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“And why do you think that you do?”
“I do not think. I know.”
“Search your heart, Brian Brave Walker. Search long and hard. Do not tell me now what you find. I will wait for you to tell me later.”
Brian Brave Walker nodded. He went to his mother’s bedside and gave her a lingering stare, then turned and took Dancing Cloud’s hand and looked trustingly up at him. “Please teach me about the spirit world and how my mother will get there,” he said softly.
“Come,” Dancing Cloud said, walking toward the ladder.
Brian Brave Walker followed Dancing Cloud down the ladder.
“Dancing Cloud?” Brian Brave Walker asked softly.
“Yes, my son?”
“Can you also teach me how not to hate Lauralee?” Brian Brave Walker asked, placing his feet on the floor and gazing up at Dancing Cloud. “Because of you I do wish to know how to like her.”
Lauralee had just entered the cabin with two women and had heard Brian Brave Walker. Her lips quavered as Dancing Cloud turned and gave her a soft, reassuring smile.
Brian Brave Walker clung to Dancing Cloud’s hand, his eyes wary as he looked over at Lauralee.
He turned again to Dancing Cloud. He tugged on his arm so that Dancing Cloud would lean down close to hear what he had to say. “She is almost as beautiful as my mother, is she not?” he whispered.
“Yes, I would say so,” Dancing Cloud whispered back.
“It should not be all that hard to like her, should it?” Brian Brave Walker whispered again, giving Lauralee a quick glance over his shoulder.
Dancing Cloud chuckled.
Lauralee sighed with relief, for Brian Brave Walker’s whisper had not been as much of a whisper as he would have liked.
She had heard all that had mattered!
For now, that was enough.
Chapter 31
What’s the earth with all its art,
verse, music, worth compared with
love, found, gained and kept.
—ROBERT BROWNING
Soft Wind had been buried. The journey to and from the orphanage was behind Lauralee and Dancing Cloud. When they had arrived there, Lauralee had been thrust back in time as she had walked the corridors. While looking into the rooms, seeing the children, it had been reminiscent of times not that far past. She could see it in the children’s eyes as they gazed back at her that they envied her and wished to be taken away to a different world where they would find a true home filled with love.
There had been no way they could have known that she had been one of those children at another time, in another orphanage, with her own dreams, with her own envies.
She only wished that she could have embraced them all and brought them back to the village with her, to offer them the sort of life that she had found among Dancing Cloud’s people.
All of the Cherokee children had been taken from the orphanage and were even now with various families in this village.
Lauralee and Dancing Cloud had taken one child to raise as their own. She gazed down at the tiny bundle that she held in her arms. Her eyes sparkled with tears as she unfolded the blanket and looked at the tiny copper face that was framed already by straight, black hair.
“We found her on our doorstep only recently,” the superintendent in charge of the orphanage had told Lauralee and Dancing Cloud. “There was no note. Only the child lying wrapped in a blanket in a wicker basket. If she is taken now by a family, she will never know that her mother chose to give her away.”
Lauralee and Dancing Cloud’s thoughts had been of one mind and heart. At that very moment their arms had collided as they had both reached for the infant.
