“About your own father?” Flame said, lifting an eyebrow. “You mean you have discovered something about Samuel Dowling that you never knew before?”
“Yes, something that shook my innermost faith in my mother,” White Fire said sullenly.
“What on earth could do that?” Flame asked, searching his eyes.
“Let me tell you about it on our way back to the Chippewa village,” he answered. He placed his hands at her waist and lifted her onto his horse.
He then went and got his rifle, sliding it inside the gunboot at his horse’s flank. Then he swung himself into the saddle behind Flame.
As they rode off, with the Chippewa warriors following them, White Fire told Flame about receiving the wire from his mother, and about the news of who his true father was.
“Gray Feather is your father?” Flame gasped out after listening intently. She was awestruck to hear how both she and White Fire had at almost the same time discovered the lies they had been living.
“I am Chippewa!” White Fire proudly declared. He lifted his chin and shouted it for the warriors to hear. “I am Chippewa!” he proudly cried.
He could feel a commotion behind him and as he looked over his shoulder, he saw the wonder in the warrior’s stares.
He smiled at them. “I am part Chippewa,” he said. “Your chief is my father!”
Gasps reverberated through the warriors.
Red Buffalo then rode up next to him. “What do you mean?” he asked, his voice filled with shock. “Has Chief Gray Feather, my uncle, said that you are his blood kin, his son? That you are my cousin? He has just said that in his dreams you sit by his side in the capacity of a son. Dreams are not real.”
“This dream seems to be,” White Fire said. “But I know it’s hard for you to understand. You and Gray Feather, as well as all of your people, will soon know how this can be.”
He smiled broadly at Red Buffalo. “All those times that you and I hunted, practiced shooting bows and arrows, or just sat around and talked of life, we were acquainted, Red Buffalo. Ah, but if only I had known then what I know now.”
Red Buffalo was rendered speechless, but knowing that White Fire was not one who spoke a false tongue, he quickly reached over and clasped a hand of love on White Fire’s shoulder. His eyes locked with his for a moment, then Red Buffalo swung his horse away and fell back again to ride with the warriors.
“I am touched deeply by Red Buffalo’s reaction to knowing the truth,” White Fire said, tapping his horse’s flanks with his heels to urge him into a faster lope. “You see, since my father has no sons, it would have been Red Buffalo who would have been next in line to be chief for his people. His father, who has been dead for many years now, was my father’s brother. He is my father’s nephew, my cousin.”
“Would he have cause to resent you?” Flame asked softly. “Are you going to be chief, not Red Buffalo?” She was not sure what she wanted to hear from White Fire. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to live in an Indian village and be a part of their way of living.
To live outdoors? To cook over a fire in the floor? Perhaps to almost freeze to death in the winter in a wigwam?
No, she wasn’t sure if she was ready for that sort of radical change in her life.
“I have not thought that far ahead as to how my life will be changed by knowing that I am a full-blooded Indian,” White Fire said softly.
His eyes met and held with hers. “Does knowing all of this about me make things different for you?” he asked guardedly. “Can you still love me knowing that I am a full blood?”
“White Fire, darling, you are you,” Flame murmured, turning to embrace him. “How could you ever doubt my love for you?”
He held her close and sighed.
Chapter 42
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills or fields,
Woods or steepy mountains, yield.
—Christopher Marlowe
Flame strolled along the river hand in hand with Michael and Dancing Star as White Fire opened up his heart to his true father. Flame looked around her, at the wigwams, and at the people coming and going from them, and at the work the women were busy at.