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Sighing with relief, Lauralee followed his lead.
He rode up to Lauralee and reached a gentle hand to her cheek. “Yes, o-ge-ye, we will stop for water,” he said thickly. “We have left the posse far behind us.”
He yawned and stretched his arms high above his head. “I do not like confessing to how my body needs rest,” he said.
“Dancing Cloud, you have just cause to be tired,” Lauralee said softly. “You were recently wounded. You have not fully regained your strength.”
Her gaze lowered and she gaped openly with alarm when she saw blood spreading on his buckskin shirt, over his shoulder wound. “Lord, Dancing Cloud,” she gasped. “The stitches may have broken loose. We must stop now. You have pushed yourself much more than your body can tolerate. I will bathe your wound. I will get a petticoat from my valise and rip it into strips for a bandage.”
Dancing Cloud looked down at the seepage of blood through his shirt. He reached a hand there and slightly pressed his fingers against it, wincing when pain shot through his wound.
Lauralee saw Dancing Cloud’s discomfort. “See?” she said, her jaw tight with determination. She tried to hide her own discomfort when sliding from the saddle made her aches worsen. She could hardly stand placing her full weight on her feet. There was not one inch of her body that did not ache worse than any toothache that she had ever experienced.
Forcing herself not to react to her discomfort, Lauralee secured her horse’s reins to a low limb of a tree, then took Dancing Cloud’s reins and secured them with her own.
She turned to Dancing Cloud. She frowned with worry as she slowly pushed his fringed buckskin shirt over his head.
She dropped the shirt with alarm when she realized the seriousness of what the hard travel had caused. Several threads were hanging bloody and twisted from his wound, his skin open and raw as blood trickled in a tiny stream from it.
“Damn them,” she said, hating the posse, even her uncle. “Damn them all. Why couldn’t they leave us alone?”
She gazed sadly into Dancing Cloud’s eyes. “Why couldn’t they have believed us?” she murmured. “Especially my Uncle Abner. He saw the sort of man you were. It seems impossible that he could truly believe you are guilty of having stolen that stallion.”
“White men believe what they wish about men with red skin,” Dancing Cloud said, his voice drawn. “Your uncle’s skin is white. Why should he be different from the others?”
He clasped gentle hands to her shoulders. “And remember this, my o-ge-ye,” he said softly. “I am not only Indian. I am also labeled a Rebel. So you see? There are too many things about me that brought anger into the heart and eyes of those who call me a horse thief. Do you not see that this Cherokee need not do anything to be accused? In the white man’s hearts, this Cherokee is already guilty.”
“It’s so unfair,” Lauralee said, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.
“Many things in life are not fair,” Dancing Cloud said thickly. “You live. You die. That is the way it has been from the beginning of time. What you do between those two certainties is up to each individual. Whether they leave a life they can be proud of? Or whether they choose to be heathen-like. I chose to walk with a proud chin and heart. Those who chase me down now as though I’m no better than a dog? They are of the breed of man whose life is filled with hate and vengeance.”
“I hate to think that of my uncle,” Lauralee said, her voice breaking. “During the short time I was with my aunt and uncle I grew fond of them. I wish that I were wrong about how I am feeling about my uncle now. I see him as . . . as . . . a cad.”
She looked at his wound again, then grabbed his hand and led him to the stream. “Sit, please,” she murmured. “Let me bathe your wound.”
“First I will find a tassel flower plant,” he said softly. “From its dry-powdered leaf I will make a poultice that will draw the blood from my wound.”
After gathering up several of the dry-powdered leaves, Dancing Cloud eased down on the ground, welcoming this moment of reprieve off his horse. He folded his legs beneath him and watched and smiled at Lauralee’s attentiveness to him, in how she cupped the water into her hands, and how she leaned her hands over his wound and allowed the water to trickle freely and slowly across it.
“Are you certain it is all right to place the poultice on the wound?”
“Do you not know that the Indian ofttimes knows more about the property of plants and the cure of diseases than does the trained white botanist or physician?” he said matter-of-factly. “Living as we do in the open air in close communion with nature, we know well the knowledge of properties of plants.”
“I would do anything to see that you are well,” Lauralee said, applying the herbal poultice to his flesh.
“The plant world is friendly to the human species and constantly at the wil1ing service of those in need of their services,” Dancing Cloud said softly.
Lauralee smiled at him, then went to her valise and removed a cotton petticoat from it. She rushed back to Dancing Cloud, surprised when she found him stretched out on his back, asleep. So quickly he had gone to sleep. So easily.
But then why wouldn’t he, she thought to herself. While she had gotten a moment’s sleep back at their campsite, he had kept a lookout. Had he not, the posse would have swept down upon them like a swarm of hornets.
The trees whispered peacefully overhead as the breeze sighed through them. Lauralee found that she was suddenly drowsy, yet she shook off the need of sleep and continued with the task at hand. She ripped long strips of cloth from her petticoat. She bent low over Dancing Cloud. She had a hard time lifting his right shoulder to wrap the bandage around it and beneath his arm. His muscled body seemed the weight of lead as he slept.
But after a while she had the wound comfortably covered. When he awakened she would take a few turns with the bandage across his massive, muscled chest and secure it at his back with a knot.
Lauralee moved to her knees and gazed down at Dancing Cloud with an intense love. She drew a ragged breath. How could anyone accuse him of anything vile?
There was such a gentleness in his expression as he slept. She dared to touch his lips, their sensual fullness. She ran her fingers then across the lean line of his jaw, a jaw that showed strength.
