Читать книгу Running Wolf - Jenna Kernan, Jenna Kernan - Страница 13

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