His heart pounding, Two Ridges felt blessed that soft moss cushioned the sound of his horse's hooves as they moved onward. Two Ridges knew where he would go. There was a secret cave that he knew. Never had he shared the location of this cave with Spotted Eagle or any of his other friends. It had been Two Ridges' secret place to play as a child and pray as an adult.
Jolena would be the only one to share his secret.
Moving into the shadows of the forest, Two Ridges sighed with relief. Sinking his knees into the sides of his horse, he sent it quickly onward. When Jolena moaned and moved slightly in his arms, his insides melted as he glanced down at her. He studied her features, finding them beautiful and alluring, yet now that he was this close, there seemed something different about her from the beauty he had admired in her at arm's length.
It was only a slight resemblance that he was seeing, yet it was therea look in her sleep that he had seen often when his very own father lay sleeping.
There was something about the way she held her lips, the way she seemed to be smiling even while asleep…
He had admired that trait in his father, whose heart was always so kind to everyone, even strangers, that his kindness had always followed him as he fell asleep.
This gave Two Ridges a strange foreboding inside his heart, yet he scoffed and cast these feelings aside, knowing that although this woman was Indian in all of her features, she was not related to anyone that Two Ridges knew!
Most certainly Jolena was not the daughter of his father! A sudden thought gripped Two Ridges' insides then, and he recalled the story of his father's first wife and how a child had been taken from her. No one had ever seen the child again, nor had it been known if it was a boy or a girl.
No one even knew if the child was still ali
ve!
''This is not my father's daughter," Two Ridges said, convincing himself that she wasn't.
The reason this woman smiled in her sleep was only because she was kind and sweet in all ways possible!
She was what he wanted in a wife, even if he won her love at the same time that he betrayed his friend!
Clutching her to him, as though his own life depended on it, Two Ridges rode relentlessly onward, hoping to reach the cave before Spotted Eagle discovered him gone.
Spotted Eagle's eyes scanned the land below him, his heart bleeding as he saw the broken, twisted bodies and debris scattered everywhere. There was no way to identify those who were dead without seeing them up close.
His head bent low, he moved slowly to his feet and without much thought, too filled with remorse to think about anything but his beloved woman, he swung himself into his saddle and wheeled his horse around to seek a path that would take him to the bottom of the cliff.
Between him and Two Ridges, a way would be found!
Raising his head to tell Two Ridges to help him at this time of his deep despair, Spotted Eagle's lips parted in a surprised gasp when he discovered that his young friend was no longer there.
"What would make him leave?" he whispered to himself, peering ahead, hoping to see his friend waiting farther up the path, yet he saw no sign of him anywhere.
Puzzled and disappointed, yet not wanting to take any more time wondering about a friend who would abandon him at such a time as this, Spotted Eagle set his jaw hard and searched until he found the safest way to travel down the steep incline.
Holding his reins tightly, and locking his knees to the sides of his horse to steady himself as his stallion's hooves began slipping and sliding on the loose rock beneath them, Spotted Eagle determinedly moved lower and lower until he reached the place where broken bodies, scattered journals, and pieces and wheels of wagons were strewn about.
There was not a sound to be heard as Spotted Eagle dismounted. The birds in the trees had even ceased to sing as the fires of the sun poured down from the heavens on the death scene spread around before Spotted Eagle's tear-filled eyes.
Stiffly he went from body to body, gasping at the sight of those who were so bloodied and smashed it was impossible to identify them.
The clothes on each victim were so ripped and torn and covered with blood that Spotted Eagle could not even use that means to identify his woman.
He shouted to the heavens a cry of despair, devastated to know that Jolena was gone from him so quickly!
After searching for a while longer, desperate for any clues as to which one might be Jolena, Spotted Eagle finally gave up, feeling that he had no other recourse but to leave the death scene.
Jolena and Kirk's bodies were unidentifiable.
There was no way to separate them from the others, to give them a proper burial.
All that he wanted now was to escape, to put this horror from his mind, yet he knew he never would be able to forget!
It was there forever, like leaves carved into stone as they become fossilized with age!