Wild Embrace

She wanted him to know her name.

For a moment she studied the buckskin-clad man, until she determined it wasn’t him. Then she looked at the men on horseback who rode past her, and at the men trodding along the wooden walks of the city.

She also squinted at the men leaning against the buildings. Yet she saw no one who even remotely resembled the Indian.

In fact, as far as she could tell, there were no Indians to be seen in the city at all. As if they were forbidden to enter here. Which puzzled her, since the city had been named after a powerful Suquamish Indian Chief—Chief Sealth. His name was misinterpreted as Seattle by those who had founded the city.

The mysterious, handsome Indian seemed to go and come as he pleased.

Or had he not gone into the city after rescuing her from the Sound, she wondered. If not, then what had been his destination?

More taunts and insulting remarks coming from the boardwalks and the shadows of the buildings caused Elizabeth to urge her horse into a faster gait. They turned a corner, and the horse and buggy now climbed a steep road—the road that led to the prison.

Elizabeth felt the strain of the buggy, and heard the wheels groan frighteningly the farther the horse traveled up the grade. She paled, fearing to look over her shoulder, realizing that if the wheels slipped, or the horse faltered, the backward plunge would take her straight into the waters of the Sound.

But soon that fear was replaced by another. The sound of hammers striking wood came to her.

Her eyes widened and she gasped when she first caught sight of the hanging platform that Frannie had spoken so fearfully about. It was being built directly in front of a long, dreary wooden building—Copper Hill Prison. Forests towered way above the site as far as her eye could see.

Her heart pounding, as though an echo of the hammers, Elizabeth was at least glad that the steep grade of land had leveled out. She was now driving along a level, narrow street that soon took her to the prison.

After climbing from her buggy and securing her horse’s reins to a hitching rail, Elizabeth tried to will h

er knees not to shake, and her pulse not to race so fast, but failed. Being there made her realize the danger she was in. The men working on the hanging platform had caught sight of her, and one was lumbering toward her, a cigar hanging limply from the corner of his wide lips, his eyes raking her body.

“What do we have here?” the man said, circling Elizabeth, not allowing her to reach for the huge basket of fruit and books at the back of the buggy. “Come to see the hanging? It’s not ’til sunup tomorrow. Want some entertainment to pass the time whilst waitin’ to see the Injun hang? I can offer some mighty interestin’ entertainment, if I do say so, myself.”

“Indian?” Elizabeth said, even more fear gripping her heart at what he had said. They were planning to hang an Indian. She felt anxiety at the pit of her stomach.

For she knew only one Indian.

Surely he was not the one to be hanged, she despaired to herself. In her mind’s eye, she saw the handsome Indian’s body hanging from the gallows, spinning slowly in a dance of death.

“Sure,” the man said, guffawing. He yanked the cigar from his mouth and spat across his shoulder. “An Injun called Four Winds. And it’s about time we hung the renegade. He’s been stinkin’ up our prison long enough.”

“Just how long has . . . has . . . he been incarcerated?” Elizabeth dared to ask, feeling the sudden tightening in her throat at the possibility that the condemned man was her Indian!

“Weeks,” the man said, shrugging.

Elizabeth sighed, knowing that her Indian was not going to hang. He had been free yesterday, to save her from the Sound. He was surely as free today.

She started to ask the man about the prisoner, wanting to know what he had done to deserve hanging, but he had been called back by the others. She watched, wide-eyed, as he helped secure the rope and its noose on the cross beam. Her insides rebelled at the sight and what it meant—that soon a man would die there, and not only a man, an Indian! No wonder she hadn’t seen any Indians in Seattle today. Being there was dangerous.

Elizabeth was jarred out of her unpleasant reverie when the man who had talked with her mounted a horse, and began riding away with the others. She stiffened when he yelled something over his shoulder at her—that he would look her up later, and he would like to “acquaint” himself with her body.

“The pig,” she whispered, cringing at the thought of this crude man’s rough hands on her.

Yanking the heavy basket from the rear of the buggy, Elizabeth stomped up to the prison door, then stopped and took a nervous breath before placing her hand on the latch.

When she composed herself she lifted the latch, and took a shaky step across the threshold. What she encountered made her want to turn around and seek the haven of her home as quickly as possible. Never had she seen such filth and gloom as crowded this small, outer room. A bearded man sat behind a crude desk piled high with yellowed papers and journals, his booted feet resting on the edge.

She grimaced when their eyes met, and she felt ill when he leaned his head sideways and spat a long stream of chewing tobacco into a large and tarnished brass spittoon that had strings of tobacco dripping down its sides.

Elizabeth stood stiff and unresponsive to how this man was looking at her as he slowly pushed himself up from his chair. He hooked his thumbs through red suspenders that held up soiled, black, baggy breeches. A red-plaid shirt was stuffed loosely into the waistband.

Elizabeth looked slowly around the room, at the peeling paint of the walls, and at the one filthy window that failed to let in any light through its dirt.

Her gaze stopped at the many small pegs along one of the walls. Keys hung from each.