Elizabeth Lane - Navajo Sunrise

His black eyes flashed in warning,

but when he met her gaze, Miranda was overcome by the strange tenderness she saw there. Something moved inside her, warming, unfolding like the bud of a flower. Her lips parted as she struggled to break the silence with words that would not come.

“I know your heart is good, Miranda Howell,” Ahkeah said, “but your efforts to help the Dine will only make enemies for you—dangerous enemies, on both sides.”

“Including you?”

Time froze as he loomed above her, his eyes smoldering with unspoken secrets. His thin lips were sensually curved, his sharp bronze face much too close to her own.

“Including me?” His husky voice echoed her question as his gaze held her captive. “Make no mistake, bilagaana woman. You and I have been enemies from the first moment we set eyes on each other.”

Acclaim for Elizabeth Lane’s recent books

Bride on the Run

“Enjoyable and satisfying all around, BRIDE ON THE RUN is an excellent Western romance you won’t want to miss!”

—Romance Reviews Today (romrevtoday.com)

Shawnee Bride

“A fascinating, realistic story.”

—Rendezvous

Apache Fire

“Enemies, lovers, raw passion, taut sexual tension, murder and revenge—Indian romance fans are in for a treat with Elizabeth Lane’s sizzling tale of forbidden love that will hook you until the last moment.”

—Romantic Times

#607 HER DEAREST SIN

Gayle Wilson

#609 BRIDE OF THE ISLE

Margo Maguire

#610 CHASE WHEELER’S WOMAN

Charlene Sands

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Available from Harlequin Historicals and

ELIZABETH LANE

Wind River #28

Birds of Passage #92

Moonfire #150

MacKenna’s Promise #216

Lydia #302

Apache Fire #436

Shawnee Bride #492

Bride on the Run #546

My Lord Savage #569

Navajo Sunrise #608

Other works include:

Silhouette Romance

Hometown Wedding #1194

The Tycoon and the Townie #1250

Silhouette Special Edition

Wild Wings, Wild Heart #936

Navajo culture is so rich and complex that an outsider, trying to describe it in a story, is bound to make mistakes. For any errors contained in this book, I ask the forgiveness of my readers and all those whom my words may have offended.

Navajo Sunrise is set against a background of real historical events, but the story itself is the product of my own imagination. Except for Barboncito, Manuelito, Theodore H. Dodd and General William Tecumseh Sherman, the characters are fictitious and bear no resemblance to actual persons, living or dead.

Elizabeth Lane

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

New Mexico

March, 1864

Ahkeah stood in the cold moonlight, staring down at the grave the bilagáana soldiers had forbidden him to dig. His hands were raw and bleeding, the nails worn to stubs from scraping away the half-frozen earth. His eyes and throat stung as if he had just walked through a forest fire.

Even now that the grave was finished, the top piled high with stones, he feared it might not be deep enough to protect his wife’s body from the marauding foxes and coyotes that would close in after he was gone. She had died that afternoon, on the fifth day of the long walk from Dinétah to the place the soldiers called Fort Sumner—died in agony, her body swollen with a child that would not have lived even if she’d had the strength to give it birth. The passing soldier who’d fired a bullet into her temple had probably done her a kindness. Even so, it had taken three of Ahkeah’s friends, gripping him from behind, to keep him from leaping on the blue-coat and tearing him apart with his bare hands.

At the time he had wanted the soldier to shoot him as well. He had wanted nothing more than to lie on the icy ground beside the body of his sweet young wife, free from the burdens of grief and shame and from the hunger that gnawed at his vitals. But even then reason had whispered that it was his duty to live. There were people who needed him—his small daughter, Nizhoni, whose name meant beauty, and his mother’s elder sister, who had watched her entire family die on the cliffs at Canyon de Chelly, and had not spoken since. And there were others—so many others who needed his strength and his voice.

The crescent moon that hung above the mesa cast ghostly shadows across the desolation of the high New Mexico desert. Through the darkness, the lonely wail of a coyote drifted to Ahkeah’s ears. The yelping cry was echoed by another, then another. At one time Ahkeah would have welcomed the calls of his wild brothers. Now they only chilled his blood, because he knew that the sharp-nosed creatures would be gathering around the bodies of the Diné who had fallen along the trail.

He had begun scraping out the grave as soon as he knew his wife was dead; but the soldiers, jabbing him with the points of their bayonets, had forced him to leave her and move on with the rest of his people. Only after the dismal procession had made camp for the night and settled into sleep was he able to slip past the sentries and race back along the trail to where she lay.

Now the grave was finished. The remains of his beloved were as secure as he could make them. But how many others lay unburied along this trail of tears and misery? How many bones would lie scattered on the sand because there was no one to dig the graves?

Turning in the darkness, he faced the direction of the four sacred mountains that marked the boundaries of Dinétah, the homeland of his people. There, the great headman Manuelito and the last of his followers were still holding out against the overwhelming forces of Kit Carson and his regulars. Ahkeah longed to be with them in the mountains, to fight and die as a free man.

But Manuelito himself, his handsome face creased with weariness, had asked him to join the trek to the new reservation at Bosque Redondo, the place the Diné called Hwéeldi—the fort. “Our people will need you, Ahkeah,” he had said. “You grew up as a slave among the bilagáana, and you speak as they do. Go now, and be the voice of the Diné in this evil time. Go and speak for us all.”

Speak for us all.

Swallowing his bitterness, Ahkeah turned away from the sacred mountains and started back the way he had come. What words could he speak that were not hateful and angry? At one time the Diné had been the lords of the earth, their herds, fields and orchards the envy of all the land. He himself had owned more cattle and horses than a man could count in half a day, and his beautiful wife had worn robes of soft wool from her own sheep and necklaces of the finest silver. Then the bilagáana had come, wanting their land, and everything had changed.