Savage Courage

As soon as the women of the village had been warned that he was about to return, a fire had been lit in Storm’s firepit in the center of the floor. He placed Shoshana gently on a pallet of furs beside the fire that he used at night for sleeping.

He knelt beside her and slowly ran a hand along her lips, and then gently touched her cheek. “You are more beautiful than all the stars in the heaven,” he whispered. “How can I be anything but good to you? Yet . . . you are here for a purpose other than what I would want you for. I must remember that.”

“My chief, I have come to offer my medicine,” White Moon said as he came into the lodge, wearing his artistically ornamented medicine shirt of buckskin. It was decorated with various designs symbolic of the sun, the moon, the stars, rainbows, and clouds.

Next to the chief, the medicine man was the most powerful and influential member of their band.

“Come,” Storm said, nodding. “I shall sit on the other side of the fire as you care for Shoshana.”

“Her name is Shoshana?” White Moon asked, sinking to his knees beside her.

“She is Shoshana of our Apache tribe, but not of our band,” Storm said. “She was taken long ago by whites and raised as one of them. She has returned to her homeland to search out her true Apache heritage, but she had not planned to stay. It is my decision that she will.”

“I heard you and Dancing Willow from my lodge,” White Moon said as he burned sweet grass over Storm’s lodge fire, then cleansed his hands in the smoke.

He leaned closer to Shoshana and placed his hands on her wound. “I have seen you and your sister disagree before, but this time your differences seem worse,” White Moon said as he took from his bag some hoddentin, a powder made of the tule plant. He took only a pinch of it and sprinkled it across Shoshana’s wound.

“Yes, like many a brother and sister, we do argue,” Storm said, nodding. “Especially on this matter, my sister does not agree with her brother.”

“All who know you, even your sister, know that you do not take any action without thinking it through thoroughly,” White Moon said.

He took more of the same plant and others from his bag and mixed them with water in a small pot that he placed over the fire.

He found this plant often as it grew along creeks. It was used in every medicine he made. He could not make medicine without it. It was like a grass. It had no flowers, but a root like a small carrot, and it was the root that he used for his medicines.

Now, after the mixture in the pot grew thick and warm, he began slowly drizzling it into Shoshana’s mouth from a narrow wooden spoon.

At first she choked on the mixture, then began to swallow it freely.

White Moon fed it all to her slowly, then replaced his things in his bag and gazed at Storm.

“She will be well soon,” he said. “And so will the feelings between yourself and your sister. Your love for one another is strong enough to sustain any hurts caused by loose-tongued words.”

“Yes, I know,” Storm said. “Thank you for your wisdom and medicine.”

White Moon rose slowly to his feet, hung his bag across his left shoulder, then left the lodge.

Storm continued to watch Shoshana, hoping she would awaken soon. He would like to know more about her . . . about her Apache band . . . especially about her mother.

“Perhaps I can help you, pretty woman,” he whispered. “But you must awaken. Plea

se . . . awaken.”

Chapter Fifteen

Let us hope the future

Will share with thee my sorrows,

And thou thy joys with me.

—Charles Jeffreys

George Whaley glared at the flames of a newly built fire where a rabbit cooked on a spit and coffee brewed in a cup in the hot coals. He cursed the one who had taken his daughter, placing him in this terrible position out in the middle of nowhere, where first one minute he was sitting comfortably beside a roaring campfire beneath the moonlight, then the next soaked to the bone by a sudden storm.

This storm had not only made things uncomfortable for everyone, but had delayed the search for Shoshana.

Everyone’s clothes were finally dried, and after they shared a morning meal of cooked rabbit and hot tin cups of coffee, they would move onward.