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“Let’s get it over with,” Pedro mumbled.
“Sit down and roll up your pants leg as I gather the poison ivy,” Running Fawn said, giggling when she saw how the words “poison ivy” made Pedro grimace. She leaned into his face. “Are you going to change your mind? Are you too cowardly to let me touch you with the poison ivy?”
“Poison ivy,” Pedro grumbled. “Whoever heard of using poison ivy for a tattoo? Only Indians would think up such nonsense as that.”
He nodded toward Running Fawn. “Get on with it, Señorita Running Fawn,” he grumbled. “Or I just might decide you are not worth all the worries you put me through.”
He sat down and rolled up his pants leg as he watched Running Fawn go to a thicket and pluck several twigs of poison ivy. He scarcely breathed when she came to him and began squeezing the juice of the poison ivy carefully along his flesh in the design of a dog.
After Running Fawn was finished, she tossed the poison ivy aside. “Now when the sores are gone, and the scarring is left behind, you will have yourself a tattoo just like mine,” she said, smiling at him.
Her smile faded when Pedro started to gasp for breath, his eyes wide with terror. She backed away from him when he began clawing at his throat.
“I . . . can’t . . . breathe!” he choked out. “My heart! It is racing so much I feel I might pass out!”
“Why?” Running Fawn cried. Fear circled her heart as Pedro crumpled to his knees, his hand now clutching at his swollen leg where the tattoo was inflamed. “What is happening, Pedro?”
“He is having some sort of a reaction to the poison ivy,” Miguel shouted. He went to Pedro and held him. “We must get help for him. Running Fawn, your village is closer than San Carlos. Go for help. Surely your people will have something to counteract the reaction. Go! Find out! Pedro might be dying!”
Running Fawn felt as though she was being squeezed from both sides. She was torn with what to do. If she went to her village and let them know about Pedro, then she would forever be condemned in their eyes! Oh, surely she would be banished, a shamed person forever in the eyes of Kitzhiat.
“Running Fawn. . . .” Pedro managed to say in a whisper as he reached a hand out toward her. “Señorita, I’m . . . dying.”
“But, Pedro, if I go to my village—” she began, but stopped when he began choking again, his eyes wild as he stared up at her.
“I will get you help,” Running Fawn said, knowing that she had no choice. She loved Pedro. She would sacrifice anything if it meant that he would live. “I will bring my shaman to you.”
“No, there is not time,” Miguel said. “We will take Pedro there. We will follow you, Running Fawn. Lead the way.”
“But, my people are celebrating the New Year,” Running Fawn cried. “I cannot interrupt the celebration. Let me just tell Bull Shield. Is that not enough?”
“Look at Pedro!” Miguel cried. “He is now unconscious. He may not have long to live. We must take him to your village.”
Tears flooding her eyes, her heart pounding with fear of her father’s and her chief’s reaction when they saw her and her three friends enter the village with the four Mexican men, Running Fawn broke into a mad run through the forest.
She could hear the harsh breathing of Miguel as he followed closely behind, Pedro in his arms.
She glanced over at her friends whose faces were pale with fear.
They all knew what the result of today would be—banishment!
Chapter 22
I will not let thee go,
Ends all our month-long love in this?
Can it be summed up so?
Quit in a single kiss?
I will not let thee go.
—ROBERT BRIDGES
Now at the end of the festival, as food and drink were being shared by all, Kaylene felt a delicious warmth inside herself, to know that she was being accepted by these people who would soon be truly a part of her life by marriage.
As she sat beside Fire Thunder, eating the delicious venison and corn, and listening to the gay laughter all around her, Kaylene felt strange longings inside herself again, which made her feel as though she was already a part of the Indians’ lives, as though somewhere in time she had been an Indian.
