"It is not a reward, white man," Nant'an growled. "It is a bond. If you are family, you will not lead the soldiers to us. If you are family, you will fight for us. If you are family, my daughter's life is your life." "But I'm a drifter," Luke argued, backing away until he bumped into a warrior who shoved him back toward the fire.
"I ain't husband material for anyone, let alone" He looked at Ayanna. She was shaking with rage. She turned to Luke, her eyes brimming with tears of fury. "I will not lie with a white dog." She hissed in perfect, accented English. "I would rather die." "Then you defy your chief?" Nant'an asked softly.
Ayanna froze. She looked at her father, betrayal written on every line of her face. "You trade me like a horse." She whispered, "Just like them. You are no better than the soldiers." Nant'an's expression was pained, but he did not waver. "I secure your future.
A lone woman has no protection in this world. A woman with a white husband, perhaps she survives when the end comes." He waved his hand, dismissing the argument. "It is done." Ayanna let out a sound of pure frustration. She glared at Luke with such venom that he actually took a step back. "Do not think this makes you safe," she said, her voice trembling.
"You sleep with one eye open, cowboy." She turned and stormed off into the darkness, vanishing into one of the wikiups. Luke stood there, stunned. He looked at Nant'an. "You can't do this," Luke said. Nant'an sat down by the fire and wrapped his robe around him.
"Sit," the chief commanded. "Eat. You have a long winter ahead of you, son." Luke looked at the warriors surrounding him. He looked at the vast, empty darkness beyond the firelight. He sank down onto the buffalo robe, the heat of the fire doing nothing to thaw the ice in his stomach.
He watched the sparks drift up toward the stars. He had ridden out that morning a free man, a nobody. Now he was a prisoner, a savior, and a husband to a woman who wanted to kill him. He looked toward the tent where Ayanna had disappeared. The flap was closed tight.
Luke Carver rested his head in his hands and listened to the wind howling through the canyon, knowing that he had just walked into the biggest trap of all. Dawn broke over the high desert with a silence that felt brittle enough to snap. The light did not arrive all at once, but crept down the faces of the distant ridges, turning the gray stone to a bruised purple, and then to a brilliant, glowing pink. In the valley floor, where the camp lay hidden, the air was still heavy with the night's freeze. Frost coated the dry yellow grass like a dusting of diamond dust, crunching softly under the paws of camp dogs that trotted between the brush huts with their heads low.
Luke Carver woke with a gasp, the cold already settled deep in his bones. He was sitting on the ground with his back against the rough bark of a piñon pine, his wrists bound loosely with rawhide thongs. He was not tied to the tree, a small mercy that allowed him to shift his position, but a guard sat only 10 ft away, wrapped in a blanket, a rifle resting across his knees. Luke flexed his stiff fingers, watching his breath plume in the icy air. He felt like a man who had walked out of one life and fallen into a dream that might turn into a nightmare at any moment.
He was alive. That was the only fact he could hold on to. As the sun crested the peaks, the camp began to stir. It was a transformation that fascinated Luke despite his fear. One moment, the wikiups, low, dome-shaped structures covered in brush and hides, looked like mounds of earth.