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Soft Wind rose shakily from the bed. Clint saw her and went and held her back as she tried to reach for Brian Brave Walker.
“No!” she cried. “Son, do not listen to him. Do not leave your mother!”
Brian Brave Walker wiped the blood from his mouth on the back of a hand, his eyes wavering into his mother’s. Then he spun around on a moccasined heel and went and stood over the cradle and took a lingering, last look at his sister. He stifled a sob as she gazed up at him with her trusting dark eyes. Never would he see her again!
Turning his eyes away from her he left the cabin in a mad run. He trembled inside as he heard his mother yelling his name over and over again—and then she became quiet.
He closed his eyes and doubled his hands into tight fists at his sides as he envisioned what was now happening to his mother. His father had surely thrown her on the bed and was using her as though she were no better than an animal.
Then his father would take the child away!
“Aieee!” he cried in Cherokee as he broke into a hard run away from the cabin.
Brian Brave Walker had thought of leaving many times. But his concern for his mother had kept him there, with her.
Now it was just too much for him.
He was ten winters of age.
If he was among his true people he would be classified as a brave!
“I must search until I find my mother’s true people,” he whispered. “She has told me often that they are not far away.”
Fearing that Brian Brave Walker would leave her, she had never told him exactly which village she had fled from during the war, having found a refuge in the orphanage when she had been near to starving to death. But he knew that it could not be too far away. He would find it. He would go there.
But how could he tell the elders about his mother?
How could he tell them about his baby sister?
His father’s warnings consumed him. He knew that Clint McCloud would follow through with his threats. He was capable of doing anything. No. Brian Brave Walker could not endanger his mother by telling the truth of her captivity.
Not now, anyhow. But somehow he would find a way to end his father’s tyranny! His mother had to be rescued from a life of cruel treatment wrought upon her by an evil husband.
He ran even harder at the thought of searching the mountains and finally becoming as one with his mother’s people. He would never think again about having blood of that vile, insane white man flowing through his veins. This man had never been a true father.
To Brian Brave Walker, this man was nothing.
Chapter 24
For all my world is in your arms,
My sun and stars are you.
—SARA TEASDALE
The hot August sun was slowly burning away the blue haze of morning. Fearing the posse, and saddened over her uncle being among those men who were after Dancing Cloud, and even herself, Lauralee fought hard to keep up with Dancing Cloud.
But oh, how she missed the comforts of her buggy. She had never stayed on a horse for so long. Her thighs ached. Her bottom was numb and seemed glued to the saddle.
Yet she still forced her steed into a hard gallop now that the forest and the slight mountain ridge had been left behind. They had come out on a smooth meadow. The grass was green and high. A stream of cold, clear water ran along one edge, watering the valley.
Lauralee’s eyes feasted on the water as she rode alongside the stream. Her throat was parched. Her lips burned. Dirt seemed plastered to her face.
“Dancing Cloud,” she cried. “Please, darling. I need a drink. I need to stretch my weary, aching bones. Can’t we ple
ase stop for at least a few moments? The water. I can hardly pass it up. I’m so thirsty. I have never been as thirsty.”
Dancing Cloud wheeled his horse to a quick stop.
