No Other Man Read online

  No Other Man

  Shannon Drake

  One

  Late summer, 1875

  God was punishing her. It had to be that simple.

  And that awful.

  As the stagecoach came to a jerking halt, Skylar wondered briefly if she deserved the kind of death that now threatened her. No. No one deserved the fate it seemed she was doomed to discover. Please, God, no one. And what she had done was surely not so very bad, not so horrible, not so ...

  Oh, God!

  She had seen them coming. Seen the war-painted braves on their speeding painted ponies, screeching out their hair- raising battle cries. She had prayed that the stagecoach might somehow outdistance them, but she had wondered even then if God would pay heed to her fevered cries after the deception she had so desperately carried out.

  It seemed not.

  The doors to the coach were suddenly wrenched open. Fear ran like an icy river throughout her limbs, clutched her heart and lungs. Suddenly sunlight poured in, somewhat blinding her, yet what she saw was enough to turn her fear into terror.

  A massive shadow filling the doorway. Blocking out the sun. Huge, forbidding, terrifying ...

  It was Sioux country. She'd known there were Indians in the West. She'd known the United States Army was heavily in residence near here, battling the heathens on behalf of the settlers, more and more of whom had flowed into the Badlands area when gold had been discovered here. She'd heard tales about the savages. The eastern newspapers had been filled with reports on them, all of them, the Comanches, the Cheyennes, the Pawnees, the Crow, the Assiniboines ...

  The Sioux.

  Indeed, she'd heard something about them. About the way they'd been moving steadily westward themselves, battling other tribes who vied for the same hunting grounds. They were what the soldiers called true "blanket and pony" Indians, hunting the buffalo on horseback, painting themselves garishly for warfare, finding the greatest honor in feats of daring in battle. She'd also heard there were good Indians—those who accepted the white ways and stayed on the reservations set aside for them. Then there were the "hostiles," those who refused to accept the boundaries of white treaties. Those who now raided white settlements and murdered whites whenever they could.

  Those who attacked stagecoaches.

  Oh, God, she had known that horrible things happened.

  And she'd come here anyway.

  She hadn't been able to allow herself to think about the Indian situation; she hadn't been able to allow herself to be afraid. Oh, God, she had been clutching at life, all right, grasping perhaps, and what she had done had been wrong. She had taken just pains to escape the East, traveled a long, circuitous two-week route when the train might have taken her half the time. She had done everything to avoid danger in the East, and now, oh, God, she had been wrong, but surely, not so wrong as to deserve this....

  She blinked furiously, trying to clear her vision. The dark, massive form in the doorway to the coach remained.

  Impossibly tall, impossibly muscled and bronzed. His face was painted: half in red, half in black. Straight black hair fell past his shoulders. Buckskin leggings covered his thighs while beaded boots of a like skin clung tightly to the heavy muscles of his calves. His chest, in all its muscled bronze glory, was bare except for designs painted in the same red and black shades that adorned his face. One look at him was enough to instill the very fear of God and the devil in her heart. She was well aware that the Indians could be as merciless with women and children as they were with the soldiers.

  Did they, perhaps, have a right to be so brutal? Hadn't she heard talk as well that the soldiers were terrible when they attacked Indian camps? Everyone had heard stories about the famous young brevet general, Custer, who had done such glorious deeds for the North during the War Between the States. In 1868, he'd attacked a Cheyenne camp on the Washita River. It was another "great victory" for the whites—articles from massacred settlers had been found in the camp—but there were those who had written about the number of Indian women and children who had been slaughtered during the attack.

  But she hadn't slaughtered anyone!

  Yet now, here, was a red man, blocking the sun, threatening to make the earth flow crimson with her blood.

  Split seconds passed as terror filled her.

  But the hysterical scream she expected did not tear from her throat. Somehow, she swallowed it. If she was going to die anyway, she was going to do so fighting.

  She'd heard enough about the Indians to know they'd enjoy her death even more if she begged for mercy while they granted not a whit of it.

  Even as the brave at the door reached in to drag her out, she remembered the hat pin holding her mourning bonnet in place upon her head. She wrenched it out with a speed she found astonishing herself, grasped it firmly, and slammed it straight at the warrior's eye. Something deep, guttural, and furious spewed from his lips as he caught her hand with a half second to spare in which to preserve his eyesight. She cried out with the pain as his grasp seemed about to break the fragile bones of her hand; his hold eased, but barely. Kicking and screaming, she found herself being dragged from the coach. Her wild gyrations sent both of them flying to the dry, dusty ground. She saw the knife sheathed at his hip and lunged for it, drawing it free and aiming it at his throat before he once more managed to salvage himself from her deadly intent, this time capturing her wrist and rolling to pin her beneath him. She cried out again in fury and fear as he slammed her wrist against the earth, causing her to give up her hold on the weapon. He straddled her then, catching both her wrists in his merciless grip, his thighs tight around her hips. She continued to struggle, swearing, praying that the swearing would help her. "Bastard, wretched pagan, savage, hideous demon from the fires of hell, get off of me!" Yet, if he got off of her, what then? Three of his comrades watched just a few yards away from them, seated upon their painted ponies silently observing her desperate struggles. If she freed herself from this brave, the four of them would hunt her down, run her into the ground, rape her, take her scalp, and leave her carcass for the crows . . .

  "Cowards!" she hissed, trying to spit, trying to claw, whimpering, screaming, twisting. As she fought against the weight and muscle pinning her to the ground, she realized that the buckskin leggings provided little covering for the savage atop her; they twisted with each of her wild, bucking movements, creating a wave of dread and horrific fascination within her as she noticed the man wore a scanty breechclout along with the leggings, and nothing more. "Cowards!" she cried again, twisting anew. "Attacking a lone woman! Slaying that poor old driver!" Had they slain the man? she wondered. They must have done so, for he was nowhere to he seen; he was not leaping to her defense. She had to be grateful that she couldn't see the driver's mutilated, dead body upon the ground. She started to cry out again, her fury all that kept her from pure hysteria.

  "You are nothing but hideous beasts! I swear it! You will all die, you bastards; the cavalry will come, you'll die slowly, I-promise, I..."

  The cavalry would come? In time to save her? She doubted it. Still, her threats were keeping her alive. But to what purpose? If she stalled them this minute, they would slay her the next!

  "God damn you, I will come back myself from heaven or hell!" she breathed, then inhaled, desperate for more breath to continue her tirade.

  And in that second, she saw his eyes.

  Strange eyes for an Indian brave. Green eyes. As deep and dark as the trees from which the Black Hills had drawn their name, yet distinctively and decidedly green.

  Did it matter? Some white blood had ventured into this man's past, leaving behind a legacy of green eyes. Would that save her life now? She doubted it.

  She sucked in more air, fighting the tears that stung her eyes.
"Bastard!" she shrieked again. "Get off me—kill me, or get off me!"

  Oddly enough, in those seconds while she had stared, thoroughly startled, into his eyes, he had somewhat relaxed his grip upon her. With a wild, frantic effort, she freed her hands, managing to pummel his chest and swipe one set of nails across his cheek. A deep, rich, savage sound came from his lips, a sound so fierce it seemed to knife into her soul itself. He caught her hands again, this time leaping from her with swift agility and dragging her up along with him. She thought that she had found a new freedom with which to fight, but before she could begin a new onslaught in any way, she found herself thrown over his shoulder as he walked for his pony. The dusty remnants of her bonnet were left behind on the dry earth. Her hair, a very deep, rich honey blond that fell past her waist in heavy waves— once a great pride to her but soon to adorn various tipis as trophies—fell free from the last of the hairpins that had held it regally in place just moments before. She gasped deeply as it tangled around her face. She twisted, freeing herself from the cloud of it, and struggled to rise against his back. As soon as she achieved enough balance to slam a fist against his back, she was lifted again and thrown belly down over his pony's flanks. And before she could rise from that position, he had scissored his legs over his mount's haunches and sat bareback astride the animal. Desperate, she struggled to rise against the pony's flanks, only to find him kicking the animal into motion while delivering a strike both painful and humiliating upon the region of her derriere, despite the black taffeta bustle that rested there.

  Dirt spewed up from the earth. She coughed and choked, then ridiculously found herself clinging to his knee in fear that the sudden speeding motion of the horse would send her hurtling down to the ground to be trampled. She didn't know how far they rode, or for how long. Time and space lost all meaning during the reckless race they seemed to take against the wind. When he drew the horse to a halt at last, the daylight had waned. They had left the dust, flat- lands, and rock behind and climbed into the hills. When he dismounted, dragging her numbed body from its precarious perch atop the haunches of the pony, a pale red glow of sunset was settling over a copse of trees and a small cabin that stood within that copse.

  He set her upon the ground. For a moment she merely stared at the cabin and wondered when he had murdered the people who had once dwelled within it, for it had obviously been the small home of a white man, a trapper, perhaps. Maybe even that of a school marm who had been dedicated to teaching the children of the scattered white homesteaders, miners, bankers, ranchers, farmers. Some light glowed from within the cabin, as if a fire burned within a hearth, a fire to welcome home the weary.

  She was free, she realized. The Indian had led the pony into a small paddock that flanked the cabin, taking the bit and bridle from its head so that the trusty creature might munch freely on the hay that brimmed from a feeder.

  The man's three comrades had ridden on elsewhere, she discovered with amazement.

  She turned to run, downhill, into the darkness, into the copse, into the night.

  From there, where?

  It didn't matter in the least. She had taken no more than three flying steps before she shrieked out with pain and stopped in her tracks as the Indian's fingers wound into her hair, dragging her back. "Damn you, damn you!" she cried out, trying to pummel him with her fists as he swept her up. She wound up face down over his shoulder again, swearing and fighting as he made his way to the cabin.

  Once inside, he set her on her feet. She tried to run around him, determined to reach the door. But he caught her hair again and this time kept his grip within it, moving her deeper into the cabin where he forced her down upon a bed covered with a blanket of rich, warm fur. She grasped for his wrist, trying to claw his flesh, anything to force him to relinquish his hold on her hair. He did release her hair, but only to pull a rawhide strip from his legging and bind her wrists together.

  "No, no, no!" she told him, her voice rising as she struggled to keep from being bound. It did no good. Down on one knee before her, he quickly and efficiently tied her wrists so that she could barely move her hands. Then he rose, leaving her seated there upon the bunk, moving to warm his own hands at the fire within the hearth.

  "You must have murdered these poor people a while ago!" she cried out. Why was she taunting him? Wasn't she going to die an awful enough death as it was? Why was he waiting? He should kill her, have done with this torture! Yet as she lived, hope lived. She should keep silent. Humor him. Humor a savage who didn't understand a word that fell from her lips? No! Keep talking, keep fighting in spirit, pray that there would be one second when he would truly let down his guard!

  "Quite comfortable here, aren't you, you baboon?" she cried out. "Right at home!"

  He didn't seem to hear her. He stared into the flames. She tossed her head, looking about the cabin. It was a one- room dwelling, and surprisingly, it appealed to be inhabited. Beneath the fur cover, she could see that the bunk was decked in cotton sheets as well; the pillow was covered with a clean matching case. There was a table before the hearth; simple curtains hung at the four windows. A hip tub sat to the right of the table, near the hearth, and behind that, there was a wooden counter for food preparation, and within it, a pump that was surely attached to an outside well. There was a wardrobe against the wall behind the bunk, and a clothing trunk lay at the foot of it. A huge leg of ham and several pounds of cheese hung from pegs above the counter area, while shelves were filled with what appeared to be containers of preserves, bottles of wine, and even canned goods. It was a modest place, clean and neat. For one person or a young couple, it would make a cozy home.

  Startled by the sound of water being poured, she looked quickly back at the Indian. He had taken a huge, steaming pot from atop the hearth and dumped the water from it into the hip tub. Her jaw dropped as she realized he was stripping down from his scant clothing to nothing at all. He stood naked, his back to her. Still stunned, inhaling a ragged breath, she seemed unable to do anything other than stare, her heart hammering fiercely. He was a very tall man, more imposing than she had realized in all her terrified struggling. Every inch of that height was savagely muscled. His shoulders were very broad, his back was long, his buttocks were as hard-muscled as his sturdy, well-shaped legs. Even from the back, his arm muscles rippled.

  She quickly averted her eyes, looking toward the cabin door as he stepped into the tub.

  He lay back comfortably.

  And sighed.

  She stared at him at first, incredulous. She had read accounts of Indiah captivity. Accounts of Sioux raids, encounters in which survivors were sometimes shot even as they assumed they were being taken hostage, encounters in which men, women, and children were taken for slave labor and used brutally.

  But a savage warrior opting first for a bath did not quite seem to fit well with any previous account she had come across.

  She couldn't see much more than the power of his shoulders and the sleek wet darkness of his hair as he sat in the tub, for he faced away from her. He seemed to be scrubbing himself furiously, removing his war paint. Why?

  Would he paint himself differently to murder her? One set of colors for the capture, another for the kill?

  Perhaps she was to be some kind of ritual sacrifice. Killed in a very specific way.

  Oh, God!

  She leaped up, lifting her bound hands before her, ready to throw herself against the door. What did she do once she was free with her bound hands? What if animals attacked in the night?

  How would that be different from the fate that awaited her here? she shrieked silently to herself.

  But again, it didn't matter. He may have seemed to be at ease bathing in the tub. But he could not have been so very relaxed, for he was out of the water even as she hurled her weight against the door.

  "I will not stay here. You cannot keep me here!" she cried. He flung her around. She stared into his eyes, afraid to let her eyes wander down the length of him. "You think that you can
keep me captive watching you mimic a murdered settler in his bath? I am the one who needs to bathe; I am the one who needs to wash away your touch! I—" She broke off. His wet hands were upon her arm, wrenching her back with such a force that she heard the delicate silk and lace of her black mourning gown rip and tear. She screamed, trying ridiculously to free herself from his hold. Both hands upon her shoulders, he shook her firmly. She gasped for breath and stared into his strange green eyes once again, and for the first time, saw his face. Really saw his face.

  She couldn't ascertain his age, but she thought he was somewhere near thirty—not a very young man, certainly not an old one—one indisputably in the very prime of life and at the height of his strength and power. His skull was ruggedly sculpted, his jaw square, his cheekbones high, his forehead broad. His unusual eyes were large and bright against the bronze of his flesh, while his brows, as well as his hair, were blue black, well and cleanly arched. Were it not so fierce and menacing, it would have been a fascinating face. Compelling, intimidating, masculine, hard but so cleanly lined that among any race it would be considered handsome. His nose was long and straight, his mouth full, his lips oddly curled in a mocking smile that sent chills racing throughout her body once again. Skylar was quite certain then that many a beautiful young Indian maid had worn her heart upon her sleeve for this ruthless warrior, and yet there was something in the mocking eyes that made her wonder if there wasn't something dark and deadly in this savage's past that might make him deal as callously with one of his own as he dealt with her.

  No. He'd not slay an Indian woman when he had finished with his taunting of her....

  Taunting. He was naked now. Buck naked. Dripping upon her as he held her.

  "Savage son of satan! Bastard!" she shrieked. Hands tied, shoulders caught in his iron grip, she fought the only way she could, trying with all her remaining strength and energy to kick him. She caught a shin, yet didn't draw so much as a grimace from him. A second passed while they stared at one another. Then she shrieked in real terror, for he plucked her up again and threw her down upon the bunk. As she struggled to inch away from him and rise, her fear began to escalate in leaps and bounds, for he caught her by one foot, and despite her thrashing and struggling, removed the black lady's boot from it.