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Turning, he saw Jessie smiling brightly at him.
He returned her smile, then looked first at Jade and then at Lee-Lee. “It is good that you are no longer with Reginald Vineyard,” he said kindly. “You will find much peace and love among my people.”
Lee-Lee gave Lone Wing a
quick, bashful glance, then nestled close to her mother, whose arm swept around her waist.
“I am sorry if we disturbed anything in the cave,” Jade said. “But we knew that would be the one place Reginald would not look for us. I know how he fears the cave. I have witnessed the nightmares caused by his disturbing the spirits of the cave.”
“You do not have to worry about nightmares, for all know that you went there for good reasons, not bad,” Thunder Horse said, then turned to his people. “We will proceed with the burial. There is not enough time to have the usual ceremony. It is best that we get my father inside the cave and then leave as soon as possible for the reservation. When I make promises, I do not break them, ever.”
He watched as his father’s body was taken into the cave. Then he went to Jessie and embraced her and gazed down into her eyes. “I want to sit for a while with my father and then I will join you,” he said sadly.
“I understand,” she murmured, then hugged him. “I will be waiting for you.”
She stepped away from him and went to stand with Lee-Lee and Jade. Lone Wing joined the others who now stood closer around their chief.
“My people, I need some time with my father,” Thunder Horse said, then gazed at the warriors who had just came from the cave. He nodded at them. “Escort our people to the village, then return to the cave at sunset to help me roll into place the boulder that will make it difficult for anyone else to enter our sacred burial cave.”
His warriors nodded, each embracing him in turn.
As they departed, Jessie felt uneasy about leaving Thunder Horse there alone. And she felt vulnerable without him.
She wondered if she would ever get over fearing what Reginald might do, especially now that he had lost not only her, but also Jade and Lee-Lee. She could not begin the journey to the Dakotas soon enough, for surely once they were gone, Reginald would forget them all.
It didn’t seem to take as long to return to the village as it had to go to the cave, but just as they reached the point where they could see ahead into the village, Jessie felt her knees buckle.
“No!” many voices cried as others saw what Jessie had seen.
Sobbing and wailing, many broke into a mad run toward the village. Jessie stopped with Jade and Lee-Lee, stunned speechless by what lay ahead.
Bodies lay strewn all over the ground. The defenseless elders of the tribe had been ruthlessly slaughtered. The proud warriors who had stayed behind to stand guard had also been ambushed.
Killed!
Whoever had attacked the village had done it in a silent way—with arrows, which led Jessie to believe that an enemy tribe had come and taken advantage of Thunder Horse’s absence.
As Jessie stopped just inside the edge of the village, tears spilled from her eyes. Even the “Old One,” their band Historian, was dead.
“There is one survivor!” Jessie heard the warrior named Two Stones cry out. “It is not one of us, but a white man!”
“White?” Jessie whispered, again staring at the many arrows lodged in the backs and bellies of the fallen.
This ghastly deed wasn’t the work of an enemy tribe, but of white men? She shivered at the realization that Reginald must have had a role in this.
She knew he would not have been among the actual murderers, for he was too frail and cowardly to do something so daring.
She ran over to where warriors stood around the one survivor. Two Stones knelt beside him and held his head off the ground by a grip on his thick red hair.
“Who did this?” Two Stones asked through gritted teeth. “Who rode with you? Who . . . was . . . the leader?”
“I . . . am . . . part of an outlaw gang led by Bulldog Jones,” the man gasped out, although his shirt was covered with blood from a chest wound; the arrow still protruded from it ominously.
When the man said the name of the man who’d killed her father, Jessie ran to the bushes and vomited. She couldn’t believe that this man was still wreaking havoc and death everywhere he went . . . even killing those who were too old to defend themselves.
And why? Why would he do this?
Nothing had been taken from the tepees. Was it for the sheer pleasure of murdering that he’d led the attack? Jessie wondered.
