“You are my one true love,”proclaimed Swift Hawk to Juneberry Woman, having managed to meet her alone. “When I imagine my life, I remember you alone. When I dream, I dream only of you.”
Juneberry Woman laughed, the sound of it as soft as the summer wind through the trees. “And how will you show me your love, my warrior?” She smiled up at him and trailed a finger down his cheek.
“I will take you for my wife.” Swift Hawk captured her finger with one of his own. “I will do it now, if you please.”
Juneberry Woman smiled back at him, releasing her hand from his. “I have no need of a husband. Why would I want one when I can have all I need without such a one?”
“But surely you wish to marry again?”
“Do I?”
“Don’t all women? Who else will take care of a woman? Bring her meat? Honor her in old age?”
Juneberry Woman giggled. “How young you are. How young, how ideal and how appealing, also.” She wound her fingers downward over his neck to his chest.
Swift Hawk inhaled sharply, fighting the desire she instilled within him. “Come with me now and I will make you my wife.”
Her grin widened. “We could do the things married people do without being married. I am a widow. This is permitted to me.” Her look up at him was full of seduction.
Swift Hawk pulled back from her. “I would never dishonor you in this way. Come, let us marry and we can experience all there is in life together.”
But Juneberry Womanhad turned away from him, and with a giggle, she had fled.
Swift Hawk would have married her too, except for the insistence of a Cheyenne wise man who had taken Swift Hawk by the arm one fateful day and led him into the woods.
“Marriage isa deed that should oftentimes be accomplished with the head, and not with the heart,” the wise man said.
“With the head?” asked Swift Hawk. “Grandfather, how can you be a great sage and yet say such a thing? Is not marriage an act of love?”
“Haa’he, that it is, my son. But beware, for there is a kind of love that is not really love, though it mimics it. There are in all life those things that pretend to be what they are not. And as there is in all the universe around us, so, too, there is a type oflove that is as deadly as a slow poison, for it destroys all within it. It is a passion that takes, but never gives. It demands subservience, yet never submits. Come.”
It was only because Swift Hawk so greatly respected the old man that he allowed himself to be led into those woods. After all, thought he, what did this old man know? He who spoke of marriage as being divorced from love?
Did the old man burn for Juneberry Woman as did Swift Hawk? Did he think of her as constantly as did Swift Hawk? Did he forget all else when in her presence? Even to the seriousness of his life’s purpose?
And then it happened. With no words being spoken, the old man pointed at a clearing among the trees, nodding toward it.
In it was she, Juneberry Woman, sitting naked atop a youth from his own band, a man two winters younger than Swift Hawk. Straddling the lad and wiggling to and fro, Juneberry Woman sighed as she clearly met her pleasure.
Swift Hawk watched them for a moment, if only to be positive of what he saw. Then, certain at last, he turned away.
“It is her right as a widow,” said the old man as they trod back the way they had come. “Perhaps Juneberry Woman grieves for her husband in a way that we do not understand. I do not know. I would ask you not to judge her too harshly however. I have brought you here only so that you might understand why I do not believe that she is ready to become a wife. Not now. Perhaps not ever.”
Swift Hawk could not speak. A part of him had died back there in the woods. Worse, he knew shame.
Had he not been willing to give up his quest? A quest that he knew in his heart to be of grave importance? And for what? To become Juneberry Woman’s husband?
Yet he could not truthfully deny that he felt a need to be a husband, to hold his woman in his arms and give to her a love that a man was destined to give.
Was this the way of things, then? Was this to be his life?That he would yearn for something that he could never have?
Perhaps it was so. Perhaps.
It had not been longafter this that Swift Hawk had climbed to the top of the highest butte, there within Cheyenne country. Here he would pledge his sacred word to the Creator. Here he would promise to give his all toward the accomplishment of the task set before him. Never again, he vowed, would he be blinded by love. Never again would he even take a woman to his bed unless she too shared his same purpose. A thing that, with the impatience of youth, Swift Hawk had decided was unlikely.
And why shouldn’t he think thusly? For in all this time, Swift Hawk had not found such a woman. Indeed, he was beginning to be certain that she did not exist.
Most women held also to the belief that a husband should bring home meat to fill the bellies of their children. Most women desired to be safe, secure.
