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“The bear has buried his find to le
t it spoil for a while before coming back to feast upon it,” Brave Wolf explained.
“Truly? It prefers spoiled meat over fresh?” Mary Beth said.
Then she sighed with relief as the bear made a wide turn and sauntered away, soon hidden from view in the thickness of the trees.
“We must wait for the bear to get ahead of us before resuming our journey,” Brave Wolf said, watching intently for a possible return of the animal.
Then, finally, they were able to move onward. After some miles they came to a wide, treeless plain, the last straight stretch of land they would traverse before starting the climb into the mountains.
Mary Beth now guessed that Brave Wolf had a set destination, for he seemed to know where he was going.
She hoped he would reach it before too much longer. Only then could she see light at the end of her tunnel, for until Brave Wolf found his brother, she would be forced to travel with him, instead of being able to search for her son.
“David,” she whispered, and his name caused that terrible ache to begin inside her heart anew.
She was so afraid that she might never see him again. If only he had been fortunate enough to have been seen by a contingent of roaming cavalry and saved by them! She would continue thinking that, for only in doing so could she keep her sanity.
She slumped in the saddle as they rode onward toward the mountain slope. Again she was feeling dispirited and as though nothing in her world would ever be the same again.
She had lost her husband. She had lost her son.
She only wished now to be back on her farm in Kentucky with David safe beside her. There she would find solace.
She regretted that she had had to bury Lloyd so far away from his beloved Kentucky. At least if his grave was in Kentucky, she could have gone and talked to him from time to time. She could have placed flowers on the grave every day.
Now she had no grave to speak over, nor to take flowers to. . . .
“A man!” one of the warriors suddenly shouted. “I see a man on horseback in the distance. He seems ill. See how his head is hanging and how he barely holds onto the steed?”
“Oh, my Lord, he’s fallen,” Mary Beth cried when she caught sight of the man just as he slipped and fell from the horse.
The stranger was dressed in buckskin, with long, thick black hair and a face that shone copper colored beneath the brightness of the early afternoon sun.
She glanced over at Brave Wolf, whose eyes were wide with surprise just before he sank his heels into his horse’s flanks and rode off at a hard gallop. She was left behind with the other warriors except for one who rode with Brave Wolf.
Mary Beth strained her neck in order to see when Brave Wolf leapt from his horse and sank to his knees on the ground beside the fallen warrior.
When she heard him cry out the name Night Horse, she realized that he had found his brother, and that his brother might have just died in his arms.
The warriors rode in a hard gallop toward Brave Wolf and the fallen warrior.
Mary Beth suddenly realized that she was alone. Her heart skipped a beat, for she knew that she had just been given the opportunity to ride in the opposite direction.
No one would even notice. She could find Fort Henry!
The cavalry could send out a search party for David.
But then she recalled the bear, the cries of mountain lions in the night, the baying of wolves, and yelping of coyotes. All of those wild creatures were a threat to her, perhaps more of a threat than being with Indians who so far, had treated her with only kindness. Instead of fleeing, she hurried forward, stopping when she came a few feet from where Brave Wolf was cradling the fallen warrior’s head on his lap.
Yes, surely he had just found his lost brother, and by the looks of things, he might be at death’s door.
She slid from the saddle just as Brave Wolf lifted Night Horse into his arms and carried him to a nearby stream. Its banks were shaded by willows, their leaves looking silver as they fanned in the gentle breeze.
Mary Beth watched as Brave Wolf laid his brother on a bank of purple primrose, then reached his hands into the water and brought some out to bathe his brother’s fevered brow.
Mary Beth tied her horse with the others, which had been tethered to the limb of a lone tree that stood beside the stream.
