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She took a quick step backward and gasped when she found a tall Indian standing there gazing down at her.
She nervously cleared her throat and composed herself enough to speak. “Who are you?” she asked, speaking softly so that she wouldn’t awaken her father. He was resting peacefully. So often now when he was awake she could see in the depths of his eyes the suffering that he was feeling. Everyone had been amazed at how he had clung to life these past weeks.
She had been torn with how she felt about him still being alive. She knew that his suffering would be finally over when he took his last breath.
Yet she also knew that she would desperately miss him and hated to give him up.
The good Lord willing, He would do what was right for her father soon and ignore a daughter whose heart was being selfish in wanting to have him with her for as long as possible.
“I was told that Boyd Johnston was in this room,” Dancing Cloud said in perfect English, surprising Lauralee that an Indian could speak so succinctly.
Dancing Cloud looked past Lauralee, into the gray gloom of the room where only a candle beside the bed gave off a dim, wavering light.
“Yes, this is Mr. Johnston’s room,” Lauralee said, relaxing more in the Indian’s presence. “Who can I say is asking about him?”
Her eyes raked over him. She saw him nothing less than absolutely, strikingly handsome. His long, coal-black hair curled down over his shoulders and flowed to his waist. He was tall and strongly built. His shoulders were wide, his muscles straining against the inside of his fringed buckskin shirt. His skin had a touch of red to it, and his eyes were dark and mesmerizing.
Her heart took on a strange sort of thudding as he once again looked down at her. His smile gave away the secret that there was nothing to fear about him. He appeared to be a man of genuine kindness and gentleness.
“Tell Boyd that Joe Dancing Cloud has arrived.” Once again he tried to see past her, only seeing dark-shadowed images in the room beyond.
He gazed down at Lauralee again, his eyes filled with concern. “Tell me how Boyd is feeling,” he asked thickly. “Why is he in the hospital ? When he sent the message for me to come to him he did not go into the details of why.”
Lauralee’s hand went to her throat. “You are Joe?” she said, her eyes widening. “You are the man my father summoned . . . the man he is counting on to . . .”
Dancing Cloud interrupted her. “You are his daughter?” he said, in awe of his discovery. “You are Lauralee?”
“Yes, I’m Lauralee,” she said, still stunned over her discovery. Joe. Joe Dancing Cloud. Now she understood why her father had never told her Joe’s last name. He would have then been forced to explain that he was an Indian.
r /> Her father had surely wanted to delay telling her that until after she had already met him.
And she knew why.
The mere mention of an Indian stirred up all sorts of dreads and fears within so many people’s minds.
But only these few moments with this man told her how wrong her misconception of Indians were. Her father had known that she would feel this way after having made his acquaintance.
“Boyd has finally found you?” Dancing Cloud said, in his mind’s eye having always envisioned a young girl of five years whenever he thought about her.
He had never thought of her as grown up, and . . . ravishingly beautiful! Her lovely face, where dimples deepened when she smiled, was framed by long and flowing hair the color of a coppery sunset.
Her skin was flawlessly pale, and her eyes, the color of violets in the spring along the mountainsides, were large and veiled with thick, dark eyelashes.
She wore a high-necked, yellow-flowered silk dress that clung to her bosom, revealing well-formed breasts pressing against the inside of the soft fabric, and a tiny waist, where the dress flared out in deep gathers.
She was petite in height.
To kiss her he would either have to place his hands at her waist and lift her to his lips, or she could stand on tiptoe.
Realizing where his thoughts had taken him, Dancing Cloud shook himself out of his innocently induced reverie.
“Father and I have finally found each other,” Lauralee said, turning to gaze at the still form on the bed. Her father had taken to sleeping much too soundly, which frightened her. This past day or so she could scarcely tell when he was breathing. She was afraid that she would not even be aware of when he took his last, desperate breath of life.
“He looked i-go-hi-dv, forever for you,” Dancing Cloud said thickly, drawing her eyes back to him when he slipped momentarily into mixing his Cherokee language with his English. “I traveled with him often to search for you. It saddened me to see his disappointment each time we parted after having not found you again.”
“You have known my father way longer than I,” Lauralee said wistfully. “You must know so much about him that I never shall have the opportunity of knowing. You are blessed to have known him so devotedly, Joe. So blessed.”
Dancing Cloud had a strong urge to draw Lauralee into his arms and show her how happy he was to have finally had the pleasure of meeting her. He had carried the same disappointment in his heart along with Boyd so many times when they gave up searching for her, that now, with her standing there only an arm’s length away, he could hardly refrain from lifting her into his arms to hug her to him.
