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The fog had finally lifted, and the wind was cool against her face as Shirleen saw Blue Thunder walking toward her. He was leading a beautiful white horse.
She felt a strange tingling rush through her veins when Blue Thunder stopped beside her and mounted his horse, then turned a soft smile her way.
“Are you ready?” he asked as his warriors banded together in one tight group, awaiting his orders to ride. “Are you truly strong enough to travel?”
It was at this very moment, after having mounted her own horse, that Shirleen realized she was in no shape to ride. The lump on her head throbbed, and she suddenly felt dizziness rush through her. But she couldn’t think of herself.
Her daughter’s life lay in the balance! Shirleen had to be strong enough to accompany these warriors to search for Megan.
“Yes, I am well enough to travel,” Shirleen murmured, trying hard not to show that she was dizzy. She held her reins tightly as she smiled over at Blue Thunder. “Please. Let’s go now. I hardly slept a wink last night, I was so eager for this moment to arrive.”
“A . . . wink?” Blue Thunder said, arching an eyebrow. “What is this . . . wink?”
His curiosity about the unknown term made Shirleen’s feelings for him deepen even more.
“It is a way to say that I had trouble sleeping,” she said, smiling softly at him.
“You had problems because you did not feel well?” Blue Thund
er asked, truly concerned about her welfare.
He noticed that she was weaving slightly as she sat in the saddle. He was quite certain that she was dizzy, even though she would not admit it.
And he understood why.
She wanted to be part of the search for her daughter.
The child meant the world to her, just as Little Bee did to Blue Thunder!
“No, that wasn’t the reason,” Shirleen said, telling the necessary white lie. “It was because of my anxiousness to go and search for my Megan. Each day I am away from her is one day too many.”
“We shall do what we can to find her,” Blue Thunder promised. “I understand the hurt in your heart. It would be the same way I would feel if my daughter were no longer safely with me.”
“Thank you for your understanding,” Shirleen murmured. She looked toward his aunt’s tepee and saw the woman holding Little Bee in her arms. Both were gazing at Blue Thunder, awaiting the moment when he would ride away.
Seeing Little Bee made Shirleen’s heart ache even more for her own daughter. She hoped that today that heartbreak would end.
Oh, if only God would make it so!
Her gaze shifted when she saw Speckled Fawn step out of her tepee.
Speckled Fawn waved at Shirleen, and it seemed to Shirleen that she was whispering “Good luck” to her.
Shirleen was now beginning to believe that the woman truly did want to be her friend. Needing one badly, she smiled and waved back at Speckled Fawn. Silently she mouthed “Thank you.”
She looked straight ahead again and held the reins tightly, her knees locked against the sides of her horse in the hope that it would keep her steady when dizziness claimed her again. Slowly they made their way out of the village.
As they rode on and on, each pounding of her horse’s hooves made Shirleen feel less able to keep up the pace. But determination was her company today.
It kept her going, no matter how dizzy she was at times.
Finally they reached their destination, the site of her former home, where her friends had died, and where their cabins and barns had been burned to the ground.
They didn’t go all the way to the scene of the massacre, but close enough for Shirleen to see the dead lying upon the ground.
She felt a bitter bile rise into her throat and had to fight off the urge to vomit as she turned her eyes quickly away from the gruesome scene.
She wanted to ask Blue Thunder to please see to her friends’ burials, but there was hardly anything left . . . to . . . bury. The roaming, hungry wild animals had had their way with the bodies.
