Free Savage Beloved by Cassie Edwards

lurked away from the safety of the fort.
    Of course she knew all about Indians and what some were guilty of doing to whites.
    But she hadn’t allowed that knowledge to make her a prisoner of her own home, for if she had, she would have felt only half alive.
    “And now I am a true prisoner,” she whispered to herself, again looking at the food.
    She had never been so hungry in her life, yet . . . yet . . . each movement of her wrists brought renewed pain and fresh blood as the irons scraped against her already raw flesh.
    Again she thought of her father. She knew that if he were alive, he would be sending the military out everywhere to look for her.
    She could even now envision him sitting in his study, staring into the fire, as he waited for her to return.
    The thought of the study brought more than her father to her mind. She shivered as she again recalled the head in the jar, and where Two Eagles had found it.
    In her father’s study!
    Now she understood why he had never allowed her to enter it. He was hiding something ugly beyondbelief. How could any man do such a thing to another human being?
    Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard footsteps outside drawing near the tepee. They were not the footsteps of a woman, so she knew not to expect Hawk Woman.
    Her heart pounded at the thought of who had come for a morning visit. A moment later, Two Eagles nudged the entrance flap aside and came to stand over her.
    As before, he wore only a breechclout, moccasins, and a headband holding his long, thick, black hair back from his magnificently sculpted face. The scar beneath his lip was certainly no hindrance to his handsomeness.
    But today there was something about his attire that was different. He wore a huge knife sheathed at the right side of his waist.
    It looked deadly.
    He also carried a lovely white, fringed dress across one arm, and held a pair of moccasins in his left hand. A thin, long piece of hardened leather was in his right.
    She knew immediately what that strip of leather was: the hardened remains of a leather strop.
    She grimaced at the memory of a time long ago when one of her friends, Sam, a twelve-year-old boy, had been punished by his father for bloodying the nose of a playmate. His punishment had been a whipping with his father’s leather strop.
    She would never forget Sam’s yelps of pain as his father brought the strop down across his back atleast a dozen times. Nor would she forget that afterward, his father had taken Sam by an ear and forced him to apologize to the other boy, even though as far as she was concerned, that boy had earned the bloody nose because he had yanked so hard on Candy’s pigtails. The pain in her head had lasted for a full day.
    So . . . why had Two Eagles brought a razor strop into this tepee? Was it a way to frighten her even more?
    Did he use the strop to punish anyone who disobeyed him?
    She closed her mind to the possibility that he would use the horrid thing on her; surely he could not do such a thing to someone as innocent as she.
    Her insides tight, and scarcely breathing, Candy watched as Two Eagles laid everything down.
    She saw how his eyes went to the uneaten food, and then gazed questioningly at Candy.
    As though he could read her mind, he bent to his haunches and removed the irons at her wrists.
    “Eat,” he said, nodding toward the bowl of food.
    Stunned that he had been thoughtful and understanding, Candy just stared into his midnight-dark eyes for a moment. Then when her stomach growled and she was reminded how hungry she was, she gave him a soft smile.
    “Yes, I am terribly hungry. Thank you,” she murmured. She knew that after she was through eating, he would more than likely place the irons on her again, but for the moment she was free of them. For-gettingthat he was there watching her, she ate ravenously.
    While she was eating she was only scarcely aware that he had removed his knife from its sheath. But when he began slowly sharpening it on the