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“I have asked Chief Silver Wing if I can stay awhile longer in his village,” she said softly. “And since I have no one expecting me at Fort Snelling, I would like to stay even longer than first anticipated. Nee-kah has become a special friend, something that I have never had. And . . . and . . .”
“And in me you see a special friendship also?” Echohawk said, having to force himself not to reach out to touch her.
“Ay-uh, yes,” she murmured, having to force herself not to reach out and touch him. She even had to fight back the urge to scoot over next to him, to snuggle. Within his arms she had found such a wonderful, blissful peace. They were so strong, so comforting. This was something quite new to her, since her father had never afforded her a single hug.
“You speak the Chippewa word ‘yes’ quite excellently,” Echohawk said, chuckling. “Nee-kah has told me that you are an astute student.”
“My father taught me many words of your people. I have enjoyed being taught more of your language and also your customs,” Mariah said, picking up a stick, idly stirring the cold ashes at the sides of the fire. She glanced over at him. “Echohawk, I truly love everything about your people.”
Echohawk’s heart soared with this knowledge. If things could work out between them, she had already taken her first steps to becoming Chippewa!
And she had done this willingly.
“That is good,” he said, trying to hold back any excitement that he feared might be there, evident in his voice.
“Echohawk, you did not tell me much about your family,” Mariah said, her voice filled with caution, yet needing to know about his love life.
“There is no more to tell,” he said, his jaw tightening. “There is no wife. There are no children. My mother died many winters ago after wasting away with some strange coughing disease. My father and I—we were quite alone in the world, except for the love and devotion of our people.”
Mariah smiled sweetly over at him, her heart filled with delight to know that, indeed, there was no wife, yet finding the fact hard to understand, since he was so handsome, so virile.
But perhaps he had chosen to center his life around his people. And if so, would he truly ever find room for her inside his heart?
His kiss had revealed that he wanted her, yet since they had returned to his wigwam he had not made any more overtures toward her. There seemed to be something there, stopping him, just as there were her own doubts there, plaguing her and keeping her from boldly going to him.
Echohawk rose to his full height and went to the back of the wigwam, searching inside a buckskin bag. He circled his fingers around the flute that he had asked Nee-kah to lend him, then went back and sat down beside Mariah.
“I shall play some tunes for you in a way to repay you for your continued kindnesses to me,” he said, positioning his fingers on two of the three holes of the flute.
“How lovely,” Mariah said, drawing her legs up before her, circling her arms around them. As he played on the flute, she became mesmerized by the sweetness of the tunes. They were soft and lilting, reminding her of the birds in the trees outside her upstairs bedroom window that she had heard at daybreak in the early spring every year. She had lain there marveling at the sweet melodies, the same as she now marveled at the sounds that Echohawk was creating with the flute.
She sighed as she watched him, wondering how her father could have ever wanted to see him dead. Here was a man who was gentle and tenderhearted. Here was a man who stirred her into feelings that made her heart soar . . .
A commotion outside the wigwam drew Mariah’s eyes to the entrance flap, then back to Echohawk as he laid the flute aside and rose to see what was causing the interference.
Mariah rose quickly to her feet and followed him from the wigwam, her eyes widening when she discovered a beautiful horse that had apparently wandered into the village, now standing there as though it belonged.
Echohawk walked over to the horse, his heart pounding, and began running his hands over its withers. He then offered the palm of his hand to the horse for nuzzling.
When the horse did as Echohawk bade, lovingly nuzzling his hand, neighing gently, Echohawk’s lips lifted into a quavering, thankful smile. “It is Ish-sko-day, Blaze, my horse,” he said, placing an arm around the horse’s neck, hugging it. “He is not dead and he has found his way back to me. No-din, do you see? Blaze has searched until he found me!”
“I would say that is a miracle,” Mariah said, smiling at the man and horse. “I didn’t know that animals could be this devoted.”
She watched the reunion of “friends,” silently recalling how the horses had become so frightened by the gunfire during the raid on Echohawk’s people. She could see even now, in her mind’s eye, how they had feverishly broken through their protective fence and scattered in all directions. That his horse had found him again, under these circumstances, could be no less than a miracle.
“A man is nothing without a devoted horse,” Echohawk said, now smoothing his hand across Blaze’s rust-colored mane. “Now that I have mine back again, the burdens of that fateful day are lessened inside my heart.”
Mariah stepped up next to Echohawk and ran her hands over Blaze’s left flank, the fleshy part of the side between the ribs and the hip. She had never seen such an elegant horse. And he was so very, very muscled!
And strangely enough, the horse still wore a saddle—a cushion of leather stuffed with buffalo hair and ornamented with porcupine quills.
A rope around the underjaw seemed to be there to take the place of a bit.
“He is a magnificent horse, Echohawk,” she murmured. “No wonder you are proud. I’m so glad that he found you.”
“Blaze is of the wild breed of Mexican horses,” he explained. “Long ago, during a raid on the Sioux to reclaim things stolen from my people, I stole this horse. The Sioux had stolen it themselves from some other tribe on lands far from the Minnesota wilderness.”
“I would love to ride the horse,” Mariah said, thrilling at the thought. “Perhaps one day soon . . . ?”
