Savage Tempest (29 page)

Andrew laughed softly. “Dumb as an ox, Mole believed me,” he said. “I knew that there would be no way he could kill any Pawnee, because I wouldn't let him. Mole put his trust in the wrong man.”

Suddenly there was a loud squeal behind High Hawk and Joylynn.

Rose came running past them.

The gunfire had brought everyone to see what had happened.

Rose had seen Andrew standing there, his firearm lowered at his side, and Mole dead on the ground.

She had known it was safe to run to the man she loved!

Andrew dropped his rifle and took Rose tenderly into his arms. “Rose, Rose, I almost died finding my way back to you,” he said, clinging to her and sobbing. “While searching for a horse for my bride price, I went too far. I . . . I . . . got lost. As I was trying to find my way back to the stronghold, I ran into that horrible man named Mole. He almost beat me to death in order to get answers from me.”

“But you are all right now?” Rose asked, leaning away from him, touching his gaunt face with a hand. “You are so thin. But . . . you . . . are alive!”

Again she flung herself into his arms, clinging.

“Yes, I'm alive,” Andrew said, a sob catching in his throat. “I survived and stayed in Mole's hideout until the weather improved enough to travel up the mountain again. I was with that man for the duration of the winter. He made me hunt for food. He tied me up at night when we slept. And then the weather finally changed for the better and the snows began melting from the mountainside. I
started out with Mole up the mountain and I had thought I'd led him to where the sentries would spy us and would recognize me and kill him. But again I was disoriented. I had no idea I was bringing him up the back side, not the front, where the sentries always were.”

“You took such chances,” Rose cried. “If you had found the right way to the village and the sentries had seen you, they would have taken you for an enemy alongside Mole. They would not have stopped to ask questions. They . . . they . . . would have shot both you and the evil man, side by side.”

“I'd have chanced anything to find my way back to where I belonged . . . to you,” Andrew said thickly. “I'd allowed Mole to get this close, while all along knowing that I would kill him before he had a chance to harm your Pawnee people. I . . . I . . . felt that it was safer to travel with Mole on my way back to the stronghold than to travel alone, since I don't have the same knowledge of how to survive in the wild. I took advantage of Mole's knowledge of the mountain and how to survive the cold, by pretending to be his partner in crime.”

“Yet he still tied you up at night?” Rose said, leaning away from him to search his eyes.

Andrew nodded. “I was his captive the whole time, his pawn. I . . . I . . . feel like such a fool.”

“Yet he is dead and you are alive,” Rose said, smiling at him. “I do not think you a fool, but very, very brave. You survived these past months while
living on the edge of death with that . . . that . . . monster.”

“But, Andy, where were you when Mole stepped from the trees, his rifle aimed at my belly?” Joylynn asked.

“I'm sorry if I didn't plan carefully enough,” he said, gulping hard. “I would have died if he'd managed to kill you before I caught up with him. You see, he saw you alone before I did. He ran away from me after spotting you. I had just gotten close enough to shoot him when High Hawk's arrow did the deed for me.”

He looked slowly from Rose to High Hawk to Joylynn, and then back at High Hawk. “You do believe me, don't you?” he asked guardedly. “You do believe me when I say that I was not in cahoots with Mole, that I never knew him before he took me prisoner, not even when he was a part of the cavalry I was with that day when . . . when . . . he and I were the lone survivors. You've got to believe me when I tell you that I used him in order to find my way back here alive.”

Rose heard the silence all around her.

She stepped away from Andrew and went pale as she looked around at everyone. The onlookers were moving slowly forward, making a tight circle around their chief, his woman, and Rose and Andrew.

“I would not lie about this,” Andrew cried. He looked pleadingly at Rose, then fell to his knees before
her. “I love you, Rose. I did all of this because of you.”

He looked over his shoulder into the shadows of the trees, then gazed into Rose's eyes again as she placed soft hands on his cheeks.

“In there, amid the trees, you will find the steed that I brought back for the bride price,” he said, his voice breaking. “There are three horses, Rose, in the shadows of those trees. The horse that High Hawk loaned me, Mole's, and the one I tamed for you and brought with me to offer your father. Rose, the steed is as white as the snows that fell on the mountain this winter. You will surely be glad to ride alongside me on that steed through the wildflowers, chasing butterflies and watching eagles soar. Won't you, Rose? Won't you?”

Three Bears stepped away from the others and went into the forest.

He came out again with three horses, their reins tied together.

Among them was the steed that High Hawk had loaned Andrew, a roan, and then a lovely white mustang that had surely been found among those that High Hawk had seen upon their first arrival in this new land of the Pawnee.

“He tells the truth,” Three Bears said, standing with the horses behind him.

“I knew it,” Rose cried, falling to her knees before Andrew and hugging him. “I knew you loved
me. I knew there was a good reason why you had not returned. Oh, my Andrew, how horrible that you had to live with that evil man the whole winter through when you and I could have shared a warm tepee as man and wife.”

“We will share everything forever, my darling, now that I have found you again,” Andrew said, drawing her into his embrace and softly kissing her.

Everyone watched, then silently turned and walked back toward their village, while High Hawk and Joylynn stayed behind with Andrew and Rose.

“Andrew, come now with us,” High Hawk said, laying a hand on the young man's shoulders. “I believe you and Rose have a lot to tell one another. I will take my wife home. We will leave this evil man lying here, food for wild animals and the hatchlings in the eagles' nests.”

“Thank you for believing me,” Andrew said, standing, then flinging himself into High Hawk's arms.

Joylynn noticed that he still had his Bible. It was torn and frayed at the edges, but it was still being carried in his rear pocket.

When she got back to her tepee with High Hawk, Joylynn sat down beside the lodge fire as High Hawk added wood to it.

“Did you believe all of Andrew's story?” she blurted out.

He didn't reply, only gave her a look that she could not decipher.

A soft breeze blew through the waterfall, sending a spray over Joylynn and High Hawk as she knelt down beside a fresh grave in the Wolf band's new burial grounds. High Hawk stood tall over her, holding their two-year-old son in his arms.

Joylynn spread beautiful autumn flowers over the grave, said a silent prayer, then rose up and stood beside High Hawk. “I miss her so much,” she murmured. “Your
ina
and I had become so close. It was as though she were my own mother.”

“She grew to love you as much,” High Hawk said, a deep sadness in his eyes. “But she just could not go on. I believe her body began to fail her when my
ahte
was murdered. I believe she only managed to hold on this long because of her grandson. She dearly loved holding him and playing with him.”

Joylynn turned and gazed at her son, who was
the exact image of his father, with long black hair, midnight-dark eyes and lovely smooth copper skin.

Their three-month-old baby daughter, Moonbeam, who remained at their tepee with Rose watching her, had much of Joylynn's looks except for her hair. It was as black as her father's and brother's, which made her grass-green eyes stand out, beautiful and entrancing.

“I'm so glad that we named our firstborn after your brother,” Joylynn murmured. “That brought such joy to your mother's heart. I had thought that she was doing much better, because she was so happy. But her heart was just too tired to go on.”

“
Ho
, when you suggested our son be named in the memory of my brother Sleeping Wolf, my
ina's
eyes lit up as I had never seen them before,” High Hawk said, his voice breaking. “She marveled over our son's straight back and handsomeness the very moment she saw him, and when you suggested the name, it was a wonder to behold how my
ina
rejoiced. You are a good woman, my wife. Through and through.”

“As you are such a good man,” Joylynn said, sliding an arm through his.

In the morning sunlight, her husband looked so handsome and noble. He wore his fringed buckskin attire, with the lone eagle feather hanging from a loop of his hair at the side of his head.

It seemed that as he aged, he grew even more handsome.

She knew now that even when he was old and gray, he would still be someone who would take her breath away.

He had proven himself to be just as wonderful a father as he was a husband. He treated his children with such gentle care and love.

She remembered her own father's love and saw the same caring in her husband.

She had been twice blessed, with two men to love her and care for her so much.

At times like this, she so missed her father and his smiling eyes and gentle hands.

But now was not the time to think about sadness, for the spring had arrived with its blessings. The crops had been planted and were now tiny sprouts shooting up through the rich black earth.

The eagles had given birth to new hatchlings that were just now learning how to perch on the edge of their nests, soon to join their parents in the sky.

Joylynn turned and gazed at the waterfall, seeing many rainbows in it as the water splashed down. It reminded her of another waterfall, another grave. Sleeping Wolf lay there, eagles his companions, just as the eagles at this waterfall would always be Blanket Woman's.

How had her husband described it?
Ho
, his brother would always be flying with the eagles. So now would his mother. She could just see Blanket Woman and Sleeping Wolf meeting in the heavens, joined again, this time forever.

She gazed down at the blanket around her shoulders. It was one that Blanket Woman had made for Joylynn just before she died. It proved how Blanket Woman had been given her name, for Joylynn had never seen such a beautiful blanket. It was made of fine blue cloth, heavily and tastefully adorned with silk ribbons of various colors. It had a band of embroidered work made from beautiful tiny beads, a foot wide, running around the bottom.

Back at her tepee, her daughter lay on a blanket that was also made by Blanket Woman's old but deft fingers. It was the same as Joylynn's but much tinier so that it could be wrapped comfortably around Moonbeam when Joylynn took her from her cradle to nurse her.

“We should get back to the village,” Joylynn said, stepping away from High Hawk. “Rose is large in her pregnancy now and might be tiring from caring for Moonbeam this long. Her child should come any day now.”

“Andy has proven to be such an honest, caring man, whose every breath seems to be taken for his beautiful Pawnee wife,” High Hawk said, placing Sleeping Wolf on the ground, so that he could run and play on their way back to the village.

When a butterfly landed on his son's hand, High Hawk smiled at the wonder in Sleeping Wolf's eyes.

He knelt down beside his son. “That is a butterfly,” he said. “Is it not beautiful?”

“Butterfly,” Sleeping Wolf said, repeating after his father. “Beautiful.”

“That is right,” High Hawk said, patting his son on his bare shoulder. “You are learning to speak quite well now, my son.”

The butterfly suddenly took wing. “Sleeping Wolf, watch the butterfly as it flutters away,” High Hawk said. “It will go to a flower now and sip nectar from it so that it will have energy enough to fly on to another and another.”

Sleeping Wolf giggled and ran after the butterfly as High Hawk stepped closer to Joylynn and slid an arm around her waist. “
Tirawahut
has been good to us,” he said. “The white eyes have not yet discovered our stronghold. Our people feel safe now and no longer fear that each day may bring doom to them. It is a good time for us all.”

“And I adore the new name that you have chosen for me,” Joylynn murmured. “Pretty Moon, after that first night we met one another. Oh, was not the moon so brilliantly bright and large that night?”

“My wife, it led me to you,” High Hawk said. Then his eyes widened when he saw someone running toward them, shouting excitedly.

“It is Three Bears,” High Hawk said, raising an eyebrow. “I wonder what brings such excitement into his voice?”

“His wife,” Joylynn said, her eyes widening. “She
has surely given birth. She has gone far past the time when she should have had her child.”

Panting hard, Three Bears stopped when he reached them. “Two babies at almost the same time have been born into our Wolf band of Pawnee,” he said when he finally caught his breath. “My wife gave birth to a son, and Andy's wife gave birth to a daughter!”

“Both?” Joylynn exclaimed.

Then she reached a hand to Three Bears's arm. “Are they all doing well?” she asked, then took a step away from him. “Rose was caring for Moonbeam. Who is there with Moonbeam now?”

“She is in good hands, for Yellow Blossom came to care for her,” Three Bears said, smiling. “And,
ho
, all is well. The newborn children are healthy, and the mothers and fathers are well, happy and proud.”

“As we are happy and proud for you, my friend,” High Hawk said, placing a hand on his best friend's shoulder. “Today our people have much to rejoice over. Let us return to the village and celebrate together.”