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“I do not have to ask his permission for every move I make,” Nee-kah said, shrugging. She sat down beside Mariah. “And I did promise you food, did I not? Wee-si-nin, eat.”
Mariah’s eyes lit up, most definitely seeing a friend in this beautiful mother-to-be. She had been given no spoon or fork, so she began to eat ravenously with her fingers, realizing that Nee-kah was studying her even more closely in the light of the fire.
“Beneath that mud I believe I would find a face that is too pretty to be a boy’s,” Nee-kah said, moving a hand to flick some of the dried mud from Mariah’s chin.
Mariah almost choked on her food. If Nee-kah did discover that she was a woman, then Nee-kah would wonder why Mariah had not been truthful about this, and perhaps see that Mariah could have lied about other things as well.
“Nee-kah!”
A voice outside the wigwam was Mariah’s reprieve, for Nee-kah scrambled quickly to her feet, just in time for Chief Silver Wing to come into the wigwam and find her there.
“You are here instead of seeing to our most valued guest?” Chief Silver Wing said, his voice sharp.
“I went to him,” Nee-kah quietly explained. “He was asleep. Nee-kah did not want to disturb his sleep. Rest is valuable also. When he awakens, then I shall force more medicinal liquid between his lips.”
“And so, while waiting, you spend time with the white lad?” Chief Silver Wing said, his brows meeting together as he frowned. He gestured with a hand for Nee-kah to go to him. “My wife, you trust too easily. Come. We leave the boy to the food you were so generous to bring to him.”
Nee-kah smiled weakly over her shoulder at Mariah as her husband led her to the entrance flap, then left with him, leaving Mariah alone, fearing that the new friendship she had thought to have found had just ended.
“I must find a way to escape,” she whispered, her heart pounding at the thought of
trying. She gazed at the closed entrance flap, having seen a guard standing just outside as Nee-kah and her husband had left. “If I could slip past the guard and steal a horse and resume my journey to Fort Snelling, then later I could explain everything to Nee-kah and let her know that her trust had not been misplaced.”
Yes, that was what she would do. Later tonight, when the villagers were asleep, hopefully the guard would also drift off long enough for her to flee past him.
She began stuffing the most solid pieces of the stew into her mouth, not wanting to get stranded again somewhere without a full stomach.
* * *
Nee-kah slipped back inside Echohawk’s wigwam and took her place at his side.
Echohawk stirred awake momentarily. He gazed through his blind haze up at Nee-kah, his limbs too weak to rise from his sleeping platform.
“Lie still,” Nee-kah said, running a cool, gentle hand across his fevered brow. “Nee-kah will make you feel better.”
Her thoughts returned to the young lad in the wigwam not far from this one in which Echohawk lay so ill. She looked questioningly down at Echohawk, then shrugged, having decided it was best not to reveal to him, at least yet, that a white boy was in the village, fearing it would upset him.
Yet, would he even be aware of what she was saying? she wondered. He had become mindless with the fever.
She moved away from Echohawk and stood in the shadows as a Mide priest entered and began performing his healing rituals over Echohawk.
Chapter 6
All’s to be fear’d, where all is to be lost.
—Byron
Mariah placed another log on the fire, then peered up at the smoke hole. A full night had passed. The sky was just beginning to lighten, which meant that escape would be virtually impossible should she wait much longer. Soon the sun would rise, and with it the Chippewa people, bustling around, doing their morning chores.
Having slept erratically through the night, checking on the guard outside her door each time she had awakened, she was still bone-tired.
She glanced toward the entrance flap, frustrated over having not once found the guard asleep through the night.
Her chance to escape had become an impossible task!
Yawning, stretching her arms over her head, Mariah decided that she would try just one more time. If the guard was still awake, then she would have another full day to wait.
The mud on her face even tighter this morning, since she had not been given a basin of water to wash herself, Mariah rose quietly to her knees and crawled to the entrance flap. With trembling fingers and an anxious heart she lifted the flap, and her heart frolicked within her chest when she discovered that, finally, the guard had fallen asleep!
