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The woman!
In his mind’s eye he saw her now, as though it were yesterday, and how there seemed to have been some magical force reaching between them, making them aware of their feelings for each other.
Until now he had never thought about falling in love this quickly, this intensely.
His head seemingly in the clouds, he rode onward, unable to think past Hannah’s lovely smile, her beautiful hair, and how statuesque she was!
And he had seemed to have won a vote of approval from his best friend, for, except for those brief moments when Proud Heart had questioned him about Hannah’s skin color, Proud Heart had not discouraged his interest in the white woman.
That made Strong Wolf smile, for Proud Heart was to him like a twin. All things good and bad they shared together. Their long a
ffection had made them kin—brothers!
Chapter 6
At first I viewed the lovely maid,
In silent, soft surprise.
—ROBERT DODSLEY
Dressed in a long riding skirt, a calico blouse, well-fitting boots, and wearing three-quarter length butter soft gloves, Hannah rode in a soft trot on a fine pinto horse. Silver earrings dangled from her pierced ears, and her long, luxuriant hair was held back from her face with small combs.
She rested a hand on the knife sheathed at her waist as she rode onward. Hannah felt dispirited, for she had been unable to sleep all night. She couldn’t get Strong Wolf off her mind, or the dam. She had told her brother that she was going horseback riding this morning, while hiding the truth from him that she was actually going to see for herself if Tiny had followed her brother’s orders and destroyed the dam.
She also hoped that she might see Strong Wolf again. He had awakened feelings inside her that she had never known were there. She hoped to be with him again, to test these feelings, these wondrous sensations that warmed her through and through.
And what was absolutely perfect, was that her brother and the Indian were friends. That would make her relationship with him, should he feel the same about her, less forbidden. She recalled how women were mocked and ridiculed back in Saint Louis when they had married an Indian brave.
Well, this wasn’t Saint Louis, she thought stubbornly to herself. This was Kansas, where she was free to do as she pleased!
Smiling, confident of her feelings and with whom she wished to share them, Hannah rode onward.
It was summer on the plains. Fields of golden sunflowers faced eastward. Colonies of plants wandered across the hillsides.
When she reached the river, she rode slowly beside it and watched for the stream that forked away from it, where Tiny had placed the dam. The river was carried along on a weak current green with algae. Sometimes rocks and sometimes rich green moss fringed the riverbank. But for the most part, cottonwoods and sycamores held back the banks and probed the sky with their canopies.
Farther away, the oaks, hickory, and maple trees claimed the higher ground. In their shade grew the inner forest of pawpaws, buckeyes, and occasionally crab apple trees.
Most of the sunny places were dominated by walls of horseweeds. Some were left with a permanent lean in their growth, a reminder of the spring’s higher water.
Finally she came to the stream that she was looking for. Slowly she rode beside it, her eyes searching for the dam, hoping she did not find it. If Tiny hadn’t removed it, that would be a blatant show of disobedience of her brother’s orders, which could cause her brother undue stress.
“I do so hope it’s gone,” she whispered to herself as she edged her horse around a cluster of white birch trees. “Not only for my brother, but also for Strong Wolf. I would hate to think that he might blame my brother if Tiny . . . ?”
She got distracted for a moment by two groundhogs that were playing and chasing one another. She followed them into the trees and rode within the thick foliage beside the stream, where she could only now barely see the water.
Suddenly the groundhogs darted into small holes in the ground. Hannah shrugged and turned her horse back in the direction of the water, just in time to see the dam through a break in the trees a short distance away.
Anger filled her heart in hot splashes. “The damn nitwit,” she whispered to herself. “Tiny didn’t do as Chuck told him. Damn him.”
Then when she came out of the cover of the trees and she was on the banks of the stream again, something else grabbed her attention. What she saw caused her heart to skip several beats and a cold sweat of fear to cover her.
She could hear the pounding of her blood in her ears as her eyes looked in jerks at the many sticks of dynamite that she saw positioned in various places in the dam. Then a cry of panic filled her throat when she saw the wick that crawled along the ground like a snake to a thick stand of rock and brush.
Proud Heart suddenly rose from behind his protective hiding place. He waved frantically at her. “The fuse has been lit!” he shouted. “I cannot stop it! Leave! Ride away quickly!”
Strong Wolf had rode up one side of the stream and down the other, his eyes watching.
