The men of the village were meeting to discuss her missing husband. Search parties had gone out in all directions again, and thus far, none had brought good news home with them.
Her husband was gone, perhaps . . . forever!
Ignoring the stares of the men who sat around the fire with her son, Blanket Woman stepped up to High Hawk as he rose quickly to his feet. “Come outside with me,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. “I have something to tell you.”
Seeing the anger in his mother’s eyes, he stepped outside with her and placed his hands gently on her shoulders. She stared up at him with a familiar determination in her eyes. Never had he known such a strong-willed person. Yet he realized the white woman seemed to be just as determined.
But he would never compare Joylynn to his mother. There were vast differences in their personalities. There was a softness about Joylynn when she let down her guard with him.
His mother’s softness had left her long ago!
“What do you have to tell me? What is so important that you would interrupt the council of warriors?” High Hawk asked.
“It has been proven to me today that you were absolutely wrong to bring the white woman to our village,” Blanket Woman blurted out.
“And how was it proven?” High Hawk asked, weary of his mother’s interference.
“She . . . is . . . with child,” Blanket Woman said. Her words brought alarm into her son’s eyes, and he jerked his hands from her shoulders. “It is ironic, is it not, that she is with child when your father’s main purpose in having you abduct her was to prevent one more white child from being born into the world.”
She clenched her jaw. “And here this woman is pregnant!” she said angrily. “I was right to counsel you against this abduction. I have been proven right!”
“How do you know that she is with child?” High Hawk asked warily.
“I took her a dress to wear, and when she disrobed, I saw her belly,” Blanket Woman said bitterly. “I know when the swell of a woman’s belly means that she is with child!”
High Hawk was so stunned, he was speechless.
Joylynn was not a married woman. She had not been living with a man.
So how could she be with child?
Had she been married? Had her husband died? Or had he been killed?
“You must return the white woman to her home,” Blanket Woman said tightly. “It is bad enough that you stole her in the first place. But you cannot keep a captive who carries the child of a white man in her belly!”
“I will never take her back to the white world,” High Hawk blurted out. “She is a woman alone in a harsh land. I cannot leave her vulnerable, especially now, now that she is with child.”
Blanket Woman took a shaky step away from him, her eyes wide. She now knew the depths of her son’s feelings for Joylynn.
“Ina, take your anger elsewhere today,” High Hawk said, giving her a look she could not decipher. Then he walked away from her.
High Hawk hurried to his tepee.
He stopped just inside the entrance flap and stared down at Joylynn as she sat before the fire. She had not yet noticed that he had come into his lodge.
He knew that she must be worried about the outcome of his mother learning her secret.
Joylynn gasped when she turned and found High Hawk standing there. Quickly she moved to her feet. The moment she stood before him, his eyes went to her belly.
She knew the beautiful dress she was wearing clearly outlined the small mound of her growing baby. When he continued to stand there, staring at her belly, she was sure he realized that she was most certainly with child.
Suddenly he came to her and gently placed his hands at her waist. There was no contempt in the gaze he leveled on her. “Where is this child’s father?” he asked thickly.
That question made Joylynn cringe. She couldn’t tell him the truth, for she had never told anyone about the rape. She especially didn’t want to tell this man, a man she was beginning to love.
When Joylynn refused to respond, High Hawk was torn. He was not certain how to feel about her. He had begun to love her, but now it was obvious she did not care enough about him to be truthful with him.
He gazed again into Joylynn’s eyes, then turned and left the tepee without saying anything else to her.