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  “It is just as well you awoke,” she said. “It is time for me to put another layer of medicine on you.”

  “What is it?” Stone asked, his one good eye looking up at her and trying to get her in focus in the flickering rays of the fire that burned calmly in the center of the tepee. His mind felt a lot clearer than it had before—at least he could remember his name, knew vaguely where he was, and probably could have added up two and two, which was a hell of a lot more than he could have accomplished just hours before.

  “I wonder if you really want to know,” she said, smiling down at him, and he saw that she was even more beautiful than he had thought. She took a handful of the strong but not repulsive-smelling stuff, slapped it down on his chest, and then began smearing it off in all directions as if fingerpainting across him. “It’s rattlesnake liver, cactus pulp, lizard tails, bat saliva, and two kinds of poisonous plants, fatal if eaten. Satisfied?”

  “I shouldn’t have asked.” Stone smirked, remembering as he did so that he shouldn’t smirk, for an electric jolt of pain shot across his jaws and mouth.

  “You have a beautiful body,” she said softly as she continued to spread the ointment across him. She looked coyly at him. “Does that embarrass you?”

  “It embarrasses me because I keep thinking they really fucked me up—that I look like hamburger. Tell me, do I have all my teeth? Does my right eye work, or is it … gone?”

  She burst out laughing and slapped him on the chest, which sent waves of pain through his whole chest and stomach. “Sorry,” she said, suddenly putting her hand over her mouth as she realized she had hit him. “I laughed because—no, you have not lost anything, as far as I can see. You were beaten up—that I can see—badly. Every part of you is black and blue. And those ants, they just started in on you, but I got there pretty fast, once I saw them lay you out.” Stone felt himself growing dizzy again, but he struggled against it. He was getting tired of heading for dreamland whenever he got a little breathless.

  “Who—who—are you?” he choked out, suddenly coughing, and she raised his head and fed him some strong herb-flavored water that soothed his throat almost immediately.

  “I am—we are—Cheyenne,” she said, her face taking on a proud, defiant look. “There are few of us left now—very few. But those who are, are tough—and we survive.”

  “Why—did—you save me.” Stone asked, suddenly able to speak slightly louder as the Cheyenne throat medicine seemed to smooth things out in mere a little.

  “We—hate Patton,” she said bitterly, getting a look on her face that Stone was thankful was not directed against him. “He has killed many of what few of my people are left,” she said, her eyes going from calm brown to storms of hate. “We lived not bad lives after the disaster that befell the country. After all, we had little to lose compared to others—to the white man. And as we gave up our reservation life and readapted to the hard land, we got strong again. Those of us who survived. But when Patton showed up a year ago and built his fortress, at first we thought that perhaps the government would be friendly to the Cheyenne even if no one else would. And those who went to meet with him were tortured and killed—every one of them. One was my father, Fighting Bear, a strong and gentle man. Then he hunted us down, sent out unit after unit to get us. Tanks, shooting Indians off horses, cannon blowing up tepees and children. It was like the good old days all over again,” she said bitterly. “Like the first massacres when this land was stolen from us.”

  “I know,” Stone said, looking up sympathetically at her. He knew what it was like to lose those closest to you, to say the least. “I guess Indians are on his extermination list too.”

  “We saw your tanks come into the valley—we see everything that goes on for miles around. And the battle—the trap you were led into. When I saw them bring you out of the fort, I knew you were the leader of the strike force. They would never waste all their time, have General Blood himself come out for the occasion. So I helped you.”

  “We’ve got to get out of there,” Stone said, suddenly rising up on his elbows, or trying to, as both appendages collapsed instantly beneath him like ropes. “The bastard has an atomic missile. When he finds out I’m gone, he’ll—”

  “Shh,” she said again, pushing him back down with the palm of her hand. “It will wait until morning. Even death has the etiquette of letting a man get a good night’s sleep.”

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  MEYRA LIT a stick of strong-smelling herbs that made Stone feel as if he were floating even higher than he already was, and then she spread the Cheyenne healing paste down over his arms and chest and stomach. When she reached his manhood, she didn’t pause but spread the green stuff there, too, and Stone, being a man, began to stiffen. He sensed her breath coming more quickly, the heat of her body just inches away from him. She held him in her hands as he grew like a tree in time-lapse photography.

  “Oh,” she moaned between suddenly clenched teeth, looking down at what she held. And then it was as if she entered another realm of herself, for her back arched like a cat’s and she moved alongside him, groping frantically with both hands at Stone’s organ. She groaned again, and Stone heard himself make a similar noise as she ran her hands and fingers all around the fleshy staff like it was something mystical, a wand of power from some magic kingdom. She began running her hands from the base to the tip, over and over, making him even bigger and thicker so that he felt his own hips thrusting up in involuntarily animal motions. Suddenly she was bending over him, and her hot lips and mouth enclosed on the enflamed knob. Stone felt himself sink nearly all the way into her, and he could hardly take the sensations. His body still ached in every spot from the experience of the last twenty-four hours, yet her burning fingers and mouth were driving him into a frenzy. And somewhere inside of him, at the deepest part of the sexual motor that drives a man, a wave of desire and lust and the will to live overtook him. And he wanted her, desperately. Wanted the strength to take her as a man should.

  He commanded his sore, bruised arms to rise, and somehow, as if he were pulling the strings of a puppet—only the strings were made of rubber and the arms just sort of dangled—Stone made the half dead limbs move. He raised them forward through the air, made the fingers reach for her firm, hanging breasts, which fell over his stomach as she moved up and down on the long, stiff shaft, emitting groans and whistles of animal desire and sexual hunger. He cupped one of the firm, copper-colored breasts in his hands, and the nipple seemed to harden and rise up between his fingers. He squeezed it hard, and she groaned and took him even deeper into her throat, opening up for him, the way a woman does for a man she wants. Then he was just kneading her breasts with both hands, squeezing them back and forth, almost like a child squeezes its mother.

  Then he wanted her. He let his hands fall down around her waist, and he pulled her up toward him. Slowly she came at his command, and he lay back down on the bear furs as she was now kneeling on top of him. She rested the palms of her hands on his chest and then sank down on top of him, letting her lips slowly rest against his. She kissed him softly over and over, her hips pushing against his. He could feel the heat coming from between her legs, and in the throes of passion that Stone could hardly believe he was experiencing in his racked and torn body, he reached down and cupped her around the furry slope that was releasing its own perfumes. She groaned again and seemed to buck beneath his grip, then spread her legs wide, giving him access to her. She slid her garments off as he touched her and opened her with his fingers.

  Then she was lying atop him again, and she raised herself up and found his manhood with her hand. She placed the swollen tip just inside the flesh petals beneath her reddish fur and then slowly lowered herself on it. Her eyes closed, and her lips parted, as a hiss of air came from between her teeth. Slowly the spear of turgid flesh slid deeper and deeper into the recesses of her body. Stone felt his own urgent writhings as his body and limbs seemed to vibrate. From where he didn’t know, but s
uddenly he felt infused with strength, and he pumped up hard into her to meet her descending flesh.

  Suddenly he plunged all the way into her, to the very hilt of himself, and she seemed almost to half faint so that he had to catch her with his hands as her face came down toward him. She was so beautiful by the dancing flames of the fire, her black hair spread down her shoulders and back, her slim, perfect body above him, her femaleness fitted over him like a sheath over a sword. Suddenly he thrust hard up into her, overcome with pure animal lust. She gasped and sank down deeper onto him, opening, opening like the petals of a flower open for the sun. And before he knew it, Stone was driving up into her again and again, his hands gripped firmly around her waist so he held her in check above him, while his hips just pistoned into her, driving his staff to the very depths of her burning core.

  Then she seemed to go mad atop him, riding him, bouncing up and down to meet his thrusts. Her mouth opened wider and wider, as if she were a fish gasping for air, and her breasts seemed to swell and grow, the nipples rising, begging to be licked and bitten. Her whole body seemed to glow and pulse with a reddish aura, and he could feel the electric currents between them, the very primal energies of man and woman, mingling with and recharging each other. Then they were both going mad, over the edge, devoid of humanness, but just pure animal spirit desiring nothing more than to crush themselves against the other, take and be taken, push and open, explode and ooze.

  Stone could feel himself at the edge, a lava of lust building deep inside himself. And he could feel by her moans and gasps and by the increasing jerking spasms of her body as she seemed like a spineless puppet, writhing around atop him, that she was almost there too. And he pushed even harder, deeper, until he could be no farther into her, her soul, and he held himself there, extended to his full length. She seemed to go mad, flopping atop him like a fish out of water, her whole body snapped and jerked, her head rolled from side to side as she slid down on him, taking every molecule of him. Then she screamed, and her back spasmed up and down its length and she ground down against his stomach, wrapping herself completely around him. Stone pulsed and exploded inside of her in a nova of heat and gasps. He felt the steaming liquid rise in him, and then, like a geyser of steam, he erupted into her, pumping, pulsing like a beast alive within her.

  “Yanna,” she said minutes later as she lay naked and covered with a sheen of sweat and half the healing paste she had smeared on him, and she looked almost greenish over her coppery skin as the low flames of the fire wriggled back and forth in waves of red and orange. “Yanna,” she said again in the softest of whispers, tracing her finger softly up and down his spine as he lay facedown, naked, on a shining black pelt.

  “Yanna?” he asked in a whisper from out of the love-scented semidarkness.

  “Lover,” she answered like a dove cooing. “The giver of love, really, is how you would say it in my language.” So he was a yanna, a giver of love—and a nadi,—giver of death. If he had to choose one, Stone thought as he reached out and traced the perfect curve of her pomegranate breasts, then he would make love, not war.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  WHEN HE awoke the next morning, Stone’s eyes were fixed right on the opening at the top of the tepee, so he saw immediately that the day was cold. Silver sky and blank walls of clouds rolled overhead like an endless sheet of metal. He felt as if he were on fire—the temperature in the tepee had risen considerably overnight. He reached for her but she wasn’t there, and Stone rose up to look around. As he did he realized that—lo and behold—he could actually move. He didn’t feel great, to say the least. Everything hurt like he had received about a million razor cuts and a stomping from a pack of dinosaurs. But as he hadn’t even been able to support his body the night before, anything was an improvement.

  “I’m here,” a voice said, kneeling over the fire. Stone smelled strong odors wafting over toward him with an almost palpable presence. “Just cooking some breakfast.” She smiled over at him. “Man like you needs to eat.” She wore only a sort of loincloth, hardly more than a strap of leather around her triangle of moist, reddish hair, and a deerskin vest, open down the middle so her breasts stood out, draped on each side by the soft tan hide. Stone felt himself starting to get excited again and could hardly believe it. He should have been dead—yet here he was, ready to fuck his brains out. The women was either the sexiest thing he had ever laid eyes on or she was a witch. There was no other answer.

  “Are you a witch?” He grinned as he propped himself up on a bunched-up old bison head that she used for a pillow—clothes hung on its horns, which circled out from both sides around the end of the bear-fur bed. She carried a steaming bowl toward him and kneeled down on the bed so that their legs were just touching.

  “Yes, a witch,” she answered as she lifted a wooden spoon full of a porridgelike substance. “A witch over men —whose hearts or bodies I crave. A man like you.” He started to answer, but as he opened his lips she thrust the spoonful of hot chow into his mouth and he gulped it down hard. It took him a good ten seconds to even sort out the taste—something like oatmeal and chopped liver.

  “What the hell is it?” Stone asked as she held a second steaming spoonful up to his lips.

  “This time I’ll save you your stomach.” She laughed. “And I won’t tell you—remember what happened last night. All that matters is that it’s super-high protein and will help your body recover.” She pushed it into his mouth, and as his stomach hadn’t rejected the first load, Stone took it down, and damned if it didn’t taste pretty good once you got past how it looked and smelled. After he had finished off two bowls of the stuff and nearly half a gallon of some “medicinal” liquid she gave him, Meyra helped him get dressed as she got into her things too.

  “The others are waiting for us,” she said to him as she stood up on her toes and kissed him quickly on the mouth. “Are you ready to go? There is much to do and little time. Can you walk?”

  “Yes,” Stone said, pushing her off so he could try to walk around on his own. “I think so.” He made a wide circle around the inside of the tepee. He felt light-headed, but nothing like the totally numb, leg-dropping zombie state he had been in.

  “It would seem your treatment worked, Doctor,” Stone said, going over to her and pulling her close, up against his bearskin coat, cupping her ass through her own thick garb.

  “It is passion that keeps a man alive,” she said with a faint smile. “All ancient medicines and magic systems are based on that. I just brought out—shall we say—what is already inherent in you.”

  “I’ll say,” Stone said, looking deep into those eyes he couldn’t get enough of. “Pulled out, and up, and every which way. And I wouldn’t mind doing it a—”

  “Come on, lover boy,” she said, starting toward the exit of the tepee, half pulling him along by the collar. “We’re holding up a meeting.” Stone walked outside behind her as she shut the bison-skin flap of the Indian structure. His eyes took a few seconds adjusting to the light of the cloud-shrouded day. Both eyes, he was pleased to note, were still working, albeit at half mast. Stone stumbled forward a few steps, until she took him by the elbow and led him down a dirt path past two other tepees. They came to a small fire with two long logs on each side of it. Stone wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but what he saw was definitely not it. The eight or so Cheyenne who sat before him hardly looked the type of Indian that Stone had in his mind of how Indians should look. None of them wore bearskin but denim jackets of all different colors, jeans, and boots. Several of them had earphones on, Walkmans attached to their belts, and seemed to be listening to jazz or rock that Stone could dimly hear floating through the insect cracklings and fire poppings of the early morning.

  He sat down on an empty space on one of the logs, and Meyra sat beside him. He looked around at the other faces for jealousy or anger—after all, he had just spent the night with one of their women. But he didn’t see it—just a sort of removed curiosity about him
. And neither hostility nor friendliness was offered.

  “You guys don’t look like Indians,” Stone said, knowing as he said it that it was the wrong thing to say.

  “And you don’t stink like a white man,” one of the others, several scars gouging along one side of his face, replied. “How the hell are Indians supposed to look?”

  “Hey, lighten up,” Meyra said, looking around at them. “Guy almost lost his life fighting the general. Put his cock right on the line.” Stone was slightly startled by her use of the curse and then realized that he was again judging everything by some notions of an America that was long gone. Women shouldn’t curse, Indians shouldn’t wear denim and have Walkmans. He tried to banish all the bullshit from his head and just take them as they were.

  “So what’s the scene?” one of them directly across from Stone asked, his hair slicked back beebop-style, a gold earring in one ear. He had the same copper skin and strong features that Meyra did, and Stone knew instantly that he was her brother. “Are you—the commander of the tank force that was captured? Commander Stone?” he asked.

  “That’s me.” Stone smiled back, feeling friendly toward all of them, considering the night he had just been given as a kind of supreme reward for having been hacked to within an inch of his life. And now that he had been with her, Stone couldn’t say he wouldn’t go through it all again. “But as for being a ‘commander,’” he explained, “If you saw the outcome of my attack, you’d know that’s not a word that should be used in front of my name.”

  “Don’t bust your balls—there’s always someone ready to do it for you,” the Indian, apparently the leader of the group, said, offering a slight smile. “You were set up—we saw them baiting a trap days ago but didn’t know who the hell they were baiting until it was too late.”