Savage Beloved

Those wolves had coaxed Shadow to join them more than once.

Candy had always been afraid that her wolf wouldn’t return, for surely the call of the wild was imbedded so deep inside her heart, she was destined to one day live among those of her own kind.

Candy returned to her half-finished chore of packing her trunk. Sighing heavily, she went and sat down on the floor before it, again carefully placing her folded clothes inside.

She then picked up a doll that her mother had given her when she was a small girl.

Tears glistening in her eyes at the thought that she might never see her mother again, she held the doll to her bosom and hugged it.

“Mama, I hope you are alright,” she whispered. “I . . . I . . . hope you are happy.” She swallowed back a sob. “I hope to one day find my own true happiness.”

Chapter Three

The smitten rock that gushes,

The trampled steel that springs;

A cheek is always redder

Just where the hectic stings.

—Emily Dickinson

It took a while, but finally the bloody irons and chains were off Short Robe’s ankles and wrists. Short Robe was in his lodge now, where he lay unconscious, emaciated and weak, on a thick pallet of furs and blankets.

Two Eagles solemnly, gently washed his uncle’s wounds free of blood as Crying Wolf, his people’s shaman, prepared medicine for the cuts.

Two Eagles’s heart skipped a beat when he saw his uncle’s eyelashes flutter as he began to awaken from his deep sleep.

Two Eagles laid aside the soft buckskin cloth that he had been using to bathe his uncle’s wounds and leaned down over him to hear what Short Robe was whispering.

Short Robe reached out a shaking hand and placed it on his nephew’s arm. “Two Eagles, my . . . life . . . was spared for a purpose,” he managed to say in his pain-filled voice. “After the pony soldiers realized they had captured the wrong man, they . . . they . . . took their mistake out on me and . . . and . . . beat and whipped me almost to unconsciousness. They . . . they only returned me home for one reason.”

When his uncle’s eyes closed and his voice faded, when his hand fell away from Two Eagles’s arm, Two Eagles felt panic rush through him.

He breathed a heavy sigh of relief when his uncle’s eyes opened again, his quivering hand again on his muscled, bronzed arm.

“I was brought back to my people to . . . to . . . set an example,” Short Robe said, his voice cracking with pain.

“An . . . example?” Two Eagles said, rage entering his heart. “They did this to you for such . . . a reason as that?”

“Listen while I can speak,” Short Robe said, his faded brown eyes pleading with Two Eagles. “There are not many pony soldiers left at the fort. Only . . . a . . . few remain, but even they are going soon, to another fort.”

Two Eagles saw a sudden panic in his uncle’s eyes, and felt his grip tighten on his arm as he again forced words from deep within himself.

“Two Eagles, it would be easy to attack the fort, but I encourage you not to, for vengeance is a low law that weakens the soul,” Short Robe said. “Two Eagles, you must resist the temptation of vengeance. It is something that will bring more wakan, bad, to our people, than good. Think past what happened to me and concentrate only on the future of our people. Forget . . . what . . . happened to this one old man.”

Two Eagles looked at his uncle’s scarred, bloody feet and ankles.

He then looked at his uncle’s bloody wrists, where the irons had cut mercilessly into his flesh.

And he knew that as long as Two Eagles lived, he would never be able to put the sight of his uncle’s scarred back from his mind.

“Uncle, how can I not hunger for vengeance against those who did this to my father’s brother?” he said thickly.

“You . . . will . . . only play into their hands if you pursue the vengeance that is eating away at your gut,” Short Robe breathed out, each word now becoming harder to say.

He was so weak, so tired, but he forced himself not to drift off into unconsciousness again. He must not, not until he had said everything to his nephew that he knew must be said.