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While he was slowly looking around her cabin, she studied him. What she saw was someone so handsome that, had they met under different circumstances, she would have been attracted to him. He was uniquely handsome, with sculpted facial features, penetrating coal-black eyes, and long, raven-black, unbraided hair held back from his face by a beaded headband.
His hair hung down past his waist, and she could envision how it would blow in the wind when he rode across the land.
He was dressed in only a breechclout and moccasins, and she admired his muscled, bronzed body. She wondered how it might feel to be held by those muscled arms if he were not someone who had come upon her in the night, threatening her very existence.
“Answer me,” High Hawk said, seeing that she seemed too frozen with fear to respond to his questions. He regretted causing that fear, for he had not come here to harm her.
He had not come here with her on his mind at all.
“Tell me,” he said, his eyes gazing deeply into hers. “Do . . . you . . . live alone?”
She knew now that he would insist on an answer. Hoping that if she responded, he would leave her in peace, she cleared her throat, then blurted out, “My husband will be home anytime now. He’ll kill you if you violate me.”
That word “violate” disturbed him, for he was a man of honor, who would never take advantage of a woman.
But of course this woman had no way of knowing this, and he did not feel now was the time to tell her. He needed to know, first, whether or not she had a man to protect her.
“I see nothing to show that a man lives here with you,” he said, still holding her wrist, yet not as tightly.
Joylynn felt trapped, for she knew that there was nothing in the cabin except her own possessions.
But she refused to admit the truth, so she said nothing.
“You do live alone,” High Hawk said, releasing his hold on her wrist. “Why? I have never seen a white woman live without a man to provide food for her and look after her safety.”
His eyes moved to a shelf that held dishes, as well as the cooking utensils that white women used to prepare food; then he gazed into her eyes again. “If you have no man who hunts for you, who puts food on your table?” he asked.
Joylynn still remained silent, feeling it was best not to confirm his belief that she had no husband. She must wait and see what his intentions were. She had no other choice. She was truly at this man’s mercy.
High Hawk sighed heavily when the woman still would not respond to his questions.
Then he thought of someone else: his father, and his father’s premonition about finding a white woman on the night of the full moon. High Hawk realized that somehow his father had known that he would find this woman tonight. Not for the first time, he was awed by the powers of his father; Rising Moon truly could see things that no one else saw.
And then High Hawk remembered his mother’s words . . . that he should not take any white woman as his captive.
Considering how the events of the night had played out, the mystical way he had found the woman his father had predicted he would find, he chose without further thought to follow his father’s bidding, ignoring his mother’s.
And seeing how alone this woman was in a world where women amounted to only one thing to most men, seeing how vulnerable she was for any man’s taking, he made his decision. He felt that he was saving her from a future that might include being raped by any man who might pass by; he felt that he was not truly taking her as his captive, but that he might actually be saving her life. It was true that no woman lived for long, alone. If he were to leave her there, her days were surely numbered.
He thought ahead, to her life in his village and realized that she was accustomed to a vastly different existence from the one the Pawnee women lived. To prove to her that what he was doing was not all bad, he would see that she would take some comforts from her home, which would make her life with him and his people more tolerable.
He searched for a travel bag, and when he saw a large leather satchel, he grabbed it and shoved it into her arms.
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nbsp; “You are coming with me,” High Hawk said tightly. “Take what clothes and provisions you wish to bring with you and place them in this bag, for you will not be returning.”
Joylynn’s heart skipped a beat.
Her throat went suddenly dry.
She searched his eyes as tears threatened to spill from her own. “Please, oh, please don’t make me go with you,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’m no threat to you or your people. I . . . I . . . am only one small speck on this earth. Why can’t you forget that you found me here and go on your way? Surely there are those who are waiting for your return home. And . . . surely they wouldn’t want to see you bring a white woman among them.”
“Curiosity brought me here when I saw this lone cabin from a high butte,” High Hawk said. “When I decided to come and see who lived so isolated from everyone else, at first it was only to observe. But when I heard your horse whinnying, I knew I would not leave without it. It was my intention to come only for the horse. Not you.”
“Then what changed your mind?” Joylynn asked, clenching and unclenching her hands as she tried to think of something she might say, or do, that would convince him what he was doing was wrong.
She was horrified to hear that he planned to take her horse! Without Swiftie, she would be alone in the world. She would no longer have a companion, nor a means to get supplies.
