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“All right, if you truly feel you don’t need me, then I shall come shortly after supper,” she said, still questioning him with her eyes as she rose from the chair.
“You haven’t spent much time with Nancy, that’s for certain,” Dancing Cloud quickly interjected. “To make up for it, stay the entire evening with her. I will get my rest. Today has been tiring.”
“You truly don’t want me to return this evening?” she asked, stunned by his insistence to be alone.
“I always want you with me,” Dancing Cloud said softly. “But I must learn to share you with others. Tonight I share you with your aunt”
Still unsure about his willingness to be apart from her for the rest of the day, and evening, Lauralee stared down at him for a moment longer.
But knowing that this made her plans even more easier to carry out, she questioned him no further about it.
As she sat up from the chair, her silk dress wrapped provocatively around her legs, revealing their shape to Dancing Cloud. She could feel Dancing Cloud’s eyes raking over her. She was delighted with his response. She had dressed as beautifully as she could this morning just for him.
It worried her to realize that she would be seeing Paul Brown later and that he might think she was wearing her best clothes to encourage his attentions. This was an impression she didn’t want to convey at all.
“This Cherokee’s eyes cannot get enough of you today,” Dancing Cloud said, reaching to grab her hand. He drew her down onto the bed beside him. He moved his fingers over the swell of her breasts, wishing the barrier of silk was not there to impede the touch of her soft, sweet flesh against his fingertips.
Lauralee sucked in a quavering breath and closed her eyes as she leaned her breast into his hand. “I have so missed our private moments together,” she whispered, her body trembling with need of him. “Have you also missed me as badly?”
Dancing Cloud slid his hand upward and cupped her chin within its palm. He drew her mouth to his. “I hunger for you, always,” he whispered. He crushed his lips against hers, the flames of desire lapping at his loins.
Footsteps entering the room caused Lauralee’s heart to skip a beat. Fearing that it might be her uncle Abner, she yanked herself free of Dancing Cloud and rose shakily to her feet.
Her face hot with a blush, she turned slowly. She sighed with relief when she found herself gazing wide-eyed at Dr. Kemper instead of her uncle.
The doctor’s jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed as he looked from Lauralee, to Dancing Cloud, and then back at Lauralee.
“Lauralee, I’ve come to say that should he feel up to it, Dancing Cloud can leave the hospital as early as tomorrow morning,” he said, his voice drawn and tight. “That is, if Dancing Cloud has somewhere to go. He must not travel yet as far as his home in the mountains. The Petersons. Lauralee, do you think the Petersons will allow Dancing Cloud to stay at their house for the short time he needs for further recuperation?”
“Yes, I believe the Petersons will allow him to stay at their home until he is able to travel,” Lauralee said, yet truly not certain at all how her uncle would take this news. No one knew as much as Lauralee how her uncle felt about Dancing Cloud. His resentment seemed to lay way deeper than was even decent.
It was up to her to change all of this for Dancing Cloud. It was important that her aunt and uncle grow to like him as much as Lauralee loved him.
“Then that’s settled,” Dr. Kemper said, coming on into the room.
Lauralee stepped aside and stood breathlessly watching as Dr. Kemper slowly unwrapped the bandage from around Dancing Cloud’s chest and shoulder.
When the bullet wound was revealed to her, a sick feeling engulfed her. She hadn’t been aware of how much surgery had been required to remove the bullet. There was a wide, puckering scar across his right shoulder, reaching down across his chest.
Dancing Cloud winced and gritted his teeth as the doctor pressed and pushed on the skin around the wound. Dancing Cloud glanced down at it and saw it for the first time.
Hate swelled inside his heart against the one responsible for not only this infliction upon his body, but so much hurt inflicted inside his heart. He now knew, from the short time with his mother in the hereafter, that the very same Yankee who had ravaged his village and had killed many innocent Cherokee, had also shot Boyd!
He thanked the Good Spirit for allowing him to remember some of what had been said between himself and his loved ones amid that peaceful, swirling white light.
Dancing Cloud vowed again to himself that he would find Clint McCloud. He would end the Yankee’s days of murder and plundering.
Ii, yes, somehow their paths would cross again.
Dancing Cloud looked toward the window. When night fell in its cloak of black and the lawman was asleep outside the door in the corridor, Dancing Cloud would flee from this room and get the healing powers from the water.
So much depended on his total recovery . . . his people’s future, and his and Lauralee’s lifetime together.
“Joe Dancing Clou
d, I’m going to leave the bandage off now,” Dr. Kemper said, dropping the soiled bandage in a wastebasket. “Ofttimes the air can help the healing process better than leaving a wound covered. We’ll see how you do today. If I feel you should be bandaged again, I’ll do it tomorrow before you leave the hospital.”
Dr. Kemper gazed in silence down at his patient a moment longer, then turned to Lauralee. “He looks tired,” he said dryly. “I’d suggest you go home so that he can get some rest.”
