Think of her. no, he could only envision Jessie crying when she saw what was left of his body after they were done with him. Jenny — he had to concen-trate on her.
Damn, how many strokes was that now? Six? Seven?
Jenny, beautiful, blond, sweet as Jessie's home-made candy. Her father had settled in Wyoming only last year, after the Indian wars were over, the beaten Sioux and Cheyenne confined to reservations. Colt had been in Chicago with Jessie and Chase during the worst of the war, Jessie conspiring to keep the news from him, thinking he would want to go back and fight with his people. He wouldn't have. His mother, sister, and younger brother were already dead, found and killed by a couple of gold prospectors heading for the Black Hills just two months after he had left the tribe in '75. The area had been swarming with pros-pectors ever since gold was discovered there in '74.
It was the start of the end, that gold in the heart of Indian territory. The Indians had always known it was there, but once the whites did, you couldn't keep them out. And even though they were breaking the treaty by being there, the army finally came in to protect them, and so the last great Indian victory at Little Bighorn, but then the end.
Colt's mother, Wide River Woman, had seen it coming. That was why she had instigated the fight between him and his stepfather, Runs With the Wolf, pretty much forcing Colt into leaving the tribe. She would have sent his sister with him if Little Gray Bird Woman hadn't already married.
She told him that only after it was over and done and too late to mend the breach, that and her reasons for doing it. He had been furious with her at the time. Her fears for the future meant nothing to him. He saw only the end to his way of life. But she had already seen that end, was giving him a new life in forcing him to go.
It was galling to see her proved right, to know that he would be living on a reservation now if he had survived the wars, just as his stepfather and older brother were — if they had survived. But it was even more galling to be saved from that degradation for this.
Twenty-five? Thirty? There was no point in count-ing, was there?
He had seen Ramsay Pratt's skill with the whip several times before when he had come to visit Jenny.
The man took pride in what he could do. And he was showing off now for the men who stood behind him, slashing the whip down in the exact same welt as many times as it took to lay the welt open, again to deepen the cut, then again just for the hell of it, and the pain of it.
Colt knew Pratt could go on indefinitely wielding that whip. He was a big bear of a man, looked like one too, with a nose so flat it was almost unnotice-able, a shaggy mane of dirty brown hair floating wild about his shoulders, and a long, full beard and mus-tache that blended right into it. If any man looked like a savage, Pratt did. And Colt had seen the gleam in his eyes when told to fetch that whip. This was a chore he was enjoying.
Fifty-five? Sixty? Why was he still trying to keep track? Did he have any skin left? Was the damage as bad as it felt, or was it only Pratt's skill that made it seem as if his back were going up in flames? Just barely, he was aware of the blood seeping into his boots.
How much longer would Jenny stand there and watch, her expression as hard and unemotional as her father's? Had he really thought about marrying this girl, of buying a ranch with the pouch of gold he had found in his belongings when he arrived at the Rocky Valley, his mother's parting gift to him?
From the first time he had seen Jenny he had wanted her. Jessie had teased him about his interest and encouraged him to do something about it. She had also instilled enough self-confidence in him so that he didn't hesitate long.
When they actually met for the first time, he found the attraction was mutual, so mutual that in less than a month, Jenny gifted him with her innocence. He asked her to marry him that night, and they had been making plans ever since, were just waiting for the right moment to tell her father. But the old man had to suspect what was coming. With the Rocky Valley cattle grazing across the open range, practically right up to the Callan Ranch, it was an easy matter for him to come visiting three or four times a week at midday, as well as in the evenings. Walter Callan's knowledge of how serious Colt's suit was probably had a lot to do with his outrage now. And Jenny's outrage?
He realized that he should have told her about his past, that White Thunder was his real name, that Colt for a first name was Jessie's idea. The trouble was, he had known Jenny wouldn't believe him, would think he was only teasing her. Jessie had done too good a job on him; most of the time he even thought like a white.
But to Jenny, he was no longer white. He had seen her fury before she closed it off and matched her father's hard visage as the torture began. There were no tears, no thoughts now of his hands and mouth on her body, of begging him to make love to her each time they found themselves alone. Now he was just another Indian getting what he deserved for presuming to aspire to the affections of a white woman.
His legs were getting weak. So was his vision. The fire had worked its way up to explode inside his brain. He didn't know how he was still standing, how he was keeping his facial muscles from twitching spasmodically. He had thought he had experienced the ultimate in pain during the Sun Dance ceremony, but that was child's play next to this. And Jenny hadn't closed her eyes or looked away yet. But men she couldn't see his back from up on the porch. Not that it would matter. And it no longer mattered that he keep eye contact with her. It wasn't working to block out the pain.
Walter Callan signaled Ramsay to stop a moment when Colt's eyes closed and his head dropped back on his shoulders. "You still alive, boy?"
Colt made no response. The screams were there, in his head, in his throat, just waiting to escape if he opened his mouth. He'd bite his tongue off before he let them out. And it wasn't the fierce pride of the Indian that had decided he would make no sound. The Indian respected the white man who could face death with courage. He didn't expect any such respect from these men for his courage. His silence was for his own sake, his own self-respect.
But the silence around him had been broken by Callan's question. There were exclamations of amazement that he was still on his feet, a debate on whether it was possible to faint without keeling over, a sug-gestion that a bucket of water be fetched to dump over him, just in case he really had fainted. At that point he opened his eyes, still cognizant enough to know that water touching any part of his mangled back would send him over the edge of control. It was harder to lift his head, but he managed that too.
"Wouldn't believe it if I wasn't seein' it with my own eyes," someone said next to him.
The whir and slap of the whip resumed, but no one was paying much attention to it now except the recip-ient and the wielder.
"I still don't believe it," a voice grumbled behind Colt. "It ain't possible he's still on his feet."
"What'd you expect? He's only half human, you know. It's the other half that's still standing."
Ramsay tuned out their voices, concentrating on lashmg only the raw wounds now. He was furious that he hadn't broken the Injun yet, and his anger was affecting his aim. The bastard couldn't do this to him.
He couldn't die without making a sound.
Ramsay was so angry he didn't hear the riders who came tearing around the side of the house, but the others did. They turned to see Chase and Jessica Summers and about twenty of their cowhands de-scending on them.
If Ramsay heard them, he must have assumed they were some of Callan's men coming in off the range, for he still didn't pause. He was in the process of drawing back his arm for another slash when Jessie Summers palmed her gun and fired.