White Fire nodded a stiff thank-you and sat down on the velvet-upholstered chair. His eyes never left Michael as the child squirmed to sit on Maureen’s lap after she sat down in a chair opposite White Fire.
He then glanced quickly around the room and saw the expensive gilt-framed portraits that lined the walls, the satin draperies at the windows, and the many pieces of expensive furniture that filled the dark shadows of the room.
A woman coming into the room, dressed as a nanny, caused White Fire’s insides to stiffen. He watched without argument as Michael was taken into the thick-waisted woman’s arms and whisked quickly from the room.
White Fire realized that, yes, all of this would take time, the return of his son to him, the return of his son’s love.
His gaze shifted back to Maureen as she began to talk in a monotone voice, yet working hard to make her point—that she would fight to keep this child whom she now considered her son.
“Michael is happy with George and I,” she said, stiffly lifting her chin. “I cannot imagine him living anywhere but here. Sir, from what I know of Michael’s earlier years, before we took him to raise as our own, he lived in a small cabin without any comforts whatsoever.”
She nodded toward various objects in the room, at the twinkling crystal vases, at the solid gold candlesticks, at the expensive paintings, then smiled smugly at him.
“As you see, sir, we have much to offer Michael,” she murmured. “I would hope that you would reconsider the foolishness of trying to have him back with you, to live a life of squalor, when my George and I can offer him everything his heart desires.”
She cleared her throat nervously. “Michael’s friends know nothing of his background . . . of him being part Indian,” she said dryly. She visibly shuddered. “Since his skin is white, he passes as white, not as . . . a savage half-breed.”
The way she spoke the words savage half-breed, the insult of it, and her actually shuddering when she spoke of Indians, as though they were the lowest form of people on the earth, made an instant rage enter White Fire’s heart. And even more than that, he was afraid that his son might have been taught to dislike, to mistrust all Indians.
“You bigot, I resent what you said, and what you implied,” White Fire said, his jaw tight. “I am proud of my Indian heritage, as will Michael be, once he realizes that he himself is part Indian.”
Being called a bigot caused Maureen to sit forward in her chair. “I’ll have you know that I am no bigot,” she said, her voice trembling. “I-I just don’t want Michael to know that he is part Indian. His friends would poke fun at him. He would miss many opportunities in life that a man born white is offered. A man who is part Indian, a ’breed, has much to endure.”
She smiled. “But, of course, you must know that, since you are a ’breed, yourself,” she said, her eyes on his face.
“I am a ’breed, yes, that is true,” White Fire said, lifting his chin proudly. “And as you know, I chose to be called by my Indian name rather than the name Samuel, which was my mother’s choice, since she was so wrong to be ashamed of her Miami heritage.”
“That, alone, is cause enough for me to know that Michael is better off being raised here with me and George, than with you—you who cast aside a white man’s name as though it is a sinful thing, a curse,” Maureen snapped back. “This child I have grown to love must not be faced with such decisions. His name is Michael. He is being raised as white. That is how it must continue to be.”
He knew he definitely had a battle on his hands, that he was faced with someone who was determined not to let go without a fight, and it would be too traumatic to just go and grab Michael and abruptly take him away. White Fire decided that now was not the time to make hasty decisions.
Yet even though he saw the prejudice that his son had been forced to live with in his daily life, White Fire still couldn’t see taking Michael away from his adoptive family just yet—at least not until he himself had gotten his own life back in order.
“Let me tell you something about my George and myself,” Maureen quickly interjected. “George and I have come from Boston to this wilderness of Minnesota. George is a smart, skilled, ambitious man. He sees much hope for this small community of Pig’s Eye. He imagines a powerful city rising up from what is now only a few buildings. He wishes to build it. He had seen the possibilities when he heard about the fort being built. He is a trader at heart, having become wealthy from his trading days in Boston. He saw Fort Snelling as possibly one of the better forts used for trading along the two rivers. He sees this as why Pig’s Eye will one day prosper as one of the better cities in America. He has even considered renaming it to something like St. Paul.”
She stopped and drew in a slow, deep breath, then continued. “Michael is now a part of this wonderful awakening in this wilderness,” she said tersely. “As the city grows into something wonderful, so shall Michael’s chances to be a part of its powerful future. And he can only be a part of that if he stays with us, and is given the opportunity.”
White Fire patiently listened, letting her have her say, while, in the end, it was all wasted breath, for no matter what, he would have his son with him again.
Maureen rose stiffly from her chair. She clasped her hands together before her and stared coldly at him as he slowly rose from the chair.
“We will fight to keep Michael,” she said icily. “No matter what you do, he will never be allowed to live in poverty again.” Her tone softened and she looked up pleadingly at White Fire. “Can’t you see that it would be wrong to take the child away from this life that he has grown to love?”
“Can you not see how wrong it is to keep a son from his true father?” White Fire said, his eyes locked with hers.
He turned and walked out of the parlor.
When he reached the front door, Maureen hurried and stood between him and the door.
“Please don’t come back here and confuse the child any more than you already have,” she pleaded. ‘We have been so happy. He has been so happy.”
“I doubt that,” White Fire said, then placed his hands at her waist and lifted her out of his way.
He went out onto the porch, then turned and gazed at Maureen as she stood at the door. “I will be back,” he said thickly. “I want to spend time with Michael. If you do not willingly allow it, you will force me to take him away from you right away, instead of gradually working him into it.”
Tears spilled from Maureen’s eyes. She gazed up at White Fire for a moment longer, then turned away and slowly closed the door between them.
Strangely empty inside, White Fire stared at the door, then went and uncoiled his reins from the hitching rail.
Feeling eyes on him, he looked up at a second-story window.
His heart almost broke when he saw Michael standing at the window, gazing down at him, his eyes filled no longer with confusion, but with a strange sort of detachment, and . . . resentment just before he was whisked away from the window and Maureen was quickly there, frowning down at White Fire.
White Fire sighed heavily, then swung himself into his saddle and rode away.
It came suddenly to him that if he was to get his son back without a fight, he must find a wife, someone who would willingly be a mother to his Michael. For in anyone’s eyes, it would not be right to wrench a child away from a true family, to live with only a father.
His spirits low, his shoulders slumped, he could not think of any woman who might be willing to have an instant family, especially in this wilderness where men outnumbered women ten to one.
He was filled with a sudden, deep, bitter hopelessness.
Chapter 8
I sleep with thee, and wake with thee,
And yet thou art not there;
I fill my arms with thoughts of thee.
—John Clare
Restless, and angry at her father for having placed a sentry in the corridor outside her bedroom door, Flame paced the floor.
She couldn’t believe that her fa
ther could be this overprotective of her! She had experienced his obsession with her while living in St. Louis, but never had he kept her in her bedroom like a prisoner.
But now that she thought about it, she realized that even when she had attended fancy balls and other social functions in St. Louis, one of his military colleagues had always been close by, trying not to be too obvious as he kept an eye on her.
She wondered now, when she had thought she had been alone, free as a bird while horseback riding, if someone had always been there, close at hand, watching her.
“How could he?” she cried, doubling her hands into tight fists at her sides.
She went to the open French doors that led to a small balcony and stepped gingerly out onto it. She circled her hands around the railing, her gaze settling on a small roof that lay just beneath the balcony, where a trellis had been placed, reaching from the ground to the roof. She was glad that roses were not the first choice of flowers for this trellis. Instead it had lovely wisteria vines that had no thorns to tear at her flesh when she escaped from her prison.
“In time he will know that he can’t hold me back,” she whispered, smiling now that she knew that she would have a way to leave the confines of her room whenever she chose to. Let him lock the door and she would escape and have her fun.
Glad to now have a plan, and badly wanting to explore, she decided that tomorrow would be soon enough since she was tired from the long river voyage. Flame went and plopped down on her bed.
Stretching out on her stomach, she rested her chin in her hands as she slowly looked around her room. Her private quarters were, indeed, grand, even as beautiful as those she had at the family mansion in St. Louis.
Her bedroom was large, giving an open feeling that was enhanced by the sunlight streaming through a number of windows, which were graced by beautiful satin draperies.
A fire was burning leisurely in the bedchamber fireplace, casting a soft, golden glow on the rich paneling of the walls. Ceiling beams and crown molding reinforced the sumptuous feeling, with hardwood floors that shined enough to see her reflection in them. Several silver candelabrums stood on various tables in the room, holding numerous tapers. Her bed, with its iron bedstead, was comfortable with its thick feather mattress. A marble-topped washstand stood beside the bed, a china basin decorated with rosebuds atop it.
She gazed at the chifforobe, anxious to make her father keep his promise to allow her to choose a new wardrobe. She closed her eyes and envisioned the hats she would wear for outings on her horse.
“My horse,” she whispered, jumping from the bed.
She hurried to the balcony and leaned her head out, to look far to the right, where the stables were. She had brought her steed from St. Louis. She hoped it wouldn’t be hard to find it among so many stabled together beneath one roof.
“I shall,” she said, stubbornly lifting her chin.
Then she looked past the wall of the fort. Her gaze searched in the distance from cabin to cabin, wondering in which one she might find the handsome ’breed.
Her pulse raced at the thought of beginning her search for him even as soon as tomorrow.
Chapter 9
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent;—
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.
—Lord Byron
White Fire awakened with a start when he heard the popping and crackling of a fire in his fireplace. He had not kindled it since last night, which meant that now it should only be simmering coals, or cold, gray ashes.
Remembrances of other times flooded his senses, when he had awakened to the same sort of sound, when his wife, Mary, had risen before him and gotten the fire started.
But this was now.
His Mary wasn’t there. Someone else had to have started the fire.
“But who?” he whispered to himself, rushing from the bed.
He scrambled into a pair of fringed, buckskin breeches and a shirt, then hurried, barefoot, into the living room. Who he saw sitting there caused him to stop with a start.
He stared at Chief Gray Feather, who was even now on his knees before the hearth, placing another piece of wood on the fire.
Then his gaze slowly shifted to the chief’s daughter, Song Sparrow, and then to Song Sparrow’s three-year-old daughter, Dancing Star.
He didn’t have time to wonder more about it, for Song Sparrow had heard him come into the room. She turned and was smiling at him. Then she gently shoved her daughter toward him.
“My gee-dah-niss, daughter, Dancing Star, has come to introduce herself to you,” Song Sparrow said, giving her daughter another slight shove when Dancing Star hesitated.
Chief Gray Feather rose to his feet and stood with his back to the fire as he watched his granddaughter go to White Fire. Then he watched White Fire intently as he kneeled and reached his arms out for the child.
Knowing of White Fire’s gentleness and compassion for children, Chief Gray Feather hoped that he would feel his granddaughter’s loneliness for a father.
“Hello, there,” White Fire said, taking Dancing Star into his arms and hugging her. “Dancing Star, nee-may-nan-dum-wah-bum-eh-nawn, I am glad to see you. It is good to make your acquaintance.”
He looked past her shoulder and questioned Gray Feather with his eyes, yet knew, without actually questioning the chief, what was happening here. Gray Feather wished to sway him into marrying his daughter through the child’s affection.
That puzzled White Fire, for Gray Feather knew that he was married and that he had a child. White Fire had not yet had the chance to tell him that things were different, that he no longer had a wife, and in a sense, had lost his child.
He could not help but be touched, though, by the child’s tiny arms around his neck, and by how she showed no fear of him, when she had never even known him until now.
He reached his hands up to her long, glossy, black hair and stroked it.
When he looked at Song Sparrow and saw too much in her eyes, caused by his show of genuine affection for the child, fear leaped into his heart that he was giving Song Sparrow false hope.
Gently, he eased the child from his arms. He took her hand and led her back to her mother.
His eyes locked momentarily with Song Sparrow’s as she lifted her daughter. Then he turned abruptly from her and went to place his hands on the chief’s shoulders with the cordial greeting familiar to them.
“It is good to awaken and find such good company in my home this morning,” White Fire said, smiling. He lowered his hands to his sides. “It is always good to see you, Gray Feather.”
Chief Gray Feather went to stand at his daughter’s side. He placed a gentle arm around her waist and smiled at White Fire. “We came today to have council again about your future, and how it would seem only right that it would be with my St. Croix band of Chippewa, and particularly with my family,” he said, his voice a deep rumble. “I have come to ask you again, White Fire, to leave this sort of life behind you. Come and live with people of your own skin coloring.”
Gray Feather gestured, making a wide swing as he looked slowly around the room. “This is white man’s en-dah-yen, home,” he said solemnly. “You would be more content in lodge of the Chippewa.”
His eyes implored White Fire. “Were you not happy with the Chippewa the time you spent with them?” he asked softly. “Did it not feel only natural that you would awaken in a wigwam instead of this place made of logs?”
The more Gray Feather talked, the more confused White Fire was by how he again pleaded with him to live with his people, when the chief did not yet know about White Fire’s discoveries after arriving home from his captivity with the Sioux.
“Gray Feather, please say no more at this time about this that you wish of me,” he said quickly, to interrupt Gray Feather before he went further with his pleas which caused only a strain between them. White Fire could think of nothing or no one at
this time except for his son and getting him back where he belonged. In his own father’s lodge. In his own father’s heart.
“White Fire, now that you have no wife, and now that your son has been taken away from you and is living with a white family, it is only right that you leave this life behind and live where you are needed, wanted, and loved,” Chief Gray Feather said, himself now interrupting.
White Fire took an unsteady step back from Gray Feather. “How did you know about Mary?” he asked, his voice drawn. “How did you know about my son?”
“I have watched you since your return from your captivity,” Chief Gray Feather said. “I have seen you visit your wife’s chee-bay-gah-mig, grave. I have seen you go to the home in which your son now lives as a white boy. All has been taken from you. I am here to give so much more back to you.” Gray Feather gave his daughter a quick glance, then looked at White Fire again.
Song Sparrow stood proudly at her father’s side, yet her eyes had never left White Fire since he had come from his bedroom and found them there.
“My gee-dah-niss, daughter would make you a good gee-wee-oo, wife,” Gray Feather said fervently. “You would make a good husband for my daughter. You would make a good father for my granddaughter.” He lifted his chin and squared his shoulders. “You would make a good son for this old man who was never blessed with sons. You would be the heir to all I own!”
Taken aback by the knowledge that Chief Gray Feather was this determined to have him as a part of his family, and had actually followed his each and every movement since his return from his captivity, White Fire was momentarily at a loss for words.
Yes, he had known that their friendship was special. He would never forget the year that he had spent with Gray Feather and his people. It was a unique, special time, which felt normal and right to him while there.
But many things had changed since his farewell to Gray Feather. He had changed.
“Do you hear and understand what I say to you this morning?” Gray Feather asked, stepping away from his daughter to place a gentle hand on White Fire’s shoulder. “I offer you way more than you can ever achieve in the world of whites that has given you nothing but heartache. I offer you my daughter’s bed. I offer you my granddaughter, who would be your daughter, who would take the place of the son you have lost to whites. Besides that, I offer you everything that you enjoyed while living among my people—and even more!”
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