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"You need not tell me the ways of the world and what is required of me to make sons," Spotted Eagle said, his voice no longer light and carefree, but annoyed at the impertinence of this young man at his side. "In time, a woman will fill my arms and warm my blankets. Until now, none has interested me."
"Except for my father's first wife," Two Ridges dared to say, giving his friend a guarded glance after he said it.
"Watch your words with me," Spotted Eagle snapped back. He paused, then added, "I was a mere boy then, yet I felt, I am sure, the feelings of a man for your father's first wife. But I rightfully and respectfully kept those feelings to myself. Still, I feel them and mourn her I believe even more than your father has ever mourned her."
"My father did mourn Sweet Dove and married soon after her death because he could not bear the loneliness and pain of his first wife's absence," Two Ridges said in defense of his father, Brown Elk. "And should he not have married my mother then, you would not have a best friend to shadow your every move now. Would that not sadden you?"
"It would not be something that would make me sad, because you would not have entered my thoughts had you not been born," Spotted Eagle said matter-of-factly.
"That is so," Two Ridges said thoughtfully. Then he cast a big smile toward Spotted Eagle. "You are glad that Father remarried and had a son, are you not?"
"Yes, it makes my heart happy," Spotted Eagle said. Speaking of Brown Elk having a son catapulted his mind back eighteen years, when Brown Elk had also had another child born to hima child that had been stolen from its dead mother and never seen or heard from again.
Spotted Eagle had wondered often about that child, whether or not it was a boy or girl, for that child would be a half-brother or -sister to Two Ridges.
Spotted Eagle had wondered if Two Ridges had ever been told of the child. It was not a question he had ever tested by asking.
It was for Brown Elk to make such confessions to a son!
Having reached their horses, Spotted Eagle stroked the mane of his mounta black stallion, a very fast horse with a white spot on its sidethen swung himself into his saddle.
Two Ridges followed his lead, soon sitting tall and square-shouldered on his strawberry roan.
"Let us be on our way!" Spotted Eagle shouted, sinking his moccasined heels into the muscled flanks of his horse. The fringes of his buckskin shirt and breeches blew and fluttered in the wind as he rode off at a fast gallop into the moonlight-drenched night, his friend close beside him.
When Fort Chance came into sight at the break of dawn, it was not the fort and the tall fence surrounding it that drew their attention. It was the sight of a huge paddle-wheeler moving down the Missouri River, its tall smokestacks blackened with smoke, many people lining the rails on the top deck, waiting for the boat to stop and deliver them to the Montana Territory.
Two Ridges drew a tight rein and stopped. He forked an eyebrow and gestured toward the steamboat with a wide swing of his arm. "Is not that a strange floating canoe?" he marveled. "It is so large! It carries many people in its bowels!"
Spotted Eagle drew rein beside his friend, yet offered no conversation. His insides were tight with more thoughts of Sweet Dove. It had been said that perhaps her child had been taken by those who rode the large river vessel those many years ago.
He tried not to be angered by this possibility.
Long ago his father had made peace with the white people. He had dug a hole in the ground and in it the Blackfoot had placed their anger and covered it up, so that there was no more war. His father still being chief, dealings were peaceful with the white people. The rival Indian tribes of this region were now more their enemy than anyone else.
The friendship of his Blackfoot people toward the whites had been fostered by decades of commerce with beaver hunters who roamed their mountain homeland. Spotted Eagle himself had chosen to walk the white man's road in peace, having felt that it was important to win favor with those who seemed destined to inherit the future.
Many Blackfoot warriors had even gone as far as saving many emigrants' lives by guiding and protecting them against the hostile Indians of the territory, as Spotted Eagle, in the capacity of a guide, had agreed to protect these people arriving on the river vessel from the Cree.
This would be easily done, for Spotted Eagle now spoke the English language well, from ha
ving become so closely associated with those at the fort and at the many trading posts in the area.
Feeling that enough time had been spent watching the large river vessel, Spotted Eagle sank his heels into the flanks of his horse and thundered onward toward the fort, Two Ridges soon beside him.
"There are many beautiful white women," Two Ridges said, smiling devilishly at Spotted Eagle. "Your business is scouting, not women-watching," Spotted Eagle said, giving his friend another annoyed glance. Two Ridges' love for women would one day get him in a barrel of trouble.
Silence fell between them as they grew closer and closer to the river boat that was inching its way closer to land for docking.
Jolena leaned her full weight against the rail as she combed her fingers through her wind-tousled hair, absorbing everything as the steamboat moved closer to shore.
The air was clear, the sunshine burning.
A spotted eagle soaring majestically overhead sent shivers down her spine because of its loveliness.
She had witnessed many marvels of nature on this long and tiring three-month journey from Saint Louis, a distance of two thousand miles. From Saint Louis they had passed one continuous prairie, with the exception of a few of the luxuriant forests along the banks of the river and the streams falling into it. There she had seen deer, antelope, bison, and various types of birds whose magnificent colors had stolen her breath away.
Now and then she had gasped when she saw a butterfly sweeping overhead, soon blown by the incessant wind away from her.
