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She believed that God would bless her union with this man, Blue Thunder, who truly did seem to cherish her.
So, too, would he cherish her daughter, for who could not? Megan was the sweetest, loveliest child on the earth!
But thinking of Megan again and where she now was, Shirleen’s eyes filled with tears.
She leaned away from Blue Thunder and gazed into his midnight-dark eyes. “How?” she asked, a sob catching in her throat. “How can you rescue my daughter? Earl is at the fort, surrounded by the cavalry, who will never allow you to take a white child from her white father. And if you did have a plan of rescue that you feel might work, could you even get there in time?”
Suddenly Speckled Fawn spoke up, after being unusually quiet for so long. “How well does your husband hold his liquor?” she asked, stepping up to Shirleen as Shirleen slipped from Blue Thunder’s arms and turned to face her.
Shirleen was stunned by the question, wondering what on earth that had to do with anything.
“Shirleen, how well does your husband hold his liquor?” Speckled Fawn repeated, more insistently.
“Hardly at all,” Shirleen replied. “You see, while I was with Earl, there was scarcely enough money for food and supplies, much less for liquor. But when Earl did manage to get some whiskey, he drank it all at once. He got drunk fast.” She lowered her eyes. “That was when I got my worst beatings,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Speckled Fawn, why would you ask such a question?” Blue Thunder said, his voice tight with controlled anger. He did not like to see Shirleen so upset.
“I have a plan, if you will only listen,” Speckled Fawn said, realizing that once again she had not only annoyed her chief, but also angered him. “Will you listen, my chief? I believe I know of a way to get the child from her father.”
Blue Thunder sighed heavily, then nodded. “Tell us the plan,” he said, this time not so impatiently. He had realized that Speckled Fawn was a woman of much intelligence. She had lived a hard life before coming to live among his people. She had gotten herself out of enough “scrapes,” as she called them, to have a good sense of what might work now.
Yes, he was ready to listen to whatever plan the golden-haired white woman had come up with.
Shirleen listened, her eyes widening with every word Speckled Fawn said. She began to realize that this woman was very intelligent, and knew ways to outsmart men who were stronger than she but not as clever.
The more Speckled Fawn said, the more certain Shirleen felt that soon, finally, Earl would get his comeuppance.
But best of all, Shirleen began to believe that soon she would have her daughter back in her arms!
A disturbing thought occurred to her. Earl must have taken Megan from their yard only moments before the Indians had arrived with their war cries and eagerness to kill and rape.
Surely Earl had grabbed Megan and had hidden amid the thick forest of trees near their cabin just in time to see the Indians approaching. No doubt he had clasped his hand roughly over his daughter’s mouth, first to keep her from crying out for her mother, and then to kee
p her from letting the Indians know where they were.
Now that she thought about it, she was certain that Earl had witnessed the murders, the rapes, the burning of the cabins and barns. He had even seen Shirleen lying there unconscious, then taken away with ropes tied around her waist, and had not done a thing about it.
When he had reached the fort, he probably had not even told the colonel in charge about the massacre, for had he done this, when Shirleen and Blue Thunder and his warriors returned to where the massacre had happened, the bodies would have been buried by the cavalry.
No, Earl had not told anyone what he had witnessed. He cared nothing for those who were left dead upon the ground. He had done nothing while women were raped right before his eyes.
She was sure this was true, because Earl most certainly had not had time to get very far away after taking Megan. The time span between the child’s disappearance and the renegades’ attack had been too short for him to have fled.
If he had tried, he and Megan would have been added to the casualties.
The one thing that puzzled her was why he had waited so long to steal Megan. He had been gone for many hours before actually taking the child from the yard.
Then the reason came to her. Until that moment, when Shirleen had allowed Megan to go outside alone, Megan had been safely in the house with her mother.
Allowing Megan to go outside had played right into Earl’s hands. It had made Earl’s plan work to perfection.
Shirleen had never hated Earl more than she did at this moment of realization.
Chapter Nineteen
A merry heart goes all the day,
A sad tires in a mile.
