Savage Courage

As he walked out of the lodge, she shrugged off her momentary concern about his behavior.

“This is no time to begin doubting him,” Shoshana said, rising and testing her ability to stand. She was glad when she discovered that her knees weren’t wobbling and she didn’t feel any lightheadedness.

Yes, she was on the road to full recovery!

And once she’d recovered, she would begin a serious search among these people for a woman who might have been brought here fifteen winters ago, a woman who could be her mother.

Suddenly the entrance flap was brushed aside and an elderly woman with snow-white hair and a bent back entered the lodge. She had a very lined face, and eyes that were sunken in their sockets. A beautiful dress was lying across her outstretched arms.

The woman did not speak. She only motioned with her head.

Shoshana realized what the woman wanted. She wanted Shoshana to take the dress, which she did. Before she could thank her, the woman had stepped outside the lodge again and just as quickly came back inside with moccasins and a towel.

Through all of this, Shoshana could not help staring at the elderly woman. She was startled to see something familiar in her features, especially the eyes.

Yet she was so old, it was hard to see beyond the wrinkles and the pursed, tight lips. Her mother would not be this old. No, this could not be her mother.

Shoshana turned her eyes quickly away and gazed down at the lovely dress that lay across her own arms. It was snow white with bits of bright metal or glass sewn onto it that shone and twinkled in the fire’s glow.

The elderly woman nodded toward the door. Shoshana took that to mean that she wanted Shoshana to go with her.

Shoshana nodded and with the towel draped across one arm, the dress across the other, and carrying the lovely moccasins, she left the tepee in her bare feet and gown and followed the elderly, stooped woman to a beautiful pool of water some distance from the village. It was surrounded by lovely weeping-willow trees, whose fronds hung around the water like a huge blanket.

Shoshana wondered why the elderly woman couldn’t speak. Was it a physical or an emotional injury that caused her muteness?

Again the woman nodded, this time toward the water, which Shoshana interpreted as a sign that this was where she was to take her bath.

She nodded and so began to disrobe as the woman turned her back to give Shoshana privacy.

When Shoshana stepped into the water, she sighed with pleasure. It totally relaxed her. She wanted to wash her hair but was afraid to get her wound wet, so she just concentrated on bathing the rest of herself.

After she was out of the water and dressed, she was shaken by a sudden, vivid memory of the day her world had changed forever: her mother gripping Shoshana’s hand desperately as they ran toward the ravine for safety.

It was as though Shoshana was there now.

She could hear the gunfire and screams behind her.

She could feel the pounding of her heartbeat and her mother encouraging her, saying they would be safe soon, not to be afraid.

And then Shoshana gasped as she heard the sound of a closer volley of gunfire behind her. She stil

l ran, hand in hand with her mother, then her mother dropped Shoshana’s hand; looking behind her, Shoshana saw the blood on her mother’s back as she fell to the ground.

Then Shoshana suddenly recalled her recent dreams, how her mother had been in the talons of a golden eagle.

Suddenly Shoshana was aware of something else.

This was no dream.

It was happening now, at this very minute!

She gasped as she gazed heavenward and saw a golden eagle even now circling low overhead, its huge shadow falling over her.

Shoshana trembled as her eyes and the eagle’s met and held.

In the eagle’s golden eyes she saw the same look as she had seen in her dreams.

The eagle was flying away from her now, and as Shoshana followed its flight with her eyes, she saw how it stopped and circled above the old woman’s head.