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An instant rage filled White Fire. Heated anger flooded his senses. He raised his rifle and took steady aim; then decided against shooting the man. He felt that the trauma of the man falling on Flame, dying atop her, might be too much for her to bear.
Instead, White Fire raised his rifle and fired into the air to frighten the man away.
White Fire’s eyes danced and he smiled devilishly when the man tried to scamper to his feet, not succeeding very well as he desperately yanked on his breeches to get them back on. His eyes were wide with fear as he turned and saw the Indians standing there, their weapons drawn on him.
When the trapper tripped and fell and rolled away from Flame, his breeches twisted about his knees, Flame shoved her skirt down to cover her nudity. Then she scurried to her feet and ran toward White Fire.
She screamed and stopped dead in her tracks when an arrow whizzed through the air, just missing her by inches, and settled into the chest of the trapper.
Eyes wild, the trapper grabbed for the arrow and tried to dislodge it. Then unable to, fell over backward into the river.
A hand covering another scream behind it, Flame watched the current grab the man. The lifeless body of the trapper bobbed up and down in the water as he was carried downriver by the swiftness of the current.
White Fire dropped his rifle to the ground. He ran to Flame and took her into his arms. He felt the desperation in her hug as she held him tightly to her.
“Thank God,” she sobbed. “It’s been so horrible, White Fire! So horrible!”
“You are safe now,” he murmured, stroking her back. “You are safe.”
Flame clung to him for a moment longer. Then she eased from his arms and gazed up at him. His copper face was bathed in moonlight. His eyes were filled with love and emotion as he looked down at her.
“The man who I thought was my father wasn’t my father after all,” she blurted out. “White Fire, he abducted me for reasons you will never believe!”
“What do you mean he wasn’t your father?” he asked, aware of how he also had only a short while ago discovered that his father wasn’t his true kin!
“He married my mother when she was pregnant by my true father,” Flame blurted out. She looked past him, where Colonel Russell now lay dead. “My life was a lie.” She gave White Fire a look of desperation. “My mother never told me the truth!”
He had much to tell her, too, about his own discoveries. But he decided the time was not now, not while she was still trying to sort through her own truths and make some sense about them.
“My father—I mean, Colonel Russell, planned to take me to Canada,” she said, her voice breaking. “Once there, he planned to marry me. Can you believe that, White Fire? The man who raised me as his daughter had sexual feelings for me? He actually thought I could be persuaded to return such feelings and marry him?”
She swallowed hard. “He’s dead,” she murmured. “One of the trappers killed him.”
Stunned by the knowledge that the colonel was not her father, White Fire gasped. Then he again drew her into his arms to comfort her.
“It is all over,” he said softly. “Try to push this all from your mind. We have the rest of our lives ahead of us.”
He gently framed her face between his hands. “The children are waiting for us,” he said, gazing into her eyes. “Let us go now and show them that you are all right.”
Flame swallowed back the urge to give in to tears all over again, but this time it was from happiness, not from the trauma she had just gone through.
“Yes, let’s go to the children,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes with the back of a hand.
“They are at Chief Gray Feather’s village,” White Fire said. “I felt they would be safer there.”
“Then you were able to get Michael from the Greers?” Flame asked, stepping away from him.
“Actually, Michael was waiting for me,” White Fire said, proudly squaring his shoulders. “Maureen even had his clothes packed, for she saw that Michael could never be happy with them. Not when he knew that his father was alive and well, and wanted him.”
They locked hands. Their fingers intertwined, they walked toward the waiting Chippewa warriors.
“And Dancing Star?” Flame asked, gazing up at White Fire. “Will she and Michael get along?”
“They are already fast friends,” he said, stepping up to his horse, and grabbing the reins. He turned and smiled at Flame. “The last time I saw them, they were sitting beside Chief Gray Feather’s fire and giggling and talking. Gray Feather had promised to tell them stories.”
He looked over his shoulder at the warriors as they mounted their steeds, touched deeply to know that he was, in truth, a part of them by heritage. His gaze moved to one warrior in particular, a warrior he now realized was his cousin.
He then looked at Flame. “I have much to tell you,” he said, his voice low and measured. He placed a gentle hand to her cheek. “You see, I have also discovered something quite unique about my own father.”
