She envisioned herself back in Saint Louis and recalled how she had listened to the sounds of the one giant cottonwood tree that stood just outside her bedroom window. On days when she was caught up in wondering about her heritage, and where her true father might be, she had listened to the cottonwood tree, allowing it to soothe her in her moments of loneliness for a life that she had been denied.
Her stomach rumbled, and the gnawing ache at the pit of it drew Jolena's eyes back open. She knew that she must travel onward, if not to find civilization of some sort, at least to find food. She had been able to quench her thirst in the clear, sparkling streams, and an occa- sional blackberry bush had offered her some respite from her hunger as she had gobbled up handsful of the berries.
But now, even that meal was far behind her and she knew that she must eat soon or collapse from weakness.
She could feel it already beginningthe trembling in her knees and the slight dizziness.
"I must move onward," she whispered, pushing her way through knee-high prairie grass. "I must. I must."
The sun seemed to be branding her as it beamed its heated rays down upon her. She wished the day away, hungering for the cooler breezes of evening, yet fearing the unknown again in the deep, purple shadows of night.
Jolena stopped to take a quavering breath, and to use the hem of her skirt to sponge the perspiration from her face. As she dropped the skirt down again, something grabbed her attention. Her heart seemed to skip several beats when again she heard something wafting through the air.
"Is that children's laughter?" she whispered, then stiffened when she heard the faint barking of dogs and neighing of horses.
Then she crinkled her nose as she picked up the wonderful aroma of meat roasting over an open fire.
All of these things could only mean one thing.
She was nearing either a settler's cabinor an Indian village! The thought of finally finding someoneanyoneout here in the middle of nowhere gave Jolena the incentive she needed to go that one more mile, if needed, to finally be safe from the dangers of being alone, and to eat. Each step she took now was a true effort, as though it just might be her last.
Suddenly she saw them!
Her eyes grew wide and her heartbeat went wild with the discovery.
Through the cottonwoods she could see dark, smoke-blackened tepees, their peaks releasing drifting, lazy smoke up into the breeze. Every open place in the valley was covered with tepees!
The hills close by the village were dotted with horses grazing in a large, wide corral.
She shifted her gaze and watched children scampering about barefoot and in brief breechclouts, chasing one another in what seemed mock battles, with limbs for lances and rifles.
Dogs followed on their heels, yapping.
Jolena stepped behind a tree, suddenly fearful of approaching an Indian village alone. She watched with a shallow breath as women came into view, stooping, tying and hauling their gathered wood that would feed their fires tonight.
Jolena looked past these women at the blue smoke of the cooking fires rising into the still air in little columns from the tepees, soon disappearing into nothingness.
Her eyes widened, and her stomach growled again at the sight of meat cooking on a spit over a large, outdoor fire in the center of the village.
She knew that she had no choice but to go on into the village. She eased from behind the tree, ready to approach the women, but found them gone, and also the children and dogs that had been with them.
Sighing heavily, Jolena moved on toward the village, casting all fears aside, not allowing herself to think they might be enemies, instead of the friendly Blackfoot. If they were the Cree, Sioux, Crow, or Snake she did not know how she would be received. She did know that Spotted Eagle had been accompanying the expedition of lepidopterists in part because of the danger of a Cree attack. He had most definitely seen the Cree as his enemy and the enemy of white people.
Bringing Spotted Eagle to the surface of her memory again made a sad longing wash through her. She wiped tears from her eyes and trudged onward, soon reaching the outer edge of the village.
Limping slightly, Jolena moved toward the closest dwelling, a colorful tepee made from buffalo hides with strange medicine animals painted on it, knowing that it should not matter which one she approached for assistance.
As she circled around the tepee from behind, she stopped when she discovered an older man sitting in front of the tepee on a blanket, polishing his arrow shafts by passing them through holes drilled in a thin, flat rock. She had been so quiet in her approach that he had not yet discovered her there, which gave her time to study him and to guess whether or not he might be friendly enough to approach.
This man, who wore a vest of puma skin and fringed buckskin trousers had a great, arching chest and immense shoulders. His hair was black and thick and hung in braids down his massive, straight back. His face had lines of force and intelligence. She felt suddenly awed in his majestic presence and wondered if he might be someone of great importance.
Her eyes stopped on his moccasins, causing her heart to jump with relief.
They were black!
The Blackfoot were the only Indians known to wear black moccasins. That had to mean that she was in a friendly camp of Indians!
She turned her eyes slowly around her, deciding that this man was surely not the chief of this village, for farther into the village sat a much larger tepee positioned on a knoll that overlooked the others, as she imagined a chief's tepee would be.
A shuffling sound and a gasp drew Jolena's head around in a jerk. She swallowed hard and placed a hand at her throat when she found the older man staring at her, his eyes full of questions as he gazed intensely at her faceas though perhaps he knew it well already!
Brown Elk began inching backward, away from Jolena, then was forced to stop when his back came into contact with the cowhide fabric of his tepee. His heart was thudding wildly and he was feeling faint, for never had he expected to see that face againnot until he joined his beloved wives in the land of the hereafter!
''How… can… it be?" he finally stammered.
Jolena had already experienced such a reaction from another BlackfootSpotted Eagle!
He had also looked at her as though seeing a ghost, thinking that she was her mother!
That had to mean that this man also recognized the resemblance, which had to mean that he was surely from the same tribe, the same village, perhaps the same dwelling!
"Are you Brown Elk?" she blurted out, hoping he would understand her. She might be looking upon the face of her true father for the first time in her life! It did not seem possible, yet there it was in the way he was react
ing to her knowledge of his name!
"My name is Brown Elk," he said in English, his voice drawn. "And yours? What are you called? Where did you come from? Why are you here? How do you know my name?"
His gaze swept over her again, raising an eyebrow at the way she was dressed. It was obvious that she was an Indian, yet she was dressed as a white woman!
He looked at her again with wild, wondering eyes, knowing of only one way all of this could be possible!
She was the mirror image of Sweet Dove.
She was… his daughter!
It was as though it had been destined for them to meet in such a way!
After all these years of wondering, Jolena was in the presence of her true father, and now she didn't know what to do next.
She so badly wanted to move into his arms and cling to him, to take from him the comfort that she needed now to get her past her grieving for Spotted Eagle and Kirk.
But she knew that she had to hold herself in check. Just because he was her father by blood did not make them instantly love each other as daughter and father! Love would surely have to grow between them.
He was a father who would have to accept that the baby he had been denied was suddenly a grown woman.
"You are Brown Elk," Jolena said, her voice trembling as much as her knees and fingers. "I am called Jolena by the white community, but I am not sure what Blackfoot name you would have called me had I not been taken by white people instead of being left for you to find on the day my mother sacrificed her life to give me mine."
Brown Elk's shoulders swayed with the absolute knowledge now that this was his daughter, the child he had mourned. Even after his second wife had given birth to Two Ridges, this son had not been enough to erase the sadness of having lost his other child.
When his second wife had died from a feverish malady, he had not married again, but resumed trying to ease his haunting thoughts of where his first child was, and whether or not the child was even alive! And now he was blessed! His daughter had returned to him.
After all these years, his pleas and prayers to the fires of the sun had finally been answered.
Brown Elk reached his arms out for Jolena. " Ok-yi, come to me, daughter," he said thickly, fighting back the urge to cry that made men look like women in the eyes of those who witnessed such a weakness. "Let me fill my arms and heart with you. This has been denied me long enough."
Sobbing with joy, Jolena eased herself into his thick, muscular arms. She hugged him tightly, reveling in the wonder of the moment. "I never thought this would happen," she cried, turning her dark eyes up to him. "I have dreamed it. Oh, how many times I have dreamed it. I've prayed for this. It took a long time, but God finally answered my prayers."
Brown Elk placed his fingers at her waist and eased her slightly away from him, enabling him to get a good look at her. "I, too, have prayed," he said. "The Blackfoot creator, Napi, has heard my prayers. He has finally granted them true."
They gazed smilingly at one another a few moments longer, then Brown Elk frowned. "How is it that you are alone?" he said, his voice drawn. He swept his eyes over her, seeing her complete disarray.
Then he gazed into her eyes. "How did you find this Blackfoot village?" he said softly. "How long have you been wandering, looking for it?"
Jolena was catapulted back to the tragic acci- dent. She lowered her eyes, truly not wanting to talk about it.
Not the death of those she loved!
Nor of Two Ridges' deceit of a friendand near rape of his friend's woman!
All of this caused a bitter ache to circle her heart, yet she knew that she must tell at least part of the tragedy.
She would not reveal Two Ridges' true nature to his people. That would happen soon enough, when he returned to the village and saw that she was there! He would not know if she had or had not told what he had done.
This would make him react strangely enough in front of his people so that they would ask what was the cause of his behavior. She would stand back, smiling smugly when he tried to invent a lie that might free him of all blame and shame!
"You show such pain in your eyes," Brown Elk said as he placed a forefinger beneath Jolena's chin, forcing her eyes to lock with his. "What has happened? You can tell your father."
Then his eyes widened with horror as he once again swept them over Jolena, remembering that Spotted Eagle and Two Ridges had gone to guide a group of white people. Lepidopterists, he believed they were called. Could his daughter have been among those people? If so, where was Spotted Eagle and Two Ridges? They had been hired as guides!
"Spotted Eagle and Two Ridges?" he cried. "Do you know these two Blackfoot?"
Jolena felt her throat become constricted at the mention of those names. "How would you know that I did?" she said in almost a whisper.
"Then you are in the Montana Territory seeking butterflies?" Brown Elk said, his voice guarded.
"Yes, I was," Jolena said, finding it difficult to speak about it without reliving in her mind's eye all over again the tragedy of it all.
Brown Elk placed his fingers to her shoulders. "You say that as though you are no longer a part of the expedition," he said, his voice drawn. He glanced at her disheveled clothes again and at her tangled hair, suddenly feeling as if he was drowning inside at the thought of what this all meant.
"Where is Two Ridges?" he said in a rush of words. "Where is Spotted Eagle?"
Jolena stared up at him, realizing that he had guessed what had happened, and she dreaded having to tell him that what he feared was in part true.
One Blackfoot warrior was dead.
The other…
Oh, God, what could she say about the other?
This moment, when she should be happy to have finally found her true father and true people, she felt trappedtrapped by someone else's lies and deceits and lusts.
Chapter Twenty-One
The sudden alarm in Brown Elk's eyes made Jolena aware that he perhaps knew her answer before she spoke the words out loud.
Even though talking of Spotted Eagle's death would tear her heart apart, Jolena knew that she had no choice but to tell her Blackfoot father the truth. She owed him so much for having been denied his daughter for the first eighteen years of her life, and she never wanted to be anything but truthful with him.
"Spotted Eagle and Two Ridges were doing well their task of keeping the expedition from harm," she said, swallowing hard. She nervously clasped her hands behind her. "But there was nothing they could do about the fierce lightning. It caused the mules and horses to go wild," she said in a rush of words. She lowered her eyes, finding it even harder than she had at first imagined to tell the rest. It wasn't that she had actually seen Spotted Eagle's horse become spooked enough to carry Spotted Eagle over the cliff. She knew it to be true because Two Ridges had told her that it had happened.
Her he�
�art skipped a beat. What if Two Ridges had been telling a lie, in hopes that she would lean on him for protection in the absence of her beloved Spotted Eagle?
Then she felt foolish for such a thought.
Even Two Ridges could not be that vindictive.
She had to accept that Spotted Eagle was goneforever.
Hands gripping her shoulders, almost painfully, caused Jolena to look suddenly up, finding her Blackfoot father's dark eyes silently pleading with her.
"Tell me the rest," Brown Elk said, his voice drawn. "Did Two Ridges and Spotted Eagle lose control of their horses? Were they thrown and trampled to death? Tell me. I must know the fate of my son, Two Ridges!"
Everything that Brown Elk was saying was lost to Jolena except that he had called Two Ridges his son!
Savage Illusions Page 21
