Wild Embrace

—ROBERT GREENE

The sun was just rising in a great splash of orange. The birds were waking in the trees overhead. Fish were fastened in strips to willow poles stuck in the ground near the campfire. The delicious aroma of the juices as they dripped into the flames, tantalized her as it filled the air. A spring, its bubbly water sweet and pure, flowed nearby.

Elizabeth was weary from the long ride from Seattle, and was feeling as if history was repeating itself as she sat beside the campfire, listening to Strong Heart and Four Winds discussing Four Winds’s association with the outlaws.

When the words got heated, she looked guardedly from one to the other.

“Four Winds, when I set you free from prison, it was my sincere belief that you were not linked with the outlaw

s in any way,” Strong Heart said, his jaw tight. “And now I discover that you are. Do you not see how foolish this makes me appear?”

Four Winds glowered at Strong Heart. “Had you known I was guilty of choosing my own way of life—the life of a renegade—you would have let me, your childhood companion, hang,” he said dryly. “You would condemn me to death?”

“In my heart I would not want to,” Strong Heart grumbled. “But, ah-hah, yes, I would have no choice but to allow the noose to be slipped over your head. What you stand for does not show a Suquamish brave well in the eyes of all who see you. As a renegade, you do not set a good example, Four Winds, for the children of your village or mine. Tell me, Four Winds, why did you choose this road that you have followed?”

Four Winds hesitated. He took a willow pole with its skewered meat from the ground and handed it to Elizabeth. He did the same for Strong Heart, then took some for himself. Yet he only stared at it, instead of eating.

“At first I thought what I was doing was best for our people as a whole,” he mumbled. He looked slowly up at Strong Heart, who also was not eating. “I saw the onslaught of white settlers as a threat to our existence. I rode with the desperadoes only to frighten the whites from our land.” He lowered his eyes again, then said softly, “After a while what I was doing was more for excitement than for our people. In a sense, I was free again, with no white authority dictating to me how I should live.”

His jaw tightened. “It is good to be free,” he said forcefully.

“Do you not see that Strong Heart is even more free than you?” Strong Heart said, placing a hand on Four Winds’s shoulder. “You became the hunted the moment you raided and killed that first white settler.”

“You are now the hunted, also, my friend,” Four Winds said, swallowing hard. He clapped his free hand onto Strong Heart’s shoulder. “And it is because of me that you are. It would have been best had you allowed me to die, Strong Heart. It would have been best for all concerned.”

Strong Heart turned his eyes to Elizabeth and gave her a lingering look. He knew that she would have been better off had she not become involved in these escapes, yet if she had not, they would have never known the wonders of the love they felt for each other.

And theirs was a special love—enduring to the end of time! For this, he turned grateful eyes to Four Winds and could not find it within his heart to totally condemn him.

“It is never too late for you to turn your back on this wrong life that you have chosen,” Strong Heart said, dropping his hand from Four Winds’s shoulder. Four Winds lifted his away.

“That is not what I wish to do,” Four Winds said, his eyes holding steady with Strong Heart’s. “It is still the life that I want. Do not fight me over it. I have my life. You have yours.”

There was a strained silence between them. Four Winds turned his eyes away and began pulling meat from his stick with his teeth, slowly chewing it as he stared into the flames of the fire.

Elizabeth waited breathlessly for Strong Heart’s next move, then relaxed when he also began to eat. Not taking her eyes off the two Suquamish braves, she also began eating, hardly tasting the food. The tension between Four Winds and Strong Heart seemed wound so tight it might snap at any moment.

Then Strong Heart spoke abruptly, breaking the silence with his forceful voice.

“Four Winds, I urge you to reconsider this choice that you have made,” he said, laying his stick and half-eaten food aside. “It is time for you to choose sides—to live still as a renegade, or the life of a Suquamish brave who shares each and every breath and deed with his people.”

“You ask the impossible of Four Winds,” Four Winds grumbled. “I cannot do this thing you ask. I have already deceived my friends last night. I cannot do anything else against them.”

Elizabeth’s mind was spinning with questions about many things. How had Four Winds known about her? Why had he cared? Why would he help release her if he was aligned with outlaws?

He had been motivated by friendship—friendship with Strong Heart.

But this was not answer enough for her. She would ply Strong Heart with many questions once they were alone.

“You are too hasty in your response tonight,” Strong Heart said. “Because of what we were to each other as children, I will wait for you to think this through, this that I ask of you. Such a friendship as yours and mine cannot so quickly be cast aside, like something trivial and worthless. Ah-hah, I will await your response another day.”

“Kloshe, good,” Four Winds said, nodding, relief showing in his face. “Ah-hah, that is good.”

“Four Winds, you said that you had nothing to do with the raid on my people, and I believe you. But I must ask you again if you think those of your outlaw band are responsible?” Strong Heart said, lifting up his stick and biting pieces of fish from it.

Four Winds took a bite of his own fish, then laid it aside as he looked at Strong Heart. “If I knew the answer, I would tell you,” he said. “As I have told you, I did not return to my outlaw friends immediately after my departure from you the night of the escape. I went to the hills for two nights and two days. When I returned, they were also in hiding, and nothing at all was said about any raid on your people.”

Strong Heart frowned as he thrust his stick into the flames of the fire and watched it catch fire and burn. “Of course, they would not mention it in front of you,” he said in a low grumble. “You are Suquamish. They would expect you to still have some loyalty to our tribe. They would not want to give you cause to go against them, especially after hearing that it was your Suquamish friend who set you free.”