A voice filled with panic and alarm outside the lodge drew Gray Feather quickly outside. When he saw his nephew, Red Buffalo, standing there holding Song Sparrow in his arms, her body lifeless and limp, her eyes locked in a death stare, everything within Gray Feather went cold with despair.
His daughter was dead! The mother to his grandchild was dead!
“I found her hanging by her long hair . . . from . . . a limb of a tree,” Red Buffalo stammered out. “She wrapped a long coil of her hair around her neck and hung herself with it!”
Chief Gray Feather felt too numb to move. He could do nothing but stare at his daughter.
She was gone! This quickly she was gone from this earth. He would not hear her laughter again. And he would not see her sadness.
“Gee-mah-mah, Mother!” Dancing Star screamed as she came running toward them. “Gee-mah-mah!”
The child’s voice brought Gray Feather out of his trance. He looked at Dancing Star as she stopped and became quiet as she stared at the lifeless body of her mother.
“Ah-bee-no-gee, child, come to me,” Chi
ef Gray Feather said sadly. He bent to a knee, his arms outstretched for Dancing Star.
When she went to him, her body suddenly racked with tears, he held her tightly to him.
As he stared across her shoulder at Song Sparrow, anger filled his very soul at why his daughter had become so distraught that she lost her will to live.
“White Fire . . .” he whispered, the name a low hiss as it crossed his pursed lips.
But Gray Feather had done everything within his power to make the man his daughter loved her husband. And because Gray Feather loved his daughter so much, he had gone beyond what he would normally do to bring the man she loved into her life.
Only now did Gray Feather truly know just how much his daughter had loved White Fire!
Oh, but if only White Fire could have returned the love with the same sort of strength, with the same sort of passion, Gray Feather would have not lost his daughter in such a way—in total disgrace.
Chapter 28
To her is only known his faith that from the world
is hidden.
—Nicholas Breton
His granddaughter on his lap, Chief Gray Feather reined in his horse in front of White Fire’s cabin.
Somber, and feeling the stark weight of the emptiness in his heart that the death of his daughter had left, Gray Feather held Dancing Star snugly against his chest as he slid from the horse, then placed her tiny moccasined feet on solid ground.
His upper lip stiff, Gray Feather gazed at White Fire’s cabin. He saw no smoke rising from the chimney. Then he looked around for his horse. He saw no horse.
“He is not here,” he whispered to himself.
But Gray Feather would wait for White Fire’s return, that was for certain. He was there with a mission and he would not leave until White Fire understood how it must be now that Song Sparrow was dead. White Fire was free of his daughter, but not Gray Feather’s daughter’s child!
“Mah-szhon, go to the door and open it,” Gray Feather said, nodding at his granddaughter as she turned her soft, questioning eyes to him.
He slung his reins around the horse’s hitching rail, then went to stand over his granddaughter. He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Open the door, grandchild, for this is now your home,” he said sullenly. “You have a right to go and come as you please. As do I, your grandfather.”
Gray Feather folded his arms across his bare chest and set his jaw firmly as Dancing Star placed her tiny hand on the door latch and slowly opened the door.
When she turned questioning eyes up at him again, Gray Feather frowned down at her. “Go inside,” he said flatly. “I will follow.”
Dancing Star nodded and looked as though she was going to enter. But instead she turned and flung herself against Gray Feather’s legs and desperately hugged them.
He understood her fear, her sadness, her feeling of loss. Her mother’s burial was not so far behind her and the mourning in the village was continuing. Gray Feather placed a gentle hand on Dancing Star’s head.