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She laid the shovel aside and went back inside the fort to kneel beside her father.
She reached out a hand to his pale cheek, held her fingers there for a moment as she bent low and kissed his cold lips. Then slowly she reached for his arms to begin the dreaded task of dragging him to the grave.
Flashes of her mother being laid in the dirt some miles back came to her, causing a sob to rise from deep inside her, and tears to rush again from her eyes.
“Mama, Papa,” she whispered. “How can this be? I no longer have either of you.”
Before attempting to take her father’s body to the grave, she looked heavenward. Although she felt Wolf Hawk’s dark eyes on her, watching her every move, she murmured a soft prayer, then spoke a memorized verse from the Bible that she recalled her father speaking over her mother’s grave.
Then, knowing that she had taken more time than the Indian wanted to allow her, she stood up, bent low and grabbed her father’s arms.
She grunted and groaned as she tried to pull his dead weight to the grave, but didn’t succeed in budging him even one inch from the spot where he had fallen and died.
“No,” she moaned in despair. She had never felt so helpless in her entire life, for she knew now that she could not do this alone, and she most certainly would not go inside the cabin and ask Tiny for any more help.
If she had to drag her father one inch at a time and stand in a pool of her own sweat from the effort, she would get her father buried. And she would do it by herself.
No matter what she must face as a young woman now alone in the world, she would, and with a lifted chin. She would not show an ounce of cowardice to these Indians, especially not this chief whom she blamed for causing her father’s heart attack.
Wolf Hawk winced when he saw the trouble Mia was having transporting her father to his grave. But he could not help being proud of her for not asking anyone’s assistance.
When Mia tried once more to move her father’s body and could not even budge him, she dropped the shovel and sank to her knees. She put her face in her hands and cried.
She hated showing such weakness to these Indians, but she could not help it.
She felt totally helpless, for she knew that she could not complete this task alone.
Suddenly out of the corner of her eye she saw someone bend over on the opposite side of her father. She saw two powerful arms and hands reach beneath her father and pick him up from the ground as though his body weighed no more than a feather.
She slowly looked up and found herself staring into the eyes of Wolf Hawk as he met her gaze, then carried her father to the grave.
Oh, so much was exchanged between them in those brief moments. Mia was puzzled, for she felt strangely drawn to this man whose deeds did not match the harshness of his words. Instead, he was giving her a look that melted her heart because it was so full of caring and understanding.
It was at this moment that she realized this man would not harm her in any way; nor could he have been the one who had shot the arrow into her mother’s body.
He had come and frightened her father, yes, but she knew that he had not intended for her father to die. He had come seeking those who had slain two innocent young braves.
Mia rose to her feet and went to kneel by the grave. Again she gazed with intense love at her father’s lifeless body. Again she murmured a soft prayer.
When she stood and took up the shovel to begin shoveling the dirt over her father’s body, each turn of the shovel was like a knife being thrust into her heart.
And when it was over and all that remained was a mound on the ground, she gave Wolf Hawk a questioning look.
“We must go now,” Wolf Hawk said. “Are there some of your belongings that you would want to take with you? For you will not be allowed to return to this place, not once you are in my village.”
The fact that she was most definitely going to be this man’s captive gave Mia a chill and she questioned her earlier thoughts about him. Mia paused for a moment as their eyes met and held, then she shook her head as though coming out of a trance.
“Yes, I would like to take a few things with me,” she murmured. “I won’t be long.”
“I will follow you,” Wolf Hawk replied, not wanting to leave her alone with the tiny man who seemed so disrespectful to her.
Mia ignored Wolf Hawk, and hurried inside the cabin.
She paused, taking a last look at the empty birdcage. Oh, how she despised Tiny for releasing her canary to the wild…a bird that had no idea how to survive away from her cage, where she had been safe, loved, fed and watered.
She looked quickly away from the cage, for she didn’t want to think of what might have happened to Georgina. She was another one of Mia’s losses, adding to her heartbreak.
Mia started to gather up some things but suddenly realized that Tiny wasn’t in the cabin!
