CAPTIVES

Jimmy rode at the front of the pack, right beside Curly. He was accepted as one of them now, he knew.

"Where are the soldiers camped?" Jimmy wondered.

"It is not far now," Curly murmured tensely, "The white men call it Hawk's bluff."

Jimmy sighed with relief. His arm was aching and he felt very weak from the ride. They had been riding for a few hours. He couldn't help but wish he'd just stayed in the camp and let the wedding ceremony be finished.

"Relax, Curly, the soldiers will listen to me. They are probably looking for me!"

"The soldiers listen to no one when they see red men," Curly snapped back, "One of our fellow Sioux villages was attacked and many women and children murdered by the army!"

Jimmy nodded, remembering that had been the reason for the Sioux's acting up in the first place. Funny how that village had not been the one to catch them, but instead Running Horse's village, avenging the honor of one of their women had found him and Lou first, "It will be different this time."

Running Horse pulled up on a rise. Curly moved up to sit beside him. Jimmy could hear the confusion and surprise in their voices. Other braves expressed similar sentiments.

Jimmy nudged his horse up beside Curly and stared at the bluff. It was empty, and looked as if it had been for a long time.

"What's wrong?" He wondered.

"This is Hawk's Bluff, the place where the Pony Soldiers were camped."

"Are you sure?" Jimmy wondered.

"Yes, we are. That is where Laughing Fox said he spotted the soldiers."

There was silence for a moment.

Then Curly wondered, "Why would Laughing Fox tell us there were soldiers looking for us here? Why, when there has been no one here for months?"

Jimmy suddenly realized who Laughing Fox was…Dark Wolf's shadow.

"He did it to clear the village of all the warriors!" Jimmy said, feeling physically ill, "Dark Wolf is planning something while we are gone!"

Curly paled also, his light blue eyes became alive with fury. He turned to tell Running Horse.

Running Horse demanded that Laughing Fox be brought forward for an explanation. Laughing Fox had been with them when they started out from the village. However, he'd slipped away long before they realized what he'd done.

"The women and children," Curly suddenly groaned, "They are helpless!"

Wordlessly Curly turned and kicked his horse into a full gallop. Jimmy was only half a stride behind him. The rest of the tribe followed.

However both of them knew they were already far too late…

Lou crouched beside the stream, washing out Jimmy's torn and bloodied shirt. Raven Wing sat beside her, dangling her feet in the cool water. Despite her feeling of impending danger and her determination to be in a bad mood, the Sioux woman had cheered her considerably.

Lou glanced sideways at Raven Wing and smiled slyly as she saw her rounded belly. Even in the short time she'd been with the Sioux, Lou could see the change in Raven Wing's body.

Raven Wing caught her looking and laughed, "Before long I'll be as big as a horse!"

"You'll still be beautiful!" Lou insisted and reached over to hug her friend's shoulders. She'd never felt closer to another woman in her life, not even Rachel or Emma. She supposed it was because Raven Wing was more than a friend to her, she was also a teacher of survival, and a spiritual healer.

Raven Wing laughed and tossed her hair over her shoulders, cradling her abdomen as if it were much larger than it was.

"Curly is so happy! He thinks it is a girl!"

"I remember. Named Little Flower," Lou recalled from the night around the bonfire.

"It is a son," Raven Wing said, and wrinkled her nose and nodded her head, "I know." She turned to study Lou, "And you? Will you have many children?"

Lou laughed and blushed, "I can't even imagine! Some day…" Her eyes became dreamy and Raven Wing knew that she thought of not Jimmy, but the other man, the man she'd cried out for her in her dream.

"The wedding ceremony was never finished," Raven Wing pointed out, "But perhaps we will not have to tell anyone else that…especially Dark Wolf."

Lou looked at Raven Wing, "You are amazing, you know. Do you read my mind or do I just think out loud?"

Raven Wing laughed, "Ah, perhaps a bit a both!"

She turned her dark eyes back to the water and stared at her feet, grinning before sending a spray of water over both of them.

They both giggled like little girls.

Then Lou felt it, a very slight trembling in the ground. When she became tense, Raven Wing ceased to make a sound.

"What is it?"

"Do you feel that?" Lou wondered, daring to hope she was imagining things.

However, she didn't have to wait for an answer. The trembling grew stronger and soon they heard the sound that caused it, the hoof beats of many horses.

"It is too soon for them to be back, isn't it?" Lou wondered, trying to keep her voice calm.

"Yes. They couldn't have even reached Hawk's Bluff yet, much less have returned from it," Raven Wing said grimly.

"Are there any guns or weapons in the village?" Lou asked quickly, "We don't have much time."

"A few," Raven Wing said, determined to remain calm as long as Lou was able to.

"Alert everyone of possible danger. Give out the guns. Tell everyone to hide outside the village. We can't fight them, there are too many, I can tell that much by their horses. Just let them take what they will."

"The women don't even know how to use guns!" Raven Wing began, her voice beginning to climb in fear.

"I hope they don't have to! But, now is as good a time as any to learn!" Lou told her, "Go! I am going to get my gun! Then I will find you! There isn't a second to be lost!"

Raven Wing nodded and tilted her head to give the cry of warning as she ran into the village.

Lou's hands trembled as she retrieved one of Jimmy's guns, thankful he'd left her with it. She then burst out of the tee pee and went to supervise the women, children, and old men fleeing the village. They took cover in the woods surrounding the village, and Lou was amazed at their ability to disappear.

Raven Wing looked at her, rifle in hand, "Let's hide," She suggested.

Lou nodded and they ran together to find an overturned tree to crouch behind.

"They'll be here soon," Lou murmured, her heart beating in her throat. The terror she felt when Jimmy left seemed to be a thousand times that magnitude now.

Suddenly about twenty horses charged into the village. Lou's eyes narrowed as she looked them over. They were a rough looking band of misfits. The one at the lead seemed to be a fur trapper, a bear of a man with a patch over one eye. He was the oldest of the group by far. Most of the others looked to be young half-breeds or white men.

"The bastard!" Lou suddenly spat out as her eyes fell on a figure at the back of the pack. It was Dark Wolf. Close by his side was Laughing Fox.

"That's what he meant," Lou mumbled to herself. Raven Wing didn't ask her to explain. She was too shocked to see the man she at one time was promised to riding against his people.

The raiders were clearly surprised to find the village deserted, having expected to find them unsuspecting. However, it didn't deter them for long, and with a cry from the leader, they charged through the village.

Tears filled both Raven Wing and Lou's eyes at the destruction they wrought. They tore down everything in their path, teepees, huts that stored food, monuments, even the platform a brave who had died yesterday lay upon. Lou shuddered as the body crashed to the ground. These men were some of the most vicious she'd ever seen.

On their second pass through the village the raiders threw torches on everything they'd wrecked on the first pass. Lou's eyes narrowed as she studied Dark Wolf, burning and destroying with the best of them. She watched as he destroyed her and Jimmy's tee pee with special vigor. Her finger caressed the trigger of Jimmy's fine gun.

Raven Wing buried her face in her hands and sobbed as the men reached her tee pee. Dark Wolf again seemed to enjoy himself immensely.

Once almost every structure in the village was destroyed, the band of riders stopped.

Dark Wolf threw back his head and yelled in Lakota. Raven Wing whispered the translation, "He tells us to come out, that he will find us all and kill us anyway!" She needn't have bothered with the translation though, because next Dark Wolf called out in English, "And you, Fire Dancer, you will never escape this day alive!"

There was silence. Not one of the Sioux people breathed. They were well scattered, Lou realized hopefully, and she prayed that the men would not be able to find any of them.

"Maybe I should go out there. Perhaps Dark Wolf will leave all of you alone if I let him take me," Lou began.

"No! You will not!"

"This is my fault, Raven Wing," Lou said, the first tears of guilt coming to her eyes, "He told me if I married Jimmy no one would survive! I didn't think he meant it!"

"Shhh," Raven Wing comforted her, loving even in her terror, "Dark Wolf isn't right. It isn't your fault. He would have done this to us anyway. You see, he is not really Sioux. He is the son of an Apache woman captive who died when he was very young. He grew up serving the tribe, until he proved himself a valuable warrior. He asked my father for me, and my father thought he could show him his acceptance by granting his request. About that time Curly came along and we fell in love. My father explained this to him, but Dark Wolf would not believe that it was because of my happiness. He believed he was still looked upon as a captive. This is why he hates captives so much, especially you and Jimmy, who in many ways have been treated much better than he ever has. He hates the Sioux, but knows no other tribe."

Lou took a deep breath and nodded. It was, at least, some sort of an explanation for the hate Dark Wolf had showered upon her from the minute he laid eyes on her. It did nothing for their situation now though.

"Show yourselves!" The big man with an eye patch roared as he fired his gun into the air.

Still, no one moved.

And then it happened, and Lou was never sure exactly at what point she knew that indeed, everyone she cared about in the village would die. All she knew was that it was soon after a tiny child burst out of his hiding place, holding a bow that was much too big for him. He didn't even have an arrow, Lou realized.

"NO!" Raven Wing and Lou screamed simultaneously as a gun shot roared, breaking the eerie silence. Tears rolled down the two young women's faces as the child fell to the ground, dead.

His mother darted out after him, and fell soon after, her hands reaching out for her dead child as she breathed her last.

A sound unlike any other Lou had ever heard or ever would hear again seemed to erupt from the depths of Raven Wing's soul. Before Lou could think or act, Raven Wing was leaping from her cover and aiming her rifle.

Lou screamed and reached out, but couldn't grab her friend in time.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the events played out before Lou's eyes, and she was stuck watching, powerless to stop them.

Many other Sioux women and old men charged at the same time as Raven Wing, but Lou found she couldn't take her eyes off the beautiful woman.

Dark Wolf turned and saw Raven Wing, and there was a mad blood-thirst in his eyes as he leveled the rifle at her.

Lou screamed and realized too late what was happening, and in a desperate attempt fired at Dark Wolf. Her shot had been too hurried though, and she missed him.

The sound from his gun seemed to roar above those of the other raiders, and Lou screamed in fury and grief as Raven Wing buckled in mid-stride. She spun around before she fell, and Lou saw that she'd been hit in the stomach. Lou screamed again as another bullet ripped through the woman, this time from her back through her chest. Raven Wing fell to the ground.

Everything else in the world seemed to disappear as Lou emerged from her cover and ran to Raven Wing. Bullets flew all around her, but she didn't notice. She grabbed Raven Wing under her arms and drug her back to the relative safety of the log.

"Oh dear God!" She sobbed as she watched the blood covering Raven Wing's chest and middle, "Oh God! How could you let this happen?"

The blood pooled in the deerskin she was wearing and ran onto Lou's dress…the white dress that Raven Wing had said she'd never wear again.

Raven Wing was choking, blood running from the corner of her mouth.

"You just hang on, Raven Wing, I'm going to help you! You're gonna be fine!"

"Never stop…fire dancing," Raven Wing whispered and her great, wise eyes fluttered closed.

"No!" Lou screamed, sobbing in great heaving breaths as she cradled her friend's head in her lap, "No! Raven Wing!" She leaned her head down on the slightly older woman's and screamed, trying to find someway to release her grief. Her fingers wound in the Indian woman's silky black hair.

Then a trembling began deep in her, a trembling that worked its way to the surface. Lou's head snapped back, and her blood covered hands slipped on Jimmy's silver gun as she pushed herself up on knees that had never been so unsteady.

She didn't falter, however, as she raised the gun and took aim. A scream tore from her lips, much like the one that Raven Wing had sounded before she died. It seemed to come from the pits of hell. Lou fired the gun again and again, taking careful aim each time.

"Murderers!" She accosted them in a shrill voice, "Savages!"

Five men fell before anyone did anything about her.

The man with the patch raised his gun at her, but Dark Wolf pushed the barrel to the ground.

"She is mine," He told him, and started towards her.

Lou screamed again fiercely and raised her gun at him, but Dark Wolf kept coming straight at her. The look in his eyes was almost hypnotizing, as if he were a snake willing a rat to be still so that he might devour it. Lou snapped out of her daze and pulled the trigger.

Dark Wolf laughed. He'd kept tabs on her, she realized, though she hadn't even known it, she was out of bullets. And out of luck.

Lou stood, the body of Raven Wing crumpled at her feet, and met the eyes of the man that had killed her. There was no where for her to go, she realized, and so she looked at him defiantly.

She didn't really think she cared if she lived or not…

"I warned you, captive…" He said softly before raising the gun.

Lou braced herself. She would not beg him for mercy. He was incapable of mercy anyway.

Everything happened fast. An old brave hiding near by fired at Dark Wolf a split second before he fired at Lou. Lou saw Dark Wolf shudder with the blow then felt a searing pain rip through her middle, and she fell to the ground.

Her last conscious thought was that she was lying on Raven Wing, and should move lest she hurt her or the baby…

"Damn!" Jimmy breathed as he and Curly broke through the opening where the village had stood a few hours ago.

It might have been a different world now. The whole village was leveled. The once beautiful, thick green grass had been turned to dust by the raiders, and every structure that had once stood proudly was collapsed and burning. The air was filled with smoke, and there were bodies every where. It was deathly quiet.

And no sign of the invaders, Jimmy thought with fury, they were too late.

A terror unlike any he had ever known worked its way into his gut. Lou, brave girl that she was would have been right in the middle of the fighting. And it didn't seem like many of the fighters were left alive.

"We've got to find them," Jimmy told Curly, who nodded absentmindedly.

"I should have listened to her," Jimmy began brokenly.

Curly turned cold, glittering eyes on him, "And then they would have killed you too."

Jimmy closed his mouth. Curly had enough to worry about without Jimmy pushing his guilt at him. They separated and began searching.

Tears filled Jimmy's eyes as he saw so many small children and women slaughtered. The ones that weren't dead were injured, crawling along the ground and begging the help of every brave that passed by preoccupied with looking for his own family.

It was as if he'd arrived in Hell. Jimmy's heart skipped at every woman's body he spotted, but still, he could not find Lou.

Then he heard a cry from the outskirts of the village that made his hair stand on end. He spotted Curly staring at an overturned tree. Curly raised his arms to the heavens and screamed again, his voice rising over the chaos in the village

Already knowing what he would find, Jimmy ran to him.

There lying behind the overturned tree, tangled together in what seemed to be a last embrace, were both Raven Wing and Lou, covered in each other's blood.

To Be Continued…On To CHAPTER XII

Copyright 1998-This work is not to be reproduced without the permission of the author

Way Station
Fan Fiction

Email: gliterin@bellsouth.net