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Knowing that he had no choice, Hawk rode up to Strong Wolf. “And so we meet again,” he said.
“And so we do, but what are you doing here, except to spy on me and my people, and also Proud Heart who you have been urged to believe is your enemy!” Strong Wolf growled. He nodded to his warriors. “Seize him! You see him as I do, as our enemy! His mother threatened long ago to avenge her brother Slow Running’s death!”
Proud Heart rode up beside Hawk and leaned into his face as Hawk’s hands were tied behind him. “And so your mother sent you to do the dirty work?” he hissed. “She sees that my death, and Strong Wolf’s, is even more important than my powerful chieftain father’s? Than Strong Wolf’s powerful chieftainship? Well, she was wrong to send you to do the dirty work.”
Strong Wolf peered into Hawk’s eyes. “How long have you been here spying on us?” he asked angrily. “How long have you been hidden like a frightened snake coiled in the grass close to my village?”
“Strong Wolf, I . . .” Hawk began, but he was stopped when Proud Heart gave a yank on his horse’s reins and led him away from Strong Wolf toward their village.
Strong Wolf sighed and his shoulders grew limp as he gazed hopelessly to the ground. “If not one thing, it is another,” he mumbled. “Why can’t there be love and peace among men? Why?”
“Who was that?” Hannah finally had the chance to ask. “Was he here to kill you and Proud Heart?”
“I am not sure what his true plans were, Hannah,” Strong Wolf said as he softly nudged the flanks of his horse to urge it into a soft lope. Hannah kept up beside him. “Hannah, Hawk has never been one to cause problems. The fact that he is here, I am sure at the orders of his mother, surprises me. And I am certain that he would not be here unless ordered to come. His place is with his people, as mine is to be with mine.”
“He is not Potawatomis, then? Nor Chippewa?” Hannah said, trying to follow Strong Wolf’s logic.
“No, he is Sioux,” Strong Wolf said softly. “His mother, Star Flower, is wicked to the core. She has tried to make her son as wicked.”
“What about his father?” Hannah prodded. “How does he feel about all of this?”
“Chief Buffalo Cloud is a fair, kind man,” Strong Wolf said solemnly. “He married Star Flower because she is a temptress in her loveliness. After their marriage, I am sure he discovered her true self.”
“But why didn’t he leave her?” Hannah said softly.
“Because her beauty outweighs her evil in the eyes of her husband,” Strong Wolf said, recalling the exquisite features of Star Flower.
They rode on until they reached the village. Hannah dismounted and stood back and watched, stunned when Hawk was tied to a stake in the center of the village after not being able to deny why he was there, on Potawatomis land.
“This is not something I wished to do,” Hawk pleaded as his buckskin shirt was ripped from his chest. “It was my mother! How could I refuse her? Because of me she has a barren womb!”
“That is why you came to avenge your uncle’s death?” Strong Wolf said incredulously. “Because your mother made you feel guilty over her not being able to bear her husband any more children?”
Hawk hung his head in shame.
“Remove him from the stake!” a woman’s voice rang out at the far edge of the village as three horses came into sight, a woman on one of them. “Remove him now. He does not deserve to be treated this way, Strong Wolf!”
Strong Wolf’s heart leapt into his throat when he recognized the voice. He turned on a heel and stared at the woman of his past, the very woman who so long ago had reduced him to less than a young brave in her eyes!
“Doe Eyes?” he gasped.
Proud Heart took an unsteady step backward. “Sister?” he said in a low gasp, his eyes filled with wonder. “Sister Doe Eyes?”
Hannah paled at Strong Wolf’s reaction to the woman entering the village. She stared at the woman and saw her loveliness.
And Hannah was instantly jealous!
Chapter 20
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My senses, as though of hemlock I had drunk.
—JOHN KEATS
Doe Eyes ran to Hawk when nothing was done to release him. As she gazed up at him, she desperately sobbed his name and clutched at his hands. “Why did you leave without me?” she cried. “You did not even say a good-bye. Is your love less for me than mine is for you?” She glanced over at Strong Wolf, then Proud Heart, then pleaded up at Hawk with her dark eyes. “Tell them, Hawk. Tell them that you are here only because your mother forced this upon you.”
“They already know, but they do not listen,” Hawk said, his voice breaking. “I was wrong, Doe Eyes, to leave in such a way. I should have never listened to my mother. Our future, yours and mine, is what suffers from her misguided, evil ways.”
