“I am cold,” Nee-kah said, clinging to the blanket around her shoudlers.
“The woman with child must be seen to,” Chief Silver Wing said. He whisked Nee-kah to his side and walked her away to their wigwam.
Echohawk and Mariah went to their own wigwam and embraced with a long, sweet kiss.
“Lie down beside the fire and cover yourself with the warm buffalo robes,” Echohawk said softly.
Perfectly content, Mariah did as he suggested, then watched as he busied himself heating several smooth round stones in the fire.
After these were thoroughly heated, Echohawk wrapped the rocks in strips of warm blankets, then knelt beside Mariah and placed them at her feet. “You will be warmed clear through soon,” he said, crawling beneath the piles of heavy robes beside her. He embraced her and drew her against him. “When will you say that you are ready to be my wife? How much longer do I have to wait for you to voice this aloud to me, the man who loves you?”
“Do you doubt at all that I will be your wife?” Mariah asked, smoothing her hand along the sculptured lines of his face. “I am here, am I not?”
“Ay-uh, and I will never let you go,” Echohawk said, brushing a kiss across her lips.
“Echohawk, before we speak vows of marriage, I first want to make things right in my life,” she murmured. “I want to reveal myself to my true father.”
“I understand,” Echohawk said, nodding. “As soon as the new wigwams are built and my people have a sense of belonging again, we will travel to Fort Snelling. We will both meet with Colonel Snelling, but for separate reasons.”
“Ay-uh,” Mariah sighed. “And then, my love, I will go through whatever ceremony is required to be your wife.”
Echohawk smiled to himself, knowing that she would be greatly surprised when he told her that a private ceremony had already been conducted that had made them man and wife.
When the time was right, ay-uh, he would tell her!
He looked through the smoke hole overhead and to the sky. It was no longer snowing, the clouds having drifted away. Tonight the stars seemed to be the eyes of the gods, shining down at him and his beloved . . .
Chapter 23
Of all the tyrants the world affords,
Our own affections are the fiercest lords.
—Earl of Sterling
Several Weeks Later
The wind swept across the snow-silent slopes. Mariah and Echohawk’s horses loped along the crusty white trail, obscured by a blizzard of spinning snowflakes. Even though Mariah was wearing a snug bearskin coat, its hood framing her face, and winter moccasins lined with rabbit fur, she still trembled, her teeth chattering, as the bitter chill of the early evening stung her cheeks and nose. When she and Echohawk had set out for Fort Snelling earlier in the day, the sun had been brilliant overhead, and the snow that had fallen the previous day had begun to melt from the limbs of the trees.
And then an unexpected snowstorm had blown in over the land. In the forest that fringed the river, powdery snow smoked into the wind from the limbs of the great cottonwoods, and grass spiked upward through the icy crusts that stretched across the meadows.
Mariah and Echohawk had been too far from their village to turn back. They had decided that it was best to travel on to Fort Snelling, since they had postponed the trip already too many times. Their newfound love, free of all doubts and suspicions, absorbed them completely. And the unusually harsh weather had made it hard to gather the appropriate materials for the new village’s wigwams.
But in time, when the dwellings were finally built, Echohawk’s people were able to settle in for the winter. Chief Silver Wing’s generosity extended even to helping supply Echohawk’s people with enough staples to get them through the winter.
And now Echohawk felt free to leave his village and people to take care of his affairs at Fort Snelling—to talk peace with Colonel Snelling and to see that his name was completely cleared.
Mariah glanced over at Echohawk, seeing how wonderfully handsome he was, even though mostly covered by a bearskin coat which matched hers. He rode tall in the saddle, as though he were an extension of his prized Blaze.
And he no longer had to wear the eyeglasses, although he still found them useful for hunting and target shooting. Mariah didn’t mind them at all, in fact she secretly loved the quirky addition to his rugged features.
But she knew that he detested the eyeglasses and was awaiting the day he could cast them aside entirely, for he felt that they took away from his nobility—his prowess as a great hunter and invincible leader.
Her mittened hands clutching onto the reins, her eyes now directed straight ahead, she tried to ignore how the wind continued to hurl stinging pellets of snow at her. Her thoughts turned to her own reason for going to Fort Snelling, besides traveling with the man she loved for moral support. She was finally going to come face-to-face with her true father. She was determined that he know she was his daughter. And surely he would be as happy about it as she. He had always treated her as though she were someone special.
But perhaps that was because he had always felt sorry for her, never having approved of the way she had been forced to live with Victor Temple—as though she were a boy, instead of a girl with a girl’s desires and dreams.
She wanted more than pity.