Wild Rapture

Once inside, she helped him down onto a sleeping platform and covered him with a bear pelt and blankets, and soon had a roaring fire blazing in the firepit in the center of the dwelling.

“I must leave now to go and get supplies for your stay here,” Nee-kah said, looking tenderly down at Echohawk. “I shall return soon.”

Echohawk nodded, then closed his eyes, sighing deeply.

He opened his eyes again in a flash as he felt another presence in the room. He bolted to a sitting position, trying to see who was there. He damned the white man who had taken his sight from him when he could not make out anything but the shadow of a man kneeling beside him.

“It is I,” Silver Wing said, kneeling down close to Echohawk’s sleeping platform. “I have brought you many things.” He placed a rifle in Echohawk’s hand. “This is for you. Keep it with you at all times. If white men destroyed your village, ours might be next.”

“Mee-gway-chee-wahn-dum, thank you,” Echohawk said, lifting the rifle, liking the feel of it in his hands.

“Also I have brought you a bow and arrows, should you prefer that weapon over the firearm,” Silver Wing said, placing the bow and arrows at Echohawk’s side on the sleeping platform.

“You are more than kind,” Echohawk said, laying the rifle aside. He reached out for Silver Wing, searching, then clasping his hand on his shoulder. “My father was right to want to rekindle your friendship and live close to you. You are a special man, a man of heart.”

“You would be as generous had it been I who came to you sightless and fatherless,” Chief Silver Wing said solemnly. He paused, then added, “I also offer you land for burial of your people’s loved ones.”

Echohawk almost choked on a sob, so moved was he by Chief Silver Wing’s continuing generosities. “My people,” he said. “Those who have survived. Are they all being seen to? I do not want to be favored over them. I am now their chief. My oath as chief binds my life first to the lives of my people.”

“Each has been taken in by a separate family,” Chief Silver Wing assured. “None will want for anything. And this will be so until you choose to leave our village.”

Echohawk reached out and hugged Chief Silver Wing tightly, for a moment feeling as though he was in his father’s presence.

Then, embarrassed, he drew away.

A kind, firm hand on his shoulder made Echohawk warm clear through. “My heart is grateful,” he said. Then he scowled as he once again remembered the massacre. “I will avenge my people. I will begin hard practicing with weapons soon, to perfect what sight that I have left. They who are responsible for my people’s misfortunes will die!”

Chief Silver Wing gazed down at Echohawk, saddened by and wary of the bitterness in his voice and heart. He knew that no good could come from it. The white people had become the law in these parts. If Echohawk killed for revenge, then so would more Chippewa be slain because of it.

It was Silver Wing’s sincere desire to help curb Echohawk’s anger and to find a more peaceful solution to what had happened again to the red men of the forest. For their survival, that was the only way. Too quickly the white people were outnumbering the red man in the Minnesota wilderness.

“I have brought you something else,” Silver Wing said, placing a pipe and otter-skin tobacco pouch on Echohawk’s lap. “When you smoke from this pipe, think peaceful thoughts.”

Echohawk’s mind was no longer on what Silver Wing was saying or was offering. He was feeling hot, and then cold. Yet he did not complain out loud, although he knew that he was being weakened even more now by a fever.

“I shall return later to see how you are faring,” Silver Wing said, rising. “Nee-kah will be here shortly. She will bathe your wound. She will feed you broth. Tomorrow will be a brighter day for you, Echohawk. You will see that I am right.”

After Chief Silver Wing left the wigwam, Echohawk laid the pipe and tobacco pouch aside and eased back down onto the thick layer of pelts. His thoughts were becoming fuzzy. His scalp seemed on fire.

“Gee-bah-bah, Father,” he whispered, reaching a hand out toward the fire, thinking that he saw his father’s image in the dancing flames. “Father, do you hear me? Do you see me? Your nin-gwis, son, oh, how he misses you!”

He moved to his side and closed his eyes, his body racked with hard chills as his temperature began to rise.

He found himself drifting somewhere between midnight thoughts and the flaming glory of a Chippewa sunrise....

* * *

Fully clothed, reeking of dried perspiration and alcohol, Victor Temple tossed fitfully in his bed, his drunken slumber broken by dreams of horror. In the nightmare, he and Mariah were nude and chained together, forced to stand upon a scaffold, while Indians looked at them with hate in their eyes, ready to shoot arrows into their flesh.

Victor awakened with a start, a cold, clammy sweat on his brow, his hands drenched with perspiration, and his eyes fixed.

Shaking himself out of the dream, he jumped from the bed and poured himself a glass of whiskey, drinking it in fast gulps.

Then, recalling Mariah’s part in the dream and in the Indian massacre that he had commanded, he rushed to her room to see if she was all right. When he discovered that she was not there, alarm filled him.

“She’s been abducted!” he cried aloud. “While I slept, my daughter was abducted!”

His thoughts became scrambled as he wondered who could have done it. “Tanner?” he whispered, then shook his head, thinking that Tanner wouldn’t be that foolish.