Wildest Dreams - By Rosanne Bittner Page 0,25

a hand over his powerful arm, across his broad shoulders.

His lips met hers, and in spite of their weariness, their passion was too powerful to ignore. He moved between her legs, grasped one leg under the knee and pushed it farther to the side, and in the next instant he was surging inside of her for the second time in one day. He pulled a blanket over them. Again they were lost in each other, oblivious to anything around them, ignoring the dangers, sure their love would hold them together whatever the future held.

Outside the bobcat prowled, searching for wild rabbits, perhaps some rats. It decided not to invade the realm of the humans who had moved into its territory... not yet. And in the foothills and distant mountains wolves began their nightly howling at the moon and to each other, making sure to remind any humans who came into this land who really belonged here.

Something else also prowled and watched, something human in form, but more animal in instinct and senses. A teenage Indian brave named Red Hawk sat on his spotted horse watching the cabin. A tiny bit of light created by a dimly lit lantern inside shone through one small window, the only sign of life in the dark night. Red Hawk turned to his father, a fierce-looking and honored warrior who sat beside his son on his own horse. The boy admired his father greatly, was proud of the deep scar on one side of the man's nose, where a Crow Indian had cut it partly off. That Crow man had died a slow, painful death at the hands of the mighty Sioux warrior. It was after that fierce raid that Red Hawk's father had taken the name Half Nose, a name feared by all white settlers and even some Indians in the region.

"Should we go and kill them, Father?" Red Hawk asked in the Sioux tongue.

Half Nose watched quietly for a few minutes. "No. He has a woman and child with him. He is one of those who has come to stay. He will still be here when the grass grows green again, when we come back to the mountains from the sacred winter grounds. Perhaps by then he will have more horses, something worth stealing. We have no use for oxen or mules."

"He has one good horse, that red one we watched him put in the shed when it was still light."

"Yes, and we will take it! He will never know we were here until he finds it gone in the morning. Then he will know how quietly a Sioux brave can take whatever he wants. He is new to this land. He has much to learn." Half Nose grinned. "We shall teach him and have a good laugh over it. We will take his horse, then get back to our camp. Tomorrow we must head south and east. Winter is coming."

"Perhaps he and the woman and child will not last until the grass is green again. Perhaps they will die from the cold."

Half Nose laughed lightly. "Perhaps." He nodded. "They will learn that they cannot own this land. The land will own them. It will swallow them up and spit them out!" Half Nose dismounted, and his son followed suit. Both men crept down the hill with the stealth of the bobcat that prowled in the thick woods beyond the cabin. They sneaked into the shed where Luke kept his horse and mules, using their skill with animals to keep them quiet while they untied Red. They led the horse back up the hill and rode off into the night.

Inside the cabin, Luke and Lettie lay sleeping, naked body against naked body, dreaming of the empire they had come here to build together.

CHAPTER 5

"Hello, there!"

Lettie studied the man who had shouted the words, a bearded, burly-looking man in buckskins named Will Doolan, whom Luke had already learned was thirty-five years old and once scouted for wagon trains headed to California and Oregon. The man stood on the porch of his sturdy-looking log home east of Billings, a piece of property Lettie thought was not nearly as pretty a setting as the one Luke had chosen, but then Luke had gone into country still prowled by outlaws and Indians alike, country beautiful because of its wildness.

"Hello, Will," Luke called back.

Doolan stepped off the porch, the fringes of his buckskin jacket moving with him. In the past two weeks the weather had remained stable, cold