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When he saw lamplight approaching, he tensed, for except when Colonel Russell had brought Flame to see him, this was the first time anyone had come into his cell after he had been left there, surely to die.
“Because of you she is now dead!” Colonel Russell shouted as he stepped up to the bars and glared at White Fire.
“Who . . . is . . . dead?” White Fire asked, his thick, dry tongue sticking first to the roof of his mouth, and then to his parched lips. He tried to make out the colonel’s face, but all that he could see in the lamplight was a blur.
“Who do you think I would be talking about?” Colonel Russell shouted, banging a fist against one of the bars. “Reshelle, by damn! Reshelle!”
“Reshelle?” White Fire said, finding it hard to concentrate, to make sense of anything the colonel was saying.
“Flame, you idiot!” Colonel Russell shouted. “Flame is missing! Because of you, I’m sure she is dead!”
Cold fear splashed inside White Fire’s heart as he comprehended what the colonel was saying. “What . . . happened . . . to Flame?” he gasped out. “Where is she?”
“While traveling on the riverboat, she leaped overboard,” Colonel Russell cried. “That’s the only logical thing that could have happened to her. Every inch of the boat was searched when she came up missing. She wasn’t there! Lord a’mighty, she is surely sucked to the very bottom of the river. I’ll never see her again!”
A remorse overwhelmed White Fire, so keen that he cried out as though someone had stabbed him in the heart. “No!” he cried. “No! Not Flame!”
“You are going to die for this,” Colonel Russell hissed out. “I was contemplating freeing you and having you escorted far from the Minnesota Territory. But now? By God, at sunup you will be standing before a firing squad. I will laugh as I watch bullets riddle your copper body. You damn, worthless ’breed.”
White Fire’s insides turned cold to realize that he had not only lost Flame, but that, he, too, would soon join her in death.
But perhaps that was the only place they could ever be together peacefully, he thought—walking hand in hand on the road of the hereafter....
Chapter 35
That I, in whom the sweet time wrought,
Lay stretch’d within a lonely glade,
Abandon’d to delicious thoughts,
Beneath the softly twinkling shade.
—Coventry Patmore
As she wheeled her horse to a shimmying halt, Flame could hardly believe her eyes as she stared at Fort Snelling. There was a solid wall of soldiers standing guard on all sides, except for the one wall that was part of the rocky cliff.
Flame gazed with a building anger at the tall, closed gate. She could see soldiers standing guard on the walkway atop it, the moon reflected on their rifle barrels.
“He’s more demonic than I could ever have imagined him to be,” Flame whispered to herself. A shudder ran through her whole body as she thought of what her father was doing to keep anyone from saving White Fire from certain death.
“I have never seen the fort protected in such a way,” Chief Gray Feather said, sidling his horse closer to Flame’s. He glanced over his shoulder at his warriors, prepared to attack the fort at his command.
Then Gray Feather gazed at Flame. “We do not have enough men to go against such odds as these,” he said sullenly. “There can be nothing done in secret with so many eyes watching.”
“Yes, I know,” Flame said, her hope to save White Fire all but gone.
“There is one more thing I can do,” Gray Feather said, glaring at the fort. “I can send warriors to all the neighboring bands of Chippewa. We will ask for their assistance.”
“There isn’t enough time for that,” Flame said, frustratedly raking her fingers through her thick, red hair. Her eyes wavered as she gazed into the old chief’s eyes. “And, anyway, no other band of Chippewa would risk what you are willing to risk to save White Fire.” She swallowed hard. “And he would never approve,” she murmured. “He would rather die than bring your people into war against the soldiers.”
She sighed deeply, so bone weary, so sad, she found each moment now a struggle to stay atop the horse, to even stay awake. Yet she could not give in to her weariness. She had to think of some way to get past the soldiers.
Of course, all that she herself had to do to get past them, was to ride up and announce that she was returning to her father.
But she, alone, was not enough to stop what her father planned for White Fire. Her presence there might even hasten his death.
No, there had to be another way.
