Savage Skies

But he also wanted her to want his help!

“I was brought news that you might have a child,” he began.

Shirleen’s throat tightened.

She looked quickly up at him.

But she still said nothing even though she was very aware that he was gazing into her eyes. She was also aware of how her own heart was racing.

She could not help wondering why he had concerned himself with news of her child.

He was a chief with many more things on his mind than the existence of a stranger’s daughter.

“Is there a daughter?” Blue Thunder prodded. When Shirleen still said nothing, he searched with his eyes for the small dress that Speckled Fawn had spoken of.

When he saw a tiny dress lying apart from the other clothes, he assumed it was the one Speckled Fawn had seen Shirleen crying over.

He moved to his feet and took the dress up into his hands.

She gasped when he suddenly turned and knelt on his haunches beside her, shoving the dress into her hand.

“This surely belongs to your daughter,” he said. “You made the dress, did you not? Your daughter wore it.”

Shirleen stifled a sob behind one hand as she held the dress in the other, her eyes filling with tears as she gazed directly into Blue Thunder’s.

“You have been wrong not to tell me about your daughter,” Blue Thunder said, standing and going back to sit across the fire from her. “There is a daughter, is there not?”

Shirleen fought against the emotions ravaging her heart as she started to say something, but it took too long, and he was speaking again.

“Speckled Fawn came to me and told me about your reaction to the tiny dress,” Blue Thunder said thickly. “My warriors and I have searched the long day through for any signs of a small white girl child, but we did not find her.”

Shirleen was too stunned to speak. She could not believe that this powerful chief would have made such an effort to search for a mere child, and a white one at that.

Why would a small child be so important to this Indian chief, unless he and his people needed white children for a particular purpose?

She suddenly went pale when a horrifying thought struck fear into her heart.

Did these people use white children as sacrifices to their gods?

The thought sickened her.

She stood quickly, dropped the dress to the mats, then ran past Blue Thunder. She stopped just outside the tepee and vomited.

The sentry’s eyes widened as his chief came out of the tepee and hurried to the woman. He gently wiped her mouth clean with his own hand when Shirleen stopped vomiting.

Shirleen was stunned.

She turned her eyes up to Blue Thunder and stared disbelievingly at him as he wiped his hand clean on the grass, then stood and looked at her.

“Why did you react in such a way when all I wanted was to help you?” he asked, searching her green eyes for answers. “My people are not like the Comanche renegades who kill whites without a reason. I have no good feelings for whites, but I respect all people, as I do the animals of the forest. All were placed on earth for a purpose. A woman’s purpose, whether red or white, is to bear and love children . . . and to give love to a man who will return her love in kind.”

He dared to place a gentle hand on her cheek and gaze more intently into her eyes. “I see you as a lovely woman who has been wronged,” he said thickly. “Is there a small child out there somewhere who has also been wronged?”

The touch of his hand was warm on her cheek, the look in his eyes filled with caring. Shirleen felt anything but repulsed by him and what he was saying.

Now she felt foolish for having reacted so violently

to what he had said.