Free Captive Travelers by Candace Smith

picked you up that time, she told me how I could come and see an Indian ceremony.” Somehow, she had known the old Indian woman was involved.
    Cici had been silent since Clara had unbuttoned her dress. “You’re not kidding, are you?” she asked quietly. She looked up at Henry. “How do we get back?”
    Henry laughed. “There is no going back. Those mounds are a one way trip.”
    “We’ll be missed,” Aubrey answered. Her voice was flat, and not hopeful.
    “So what? You’ll be missed about as much as I was,” Henry replied. “It won’t do any good. Nobody’s ever going to find you.”
    The stunned women sat quietly at the table while Henry collected all of their belongings and buried them next to Rebecca’s old camping gear. He placed a stone to mark the spot, and stood up. Clara had only been with him since Rebecca showed up at the door. There were six other stones surrounding hers, marking the possessions of travelers he had taken in during the years before Clara had joined him.
    As far as punishment, Henry had beaten the crap out of the Indian trying to date his sister. He knew he could have done much worse than he ended up. Thanks to his father, he knew about farming… and that was valuable to the Wehali. Henry spent ten years alone, except for the travelers, before he finally told Tocho he was not going to work unless they gave him a woman.
    Tocho traded his own captive to keep Henry working the wheat field. Even though Henry traded him a damn good bay, the bastard still took it out on him whenever they came to collect travelers. Henry thought about Aubrey. Kayla was out; they would definitely want her… and the fat one was just as unappealing as Rebecca had been. He might be able to trade Clara back to Tocho for Aubrey, though.
    Clara had never warmed up to him, and now she was in her thirties and things were beginning to get soft on her. She was even turning grey, from the hard farm work. Ya, that bastard Indian doesn’t like giving up his woman to me. I’ll talk him into another trade. Henry imagined Aubrey’s youthful body stretched under him and staring into her green eyes while he fucked her.
    Clara kept the young women in the house while Henry hid their belongings. She would not risk the girls trying to find trinkets from their packs. She poured them some tea made from herbs in her garden and sat down with them. “You’re going to have to do chores so you look like you fit in. The Wehali have some kind of tribal law that says they won’t take a daughter born to us here. We haven’t seen them in a couple of years, so we can try saying that you’re free-born and visiting from the east.” Clara sipped some tea, and sighed.
    “I don’t think it’s going to work. Rebecca was real good at trying to keep calm when I talked to her, but when they showed up she lost it. They’re tricky. The old woman would have given the shaman information through the chanting, and the Indians will use it.”
    “Clara? How come you and Henry are free?” Aubrey asked.
    “Henry knew about farming. That whole field is his, and it supports three Indian settlements. He was worth more here.” Clara took another sip of tea and looked at Kayla. “Like you, I dumped an Indian boy. He was only a quarter Indian from a minor tribe, so I was sent alone. Still, I spent almost eight years with the Wehali and Tocho before he traded me to Henry for one of his horses.”
    Aubrey was still in shock, and every once in a while tears would spill down her face. “It’s still so hard to believe, that…”
    Clara put her hand on Aubrey’s. “I know. God, I thought someone had slipped me drugs, or something.” She looked up at the three of them. “Look, if they get you, and if you can make it with them, they mightlet you go, eventually. You can’t get back to the old world, but they trade captives to homesteaders and farmers, sometimes.”
    Clara thought of her life with Henry. He was cold towards her, fucking her with no