“I don’t see your phantom Indian,” he said.
Maddie could see Laurel beginning to lose her confidence in the appearance of her friend, and Maddie wished that Hears Good would show himself. She gave a whistle and waited.
Just as she’d begun to think that Hears Good was not going to show himself, he stepped from the trees—and all eyes were on him.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing on the earth more magnificent than a Crow warrior in his prime—and Hears Good was that: handsome, tall, proportioned as man was meant to be proportioned, skin the color of the earth, and he carried himself with the knowledge of what he was.
Maddie did not go to him, did not speak or touch him, not when he was being a warrior. As a child she and her sister and Hear Good’s children had crawled all over him, had teased him and played tricks on him, but not when he was being a warrior; then they stood back and looked at him in awe—as ’Ring, Jamie, and Toby behind him were doing now.
As quickly as he appeared, Hears Good slipped back into the forest.
It was a moment before Laurel spoke. “There. Does that suit you? Do you think he can take us back to my home?”
’Ring wasn’t listening to her. He turned to his brother and they smiled at each other. It was as though they had seen a childhood legend come alive and they weren’t sure that they yet believed it.
Jamie went to his brother and put his arm around ’Ring’s shoulders. “I get to be Hears Good next time,” he said, using a phrase that was obviously one he’d used often as a boy.
“Only if I get to be Jefferson Worth,” ’Ring replied.
Laurel looked at Maddie. “What are they talking about?”
Maddie laughed. “Boys,” she said. “They are being boys.”
“They still askin’ her questions?” Toby asked as he squatted by the fire and ate another helping of bacon.
Maddie yawned and nodded. Right after Hears Good’s appearance, ’Ring and his brother had called Laurel into the tent and, since then, they had been in there asking her questions about where she had been held and why. At first Maddie had been protective of her little sister, but then she’d realized that Laurel was enjoying having the full attention of the two handsome men—even if she was more than a little cool to ’Ring. Maddie could see that her sister especially liked the blue-eyed Jamie, and Jamie gave the child very grown-up looks.
As Maddie was leaving the tent, she passed Jamie, bent over, and whispered, “You hurt my little sister and I’ll break more than your heart.”
Jamie laughed as Maddie left the tent.
Now Maddie felt like singing, and she realized that in the past few days she had not wanted to sing. It was the first time she could remember in her life that she hadn’t wanted to sing. But now she wanted to sing and she wanted to sing for ’Ring.
“Didn’t the miners say that they’d brought the piano up here and put it in a building?” she asked Toby.
“It’s up there on the hill. It was just a lean-to, but they put a roof of sorts on it and a front wall.”
“Good,” she answered, and started up the hill. It was just a small place, hardly big enough for the piano and a chair, but it would do. She smiled as she thought of ’Ring’s coming reaction to her singing. It was one thing to hear an opera singer on a stage and quite a different thing to hear her in a small room.
It didn’t take her long to arrange with Frank to play for her in the afternoon. Edith made them lunch of fried ham and biscuits. Maddie wanted to talk to Laurel, but she seemed interested only in Jamie and kept watching him. Maddie narrowed her eyes in warning at Jamie, and he lifted his hands in a gesture of innocence.
At last Maddie stood. “I’m going to have a lesson now,” she said as though it meant nothing. “Perhaps, ’Ring, you’d like to join me.”
He smiled. “I might like to do that,” he said, and followed her up the hill to the little cabin.
Inside the cabin he closed the door behind them, she walked to the piano, then turned to Frank, who was already seated at the keyboard. “ ‘Ah, fors’ è lui,’ please,” she said softly.
’Ring sat down in the chair she had placed opposite the piano and smiled at her. The lovely aria from La Traviata was already one of his favorites, and he’d heard her sing it twice before. Yet, for all the times he’d heard Maddie sing, he’d never been alone in a small room with a voice such as hers. When heard on a stage one realizes that it takes a powerful voice to be heard to the last seat, but it is difficult to understand the full depth, the full power of an opera singer’s voice when sitting in an audience of a hundred or so people.
At first ’Ring merely enjoyed the music as Maddie sang about whether or not she should love Alfredo. But when she got to the part where she was singing of how perhaps their souls were meant for each other, he opened his eyes a little wider. Her voice, partly from talent, partly from training, came from inside her chest, deep, deep down within her. When she sang follia, Italian for “It’s madness,” the sheer volume of her voice made his chair begin to vibrate and with it, his body.
She sang of the burning flame of love, of a love that was mysterious and unattainable, the torment and delight of her heart.
It was on the exquisite trill of gioir, “Enjoy myself,” that he sat up in his chair and looked at her. He’d never seen anything as beautiful in his life as this woman. He knew that he loved her, had loved her for some time now, but now he was looking at her differently, not as a person, but as an incredibly desirable female.
Frank surprised ’Ring as he made an attempt to sing Alfredo’s part as he stood outside Violetta’s window and sang that love is the pulse of the whole world.
It was Maddie’s trills on her first reply to Alfredo that made ’Ring begin to shake. It was a slow inner tremor that spread from the core of his body until it reached his limbs. He held on to the chair as though he might come apart if he didn’t.