“I’m Earl Easton,” Earl said, his voice unsteady, as he felt the heat from the gray eyes that were boring into him. “I don’t believe I had the pleasure of meeting you when I was here before?”
Strong Heart ignored the handshake and did not answer him for a moment. He was still studying this white man, trying to see if he carried innocence or guilt in the depths of his eyes. His eyes were the same color as Elizabeth’s, which made him most definitely Elizabeth’s father—and a man that Strong Heart did not want to hate.
When he saw that this brave was not going to take his hand, Earl slowly lowered it to his side. He cleared his throat nervously, glancing questioningly at the totem poles that were partially burned and then at the ones that seemed to have been newly erected and painted.
He then looked slowly around him, puzzled by the newness of many of the longhouses. What had happened here since the time he had come to talk business with the chief? It appeared as if some great fire had ravaged the village. Yet beyond, where the forest stood mighty and green, there was no sign of fire.
It made him uneasy, yet he again turned and faced Strong Heart. Nothing would dissuade Earl from his purpose for being here.
“I have returned to speak business with Chief Moon Elk again,” Earl said, clasping his hands nervously behind him. “Would you please take me to him?”
Strong Heart stood there silently for a moment longer, then nodded toward the door. “Come with me,” he said, turning and walking back inside the longhouse.
Earl followed him inside and stopped at Strong Heart’s side. Earl’s eyes widened as he stared down at Chief Moon Elk, whose one leg was stretched out before him, evidently wounded. Earl wondered how he had been wounded, and by whom.
Strong Heart gestured toward his father and his mother.
“My father, Chief Moon Elk, and my mother, Pretty Nose,” Strong Heart said. “My father will speak to you again. I will listen, then speak to you myself as soon as my father is finished with you.”
Earl paled and grew unsteady on his legs as he looked in surprise at Strong Heart. “You are Chief Moon Elk’s son?” he said softly. “I did not know. You did not sit in council with your father and me before.”
“That is so,” Strong Heart said, glancing toward the curtain, knowing that this white man would be quite surprised to know that at the time of his last visit, Strong Heart had been with his daughter. This man would be even more surprised if he knew that his daughter was there even now, hiding from him in the Suquamish chief’s longhouse.
It gave Strong Heart a smug feeling to keep these secrets from the scheming white man.
Elizabeth chewed nervously on her lower lip when she heard how wary her father’s voice sounded. She was guilt-stricken over deceiving him. But the fact that he was there, instead of elsewhere with a posse searching for her, gave her cause to again doubt his love for her.
Tears flooded her eyes. She now understood why her mother had disappeared all those years ago more than ever before.
Wiping the tears from her eyes, she leaned nearer to the curtain and listened closely as Chief Moon Elk began to talk in a monotone to her father.
“Mit-lite, sit down,” Chief Moon Elk said, gesturing toward a cushion on the floor opposite the fire from him. “You did not hear me well the other time you were speaking of fisheries and salmon to me. Did I not tell you that my people caught only for our village? Why do you waste your time coming again?” He looked past Earl, at the door. “And where is the man who goes by the name Morris Murdoch? He did not accompany you this time to hear a more determined no from my lips?”
“No, he did not come this time,” Earl said, resting his hands on his knees as he crossed his legs. “He came the last time mainly to direct me to your village. I knew the way this time. He stayed behind and is tending to our business. I am the spokesman for the two of us now. I hope that you will give me another chance to explain the benefits to your people of working under my employ. Perhaps you have had time to think about it? To see the worth of my plan, as I see it?”
Earl glanced down at Chief Moon Elk’s festering wound again. “You have had a mishap since I was last here?” he said, raising an eyebrow. He looked slowly up at the chief again. “How unfortunate. I’m sorry.”
r /> Strong Heart went and knelt beside his father, gently touching his father’s leg, and glaring at Earl. “Ah-hah, my father is ailing,” he said, glad that his father was giving him the opportunity to speak as he sat in stone-faced silence. “Can you truthfully say that you do not know the cause? Did you not see the burned totem poles as you entered our village? Did you not see the many new longhouses in my village? Of course you could not see the ashes of many of our people that have been spread across our land, and across the waters of the river. This has all happened since your last council with my father. Can you tell me that you do not know why this has all happened in our village? Can you?”
Elizabeth blanched and she placed her hands to her cheeks, her eyes widening in stunned surprise at what Strong Heart was saying without actually accusing her father. She shook her head, her thoughts flying, putting ghastly things together that she did not want to believe or accept. She would not believe that her father was driven by so much greed that he would have had a part in the attack on this village!
Yet, she knew that was what Strong Heart was leading up to. And surely her father had guessed as much, as well.
Her heart pounding, Elizabeth leaned her ear even closer to the curtain, growing cold as she continued to listen.
“What are you suggesting?” Earl gasped, looking quickly from father to son. “What do you think I am guilty of? Or should I even ask?”
“Your council with my father came suspiciously close to the raid on my people,” Strong Heart hissed. “Can you deny that after my father turned your proposal down, you returned to our village and wreaked havoc on our people. To frighten us into doing as you ask, or to weaken us so that we would see no other way of survival except to take money earned from you? Do you think that we do not see right through such a scheme as this?”
Elizabeth quickly clasped her hand over her mouth and gasped. She swayed with a sudden light-headedness, to know that she had guessed right at what Strong Heart was thinking.
No! She would not allow herself to believe her father was guilty of such a heinous crime. He had never stooped to such tactics to get his way.
And why should he now? He was a rich man who did not need to go to such extremes as this to make more money for himself.
No. She could not, would not believe this of her father, no matter how greedy or ambitious he was.
Earl rose shakily to his feet, his knees weak with fright. “I am innocent of this that you are accusing me of,” he said with a slight gasp. “I am not the sort to kill for my own gain. Please believe me. I did not even know of the tragedy, or I would have never come here. Especially alone. Doesn’t that prove that I am innocent? I am not a foolish man. If I had any inkling of your having just suffered a raid, I wouldn’t have set foot in your village, for fear that I would be accused of it. I value my life more than that. I am not the sort to take chances with it.”