Soon the aroma of coffee filled the air.
Crickets chirped musically.
An owl hooted in the distance.
&nbs
p; Lauralee playfully fed Dancing Cloud small slices of banana. “I feel wicked I am so happy,” she murmured. “But I have waited so long for such a happiness, I shan’t allow anything to spoil it.”
She paused.
“How much longer will it take us to reach your home in the mountains?”
Dancing Cloud’s smile faded as he gazed into the leaping flames of the fire. “Many more days,” he said dryly. “Then duties to my father must be paid.”
He looked slowly over at her. “Do not feel neglected when I begin mourning my father’s death with my people,” he said softly. “Although I spoke with my father in the spirit world, his spirit is not wholly there until the proper mourning has been seen to. I could not do that until I was among my people. We all mourn together our greater losses.”
“I shall mourn with you,” Lauralee said, moving to sit beside him. She melted against him when he swung his arm around her shoulders.
“My people might feel uncomfortable about that,” he said thickly. “Until they grow to know you better, I would think that it would be best for you not to join the mourning rituals for my father. In time, though, you will be a part of everything I and my people do.”
Lauralee felt hurt by the rejection, then thought more about it and understood. He had his private times to see to. She would not interfere.
She rested against him. What he had just said pulled her into worrisome thoughts again about things that had concerned her when she discovered they were in love. She had heard Dancing Cloud say more than once that his clan of Cherokee were full bloods. She could not help but worry again about whether or not his people would tolerate her breaking this practice? Or even Dancing Cloud, for being the one to bring her into their fold?
It gave her a deep, dark feeling of apprehension to think that possibly they would look to her as one might look upon an alien.
* * *
A shadow moved through the darkness, silencing the night creatures in its wake. Brian Brave Walker’s eyes were wild and wide as he ventured on through the dense forest. His father, who had never been a father at all in the true sense of the word, hadn’t prepared him to know how to fend for one’s self. He had never taught his son how to shoot a gun, or how to ride a horse, or anything.
Brian Brave Walker had been an object to his father, an object for loathing, nothing more. He had not guided him into ways of other children Brian Brave Walker’s age. He had never been alone with his father.
In truth, Clint McCloud was Brian Brave Walker’s father by blood only. Not by emotions and bonds of loving and parental guiding.
Brian Brave Walker wanted desperately to live up to the name that his mother had given him when he had been born. Brave. He had to be brave! Or he might not survive living alone without the guidance and loving of a mother.
Tonight the air was cool, causing goose bumps to rise on his flesh. He hugged himself as he fought the dense thickets of briars and creeping vines. He flinched when a sound behind him made him think that perhaps his father might have decided to come for him after all.
“He sent me away. He will be glad to be rid of me,” Brian Brave Walker said in a harsh whisper. “I do not have to worry about him coming for me. My mother’s pleas for him to come and search for me will fan on deaf ears.”
His spine stiffened and his jaw tightened when he thought of what his father was perhaps even now still forcing on his mother. McCloud would always be gone for several weeks or months, but when he returned to his cabin he would wreak sexual havoc on Soft Wind’s body for endless days!
“I wish to release her from her life of slavery to that man,” Brian Brave Walker whispered as he stepped high over a slender fallen tree. “But I do not dare try.”
He would never forget his father’s threats.
“And he means everything he says,” Brian Brave Walker said, his voice breaking.
Determined to get farther and farther away from the home that was never a haven, the young Cherokee broke into a mad run. He knocked limbs away overhead as they bumped into his face. He groaned when briars pierced his flesh through his buckskin breeches.
Then he crumpled to the ground, panting, exhaustion overcoming him.
He curled up on his side on the dried-up fallen leaves of last autumn.
Sobbing, he fell into a restless sleep.
In his dreams, a Cherokee warrior came to him out of the clouds in the sky. The warrior rode a magnificent white stallion. His horse had beautiful, translucent wings. Ah, but how majestically it moved its legs as it traveled down to earth.