Savage Courage

She watched him, mystified that a man should be so different from a woman in this way. Then she sucked in a wild breath of wonder when his body shuddered and he spent himself in her hand.

He smiled at her, sat up, and reached for a buckskin cloth to clean her hand.

“You had best not do that again to me tonight, or I might not be able to walk from my lodge,” he said, laughing throatily. “You will have drained me of my energy.”

“I don’t want to do that,” she said as he laid the cloth aside. “But I do wish to talk awhile before returning to my mother’s bedside.”

She hung her head, then looked at him again. “Then I must return to the fort so that everyone will know that I am all right,” she said softly.

She wondered why her words caused Storm to look wary, but brushed her curiosity aside when he sat up and fetched a soft pelt from his stack of many. He placed it around her shoulders, and then took the end of the very same pelt and brought it around his own shoulders so that as they sat before the fire, their shoulders touched beneath the pelt.

“Tell me about your mother,” Shoshana said, seeing a strange haunted look enter his eyes.

He turned and gazed into the fire and did not respond right away; then he looked at her again. “My mother was white,” he said, drawing a soft gasp from Shoshana. “Yes, Shoshana, my mother was white. And she had such golden hair. I remember that when I touched it as a child, I thought it was made of silk. She was a golden-haired Apache princess after she was taken captive and fell in love with her captor, who was my father.”

He gazed into the fire once again. “I have always longed to find my mother’s hair so that I could give it back to her,” he said, his voice breaking.

“Your mother was scalped?” Shoshana gasped, drawing his eyes back to her.

“Yes, scalped,” Storm said thickly.

“I . . . am . . . so sorry,” Shoshana gulped out, imagining renegades coming into his village, killing and scalping.

“You have lived the life of a white person, as my mother, who was white, lived the life of an Apache,” Storm said, his voice drawn. “How do you feel about it?”

“I grow weary thinking about these things,” Shoshana said, sighing. “Especially thinking about the man who allowed me to live that day instead of killing me like all the others. But there is one thing about him that you must know. He spent his lifetime trying to make me happy. I know now that it was surely to help ease the guilt in his heart over all the wrongs he had committed against innocent people.”

“Is that man truly regretful of what he did?” Storm asked guardedly as he stood and dressed while Shoshana put on the lovely beaded dress that was made by her mother’s own hands.

“He says he is,” Shoshana murmured, running her fingers through her hair to remove the tangles from making love. “And, yes, I truly believe he is sorry,” she murmured. “Don’t you see, Storm? That is why he came here to Arizona to help find the scalp hunter who preys on the Apache.”

“I, personally, do not believe that any man who killed as Colonel George Whaley killed could ever truly be sorry about it,” Storm said. “He killed with too much ease, too much authority.”

“How do you know so much about him?” Shoshana asked.

“How?” Storm repeated. “The man who brought death into your life also brought it into mine. He . . . killed . . . my parents.”

“How do you know this?” she asked, her pulse racing. “You were so young. Surely you were not present when your parents were slain or you would not be alive.”

“I arrived almost immediately after the massacre,” Storm said thickly. “My ahte, my father, was alive long enough to tell me what happened, and the name he had heard that day—the name of the man who had murdered and scalped my mother.”

“Lord,” Shoshana gasped, remembering that only moments ago Storm had said that his mother’s golden hair had been taken by the man who murdered her.

And he knew that this man was Colonel Whaley!

She stumbled to her feet. She stepped slowly away from Storm, then turned and ran from the tepee.

Storm followed and caught up with her. He grabbed her around the waist and turned her to face him. “Why did you run?” he demanded as his eyes searched hers.

“I’m not sure,” she said, swallowing hard. “I just can’t accept that George Whaley, the man who raised me with such love and tenderness, had a role in killing not only my people, but also yours . . . and that he could actually scalp someone.” She lowered her eyes. “Oh, surely you are wrong,” she gulped out.

He placed a gentle hand beneath her chin and raised it so that their eyes could meet. “To-dah, I am not wrong,” he said, his voice drawn. “My father spoke the man’s name to me. He told me that Colonel George Whaley was the one who took my mother’s scalp. My father shot his last arrow into Colonel Whaley’s leg. Had my father not sunk back to the ground as though dead, your father would have came back and killed my father, too. As it was, Father lived long enough to tell me the truth about the tragedy that day, and who was responsible.”

“It’s so horrible,” Shoshana said, her heart sinking.

“And you still respect the man after knowing this?” Storm asked, his eyes again searching hers.

“I’m not sure if I ever truly did respect him after the truth was revealed to me in bits and pieces in my dreams,” she said softly. “But the fact remains that I am alive because of him.”