Running Wolf. Jenna Kernan

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      Ebbing Water turned back to the fire and Raven snatched up the bowl and left the tepee. Had Running Wolf left it intentionally for her?

      She sat behind the tepee to gobble down her prize. She knew Ebbing Water would miss her bowl eventually, and placed it just under the base of the tepee, hidden between the outer wall and the inner hanging lining that served to keep out the cold.

      In a short time, Ebbing Water left the lodge, closing the flap of hide that covered the circular entrance. Raven knew this was a sign that she didn’t welcome visitors or had gone away. Once she made sure she’d gone, Raven retrieved the bowl, wiped it clean and then placed it with Ebbing Water’s other cooking things.

      Raven was going to leave again, but she spotted the rawhide parfleche box covered with brightly colored geometric patterns. Her grandmother kept pemmican in just such a box. Pemmican was portable and could keep her alive. The mixture of fat and pounded dried meat might even contain some dried Saskatoon berries or wax currents.

      Such food was meant for traveling and for the long dark nights of the Deep Snow Moon when hunting was hard and game scarce. It might keep indefinitely, as long as it was kept dry and did not mold. But stealing would get her a beating or worse.

      She weighed her options.

      A weak, starving woman could not fight and she could not survive the winter. She crept forward, untied the soft leather bindings and then lifted the stiff rawhide lid.

      Inside sat the pemmican, but they were unlike the long rolls that her grandmother fashioned. Ebbing Water’s food stores looked like flat skipping stones, the size of her fist. They lay one upon the other in no order. Raven wondered if she would know if there was some missing.

      She quickly took five and rearranged the top layer to cover their absence. Then she continued out the opening only to find Running Wolf waiting for her. She was caught with the stolen food.

      He grasped her arm and several of the pemmican rounds fell at her bare feet.

      “So you ride and shoot and fight, and now I find you steal as smoothly as Weasel.”

      Would he kill her? He could. Captives had died for less. Raven found it difficult to stand—her legs began to shake and sweat popped out upon her forehead.

      She pressed her lips together to keep herself from begging for her life, although that was what she wanted to do.

      “Would you slit a man’s throat with the same ease?” he asked.

      When she did not answer he tugged her forward so that she fell against his broad chest and felt again the power of his body.

      “Why did I ever take you?”

      “I do not know.”

      He gave her wrist a little shake. “I wish I had killed him.”

      “Who?”

      “Your war chief.”

      Raven shuttered at the thought of her brother’s death earning this man one more eagle feather.

      “I would rather have you earn the feather of a gull.”

      His eyes widened at this and then went hard. He knew what she was saying. The killing of an enemy woman might earn a gull feather, dipped in red paint. She was saying she would rather die than have him kill her war chief. She met his glare, realizing she had never seen him look so angry.

      “Why didn’t you kill me?” she asked, wondering how she even found enough wind to speak. His proximity continued to make her body quake and her stomach quiver. It must be because he was an enemy and because he had the power of life or death over her. It must be that, for the alternative was too terrible to consider.

      “Why?” he asked. “I have been asking myself just that same question since I first saw you. The easy answer is because of the way you dressed. But now you have no clothes and still you intrigue me. It cannot be good for you or for me. Perhaps you are a witch, as Red Hawk says.”

      That charge was worse than being a common woman. Witches were dangerous. Witches were killed.

      “I am no witch,” she whispered.

      “I believe you. But my opinion does not matter. You must convince Turtle Rattler.”

      “How?”

      “I do not know. But you must or you will die.”

      He released her and gathered up the food she had stolen. Then he handed it to her. “Are you going to eat it?”

      “No. Hide it.”

      “Then, do it. And come with me.”

       Chapter Six

      The evening breeze brushed Running Wolf’s face. How much colder was it on her bare skin? he wondered as he watched her dress with the loincloth and draped buckskin he’d handed her across her shoulders.

      “Come,” he commanded, and turned and walked before her because it was unseemly for her to walk beside him as an equal. As he went, he listened for her tread and could hear only the whisper of her feet upon the grass. It was better to have her behind him, for then he did not have to look at her perfect form or the angry bruises that covered her skin like the spots on his horse.

      When he was away from her he knew what to do. Everything was clear. He would be generous and offer his captive to the one in the village who needed her help the most. Perhaps an old woman whose hands were knotted like the trunks of old cottonwood trees. Or to a young mother who had several children to look after. That would be charitable.

      What he would not do was make her a common woman.

      The thought of her lying beneath man after man made him sick. With Snow Raven, he felt possessive, and that was not the way of his people.

      But when he was with this enemy captive he began to notice the fine curve of her shoulder and how her breasts were high, firm and round. He noticed the way she walked and the subtle sway of her hips that was not meant to be seductive, but still was more enticing than any female he had ever seen.

      He led Raven to the tepee of Turtle Rattler and called a greeting. The shaman bid him enter and Running Wolf ducked inside, then motioned to Snow Raven to enter. As he took his place beside the shaman, he glanced at the small frail woman with hair streaked with gray. He had never noticed her before, though he knew she had been here on each of his visits. Now he watched her intently, a captive that he recalled Turtle Rattler had admitted to his lodge on her first winter.

      It occurred to Running Wolf that she and Snow Raven might know each other or even be from the same tribe. He had been there at the taking of this woman. There were two, but they had not been taken in a raid, so Running Wolf did not recall the tribe.

      After the formal greetings were exchanged, Running Wolf turned to the reason for his visit.

      “I have brought my captive,” said Running Wolf. My captive, he had said. Not the

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