His skin tingled, the minor discomfort turning to pain as the sun began to climb higher in the sky.
"Regan." He shook her shoulder. "Regan, wake up."
With a sleepy sound, she opened her eyes. "What's wrong?"
"It is morning. I must go find a place to rest. Stay here until I return."
She glanced around. There were trees everywhere. The sky was still dark, though a faint light glowed in the east. "Where will you stay?"
"Do not worry. I will find a place."
"But where…"
"I do not have time to explain:" He kissed her quickly on the cheek, then vanished from her sight.
Yawning, Regan sat up, wondering if she would ever get used to his coming and going so quickly. And where the heck was he going? As far as she could see, there was no place where he could hide from the sun. Reminding herself that he had existed for hundreds of years, she slid back into her sleeping bag and closed her eyes.
The sun was high in the sky when next she woke. Rising, she stretched the kinks from her back and shoulders, wondering what she was going to do while Santiago slept. He had told her to stay where she was, though there was little need, since there was nowhere to go. A glance at her watch told her it was almost two o'clock. How was she going to pass the hours until sundown?
Rummaging in her backpack, she found a box of matches and lit the fire Santiago had laid, then filled a blue-speckled coffee pot with water and put it in the coals. While waiting for the water to heat up, she found a convenient tree to hide behind while she relieved herself, though she didn't know why she was hiding. There was no one to see her.
Breakfast was a cup of instant coffee, a peach, and an enormous piece of coffee cake, which she figured she would walk off come nightfall.
When she finished eating, she put out the fire, brushed her teeth, changed her underwear, again behind a tree, and then, with nothing else to do, she decided to take a short walk. Taking her gun from her handbag, she dropped it in the pocket of her jacket.
The scenery was breathtakingly beautiful. The hills were covered with trees and shrubs and wild-flowers. The sky was a clear, brilliant blue. There were birds and squirrels and chipmunks everywhere. She spent the better part of an hour watching two gray squirrels chase each other from tree to tree. Must be nice, she thought, to be so carefree, with nothing more worrisome than finding your next meal.
Returning to her campsite, she fixed a quick lunch; then she sat down on her sleeping bag and turned on her MBox, hoping that listening to some soothing music would help relax her. With her back against a tree, she gazed at the countryside, trying to imagine what it must have been like back in the 1800s, when the whites were moving westward and the Indians were fighting to hang onto their land and their way of life. She had never been much for old Western movies, but she had watched a few in her time. Her favorites had been films like Wind-walker and Dances With Wolves and Winterhawk, and even the more contemporary Thunderheart, movies where the Indians had been portrayed as real people who were trying to survive in a harsh environment instead of mindless savages who killed indiscriminately and spoke in broken English. She had to admit, most of those films had also featured darkly handsome heroes, like Michael Dante in Winterhawk. She had watched that one over and over again, imagining herself as the innocent young white girl who had been kidnapped by Winterhawk and had refused to be rescued when her uncle found her.
With a sigh, Regan closed her eyes, imagining Santiago as a wild savage and herself as the young white girl he kidnapped. For a time, she let herself get lost in the fantasy. She could see it all so clearly, the two of them riding across the sunlit prairie, stopping beside a ribbon of blue water, making love on a buffalo robe under the stars, standing on a high bluff to watch a herd of horses running across the plains. It took her a moment to realize that the sound of hoofbeats growing ever closer wasn't in her mind.
With a sense of foreboding, she opened her eyes.
Three mounted warriors clad in breechclouts and carrying bows and arrows stared down at her.
Chapter 14
Regan looked up at the Indians, her heart in her throat. Was she dreaming? Please, she thought, let me be dreaming! She blinked and blinked again.
They were still there.
A warrior with an eagle feather tied in his long black hair urged his horse forward a few steps. "Who are you?" he demanded. "What are you doing here? This is Lakota land. The wasichu are not allowed. To cross our border without permission is punishable by death."
Fear knotted in the pit of Regan's belly, and with it the urge to laugh. Mortals who strayed into You Bet Your Life Park did so at their own peril. Apparently that was true for whites who wandered, uninvited, into the Black Hills, as well.
"I'm… that is…" What should she say? That she was lost? That she was looking for a shaman? She slipped her hand into her jacket pocket, her fingers curling around the butt of her gun, and then, slowly, she withdrew her hand. She couldn't just shoot them, not when she didn't know if they meant her any harm. Besides, she had a feeling any one of them could put an arrow into her before she could draw and fire her own weapon.
The three warriors spoke to each other in a language Regan assumed was Lakota, then Eagle Feather dismounted and stalked toward her.
She shrieked when he grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. "Let me go!"
The warrior didn't respond. Instead, he lifted her onto the back of his horse, then vaulted up behind her. Reaching around her, he took up the reins and urged his horse down the hill. The other two warriors followed.
"Wait!" Regan cried. "My things. I need my purse and my…"
But the Indian wasn't listening.
She told herself there was no reason to be afraid. These weren't uncivilized savages and this wasn't the nineteenth century. In spite of what Eagle Feather had said, she couldn't believe they would kill her just for trespassing! But maybe she was just fooling herself. Hadn't the clerk at the sporting goods store warned them to be on the lookout for wild Indians? What had he said? The Sioux don't take lightly to trespassers these days?
They could kill her, she thought, and no one could do a thing about it. They had their own land now, their own laws, and she was trespassing.
That thought was uppermost in her mind as they rode through a stand of tall timber that opened onto a flat meadow, and she beheld an Indian village for the first time. What looked like hundreds of tepees were spread alongside a slow-moving river. Horses grazed in the tall grass. Men and women, all dressed in Native attire, could be seen going about their daily tasks. Children ran among the conical hide lodges. Several old men were playing a dice game. Dogs slept in the shade. She couldn't help grinning at the sight of two teenage boys clad in buckskin leggings tossing a football back and forth.