Giving Charlotte the needed privacy, the men walked away and stood in a group, discussing the find.
Charlotte opened her dress to the tiny baby girl. Tears came to her eyes when the child began suckling from her breast. She gazed with wonder at the child's beautiful copper skin and tiny toes and fingers. It came to her that the child was now motherless and that perhaps Kirk could have an instant sister. She was not sure if she could have any more children. It had taken so long to finally have her adorable Kirk…
Bryce still stood beside the wagon, watching the baby nursing. "I don't know what to do," he said, his voice drawn. "If we try and find the village from which this woman came, we might somehow be accused of the woman's death. I don't think I want to trade my scalp for the chances of trying to find this woman's people."
"And the child?" Charlotte said, her heart pounding at the prospect of getting to keep the child as her very own.
"We've got to keep her, Charlotte," Bryce said, giving her an easy stare. "Would you mind? It's your breasts that would be feeding her."
Tears came to Charlotte's eyes as she gazed down at the tiny bundle of joy that still so hungrily fed from her breast. "Do I mind?" she said, slowly shifting her gaze to her husband. "Darling, I couldn't leave her behind, not after having held and fed her. She'll be our daughter. Kirk will be raised with a sister. We will give her the name that we had picked out should we have a daughter instead of a son."
"Jolena?" Bryce said, reaching a hand to touch the soft thigh of the girl child.
"Yes, Jolena," Charlotte said in a sigh, as she again watched the child with adoration. "It's such a lovely name to fit such a beautiful little girl."
"Then it's settled," Bryce said firmly with a nod of the head. "She's ours from now on."
He turned and looked toward the bushes beneath which lay the lovely Indian woman. He had not taken much time to look at her, being too worried over the child's welfare. But in one glance he had seen her exquisite loveliness and knew that some Indian warrior would mourn deeply over such a loss. If Jolena took her looks from her mother, this new daughter of his would one day be just as exquisite!
"I can't bury her," Bryce said quickly. "I must leave her out in the open for her people to find her. Her soul would not rest if she was not given a proper Indian burial ceremony and placed with her people's dead. We have no choice but to leave her like that, instead of hiding her in a grave in the ground."
"How soon do you think she will be found?" Charlotte asked, worrying about animals feeding on her.
Bryce kneaded his brow thoughtfully as he looked into the distance. "It is said that the Indian women go far enough away to have their child so that it takes three days' travel on foot to get there," he said. "On horseback, the way the warrior husband will travel when he comes looking for her, it will take only one day. So he should be here I'd say at least by tonight."
"That means that we most certainly must be aboard that riverboat before he arrives," Char- lotte said, her voice wary. "Can we truly, darling? Can we make it?"
"I'll see to it," Bryce said, climbing aboard his wagon. He leaned out and shouted for everyone else to be on their way, then turned to Charlotte with heavy eyes. "I hate like hell depriving a man a look at his newborn child, but once he finds his wife dead, he will become enraged enough to kill anything and anyone in his path. We have no choice but to take his child and raise her as our own."
"She will be given many more opportunities than she would have had among Indians," Charlotte murmured, taking the child from her breast. She reached behind her and grabbed a soft blanket to wrap the baby in.
Then she positioned a child in the crook of each of her arms, a contented smile on her lovely face.
"One thing we must prepare ourselves for," Bryce warned. "When she gets old enough to mingle with the other children in Saint Louis, she will be pointed out as different, even as perhaps peculiar in her coloring. She might be tormented by the white children, even called a savage."
Charlotte paled at the thought. "We will make up the difference in our attitude toward her," she said determinedly. "We will teach her to ignore those who would belittle themselves by being prejudicial in their judgments and viewpoints."
Bryce smiled at Charlotte and nodded his approval of that which she had so strongly declared in defense of this child that was theirs by only moments.
Chapter Two
A semicircle of cone-shaped tepees dotted the green of the plain. A stream, tree-fringed, fresh from the distant mountains, flowed by the camp pitched upon a tableland where he the enemy, red or white, could pass by unseen.
Men hunted. The Blackfoot women were busy drying meat and tanning robes and cow hides.
The smell of roasting meat and the sound of children at play filled the afternoon air.
Spotted Eagle, who had only recently earned his new name by having fasted far from his people for four days and nights, paced before his parents' tepee. He found the games of the children much too childlike this day. He had other things on his mind which were more important to him. He knew that today Sweet Dove should have returned to her people, proudly carrying her newborn child within her arms. When Brown Elk, her husband, had begun to worry over her absencethe required days a Blackfoot maiden should be gone to give birth to her child having passedhe had left with many warriors to search for her.
"She is dead," Spotted Eagle whispered to himself, his long flowing hair around his shoulders as he made another troubled turn to pace again. "I know she is dead."
He lifted his eyes to the sky. "I am only a boy of ten winters, but I will mourn such a death as though she were my own woman," he prayed. "Never have I looked upon such a face of beauty. Never has any woman besides my mother been so caring, so understanding. Oh, hear me now, Sun, the supreme chief of the Blackfoot. Let Sweet Dove enter the camp soon with her child held close to her bosom. Oh, powerful one, please hear my prayers."
The sound of hooves entering the far side of the village, making a sound like distant thunder against the bare, packed earth, caused Spotted Eagle's heartbeat to quicken. He wanted to run and meet the warriors, to see if they had found Sweet Dove alive and well.
But it was as though his black moccasins were fastened to the ground, for he could not move, fearing the worst.
And he was only a boy with an infatuation for an older woman!
Many would call him foolish if he showed his feelings for Sweet Dove. He had guarded them well, even while running, playing, and hunting with the other young braves of his village.
Dressed in only a breechclout and his prized black moccasins, with a beaded headband holding his waist-length, raven-black hair in place, Spotted Eagle stood with his hands doubled into tight fists at his sides. His heart throbbed so hard that it felt
as though someone were inside him, beating drums.
With worried, dark eyes, he watched the solemn procession of horsemen. Then everything within him cried out with despair when he saw the travois being dragged behind the last horse, on which lay a body covered with a bear pelt.
Spotted Eagle's gaze shifted jerkily upward, and he could hardly contain the cries within his heart when he saw that the warrior whose horse was dragging the travois was Brown Elk. He then knew that the one beneath that covering of fur was the beloved Sweet Dove.
As Brown Elk stopped his horse and dismounted, the people of the village crowded around him and the travois, waiting for him to uncover his wife's body. When she was finally in full view, and everyone saw that it was in truth the adorable Sweet Dove, whose sharing gentleness had touched everyone in the village during her lifetime of only eighteen winters, wails burst forth into the air.
Fighting back tears and trying to muster the courage to push his way through the people to get his own look at Sweet Dove, Spotted Eagle swallowed hard and walked stiffly toward the assemblage of wailing Blackfoot, finally managing to squeeze through them.
He soon found himself standing over Sweet Dove's body. The sight almost caused his knees to buckle beneath him.
She was so quiet.
She was so dead!
And the sight of the blood on the skirt of her dress made him stifle a sob beneath his breath, knowing that childbirth had caused the bright red stain.
A sudden thought came to him. He looked desperately up and down the full length of the travois, panic seizing him when he did not see the child anywhere.
''The child?" he blurted, looking up into the woeful eyes of Brown Elk. "I… see no child."
Seeing Spotted Eagle as a mere boy, who should not be showing such an interest in an older woman, especially Brown Elk's very own woman, Brown Elk looked away from Spotted Eagle, flatly ignoring him.
Spotted Eagle's mother came to her son's side. " No-ko-i, my son, this is not a place for young braves," she said, taking his hand.
When she tried to move him away from the travois, Spotted Eagle defied his dear mother for the first time in his life, refusing to budge.
He had not taken a long enough, final look at Sweet Dove before she was prepared for burial.
No one, not even his mother, could deny him that! And still, there was the wonder of the child. "Mother, please tell me," he pleaded, his eyes dark and wide as he gazed up at her. "Where is the child?"
His chieftain father came to Spotted Eagle's side and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. " No-ko-i, my son, the child was gone," Chief Gray Bear said sadly. "Someone took the child before Brown Elk and our warriors found Sweet Dove. They have searched far and wide. The child is nowhere. They searched even as far as the river. There were many wagon, hoof, and footprints there, but no people. Those people were surely many miles away by then, down the river. Those who boarded the large white river raft might have seen the childmight have even taken the child from her mother."
The thought of white people having a child borne of a Blackfoot woman, especially Sweet Dove, caused an intense pain to circle Spotted Eagle's heart.
He could not envision a white woman caring for the child that was meant to feed from Sweet Dove's breast!
And no one would ever know now whether the child was a boy or girl.
Wanting to flee to the hills to say his private prayers for Sweet Dove, Spotted Eagle spoke no more, only gazed sadly down at the woman whose hand had been soft in his and whose voice had spoken to his heart as though he were her brave, and she his woman.
She had never known the depth of his feelings. Only now she might, when his prayers lifted high into the heavens, where she would be starting her long journey to the land of the hereafter. He would speak to her, as well as to the fires of the sun.
She would hear!
He knew that she would hear!
And she would protect their secret well until one day he joined her in death in the Sand Hills, the ghost place of the Blackfoot.
His eyes heavy, his muscles tight, he gazed with a longing now denied him at this woman whose death had touched him so deeply. Even in death she radiated a natural beauty, with her hair blacker than charcoal, her eyes browner than the bark of the tallest fir tree.
Spotted Eagle's heart bled when, for the last time ever, he was able to look at her exquisite facial features, so perfect that surely there could be no one that could compare to her.
Not able to contain his feelings much longer, Spotted Eagle turned and pushed his way through the wailing people and ran from the village. His heart pounded, and tears flooded his eyes as he sought to find that highest peak, hoping to one day find the child borne of the woman of his childhood dreams.
Blinded by tears, he ran onward until finally he was high above the forest, his village in the distance hidden to him by the thick covering of trees that reached up to this bluff on which he now sat on bended knee.
Spotted Eagle became conscious of a drum- mingthe double beat of Indian tom-toms, so far away that it was like the throb of the pulse in his ear. The drums were vibrating and speaking to the spirits.
The wailing of his Blackfoot people reached Spotted Eagle's heart with a renewed despair.
He lifted his eyes to the heavens and began pleading with the fires of the sun to give him strength to accept this horrible thing that had happened to his people, the death of someone so cherished, someone that everyone would sorely miss.
"Pity me now, oh Sun!" he cried. "Help me, Oh Great Above, Medicine Power!"
There was a strange silence, and then Spotted Eagle's eyes widened and his heartbeat momentarily wavered in its beats when he heard something that seemed unreal, yet wonderful!
" A- wah-hehtake courage, my son!"
Those words, the strength of the voice, startled Spotted Eagle. He looked quickly around and saw no one, then looked slowly up at the sky again, smiling. He knew that Old Man, the chief god of the Blackfoot, their creator Napi, had heard his heart's sadness, his prayer, and had spoken to him. The Sun and Old Man knew his feelings, even though perhaps it had been wrong to love a woman twice his age.
He smiled as tears rushed from his eyes, knowing now that, yes, they understood.
They would lift the burden of sadness from his heart, for he must look to the future. They, as well as he, knew that he would one day be chief of his people. To learn the ways of a powerful chief, one must prepare oneself for it.
And a part of that preparation was learning how to accept death…
As the tom-tom droned song upon song, Spotted Eagle lifted his thoughts to the heaven again. "Oh, hear now, Sun! Wo-ka-hit, listen to my pleas. Help lift my burdens. Send them away from me, like an eagle in flight. Hai-yah, my heart cries out to you to let me acc
ept my loss. Send my words into the heart of Sweet Dove as she walks the road of the hereafter. Touch her heart with a song that will stay with her until I, too, become one of the stars in the sky, twinkling down upon those I have been forced to leave behind."
He prayed until night fell like a black cloak around him. He peered into the depths of the stars, watching the aurora as the death dance of the spirits began. He searched slowly for that special star, that which twinkled the brightest, and when he found it, he knew that Sweet Dove was there, looking down upon him with a smile, understanding a child's heart and a child's despair.
There was no wind.
Then suddenly a sound came across the valley below him and up the hill like the noise of thunder, as a great owl came flying toward Spotted Eagle, its wide wings just barely missing his face.
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