Wild Embrace

He had never been a God-fearing man. But now he could not help but think that God was punishing him for all of his transgressions against humanity, especially his own kin.

Chapter 13

Ah!—With what thankless heart

I mourn and sing!

—BARRY CORNWALL

The sun was splashing the sky a brilliant crimson as it lowered behind the mountains in the far distance. Elizabeth sat in the saddle behind Strong Heart, clinging to his waist, apprehensive about soon entering his village and meeting his people, especially his parents. She knew Strong Heart’s bitterness over white people well enough. Surely his people’s feelings were even stronger against white people.

If so, they would not take to their chief’s son having fallen in love with a white-skinned woman. Her mere presence might make life awkward for Strong Heart, and that was the last thing that she wanted.

Yet he was strong willed. Perhaps he would overlook any resentment toward her.

She glanced down at her clothing. The fringed buckskin outfit fit her loosely. A rope around her waist held the breeches up. She had rolled up the legs so that she would not trip over them as she walked, and she had rolled up the sleeves of the shirt to her elbows.

Although she knew that she must look comical, at least it had made traveling on horseback with Strong Heart more tolerable.

Strong Heart noticed hawks circling in the air up ahead. They must surely be flying above his village. It would soon be within sight once they rode up a slight butte. His roan’s footing was sure on the loose and crumbling rock.

His keen senses picked up a faint odor of smoke and ash, sending a warning to him that all was not right.

He surveyed the soaring hawks, realizing that they only flew like this in a group, if death was on the trail. Or in a village, he thought grimly.

Elizabeth could feel how Strong Heart’s muscles had suddenly tensed. His breathing had quickened and he was concentrating strangely on several hawks in the sky.

“What is it, Strong Heart?” she asked, clutching even more tightly around his waist as he kicked his moccasined heels into the flanks of his horse and sent it up the rise, to the top.

Strong Heart had not heard Elizabeth. All that he heard was the crying of his heart as he peered down and saw the destruction of so much of his village. Half of its cedar homes had been burned to the ground. The burnt totem poles listed crazily. The sight chilled his blood.

The devastation was everywhere.

He could see the people of his village roaming about, their heads bowed, their wails reaching clear into his soul. While he was gone, tending to his own affairs, his village had caught fire, somehow. And by the sound of the wailing, several of his people had died.

“Mother!” he gasped. “Father! Are they allright? Aieee,” he cried with a shrill yelp, sending his horse into a hard gallop toward the remains of his village.

When he arrived, he dismounted in one leap, and forgetting Elizabeth, began running toward his father’s longhouse. It still stood proud and untouched by the ravages of the fire that had swept through the village.

As he continued to run, he also saw that his longhouse still stood, saved by the people who loved him and his parents so much. They had probably allowed their own dwellings to burn in order to save their chief’s, and the one who would next be chief.

He was followed by many people who reached out for him, crying his name. Strong Heart did not stop until he came to the entrance of his parents’ lodge. Then he hurried inside.

What he saw made him teeter, for his father was lying on his sleeping platform, his eyes closed, otter fur pelts drawn up to his chin. “Father,” he cried out, rushing to kneel beside the sleeping platform. He could not understand how his father had been harmed when his dwelling had been saved. Unless, unless, being the kindhearted man that he was, he had gone to help the others, and perhaps falling debris had struck him.

Strong Heart’s mother came into the longhouse with a jug of water balanced on her shoulder. When she saw Strong Heart, she sat the jug down and went to kneel beside him.

When Strong Heart felt her presence, he turned to her and, with tears splashing from his eyes, he quickly embraced her. “You were not hurt by the fire?” he asked, holding her tightly to him, her usual scent of sweet grasses now ruined by the stink of smoke.

“Your mother is well enough,” Pretty Nose murmured, then coughed fitfully. She eased from Strong Heart’s arms and covered her mouth with her hands, continuing

to cough until she was red in the face.

When she finally stopped, she cleared her throat and gazed sadly up at her son. “The smoke,” she said hoarsely. “It entered my lungs. Still I cannot rid myself of the burning feeling left by the smoke.”

Strong Heart stared with pain for a moment at his frail mother. Then he looked at his father again, whose eyes were now open, watching Strong Heart. When his father’s hand reached out, Strong Heart circled his fingers around it and clung to it.

“My father, how are you?” Strong Heart said, seeing much pain in his father’s eyes. He wanted to believe that part of that pain was from the loss of some of his beloved people, and the devastation the fire had caused.