legs.
The Indian's war hoop shattered as iron-shod hooves crushed flesh and bone. For the space of a dozen heartbeats the only sound Tamsin heard was Dancer's enraged snorting.
Shaking, still clutching her pistol, she tried to rise. But before she could disentangle herself from the clinging vines, a sinewy arm clamped around her throat and an overpowering stench of bear grease filled her head.
Choking, half-mad with fear, Tamsin swung the Colt, striking her assailant. She heard him grunt with pain and felt the pressure on her throat ease. Gasping for air, she twisted away. A heavy blow knocked her to her knees, and she twisted onto her back.
The Indian flung himself on top of her, and she dragged the gun up and pulled the trigger. Pushing free of his thrashing body, Tamsin crawled away.
Without warning, another warrior seized her by the hair and yanked her head back. He spat a jumble of angry words that she couldn't understand, but she needed no translation. The cold steel of a knife blade pressing against her throat spoke volumes.
She tried to raise her pistol to shoot him, but powerful fingers clamped around her wrists, twisting until the weapon dropped from her hand. In shock, she closed her eyes and tried to pray as she prepared herself for the death thrust.
Seconds passed like hours. She could feel wet, sticky drops oozing down her neck and his hot breath on her face. The sound of the brave's harsh breathing rasped in her ears.
Inhaling deeply, she looked into the ocher-streaked face above hers. Fierce eyes, ringed with circles of paint, stared back at her. She caught a glimpse of a naked chest and bands of copper around the arm that held the knife to her throat.
'You die!' Venom radiated in the soft, almost lyrical English.
Shards of terror pierced Tamsin's breast. 'White. You're white,' she whispered hoarsely.
'No speak!' The blade wavered. She felt a sharp sting but not the piercing agony that she expected.
Another man shouted to her captor. He answered, then slowly released his grip on her hair and removed the knife.
Teeth chattering, Tamsin rolled to a sitting position and drew searching fingers over her lacerated throat. When she glanced down at her hand, it was smeared with blood. Her breath came in strangled gasps, and she trembled as intense cold seeped through her bones.
The white Indian with the ringed eyes kicked her. 'Get up!'
She staggered to her feet.
Four braves, one with torch in hand, moved from the shadows. Two carried a broken body and laid it beside the dead man at the campfire. A huge warrior with a shaved head and human finger bones thrust through his earlobes crouched over a third fallen figure. The injured man, obviously badly hurt, moaned softly.
Tamsin drew a ragged breath and looked back at the white savage who'd threatened her with the knife. His grotesquely painted face twisted with hate as he laughed and raised the knife again.
'No.' Tears sprang to her eyes, and she threw up an arm to protect her face. 'Please! Don't kill me!'
The giant with the bones through his ears shouted something to Ringed Eyes. Then he pointed to the injured warrior, raised the butt of his musket, and made a smashing gesture.
Tamsin didn't need words to understand the warrior's meaning. He was urging the white Indian to kill her.
'You attacked me,' she said hoarsely. 'I was only defending myself.'
'Prisoner no talk!' her captor ordered as he slid his knife back into his belt sheath. 'You talk, you die.'
Her stomach lurched as she smelled the mingled stench of blood, rancid fat, and sweat on his near-naked body. He wore nothing but a strip of beaded leather around his loins and moccasins on his feet. Every inch of his pale skin was smeared with red and yellow dots of paint.
'You can't blame me for what happened,' she argued.
He grasped her throat and forced her head back, then brought his face so close to hers that she could feel the heat of his flesh. 'No talk!' he repeated.
Tamsin swallowed her protests and stared him full in the eyes.
He released her and laughed. 'White-skin woman brave.' His sweating face shone in the flickering firelight. 'Die good.' He seized her wrists and bound them tightly with a leather cord.
Another man led Shiloh forward, and her assailant grabbed her by the waist and heaved her up into the saddle. The brave who held the horse's reins, a short, stocky man with bowed legs, tied her ankles beneath Shiloh's belly.
'Where are you taking me?' Tamsin dared. Hope was beginning to blossom within her. If they hadn't killed her yet, maybe they didn't intend to.
Ringed Eyes glared at her. 'You know place white men call Sand Creek?' Tamsin nodded.
'Many Cheyenne die there. Children, old woman, old man. Many die.'
'I know,' she said. 'That was wrong. Evil. But I didn't-'
'You white!' he accused. 'You're white yourself!'
His face flushed purple beneath the paint. 'Not white! Father white. Buffalo Horn great dog soldier!'
'Dog soldier? I don't understand,' she said. 'Are you Cheyenne? Are these men Cheyenne?'
'Cheyenne?' He struck his chest with his fist as he had done before. 'White man call us that name. We are the People.'
'Please. What is your name?' Tamsin moistened her dry lips. 'I am Tamsin MacGreggor. I've never done anything to hurt you.'
'You are the enemy.' He hawked up a gob of phlegm and spat on the ground. 'You think Buffalo Horn let you live when his mother die in Black Kettle's camp? When his sister, big with child, used like whore and butchered by white soldiers? You not live, white woman. You die slow. Die as Buffalo Horn's sister die. But you with hair like fire-you die in fire.'
A mile to the east, Ash lay on his back and watched the stars reel across the sky. He'd chosen not to build a fire, despite the faint roars of the cougar he'd heard since dusk. At noon, he'd traded his worn-out boots for the Arapaho moccasins of a scalped miner he'd discovered in a gully.
There'd been nothing he could do for the man or his two companions. All lay dead, two slain with bullets, one clubbed with a heavy object. As far as he could tell, Tamsin had ridden within two hundred yards of the massacre and never seen the bodies.
The war party was Cheyenne. They were mounted and moving fast. Smoke from a trapper's cabin had drawn them off to the south. Otherwise, Tamsin would have ridden right into the hostiles.
He'd noticed the smoke at once, more than a chimney would release and less than a forest fire. Ash didn't need to cover the four miles through rough country to know that the cabin had been burned. There was no way of telling whether or not the owner had escaped alive. Hell, he couldn't even spare the time to bury the three miners. If he was going to find Tamsin, he had to get to her soon.
The dead men had owned several mules and at least one shod horse. One mule had been shot and butchered by the war party, one led off with the horse. It had been a stroke of luck to find the remaining animal wandering in a draw. Ash had ridden that animal hard until it was too dark to see.
Chasing Tamsin MacGreggor down in the teeth of a Cheyenne raiding party wasn't in his job specifications. The reward he'd get for bringing her in wasn't worth get-ting staked out on an anthill or being skinned alive. But Tamsin's second escape had changed everything between them. Catching her was no longer simply his duty. Bringing her back to trial in Sweetwater had become personal.
'You've not seen the last of me,' he swore as he wiggled farther back into the dirt hollow he'd dug for himself in the ridge. He hadn't had a decent night's sleep since he'd first laid eyes on her.
And now he was about to risk everything to save her from a worse end than hanging. That is, he'd try to save her… if she wasn't already dead.
If there was one thing that attracted Cheyenne warriors more than whites trespassing on their lands, it was fine horseflesh. Ash figured most dog soldiers would give fingers off their right hand to own animals like Tamsin was riding.
'A man with the least bit of common sense would turn back, tell the sheriff and the judge the MacGreggor woman was dead, and collect his pay,' he muttered.
