knew that these two would be fierce enemies or loyal friends. She could tell by the set of the younger man’s shoulders, the way he stared back, challenging her, daring her to look away, that he possessed the heart of a warrior.

He was not a man to anger or to betray.

She tried to drop her gaze and failed. There was something in his eyes that compelled her to stare back. It wasn’t long before she realized what force attracted her to him.

His spirit, too, had flown. Inside, he was as empty as she.

As if locked in a silent battle of wills with the dark-eyed young man, Eyes-of-the-Sky knew a moment of panic. For the first time in two days, the emptiness, the numbness she’d suffered abated.

She shivered, wondered what this man wanted from her. Why would this scarred woman walk into a room of captives and soldiers?

What had these two to do with her?

Joe’s gut tightened until it hardened into an aching knot as he stared into the eyes of the white woman turned Comanche.

He couldn’t seem to break the spell until he heard his mother say, “Untie her, Jesse, please. No one deserves this kind of treatment. No one.”

Beside her, Joe shifted uncomfortably. If not for his mother, he’d be hightailing it out of here, leaving the girl behind, fighting to shut out the memory of the penetrating blue-eyed stare that would haunt him for a long time to come.

“Ma, they’re bound for a reason. Leave it alone.”

“Look at her, Joe. Look at all of them. These are God’s creatures. These poor souls deserve better.” Hattie turned her ire on Jesse. “I can’t believe you keep them fettered like this, sitting in their own filth, after all they’ve been through. We treat our stock better.”

“The women can be as fierce as the men, Hattie. There’s still no telling what they might do to us or themselves,” Jesse grudgingly admitted.