Chapter Thirteen

Be strong!
Say not: The days are evil,
Who’s to blame?

—Babcock

The day had been long.

The search had taken the Assiniboine warriors far and wide.

But they were home now, empty-handed.

Blue Thunder had eaten the evening meal with his daughter and aunt. Bathed and dressed in fresh, fringed buckskins and matching moccasins, he stepped up to the entrance flap of the lodge where the white woman named Shirleen was staying. He imagined she must be feeling downcast, missing her old life with every fiber of her being, especially her daughter.

After spending a full day searching for the child, Blue Thunder spoke Shirleen’s name before entering the lodge. He knew that she deserved as much privacy as anyone else, especially since she was in unfamiliar surroundings, at the mercy of people she did not yet trust.

Shirleen heard Blue Thunder’s voice. It made her heart do a strange leap inside her chest. She realized she felt no fear at the sound of his deep, masculine voice.

Although she did not want him to know that she had any feelings for him, she could not help feeling more and more intrigued by the man. Would he think her attraction foolish, because she was a mere white woman and he was a powerful chief?

When the young chief spoke her name again, Shirleen hurried to her feet and went to the entrance flap.

Dismayed that her hand trembled as she reached for the hide covering, she seemed to have no control over her emotions.

As she held the flap aside, the evening breeze wafted past Blue Thunder into the small tepee, and she noticed the darkening sky behind him. Shirleen did not seem to know how to talk with him, fearing she might say the wrong thing.

She only looked at him shyly as he stepped past her, not waiting for her to invite him in.

As Shirleen dropped the skin back into place and returned to the fire to sit down beside it, Blue Thunder could not help feeling disappointed. He was discouraged that the woman still chose not to speak to him.

He sat down across the fire from her, noticing the hesitancy in her expression when her eyes momentarily met his.

When she looked away from him again, fixing her gaze on the mats upon which she sat, Blue Thunder was overwhelmed by frustration.

“I have been gone most of the day with my warriors,” he suddenly blurted out. “I am going to tell you where we have been, and what we did not achieve.”

He waited for her to respond, but again she chose not to.

His frustration was building, for he truly wanted to help this woman.

But he also wanted her to want his help!

“I was brought news that you might have a child,” he began.

Shirleen’s throat tightened.

She looked quickly up at him.

But she still said nothing even though she was very aware that he was gazing into her eyes. She was also aware of how her own heart was racing.

She could not help wondering why he had concerned himself with news of her child.

He was a chief with many more things on his mind than the existence of a stranger’s daughter.

“Is there a daughter?” Blue Thunder prodded. When Shirleen still said nothing, he searched with his eyes for the small dress that Speckled Fawn had spoken of.

When he saw a tiny dress lying apart from the other clothes, he assumed it was the one Speckled Fawn had seen Shirleen crying over.

He moved to his feet and took the dress up into his hands.

She gasped when he suddenly turned and knelt on his haunches beside her, shoving the dress into her hand.

“This surely belongs to your daughter,” he said. “You made the dress, did you not? Your daughter wore it.”

Shirleen stifled a sob behind one hand as she held the dress in the other, her eyes filling with tears as she gazed directly into Blue Thunder’s.

“You have been wrong not to tell me about your daughter,” Blue Thunder said, standing and going back to sit across the fire from her. “There is a daughter, is there not?”

Shirleen fought against the emotions ravaging her heart as she started to say something, but it took too long, and he was speaking again.

“Speckled Fawn came to me and told me about your reaction to the tiny dress,” Blue Thunder said thickly. “My warriors and I have searched the long day through for any signs of a small white girl child, but we did not find her.”

Shirleen was too stunned to speak. She could not believe that this powerful chief would have made such an effort to search for a mere child, and a white one at that.

Why would a small child be so important to this Indian chief, unless he and his people needed white children for a particular purpose?

She suddenly went pale when a horrifying thought struck fear into her heart.

Did these people use white children as sacrifices to their gods?

The thought sickened her.

She stood quickly, dropped the dress to the mats, then ran past Blue Thunder. She stopped just outside the tepee and vomited.

The sentry’s eyes widened as his chief came out of the tepee and hurried to the woman. He gently wiped her mouth clean with his own hand when Shirleen stopped vomiting.

Shirleen was stunned.

She turned her eyes up to Blue Thunder and stared disbelievingly at him as he wiped his hand clean on the grass, then stood and looked at her.

“Why did you react in such a way when all I wanted was to help you?” he asked, searching her green eyes for answers. “My people are not like the Comanche renegades who kill whites without a reason. I have no good feelings for whites, but I respect all people, as I do the animals of the forest. All were placed on earth for a purpose. A woman’s purpose, whether red or white, is to bear and love children . . . and to give love to a man who will return her love in kind.”

He dared to place a gentle hand on her cheek and gaze more intently into her eyes. “I see you as a lovely woman who has been wronged,” he said thickly. “Is there a small child out there somewhere who has also been wronged?”

The touch of his hand was warm on her cheek, the look in his eyes filled with caring. Shirleen felt anything but repulsed by him and what he was saying.

Now she felt foolish for having reacted so violently to what he had said.

She knew now just how wrong she was ever to think something so vile about him . . . or his people. He . . . they . . . had been nothing but giving and caring to her. And she had been nothing but cold and unresponsive in return.

That was not the sort of person she was, and she felt suddenly ashamed of herself.

If this man truly wanted to help her find her daughter, oh, how wonderful it was . . . how wonderful he was!

She was so taken by him and his kindness, she stepped away from him, leaned her face into her hands and sobbed hard.

“Come,” Blue Thunder said softly. He gently took her by the elbow and walked with her back inside the tepee. He led her down on the pelts beside the fire, then picked up the tiny dress.

“Do you want to tell me now what this small dress means to you?” he asked, kneeling beside her.

Her eyes slowly lifted. “Yes, it means a lot to me,” she murmured, a sob catching in the depths of her throat. “I did make this dress. It was sewn specifically for my daughter.” She lowered her eyes and wiped tears from them. “I am so afraid that she . . . is . . . dead.”

“Did the Comanche renegades take her?” Blue Thunder asked as he gently placed the dress on Shirleen’s lap. He felt keenly relieved that he had finally reached her heart, and that she was talking with him. “Was she taken by a renegade with a huge nose . . . the renegade leader who goes by the name Big Nose?”

“After I was abducted, I saw the man for a short while, and then . . . and then . . . he disappeared from the others,” Shirleen said. “But no. As far as I know, he did not take my daughter.”

She brushed fresh tears from her face and gazed into the midnight-dark eyes of the man who was quickly taking over her heart and making it his!

“When I looked outside, just before the attack, I saw that the gate to my yard was open,” she said. “I also noticed that my daughter was no longer in the yard. She . . . she . . . might have wandered off on her own before the Indians came.”

“My warriors and I will leave again tomorrow to search for your daughter,” Blue Thunder said. He searched her eyes as she openly gazed into his. “Would you like to join the search? Can you ride a horse? Are you well enough, and strong enough, to accompany us?”

He believed that a woman, even wounded, would go to the ends of the earth to save her child.

He knew this to be true about Shirleen, for she had done nothing but mourn her loss since her arrival at his village!

He knew deep love when he saw it, and he saw it in this woman for her child.

Shirleen could hardly believe that Blue Thunder was actually offering her the opportunity to ride with him, to help search for Megan.

She was not at all sure what to say. Although everything within her cried out to do as he suggested, she was afraid to say yes.

His world was vastly different from hers.

And there was the question of trust again.

Although everything inside her heart told her that this man was trustworthy to the very core of his being, he was still an Indian, and she had seen the atrocities other Indians had committed.

Filled with conflicting emotions, she lowered her head and did not respond to his question. She actually was too breathless to speak.

Trying to understand her stubbornness, her continued obvious distrust of him, Blue Thunder stared at her for a moment longer, then left quickly.

Shirleen realized now just what she had done by not speaking up right away. She should have agreed to his kind offer, even if it had seemed out of place for such a strong chief as he to include a woman, a tiny white woman at that, in his plans.

Thinking that she had surely insulted him, and thinking she had lost her chance to do as he had suggested, Shirleen threw herself down on the blankets beside the fire and cried.