Jade hugged her. “I so wish you well,” she murmured. “If Thunder Horse agrees to help you, perhaps Lee-Lee and I will soon join you.”
“I’m sure Thunder Horse would welcome you, too,” Jessie said, then gave Jade another hug and went back to her bedroom to wait for an opportune moment to flee. She would be setting out in the darkness of night, alone, and afraid, and hoping for help from Thunder Horse.
“Will he take me in, or will he be too afraid to get involved?” she whispered as she gazed out her window, only now realizing that she had no idea where Thunder Horse’s village was located.
She no longer felt as sure of her plan as before.
Chapter Ten
Thunder Horse’s ahte’s tepee was lit by the burning embers of the lodge fire. Concerned about how his father had seemed to worsen today, Thunder Horse had decided to sit with him for a while longer than usual tonight. White Horse was sleeping now on his bed of blankets and furs, a warm pelt covering him to his armpits.
Earlier, when Thunder Horse had came to see how his ahte was faring, he had become concerned when he heard just how labored his father’s breathing was.
Thunder Horse knew that his father had these spells often now. Thus far, he had come out of them in a matter of hours. But each time he was left even weaker.
Thunder Horse knew that one of these times, his father would slip away from him to begin his long journey to the hereafter to join his ancestors in the sky.
White Horse would become one of the stars in the heavens. Thunder Horse would gaze upon them each night and know that his father would be looking down at him.
His eyes never leaving his ahte as he sat beside him on a blanket on the warm rush mats covering the earthen floor, Thunder Horse drew his knees up against his chest. He held them in that position by wrapping his sleeping robe tightly around his loins and knees.
In this fashion he had made of himself a rocking chair, and even now he slowly rocked back and forth, his troubled thoughts on his father. He knew that his father’s time to leave this earth was near, but would it be days or weeks?
White Horse had proved to have a strong constitution and an even stronger will to live.
When Lone Wing said Thunder Horse’s name outside the lodge, Thunder Horse rose and held the entrance flap aside.
“Chieftain uncle, may I sit with you?” Lone Wing asked, looking into Thunder Horse’s eyes, then gazing past him, at how still White Horse lay.
“Ho, hiyu-wo, come in,” Thunder Horse said thickly, stepping aside so that Lone Wing could move past him.
“He seems so still tonight,” Lone Wing said as he went and stood over White Horse. “Is my grandfather worse?”
He watched Thunder Horse as he sat down by his father. He took the same position as before, again slowly rocking.
“It is hard to say,” Thunder Horse said, then patted the blanket next to him. “Sit. I welcome your company.”
“Should we talk? Will our voices disturb your father?” Lone Wing asked, settling down beside Thunder Horse, his own sleeping robe wrapped about his knees as he tried to imitate the way Thunder Horse was sitting and rocking.
“If we talk and my ahte hears us, that will be good, not bad,” Thunder Horse said, gently touching his father’s cheek, then drawing his hand slowly away again. “His flesh is warm enough. He is still with us for a while longer.”
“He was a good chief before you,” Lone Wing said softly. “But he is now . . . so . . . much smaller than I remember him being.”
“Age shrinks a person sometimes,” Thunder Horse said, sighing heavily. “But all who knew my ahte remember vividly how muscular and able he was before age took him in its iron grip. It is sad to see how much has been taken from him by aging.”
“Ho, very sad,” Lone Wing said softly.
To change the subject, Thunder Horse urged Lone Wing to talk about his own life for a while. To Thunder Horse’s surprise, Lone Wing brought the white woman with the flame-colored hair into the conversation.
“I do not understand how the pretty white woman that we saw kneeling at our worship stone today could belong to such an evil-hearted man as Reginald Vineyard,” Lone Wing blurted out. “Do you think she is his wife?”
Stunned that his nephew had thought of Jessie at all, much less be puzzled about who she might be married to, Thunder Horse looked quickly at him. His jaw tightened.
“I do not want to talk about another man’s woman,” Thunder Horse said. He gave his nephew a frowning glance. “If you want to sit with me and discuss anything further tonight, it is best that we talk about how you aspire to be our people’s Historian, how you will record our people’s history as we have lived it in these troubled times.”
“Ho, that is more important than . . . than . . . a mere woman who means nothing to either of us,” Lone Wing said, seeing that those words made his uncle’s jaw tighten even more.
Deep down he knew that this woman did mean something special to his uncle. It was clear in Thunder Horse’s eyes and voice that he felt something for her, yet apparently he denied those feelings.