White Fire

Glowering, the colonel left the cabin and waited for his horse to be saddled. He looked heavenward and saw the first signs of the rising sun as shimmering rays of gold fanned across the horizon.

“By damn, I will find her,” he whispered. “Pity the ’breed if he is with her!”

Chapter 25

Love not me for comely grace,

For my pleasing eye or face,

Nor for any outward part,

No, nor for my constant heart.

—Anonymous

The sun was up past the horizon just as White Fire and Flame arrived at the Indian agent’s cabin. When White Fire saw no smoke spiraling from the fireplace chimney, and no horses in the crude corral at the back of the lodge, his heart sank.

“Isn’t he here?” Flame asked, wheeling her horse into a sudden stop beside his.

She could not help but notice the tattered, yellowed curtains at the window. She saw how weeds had grown up knee high around the perimeters of the log structure, even at the door.

“The place looks so deserted,” she murmured.

“I had not taken the time yet since my release from the Sioux to come and meet with Neal Geary, the agent,” White Fire said, sliding from his saddle. “I should have known something was awry when he did not come and join the recent council with the Sioux at Fort Snelling. I should have known something was wrong when your father placed such an emphasis on finding an interpreter, instead of using Neal’s expertise. Neal was fluent in Indian languages. His presence at councils between Colonel Russell and the Indians would have been enough.”

“So you knew him?” Flame asked, herself dismounting her horse.

“Yes, before I was forced into captivity by the Sioux, Neal and I were good friends,” White Fire said. “Like you and me, he was initially from Missouri.”

Flame stepped quickly to his side and went with him through the dew-dampened grass, wincing when a black snake slithered quickly away from them and disappeared beneath the edges of a large rock.

“Do you think my father ordered the agent to leave the premises when he became the commandant at Fort Snelling?” Flame asked, standing aside as White Fire lifted the latch at the door and gently shoved it open.

“Now that I am aware of your father’s plans to start a war with the local Indians, yes, I imagine he felt that Neal Geary should be the first to go since he was here in the Minnesota Territory to fight for the rights of the Indians,” White Fire said somberly.

He reached a hand out for Flame. “Come inside with me,” he said softly. “Let’s see what we can find.”

“Surely nothing that will help us know where he might be,” Flame said, gasping when she stepped into a thick cobweb just inside the door. She fought the cobweb with frantic sweeps of her hands. Then she moved quickly farther into the room to where White Fire was standing, taking a slow look around him.

“I don’t like the looks of this,” he said warily. He gestured toward a journal that lay open on a desk, as though someone had been disturbed while making entries.

He gazed at the many leather-bound books on the shelves above the desk. “Neal would not have left those behind,” he said dryly. “I have never seen a man as proud of books as he was of those you see on the shelves.”

He frowned as he looked farther into the morning shadows. “Nor would he leave without his clothes,” he said. “See how they are stacked neatly on a shelf? See his boots? His rifle standing against

the far wall?”

“No, surely no man would leave those things behind,” Flame said, shivering at the chill that crossed her spine, as though an omen of bad tidings. She crept closer to White Fire and looked guardedly around her. “I’m afraid that something has happened to your friend.”

A sudden thought caused a sick feeling to grip her insides. “No,” she said in a soft moan. She looked frantically up at White Fire. She grabbed his arm, causing him to look quickly down at her with alarm. “White Fire, you don’t think that my father could have . . . ?”

She clasped a hand over her mouth, finding it too hard to continue with her suspicions. They were too horrible to say aloud. She didn’t want to believe that the man who carried her blood in his veins could have murdered someone and done way with his body as a part of his plot to rid the land of Indians.

But if her father feared that the agent might uncover his devious plot, would not he then have rid himself of such a threat by . . . by . . . doing away with the man?

Her father could never have carried out the plot in the end, making it look as though the Indians were responsible for the blood spilled upon the soil of Minnesota.

Her father would come out of this looking like a hero if he killed the Indians and kept them from slaying whites once the war was started between them. No one but the soldiers under his command would ever know that it was her father who had started the war. Those men would never speak against him, knowing what he was capable of doing to them.