But now was not the time to let her know just how deeply he felt for her.
Tomorrow.
“Go with care, and…and…thank you,” Mia said, following him to the entrance flap. She held it aside for him.
He turned and gazed into her eyes one more time before leaving.
Mia stood in the entranceway and watched Wolf Hawk go from tepee to tepee, seeking help from one warrior and then another.
A sudden thought made her heart turn cold. What if she were sending him to his death?
She started to rush out of the tepee and tell Wolf Hawk that she had changed her mind, but it was too late. He was already riding from the village with many of his men dutifully following him.
“What have I done?” she cried softly in despair, watching until she couldn’t see him any longer.
Georgina began warbling a sweet song again.
Mia went to the cage and sat down beside it. “I’m afraid of what I have encouraged Wolf Hawk to do,” she said. “So afraid.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Come and let us live, my Deare,
Let us love and never feare!
—Catullus (Gaius Valerius Catullus)
Wolf Hawk had returned to his tepee with the news that he doubted Tiny was still alive. He and his warriors had searched far and wide but had seen no sign of him anywhere.
Mia had conflicting feelings about this news.
She had always despised the tiny man, then had actually hated him when she found out that he had released Georgina to the wild, but she had never wished him dead.
Now she, too, believed that Tiny was dead. She doubted that she would ever see him again.
She had wanted him to disappear from her life many times when she had been stuck with Tiny on the scow. The little man had aggravated not only herself, but also her father. But she would never wish for something this bad to happen to him…that he would just disappear from the face of the earth.
The breeze was cool on her face and arms as it wafted through the raised entrance flap of Wolf Hawk’s tepee.
Her health had improved so
much, she felt that today might be the day she would be asked to return to the lodge that had been prepared for her prior to her illness.
“It’s a miracle,” she whispered to herself as she raised the hem of the beautiful doeskin dress that had been given to her by Wolf Hawk’s cousin Little Snowbird.
The horrible sores made by the poison ivy were all but gone.
Only a few of the largest were still visible, but they would soon disappear, too.
She ran her hands slowly over the smoothness of one of her legs. She was amazed at how fast she had gotten well.
Talking Bird had truly worked magic on her.
She wondered how an Indian Shaman could know so much more about medicine than the doctors in the white community? When she had had poison ivy before, it had taken many weeks for Dr. Jamieson’s cure to heal her.
Perhaps Talking Bird had more faith in his abilities than the white doctors had in theirs. Or…perhaps it was pure magic!
In any case, she was well now. Should she wish to, she was strong enough to go on her way.