Her pulse raced at the thought of beginning her search for him even as soon as tomorrow.
Chapter 9
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent;—
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.
—Lord Byron
White Fire awakened with a start when he heard the popping and crackling of a fire in his fireplace. He had not kindled it since last night, which meant that now it should only be simmering coals, or cold, gray ashes.
Remembrances of other times flooded his senses, when he had awakened to the same sort of sound, when his wife, Mary, had risen before him and gotten the fire started.
But this was now.
His Mary wasn’t there. Someone else had to have started the fire.
“But who?” he whispered to himself, rushing from the bed.
He scrambled into a pair of fringed, buckskin breeches and a shirt, then hurried, barefoot, into the living room. Who he saw sitting there caused him to stop with a start.
He stared at Chief Gray Feather, who was even now on his knees before the hearth, placing another piece of wood on the fire.
Then his gaze slowly shifted to the chief’s daughter, Song Sparrow, and then to Song Sparrow’s three-year-old daughter, Dancing Star.
He didn’t have time to wonder more about it, for Song Sparrow had heard him come into the room. She turned and was smiling at him. Then she gently shoved her daughter toward him.
“My gee-dah-niss, daughter, Dancing Star, has come to introduce herself to you,” Song Sparrow said, giving her daughter another slight shove when Dancing Star hesitated.
Chief Gray Feather rose to his feet and stood with his back to the fire as he watched his granddaughter go to White Fire. Then he watched White Fire intently as he kneeled and reached his arms out for the child.
Knowing of White Fire’s gentleness and compassion for children, Chief Gray Feather hoped that he would feel his granddaughter’s loneliness for a father.
“Hello, there,” White Fire said, taking Dancing Star into his arms and hugging her. “Dancing Star, nee-may-nan-dum-wah-bum-eh-nawn, I am glad to see you. It is good to make your acquaintance.”
He looked past her shoulder and questioned Gray Feather with his eyes, yet knew, without actually questioning the chief, what was happening here. Gray Feather wished to sway him into marrying his daughter through the child’s affection.
That puzzled White Fire, for Gray Feather knew that he was married and that he had a child. White Fire had not yet had the chance to tell him that things were different, that he no longer had a wife, and in a sense, had lost his child.
He could not help but be touched, though, by the child’s tiny arms around his neck, and by how she showed no fear of him, when she had never even known him until now.
He reached his hands up to her long, glossy, black hair and stroked it.
When he looked at Song Sparrow and saw too much in her eyes, caused by his show of genuine affection for the child, fear leaped into his heart that he was giving Song Sparrow false hope.
Gently, he eased the child from his arms. He took her hand and led her back to her mother.
His eyes locked momentarily with Song Sparrow’s as she lifted her daughter. Then he turned abruptly from her and went to place his hands on the chief’s shoulders with the cordial greeting familiar to them.
“It is good to awaken and find such good company in my home this morning,” White Fire said, smiling. He lowered his hands to his sides. “It is always good to see you, Gray Feather.”
Chief Gray Feather went to stand at his daughter’s side. He placed a gentle arm around her waist and smiled at White Fire. “We came today to have council again about your future, and how it would seem only right that it would be with my St. Croix band of Chippewa, and particularly with my family,” he said, his voice a deep rumble. “I have come to ask you again, White Fire, to leave this sort of life behind you. Come and live with people of your own skin coloring.”
Gray Feather gestured, making a wide swing as he looked slowly around the room. “This is white man’s en-dah-yen, home,” he said solemnly. “You would be more content in lodge of the Chippewa.”