Though he tried to protect her from his worry about what lay ahead for them, she knew he thought about it a great deal. But strangely, what troubled Skylar most was that he also worried about the connection she still felt to the Templeton family. He knew instantly whenever her thoughts went to Rayna or her parents. He would see a glimpse of sadness in her face, and it would make him angry—or at least that was how it had seemed to Skylar at first.
It had taken her a while to realize that what he felt was fear, not anger.
He wanted so much for her heart to be with him and nowhere else that he was afraid he would someday lose her to the white world she had been raised in. Skylar had tried to assure him that such a thing could never happen because her life was with him now, but she knew that his doubts persisted.
As one day blended into another, time lost all meaning for Skylar. On the reservation she had carefully kept track of the days, ticking them off one by one on a mental calendar, counting down to the day she would return to Rancho Verde. Now she had no goal other than surviving and learning how to be a good Apache wife. She had no future, and the past was a memory that seemed to slip farther away every day. All that was left to her was the 224
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present, and each day she reveled in the simple joys that Sun Hawk brought into her life.
She knew their mountain idyll couldn’t last, of course. There were hard times ahead. Winter was coming, and they couldn’t live in the high mountains once the snows came. Before long they would be forced to turn themselves in or join Geronimo in the Sierra Madre. Neither choice boded well for their future, but Skylar resolutely kept those thoughts at bay. She gathered and stored every precious moment with Sun Hawk because she knew that once the happy, tranquil times were gone, they might never come again.
That was why she had been so sorry to leave the Nagona. When Sun Hawk had spotted the White Mountain brave hunting in the mountains, they had broken camp quickly and disappeared without a trace. But where before they had gone north each time they moved, this time Sun Hawk had led her south. The brave had tried to follow them, but Skylar and her husband had been careful to leave no trail; thanks to Sun Hawk’s patient teaching, that was one thing at which she had come to excel.
They had traveled for two days and made camp again, but Skylar knew they wouldn’t be here long. There was no guarantee that the brave who had spotted them would keep the information to himself, and staying in one place made the risk of discovery too great.
Each evening, no matter where they were, Sun Hawk carefully scouted the area before they settled in for the night. He was gone longer than usual that evening, and when he finally returned to camp, Skylar studied him with concern. His moods were difficult to read at times, and she was never quite sure what he was thinking.
“Is there trouble, beloved?” she asked as he sat next to her. “Should I put out the fire?” Skylar hoped he wouldn’t say yes. It was the first they’d had since leaving the Nagona, and the nights were getting much, much colder.
But Sun Hawk shook his head. “No, there is no one about. We will be safe here tonight.”
“Then why do you look so serious?”
Sun Hawk glanced at her, then stared into the fire, knowing she wasn’t going to approve of the decision he had made. “I was thinking of tomorrow.”
“Will we move on again?”
“No.”
Skylar sighed patiently and cupped his jaw in her hand, forcing him to look at her. “Then what is wrong? If you do not share your thoughts with me, I will be frightened.”
He gathered her into his arms, and Skylar nestled her head on his chest.
“There is a ranch far to the west. Tomorrow I will go there, and when it is dark, I will take two of their horses. When I return, we will journey south again.”
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Skylar didn’t have to be told the meaning of his decision. “We will join Geronimo,” she said quietly.
He was silent for a long time, and when he finally spoke, his voice was laced with regret. “We have no other choice. I am sorry.”
Skylar raised her head and looked into his eyes. “When you took me as your wife, you promised that you would do whatever it took to keep me safe.
If you think this is best, I will go where you go.”
Warmed by her words, Sun Hawk gazed into her eyes and gathered into his heart the love he saw there. There was no other woman like this one. She accepted the hardships of their life with gentle smiles. When he failed her, she never accused. She found joy in the simplest of things and brought him a kind of happiness he had never known. If it had been his to give, he would gladly have made a present of the world and placed it in her hands.
That could never be, though. The world that had once belonged to all the Apache had dwindled to a few pitiful pieces of land, and even these were places he could not take his bride. He knew what lay ahead for them, and it frightened him.
But not as much as the thought of losing Skylar. If the only way to keep her was to join Geronimo on the warpath, he would do what he had to do and pray that his beloved would forgive him for it.
Rayna stood in the center of the deserted campsite, taking in the forlorn little wickiup and the cold circle of ashes in front of it. Part of her felt lost and totally alone as she imagined Skylar living in such isolation, but another part of her felt closer to her sister than she had in months. There was no proof that the Apaches who had made this camp were really Skylar and Sun Hawk, but Rayna was as positive of it as Case had been last night after Black Rope’s visit.
They had left Eagle Creek before dawn that morning and had pushed their horses hard to reach the Nagona Valley in one day. When they arrived nearly an hour ago, Case had wasted little time studying the immediate area. Instead, he left Meade and Rayna to set up camp while he used what was left of the daylight to look for the trail Black Rope had lost.
“Are you all right, Rayna?” Meade asked as he dropped another load of firewood into the pile he’d been collecting.
His return startled her out of her reverie, and she turned to him. He was giving her that strange, tender look again and she still didn’t know what to make of it. It almost seemed to her that he had something on his mind that he couldn’t quite bring himself to say. The change from his usual combative stance to this new one unsettled her because she didn’t know what to expect next. Of course, there was really nothing unusual about that.
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“I’m fine,” she told him. “I finished grooming and watering the horses, and I was just . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked at the wickiup again.
“Trying to visualize Skylar in this place?”
She nodded. “Silly, isn’t it?”
“Not at all. I’ve been doing much the same thing myself. I saw some small footprints on that hillside, and could almost see her walking ahead of me. I can only imagine how much stronger those images must be for you.”
He crouched by the cold remains of Sun Hawk’s campfire and began constructing a new one.
“They must have stayed here for quite a while,” Rayna commented as she bent down to help him.
“A week or more, I’d guess,” he replied.
A small silence fell between them before she asked, “Did you notice there’s only one wickiup?”
Meade stopped and looked at her. “Yes.”
“And there’s no sign that either of them slept on the ground outside it. Do you think . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to ask the question that had been plaguing her since she’d first learned of Skylar’s abduction.