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Speckled Fawn rose to her feet and came to Blue Thunder and Shirleen. “I am ready,” she said firmly. “I have said good-bye to my husband. I . . . I . . . truly believe that he, somehow, heard me.”
She turned to Shirleen and gazed intently into her eyes. “Thank you for sitting with my husband in my absence,” she said.
“I just can’t thank you enough for what you are doing for me and my daughter,” Shirleen said softly. “And believe me when I say that while you are gone, I will not leave your husband’s side.”
They hugged, and then Blue Thunder and Speckled Fawn departed. Shirleen did not even step out of the tepee long enough to watch them ride away, for she did not want to leave Dancing Shadow unattended for even a moment.
She hurried to him and sat down on the soft mats beside the bed of pelts.
Soon Shirleen heard the thundering of hooves and knew that Blue Thunder and Speckled Fawn would be riding side by side, while the warriors followed behind them.
She knew that many hides would be tied to the packhorses, to be offered for trade. This trading was the reason that would be given the sentries to get Blue Thunder and his men into the fort.
Shirleen smiled as she thought of how Speckled Fawn was dressed for her role in this plot. Speckled Fawn was not wearing her usual Indian attire today. Instead, she was dressed in some of the clothes that had been stolen by the renegades.
She would look the part of a distraught white woman who’d lost everything but her life at the hand of renegades.
Knowing she had many hours to wait before she would learn whether Megan had been saved from her abusive madman of a father, Shirleen tried to focus on the elderly sleeping man.
She took his hand and gently held it. She hoped that if he felt her hand in his while he slept, he might believe it was his wife’s.
She did not speak, for if he was aware of things at all, he would realize that the voice was not his wife’s.
Instead, she began humming.
She remembered how her mama long ago had sat beside the elderly people of her church when they became gravely ill, humming to them.
Her mother had said that if nothing else could reach inside the heart of those who were near death, soft music might.
Shirleen’s eyes widened, for if she wasn’t wrong, Dancing Shadow had just given a fleeting smile.
She smiled too, glad in the belief that she was helping this old man in at least a small way.
She continued humming church hymns, trying to remember the songs she had heard her mama humming.
“The Old Rugged Cross” had been her mama’s favorite.
She began humming it, for perhaps it would become Dancing Shadow’s favorite, too.
Although she was doing what she could to keep busy in her hours of crisis, Shirleen could not stop wondering about whether she would ever see her child again.
Oh, surely she would!
Had not Blue Thunder promised her that it would be so?
Chapter Twenty-two
Serene I fold my arms and wait.
—Burroughs
After seeing that Speckled Fawn was well hidden in the trees outside Fort Dennison, Blue Thunder and his warriors rode onward toward the tall walls of the fort, their packhorses heavily laden with plush pelts.
After arriving at the gates of the fort, Blue Thunder and his men stopped, except for two who approached the two white sentries standing guard.
Blue Thunder sat stiffly in his saddle as he waited for his warriors to do their normal report to the sentries of how many warriors were in their party, and how many skins were being brought for trade.
Although this was the routine whenever they came to the fort for trade, Blue Thunder’s jaw tightened. Today they had much more to accomplish than trade.
