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the corral. “The woman!”
    Black Elk did not respond for a moment. Watching the fleeing woman running for her life, he did not feel any urgency to pursue. After a moment, he calmly said, “She cannot get far.” He strode leisurely over to his pony and leaped gracefully upon its back. “She runs in the same direction we are going, anyway.”
    No more than fifty yards from the thick forest of white spruce, Martha tried to push her exhausted limbs harder. Gasping desperately for breath, her heart pounding in her throat, she began to stagger uncontrollably. Got to get to the trees! she pleaded. Just a few yards more! Then the pounding of her heart rapidly became louder and louder, and she uttered a cry of despair when she realized that it was the sound of horses’ hooves pounding the meadow grass behind her. She knew she was doomed. Still she tried to will her body to move faster.
    Five yards from the trees, she suddenly felt the heavy breath of the Indian pony as the weight of the animal pressed against her side. Jostled by the prancing white stallion, she would have been knocked to the ground had it not been for the powerful hand thatgrasped a handful of her long auburn hair. Breathless and exhausted, she cried out in pain as she was forcefully brought to a stop.
    Without releasing her hair, Black Elk threw one leg over his pony’s back and dropped to the ground beside her. “Don’t run,” he said, speaking in his native tongue. His face remained devoid of expression, so she had no notion what he was saying. But his next actions conveyed his feelings. Still holding her by her hair, he administered several sharp strokes across her back with a short rawhide quirt he carried. She screamed out in anger and outrage. The pain was considerable, but not as stinging as the shock of the beating. Never before had she been whipped like that, not even as a child. Her natural reaction was to fight back, and she beat her fists against his chest. Surprised, his face registered the first sign of emotion she had seen, although it was no more than a raising of his eyebrows and a slight widening of his dark eyes. Standing firmly before her, he did not try to stop her from pounding his chest, waiting patiently until she had exhausted herself. Then, as if disciplining a child, he whipped her again—this time a little harder. “Don’t run,” he repeated softly.
    Releasing her hair, he watched her drop to the ground. He stood over her for a few moments while she cried, her head sagging in humiliation and pain. After a little while, he took a length of rawhide rope and tied her wrists together. Taking her by both hands, he pulled her to her feet and roughly lifted her up on the horse she had ridden from Laramie.
    “We go now, we have wasted enough time,” he said, with no hint of anger in his voice. Leaping upon his white war pony, he nudged the stallion with his heels, heading up through the trees at a slow walk, leading the woman captive behind him.

Chapter 2
    Clay Culver reined his horse to a stop on a low bluff bunched with tall poplars and sturdy water oaks that cast a solid cool shade upon the narrow river crossing. He slid down from the handsome chestnut’s back to stretch his legs a bit while he looked across the shallow ford, filling his eyes with a scene he had lain awake many a night trying to envision during the past few months. The modest farmhouse on the other side of the little Rapidan River looked smaller now than he had remembered. Maybe, he allowed, it was because the little peach tree his father had planted by the back porch had grown as high as the eaves of the roof. It was barely reaching the kitchen windowsill when he had marched off to war.
    Wrapping the reins loosely around a dogwood branch, he walked down through the trees to the edge of the water, where he paused to scan the valley from east to west and back again. There was still a little evidence of the war’s destruction here, but it appeared that his