Comanche Moon Read Online Free

of his thoughts to show on his face. It remained expressionless, eyes fathomless, his mouth set in a straight line of indifference. Hawk felt no sympathy. It was simply the way of things. Life and death were an unending cycle, and it didn’t matter where a person lived, but how a person lived. Happiness was an abstract emotion, something he hadn’t thought about since he was a young boy. He was a man now, and thought as a man. A man was not to think of only personal satisfaction, but of the good of his people, his father said, and he followed that advice.
    Yet Hawk’s gaze returned repeatedly to the young woman standing stiffly with her chin tilted and her eyes grave. There was something about her that arrested his attention. Perhaps it was that she showed no fear. Nothing showed in her face, no reaction at all. The rest of the women were sniveling and weeping, but that one slender girl stared straight ahead in an unblinking gaze.

    Night fell, and the village celebration went on. Fires leaped high, and the raiders danced and bragged beneath the sky. Deborah had ceased to think.
    She’d ceased to feel. Her arms were numb where the ropes had been tied too tightly on her wrists, cutting off circulation. Some of the women had fallen asleep, yielding to exhausted fear. The children who had been captured were taken from the group by some of the Comanche women.
    Deborah’s head turned, and she called softly, “Be brave, little ones.” It had not escaped her notice that the children were treated kindly for the most part, with the women touching their small heads and crooning to them in soft voices. Maybe the children would be allowed to live, perhaps even adopted. Deborah harbored no such hope for herself or her cousin, who drifted into exhausted slumber with the others. The other women were Mexican, some of them servants, some of them guests who had come to attend her wedding.
    Her wedding. That seemed like years ago, not days. Why had she never considered that something like this might happen to her? It had seemed so farfetched then, even when her friend LuEmma had warned her about the hostiles in Texas. Of course, having lived in Natchez all her life, LuEmma considered any other part of the world primitive and uncivilized. Now Deborah was inclined to agree.
    She shifted position, her legs aching with the strain of remaining upright. She didn’t sleep for the simple reason that she was too frightened.
    Fires punctuated the darkness of the camp, red-gold flames lighting the camp and the figures of the dancers. It was a scene she’d never imagined, and Deborah felt fear prickle up her spine with malicious swiftness.
    Gathering her fortitude, Deborah remained erect and watchful. Her eyes widened slightly when she saw a man approaching the captives. He walked with a lithe, powerful stride, and her throat tightened when she realized he was looking directly at her.
    He looked so fierce, with jet-black hair worn long and loose. A feather dangled from a small braid over one ear, and the rest of his hair brushed against his shoulders. His face was dark and coppery, and he was tall, much taller than the others, she noted distractedly. Like the others, however, he wore only a large square of cloth between his legs, tied at his waist, leaving his broad chest bare. Knee-high moccasins clung to his calves, and he wore some kind of amulet on a rawhide thong around his neck.
    Deborah was frighteningly aware of his presence, of the danger evident in his loose, fluid stride. When the Comanche stopped only a few feet away, she refused to avert her gaze. She met him stare for stare, her chin lifting in that quick gesture of pride that was inborn in the Hamiltons.
    His eyes were clear and cold, his expression so indifferent that she almost lost her nerve. Fear pulsed through her nerves in singing waves, and her knees began to quiver.

    It took all her self-control to keep calm, but Deborah felt that if she revealed the depth of her fear, it