The Man From Forever. Dawn Flindt

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СКАЧАТЬ both sad and obscene, was glad this man had escaped the demeaning labels.

      “Loka.” His name crawled even farther inside her. “Did your father call you that after you had your vision quest? Is that how those things were done?”

      Although she’d asked as gently as she knew how, his body instantly became tense and hard and remote. “You know nothing of the Maklaks. How can you stand on our land as if you have a right?”

      “I’m—I’m trying to learn.”

      “You cannot! Go. Now!”

      But she couldn’t. Something as old and permanent as the rocks themselves held her here. “Why do you hate me?”

      “Why? You are part of the man who put an end to the Maklaks.”

      “No, he didn’t!” She felt on the edge of losing self-control and couldn’t think how to change that. “Your people killed him. Murdered a man of peace. That’s why he was here, don’t you understand that? He came to this awful place because his job was to try to put an end to the war. He didn’t want any more killing. Do you think he wanted to jeopardize the lives of the young men under him? To be responsible for sons and sweethearts and fathers—he was doing everything he possibly could to keep things from getting any worse. And what happened? Some hothead—”

      “Enough!”

      The single word stripped her of the anger she didn’t know she had until he’d unleashed it. Although she wanted to tell him that she hadn’t said enough yet and might never fully expel her anger at a good and dedicated man’s untimely death, Loka had leaned closer, and his eyes—his unbelievable eyes—were a tunnel to his soul.

      “Were you here?” she asked, her voice so calm that it had to belong to someone else. “Did you kill him?”

      Chapter 5

      Silence spread between them like a slow-moving river. Tory stared up at this man from the past, thinking not of his role in history, but of the way the sun caressed his ebony hair. His eyes were morning and darkness, danger and challenge, and yet she wanted to experience everything about him. Yesterday she’d wished she was behind the wheel of a speeding vehicle because, maybe, that would kill the energy eating away at her.

      Today he was what she needed.

      No! The denial reverberated throughout her, coating everything except the truth about her emotions.

      “Loka. Did you kill him?”

      He hadn’t taken his eyes off her, making her think there was no way he couldn’t know what was going on inside her. She felt surrounded by him, but although she should want to run from his impact, the thought barely flitted through her before fading into nothing. “No,” he said.

      “No?” she repeated dumbly.

      “My chief ended him.”

      My chief. “Were you there?”

      “Yes.”

      Yes. The word had a life and strength of its own. It bore its way into her, but she gave no thought to trying to fight it. “Where?” she asked as if that mattered. “Where were you?”

      Instead of pointing at the spot where she understood the peace tent had been, he indicated a rocky bluff maybe a quarter of a mile away. “The army said we were to stay in our camps, but we didn’t.”

      What did you see, Loka? On that spring morning in 1873, what did you hear? Instead of giving voice to the questions pounding at her, she waited him out. It seemed as if he were drawing into himself, looking for the memory so he could spread it out in front of them. Looking up at him with the vast sky behind him and the wind and birds the only sounds in this universe they shared, she felt herself losing whatever grip she still had on the world she’d always known.

      “The warmth felt good on my back. Cho-ocks and Keintepoos said that soon we would be able to move into the mountains because the snow was almost gone. I’d come with my brother and father and two cousins. We hid behind the rocks—the army men were too stupid to know where to look for us.”

      With every word, his voice sounded less raw and unused. There was music to it, a deep drumbeat that pulsed around and into her. She held on to the sound, the words, knew nothing except him and what he was telling her.

      “Keintepoos came armed to the peace talk. He and Ha-kar-Jim had already decided what they were to do.”

      “Keintepoos? Ha-kar-Jim?”

      “My chief and the brave your ancestor knew as Hooker Jim.”

      The Modoc chief. The man who’d killed her great-great-grandfather. She remembered a little about Hooker Jim, enough to know that the young Modoc had been almost single-handedly responsible for turning a tense situation into war. “Your chief listened to Hook—to Ha-kar-Jim? Loka, he was a killer. He murdered innocent settlers.”

      “Only after the army burned our winter village.”

      They weren’t going to get anywhere arguing over who carried the greatest blame. “I’m sorry that happened,” she whispered.

      “So am I.”

      His tone carried a deep regret, making her wonder if he understood that that single act had eventually brought about his people’s defeat. “The killing that took place here… Why didn’t you try to stop it?” she asked.

      “Stop? It was my chief’s decision. I would not argue with him.”

      “But you knew he was wrong, didn’t you? I mean, it’s insane to think that killing a general would make the army scatter.”

      “Insane?” He frowned, then looked away as if tired of this conversation. “I tell you this, Tory Kent. Our children’s bellies were empty. Our women cried themselves to sleep. A warrior does not close his ears to those cries. Cho-ocks said that an army without its leader will leave. We believed because we had nothing else to believe in.”

      Swayed by the force of his speech, she swore she could hear those despairing women, see the look of hunger in children’s eyes. “Cho-ocks? Who was he?” she asked when it didn’t really matter.”

      “Our shaman.”

      Curly Headed Doctor, at least that’s what the soldiers and settlers had called him. “I—I read that he tried to protect the stronghold with a red rope. Did you really think that would stop an army?”

      “You do not understand,” he said forcefully. “Cho-ocks was a powerful shaman.”

      Not powerful enough, she thought, but didn’t risk his anger by saying anything. How could she be arguing religious theory with a primitive? With someone who couldn’t possibly exist, or be who he said he was? She wanted to look over at her car and assure herself that she hadn’t fallen into some kind of a time warp, but would gazing at a hunk of metal make any difference?

      “You do not believe me. You think Cho-ocks was like your leaders—weak. But you are wrong.”

      “I didn’t say—what’s happening here? Damn it, what’s СКАЧАТЬ