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Blue Thunder’s.
She only hoped that, in time, more than sadness would bring them together.
She would love for him to hold her and say sweet things to her that would make her melt in his arms.
She even dared to daydream of him actually kissing her.
“I’m glad that you found happiness with your husband,” Shirleen murmured, gesturing with a hand for Speckled Fawn to sit beside the fire.
After Speckled Fawn seated herself, Shirleen settled down onto the pelts next to her.
“Food will be brought soon,” Speckled Fawn said. She drew her knees up before her, hugging them. “Would you rather I stay or leave?”
“Please stay,” Shirleen said. “And I apologize for the times that I have been rude. I have been so distraught. And . . . I wasn’t sure whether or not to trust anyone, or whether I was safe in this village.”
“And now?” Speckled Fawn asked, searching Shirleen’s eyes.
“I feel so many things,” Shirleen admitted.
She lowered her eyes timidly when she thought of how she felt about Blue Thunder.
Oh, surely her love would show on her face if she even mentioned his name!
“I hope that now you realize among those feelings is the realization that I am a friend,” Speckled Fawn said, seeing that Shirleen was still having trouble speaking her mind fully. “And I hope you realize that all of the people in this village are your friends, especially Blue Thunder and our shaman, Morning Thunder.”
“I do believe that now,” Shirleen said, looking up at Speckled Fawn. “But you should understand why I was so hesitant. It was hard to trust any Indian after suffering so much at the hands of those . . . other . . . Indians.”
“Many whites call all Indians savages. Those who speak so loosely about things they do not truly know are people whom one should avoid. They are wrong to label such an innocent people as the Assiniboine savage,” Speckled Fawn said angrily, her protective feelings for her adopted people obvious. “There are true savages among those whose skin is red, the sort who spread fear as they roam the land killing, scalping, and raping.”
“You and I are the lucky ones,” Shirleen murmured, slowly nodding. “If Blue Thunder and his warriors had not arrived when they did that day, I imagine I would either be dead now, or wish that I was. I would never want to live if I were raped, or if I knew that those renegades took my daughter’s life.”
“I am certain that Blue Thunder will find your daughter,” Speckled Fawn said reassuringly as she reached over and patted Shirleen on the arm. “He is a determined man when he cares deeply about something, or someone. It is obvious that he cares for you, and also for your daughter, since she is your child.”
“I so hope that he can somehow find Megan and bring her to me,” Shirleen said, swallowing hard.
Hoping to change the subject, for the very mention of Megan broke her heart, Shirleen smiled at Speckled Fawn and forced herself to act interested in someone else.
“You have told me a little about how you came to be with these people,” Shirleen said. “Would you mind telling me more?”
“I think it would be good for me to talk about it,” Speckled Fawn said. She swallowed hard, then gazed into Shirleen’s green eyes. “It all began when my parents chose to move from civilization as I had always known it. Back East there were no Indians, nor men who would take advantage of a girl in, oh, so many wrongful ways.”
Shirleen listened intently to Speckled Fawn’s story, stunned by the tale of this white woman who’d lost her family on her way to Wyoming and had been left to fend for herself after she escaped a gang of highwaymen.
Speckled Fawn grew teary-eyed as she reached the worst part of her story. She had been forced to fend for herself as she had fled from one town to another, dancing in saloons and dance halls for her survival, from age eighteen to when she was thirty. She had no other skills she could use to make a living.
It had been then, in the unruly town of Iron Gulch, Wyoming, that a drunken man forced her into a room and attempted to rape her. The only way she could stop him was to kill him with his own knife.
She fled that town, and heard later that wanted posters had been put up about her. Fortunately, the drawing was not truly her likeness, so no one had found her.
Speckled Fawn had wandered and wandered, on river boats, across land on foot, on stolen horses, with no one caring about her. One day she collapsed between towns from sheer exhaustion and hunger.
She woke up in this Assinboine village, bathed, dressed in a lovely doeskin tunic and moccasins, with her hair in one long braid down her back. Then an even stranger thing had happened.
An elderly Indian came to the tepee where she had been placed. He had stood there just slowly looking her over.
After gazing silently at her for a short while, he had left.
A while later, Chief Blue Thunder came and told her that she had been chosen to marry his elderly uncle, who had been their shaman before he grew too tired
