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He slowly eased his hand from Joylynn’s. His jaw tightened as he looked again at the hidden valley. “Let the white man try to disrupt our lives again,” he said fiercely, then turned to Joylynn again. “If they do try to come, they . . . will . . . die.”
Joylynn knew that he had already placed many sentries at strategic points along the high canyon wall. They could see all movement down below during the daytime hours, and could hear all sounds when darkness enveloped the land. If even a wolf or mountain lion crept close, these trained sentries would hear it.
Joylynn remained where she was while High Hawk rode to a spot where he could be seen by all of his people.
He drew rein and smiled at each of them, then spoke. “My people, I have brought you to where my dreams led me,” he said. “This is your home now. No one will disrupt your lives again. No one will threaten your young sons or daughters. I promise this to you, my people, and you know I always keep my promises.”
While he was talking and instructing his people, Joylynn’s eyes shifted to Andrew. After finally getting several nights of good rest while on their journey to this new home, he looked his age again. Before, after being wounded and traveling without rest, the young man had seemed to have aged overnight.
Even Joylynn had felt as though she had grown older from the long, hard ride without sleep, rest or a warm meal to please the stomach.
After they had finally caught up with their people, it had been heavenly to finally feel safe enough to stop and rest a full night before heading out again along the narrow passages that had brought them to this hideaway.
She knew that many of the Pawnee people were still wary of Andrew, although their shaman had befriended him. She had seen Andrew and Two Stars often discussing religion, and she had seen Andrew hand his Bible to Two Stars after reading special verses to him.
She knew that Two Stars was quite taken by the young man and the passages that had been read from the Bible to him.
Joylynn wasn’t sure how to take Andrew’s friendship with the shaman. Was the young man getting on the good side of Two Stars in order to gain the trust that might lead to his quick release?
Or did Andrew truly care about the older man?
In time, Joylynn and everyone else would know the truth behind the young man’s behavior.
She only hoped that he was not making a fool of such a wonderful man as Two Stars.
Hearing the rushing sound of a waterfall near the spot where the new village was going to be built, Joylynn remembered another waterfall, another time.
She swallowed hard as she thought about Sleeping Wolf’s poor, twisted body being covered by stones. His burial had been near a waterfall, where he would hear it for all eternity.
He was also close to where eagles nested. Joylynn smiled at the remembrance of the nest of eagles, where the small heads popped up for food when their mother came with a tiny morsel for each.
She glanced over at Blanket Woman, who now stood beside the travois on which she had traveled. Joylynn was glad to see hope in her old eyes now, instead of the sadness that had been there as she mourned her elder son’s death. Joylynn would never forget the look on Blanket Woman’s face, when she had been told that his body had been found and buried. Blanket Woman had been beside herself that she had not been at the burial of her son. She had been desperate to say final words
to him and pray over his body.
For Blanket Woman, the rest of the journey had been miserable as she lay on the travois with a blanket drawn over her face. But she had been heard. Her wails and prayers had reached into everyone’s hearts.
Joylynn was glad when Blanket Woman stopped her open grieving and rejoined humanity, throwing the blanket aside and eating again, yet still saying nothing to anyone, not even her chieftain son.
But now? Joylynn could see a tentative joy in Blanket Woman’s eyes as she gazed upon this new land that was so beautiful and filled with peace.
High Hawk was still telling his people what was to be, now that they had arrived.
Soon after, they cleared a large piece of land for their lodges and began building new tepees, placing them in a tight group at the lower level of a slope in the well-watered valley.
A large fire was built in the center of the village, where even now the elderly men, who were not strong enough to help cut wood, or build homes, sat smoking their long-stemmed pipes. In their eyes was a revived look of hope.
Joylynn pitched in and helped plant poles into the ground to support the lodge coverings. She smiled at High Hawk, who worked alongside her.
The children romped and played, some running after beautiful butterflies, others chasing quail from the high grass.
The deer that Joylynn had seen upon her arrival were farther down the stream, but not drinking. They watched with large brown eyes as they observed, for the first time in their lives, animals that walked on two legs, not four.
“They are beautiful, are they not?” High Hawk asked as he came and stood beside Joylynn.
“Do you ever hesitate to kill them?” Joylynn asked.
“One cannot afford such hesitation, not when so many people’s lives depend on the meat and pelts of the deer,” High Hawk said, watching as the creatures finally bounded away and were lost to sight amid a thick stand of cottonwood trees.
