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He stroked his fingers through her long black hair. “Time passes quickly,” he softly encouraged. “Soon you will be embracing your sons. It will be up to you whether or not to scold them for staying away longer than is usual from the safety of their village.”
“I will forbid them to hunt for several days,” Dancing Fire said. She wiped fresh tears from her eyes. “But they love the hunt so much, as did their father.”
“And that is why you always have fresh meat on your table, just as you will today when they return from their hunt successful,” he said, drawing his hand away. “They are the sons of their father, are they not? Did he not always bring meat home for his family? Your sons are taking his place so that you will be proud.”
“I am so very proud already,” Dancing Fire said, then straightened her back and tightened her jaw. “I shall do as you say. I have much work awaiting me in my lodge. I have two pairs of moccasins to bead for my sons, as well as vests to complete for them.”
“Then go in good spirit and sit by your fire and do your beading,” Wolf Hawk said. He patted her shoulder again. “Go now. I will return home soon with your sons.”
“May our Earthmaker be with you,” Dancing Fire said, then swung around and walked away from Wolf Hawk, her long, beaded dress swaying as her full hips moved beautifully with each step.
Wolf Hawk admired her, not only for her courage, but for her beauty. He hoped that one day a warrior of her age would step forward and offer her a horse as a bride price.
She needed a man in her life again.
It was not good to center her entire world around sons, for they would soon take wives, which would leave Dancing Fire totally alone in her lodge.
But it would be hard for her to find a husband, just as it would be hard for her sons to find women they could marry, for they could not marry within their own clan, and the other clans were far from their village. Many had already been confined to the horrors of reservation life.
Even he had begun to be concerned about how he might find a woman he could offer a bride price to. He did not want to chance leaving his people for the amount of time it would take to find another Winnebago clan, and he certainly did not dare go anywhere near a reservation to find a woman.
That might lead the white soldiers back to where he had made a safe haven for his people.
For now, for today, he would place his duties to his people, to this mother, ahead of the hungers of the flesh that had begun to plague him.
Perhaps he would never marry. That thought brought a strange ache at the pit of his stomach, for he hungered to have a woman to share his bed and his life.
He wanted sons!
Putting his own needs from his mind, and centering his thoughts on the matter at hand, Wolf Hawk went from lodge to lodge until he had enough warriors to ride with him.
As they rode through the fresh, new grass of spring, enjoying the scent of apple blossoms wafting through the air, Wolf Hawk and his warriors kept an eye out for any movement in the forest.
First they saw a deer feasting on grass, and then a fox meandering through the brush, confident that the red men with bows and arrows were not there for his hide.
Soon after came a female fox with her small kits, scrambling to catch up with the father.
Although fox fur was one of the most desirable of all for winter hats and clothes, today the animals were not pursued.
Wolf Hawk had been touched by the sight of the tiny kits, their fur not yet as red as their parents’. Their innocent play and ignorance of danger made him wish he did not have to kill in order to have warmth and food, but that was the way it was. That was the circle of life.
And he had to make certain that his people lived their own circle of life with enough food and pelts to make their lives comfortable. Always he feared that white people would come and take it all away from them.
He thought of the white eyes he had seen on the river in their many types of vessels. Thus far, none of them had stopped or become a threat to his people.
They all seemed to have a faraway destination in mind and he always wondered where it might be, and what was calling them there?
He shrugged and centered his full attention again on the search. He and his warriors had now traveled quite a distance, much farther than the usual hunting grounds of the young braves.
They had been taught that to go farther was to tempt fate. And he was beginning to wonder if that was exactly what those two braves had done. If not, why had Wolf Hawk and his warriors not found them yet?
Suddenly his horse neighed nervously and shook its mane. Wolf Hawk saw something up ahead beneath a tall old oak that made him gasp in horror.
He heard the same gasp all around him and knew that his warriors had also seen the scene of death that broke Wolf Hawk’s heart.
He and his warriors had found the young braves, and the news that they must take back to their mother would destroy her, for her sons were both caught in a white hunter’s claws of steel.
They lay in a pool of their own blood, blood that had come from the wounds on their ankles, where the trap had severed the skin and arteries.
