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“What . . . ?” he said, then gasped and dropped his rifle as Brave Wolf stepped from hiding, his rifle aimed at the colonel’s c
hest.
“What the hell is going on here?” Colonel Downing growled as he raised his hands in submission. He glared from Mary Beth to Brave Wolf. “There is no way in hell you could’ve planned this. It’s just my damn luck that this savage happened along at the right time for him to take advantage of the situation.”
“Mary Beth, rip off the hem of that dress you are wearing so that we can use it to tie him,” Brave Wolf said, his rifle still poised, his jaw tight, his eyes lit with fire as he glared at the colonel. “And washechu, white man, while she is doing that, start walking ahead of me.”
“You won’t get away with this,” Colonel Downing growled as he walked onward, stopping for only a moment to give Mary Beth a cold glare. “You are nothing but a whore, an Injun-loving whore.”
Mary Beth ignored him as she ripped big lengths of the bottom of the dress away. The colonel gasped and went pale at the way she was treating his late wife’s dress.
“Move onward,” Brave Wolf growled at the colonel. “We have some distance to cover before I tie you and leave you bound to a tree. I have to make certain that it will be a while before you are found.”
Mary Beth came up beside Brave Wolf with several strips of the dress. “Our horses are back there,” she said, nodding toward another section of trees, where she and the colonel had left their steeds tethered in the shade.
“We will get him secured, then retrieve both horses,” Brave Wolf said, still following the colonel. “We will take the colonel’s horse with us to the village.”
“No one will know where to look for me,” the colonel said, his voice a low whine.
“That’s the general idea,” Mary Beth said. “And there obviously will be no wedding tomorrow. Even if Brave Wolf hadn’t arrived today, I still wouldn’t have married you. I had planned to escape from the fort tonight. It sickens me how you are planning to attack Brave Wolf and his people.”
“You’d not have gotten far,” Colonel Downing said, his voice filled with rage. He looked over his shoulder at Brave Wolf. “You will pay dearly for your mistake today.”
Brave Wolf only smiled, for he would be prepared for the soldiers’ arrival. Thanks to Mary Beth, he knew there would be a war between them.
The colonel glared at Mary Beth. “Everything you promised, everything you said, was a lie?” he demanded, still stunned at her role in what was happening. “You purposely lied to me so that you could learn my plans? You never meant to marry me?”
“I’m surprised you ever thought I would,” Mary Beth said. “How could you not see the loathing in my eyes when I looked at you?”
“You will die alongside the savage heathens,” Colonel Downing growled out. “You . . . will . . . regret ever having humiliated me. I will enjoy killing you myself.”
“Those are foolish threats for a man who is at the mercy of a savage Crow chief,” Brave Wolf said, his voice filled with sarcasm. “I could kill you now and no one would ever find your body. The animals that roam this forest would see to that.”
“You wouldn’t kill a bound man,” Colonel Downing said, his voice breaking.
“You see me as a heathen savage, so why would you not believe me capable of doing that to you?” Brave Wolf said, his voice tight.
Colonel Downing’s eyes wavered; then he looked away from them and walked on.
“It is not much farther now,” Brave Wolf said, glancing at Mary Beth. “I know a perfect place to leave him.”
She sighed heavily, glad that things had worked out for her and Brave Wolf, but worried about the colonel’s wrath when he was found and rescued.
She only hoped that Brave Wolf had a lot of allies who would stand beside him, for she thought there were more soldiers stationed at Fort Henry than the Crow in Brave Wolf’s village.
Chapter Twenty-five
Every lover is a warrior,
and Cupid has his
camps.
—Ovid
“At this moment I feel so many different things,” Mary Beth said as she cuddled against Brave Wolf before the fire in his lodge. “I feel thankful for having met you, relief that I am here again with you, and sadness over my son not being safe with us. And I cannot help being afraid over what is to come . . .”
She couldn’t finish what she was going to say. She hated even thinking about what might transpire after the colonel was found. She knew that the anger Colonel Downing felt would motivate an attack even more vicious than he had previously planned against Brave Wolf’s people.
