When a sudden bolt of lightning splintered a tree close by, there was nothing to be done about the mules that were just as quickly spooked.
Jolena screamed.
The mules attached to all of the wagons began squealing and scrambling in all directions. The wagoners cursed and snapped their whips along the backs of the confused, frightened mules, causing the animals to strain even more desperately at their harnesses.
The chains clanked.
The axles groaned as the mules turned in a frenzy and began running blindly toward the edge of the cliff.
Spotted Eagle had been lagging behind on his stallion, discussing the day's plans with Two Ridges, when the storm broke and everything around him became a frenzied mass.
Stunned, he watched through the blinding rain as the mules began running toward the cliff. His insides froze as first one wagon plunged over the side, then another.
And even when Jolena's wagon went over the side of the cliff and he felt as though his heart leapt from inside him, he was unable to do anything since it had all happened so quickly. In one wink of an eye his woman was lost to him!
"Can it be that what we saw is real?" Two Ridges said, in his voice a panic. He reached over and clasped Spotted Eagle's arm. " Hai-yah! Tell me that what I saw is not real! Tell me, Spotted Eagle, that it was not real!"
Spotted Eagle yanked his arm away, sank his heels into the flanks of his horse, and rode off in a hard gallop toward the scene. His pulse raced, and within his heart there was an ache far worse than he had experienced when he heard of Sweet Dove's passing.
This time he had lost his womanthe woman who was his future, the mother of children that would now never be born of their love!
Tears scorched Spotted Eagle's cheeks. Dismounting in one leap when he reached the cliff, he clung to the horse's reins as he dared to take a step closer so that he could look down upon the wreckage below him. He could scarcely summon up the courage to look over the cliff and see her broken body.
Yet he could not turn away until he knew for certain that she was lying among her friends and brother, dead…
Two Ridges was still too stupefied by the suddenness of what had happened to move. He watched with bated breath as Spotted Eagle took another step closer to the edge of the cliff, waiting for his friend to emit a loud cry of despair.
Not wanting to experience such a moment, Two Ridges turned his eyes away from his friend, trying to focus them on something else that might make him forget that horrible sight of Jolena's wagon plunging over the cliff. Two Ridges swept his eyes slowly around him. The rain was now only a slight drizzle, making the scene more visible than only moments ago. He still refused to look Spotted Eagle's way, although he wondered why his friend was so quiet, as though his eyes had not yet found the woman of his desire.
This gave Two Ridges a soft ray of hope within his heartthat perhaps his copper princess had not truly died after all and that what he had seen had been a mirage caused by the iridescent flashing of the lightning combined with the blinding haze of the rain.
His heart thudding at the thought, Two Ridges started to dismount and go to see for himself that perhaps what he and his friend had thought they had seen had not been real at all.
But just as he was swinging his leg over his saddle, something caught his attention.
"Jolena?" he whispered harshly, his pulse now pounding in his ears at the sight of a slight hand lying on the ground, stretching out from behind a thickly leafed bush.
"Can it be?" Two Ridges mumbled to himself. Could that be Jolena? Had she been thrown free?
In his anxiousness to see if it were true, he started to shout at Spotted Eagle, but something wicked inside him told him not totold him that this could be the perfect opportunity to do as he pleased, for a change.
If this was Jolena, he could have her all to himself!
He would carry her away and treat her wounds. She would be so grateful to this Blackfoot warrior that she would be his, instead of Spotted Eagle's.
The thought dizzied him as he jumped to the ground and ran stealthily toward the bush. When he stepped quickly behind it, everything within him mellowed at the sight of Jolena lying there, unconscious, but obviously not injured all that badly.
Smiling to himself, Two Ridges knew that Jolena's unconscious state gave him the opportunity he needed to carry her away without alerting Spotted Eagle to his friend's deceit. He did not even allow himself to consider the end results of such a deceit.
But having Jolena as his own was well worth any sacrifice. Two Ridges swept her up into his arms and carried her limp body to his horse.
Casting quick glances Spotted Eagle's way as he now knelt at the edge of the cliff, obviously praying for the soul of his woman, Two Ridges placed Jolena across his saddle and swung himself into it.
Still cautiously watching Spotted Eagle, Two Ridges eased Jolena onto his lap and leaned her head against his chest, holding her in place with one of his powerful arms, while with his free hand he gripped the reins and urged his horse quietly around.
His heart pounding, Two Ridges felt blessed that soft moss cushioned the sound of his horse's hooves as they moved onward. Two Ridges knew where he would go. There was a secret cave that he knew. Never had he shared the location of this cave with Spotted Eagle or any of his other friends. It had been Two Ridges' secret place to play as a child and pray as an adult.
Jolena would be the only one to share his secret.
Moving into the shadows of the forest, Two Ridges sighed with relief. Sinking his knees into the sides of his horse, he sent it quickly onward. When Jolena moaned and moved slightly in his arms, his insides melted as he glanced down at her. He studied her features, finding them beautiful and alluring, yet now that he was this close, there seemed something different about her from the beauty he had admired in her at arm's length.
It was only a slight resemblance that he was seeing, yet it was therea look in her sleep that he had seen often when his very own father lay sleeping.
There was something about the way she held her lips, the way she seemed to be smiling even while asleep…
He had admired that trait in his father, whose heart was always so kind to everyone, even strangers, that his kindness had always followed him as he fell asleep.
This gave Two Ridges a strange foreboding inside his heart, yet he scoffed and cast these feelings aside, knowing that although this woman was Indian in all of her features, she was not related to anyone that Two Ridges knew!
Most certainly Jolena was not the daughter of his father! A sudden thought gripped Two Ridges' insides then, and he recalled the story of his father's first wife and how a child had been taken from her. No one had ever seen the child again, nor had it been known if it was a boy or a girl.
No one even knew if the child was still ali
ve!
''This is not my father's daughter," Two Ridges said, convincing himself that she wasn't.
The reason this woman smiled in her sleep was only because she was kind and sweet in all ways possible!
She was what he wanted in a wife, even if he won her love at the same time that he betrayed his friend!
Clutching her to him, as though his own life depended on it, Two Ridges rode relentlessly onward, hoping to reach the cave before Spotted Eagle discovered him gone.
Spotted Eagle's eyes scanned the land below him, his heart bleeding as he saw the broken, twisted bodies and debris scattered everywhere. There was no way to identify those who were dead without seeing them up close.
His head bent low, he moved slowly to his feet and without much thought, too filled with remorse to think about anything but his beloved woman, he swung himself into his saddle and wheeled his horse around to seek a path that would take him to the bottom of the cliff.
Between him and Two Ridges, a way would be found!
Raising his head to tell Two Ridges to help him at this time of his deep despair, Spotted Eagle's lips parted in a surprised gasp when he discovered that his young friend was no longer there.
"What would make him leave?" he whispered to himself, peering ahead, hoping to see his friend waiting farther up the path, yet he saw no sign of him anywhere.
Puzzled and disappointed, yet not wanting to take any more time wondering about a friend who would abandon him at such a time as this, Spotted Eagle set his jaw hard and searched until he found the safest way to travel down the steep incline.
Holding his reins tightly, and locking his knees to the sides of his horse to steady himself as his stallion's hooves began slipping and sliding on the loose rock beneath them, Spotted Eagle determinedly moved lower and lower until he reached the place where broken bodies, scattered journals, and pieces and wheels of wagons were strewn about.
There was not a sound to be heard as Spotted Eagle dismounted. The birds in the trees had even ceased to sing as the fires of the sun poured down from the heavens on the death scene spread around before Spotted Eagle's tear-filled eyes.
Stiffly he went from body to body, gasping at the sight of those who were so bloodied and smashed it was impossible to identify them.
The clothes on each victim were so ripped and torn and covered with blood that Spotted Eagle could not even use that means to identify his woman.
He shouted to the heavens a cry of despair, devastated to know that Jolena was gone from him so quickly!
After searching for a while longer, desperate for any clues as to which one might be Jolena, Spotted Eagle finally gave up, feeling that he had no other recourse but to leave the death scene.
Jolena and Kirk's bodies were unidentifiable.
There was no way to separate them from the others, to give them a proper burial.
All that he wanted now was to escape, to put this horror from his mind, yet he knew he never would be able to forget!
It was there forever, like leaves carved into stone as they become fossilized with age!
In a daze, he mounted his horse again. With his head hanging and his heart and soul empty, he sent his horse up the side of the steep incline again. Surely Two Ridges would be there now, waiting for him. It made no sense that his friend would leave him at such a time.
If ever Spotted Eagle needed a friend, it was now.
Finally back on solid ground, the shadows of the forest on one side of him, the sheer cliff on the other, Spotted Eagle placed a hand over his eyes to shield them from the blinding rays of the sun, scanning the land for his friend.
Again his jaw tightened, now seeing Two Ridges as a coward, one who rode from death instead of looking it straight in the eye!
But too caught up in sadness, Spotted Eagle gave Two Ridges no more thought and rode off with hunched shoulders toward his village.
Never had he felt so alone as now. It was as though he had lost Sweet Dove a second timeand he knew that this time he would never get over the loss!
Chapter Nineteen
Moaning, her whole body aching, Jolena slowly opened her eyes. The embers of a fire glowed warm beside her and the aroma of cooked rabbit wafted to her nose from the spit it hung on, low over the fire, dripping its tantalizing juices into the glowing coals beneath it.
Feeling around her with her hands, she soon realized that she was lying on a layer of blankets.
Her gaze moved upward, but she could see no stars, no sky, no moon.
"Where am I?" she whispered, leaning up on one elbow, moaning again as she realized how much more she ached with the effort of moving. How did she get here? Why was she aching so badly?
Moving slowly to a sitting position, she looked more carefully around her. When she spied someone lying across the fire from her, obviously asleep, she sucked in a wild breath of relief, thinking it was Spotted Eagle.
Her sigh drew Two Ridges awake, and he bolted to a sitting position, remembering that he had not bound Jolena's wrists and ankles. She would not have had a chance to flee him while he stayed awake, guarding her, but he had not counted on being weary enough to go to sleep so easily.
When he saw that the fire had died down only to embers, he realized just how long he had been asleep.
Too long.
He was lucky that Jolena was still there.
Jolena gasped and grabbed a blanket protectively around her when she discovered that she was not with Spotted Eagle at all! She was staring over the embers at Two Ridges.
Her pulse raced as fear crept into her heart, and she looked wildly around her, realizing that she was in a cave, with no memory at all of how she might have gotten there.
Not seeing any sign of Spotted Eagle anywhere, Jolena glared over at Two Ridges. "I do not have to ask how I got here," she said in a hiss. "You brought me. How could Spotted Eagle have allowed it? Where is he now?"
Before Two Ridges had the chance to respond, what had happened during the storm began coming to Jolena in flashes, as though bolts of lightning were going off and on inside her brain. Each flash brought up new memories that made her heart seem to stop still within her body and her throat to constrict. Everything was so vivid to her in her mind's eye that she could not scream or even talk.
The blinding rain!
The lurid flashes of lightning!
The frightened, wild-eyed mules!
Her screams as she watched the other wagons plunging over the sides of the cliff.
She held her face in her hands as she began sobbing. Then something else came to her, flooding her memory. She thought she had felt strong arms around her waist, dragging her from the wagon just before it toppled over the cliff.
But she now realized it had to have been a savage illusion. The moment she hit the ground, she had been knocked uncons
cious from the force of the fall.
She lifted sorrowful eyes up at Two Ridges, unable to remember who had saved her.
"Who else survived but the two of us?" she demanded, moving to her knees, yet still clutching the blanket around her shoulders. "Two Ridges, tell me who lived… and who died."
Two Ridges moved to his feet and stepped around the fire, squatting down onto his haunches before her. "We are the only survivors," he said, the lie slipping across his lips easier than he would have imagined. "I have brought you to a cave. I have built you a fire for warmth and have prepared food for you. Perhaps it is best now if you eat, not talk. You will need your strength to travel onward to my village."
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