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It was the woman’s reaction to seeing a child’s dress.
It was the reaction of a mother who longed for her child!
Did the woman’s reaction mean that the dress belonged to her daughter? But if so, where was she?
And why wouldn’t the woman share even her name with Speckled Fawn? Surely she had seen that Speckled Fawn had come to visit her as a friend.
But still . . . the woman had only spoken when Speckled Fawn had first arrived at the tepee. Otherwise she had remained silent, except at the last, when she’d plucked the child’s dress from the other clothes.
Yes, the tiny dress had prompted the woman to react, surely evoking memories that pained her.
Yet no one had said anything about a small child, a girl, being among those who had been killed by the renegades.
Was the woman’s daughter even now at the mercy of Big Nose and the evil men who had managed to flee the ambush by Blue Thunder and his warriors?
Realizing that eyes were on her, Speckled Fawn looked quickly down at her husband, who sat beside the fire, a blanket wrapped around his thin, slumped shoulders.
When he smiled somewhat blankly at her, Speckled Fawn’s heart felt a warmth and depth of love she had never known she could feel for a man. Especially a man who was elderly, and who no longer had the ability to speak.
He now sat, day in and day out, awaiting his time to die, so that he could join his beloved ancestors in the sky.
But until then, Speckled Fawn did everything humanly possible to make him happy.
She believed that he was still alive only because she was there to love and care for him.
She just wished that he could talk, and still had the capacity to reason, because she badly wished to talk to him about the white woman, and especially her reaction to the tiny dress. She would love to know his opinion on the situation.
But as it was, she could only tell him of her feelings, which she often did in order to make him feel that he was still involved in life. She spoke even though she knew that he could never talk back to her.
“My husband, I’ve returned home to sit with you, to talk and make you happy,” Speckled Fawn said to Dancing Shadow. At one time, when he was younger and had his full faculties, he had been his people’s shaman.
Speckled Fawn noticed that, as usual, her words had not registered, for his eyes had already turned away from her and he was again only watching the leaping flames of the fire in the firepit.
Used to this reaction, but never liking it any more than the last time she had tried to break through his terrible silence, Speckl
ed Fawn sighed heavily.
She sat down beside him and took one of his bony hands in hers. She held it, feeling its coldness even though he was sitting close to the warmth of the fire.
Too often of late he felt cold when she touched him, especially when she bathed him each morning.
His chest, which was now strangely caved in so that his ribs were prominent, held no warmth whatsoever, nor did his lips when she kissed him.
It was like kissing a dead fish. . . .
That thought made her shudder. She no longer wanted to kiss him because of how his lips felt against hers, but she hoped that perhaps a kiss might reach his consciousness, so she did it as often as she could.
“My husband, our chief returned today from his journey to find and kill Big Nose and his renegade friends,” Speckled Fawn murmured. Her words would reach the fire, the walls of the tepee, the mats on the floor, even the pot of food cooking slowly over the fire, but not her husband’s mind.
But still, she talked, for she knew that it was important not to leave her husband in total silence.
She kept hoping for some sort of breakthrough.
If he would say one word, it would cause her heart to leap with pure joy!
“Sad to say, though, Big Nose once again eluded death,” Speckled Fawn said, herself now gazing into the fire. It had a way of almost hypnotizing a person, so she turned her eyes back to her husband. “He even eluded Blue Thunder. But most of Big Nose’s men were killed. At least in that, your nephew can be proud.”
She looked over her shoulder at the closed entrance flap when she heard voices as someone walked past.
