Elizabeth’s mouth gaped, stunned by what Strong Heart had said. Her father had been trying to push his ideas on Strong Heart’s people? She had not known exactly which Indians he had visited, and did not know why she had not considered this possibility before now.
But that Strong Heart saw her as a liar hurt more than anything had hurt her in her life, for she was not a liar. She had only told him a half-truth, hoping that she would never have to tell him the whole truth about her father. She had hoped that her father would make his contract with another village, leaving Strong Heart and his people in peace.
Elizabeth went to Strong Heart, bending on her knees before him. She held his face between her hands, feeling him grow tense at her mere touch. “Darling, I told you a nontruth only . . . only to protect you,” she pleaded. “I didn’t want my father and the man I loved to clash over differing ideals. Both of you have wills of steel. I . . . I . . . felt that if you fought with my father, you would be the eventual loser, and the hanging platform still haunts me. And, Strong Heart, I didn’t know that my father was coming to your village. Please believe me. I didn’t know.”
Strong Heart searched her eyes, and when he saw the apology and the hurt in their depths, he placed his hands at her wrists and drew her to him, holding her against him. He gazed down at her. “I believe you did this from your heart,” he said. “I believe you did this for the man you love. I do understand your motive, but never lie to me again. I value honesty in everyone, especially the woman I love.”
He was very close to telling her the other thing about her father, but something stopped him—perhaps feeling that enough conflict and doubt had been between them for today. Or perhaps he did not want to discover that her father was guilty of killing his people. This man that he doubted, would soon be his father-in-law, a man he wished to have peace with. For this man would one day be his children’s grandfather, and it would not be good to have a grandfather who was despised by their father.
“Please never treat me so terribly again,” Elizabeth mumbled, near tears. She flung her arms around his neck and drew his lips close to hers. “I love you so, Strong Heart. I would never do anything to hurt you. Surely you know that. I only want what is best for you—and your people.”
“Ah-hah, yes, I believe that is so,” he whispered, brushing his mouth across her lips, his hands eagerly undressing her. “But for now, my la-daila, do only what is best for me.”
“You call me la-daila again instead of Elizabeth,” she sighed, so glad to have the wrinkled dress off, and to feel the wonder of the warmth of the fire against her flesh. She giggled. “That proves that you are no longer unhappy with me.”
Strong Heart pulled away from her and began to undress. “That is so,” he said, laughing softly.
When he was naked, he reached for a basin of water fresh from the river. He took the basin over to Elizabeth and handed it to her. “Cleanse me. Then I will cleanse you,” he said throatily.
Elizabeth picked up a buckskin washcloth, and then a piece of soap that Many Stars had placed there. It was quite a sacrifice on her part, for the chances of getting perfumed soap here in the wilderness were slim.
Meditatively, Elizabeth began to bathe Strong Heart, drawing a moan of pleasure from deep within him when she reached that part of his anatomy that was swollen and throbbing in her hand. She dutifully caressed it with fingers that were slippery with soap suds.
She continued caressing Strong Heart, watching his eyes become glassy with passion. He clutched his hands in her hair and he urged her lips where her fingers had just been. She scarcely breathed and her eyes widened, not sure of what he was asking of her.
But further urgings made her understand. Her pulse raced and her knees grew weak as she tasted him for the first time. The pleasure that she was giving was intense, for his body had stiffened and his eyes were closed, while soft moans rose from deep within him.
She pleasured him in this unusual way for a while longer. Then he placed his fingers to her shoulders and urged her down on her back on the soft cushioned floor. She became the recipient of the same sort of caresses as he took the soaped cloth and began stroking her all over as he washed her.
He knelt down over her, parting her legs, and he touched that most sensitive part of her with soapy fingers, where her heart now seemed to be centered. She closed her eyes, wishing that the pleasure would never end.
Then it seemed to intensify as she felt something even more wonderful caressing her swollen bud. Her whole body throbbed with pleasure. When she opened her eyes and gazed down at him, she was surprised to see that his mouth was the source of her pleasure, his tongue feverishly moving over her.
When she could not take much more without going over the edge into total bliss, Elizabeth took his face with her hands and urged him to move up. Soon his manhood was in rhythmic strokes within her, his lips on her breasts, moving from one to the other, setting her aflame with desire.
Moments later they reached that peak of passion they had been seeking, taking from one another all that they could give. Then they lay together, their breaths mingling as they looked with rapture into each other’s eyes.
“I could never have sent you back to your world, no matter if you had not had a good reason for lying to me,” Strong Heart confessed. “My love is too strong for you to lose you.”
“I would have never gone, had you even ordered me to,” Elizabeth whispered back, leaning to flick her tongue into his mouth.
* * *
Earl lifted his saddle onto his horse, then gave Morris a frown. “I’ve lost the battle with my daughter,” he said sadly. “But I won’t allow it to happen between me and the Suquamish. By damn, I will have their support. I must. So, Morris, I’ll be a few days tryin’ again. You stay put and see to everything here at the fishery. Perhaps one man alone can do what two men together couldn’t at the Indian village.”
Morris smiled crookedly and gave Earl a mock salute as he launched himself into the saddle. “Good luck,” he said, smiling smugly to himself. He had done his part by ordering the raid on the Suquamish. Now it was Earl’s and Morris’s time to reap the harvest of that raid.
Chapter 25
When the praise thou meetest
To thine ear is sweetest,
O then remember me!
—THOMAS MOORE
Dressed in a soft buckskin dress, and having joined Strong Heart’s parents for breakfast the next day, Elizabeth sat beside Strong Heart in Chief Moon Elk’s longhouse sipping deer-bone soup from a wooden bowl. She watched Strong Heart and Chief Moon Elk, who were also eating breakfast. Pretty Nose was close to the fire, already preparing frybread for lunch.
“You say that Four Winds is a renegade?” Chief Moon Elk said, pushing his empty bowl aside. “My son, did I not tell you that his blood is bad? Much more pointed to his guilt than to his innocence.”
“Ah-hah, yes, sad though it makes me to say it, I now realize that, in part, you were right about Four Winds,” Strong Heart said, his face solemn.
“Four Winds is small in his shame,” Chief Moon Elk said, his eyes angry. He sat back against a willow backrest. “He is a man who is hard to know, for his blood is quick to turn bad. Why does he carry such a bad heart for us, my son?”
Strong Heart placed his spoon into his empty bowl. He gazed intently at his father. “Father, one thing that I still see as a truth is that Four Winds had nothing to do with the raid on our people,” he said. “His heart is good toward our people. It can never be any other way.”
Strong Heart gave Elizabeth an uneasy glance, still having not told her all that he knew about her father and his possible role in the raid. Each time, just as he would start to tell her, she would either hug him, or give him a sweet look that always held such tenderness for him.
He had not wanted to tell her anything that might cause her pain, or that might cause a strain between them.
She was home now, where she belonged—with him, and his people. She would soon fo
rget her uncaring father.
And so would Strong Heart, for there was no actual proof that her father had had anything to do with the raid.
Pity the man, though, should Strong Heart ever learn the opposite. Strong Heart would stop at nothing less than squeezing the life from him with his bare hands....
Before Chief Moon Elk responded to Strong Heart, a commotion outside the longhouse drew his eyes to the door. He then looked over at Strong Heart. “My leg still pains me too much to go and see what is causing the stir among our people,” he said. “My son, go and see who it is.”
Elizabeth rose to her feet and went to the door with Strong Heart. As he opened the door, she stopped. “My father,” she said, as she watched Earl approach on his horse, with many Suquamish braves walking on either side of him. Their rifles were aimed at Earl.
Her anxiety was not caused as much by the sight of the weapons aimed at her father, but by the danger of him finding her there. Her presence would prove Strong Heart’s guilt in helping her escape from the prison.
She would not allow any harm to come to him, even if she had to sacrifice telling her rather that she was alive and well.
“Strong Heart, I must hide,” she said, stepping back from the door. “That’s my father. He must not be allowed to see me.” She looked frantically around her. “Strong Heart, where can I hide? Where?”
Strong Heart was stunned to realize that the man approaching was her father. That he had the nerve to come to the village so soon after the raid was astounding.
Yet was that perhaps a part of his plan from the beginning? To come back to a weakened people who might then be willing to do anything to help put their lives back together again?
And then there was Elizabeth. Ah-hah, he knew, also, that it was best that her father did not see her there.
But now she might find out the ugly truth about her father, for Strong Heart was not going to spare questions once the man was sitting in council with him and Chief Moon Elk.
Strong Heart grabbed Elizabeth by the arm and quickly ushered her away from the door. Chief Moon Elk and Pretty Nose were watching with keen puzzlement in their eyes. He took Elizabeth behind a skin curtain that hung to the floor. Behind it were hidden the treasures of his father and mother in pits under wooden platforms.
“You stay here until he is gone,” Strong Heart said, his eyes on hers. “My la-daila, soon you will hear things spoken to your father that may confuse or even hurt you. But these things must be said to him. Strong Heart needs answers about many things. I believe it is your father who can give these answers to me.”
“Answers about what?” Elizabeth said, her pulse racing. “I . . . I . . . explained about the fishery. What else is there, Strong Heart? Tell me. I have the right to know.”
“Ah-hah, and so you do,” Strong Heart said, smoothing a lock of hair back from her brow. “And I should have told you sooner, rather than have you hear it now, in this way.”
“Then tell me,” Elizabeth said, tensing when she saw the stubborn set to his jaw. “Please, tell me.”
“There is not time,” Strong Heart said. Then he turned and left her with her eyes wide in confusion.
Strong Heart stepped outside just as Earl was dismounting. Strong Heart folded his arms across his chest, torn by feelings about this man that soon would be his father-in-law. He hoped with all of his heart that he was wrong about this man.
But so much pointed to Elizabeth’s father’s guilt, Strong Heart could not help but find himself already hating him.
Earl turned slowly around and faced Strong Heart, wondering who he was, and why he was standing at the door of the chief’s house, as if guarding it. He swallowed hard, then extended a hand to Strong Heart.
“I’m Earl Easton,” Earl said, his voice unsteady, as he felt the heat from the gray eyes that were boring into him. “I don’t believe I had the pleasure of meeting you when I was here before?”
Strong Heart ignored the handshake and did not answer him for a moment. He was still studying this white man, trying to see if he carried innocence or guilt in the depths of his eyes. His eyes were the same color as Elizabeth’s, which made him most definitely Elizabeth’s father—and a man that Strong Heart did not want to hate.
When he saw that this brave was not going to take his hand, Earl slowly lowered it to his side. He cleared his throat nervously, glancing questioningly at the totem poles that were partially burned and then at the ones that seemed to have been newly erected and painted.
He then looked slowly around him, puzzled by the newness of many of the longhouses. What had happened here since the time he had come to talk business with the chief? It appeared as if some great fire had ravaged the village. Yet beyond, where the forest stood mighty and green, there was no sign of fire.
It made him uneasy, yet he again turned and faced Strong Heart. Nothing would dissuade Earl from his purpose for being here.
“I have returned to speak business with Chief Moon Elk again,” Earl said, clasping his hands nervously behind him. “Would you please take me to him?”
Strong Heart stood there silently for a moment longer, then nodded toward the door. “Come with me,” he said, turning and walking back inside the longhouse.
Earl followed him inside and stopped at Strong Heart’s side. Earl’s eyes widened as he stared down at Chief Moon Elk, whose one leg was stretched out before him, evidently wounded. Earl wondered how he had been wounded, and by whom.
Strong Heart gestured toward his father and his mother.
“My father, Chief Moon Elk, and my mother, Pretty Nose,” Strong Heart said. “My father will speak to you again. I will listen, then speak to you myself as soon as my father is finished with you.”
Earl paled and grew unsteady on his legs as he looked in surprise at Strong Heart. “You are Chief Moon Elk’s son?” he said softly. “I did not know. You did not sit in council with your father and me before.”
“That is so,” Strong Heart said, glancing toward the curtain, knowing that this white man would be quite surprised to know that at the time of his last visit, Strong Heart had been with his daughter. This man would be even more surprised if he knew that his daughter was there even now, hiding from him in the Suquamish chief’s longhouse.
It gave Strong Heart a smug feeling to keep these secrets from the scheming white man.
Elizabeth chewed nervously on her lower lip when she heard how wary her father’s voice sounded. She was guilt-stricken over deceiving him. But the fact that he was there, instead of elsewhere with a posse searching for her, gave her cause to again doubt his love for her.
Tears flooded her eyes. She now understood why her mother had disappeared all those years ago more than ever before.
Wiping the tears from her eyes, she leaned nearer to the curtain and listened closely as Chief Moon Elk began to talk in a monotone to her father.
“Mit-lite, sit down,” Chief Moon Elk said, gesturing toward a cushion on the floor opposite the fire from him. “You did not hear me well the other time you were speaking of fisheries and salmon to me. Did I not tell you that my people caught only for our village? Why do you waste your time coming again?” He looked past Earl, at the door. “And where is the man who goes by the name Morris Murdoch? He did not accompany you this time to hear a more determined no from my lips?”
“No, he did not come this time,” Earl said, resting his hands on his knees as he crossed his legs. “He came the last time mainly to direct me to your village. I knew the way this time. He stayed behind and is tending to our business. I am the spokesman for the two of us now. I hope that you will give me another chance to explain the benefits to your people of working under my employ. Perhaps you have had time to think about it? To see the worth of my plan, as I see it?”
Earl glanced down at Chief Moon Elk’s festering wound again. “You have had a mishap since I was last here?” he said, raising an eyebrow. He looked slowly up at the chief again. “How unfortunate. I’m sorry.”
Elizabeth blanched and she placed her hands to her cheeks, her eyes widening in stunned surprise at what Strong Heart was saying without actually accusing her father. She shook her head, her thoughts flying, putting ghastly things together that she did not want to believe or accept. She would not believe that her father was driven by so much greed that he would have had a part in the attack on this village!
Yet, she knew that was what Strong Heart was leading up to. And surely her father had guessed as much, as well.
Her heart pounding, Elizabeth leaned her ear even closer to the curtain, growing cold as she continued to listen.
“What are you suggesting?” Earl gasped, looking quickly from father to son. “What do you think I am guilty of? Or should I even ask?”
“Your council with my father came suspiciously close to the raid on my people,” Strong Heart hissed. “Can you deny that after my father turned your proposal down, you returned to our village and wreaked havoc on our people. To frighten us into doing as you ask, or to weaken us so that we would see no other way of survival except to take money earned from you? Do you think that we do not see right through such a scheme as this?”
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