CHAPTER 1

Mandy awoke to an awful smell. As she rolled over, her sleep-laden eyelids forced themselves open, then revolted against the spears of sunbeams that shot down from the tepees open flaps nearly fifteen feet above her. Recognition of where she was came to her, and the sickening knot formed once again in her stomach.

She lay on a mat in the dwelling into which she had been forcibly shoved two days earlier. Judging by the amount of light coming through the top opening, she figured it to be late morning. She did not chide herself for sleeping so late; she had spent most of the night crying. And praying.

Glancing toward the back of the tepee, she noticed the empty mat of the middle-aged woman whose lodge she shared. Mandy came to presume the woman was also a white captive, but from long ago. Her eyes were blue, her hair light brown, but she wore it braided and tied with beaded string. Her dress was hide, and she wore a necklace made of some poor animals teeth. She obviously did not feel so imprisoned as Mandy, who had several times taken a stab at conversation. She had tried especially to get through the idea of escaping, but the woman apparently spoke no English. She was very kind to Mandy and her expression was sympathetic, but she strictly held to Indian ways.

At their first meeting Mandy had pointed to herself and said, Mandy, then pointed to the woman. She pointed to herself and spoke a foreign name. Mandy shook her head and said, English name. The woman thought hard for a moment, then struggled, Vi...Vic...toria.

Victoria! You do speak English!

English, the woman replied. But it wasnt long before Mandy realized that her name was about all that this woman recalled of what had once been her primary language.

Rising from her mat, Mandy went to the flap door and peeked out to survey the camp as she had done several times in the preceding days. The smell that her nostrils repelled came from a pot ofwhateverthat was left simmering over the fire just outside the lodge. Though she was hungry, she was certain her stomach would not have kept down food similar to what it had summarily rejected the day before.

The inhabitants of the camp were about their daily routines, it seemed, and paid no attention to the lodge that held the white woman. She would need to familiarize herself with those routines, and the layout of the village, for she had no intention of becoming like the woman in her lodge. She would have to figure out a plan of escape.

Returning inside, she picked up the brush that Victoria had offered her the morning before when her hair had a kidnappings worth of matting in it. As she brushed out her long blond tresses, she recalled with disquietude the events of the past two days.

* * *

Cheeks flushed, Mandy boosted herself from the lap of her fellow-passenger on the Concord stage.

Im sorry, Jim, but that one was rather sizeable rut.

Dont apologize, replied the redheaded lad of twenty with an impish smile. Im rather enjoying the ride.

She glanced at the Russian couple who sat across from her and her seatmate, Jim Fletcher. Although they spoke no English, it was obvious they were amused by her predicament.

She smiled in mild embarrassment, then gazed again out the window as the setting sun emblazoned the sky with streaks of scarlet and orange. She recalled the fearful and exacting five-month trip she had taken along a similar westward route four years earlier when her father, mother and siblings had pulled up roots in Pennsylvania and immigrated to Colorado Territory in 1861. Her family had found their niche in the growing community of Denver near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Mandy served as legal assistant to her father, James Berringer, just as she had in his law office in Pittsburgh. It was legal business that had taken her to St. Joseph in Missouri Territory on her fathers behalf. Now, just twenty-four hours from home, she was anxious for the trip to be behind her.

Way station ahead! shouted the driver from his loft.

And not a mile too soon, Jim said.

The wheels of the stage were scarcely stopped when Jim had the door open and one leg out. He helped Mandy alight, and she brushed a fine layer of trail dust off her lavender calico dress. They entered the home station where supper and a bed awaited them. Mandy knew the food would be hot, the coffee strong, the company talkative.

Welcome, welcome, the stationmaster shouted as he shook the mens hands. Im Josh Magruder. Yall are right on time. The Mrs.ll serve up supper whilst I unhitch the team.

The venison, beans and baked potatoes were on the table when the passengers had finished washing up. These were rare delicacies on a trip such as this. To expect other than salt pork, greasy fried potatoes and dry cornbread was presumptuous. The meal was topped off with a large slice of hot dried-apple pie and coffee.

All we need now is a piano, Jim said. Mandy here tells me she plays up a storm after supper back home in Denver. Sure would go nice right about now. He rubbed his bulging midsection. Then, straightening abruptly, he turned an ear towards the door. A moment later they all heard itfaint at first, then the clear, undeniable sound of a child crying hard.

The faces at the table exchanged confounded glances. The plaintive cry repeated. Mr. Magruder was the quickest to his feet. He snatched up his rifle, sprinted to the window and squinted into the thick darkness of the prairie whose sole source of light on this cloudy night was that cast from the cabin. Then he moved to the door and opened it cautiously.