Proud Wolf's Woman by Karen Kay Read Free Book Online Page A

images, as memory intruded upon his life.
    He knew her. He stood, there in the middle of camp, eight horses patiently waiting behind him, little able to comprehend it.
    Another man might have felt the warmth of remembrance. Another man might have, at least, felt inclined to smile.
    But this was Neeheeowee; not his brothers, not his kin, nor his enemy. Neeheeowee.
    He felt nothing.
    And when he turned away from the path he had been taking, to march toward the Kiowa lodge, he told himself over and over that he felt nothing. But he lied and he knew it.
    Neeheeowee had never been angrier.
     
    Julia didn’t see the man stalking toward her until he was almost upon her, and then she cringed.
    What did he want from her? Hadn’t fate already dealt her too cruel a hand? What must she endure now?
    Not even looking up, she sank to her knees on the ground, before the man, before anyone who would look, too distraught even to send a prayer to the God she felt certain had deserted her. She closed her eyes.
    Perhaps when she opened them, he would be gone—he alone, not her circumstances. She didn’t even dare to hope the latter: not anymore. She was beyond believing this all a nightmare, a mere dream to disappear upon awakening.
    Hadn’t she wished it so these past few weeks? Hadn’t she prayed? To no avail?
    She heard the muted sounds of the leather fringes of the man’s leggings smacking against the ground as the man stopped in front of her. She smelled the clean smell of buckskin, felt a finger under her chin, lifting her face upward, curiously sending a shiver over her skin. But she would not, herself, look up; she kept her eyes firmly closed.
    “Eaaa!”
    She heard the man’s voice.
    Something stirred within her, some emotion, some…
    “A-doguonko do-peya kuyo!”
    The harsh, feminine voice interrupted her thoughts. Opening her eyes, Julia tried to turn her head, but the finger beneath her chin held her fast. She groaned, she tried to stir, but the man’s grip tightened and after a few more struggles, she gave it up.
    “Nevaahe tse’tohe? Ne-toneseve-he?”
    Julia felt, more than observed, the man’s intense look at her. She didn’t know what he’d said, and for a moment she was glad, fearing whatever the words meant, fearing him.
    Suddenly he let her go and she sank to the ground, praying the man would leave.
    But he didn’t. Instead she saw in her peripheral vision that he moved his hands, heard the slap of his shirt fringe as he spoke to her Kiowa mistress in the language of sign. But Julia was beyond caring what occurred between the two Indians. All she knew was that she had escaped the punishment her mistress had intended, at least for the moment, and she inched gradually backward, as far as the rawhide around her neck would allow.
    The Kiowa woman responded to the man in rapid gestures and some moments went by where the two conversed in this way.
    “Saaaa!” Had the man been speaking English, he might have cursed, and Julia glanced up to see a flurry of hand motions, none of which she understood.
    Her Kiowa mistress spit on the ground, then into her palm, wiping the contents of it down the man’s shirt and Julia at last peered into the man’s face, if only to see his reaction.
    She gasped. But it wasn’t because of the Kiowa woman’s action, nor was it due to the man’s response, which was nothing save a stoic regard.
    As though struck, Julia, barely able to breathe, could do no more than stare. Could it be? Too many years had intervened since they had last seen one another, but…
    She recognized this man. Didn’t she? He was…
    “Neeheeowee,” she said his name. Neeheeowee, a man she had once known, a man she had once…
    For a moment, awe gave way to hope as it flared within her, and she almost reached out toward him. But at the last moment, she held back, returning her hand to her side.
    She looked down at herself; at the tattered rags she wore, at the dirt and grime on her clothes, the marks on her