Restless, with most of the women away from the village at work in the fields, Joylynn felt somewhat useless today. She knew that she was much too large to be of any help in the valley. She knew that she should not be thinking of doing any hard labor at all. Thus far, she had had no trouble carrying High Hawk’s child safely within her womb. She did not want to do anything that would harm it now.
She looked over her shoulder at the children at play and at the elderly men sitting around the huge outdoor fire, puffing on their long-stemmed pipes and talking. Then she glanced at the huge council house. Her husband was there with his warriors, except for those who were on guard, watching for the approach of anyone who might be an enemy.
It seemed that she was the only one who did not have something to do. Her lodge was neat and clean, her day’s meal was cooking in a pot over the flames of her lodge fire, and her fingers were pricked from too much sewing.
So what else was there to do but take a walk and pluck some fresh spring flowers, to bring their beautiful scent into her lodge?
Smiling, her decision made, she went back to her tepee and grabbed a small wicker basket, then walked slowly from the village.
She walked onward until she entered a valley where she could not see the women preparing the fields, or the tepees in the village.
It was only her, the wind, the sun and an occasional soaring bald eagle. She saw a dark line of trees not far away to her left, and then the tall wall of rock that led into the canyon beyond.
On those canyon walls were many eagles’ nests, far from where the Pawnee sentries were watching for enemies.
“I am not here to bother you or your hatchlings,” Joylynn said to one of the eagles, which had swooped low to eye her curiously. “I am here only for flowers. Will you guide me to the loveliest? I shall forever be grateful, for my feet are beginning to throb and I do not want to go home without flowers in my basket.”
To Joylynn’s astonishment, the eagle soared away, then swept low again, its eyes on Joylynn. It had shown her a wide stretch of wild daisies just over the rise, where the eagle was still hovering.
And beyond that, she saw a huge variety of wild-
flowers of all colors. The scent wafting toward her was something akin to heaven.
“Thank you,” Joylynn said to the bird as she walked in a wide circle amid the flowers. The eagle rose higher into the sky, and then was gone as quickly as it had arrived.
But Joylynn was too busy to notice that the eagle was gone, for she was bending and plucking pretty flowers and laying them in her basket.
She followed the field of flowers up to where the stand of trees began, their dark shadows suddenly looming over Joylynn. She shuddered at the mysteriousness of the trees and the silence and shadows surrounding them.
Remembering just how alone she was, Joylynn started to turn to go back home, but stopped when someone stepped from the trees, a rifle aimed directly at her stomach.
To her horror, she realized it was Mole. The man she loathed with every fiber of her being had come again, to threaten not only her child, but herself!
She could hardly believe this was happening. But her eyes told her that it was Mole, standing there leering at her, a half-smoked cigarillo hanging limply from the corner of his mouth.
Although this man was heavily whiskered with a gray beard, she knew that it was he. She would never forget those pale blue, empty eyes. And through the whiskers she could see his ugly moles, like dark eyes, staring back at her.
“Gotcha,” Mole said, taking the cigarillo from his mouth with his free hand. He flipped it over his shoulder, where it fell upon a thick stand of dead leaves and lay smoldering.
“How did you know where I was, and how on earth did you survive the attack?” Joylynn said, her voice trembling. “I know I shot you. I just know it wasn’t anyone else, yet . . . yet . . .”
“The same as you, I’ve got nine lives,” Mole said, laughing wickedly. “I left you for dead that day I raped you. How in tarnation did you walk away from that strangling alive?”
“I’ll never tell, but how is it that you are alive? I did hit you with my bullet, didn’t I?” Joylynn asked.
“Naw, don’t believe so,” Mole said, idly shrugging. “Must’ve been your imagination.”
“How . . . did . . . you find me?” Joylynn asked, shivering when he took one long look at her belly. She had placed both hands on it now, her fingers splayed wide in an effort to protect her child from his filthy eyes, and especially . . . him.
“How did you find the Indian stronghold?” she quickly added, drawing his eyes up again.
“I ran across a lad just before the snows came to these mountain ranges,” Mole said, chuckling beneath his breath. “I got the truth outta him, all of it. That’s when I knew you were still alive, and who you were living with. But it would’ve been too chancy to travel up the mountainside at that time, with snows threatening.”
A part of Joylynn went cold inside, for she knew who that “lad” must have been.
Andrew!
Oh, surely he had been on his way to escape from the life he had found among the Pawnee, for if he had reached the bottom of the mountain, he had not gone to find himself a horse to bring back for a bride price.