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“I almost did, didn’t I?” Colonel Russell said, laughing fiendishly. He glared at Flame as she dismounted and went to stand before him. “My own daughter betrays me. Reshelle, why? Why?”
“How can you ask me such a question as that?” Flame said, fighting back the urge to cry. “Father, you have turned into someone I no longer know.”
She then turned from him.
When she saw White Fire being held between two soldiers as he walked toward her, a blanket wrapped around him, she gasped at how weak he looked, and at how gaunt he had become even during his short time of imprisonment.
“White Fire!” she cried, then broke into a mad run toward him. When she reached him, she eased into his arms.
Sobbing, she hugged him. “It’s all over now,” she murmured. “You are safe, darling. You are safe.”
She heard the arrival of many horses behind her. She did not have to look to know that Chief Gray Feather had decided to come into the courtyard to see if his assistance was needed.
As White Fire hugged Flame, he looked over her shoulder and gave Colonel Edwards a smile of thanks.
He smiled at Chief Gray Feather as the old chief nodded toward him. Then his gaze shifted and he glared at Colonel Russell.
Suddenly his eyes were drawn somewhere else.
He saw curtains being drawn aside in an upstairs window of the Snelling mansion, in the study where he had been visited by Colonel Snelling’s ghost. He blinked nervously to see if he w
as truly seeing the apparition again, or if, in his weakness, he was imagining things.
The likeness of Colonel Snelling smiled down at him and tipped his hat, and then slowly faded into the night shadows. White Fire knew that it most certainly hadn’t been his imagination. His friend had been there again.
“White Fire, you won’t believe what happened tonight at Colonel Edwards’s house,” Flame said, easing from his arms. “Darling, Colonel Snelling appeared to Colonel Edwards. He pointed a hand toward Fort Snelling. He is why Colonel Edwards knew to come tonight. He saw the ghost. He understood the meaning of his sudden appearance!”
“Yes, I would believe it,” White Fire said, still watching the window. “I owe Josiah. I most certainly owe him.”
Chapter 36
Graceful and useful all she does,
Blessing and blest where’er she goes,
Pure bosom’d as that watery glass,
And Heaven reflected in her face.
—William Cowper
Flame stood beside White Fire as her father was taken away to be incarcerated at Fort Parker. Colonel Edwards had assigned one of his most trusted men to stay behind at Fort Snelling, to see to things until a replacement for Colonel Russell arrived.
Chief Gray Feather and his warriors had left as soon as the chief had seen that White Fire was all right, having taken only enough time to give him a hearty hug and to invite him to his lodge soon for council.
“This has been a night of nights. I shall never forget it,” Flame said, placing an arm around White Fire’s waist as she slowly led him up the stairs toward the front door of the Snelling mansion. “I was so afraid that I wouldn’t get to you in time.”
“When I was told about your escape from the riverboat, a part of my heart died at the thought of possibly having lost you,” he said, grunting from the energy it took him to take the last step that led him to the porch. His knees trembled from weakness. His tongue and lips were so parched he could hardly speak.
“Come on inside,” Flame said softly. “I shall have Lorraine, my maid, prepare you a bath. While you are bathing, I shall go to the kitchen and find us something to eat. I’ve hardly eaten, myself, since you were taken away by my father.”
Then she remembered how she had poked breakfast down herself while on the boat, and she gave White Fire a mischievous stare.
“What is that look for?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Well, there was this one time that I ate like a pig,” she said, giggling. She proceeded to tell him how much she had eaten, and why.
“But that was then,” she said, sighing. “And now I feel as though I haven’t eaten in days.”
