But of course there was nothing he could do. The men were armed with
bows and arrows, rifles, even a few tomahawks.
They were going to kill her, she thought, and Jamie would never have
time to reach the surface. And it would be her fault, because if she had
talked to him this morning, he would never have brought her here, and he
would never have become so involved with her that he forgot danger.
'Jamie!' she screamed as one of the men lunged toward her. She fought.
She kicked, she scratched, she screamed and struggled, but a second man
came up, grasping her legs, and between them, she was tossed over a
shoulder. She still fought, clawing, screaming, pounding.
Bronze coloring came off in her hands. 'Tess!' Jamie was charging, naked
and unarmed, out of the water. She saw his eyes. They met across the
distance and locked with hers; the pain and the horror of the moment was
mirrored between them.
'Tess!' He screamed her name again in a loud, long cry and he was
speeding furiously toward the emthe man carrying Tess began to run with
her. She craned neck, straining to see Jamie. She saw him reaching the
shallows, and she saw him running, running to the shore. He rammed one
of the armed attackers with such violence and force that the man fell.
He spun and kicked his next opponent, then thrust his fists against him
in a fury.
But then Tess saw that another man was behind Jamie as he fought. She
saw the second man raise a battle club and bring it down upon Jamie's
head with all his strength. She heard the cracking sound. And she
screamed as she saw Jamie crumple to the ground, and then she saw no
more, for blackness descended over the sun.
Chapter Nine.
Tess didn't know how much time passed before she regained consciousness.
When she did, she was hanging facedown over the flanks of a sweating
horse in front of the pseudo-Indian who had grabbed her. She was acutely
uncomfortable.
Although the sun was setting, it was still ferociously hot. The sticky,
wet hair of the horse irritated her flesh, and the continual and
monotonous thump-thump- thump of its gait was bringing a ferocious pain
to her head.
Her arms hurt, her back hurt, and her neck burned like blue blazes.
She was a great mass of pain, and at first that was all 'she could think
of.
After a while she remembered. She'd been kidnapped. The bronze paint
worn by the 'warrior' behind her was coming off on her flesh and chemise
where the man's thighs and knees rubbed against her.
And Jamie Slater was by the river with his head bashed in. couldn't be
alive. He had fought for her, and he had b~n killed in the attempt.
Scalding tears stung her eyes. She fought back the urge to aloud.
Jamie could perhaps have survived. Maybe just been knocked unconscious.
They had left her for once, and she had survived. Jamie was tough. He
had the war, he had. She had seen the club come against his skull.
Still, she couldn't accept it. She had to believe that he was alive
because if she didn't she wouldn't care if she lived or died.
Maybe there wasn't much chance of her surviving, anyway. Von Heusen
