Savage Illusions
Then suddenly a sound came across the valley below him and up the hill like the noise of thunder, as a great owl came flying toward Spotted Eagle, its wide wings just barely missing his face.
A shiver soared through Spotted Eagle. The owl was warning him that it was time to leave his sorrows behind. With a lifted chin, a proud stance, and dried eyes, he began descending from this place of private prayers and knew that one day, he would see Sweet Dove again.
And he now felt more man than child.
Chapter Three
Eighteen Years Later
Saint Louis, Missouri 1870
The tepees were colorfully designed with paintings depicting the sun, lightning, and the various seasons of the year. The village seemed deserted as Jolena crept through it after having become separated from her companions in Blackfoot country.
Scarcely breathing, she tiptoed through the village. The smell of meat cooking somewhere close by came to her, but food was the last thing on her mind. She was terrified to be alone in the deserted Blackfoot village, wondering where everyone was. She expected them to pounce on her from all directions at any moment now. Even though Jolena's own skin was of a copper coloring and her hair was jet black, proving her Indian heritage, she was dressed as a white woman dresses, and she knew not a word of the Blackfoot language should she come face to face with one.
How would she explain her dilemma?
Would they even care?
Suddenly she stopped with a start and gasped when a Blackfoot warrior came from one of the tepees and blocked her way. She soon discovered that she was not so stunned by his sudden presence as she was by the warrior's utter handsomeness, and when he reached a hand out and very gently touched her face, all of Jolena's fears melted away…
Jolena's bedroom windows were swathed with sheer, lacy curtains, gentling the first beams of sunlight to reach her pillow, awakening her. Her dark eyes flickered open. Her pulse was racing; she still felt the same melting sensations that she had just experienced in the dream. So many nights now she had dreamed the same dream of the same handsome warrioronly this dream was different.
He had actually touched her!
Placing her hand on the same cheek that he had touched in her dream, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to imagine that her hand was his and, going even further, imagined that she was feeling his lips against hers…
Knowing that she must stop these fantasies, Jolena wrenched her eyes open and dropped her hand from her face. Instead of the handsome Indian, now the center of her attention was the sudden excitement filling her with the remembrance of what lay ahead of her, beginning today.
As she plumped the pillows more comfortably beneath her head and ran her hands along her satin coverlet, she gazed toward the window and watched the sun etch its patterns through the lace, knowing that this would be the last morning in her bedroom for many months, perhaps even as long as a year.
That she would actually travel clear to the wilderness of the Montana Territory seemed hard to believe. She had fought hard to convince her father to allow her to travel with the party of lepidopterists who were searching for the euphaedra, the rare butterfly that had once again migrated far from the jungles of Venezuela. So long ago her father had followed the same lead and had not found the butterfly. It seemed that the only thing he had discovered and taken back to Saint Louis with him was a daughter…
Slipping out of her four-poster bed, her bare feet sinking into a thick carpet, Jolena could not help beaming, caught up again in the tale that her mother and father had shared with her after she had been taunted once too often by her playmates for being an Indian.
Her floor-length sheer nightgown streaming along behind her, Jolena went to a full-length mirror and gazed intensely at herself. She ran her fingers over her face, studying her smooth, copper skin, high cheekbones, and dark brown eyes.
Then she ran her fingers through her waist-length hair that was blacker than charcoal. When she had just been six years old, she had begun to realize the difference between herself and the other girls with whom she attended school.
It had been a rude awakening when some had mocked her for being an Indian, even calling her a "savage."
She had quickly learned that having a different color of skin made a difference.
She had asked her parents to explain about her "difference"why wasn't her skin like theirs if she was their daughter?
She had listened raptly when they had told her about having found her lying with her dead Indian mother on the trail while they had been searching for the rare butterfly. They had fallen instantly in love with her, had taken her in, and had raised her as their own.
She had been told that they did not know her Indian tribe, nor did they know who her true father was.
Ever since then, she had wondered about her true heritageher true people.
Yet she had held her head high and had accepted what life had handed her. Her adoptive parents had always treated her wonderfully and she was as close to her adoptive brother, Kirk, as any sister could be to an older brotherwell, he was only a few months older.
Kirk was postponing his further college studies to accompany her on this journey to the Montana Territory, hoping to succeed at what their father had failed at all those years agoto find the rare butterfly that had been sighted there.
A shiver raced up and down Jolena's spine when she thought about the Indians of the Montana Territory. The Blackfoot were among those tribes, and her dreams had always been about the Blackfoot. She had known this by the color of moccasins the handsome Indian always wore.
Black.