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Spotted Eagle had no chance to respond. Two Ridges took a wild gasp for air, then died.
Filled with many tumultuous emotions, Spotted Eagle stared down at Two Ridges, finding all of this hard to comprehend. This young man whose future was so bright was now dead, everything gone so quickly from his grasp! Spotted Eagle had often teased his friend that his passion for women would be the death of him.
But never had he actually meant it! It had been a way of teasing Two Ridges over his wandering eye and heart!
Spotted Eagle had actually envied Two Ridges' lighthearted mood towards women and his skill at teasing and loving so many!
Now there was nothing to envy.
A sudden thought came to himhow would Two Ridges' father feel if he knew the full truth of what had happened here today? It would devastate a man such as Brown Elk to know that his son had brought such dishonor to himself!
It had to be kept from him, so that Brown Elk could mourn his son without shame clouding his memories of a son he had idolized.
"I will rightfully keep this secret," Spotted Eagle whispered, slowly laying Two Ridges' head back on the ground. "I was wrong to keep the secret to myself that Jolena was your sister. But I must keep secrets again! Never will I allow your father to know the treacherous son that you were. You do not deserve such loyalty from Spotted Eagle, but your kind and generous father does!"
Rising slowly to his full height, Spotted Eagle gazed down at Two Ridges a moment longer, then walked away toward his waiting warriors. When he reached them, he looked solemnly from one to the other.
"He is gone from us," he said, almost choking on the words and the actuality of what Two Ridges had planned to do. And why would Two Ridges want to do such a thing?
He surely had to know that Jolena was dead!
That had to mean that his hatred for Spotted Eagle ran even more deeply than jealousy for a woman, and that was something that Spotted Eagle could hardly accept.
Only yesterday he and Two Ridges were riding side by side, talking and laughing as friends do.
There had been no sign then of Two Ridges having hated him.
"The news we take to Brown Elk will take away the joy of his having just discovered that he has a daughter, and that she is alive and well," Double Runner said gloomily. "Sad it is, that he gains a daughter, then loses a son."
Spotted Eagle's heart did a strange leap at Double Runner's mention of Brown Elk's daughter.
There was only one daughter!
Jolena!
And Double Runner was talking about her as though she were alive, as though he had met her!
This had to mean only one thingthat Jolena was in his Blackfoot village!
"What are you saying about a daughter?" Spotted Eagle said, clasping his fingers to Double Runner's shoulders. "About Brown Elk's daughter?"
"While you were away, she came into our village," Double Runner said softly. "She was the one who told us that you might be dead. Your father sent a search party out looking for you, in hopes that you would still be alive. It was with happy hearts that we found that you were.''
Double Runner glanced over his shoulder at Two Ridges. "Had we arrived sooner, we would make two fathers happy upon our return to our village," he said sadly.
Spotted Eagle was only half-hearing what Double Runner was saying. His heart was thumping wildly with joy over knowing that his woman was alive after all.
And she had even found her way to her people's village!
Everything would now be perfect if not for…
He turned and stared down at Two Ridges, still finding it hard to believe that Two Ridges would go so far as to kill his best friend.
Yes, he nodded to himselfthere had to be more to it than that.
But he doubted he would ever find the answers now that Two Ridges was no longer able to give them to him.
Anxious to go to Jolena, to take her into his arms and hug her to him, feeling the warm, sweet press of her body next to his as full proof that she was, indeed, alive, Spotted Eagle walked briskly to his horse and swung himself into his saddle.
