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t is it?” Kaylene asked, seeing Fire Thunder’s troubled expression, even though they knew there was nothing there to threaten them. “You look as though you may have seen a ghost.”
“Not a ghost, but a premonition,” Fire Thunder said, thrusting his rifle back inside its gunboot.
“Of what?” Kaylene asked. She hugged herself when the breeze grew damp and colder as it whipped through the pines.
Fire Thunder saw her discomfort. He took the time to reach into the parfleche bag at the side of his horse and take a blanket from it. “My horse is restless,” he said as he gently slipped the blanket around her shoulders. “I fear that my horse has perceived danger. Perhaps back at my village.”
“Then you won’t be gathering the Solomon’s seal, after all?” Kaylene asked softly.
“I must take time to gather sweet medicine,” he said, grabbing a buckskin bag from the side of his horse. “Come with me. We are where I can find it quickly. Then we shall leave.”
Kaylene followed Fire Thunder for a while, in and around the tall pines, and short, stubby shrubs, until she saw the most beautiful flowers growing from thick, tall, drooping stems. In the leaf axil of the plants were clusters of greenish-white flowers, surrounded by red berries. The leaves formed two rows along the upper part of the stem.
“Only I can gather the sweet medicine,” Fire Thunder said over his shoulder at Kaylene. “I will not be long at doing it.”
Kaylene sat down on a large boulder and watched him, taken anew by his customs, and the seriousness with which he went about things. He knelt on the ground before the Solomon’s seal plants.
After taking a small pouch from his front right breeches pocket, and opening it, he sprinkled some tobacco on the plant closest to him. He asked the plant’s permission to gather others in the area.
After placing the small pouch back inside his pocket, he wandered onward a few feet.
Kaylene stayed on the boulder and watched him meditatively gather the lovely flowers, as well as the leaves, and parts of the stems.
Then her stomach lurched and she saw his quick reaction, how he bolted suddenly to his feet, when somewhere in the distance a fox cried out three times.
Fire Thunder, carrying the bag of Solomon’s seal in his right hand, went to Kaylene and took her hand and urged her in a brisk walk toward their horses.
“Muy malo, very bad,” he said, obviously even more distressed than earlier. “The cry of the fox is very bad! Do you recall my telling you that the cry of a fox foretells a misfortune? Today the cry was three times! There is no doubt that trouble has come to my people!”
So caught up in everything, with being with Fire Thunder again sensually, and watching him as he gathered the sacred plants, Kaylene had not thought to become alarmed over the fox’s cries. Nor had she noticed an approaching storm. She only now heard the low rumblings of distant thunder.
When she looked over her shoulder and up at the sky, a lurid streak of lightning suddenly raced across the dark heavens, causing her to flinch.
“It’s going to storm,” she said breathlessly, when they finally reached their horses. “Perhaps that is what unnerved your horse. Perhaps that is what caused the fox to cry.”
“I cannot count on as simple a thing as that to be the cause,” Fire Thunder said, tying his bag of Solomon’s seal next to his saddle bag. “We must hurry back to my people.”
The storm was racing closer by the minute. The thunder became large, deafening crashes as lightning bounced from one side of the sky to the other.
Kaylene slipped the blanket from around her shoulders and gave it back to Fire Thunder, quickly aware of her discomfort without it.
But she had to forget herself for the moment. She could see that Fire Thunder’s concerns were mounting by the minute.
And although she did not see how his premonitions of doom could actually be real, she knew that his distress was.
The rain began in a slow drizzle. Kaylene huddled over her horse and rode beside Fire Thunder down the small mountain path.
Then the rain came down in heavy torrents, the drops so large, they felt like bee stings as they hit Kaylene’s cheeks.
“We must find temporary shelter!” Fire Thunder shouted at her above the loud crashes of thunder.
He led her to a wall of stone, above which was a large overhang of rock. She quickly dismounted along with him. They held on to their horses’ reins and huddled against the rock.
The wind was violent, snapping trees off at their trunks. Kaylene screamed and clutched Fire Thunder, welcoming his arm around her as a bolt of lightning downed another tree not that faraway.
Fire Thunder looked heavenward.
Kaylene stared disbelievingly at him when he pulled out a tiny buckskin pouch from his front breeches pocket, where he kept his Indian tobacco.
