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“Your hero?” Eagle Wolf asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Ho, my hero,” Nicole said, smiling sweetly at him. “You are my knight in shining armor who came and rescued me when I needed rescuing the most.”
When she saw that he did not understand the word “knight,” she smiled into his eyes and explained the meaning to him.
And then he said something that surprised her.
“Have you never thought about how strange it is that you were given a name by your parents that had no true meaning?” he asked, placing a gentle hand on her cheek.
“No, I never thought about that,” Nicole replied. “My parents named me after a distant aunt.” She laughed softly. “And, no, there is no particular meaning behind that name. Why do you ask?”
“Because, my woman, my wife, my people never give names without meanings behind them,” he said softly. “Eagle? Wolf? On the day of my birth, as I was told, my mother saw an eagle soaring overhead outside the tepee, and my father heard the baying of a wolf. Those two creatures were honored when they named me.”
“I don’t know anything about what happened on the day of
my birth, so there could be no true meaning behind my name,” Nicole said, sighing.
“I will give you a name,” Eagle Wolf said, sitting up. He took her hands and urged her to sit before him, their eyes locked.
“But how will you know what to name me?” Nicole asked, searching his eyes.
“I will give you a name that I believe defines you,” Eagle Wolf said. “Whispering Doe. You are as gentle and beautiful as a doe, and from our first meeting your heart has whispered to mine. I would like to call you Whispering Doe.”
“Why, that is so beautiful,” Nicole murmured. “I love it.”
“Then from now on you will be called Whispering Doe,” he said. Then his eyes shifted quickly to the closed entrance flap. “Did you hear that?”
Nicole had heard a soft yip-yipping outside their tepee.
“Could it be…?” she asked, hurrying into her dress and moccasins as Eagle Wolf pulled on his fringed breeches and moccasins.
They went outside together, both gasping when they found the female wolf lying on her side behind their tepee. A tiny, lone offspring was suckling on her teat.
It was an incredible sight. They were amazed that the wolf had brought its one baby so close to humans, but soon they saw why. The long wound on the mother’s side had somehow become opened and was oozing blood.
“She brought her baby to us because she thought she might not live long enough to keep it alive herself,” Nicole said, a sob catching in her throat. She looked quickly over at Eagle Wolf. “I wonder if she got wounded again by Sam Partain.”
“I would imagine so,” Eagle Wolf said.
“We must do something, but what?” Nicole asked. “I doubt she will allow us to take her and her baby into the tepee. She only knows the life of the wild.”
“She sees us as friends, or she would have not came to us for help. I believe she will welcome the warmth of our lodge, and food,” Eagle Wolf said, stepping closer to the wolf, to test her reaction.
When the wolf did not shy away from him, or take her baby in her mouth to carry it away, Eagle Wolf sensed that she was giving permission for him to do as he saw fit.
“Whispering Doe, you carry the pup and I will carry the mother,” Eagle Wolf said thickly.
Nicole did not hesitate to reach for the tiny, sweet thing. Meanwhile, Eagle Wolf lifted the mother wolf into his arms and hurriedly took her to the warmth of the lodge.
“I healed her wound before. I shall do it again,” Eagle Wolf said, as he laid the wolf on a blanket beside the fire. “Hold the tiny thing while I administer to the mother’s wound. Then we can put them together again, but this time they will be where it is warm, and where they both will be cared for.”
Nicole gazed with intense love at Eagle Wolf. She had never known anyone as kind and compassionate as her husband.
She sat down with the tiny animal in her arms and watched Eagle Wolf with the mother wolf, amazed at how the animal put such trust and faith in Eagle Wolf. Creatures of the wild were not prone to trust human beings.
But Eagle Wolf was not just any human being. He was special, in all ways different from any white man she had ever known. She wished that her father had been born with the same understanding of what the world was all about. If he had been, he would never have wasted his time at the gambling table. And he would surely be alive today.
Chapter Thirty-four
