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“Do they make your hands feel better?” Lone Wing asked, his eyes studying the gloves as she slid them onto her hands.
“Usually,” she murmured.
“Then I would wear them if I were you,” Lone Wing said, smiling broadly as she looked at him.
“Lone Wing, go to my ahte’s lodge,” Thunder Horse said, bending down on a knee beside his nephew. “If my ahte is awake, tell him I will come to his lodge soon and with me will be a friend. But do not alert him yet as to who. Especially do not tell him that my friend is a white woman.”
Lone Wing nodded, gave Jessie another winsome smile, then leaped to his feet and ran from the tepee.
But Jessie wasn’t smiling now. She had heard what Thunder Horse had said to Lone Wing.
She was going to be taken to Thunder Horse’s father’s lodge and be introduced to him. If his father didn’t approve of her being in their camp, would Thunder Horse have no choice but to send her away?
Yet . . . Thunder Horse was the chief. He surely had the final word in his village.
She felt reassured as Thunder Horse took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. He took the blanket from her shoulders and laid it aside, then placed his hands at her waist and brought her closer to him. Their eyes met.
“My father is gravely ill,” he said thickly. “If not for his failing health, and his relationship with the white chief in Washington, all of my people would even now be housed on the reservation.”
He went on to explain the situation to her, how his father would be buried among the other departed chiefs in the sacred cave, and then how the rest of his people would go on to the reservation, where the others awaited them.
Hearing that he would be moving from this area when his father died, Jessie realized how fortunate she was to have made Thunder Horse’s acquaintance before he left. How alone she would have felt without him.
Strange how she now felt as though she would never be alone again, even though she knew he would ultimately say that she couldn’t stay with him forever. Once his father died, his people would begin their solemn journey to the reservation.
“You can stay with me and my people at our village as long as you wish,” Thunder Horse said, stunning Jessie, for it was as though he had read her mind!
“If you like, you can even go with us to the reservation in the Dakotas when the time comes,” Thunder Horse said, searching her eyes. “It is a place totally separate from the white community. No one will interfere if you wish to stay there. And the reservation is far from Tombstone—so far that Reginald Vineyard will never know that you have gone there with me and my people. You will be safe from him there.”
He searched her eyes, then said, “Will you go with me and my people to the reservation? I would not like to leave you behind, not knowing what might happen to you without my protection.”
She was stunned that he had actually asked her to go with him, that he cared enough to see himself as her protector. With his hands still at her waist and their bodies only a few inches apart, Jessie was overwhelmed by her feelings for him. For a moment she was at a loss for words.
Then, afraid she was misinterpreting his feelings toward her, she cleared her throat uneasily and eased herself from his hands.
“Perhaps I should return to Kansas City,” she murmured, even knowing as she said it that she had no money to travel anywhere.
And again she thought of Jade and Lee-Lee. Whatever she decided to do for herself, she wished she could include the two Chinese women.
But for now, she must do what was best for her child, to secure him or her a decent future.
Wondering what he might have said to make her draw away from his hands and turn down his suggestion to join him and his people, Thunder Horse said nothing for a moment. Instead, he gazed deeply into Jessie’s eyes, trying to understand the meaning behind her words.
Then he said, “Is there a man in this place called Kansas City awaiting your arrival, someone who will see to your welfare?”
Feeling more certain by the minute that he truly did care for her, and was honestly worried about her welfare, Jessie lowered her eyes. She was wishing that she hadn’t even mentioned Kansas City, for she wanted nothing more than to stay with Thunder Horse.
“No, no man is waiting for me there,” she murmured. “The man I was married to in Kansas City is . . . dead.”
“You were married?” Thunder Horse said, placing a gentle hand under her chin and lifting it so that her eyes met his. “The man . . . is dead?”
“Yes. He was killed in a most horrible way,” she said, her voice breaking. Then she explained at length about how her husband had died and why she had come to Tombstone to live with her only remaining relative, her cousin.
She shuddered. “That name Tombstone alone should have warned me what I would find there,” she said. “Meanness . . . greed . . . and . . .”
“And?” he said, again searching her eyes.
She told him about Jade and Lee-Lee and the danger they were in, and from whom . . . the same man she had fled.
