She Nursed Injured Modoc Warrior Without Knowing His Rank — His Tribe Returns With Marriage Demands
Chapter 2
She chose Telma before the sun was up, and the choice felt less like falling than standing still.
Morning Sky bathed her in a pool fed by snowmelt, so cold it stole her breath, chanting while her hands moved over Rebecca’s skin. The women dressed her in a deerskin gown of beads and quills, braided her hair with feathers and bone, and taught her what the ceremony would demand. They called her brave — a woman who chose their hard path when she could have returned to white comforts. There’d be no comfort in going back, Rebecca told them. Her home was ashes, and her own kind would call her a traitor.
The ceremony took place on a flat shelf of black lava at sundown. The whole tribe gathered — drums, voices, firelight painting the ancient rock. The chief bound their hands with a cord of deer sinew, plant fiber, and rabbit fur. “As these strands are stronger together than apart, so are your lives joined,” he proclaimed. Then he drew a thin line across their palms and pressed their bleeding hands together. “Two bloods, now one. From this day, Rebecca is a Modok woman.” The tribe erupted, and the marriage songs rolled over the lava beds until the stars came out.
That night, alone in their cave with the fire low, Telma spoke first. Among his people, a marriage was sealed through the body — but he would not rush what should grow between them. In her world, Rebecca said, marriage meant the same, but perhaps they could begin by talking as husband and wife. He smiled — a real smile, one she rarely saw — and they talked until the embers sank, about the war everyone could feel coming and whether a love born across a divide could survive it.
For two weeks, they had something close to peace.
The scout came in hard, breath smoking in the cold. Fifteen cavalry soldiers and an Indian guide, picking their way along the outer edge of the lava beds. Not patrolling. Searching. The council gathered in the fire-lit cave; Black Fox’s scarred face was grim. “The commander speaks of a rescue mission,” he said. “He says a white woman named Rebecca Caldwell was taken by the Modok. She must be found and saved.”
The cold settled in Rebecca’s stomach like a stone. They thought she was a captive. They needed her to be one — a helpless white woman stolen by savages was the excuse that made a war righteous. “I’ll go to them,” she said. “I’ll explain I’m here by choice.”
“No,” the chief said, his voice iron. “They will say you speak under threat. They will use you for our defenses, and attack anyway.”
“Then what’s left?” she asked. Before anyone could answer, a second scout stumbled in. Three more patrols had been sighted within two days’ travel. They were tightening around the camp like a noose. And the noose was being tightened with her name.