Josh hungered to fill the house with many laughing children. His and Melanie's.
"At least he's not alone today," he said thickly. "Mike Green, his attorney, is there. He should be there a good portion of the day. They have much to discuss." He frowned darkly, knowing that a will was being drawn up. His father had mentioned including Shane in the will. The thought of his father actually doing that grated at his nerves.
How could his father be so foolish as to include a dead man in his will?
Again Josh would be in competition with the
ghost of his brother. As far as Josh was concerned, his brother would remain a ghost. Forever!
''Enough talk about illnesses and dead brothers," Terrance said, visibly shuddering. "It's too pretty a day to be so morbid." He shook his head as he looked at Melanie. "I guess there's no talking you out of coming with us, is there?"
"Not on your life," Melanie said, stubbornly lifting her chin.
"Then let's be on our way," Terrance said, sinking the heels of his boots into the flanks of his black stallion. "Just don't stray from us, Melanie. I'd hate like hell to have to go and rescue you from a renegade Injun."
Ill and wasting away with tuberculosis, Jared Brennan trembled beneath his blankets with each painful breath. Mike Green, his attorney, sat at Jared's bedside, taking down everything that Jared instructed.
Then Mike paused and looked questioningly at Jared. "Jared, don't you think it's a bit foolish to include Shane in your will?" he asked in a low voice. "Surely you have accepted Shane's death by now. After you discovered the massacre that day, and Shane's disappearance, you searched everywhere for him. There's never been any indication that he's still alive." He cleared his throat nervously. "Be sensible, Jared. You have only one surviving son. Josh should be the only one mentioned in this will."
Jared glared at Mike. "I pay you well," he said,
stopping to inhale a shaky breath. "You write what I tell you."
"But Jared, this time you must listen to reason," Mike argued.
Jared lifted a bony hand from beneath the warmth of the blanket and pointed a trembling finger at Mike. "Either you do it my way or not at all," he said, his face flushed with anger. "There are more attorneys in St. Paul now than you can shake a stick at. I'll just have Josh find me someone who doesn't ask questions, who does as he is told and earns his pay because of it."
Mike sighed deeply. He nodded. "Whatever you say, I'll do," he said. "No need to get yourself all worked up. I just wanted to help."
"I don't need that kind of help," Jared sputtered as a sudden seizure of coughing overwhelmed him. He coughed until his face turned blue, then stopped, exhausted. He closed his eyes and panted for breath.
Mike laid his note pad aside and wrung a washcloth out in a basin of water, then sponged Jared's sweaty brow with it. "I'll write up the will just as you've instructed," he said in a soothing tone of voice. "It will state that half of all you possess goes to Shane if he ever shows up to claim it."
"Yes, that's what I want," Jared said hoarsely. "Until my son's body is brought before me, I will consider Shane to be alive. And if he is, he deserves everything that I've set aside for him. It's the least I can do after letting him down the day of
the massacre. Damn. If only I could have gotten back to him that day. If only the rapids in that damn river hadn't complicated everything. Perhaps no one would have died. His mother would still be alive. Shane would be here as healthy and happy as Josh. It's all my fault, Mike. All my fault."
Mike continued bathing Jared's brow, acting now as a friend, not a lawyer. "Jared, there wasn't anything you could do about those rapids," he said, having heard the tale repeated over and over again. "You did what you had to do. You had to take your boat from the river and carry it past the worst of the rapids. You know how long that took. There was no way of knowing the other boat was in trouble."
"But it shouldn't have taken me or anyone else so long to realize that something was amiss when we stopped and began waiting for them. I recall being so tired," Jared said with a sob. "I was enjoying that time of rest before we ventured onward in the water again. I was selfish, Mike. Selfish! While I was resting, my wife was being slain. My son was being abducted. I can hardly bear to think of it now."
"Yes, I know," Mike said, dropping the cloth in the water and taking Jared's hand to comfort him. "The way you found your wife must haunt you something terrible. But you must stop blaming yourself. You've lived a lifetime of regret. Try to spend your remaining days in peace. Please, Jared. You deserve so much more than you have allowed
yourself. You cannot turn time back now, no more than you could stop those rapids that interfered with your life that day. Let it go, Jared. Let it go."
Jared looked wild-eyed up at Mike. He clasped his friend's hand hard. "Just make sure that Shane gets his fair share," he said, tears spilling from his eyes. "Do that for me, will you, Mike?"
Mike nodded. "You know that I will," he said. He watched Jared's washed-out blue eyes close as he fell into a restless sleep. He eased his hands from Jared's and went to gaze out the bedroom window. He looked toward the neighboring farm and watched three horsemen riding down the dusty lane. He leaned closer to the window, correcting his thoughts. The riders weren't all men. One was a lady, more than likely Melanie Stanton.
But one of the two men was Josh. God. How was Josh going to take the wording of this will? It would be humiliating, but no more humiliating than having to live under the shadow of a long-lost brother all these years.
Though Mike did not care much for Josh, he could not help but pity him.
Chapter Two
The sun was barely over the treetops, pulsing and glowing. In the shadows of early dawn stood a tall, lean man with broad shoulders, his sun-bronzed face revealing strong lines and a kind of savage eagerness. His eyes were crisply blue, his shoulder-length hair was the golden color of summer wheat. Though he was dressed in fringed buckskins and beaded moccasins, and stood among the Chippewa Indians as though one of them, he was white.
All around Shane Brennan men and women labored hard cutting birch trees and erecting wigwams. The Chippewa had traveled for two sleeps but now had arrived at the location of the village they had left behind many moons ago.
Across the land, bare bent birch poles reached up from the ground like skeletal fingers. At one time in the past many wigwams had housed families of Chippewa here. When the decision was made for the village to move north, the poles had been stripped of their buckskin coverings and left behind, a graveyard of memories.
Resting the handle of his axe on his shoulder, Shane stared into space. He had his own memories to contend with. They had only recently been brought to the surface in his mind. He and the Chippewa with whom he had been living these past twenty-five years had stopped to rest and parley with other bands of Chippewa on their way back from Canada, sharing stories over a campfire long into the night. When Shane was asked how he had come to be with the Chippewa instead of his true white family, he had explained about the massacre and the man who was partly to blamethe man with the peculiar eyes, one brown and one blue.
It had come as a shock to Shane when some of those who had listened intently to his tale of a dying mother and her stolen wedding band said they had heard rumors of such a man. He had been seen trapping in the area. They even supplied Shane with the man's name.
"Trapper Dan!" Shane whispered in a hiss. "He calls himself Trapper Dan!"
Shane lifted his axe and began chopping a birch tree with angry swings, pretending the tree was the evil, murdering trapper. As soon as he had erected his wigwam, he was going to go and search for him. Finally, Shane's mother's death would be avenged!
He lifted the axe for another blow to the tree, but stopped when a shadow fell in his path. Not offering a smile, he turned and faced Chief Gray Falcon. Ever since Gray Falcon's father had died, Shane had felt his coldness toward him deepen into something more intense. Though they had been childhood friends, t
hings had begun to change as they grew older. Gray Falcon had become jealous of Shane because Shane had become so close to his father, Chief Standing Tall.
Did Shane have to expect this jealousy to intensify even after the old chief's death? He hoped not, yet it was in Gray Falcon's dark eyes even now, the smoldering fire of his hatred of someone he had decided not to accept as one of his people.
"Stop!" Gray Falcon ordered flatly. "You have no need to build an ayn-dah-yin."
Shane's blue eyes widened with surprise. The muscles of his tanned, bare shoulders tensed. "I don't understand you," he said in Chippewa, although he still spoke in English quite well. He had kept the ability by sharing much time with trappers and traders while living in Canada. He had even learned the French language from those who had taken the time to teach him. He was proud to be fluent in three different languages.
Shane looked around him. Many wigwams were nearing completion. He looked back into Gray Falcon's cold, fathomless eyes. "What have you not said that you are feeling in your heart?" he asked. "Tell me why I have no need for a wigwam."
Gray Falcon folded his arms across his bare
copper chest. He lifted his chin smugly. "You have no need, because you will no longer be a part of my people," he said sternly. "It is time for you to return to your people. Leave me in peace with mine!"
"What did you say?" Shane gasped. "You are ordering me to leave? You do not see that I am happy with the Chippewa? I have no family but Chippewa!"
Shane gestured with a hand toward himself. "Do I not wear my hair unbraided to prove my mourning for your father? Do I not wear narrow strips of braided buckskin around my neck and waist during this period of mourning?" he said, his voice drawn and disbelieving of what was being forced upon him.
He doubled a fist to his bare chest, resting it over his heart. His gaze lowered and he looked at himself and how he was clothed in fringed buckskin leggings and moccasins. "Have I not always dressed and acted as though a true Chippewa?" he asked, looking slowly up at Gray Falcon. "As children, we rode side by side in the hunt, Gray Falcon. Did you resent me even then? Did you?"
"It is because of you that my people were moved north from the peaceful land of many lakes," Gray Falcon said sharply. "It is because of you my father chose to move his people north. He grew tired of hiding you when white people came asking for you. He knew that it was best to take you north because he knew the white people would not venture that far from their own land. He did this
to his own people to protect your identity from yours!"
"That is not the only reason your father moved north," Shane said. He had been told later in life about Chief Standing Tall having always hidden him when he was a child from anyone who came searching for him. At that time Shane had been too small to understand why he was whisked away at the sound of approaching horses. When he was older, he was already in Canada, and hiding was no longer necessary. "Your father was not content with the land and the game that was offered him in the south. He was in search of a better way of life. Never would a chief as strong-minded as your father let a mere boy stand in the way of what was best for his people!"
"I am more astute than you. I saw a father whose heart drifted from strong love for a son to care more deeply for one who was not a blood relation. Though you did not live in the same dwelling as my family, my father became your father," Chief Gray Falcon said. "He enjoyed your company more than mine, his true son. Did he not even play the white man game of cards that you call poker with you? Sons and fathers should sharenot sons and strangers!"
"I have not been a stranger since the day your father rescued me from the forest," Shane said, setting his jaw firmly. "I became one of your people that day. I grew to love all of your people. When your father gave me to Little Dove to raise as her own, and when I was even blessed with a
sister many moons later, my past life was forgotten. I did not mean to cause resentments. I am sorry for that, Gray Falcon, but now let us forget the past and live as a family. This is what your father would want."
Gray Falcon firmed his jaw. "No," he argued. "It is time for you to seek your true destiny. You were not born with the blood of the Chippewa running through your veins. You are white. You have a family who are white. Mah-szhongo to them now."
Anger rose within Shane and he felt as though he were being banished from the tribe because of having been deceitful. He met Gray Falcon's steady stare with his own. "I go," he said. "But not to a white family, for I have none. They were lost to me many years ago. To them I am dead. To me they are dead!"
"You have a brother and father who are alive," Gray Falcon said, his eyes unblinking. "For many moons my father has known of your true father and where he resides. Before Father died, he confided this truth to me. I was not to tell you unless you had reason to know. My father showed two of his braves where your family resides and instructed them to keep the secret until the time came for you to know. One of the old braves is still alive. He will guide you to your true family. There you will live. Not here with the Chippewa."
Shane's head was spinning with all that he was discoveringnot only that Grey Falcon, who had once been as close to him as a brother, resented him so deeply, but that Chief Standing Tall had known all along where Shane's true family was! When Shane was first told about being hidden from his family when they had come searching for him all those years ago, it had been hard to accept. But he had grown to understand that Chief Standing Tall had acted this way because he had grown to love him. No true father could have ever loved as strongly or devotedly!
Yet, for Chief Standing Tall to have known through all the years where Shane's true family resided, surely grieving for him, made his heart begin a slow ache. In a sense, Chief Standing Tall had deceived him. Though done in love, it was still no less than deceit!
Han-tay-wee, Cedar Maid, the daughter of Little Dove who had been raised as Shane's sister, came to stand beside him. She took his hand and gazed up into his eyes the color of the sky, then looked slowly at Gray Falcon. She grew cold inside when she saw Gray Falcon's stiff reserve as he glared at Shane. Since Chief Standing Tall's death, she had feared what might transpire between the new young chief and Shane. She knew the depth of Gray Falcon's resentment.
''Gray Falcon, what is wrong with you?" she asked softly, yet fearing to hear the answer. "Why are you nish-ska-diz-ee? You should be happy, not angry, that we have arrived to our land that you were eager to return to. Our people are preparing their wigwams with much love and pride in their
hearts. Now that you are chief, you have guided your people here, to the place of your boyhood dreams. Why are you not happy, Gray Falcon?"
"You read my mood wrong, Cedar Maid," Gray Falcon said, frowning down at her. "It is not an unhappy face you see. It is the face of a chief who is giving an order that must be carried out."
"What order?" Cedar Maid asked, glancing at Shane, then back at Gray Falcon. "You tell Shane something? What is it? I know him well. I read his mood right and I see that he is not happy!"
"While our people build themselves new wigwams, Shane is to move onward," Gray Falcon said, stubbornly lifting his chin.
Cedar Maid gasped. She turned quickly to Shane. "Where will you go?" she asked, her dark eyes pleading. "Shane, tell me that what Gray Falcon says is false. You cannot leave. Cedar Maid will go with you if you do!"
Suddenly realizing what banishment meantleaving the way of life that he had grown to love, and leaving Cedar Maid behind alsoShane felt as though his heart was being pierced by many arrows. Already he missed his sister. Their mother had gone to the hereafter many moons ago, and Cedar Maid had depended on Shane for protection.
Now who would she have? He could not take her with him. She would not be happy away from her people. Would she be treated fairly by Gray Falcon when left alone without Shane's protection? Or would Gray Falcon's resentment not be cast aside
when Shane was gone? Would he not also hold the same resentment against Cedar Maid because
she was Shane's sister?
Shane placed his fingers gently to Cedar Maid's shoulders. He swallowed hard, her gentle loveliness today almost stealing his breath away. Her white, fine buckskin dress clung to her wondrous curves; her hair was loose and worn very long down her back. Many said that, at the age of fifteen winters, she was the most beautiful maiden among all the Chippewa villages in both Canada and the Land of Many Lakes. Her beauty made her even more vulnerable, for she would be sought out soon by many willing to pay a high bride price for her. Shane wanted to be there to decide if the brave who paid for her was good enough for her!
But that was not meant to be. Because of Gray Falcon's jealousies, Shane would have to say farewell to Cedar Maid, and when he did, he would not look back. He would never return to this village and beg for permission to see Cedar Maid! If he was forced to leave the Indian life behind, he would also leave everything about this way of life behind. He would no longer speak in Chippewa. He would never wear his hair in braids again.
He was glad that he had retained his rightful name. If he had been forced to take an Indian nameah, how hard it would be to leave it behind!
"Shane, tell me you are not going," Cedar Maid said, breaking into soft sobs. "Tell me it is not so!"
"I've got to go now," Shane said thickly. "I
should have not stayed so long with your people. It is time for me to break my ties now and return to my own people. Please try to understand."
Cedar Maid broke away from his grasp and flung herself into his arms, hugging him tightly. "My people, the Chippewa, are your people!" she cried. "Do not abandon us just because you hunger for the white man's way of life. Oh, Shane, please take me with you if you must go!"
When Passion Calls Page 2