For the Love of Suzanne Read online

  Major Richards looked up at her with cold, dark eyes and a sneer under his heavy mustache. “Ah, there you are,” he said with mock pleasantness.

  The two guards slammed her into a hard wooden chair. Then each shackled her ankles to the legs and her wrists to the arms. Neither said a word as they went about their work nor as they left, pulling the door closed quietly.

  Suzanne was close to panicking, but knew she couldn’t show it. She had to be brave and strong so she could get back home. She wondered if Richards had found out that Cody had been to visit her last night and what the major was going to do to her. Why had they put the heavy chains on her? This was getting more frightening with each passing moment.

  Major Richards leaned over the table and glared at her. “I’ll bet you will cooperate now,” he said with a twinge of victory in his voice.

  She looked away, unable to meet the soulless eyes of the man. “I don’t know anything,” she said shakily for the hundredth time since she’d first been interrogated.

  “I don’t believe you, Miss Dillon, and that is unfortunate,” he said with quiet calmness which frightened her even more. She knew a quiet man like this could be very dangerous.

  She still avoided his eyes. “I don’t know anything, Major Richards,” she insisted in a trembling voice.

  “Lieutenant Taylor has told me that Cody Black Fox came to see you last night,” he said casually and leaned back in his chair. “You aren’t entitled to visitors, Miss Dillon. You broke the rules.”

  “I am a civilian,” she said coldly, finally looking at him.

  “You are on a military post and that makes you my responsibility,” he shot back.

  “I am no one’s responsibility, Major,” she said defiantly, trying to move her hands, succeeding only in chafing her wrists. “I can assure you that I can take care of myself.”

  “Ohh,” he drawled slowly and struck a match on the table top and lit a cheroot. “You can think that all you want. We’re going to be here until you tell me what I want to know. This doesn’t have to be an unpleasant experience, Miss Dillon. But it will be unless you tell me what I want to know.”

  She was appalled that Addison Taylor had told Major Richards that Cody had been there.

  “Where is Lieutenant Taylor?” she asked bravely.

  “Oh, he’s been taken care of,” he assured her. “Treason is no light charge, you understand.”

  She gaped at him. “Treason? Lieutenant Taylor?”

  “Traitors are executed, Miss Dillon, er-shall I say, Suzanne?” he said smugly and tapped the ash on the dirty floor.

  “Call me what you like,” she snapped. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Fine,” he said smoothly. “Lieutenant Taylor was hanged at dawn. Fraternizing with the enemy is never taken lightly, Miss Dillon. It’s considered treason and that, my dear, is punishable by death.”

  She sat back with shock and some guilt. She never wanted anybody to lose their life, especially over her. She wanted to go home worse than ever. This was a huge nightmare and it seemed as if she would never wake up, and now Addison Taylor was dead. It was her fault and she choked back tears of sorrow. Addison had turned her over to Major Richards, but he’d also been instrumental in getting Cody into the fort last night and with Cody came hope. The man had paid the ultimate price which she thought was totally unfair.

  “So you see,” Richards continued casually, looking at the hot tip of his cheroot. “It doesn’t pay to keep secrets. I can have you hanged just as easily as I had him hanged. Then I can round up that half-breed buck lover of yours and he can swing in the wind with rest of the likes of your kind.”

  She knew she was in more trouble now than she’d ever been in her life. If this man would kill one of his own men, then he wouldn’t hesitate to kill a woman who meant nothing to him.

  She cleared her throat uneasily. “I don’t know anything, Major. Cody came just to check on me. That’s all.”

  “Just to check on you, huh?” he said with disbelief, still staring at the red tip of the cheroot, then took a drag from it and held it for a moment before exhaling. “I think he came to pass out more secrets. Is he going to try to break you out of here?” he asked her suspiciously.

  She shook her head somberly, knowing it was a lie of sorts. He’d given her two days and if she wasn’t at the gate at the end of those two days, he was coming to get her. That thought terrified her. He was her ticket home and if anything happened to him, she’d be stuck here forever.

  It wasn’t just about that. In the short time that she’d known him, she’d become very fond of him and cared about him as a person. She didn’t see him as a half-breed but as a man. She didn’t care what he was. She saw that he was kind, compassionate, and very intelligent.

  “The man is a savage, Miss Dillon,” he said with wonder and leaned in toward her. “Why would you give yourself to a man of his persuasion?”

  “I haven’t given myself to him, Major,” she said coldly. “He just helped me out when I was lost in the desert. He found me and brought me here.”

  “Was that before or after he had his way with you?” he asked with distaste.

  “I can assure you that he has never done anything even remotely out of line,” she said with anger in her voice and rattled the chains on her wrists again, holding back a wince as the manacle chafed painfully. “Why do you have me chained up like this?”

  “You aren’t leaving until I get my answers,” he said venomously. “I will get them from you one way or the other, and they will be to my satisfaction. So, you just as well start talking. When is the uprising going to happen?”

  ~~~

  Cody was pacing restlessly at the back of the fort, knowing he had to get Suzanne out of there as soon as he could. He’d seen Addison Taylor swinging by his neck from a tree near the fort and knew that she was in a lot of trouble. He’d offered a prayer to the Creator for his friend to have a safe journey to the spirit world as his heart broke. He knew Addison had been hanged because of him and that really bothered him.

  Major Richards had a record of brutality that rivaled Chief Tall Deer’s. He was known for being exceedingly hard on his men when he found fault with them. He demanded their loyalty at all costs and incarcerated them when they disobeyed his orders or were found to be derelict in their duties. He’d often disciplined them with whips, hard labor or, in the case of Addison Taylor, by execution. He knew that Suzanne would not be exempt from such cruelties, woman or not. She was being held prisoner and treated as such. He’d seen how men had come out of the stockade, if they were lucky enough to come out alive. They were underfed, deprived of water, beaten, and sometimes mentally broken. He expected Suzanne to get better treatment because she was a woman, but with the apparent mindset of Richards, he was fairly certain that the opposite had happened.

  The worst of it was she knew nothing. He had made sure not to tell her anything because it didn’t concern her. The threat of attack by the Chiricahua was decreasing with each passing day, but he knew he could get a war party together with just a few words. The threat would always be there as long as the white man wanted to shove the Indians onto reservations and Chief Tall Deer would believe whatever he told him.

  He looked back at his friend who was swinging in the wind with his hands tied behind his back and his feet dangling. He was dismayed to see that someone had stolen his boots and all the buttons off his pants. He felt bad that Addison was dead. He knew that his friend had told Richards that Cody had been at the fort last night and hadn’t arrested him, which was probably the reason the man had been hanged.

  Chapter 14

  By mid-afternoon, Suzanne was delirious from the oppressive heat in the closed-up room and in desperate need for water. Her head was spinning and she felt sick to her stomach. Sweat poured off her body, saturating the already filthy dress, and her lack of movement was making her arms and legs tingle as the shackles scraped her bare skin raw.

  Richards drank water in front of her, tor
menting her with obnoxious slurping sounds and even poured it onto the table as he demanded answers from her that she didn’t have. “Where is Cody Black Fox?”

  Her head lolled to her shoulder. “I-I don’t know,” she said hoarsely.

  “Don’t you dare go to sleep on me!” he raged and hit her across the face hard enough to send the heavy chair toppling backward.

  She groaned in pain as the fall jarred her back and she hit her head on the hard dirt. She felt blood running down the side of her face and tasted blood in her mouth, but she still had no answer.

  He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her and the chair back into an upright position again, getting a cry of pain from her. He put his nose to hers. “You will talk,” he growled, his big face red with anger and heat. “Now.”

  “I don’t know anything,” she sobbed. “I’ve told you that a hundred times so please let me go,” she begged weakly.

  “Never,” he hissed and stomped around to the other side of the table again and sat down. He watched her cry for a moment, breathing heavily. With another burst of anger, he flung the heavy table onto her lap. He picked it up by the legs and rammed it into her face, sending her to the floor again, not at all bothered by the fact that she didn’t cry out this time or that she was very still.

  Without remorse, he pulled the door open and grabbed the two sentries who were standing outside. “Get this whore out of my sight,” he shouted and walked outside, slamming the door.

  The two men were shocked to find her beaten and bloody and stood looking at her for a moment before releasing her from the shackles.

  “My God, he beat a woman,” one said with wonder.

  “Forget you ever saw this or you’ll end up like Taylor,” the other warned gravely. “Let’s get her back to the stockade.”

  ~~~

  Suzanne was awakened when she felt cool water hit her mouth and face. She opened her swollen black eyes as much as she could and saw her two male cellmates at her side with wet rags trying to clean her up and feed her water out of a cup.

  She tried to sit up, but the pain in her face and head sent her back down.

  One held her head up with his hand and slowly fed her water. “Easy there,” he said softly.

  “Thank you,” she said barely above a whisper.

  “He had no right,” the other man said with a twinge of anger in his voice. “She’s a woman.”

  “He’s a sick son of a bitch,” the man agreed. “If I ever get out of here, I’m going to report him.”

  “I’m not,” he said coldly. “I’m going to kill him. It’s one thing to do this to a man. It’s another thing to do it to a woman. I heard him yellin’ at her and hittin’ her. He had no right. None at all.”

  He nodded slowly as he looked down at the beaten woman who was barely recognizable.

  “And I hear she’s in a fragile state,” he continued.

  “I heard that, too.”

  “She needs to see a doctor.”

  “We’re the only doctors she’s gonna see, Caleb,” he said sadly. “Nobody can help her ‘cept us so we’d better get to doctorin’ with what we got.”

  Suzanne grasped the man’s hand who was giving her water. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Oh, you hush, ma’am,” he said politely. “You need to rest.”

  “I don’t know anything,” she squeaked as tears fell. “Honest, I don’t.”

  “I know,” he said compassionately. “We heard Cody at the window last night and he didn’t tell you nothin’.”

  “He’s just helping me,” she wept. “That’s all.”

  Both men nodded understandingly and watched her slip into an exhausted sleep.

  “She needs a doctor.”

  Caleb looked at his friend, the man who had been giving her water, and nodded slowly as he looked at her. “She does at that, Zack.”

  Chapter 15

  It didn’t take long for Cody to get the chief and the men organized for war. They did their rituals of dancing and cleansing on the night he’d returned from the fort as he looked on, never invited to participate even though he was one of their fiercest warriors. To them, he was still a white man inside an Indian body. His mother had been a traitor to their race; despite his efforts to help them, he was still an outsider. He stayed close to his lodge and did his own praying, giving special attention to Suzanne who, for him, was the whole reason for this coup.

  For them, it was a fight for freedom, pride and their way of life. He knew they couldn’t hold on much longer and were destined to end up on the reservations, despite what the white man’s treaties said. The white man had broken all of the treaties thus far and no Indian trusted them, including him. He was being hunted by the cavalry and Addison Taylor had paid the ultimate price for letting him into the fort and not arresting him. He wasn’t sure exactly why he was being pursued, but he figured it had to do with what was about to happen shortly.

  He mentally laid out his plan. The attack was going to happen under the cover of night with no moon. His first stop would be the stockade where he would rescue Suzanne, kill her cellmates, and tell everybody she was his slave. That would ensure her safety, but he had to get there before anyone else. That was the most important thing.

  He knew the sentries would be playing their nightly card games and wouldn’t see them coming. That, combined with the moonless night, would give them the advantage. They would enter quietly without their horses, which the women would be holding away from the fort but close enough to where they would release them when the attack started. All of the horses were trained to whistles, which was something he’d come up with, and it hadn’t taken the horses long to learn which whistle belonged to which man.

  Cody had lied to the chief, saying that the white men in the fort, namely Major Richards, were planning an attack on the village and urged him to keep the fight away from the elders and children.

  As he prayed, he asked for forgiveness for putting so many of his people at risk for the sake of one woman. He asked for strength to defeat Major Richards and his army, who had them outnumbered. He prayed for his people to win this battle with little loss of life and even though he didn’t actually pray for this, he wanted to exact his revenge on Richards for hanging Addison Taylor and keeping Suzanne locked away like some animal. He hated the evil man and hated his actions.

  He crossed himself the way the nuns at the school had taught him and kissed the cross at the bottom of his prayer beads that were wrapped around his hand before going inside to change out of his white man’s clothes. He put on his dark colored pants, and tied his hair back with a leather strip. He wore heavy moccasins and painted his face black with a red stripe going down his forehead, over his nose, past his lips and chin. He made horizontal stripes across his bare chest of yellow, black and red. He stepped outside and gave a whistle and waited for his horse to come to the lodge, which he did quickly and stood before him.

  Cody painted red and yellow stripes on the big black stallion, then kissed him on the forehead and said a prayer for him, too.

  He strapped on his gun belt and made sure he had ammunition, thinking of Suzanne and knowing he was going into this for purely selfish reasons. He wanted a forbidden woman. Not only was she white, she was married and carried her husband’s child. He’d tried to forget her and let it go, but he just couldn’t. He had promised to take her back to her husband and he intended to do just that. But it didn’t change his feelings for her. He’d never been in love and he wasn’t sure he was now, but she haunted his every moment. Her smile, her tears, her touch, and even her kiss had left a lasting impression on his mind that had permeated his heart.

  He thought of her lying so innocently in his arms the one night they’d shared in the desert. She’d been so soft and pliant and when he’d kissed her, she’d seemed a little frightened and had responded hesitantly. It wasn’t like any kiss he’d ever experienced with any other woman, but considering he slept with prostitutes who were paid to kiss like the
y were enjoying themselves, it was no wonder.

  Lame Bird approached him as he stood outside his small dwelling. “Are you ready to go?” she asked him lightly.

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  She gave a slight nod toward the center of camp where a group of men were gathered. “So are the others.”

  He looked but said nothing, knowing he was going to be on his own once in battle. They didn’t trust him and he sure didn’t trust them.

  “I need to be bold with you, Black Fox,” she said quietly. “Before you go to fight this battle.”

  He looked at her questioningly.

  She met his dark eyes. “When you come back, I want you to marry me,” she said quietly.

  He didn’t laugh, smile, or react in any way. He had no desire to hurt this woman. She had been kind to him for a long time. Under different circumstances, he might considered it, but with his feelings for Suzanne, he would be cheating Lame Bird out of the love she deserved.

  She smiled nervously. “I’ve been taking care of you for a long time. Do you not think I would make you a good wife?”

  “You will make another man a fine wife, Lame Bird. You’re beautiful, smart and give much. You will make any man proud.”

  “Except you,” she said sadly.

  He slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry. You are a good woman, Lame Bird and I am thankful for you and all that you do for me, but I cannot marry you,” he said gently.

  “You will be an old man without children,” she said softly and walked toward the gathering in the center of the camp.

  He felt bad. He knew she was right, but he’d never wanted to hurt her. Everything he’d told her was true, but what he hadn’t told her was that his heart belonged to another. All he cared about at this point was getting Suzanne back to safety and back into his arms, even if it would be just for a little while. He thought of the quote he’d learned while back at the white man’s school, one he hadn’t thought of in years.