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She cried out in her sleep, then awakened with a start, wet with sweat. As she sat up, she realized that eyes were on her.
She had forgotten to lower the blanket that gave her privacy while she slept. She looked quickly over to where High Hawk stood just inside the entranceway. He must have only now arrived back home.
High Hawk came quickly to her.
He knelt down beside her. “What has caused you to cry out in your sleep?” he asked, searching her eyes.
Her heart pounding, she turned her eyes away. There was no way on God’s earth that she would tell him about the rape.
Oh, Lord, she had to escape before she got much larger, for she did not want this lovely man to know what she had endured at Mole’s hands. It was something she did not ever want to say aloud to anyone.
She just wanted to have the child, hand it over to a preacher, then get on with her life. Until then, she had to continue guarding her secret in every way possible.
“Food is being brought for us,” High Hawk said quietly, seeing that Joylynn didn’t want to talk about what had disturbed her so.
He would take one day at a time and hope that she would be more open with him soon. He cared so much for her. He wanted to be the one who helped her get past her hidden fears, if she would only allow it.
Then a terrible thought came to him. What if her troubled dreams were caused by his having abducted her?
What if her fear was of him?
His thoughts were interrupted when a woman’s voice spoke outside the tepee. “I bring food for you and the white woman.”
He lifted the entrance flap and nodded a quiet welcome to the woman, who came into the lodge carrying a platter piled high with an assortment of meats and vegetables.
He took the platter from her, thanked her, then, as she left, placed the food on a mat beside the lodge fire.
Still without saying anything more to Joylynn, he got two wooden plates and nodded toward them. “Come and sit by the fire with me,” he said. “The night has turned chilly. The fire will feel good.”
Joylynn gazed up through the smoke hole and noted that day had turned into night. She could feel the breeze as it came through the spaces where the bottom edges of the tepee had been rolled up.
She watched as High Hawk went and closed them, then came back and again nodded toward the food.
“Eat with me and then you can rest again, if you wish,” he said thickly. “My mother told me that you worked hard today and that you must be as bone-weary as she.”
Joylynn felt guilty about the older woman’s tiredness, for it was surely because she had done some of Joylynn’s work.
She swallowed hard, then went and sat down beside High Hawk. She realized how hungry she was when the aroma of the cooked venison and corn wafted to her nose.
“Thank you,” she murmured when he gave her a plate filled with food. “I am quite famished.”
He ate in silence beside her. He watched how hungrily she ate, but his mind kept drifting. He had searched for his father today and had not found him.
His mother even now sat crying beside her lodge fire, fearing the worst.
High Hawk would not give in to those same fears. He continued to believe that his father would be home soon with an explanation for his delay.
“Has your father returned home yet?” Joylynn asked, as though she had read his thoughts.
All he could do was shake his head, his eyes revealing the despair he was feeling.
“I’m sorry,” Joylynn murmured. “Truly I am.”
“I believe you,” High Hawk said. “I have been with you long enough now to know that you are not only a woman of strength and fire, but also compassion. Your compassion is appreciated.”
“Are you going to search for him again?” Joylynn asked, thinking that the more often he left, the more likely it was she would find a way to escape.
But she felt guilty for thinking of herself when she could tell that he was so worried about his father.
