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“How disgusting!” Flame said, shuddering. “Never will you be allowed to lay one hand on me. I’ll kill you first.”
“When you grew up into a woman, I knew I’d have you,” he said, ignoring what she had said. “One way or another.”
His eyes narrowed. He took on a dark and sinister look as he glared at Flame. “Then White Fire interfered,” he said tightly.
Then he chuckled. “Well, he won’t get the chance to interfere again,” he said.
He gazed up one direction of the river, and then the other. “Voyagers are known to stop here and camp on their travels along the Mississippi,” he said. “That is why I chose this spot for our camp. Before midnight I am certain voyagers will stop here. We’ll steal their large canoe. We’ll get quickly out of this area, then head for Canada.”
“Over my dead body!” Flame screamed, yanking her arm free. She turned and began to run into the dark shadows of the forest.
She gasped and sobbed when she heard the twigs breaking behind her, realizing that her father—no, not her father—the fiend was gaining on her.
“Please, God, don’t let this be happening!” she cried. “White Fire, where are you? Please save me!”
She almost fainted with fright when two men jumped out from behind bushes and stood in her path, stopping her. She immediately knew that they were trappers. One was holding the reins to a mule heavily laden with pelts. The other one had a pistol aimed at Flame.
The aim quickly changed. Flame turned with a start and watched the one trapper shoot the man she had always thought was her father. She screamed as Colonel Russell grabbed at a wound on his chest, blood curling from between his fingers. She paled and gasped when he crumpled to the ground, dead.
“Got him!” the one trapper said, chuckling.
As the trapper kneeled down over the fallen victim, Flame turned and jumped the man who was preoccupied watching his friend rifling through the dead man’s pockets.
Her heart pounding, knowing that her life depended on her own clear head and swiftness, Flame grabbed a knife from the man’s sheath and sank the blade into his chest before he could stop her.
She stepped quickly away from him as he fell to the ground, his eyes locked in a death stare.
Trembling, aghast at having just killed a man, Flame stood over him. Then she screamed when she felt arms of steel grab her around her waist. The man yanked her so roughly against his hard body, that it not only took Flame’s breath away, but also jarred the knife from her hand.
“You bitch!” the man hollered, staring wild-eyed down at his dead friend. “You killed my partner!”
He grabbed Flame by the hair and yanked on it as he forced her to turn around and face him. “You are going to pay,” he snarled. “First I’m going to rape you. Then I’ll enjoy watching you die as I strangle the breath from inside you.”
Frightened speechless, Flame stared into the man’s dark eyes. Then she found her voice again, at least enough to scream as he half dragged her away behind thick forsythia bushes.
As he shoved her to the ground and ripped at her clothing, Flame’s past life flashed before her eyes....
Chapter 41
Is there within thy heart a need
That mine cannot fulfill?
One chord that any other hand
Could better wake or still?
—Adelaide Anne Procter
White Fire’s insides splashed cold when he heard a frightened scream through the trees.
“Flame?” he gasped.
His jaw tight, his pulse racing, he wheeled his horse to a stop and turned and stared in the direction of the scream. Knowing that was surely Flame, he dismounted and grabbed his rifle from the gunboot.
The Chippewa warriors followed White Fire’s lead and also dismounted. Then with weapons in hand, they followed him through the thick brush.
As White Fire stepped into a clearing, he saw that it was Flame. His heart froze. She was with a man on the riverbank behind some forsythia. The whiskered man was easing over her, ready to mount her, his breeches resting around his ankles.
