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“I should have smelled your snake breath,” Strong Wolf snarled.
“Free me, Strong Wolf,” Hawk said, squaring his shoulders. “I will return to my people. I will never cross your path again.”
“Return to your people and be ridiculed by your mother because you did not do as she ordered?” Strong Wolf said, laughing. “I think not.”
“I have learned much by being away from her willful ways,” Hawk said. “I have learned that if I am ever to be a leader of my people, I must learn to be more like my father, whose strength and prowess gain the admiration of your people. When I return and stand up to my mother, then my people will be able to look up to me as a man worthy of my father’s title of chief.”
“Even if I set you free, so that you could return, unharmed, to your people, you will never have the same respect and admiration as your father, Chief Buffalo Cloud.” Strong Wolf laughed sarcastically.
“Give me the chance to,” Hawk said, his eyes wide as he gazed over at Strong Wolf.
“You beg like someone who still hangs to a mother’s skirt tail,” Strong Wolf said, again laughing at Hawk.
“To live, I will do whatever I must,” Hawk said, firming his jaw.
“If you were a true man, one who would be a great leader, you would die like a man!” Strong Wolf said, then grabbed his knife from the sheath at his right side and sliced the ropes at Hawk’s wrists and ankles, freeing him.
“Thank you, thank you,” Doe Eyes cried, running to clutch onto Strong Wolf’s arm.
He glared down at her and wrenched his arm free. “Wench, thank not this man who hates the very sight of you,” he said. “If it were you on the stake, I would laugh and walk away from you.”
Doe Eyes gulped hard, inched back away from him, then went and flung herself into Hawk’s arms. “Let us leave this horrible place,” she cried.
“He goes nowhere,” Strong Wolf said, slipping his knife back into its sheath. “I do not release him out of kindness. He now has to prove his innocence to me, or never walk, alive, from this village of the Potawatomis!”
Doe Eyes turned burning eyes to Strong Wolf. “You will not allow either of us to leave this place alive,” she said, glowering at Strong Wolf. “For so long you have resented me. Now you have the chance to silence me forever!”
“Again all I hear is the wind when you speak,” Strong Wolf said, placing his hands on Doe Eyes’s upper arms. He bodily set her aside to get to Hawk, then glared into Hawk’s eyes. “The test today is a simple one, but the sort long used by my people when someone has gone against them.”
Hawk said nothing.
Doe Eyes ran to Proud Heart. “Again I implore you to help me, my brother,” she cried. “Help Hawk. For my sake, brother? Please?”
“Doe Eyes, when you chose to travel the road of life with Hawk, you knew then what the end would be for you where family was concerned,” he said. “I hardly know you now as a sister.”
“And all because I love Hawk?” she uttered.
“That, and also long ago my feelings for you changed when you put ridicule on the shoulders of my best friend Strong Wolf,” Proud Heart said, his voice breaking. “I knew not what caused the ridicule, but I did know that it caused pain in my best friend’s heart. That pain then became my own, your brother’s.”
Doe Eyes stepped away from her brother, then went and clung to Hawk’s arm.
Touched by Proud Heart’s words, his loyalty
as a friend, Strong Wolf stared at him for a moment, and exchanged smiles with him when Proud Heart turned his eyes to him.
Then Strong Wolf nodded to a warrior. “Bring a mustang to me that has not yet been tamed for riding,” he said solemnly.
The warrior nodded.
He returned soon with a feisty black mustang that yanked his head back and forth against the rope that was tied around its neck. Its dark eyes were filled with spirit. Its body was powerfully muscled, the mane sleek and shining beneath the rays of the afternoon sun.
“Hawk, you will ride this pony,” Strong Wolf said, taking the rope from the warrior and giving it to Hawk. “If you can break it by taking the devil out of it, then your innocence will be proved and you can leave before the moon replaces the sun in the sky.”
Hannah was surprised that such a small challenge as this would be enough to free Hawk!
“Follow me,” Strong Wolf said as he glared at Hawk.
Hawk held onto the rope, occasionally eyeing the frisky mustang, as he followed Strong Wolf to the outskirts of the village, where there was room for him to go through the process of taking the wildness out of the mustang.
