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“I imagine they will come in soon, for the wind is colder now,” Two Eagles said as he removed his fringed jacket and laid it close to the fire to dry.
After lifting a large log onto the flames, he sat down beside Candy. “And how is the child in your belly faring?” he asked, reaching over and placing the palm of his hand on the round swell of her stomach.
“When spring comes, making everything beautiful, our child will be another flower to add to the wonders of nature,” Candy murmured. “It will be another daughter. I feel it in the way it kicks just like our first daughter did.” She laughed softly. “Sometimes it feels as though it is trying to kick a rib out of place.”
“I would say we are having a strong son instead of a daughter,” Two Eagles said, smiling proudly.
“Ho, perhaps,” Candy said. She set her beading aside and scooted closer to Two Eagles, nestling in his arms as he reached out and embraced her. “I am so happy. Things are wonderful, Two Eagles. I feel so blessed.”
“Life is good to us all,” Two Eagles agreed. “Not only our family, but all of our village. We continue to have abundant harvests, and the hunts are always good, even though the buffalo are fading from this area. As the white settlers encroach more and more on what was once only the land of the Wichita, I see few buffalo.”
“They kill buffalo when they don’t need to,” Candy said tightly. “I believe they do this only to keep the buffalo from our people. It is disgraceful. I wish I could do something to stop such waste, but I would not dare appear before the President in Washington dressed in doeskin. I would be seen as a traitor to my country and perhaps locked up forever.”
“Do not worry about such things as the dissappearence of the buffalo, or anything else that has to do with matters in Washington,” Two Eagles said. “Being a wife and mother is the best thing a woman can be.”
“Ho, I know, and as I said before, I am so very, very happy with my life,” she said. She turned her eyes up to look into his. “My husband, it is a new year. It will be as good to us as all years past. I feel it in my bones.”
“Ho, or even better,” he said, chuckling.
“I must admit that I miss one thing,” Candy said in a teasing fashion, for she did not miss what she was about to tell him at all. It just seemed strange not to be a part of a New Year’s celebration as she had celebrated each new year when she was growing up.
“And that is?” he asked. “Tell me, and I shall see that you have it.”
Candy leaned away from him.
She moved to sit in front of him, feeling the fire warm on her back. “I doubt you can,” she said, looking mischievously into his eyes.
“I will try if you will only tell me what you are talking about,” Two Eagles said, taking her hands in his.
“I miss the fireworks that my father and the soldiers at the forts always shot off on New Year’s Eve,” she said, in her mind’s eye recalling how beautiful the fireworks looked against the dark heavens.
“Fireworks?” Two Eagles said, lifting an eyebrow.
Then he smiled. “Ah, ho, fireworks,” he repeated before she had the chance to say anything else. “I am familiar with such things. Let me tell you about my firs
t experience with fireworks. Do you wish to hear it?”
“Ho, please tell me,” Candy said, truly loving his tales of his past experiences. She could listen to him talk way into the night, once he got started.
“Long ago, on a cold night of the new year, in the middle of the night I heard the firing of guns,” Two Eagles said. “My father shouted the word ‘enemy,’ which meant that he felt that our village was being attacked by our enemies. My father grabbed his firearm and thrust one into my hand although I had not had much practice yet with rifles, while my mother sat trembling and afraid that we would soon be dead.”
“And then what?” Candy asked, her eyes anxious. “Were you attacked?”
“There was no attack at all,” Two Eagles said, smiling as he remembered that night so well, and how stunned he and his father were when they saw beautiful colors spraying across the sky.
“My father and I both knew that firearms could not make such designs in the sky as we saw,” he said. “I went with my father. We stealthily moved through the night until we came upon those who were making the noises. It was French Canadian half-breeds camping downriver from our village. They were firing off what I now know are called fireworks. We watched until there were no more; then we returned home.”
“Was that the only time you ever saw fireworks?” Candy asked.
“No, after that we saw them often on the night of the new year, but they were being sent into the sky from behind the walls of the forts,” he said.
“When we first came to Fort Hope, we had fire-works displays,” Candy said, then frowned. “But my father stopped them after the Sioux came near to watch one year. That unnerved my father enough that we never had fireworks again.”
“I learned ways to make my own fireworks,” Two Eagles said proudly. “Put on your coat and come outside. I shall show our children, and those playing with them, as well.”
Anxious to see what he was going to do, Candy pulled on her warm coat, then went outside with Two Eagles after he had put on a dry buckskin jacket.
She waited for him by the entranceway as he chose four arrows from his quiver. Then she saw him pick a cartridge from his cache of weapons and slide it into his front jacket pocket.
