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Frantically she searched for Little Sparrow, cold inside when she didn’t find her. If she was outside, watching, she might be shot!
Then she breathed easier when she suddenly remembered that Little Sparrow was staying with a friend and her family. Their cabin was far from the gunfire. Surely she would be safe.
Kaylene went to Midnight. She could tell that the gunfire was affecting him. Although he was tied up, he was pacing nervously back and forth, straining on the leash when he could go no farther.
“I know that you are frightened, but I can’t stay with you,” Kaylene said, giving Midnight a quick, reassuring hug. “I must go and help Fire Thunder. Stay, Midnight. Whatever you do, don’t break that leash and come outside where you might be shot.”
Then she rushed to Fire Thunder’s store of weapons. She grabbed a Smith & Wesson rifle. She smiled smugly. She knew this weapon well. She knew the power of this gun. Her father had taught her how to fire his. She would never forget his wicked laugh when she had been knocked to the ground upon firing it the first time by the kick of the firearm.
“Yes, this will do quite well for this occasion,” Kaylene whispered. The rifle could throw its bullets with accuracy a distance of four hundred yards.
And Kaylene was a crack shot. She would scare the pants off those men who had come to wreak havoc on these innocent people.
She would show them that a woman could stand up against them as well as a man!
Her heart thumping with a fear she could not deny over what she was about to do—actually shoot at people instead of tin cans lined up on a fence—she rushed outside.
When she moved to Fire Thunder’s side, his eyes narrowed angrily as he gazed down at her. There was such anger in his eyes at seeing her there, Kaylene recoiled somewhat.
Then she took a stubborn stand beside him, looked away from him, and raised the rifle to fire it.
But when she recognized who the invaders were, her finger seemed frozen to the trigger. As though in jerks, her eyes went from man to man, disbelieving that these were the men from her father’s carnival.
She paled and almost dropped the rifle when she saw the face of a man among them that she had thought was dead!
“How can it be?” she whispered, stricken numb as she stared at her father, whose horse was suddenly rearing and balking from the Kickapoo’s incessant spattering of gunfire. Kaylene wanted so badly to be glad that her father was alive. But his ruthless attack on the Kickapoo horrified her, even though she knew his reason for being there. He had come to rescue her.
But why? she despaired to herself. To rescue a daughter? Or someone who was nothing to him but a very valuable asset to his carnival? Everyone loved her act with the panther!
Still too shocked to fire the rifle, Kaylene gasped when his horse threw her father to the ground.
But that didn’t stop his determination to kill many Kickapoo. He grabbed the horse’s reins, steadied it, then used it as a cover as he began firing his rifle again.
A small brave ran from his lodge, panicking and crying, into the line of fire, and quickly fell to the ground, blood pouring from his wound. Kaylene snapped out of her frozen state. She began shouting her father’s name as she shoved her way through the hardened line of defense of Kickapoo warriors.
She heard the startled cry of Fire Thunder when he realized what she was doing, but she kept on moving toward her father.
She was keenly aware that she was now halfway between both groups of men.
But she was also keenly aware that her presence had caused a ceasefire, as she had hoped it would do.
“Father, I’m all right!” Kaylene cried as she broke into a run toward him. “Please leave these people alone! They are my friends!”
John Shelton stepped slowly from behind his horse and stared at Kaylene. His face registered shock at what Kaylene had just said about the Kickapoo being her friends.
He looked over his shoulder at the men he had urged to come with him today, to launch this attack on the Kickapoo, and saw that they were also stunned by what she had said. They had lowered their firearms.
Some were edging their horses backward, as though they were ready to retreat and leave him there to fight his own battle over a daughter that had aligned herself with “savages.” When a white woman took up with Indians, the white woman was scorned and ridiculed.
John looked desperately back at Kaylene as she kept moving toward him.
Then he looked past her as Fire Thunder stepped away from the others and started following her.
Anger came in hot flashes at this Indian having possibly turned Kaylene against her very own people. With wide, rigid nostrils and flaming eyes, Shelton slowly raised his rifle.
His gaze quickly shifted and he dropped his rifle when he saw a streak of black. He yelped with fear when Midnight leaped on him and knocked him to the ground, the panther’s broken leash hanging loosely from around his neck.
“Get off me, you goddamn overgrown cat!” John screeched. He lay helpless beneath the full weight of Midnight’s large paws.
