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“My chief, I have something to tell you,” she said in a whisper.
Another flash of lightning lit up the buffalo covering of the tepee, and the following thunder shook the ground beneath them.
Blue Thunder looked at her askance, for this was not the time for small talk. He turned away from her, wondering what could be so important that she would speak up at such a time as this.
Yet he would not ask her. His respect for his uncle was too great to speak in his presence, although Dancing Shadow would never hear anyone again.
“Blue Thunder . . .” Speckled Fawn said persistently. “Please come outside with me. I have something that must be said.”
Blue Thunder frowned at her, then seeing something in her eyes, and hearing the insistence in her voice, he rose and stood over her as she pushed herself up from the mat-covered floor.
They walked outside, where the skies were dark and the lightning and thunder continued.
The first raindrop fell, and then two, and another and another from the savage skies above.
“Hurry and say what you must say,” Blue Thunder urged. He gazed up at the sky. He had never seen it look so threatening before.
He flinched when lightning zigzagged from one cloud to another, the ensuing thunder even more pronounced this time.
“Oh, Blue Thunder, I know you need to know what I have learned, yet I find it so hard to tell you,” Speckled Fawn said, her voice catching.
She lowered her eyes for a moment, to gather the courage to tell him the truth.
Blue Thunder was stunned to see Speckled Fawn actually having trouble saying something. He had never known a woman who loved to talk so much.
She was so loquacious, sometimes she got on his nerves!
“Just tell me,” he said, taking her elbow and guiding her toward his tepee when the raindrops came in a rush from the heavens.
When Speckled Fawn saw where Blue Thunder was taking her, she grabbed his arm and led him in a different direction. She did not want to tell him about Earl in front of Shirleen.
She knew Shirleen would have to hear what Earl had done, but Blue Thunder deserved privacy when he learned the awful truth.
She led him into the small tepee that had housed Shirleen upon her first arrival at the village. Although it was dark inside because no fire burned in the fire pit, the continued flashes of lightning provided enough light to see each other.
“I have never seen you behave so strangely,” Blue Thunder said, wiping Speckled Fawn’s face dry with the palms of his hands.
He wiped his own face dry, then lifted his wet hair back over his shoulders as he awaited some sort of response from Speckled Fawn besides a strange stare.
“It will be so hard to say,” Speckled Fawn murmured. “But oh, Blue Thunder, I must.”
Growing impatient, Blue Thunder placed his hands on her shoulders and looked intently into her eyes. “Say it,” he said tightly. “Say . . . it . . . now.”
Although he was urging her to tell him whatever it was she found so hard to say, he was now dreading her next words.
And something else was troubling him besides her behavior. The storm had worsened, bringing heavy sheets of rain. The air was heavy. The winds were howling, bringing gusts of rain down through the smoke hole.
He was sorry to realize that this rain could delay his uncle’s burial, for the burial grounds would be too muddy. He had wanted to get the burial behind him so that he could know his uncle’s spirit would be free.
“My chief, it was not renegades who took your wife from you,” Speckled Fawn finally blurted out. “It was not renegades who . . . defiled . . . her body so horribly.”
Blue Thunder was taken aback by what she was saying. His heart seemed misplaced inside his chest. It seemed to be everywhere at once, pounding, pounding, pounding!
“How would you know this?” he finally managed to ask.
His grip on her shoulders tightened so much she winced.
He saw what he had done and drew his hands quickly away.
