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“I should have gone to Fort Parker,” she said, swallowing hard. “By now they could have arrived and . . . and—”
The sound of horses arriving somewhere close by made her words fall silent on her lips and her eyes widen as she searched through the darkness for whoever was approaching. The hour was late. She knew enough from her years of living the military life that no one came in the middle of the night unless it was an emergency. Late visitors threw soldiers out of their beds, their firearms quickly readied for whoever was coming, unannounced.
“We’d best take quick cover,” Flame said, giving Gray Feather a frightened glance.
Her thoughts went to the Sioux Indians. What if they had decided upon an uprising? They were not as peaceful as the Chippewa.
And the Sioux had been forced from this part of the country too often—if not by the Chippewa, then by the white soldiers. They carried much hate inside their hearts for both their white-skinned enemies, and red.
Chief Gray Feather raised his rifle over his head and made a quiet motion with it for the men to retreat into the cover of the forest.
Flame followed them. Then she stopped suddenly when she caught sight of just who was arriving. She recognized Colonel Edwards. He was leading a contingent of cavalry directly toward the fort.
She wheeled her horse around and watched as those at the fort saw the approach of the soldiers on horseback. She held her breath as she waited for Fort Snelling’s soldiers’ reactions.
But she was not close enough to hear what was being said when voices lifted in the air from the fort as Colonel Edwards stopped and conversed with the Fort Snelling soldiers.
Frustrated, Flame could not just stay back and not know what was going on between the two factions of soldiers. She had to know exactly why the colonel was there. At all cost, even at the chance of being shot as she rode free of the trees, she had to seek Colonel Edwards’s help.
And she must do it before he got inside the walls of the fort. He must know that an innocent man was held prisoner there, soon wrongly to die.
r /> A thought sprang to Flame’s mind. Could the colonel have come because of what White Fire had warned him about?
But surely not. Not this time of night. It had to be something else.
She gave Chief Gray Feather a quick look. “I must go and speak to Colonel Edwards,” she cried, “before he gets inside the fort.”
“I shall go with you,” Gray Feather said, his jaw tight.
“No, it would be best if I go alone,” Flame said. “IF the guards see me riding with an Indian, they might not stop to ask why. We might both be targets for their itchy trigger fingers!”
“But you will be so vulnerable alone,” Gray Feather argued.
“Thank you for caring,” Flame said, touched deeply by his concern for her—a white woman—a woman he still, in part, blamed for his daughter’s death.
She gave him a last, lingering look, then sank her heels into the flanks of her horse and rode off in a hard gallop toward the soldiers, who were just drawing a tight rein behind Colonel Edwards. Colonel Edwards was still speaking to those guarding the gate of the fort.
“Colonel Edwards!” Flame shouted as she rode toward the soldiers.
She was aware of a quick silence and saw the soldiers spin their horses around to look at her. The soldiers at the fort gawked, slack-jawed at her, their colonel’s daughter coming in out of hiding.
Colonel Edwards, in his full military attire, the brass buttons of his blue uniform shining in the moonlight, rode toward Flame as his soldiers parted and made way for him.
Panting, her face flushed, Flame tightened her rein and drew her horse to a stop as the colonel stopped beside her.
“Reshelle Russell?” the colonel asked, leaning to take a closer look at her, the moon bathing her face with its sheen of white. “What are you doing out here alone this time of night?” His gaze swept over her and saw her disarray. “Lord, girl, what happened to you?” he said, his eyebrows arching. “Does your father know—?”
She interrupted him. “Colonel Edwards,” she blurted out, “thank God you are here. I only hope you are in time.”
“In time for what?” he said.
“White Fire!” she cried. “My father has him locked up in a cell! I’m afraid he’s going to kill him.”
Colonel Edwards’s eyes widened. “What?” he gasped out. “Why would he imprison White Fire?”
“It’s too long a story to explain it to you now,” Flame said. Her breath caught in her throat as she asked, “Why are you here this time of night? Surely it’s not because of what White Fire told you about my father. You wouldn’t have come at this late hour to check out things. Why are you here?”
She looked past him and at all of the soldiers with him.
