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"Son, I know this looks bad. But you must understand what happened."
"I know what happened. I was expecting it to happen. They knew she was with an Indian, didn't they?"
"Yes…they did. They wanted to take her away from here, to her people, to civilization again. Do you understand? But the reason she killed them was quite noble, Matthew. They were going to rape her. That would have killed the baby, and they were going to rape Fawn too. Your mother saved Fawn, and the baby from all of that. Can you understand it?"
"Yes sir…I got me some thinking to do, though." He looked seriously at Hawk now as though he knew he didn't understand it yet. Hawk let him go.
"That's good boy, that's good..." Hawk left him alone then.
Matthew would have to learn to cope with this somehow, and Hawk did not know how to explain it any differently to him so he could accept it.
That night Hawk wrapped Eve in his arms and held her tight. "Do not weep little one. You did what you had to do. Fawn was there, she saw the whole thing…They were going to rape you both. It might have killed the baby."
"I killed two men, Hawk. Not just one, but two. I'm no different from the Comanche. I killed them because they wanted to take me away…"
"No, you killed them because they were about to take you and Fawn. And it might have killed our baby if they had."
"Might have…"
"Matthew is having a hard time with it too."
"Oh dear God…" Eve cried into his shoulder.
"My love, look at me…" Hawk said gently. She looked at him. "When we got married, we knew that things like this would happen. We knew the white people would not accept you with me. And some of the Indians would not accept me with you. We knew it, in our hearts, we knew it. You had a choice. You could have gone with them…or even let them take you. You killed them because they might have killed you and Fawn."
"Yes…does that make our love bad?"
"No…my feelings for you have not changed. Have yours?"
"I never thought I would do such a thing."
"We do what we must to survive. Sometimes it is not what we want, but what is necessary for survival."
"I am not a man. I am not used to killing."
"I realize that. But you must see…you had no choice."
"I could have gone with them, and you would have come after me and you would have killed them…"
"Yes, that is true…"
"Either way, they would be dead. Because we love each other…" She cried.
"Do not torture yourself this way." He spoke softly to her.
"I cannot sleep with you any more…" She cried.
"But…"
"If we have to kill to love each other, then we are wrong to love each other…" She said simply.
"It is never wrong to love." He told her.
"This is…this is very wrong." She cried and moved to go sleep by the fire. "I can't believe what I have done."
The others saw it, but no one said anything.
Hawk feared he had just lost her, and his family. And the sad thing was, he didn't know what to do to make things right again. They had been through so much together, now this.
