Two Ridges looked away from Spotted Eagle, who was again glaring into the fire. He was beginning to sorely resent this behavior of his friend!
He would show him.
Chapter Seven
The bright sunrise and scurrying clouds were accompanied by a brisk wind. Several covered wagons pulled by mules were lumbering along this land that was a wilderness of wooded slopes, flowing mountains, and meadows. Streams tumbled over waterfalls. Blue lakes lay in peaceful valleys. Wild sage, balsam root, and wild larkspur spotted the land with their brilliant colors.
Spotted Eagle rode straight in his Indian saddle ahead of the wagons, Two Ridges faithfully at his side. Spotted Eagle shifted his eyes heavenward, feeling the effects of the Sun God shining brightly overhead as his buckskin clothes clung damply to him like a second skin.
Then Spotted Eagle took a look over his shoulder at Jolena as she wiped perspiration from her brow with a lacy handkerchief. Her brother handled the reins of their wagon, while experienced wagoners were at the controls of the other land vessels.
He frowned, recalling the bold, boisterousness of the wagoners, having seen them tease and flirt with Jolena more than once when the convoy stopped to allow their mules to drink from the streams and to give the men and women of this expedition time to eat and drink and to find private moments behind the tallest bushes before boarding their wagons again.
Not only had Spotted Eagle found the attention of the wagnoners to Jolena annoying, but he had watched Kirk's reaction, which was near the exploding point.
Spotted Eagle moved his eyes from Jolena and returned to watching for anything that might signal that the Cree were near. He smiled at the idea of Kirk trying to defend his sister against the large and bulky wagoners. It was obvious to Spotted Eagle that Kirk was not a man of muscle and would not be able to fight off his offenders if ever he tried. It would be up to Spotted Eagle to prove to Jolena who was the strongest of those who fought, hopefully causing her admiration to blossom into something more than what it might be now.
Spotted Eagle nudged the flanks of his stallion with his heels and rode off in a stronger lope, wanting to find a campsite quickly for this first night out from Fort Chance.
Jolena was uneasy on the hard wooden seat beside her brother. It was not altogether the heat that troubled her, but something else, as though she had just felt a silent bidding from someone.
Her heart raced, looking ahead at Spotted Eagle. Only moments ago he had given her a quick glance, but it had been long enough for her to see that same inquisitive look as before, as though he saw her as someone he had known in his past. She would never forget the first time he had looked at her, when he had reacted as though he had seen a ghost.
Whose, she wondered?
Who could she look like that he knew?
This gave her cause to hope that it had something to do with her true Indian family. If she resembled one of them, then perhaps she was not all that far, indeed, from the truth of her heritage!
Squirming again to get more comfortable on the seat, the sun pouring its heat down upon her, Jolena tried to focus her thoughts elsewhere, to pass the time until they stopped to make camp.
She was anxious for tonight.
She wanted to find a way to be with Spotted Eagle, alone, to try to make her midnight dreams and daytime fantasies come true.
After Kirk was asleep, she would go to Spotted Eagle. He was surely the reason she was feeling this silent, strange sort of bidding. She felt that it could come from no other than he whose heart was crying out to her. Jolena gave Kirk a steady stare. He was stonily silent, his jaw tight, after having had another confrontation with the brash wagoners the last time they had stopped to stretch their legs and to eat. She wanted to reach over and pat his knee and thank him for coming to her rescue, but she held her hand at bay. She did not want to encourage these confrontations and bouts of chivalry over a sister. She knew what his reaction would be if he ever caught her talking with Spotted Eagle. If he knew the deep feelings that she already had for Spotted Eagle, he would explode into a rage that no one would want to witnessespecially Jolena!
She turned her eyes and thoughts away from her brother, now watching around her again for butterflies, but disappointed anew. Even though it was a warm and sunny day and flowers dotted the land, all the butterflies had been elusive today. She hadn't spotted any, especially the euphaedra, with its turquoise, black and orange coloring, and a streak of pink on its wings.
But what was lovely to look at was this glorious country where nature had reared great mountains and spread out broad prairies. Along the western horizon, the Rocky Mountains lifted their peaks above the clouds. Here and there lay minor ranges, black with pine forests. In the distance they were mere gray silhouettes against a sky of blue.
Between these mountain ranges everywhere lay the great prairie, the silver gray of the wormwood lending a dreariness to the landscape. At intervals the land was marked with green, winding river valleys, and it was gashed everywhere with deep ravines, their sides painted in strange colors of red and gray and brown. Their perpendicular walls were crowned with fantastic columns and figures of stone or clay, carved out by the winds and the rains of ages.
Here and there, rising out of the plain, were sharp ridges and square-topped buttes with vertical sides. They were sometimes bare, and sometimes dotted with pinesshort, sturdy trees whose gnarled trunks and thick, knotted branches had been twisted into curious forms by the winds which blew unceasingly through gorges and coulees.
An occasional herd of buffalo or antelope was sighted, and along the wooded river valleys and on the pine-clad slopes of the mountains, elk, deer, and wild sheep fed in great numbers.
The scorching breath of early summer stirred the tall, weaving stems of the buffalo grass. Jolena had been told that there were all kinds of roots and berries growing in abundance in this land of sky, sun, prairie, and mountainswild carrots, wild turnips, sweet-root, bitter-root, bull berries, cherries, and plums among them.
Thinking of this wilderness food made her gaze up at Spotted Eagle again, thinking that surely the women of his village were kept busy searching for these different foodstuffs.
She closed her eyes, momentarily envisioning herself among such women, dressed as they were in soft doeskins, with perhaps a touch of bloodroot on her cheeks to liven up her color for the man she loved, for the man she would take her basket of berries and roots home to. He would enjoy the fruits of her labor, then take her to his bed and pay her in the way husbands everywhere showed their gratitude to their wives.
Feeling the slowing of the covered wagon in the way the
seat swayed and shook beneath her, Jolena's eyes flew open. She looked questioningly over at Kirk as he drew a tight rein when Spotted Eagle came riding toward their wagon, which was the first in the expedition.
Spotted Eagle drew a tight rein beside the wagon on Kirk's side, and when he talked, it was to Kirk; yet his eyes were on Jolena all the while, sending a sensual thrill through her heart.
Jolena clasped her trembling fingers to the seat and smiled nervously back at Spotted Eagle, his nearness filling her insides with something strangely sweet and foreign to her. Each time their eyes met, she knew that he was speaking to her without words.
And she knew that he could tell by her response to his eyes that she was answering him in kind.
Soon they would be able to speak aloud to one another, and she wondered what he would say to her first, and how she might respond to him without revealing her heartfelt feelings for him.
''We will camp here for the night," Spotted Eagle was saying to Kirk. "There is water for drinking. There are many cottonwood trees. They give us shade for setting up camp. Also horses and mules like to eat the bark of these trees. It is good for them. The grass here is young and healthy also for the animals."
Kirk glanced from Jolena to Spotted Eagle, another warning shooting through him when he saw again how her sister and this guide were attracted to one another. He hoped that Jolena's attraction was only because of her heritage and her burning questions about it.
He hoped that the Indian warrior's questions were only because he could not understand why a woman with copper skin was called Kirk's sister, or why she mingled with the white people, as though one of them.
Hopefully, once Spotted Eagle's curiosity was abated, he would place his thoughts on other matters.
Kirk silently prayed to himself that this would be soon, for he feared these feelings that might grow between Jolena and Spotted Eagle.
"Whatever you say, Spotted Eagle," Kirk said, nodding. "If you think this is a safe place, then who's to argue about it?"
Kirk gazed around him at the seclusion of this valley in which they would be making their first camp away from civilization. He could not deny that part of him that was afraid. Yet he had to continue looking brave in Jolena's eyes, especially in front of Spotted Eagle.
Kirk did not want the Indian to take over as his sister's protector!
Everyone left their wagons and worked together gathering wood for a fire, and just as flames were leaping around heavy logs, the afternoon was fading into shifting shadows. A haze of heat settled over the valley as the sun set into a purple cradle of clouds on the horizon.
Spotted Eagle and Two Ridges made a silent kill with their bows and arrows, and soon meat was dripping its tantalizing juices into the flames of the campfire.
Billy, one of the wagoners, the most burly and outspoken of them all, with a thick sprouting of whiskers on his craggy face, lifted a coffee pot from the hot coals at the edge of the fire. After he poured himself a cup, he held the coffee pot toward Jolena, where she sat silently beside her brother, nibbling on a small portion of the roasted meat.
"Hey, pretty thing, are you hungerin' for somethin' to drink, or someone to cozy up with?" Billy asked, his pale blue eyes raking over Jolena. "If I covered you with my body, you'd sure as hell not need a blanket."
The other wagoners chuckled as they peered at Jolena, their eyes revealing that their thoughts were anything but decent.
"Well?" Billy persisted. "How's about it? Cat got your tongue? Or do you think you're too good for ol' Billy? Let me tell you, pretty thing, there's more fire in this here man than ten other men combined. I'll show you just what lovin' is all about."
Jolena's face grew hot with an angry blush, and her heart pounded with embarrassment. She gasped and grew cold inside when Kirk slammed his coffee cup down on the ground, splashing it empty, and rose to his full height over the wagoner.
"You've been hired to drive the wagons, not insult my sister," Kirk said, doubling his hands into tight fists at his sides. "You apologize or…"
Billy tossed the coffee pot and his cup to the ground and pushed himself up to his full height, towering over Kirk at six-feet and four-inches. He leaned his craggy face down into Kirk's clean-shaven face. "Do you want to say all of that again?" he dared. "I ain't one to apologize, especially to a squirt like you. I'd quickly make mincemeat outta you. Want to give it a try?"
"I ask for no fight, just for you to leave my sister alone," Kirk said, swallowing hard as he gazed up into eyes of fire, and onto shoulders twice the size of his. "Now let's just forget about all of this and resume our supper. We've many more days to have to be around one another. Let us make the best of it."
Billy would not let up. Leering, he leaned even closer to Kirk's face. "That's fine with me," he snarled. "I don't see what the fuss is about anyhow. She ain't no sister of yours. She's nothin' more than an Indian squaw dressed in white woman's clothes. Why, as I sees it, she ain't nothin' but a redskin savage."
Gasps wafted through the scientists who had been watching with bated breath.
Jolena stiffened when she saw a quick anger leap not only into her brother's eyes, but also Spotted Eagle's. Spotted Eagle looked as though he was ready to pounce on the wagoner, yet Kirk beat him to it.
Jolena took a quick step back and covered a scream behind her hand when Kirk hit the wagoner in the chin with a doubled fist, knocking Billy off balance. When Billy stumbled backward and fell to the ground, Kirk was quickly atop him, hitting him again and again.
Then when Kirk started to rise away from Billy, thinking that he had gotten the best of him, Billy grabbed a knife from his waistband and started to raise it for a death plunge in Kirk's back.
But Spotted Eagle saw the danger. He ran to the wagoner and kicked the knife from his hand, then helped Kirk up and away from him.
Kirk stepped aside as Spotted Eagle reached down and grabbed Billy's shirt just beneath the chin and bunched it up between his fingers. Yanking on the shirt, he soon had Billy on his feet again, blood streaming from both his nose and mouth.
"I think you do not listen well," Spotted Eagle said in a low, threatening grumble as he stood eye to eye with Billy. "You were told to mind your business. That is good advice. Soon we will be entering Cree territory and all hands and guns will be needed if the Cree decide to attack."
Billy reached a hand up and wiped the salty blood away from his lips, then stumbled backward when Spotted Eagle released his hold on him.
Spotted Eagle followed Billy's retreat. "And white man, I believe you forgot to apologize to the woman," he said, his teeth clenched. "She is no squaw. She is no savage. Let me hear you tell her that she is neither."
Billy growled something down deep inside his throat, then turned to Jolena. "Sorry, ma'am," he said, then slouched back to the fire and sat down, his sho
ulders slumped.
As everyone resumed eating the evening meal, Jolena was hardly able to keep her eyes off Spotted Eagle, who had turned away from her too soon for her to thank him for what he had done in her defense.
She glanced at Kirk, thinking that it was perhaps best that she hadn't thanked Spotted Eagle for anything. She could tell that his pride had already been injured, in that he had been outdone by the Blackfoot guide.
The rest of the evening meal was completed in silence. Everyone then retreated to their own bedrolls or small tents. Jolena watched Kirk crawl into his tiny cubicle of a tent, and she soon heard her brother's familiar snores.
She smiled to herself, glad that some things had not changed. In the own privacy of her small tent, where blankets were spread warm across the ground, she made her entries in her journals, then laid them aside and stretched out on the blankets. She closed her eyes and pretended that she was back home in her room and that she had not yet been faced with problems of identities and whether or not it was meant for her to be a part of the white worldor the red. The sound of movement outside caused her eyes to blink quickly open. She scarcely breathed, wondering who was stirring around outside, when only moments ago it seemed that everyone was asleep for the night.
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