Brave Heart. Lindsay McKenna

were well, Wolf walked back to the white woman.

      As he placed her on her back, he admitted in some small part of himself that she had been braver than any five warriors he’d ever known. Attacking six armed miners with nothing more than a tree limb was a great coup. For that, he would name her Cante Tinza, Brave Heart, even if it went against his beliefs.

      Hesitating in his examination of her, Wolf had never seen red hair before. It was thick like a horse’s mane and heavily matted with mud. His thoughts shifted to the women who sat wearily nearby. If they saw him vacillate in attending to her injuries, they would surely laugh at his unexplained cowardice. Picking up a thick strand of red hair, Wolf removed it from the region of her breasts. Blood had congealed across her bosom as well as on her right temple. Where to begin? The scowl on his broad brow deepened as he unbuttoned the front of her dress. His fingers trembled as he lifted away the thin material. An ivory chemise crossed her breasts, and that too was soaked with fluids from the injury. With an oath under his breath, Wolf pulled the knife from the scabbard at his side. Placing the point in the material, he slit it upward.

      A grunt of surprise escaped him as he pulled the chemise aside. The woman’s breasts bore deep, fresh burns. He hunched over, perplexed by the unusual wounds. She had small, firm breasts, their ivory roundness crowned with pink-tipped nipples. The urge to touch them, to see if they were as velvety soft as they appeared, moved through Wolf. Disgusted with his physical reaction to Cante Tinza, he turned his thoughts back to healing. He took a special powder ground from comfrey root and sprinkled it across the terrible scars on her breasts.

      “Who has done this to her?“ Little Swallow demanded, leaning over his shoulder. She jabbed her finger downward. “This woman has been hurt by wasicuns.”

      Wolf gave her a bare glance. “It could be the Crow who did this, too. They are known to burn great scars on the bodies of their enemies.”

      “Perhaps,” Little Swallow muttered, coming around to kneel at the woman’s head. Taking a cloth wet from the river, she pressed it against the head wound. “Has someone whipped her, also?”

      Glancing up from his work, he saw that Little Swallow was pointing to some fresh, pink scars that lay like ribbons across the white woman’s small, proud shoulders. “Let me dress these wounds first, and then we will find out,” he muttered.

      “She saved us, Wolf. Do not be bitter about trying to save her.”

      Compressing his lips, he held on to his anger. Little Swallow had been raped, and she was unraveling emotionally before him, her hands shaking as she daubed the blood away from Cante Tinza’s head wound. “I will do what I can,” he promised quietly.

      “I saw the hatred in her eyes,” Little Swallow whispered, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks. “She hated these miners. Perhaps they tortured or abused her—like they abused us….”

      “If that is so, then she has an even braver heart than I first thought,” he admitted as he carefully closed her chemise and rebuttoned her dress.

      “I have never seen someone fight with such fury, such anger,” Little Swallow continued.

      Wolf reached over, placing his hand on Little Swallow’s slumped shoulder. “Tanksi, sister, go and sit down. You are shaking like a young leaf in a storm.”

      Managing a wobbly smile, Little Swallow nodded. “You are right, tiblo, brother.“ Patting the woman’s shoulder, she whispered, “This one is special. I do not care if she has white skin—her heart is Lakota.”

      “You have always had an eye on those who are good and kind,” Wolf agreed. “Now, go. Sit and rest. The warriors will be here shortly to take everyone back to the village.“ It felt as if a hand were squeezing his heart. Wolf acknowledged his younger sister’s words of wisdom. No longer did he try to hold his hatred as a barrier toward Cante Tinza as he moved to dress her head wound. If not for her courage, he could have lost the last of his once large family. He owed her much.

      His mind moved forward. Many things would have to be done. Once the bodies of the miners were found, the Lakota would be held responsible for their deaths by the wasicun whether they deserved it or not. Chief Badger Mouth would have to move the village; otherwise fort soldiers would kill all of them, swooping down upon them like hawks from the sky. Right now, there was an unstable peace between all Lakota and the wasicun.

      There were Lakotas who wouldn’t like the fact that he was going to take the red-haired woman into his tepee, Black Wolf thought. Badger Mouth would oppose it. Every family in the village of one hundred people had lost someone to the guns of the wasicun. They bore hatred toward the miners, who continued to steal their ancestral lands. With a sigh, Wolf gently ran his hand across her dirty forehead. She needed to be bathed, and her hair needed to be unknotted, washed and combed. Despite the torture Cante Tinza had undergone, there was still beauty in her face. As Wolf heard the sound of hoofbeats reverberating through the foggy dawn air that told the warriors were approaching, he wondered what color Cante Tinza’s eyes were.

      Chapter Two

      “You are not going to take her with you.”

      Wolf looked up from where he knelt at Cante Tinza’s side, now acutely aware of his hand on her shoulder. He held it there in a protective gesture when he saw the chief, Badger Mouth, approach him with a disapproving look on his face. The chief, more than sixty seasons in age, halted and glowered at him, hardening his weathered face. His words were an order, not a question. Around them, the warriors were helping the injured women and children to mount the extra horses, and none seemed interested in coming to Black Wolf’s aid.

      “She saved the lives of our women,” Wolf countered in an equally authoritative tone.

      “So Evening Star says,” the chief groused. He stood with the lance in his left hand, staring toward the south. “That sister of yours is like a blue jay, constantly chattering. All I heard riding here is that the red-haired wasicun saved our women and children from sure death.”

      “She is a warrioress.“ Wolf grew sure of that as he had time to study her thin, bony features. Her forehead was broad and unmarred, her eyebrows arched like the curve of a hawk’s wing, and she had a small, dainty nose with flaring nostrils. Although she was unconscious, her lovely mouth was pulled in at the corners, indicating the level of pain she suffered even now. There was a vulnerability to Cante Tinza, and Wolf found himself wanting to draw her from the darkness she resided within and bring her into light. Each moment he spent with her increased his questions as to who she was and what she was doing with the miners. She couldn’t have been friends with the miners if she defended the Lakota women against them, he guessed. In his heart, he sensed that she’d been injured by them. Why? He had to have time to find out after she regained consciousness.

      Badger Mouth snorted, watching through squinted eyes as the last of his warriors mounted. “You ought to leave her for buzzard bait just as we leave the other wasicun to them.”

      “Even our enemy, the Crow, would not leave a woman to die in this manner.“ Women were held sacred in the eyes of the Indians, no matter what their tribe.

      The chief glared at Wolf, his hand tightening on the staff topped with the skin of a badger. “It would go better in the village if she was Crow.”

      That was true, Wolf acknowledged. They had captured Crow women who, over the years, had decided to stay in their village and not return to their home. The Lakota women had come to accept them as their own, with time. “Little Swallow feels she has been tortured at the hands of these miners.”

      “She is wasicun, Black Wolf.”

      Slowly lifting his hooded eyes, Wolf held the chief’s challenging stare. “No,” he whispered, “first, she is woman. We Lakota recognize the strength and courage of our women. She is one who gives us birth, who gives us life through the milk that flows from her breast, and who is able to give her blood back to Mother Earth every moon. As men, we can do none of these things, making us less important. We have nothing to compare to a woman’s