Shirleen’s eyes widened with pleasure at being given an Indian name . . . and one that was so beautiful!
She hoped that Morning Thunder’s kindness wasn’t part of a scheme to make her relax so she would be a more compliant prisoner. She did want to trust those who had made kind overtures toward her, especially Blue Thunder.
“I love the name,” Shirleen murmured, blushing slightly when she noticed him studying her face. “Thank you.”
“In my tongue you thank someone by saying pila-maye,” Morning Thunder explained, smiling at her as he set aside the cloth that he had used to wash the blood from her hair.
“Pila-maye,” Shirleen murmured. “I will try to remember the correct words in your tongue when I have a reason to thank someone.”
“You will have many reasons, for my people are going to be nothing but kind to you,” Morning Thunder said, now applying a white medicinal powder to her wound. “As I am being kind to you today, I shall also be kind tomorrow.”
Shirleen stiffened when the powder he was applying to her wound caused a pain to shoot through her scalp.
“It will hurt for only a little while, and then the true healing begins,” Morning Thunder said as he drew his hand away from her head.
“You are so very kind,” Shirleen murmured. “I will always remember your kindness.”
“And I will remember your soft sweetness,” Morning Thunder said, his eyes smiling into hers as she blushed.
She was feeling less and less apprehensive about being in the Assiniboine village, especially now that she believed that these Indians truly wanted to help her.
Now if she could only find Megan!
Chapter Eight
So sweet the blush of bashfulness,
Even pity scarce can wish it less.
—Byron
Alone and now dressed comfortably in a clean doeskin gown that the shaman had given her, Shirleen sat on a soft pallet of blankets beside the fire in the tepee that had been assigned her. Physically, she was feeling better since Morning Thunder had medicated her wound.
But tears filled her eyes, for she had never felt as alone and desperate as now.
Yes, she had gone through some rough times with her husband Earl, but nothing compared to being captured by renegades and separated from her precious daughter.
She was beginning to fear that she would never know Megan’s fate, even if she went to a fort after she left the Indian village and reported her loss to the colonel in charge. Out there in the West, one could disappear and never be heard of again.
That was one thing that had frightened her when Earl had talked of moving to Wyoming, yet at the time, he was behaving normally and protectively toward her, so she had put her trust in him. She had believed he would protect her and had left Boston without so much as a look back over her shoulder.
It had been exciting to think of going to a new land, where she and Earl would build a home and have children.
She had felt proud to be creating a home of her own. Before she had met and married Earl, she’d scarcely left her parents’ home, except for an occasional social function with her parents and their friends.
She had not even joined the other girls her age to go to parties, where she heard they danced the night away in beautiful gowns in the arms of handsome partners.
Although many young men had wanted to come courting, enthralled by her sweetness and beauty, she had not had the desire to receive any of them inside her heart.
She had been content spending time alone in her bedroom, reading books and dreaming of things that surely would never be.
She had at times even dreamed of coming face-to-face with a handsome Indian after reading novels about life out West.
It seemed strange that she was actually living that dream, only now it was filled with too much grief to be anything like her girlish fantasies.
She had thought when she’d met Earl that he might be her only chance of seeing what the West was truly like. When he had come to her home to visit her father with talk of business affairs, she had heard him mention that he had a dream of one day moving out West. At those words, she had been instantly intrigued by him.
She had willingly accepted his first invitation to go to dinner . . . and there it had begun.
Just the thought of being free and moving to a new land with a new husband had been so exciting, Shirleen had sometimes felt sick to her stomach. In those days, excitement had caused her body to react in such a way.
Now?
She had not had anything to get excited about for some time, except for when she had started planning her escape with her daughter.
Of course, fear had been mixed in with that excitement, for she had never been on her own under any circumstances.
She had never been the master of her own destiny.
Not even now, unless what the young chief said was true, and that she could leave when she felt strong enough to do so.
As it was now, when she tried to stand, she got dizzy.
But otherwise, she felt much better. She had been cared for so gently by the shaman, and had been given such a nice, soft gown to wear, since her own clothes had been ruined by all the blood.
The aroma of the food cooking over the fire made her belly suddenly growl. Trusting that the food in the pot over the fire was edible, even if the ingredients might be strange to her, she grabbed the empty wooden bowl and reached for the ladle that rested in the food.
Though she did not recognize any of the vegetables, or know what kind of meat floated amid them, she ladled a bowl full. Then she sat back down and grabbed up a spoon that had also been brought to her, and ate ravenously.
She didn’t stop until a surprising visitor appeared at the entrance to her tepee. She was stunned to see that it was a white woman who wore a beautifully beaded doeskin dress and matching moccasins, her long, blond hair worn in a lone braid down her back.
“I have come to talk with you. May I enter?” the woman asked, questioning Shirleen with her eyes.
“Yes, I guess so,” Shirleen mumbled, her eyes widening as the woman came and sat down beside her.
Shirleen was astonished to see another white woman in the Assiniboine village. This woman seemed content to be dressed as an Indian squaw, and was evidently allowed to come and go as she pleased.
A sudden disturbing thought came to Shirleen. She had heard about powerful Indian chiefs taking white women as wives; could this woman be Chief Blue Thunder’s wife?
But she just could not imagine those two together. The woman was older and not all that pretty. She was big–boned and fleshy.
“I am Speckled Fawn,” the other woman said, smiling at Shirleen. “I see that you are surprised to see another white woman in this village. I’m sure you are wondering why I am here.”
No longer hungry for food, but instead for information, Shirleen set her half-empty bowl aside. “Yes, I do want to know who you are,” she said guardedly as she gazed into the bluest eyes she had ever seen. They were even bluer than her husband’s and her daughter’s. “Why are you here? Clearly you are no captive, for you are free to come and go as you please.”
Shirleen leaned toward the woman. “Why have you come to see me? Were you made to come and talk with me?” she blurted out. “Is it a part of the young chief’s ploy to make me feel more at ease among his people?”
“Chief Blue Thunder is not a scheming man,” Speckled Fawn said softly. “He is perhaps the kindest man I have ever known.”
“Are you . . . his . . . wife?” Shirleen blurted out. As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished she hadn’t asked the woman such a question. The last thing she wanted to do was betray her keen interest in the handsome chief.
“I am married to an Indian of this village, but not to Blue Thunder,” Speckled Fawn said.
“Blue Thunder has no wife,” Speckled Fawn went on. “He did, but . . .”
Not wanting to think of the woman who’d been so kind to her, and who was now dead bec
ause of the renegades, Speckled Fawn quickly changed the subject.
“I have come here to assure you that you are among friends,” Speckled Fawn said. “These people are of the Assiniboine tribe. You are very fortunate to have been rescued by them, as was I.”
“You . . . too . . . ?” Shirleen asked, her eyes widening.
“Yes. I have been here for some time now and enjoy my life as never before,” Speckled Fawn said, smiling at Shirleen. “I have come to do what I can to make your time here more pleasant. The first thing I will do is take you to the pile of clothes that were brought to the village after Blue Thunder and his warriors took them from the Comanche renegades. Surely among those clothes are some that you will want. Unfortunately, the things you had on when you were injured are not fit to be worn again. The bloodstains on them are permanent.”
Speckled Fawn paused and smiled at Shirleen. “I understand why you might be afraid to trust anyone in this village,” she said. “I was afraid, too, when I first arrived here. I had heard horrible tales of how white women were mistreated by Indians. Well, it did not take long for me to learn that the Indians at this village would be far kinder to me than anyone in the white community. My family was slaughtered on their way to Wyoming, and I was forced to do anything that I could to survive . . . things I am not proud of having done.”
She paused, sucked in a nervous breath, then continued. “I had been a dance hall queen, and sometimes even worse than that, but circumstances occurred to change that part of my life,” Speckled Fawn said solemnly. “I won’t go into what those circumstances were, but just that I wandered alone and was near death when I was found by the Assiniboine Indians and brought to this village. I have now been here for five summers, which in the white way of describing things is five years. I was married shortly after my arrival to a man of this village, and I have never been happier.”
As Shirleen listened to what the woman told her, she saw just how happy she did seem to be. Yet Shirleen was not ready to open up and discuss her own life with this woman who was a total stranger to her.
Who was to say if what the woman told her was truth? Perhaps she was just toying with Shirleen, or even jealous that another white woman was now in the village.
“What is your name?” Speckled Fawn asked softly. “Surely you will share at least that with me, for I am here as a friend, and the only other white person in the village.”
Still Shirleen said nothing, yet she was thinking of the Indian name she had been given by the shaman. It had a beautiful sound to it.
Tiny Flames.
Yes, if she had to be called something while she was in this village, she wished to be known as Tiny Flames.
But Shirleen wasn’t ready to share even that much with this white woman, not until she knew whether her friendly overtures were genuine.
Speckled Fawn got to her feet. “If you don’t want to tell me your name, that’s fine and dandy,” she said, shrugging. “But please come with me to sort through the clothes.”
Shirleen quickly shook her head, refusing to do anything this woman asked her to do.
“I understand,” Speckled Fawn said softly. “Well, by gum, if you won’t go with me, I’ll bring some clothes to you.”
Speckled Fawn left and soon returned with a huge bag.
Shirleen’s eyes widened as the woman dumped the clothes out on the mats that covered the earthen floor.
She gasped when she saw that many of the clothes had belonged to her and her daughter. Her eyes lingered on one of Megan’s dresses, which Shirleen had made only recently. Each stitch had been taken with the deepest love. When Megan had put it on, she’d been so delighted by the embroidered flowers on the collar, she had swirled around and around, giggling. It was a special moment between mother and daughter that was their very own.
She suddenly thought of the sweater she had put on Megan this morning. Megan had even tried to put a few stitches of embroidery on the front herself, since Shirleen was sewing baby chickens on it. She’d wanted to make it extra special for her daughter since Megan loved baby chickens so much.
Recalling the sight of Megan rushing outside with the sweater on to play with the baby chicks, Shirleen felt tears prick her eyes. She hoped it would keep Megan warm at night wherever she was.
She swallowed hard as she fought her doubts that Megan was even still alive.
“May I be alone?” Shirleen suddenly asked, picking up Megan’s tiny dress and holding it to her breast. “Please?”
“Yes, I’ll leave,” Speckled Fawn said, already turning to walk toward the entrance.
She stopped and turned and gazed into Shirleen’s eyes again. “But while I am gone, please choose the clothes you want to keep, for the rest will be divided among the women of this village.”
Shirleen nodded and waited breathlessly to again be totally alone. She needed this time to think of a way to discover the whereabouts of her daughter.
But . . . how . . . ?
Chapter Nine
There is nothing held so dear as love,
If only it be hard to win.
—Ingelow
Deep in thought about what she had just experienced with the stranger who had been brought into the village, Speckled Fawn stepped into the tepee she shared with her Indian husband.
She stopped before going farther, her mind struck by something that had just transpired in the other tepee.
It was the woman’s reaction to seeing a child’s dress.
It was the reaction of a mother who longed for her child!
Did the woman’s reaction mean that the dress belonged to her daughter? But if so, where was she?
And why wouldn’t the woman share even her name with Speckled Fawn? Surely she had seen that Speckled Fawn had come to visit her as a friend.
But still . . . the woman had only spoken when Speckled Fawn had first arrived at the tepee. Otherwise she had remained silent, except at the last, when she’d plucked the child’s dress from the other clothes.
Yes, the tiny dress had prompted the woman to react, surely evoking memories that pained her.
Yet no one had said anything about a small child, a girl, being among those who had been killed by the renegades.
Was the woman’s daughter even now at the mercy of Big Nose and the evil men who had managed to flee the ambush by Blue Thunder and his warriors?
Realizing that eyes were on her, Speckled Fawn looked quickly down at her husband, who sat beside the fire, a blanket wrapped around his thin, slumped shoulders.
When he smiled somewhat blankly at her, Speckled Fawn’s heart felt a warmth and depth of love she had never known she could feel for a man. Especially a man who was elderly, and who no longer had the ability to speak.
He now sat, day in and day out, awaiting his time to die, so that he could join his beloved ancestors in the sky.
But until then, Speckled Fawn did everything humanly possible to make him happy.
She believed that he was still alive only because she was there to love and care for him.
She just wished that he could talk, and still had the capacity to reason, because she badly wished to talk to him about the white woman, and especially her reaction to the tiny dress. She would love to know his opinion on the situation.
But as it was, she could only tell him of her feelings, which she often did in order to make him feel that he was still involved in life. She spoke even though she knew that he could never talk back to her.
“My husband, I’ve returned home to sit with you, to talk and make you happy,” Speckled Fawn said to Dancing Shadow. At one time, when he was younger and had his full faculties, he had been his people’s shaman.
Speckled Fawn noticed that, as usual, her words had not registered, for his eyes had already turned away from her and he was again only watching the leaping flames of the fire in the firepit.
Used to this reaction, but never liking it any more than the last time she had tried to break through his terrible silence, Speckl
ed Fawn sighed heavily.
She sat down beside him and took one of his bony hands in hers. She held it, feeling its coldness even though he was sitting close to the warmth of the fire.
Too often of late he felt cold when she touched him, especially when she bathed him each morning.
His chest, which was now strangely caved in so that his ribs were prominent, held no warmth whatsoever, nor did his lips when she kissed him.
It was like kissing a dead fish. . . .
That thought made her shudder. She no longer wanted to kiss him because of how his lips felt against hers, but she hoped that perhaps a kiss might reach his consciousness, so she did it as often as she could.
“My husband, our chief returned today from his journey to find and kill Big Nose and his renegade friends,” Speckled Fawn murmured. Her words would reach the fire, the walls of the tepee, the mats on the floor, even the pot of food cooking slowly over the fire, but not her husband’s mind.
But still, she talked, for she knew that it was important not to leave her husband in total silence.
She kept hoping for some sort of breakthrough.
If he would say one word, it would cause her heart to leap with pure joy!
“Sad to say, though, Big Nose once again eluded death,” Speckled Fawn said, herself now gazing into the fire. It had a way of almost hypnotizing a person, so she turned her eyes back to her husband. “He even eluded Blue Thunder. But most of Big Nose’s men were killed. At least in that, your nephew can be proud.”
She looked over her shoulder at the closed entrance flap when she heard voices as someone walked past.
They were women, surely discussing the events that had happened today in their village, the most shocking being the arrival of the other white woman.
Many of these women had accepted Speckled Fawn’s presence, but there were those who still resented her, especially since one of their most precious elders had taken her as his wife.
Dancing Shadow had chosen Speckled Fawn as his wife soon after she had been brought into the village.
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