She leaned closer to him. "That's how it happened, isn't it?" she softly cried. "He was going to kill you and accidentally got in the way of the Cree's arrow? He would have never stopped the arrow on purpose. He would have allowed the Cree to kill you to keep from having to do it himself."
"You are right," Spotted Eagle acknowledged, releasing her hands. He leaned over the fire and stacked more wood onto the flames. "Two Ridges did not know of the Cree's presence. When Two Ridges raised his knife to kill me, the Cree's arrow is what stopped him from taking my life."
He turned back to Jolena and placed his hands at her waist, slowly drawing her to him. "Had my warriors not arrived when they did, the Cree would have sent another arrow into the air, and that one would have found its true mark. I would have joined Two Ridges on the long walk to the Sand Hills."
Jolena flung herself into his arms. She clung tightly to him. "I could hardly bear it when I thought that you had died," she sobbed. "Two Ridges had almost convinced me that you were dead. I didn't want to accept what he said as true. But there was no proof that you weren't. When I rendered him unconscious I started working my way through the forest, but only half-heartedly, for without you, nothing seemed important to me anymore."
"You should never allow yourself to feel hollow with despair," Spotted Eagle said, stroking her long, thick hair. "I made the same mistake when I thought you were dead. And now do you see? Hai-yah! We despaired for naught. It was emotion wasted! One must always have faith and hope. Despair is a worthless emotion!"
"It is easy to condemn such feelings," Jolena said, leaning back, gazing up at him. "But when I thought you were dead, I could not help it. My world has become you. You are my lifemy every heartbeat. Should you die, I would be only half alive!"
He framed her face between his hands and drew her lips to his. When he kissed her, it was not from hungry passion, but sweetness and lightness, matching the mood they both were feeling.
Remembering what her Blackfoot father had said about having to prepare Two Ridges for burial made Jolena draw away from Spotted Eagle. She gazed up at him with wide, woeful eyes.
"Why should I be expected to prepare Two Ridges' body for burial?" she asked, shivering. "Spotted Eagle, the thought of doing that curdles my blood. How could I be expected to forget how he tried to rape me? How?"
"There are times when one must put other people's feelings before one's own," Spotted Eagle said, gently placing a hand to her cheek. "Now is such a time for your Blackfoot father."
"But why should I?" Jolena said, more in a whine than she wished it to sound. "Two Ridges and I shared the same blood, but that is all."
"And that is my fault," Spotted Eagle said, turning his face away from her to stare into the dancing flames of the fire. "Had I been truthful with Two Ridges, he would not be dead now. He would be celebrating having a sister. You would share that. Knowing that you were blood kin!"
"Why didn't you tell him?" Jolena said, moving around in front of him. She leaned up on her knees, so that she could look directly into Spotted Eagle's eyes. "Didn't you think that he would welcome such news?"
"I am not sure how he would have accepted the truth, had it been told him," Spotted Eagle said. "I believe that he had strong feelings of a man for a woman for you and never would have been able to sort through them and find those meant only for a sister."
He paused and lowered his eyes, then looked up at Jolena again. "My reason for not telling him was a selfish one," he said, his voice breaking. "I did not want you to know that he was your brother, nor did I want him to know that you were his sister, fearing that too much of your time that I wanted to spend with you would be spent with your brother. He would have the answers to so many of the questions eating away at you. I wanted you all to myself for as long as I could have you. And I was wrong. Will you forgive me?"
Jolena crept closer to him and twined her arms around his neck. "Darling, there is nothing to forgive," she murmured. "The fact that you love me so much makes my heart sing."
She gave him a soft kiss, then leaned into his embrace. "There is much to be sad for," she murmured. "But also there is much to be happy for. We have found such love, you and I. And I have found my true people, especially my father. He is exactly what I thought he would be. He is a kind, dear man. How sad that he has lost a son, after discovering he has a daughter!"
Her eyes widened and she leaned away from Spotted Eagle again. "There is just so much to ask, and to say," she blurted out. "I feel that my brother Kirk is still alive. Will you send a search party out to look for him? Please, will you?"
"Soon, my love," Spotted Eagle said. "After arrangements are made in our village for Two Ridges. Then we will focus our attention on your other brother."
"Thank you," she whispered, giving him a gentle hug.
Then she looked up at him, her eyes wavering, her insides cold again at the thought of what her Blackfoot father was expecting of her. "You did not say why I must prepare Two Ridges for burial," she said, her voice shallow. "Why must it be me? There are many others in your village who had more respect for Two Ridges than I. How can I, the woman he tried to rape, be expected to be dutiful to him?"
"No matter what he did, he was your brother," Spotted Eagle said. "It is the practice of the Blackfoot that the next female relative of the deceased prepare the one who has died for burial. You are the only living female relative. It is required of you to do this for your Blackfoot father."
Jolena shuddered. She dropped her gaze and slowly shook her head back and forth. "I don't think I can," she said in an almost whisper.
Spotted Eagle cupped her chin with one of his hands and raised her eyes to his again. "Yes, you can," he said firmly. "For your true father, you must."
"I don't think I can touch him! My father will know that something is wrong by my behavior."
"You must not allow that to happen," Spotted Eagle said, taking both her hands and drawing her close to him. He implored her with his dark eyes. "We must never allow your father to know the terrible truth about his son. Can you not see why? Your father might blame you for the chain of events that led his son to his death! If not for you, Two Ridges would have not become someone foreign to himself! It is best not to give the old warrior cause to resent his daughter! He deserves to have some time of happiness with a daughter he now knows is very much alive, and here to love him."
"It's all so confusing," Jolena said, tears streaming from her eyes.
"There is something else to consider," Spotted Eagle continued. "I do not want to give Brown Elk cause to doubt what I told him about how his son died," he said. "If so, I might be put to the test of truth-telling. It is not good that a next chief in line be dishonored in such a way.''
"What do you mean?" Jolena asked softly. "What sort of test would you be put through?"
"It is a solemn form of affirmation, a sac�
�red ceremony practiced by our people when someone's word is in doubt," Spotted Eagle said, rising. He began slowly pacing back and forth, his arms folded tightly across his chest. "If a man tells his companions some very improbable story, something that they find hard to believe, and they want to test him to see if he is really telling the truth, a pipe is given to a medicine man. The medicine man paints the stem red and prays over it, asking that if the man's story is true he may have long life, but if it is false that his life may end in a short time." Spotted Eagle paused, then gazed intensely down at Jolena. "The pipe is then filled and lighted and passed to this man who is doubted. The medicine man says to him, 'Accept this pipe, but remember that, if you smoke, your story must be as sure as the hole through this stem. So your life shall be long and you shall survive. But if you have spoken falsely, your days are counted.'
He knelt down before Jolena and placed his hands on her shoulders. "This man may refuse the pipe, saying, 'I have told you the truth; it is useless to smoke this pipe,'" he explained softly. "But if he declines to smoke, no one believes what he has said and he is looked upon as having lied. If, however, he takes the pipe and smokes, everyone believes him. It is the most solemn form of oath."
"Should you be put through the test and smoke the pipe, everyone would believe that what you have said about Two Ridges' death was true," Jolena said, her eyes innocently wide. "So I see no problem."
"The problem is that I would know that I was lying and at such a solemn, sacred time as that, I would not be able to lie about the lie," he said solemnly.
Jolena nodded, understanding, and knowing that no matter how she felt about Two Ridges, she must do what she must, to keep Spotted Eagle from being put in any awkward position.
"I will do as my Blackfoot father wants," she murmured. "I will prepare Two Ridges for burial."
Chapter Twenty-Four
"Let us have no more talk about that which burdens our hearts," Spotted Eagle said, his gaze moving slowly over her. "Let us speak of things that will make us smile."
"Yes, let's," Jolena said, her heart hammering wildly as she felt the heat of Spotted Eagle's eyes moving over her, seeing her for the first time in Indian attire. She could tell by the gentleness in his eyes and the slow smile quavering on his lips that he approved of this change that had come over her in his absence.
Smoothing a hand down the front of her doeskin smock, she smiled up at Spotted Eagle. "Is it not a beautiful dress?" she said softly. "I so love it."
"Its loveliness is enhanced by the woman wearing it," Spotted Eagle said, his loins becoming hot with need of her as he gazed into Jolena's eyes. "In Blackfoot attire, you are even more beautiful than when you are wearing clothes of the white women."
He reached a hand to her hair and twined his fingers through it, tugging her closer to him. "But, my woman, you are even more beautiful when you have nothing on. Shall I… disrobe you? Or would you rather do it yourself?"
Jolena's throat was growing dry as the excitement of the moment built, yet she hesitated to follow him into this sensual bantering.
"Should we?" she said weakly. "Is this a proper time?"
"Time is precious, yet fleeting," Spotted Eagle said, his hand cupping her breast through the soft fabric of her smock. "Never should we waste a moment of our time together. Who knows of tomorrow? Tonight we are together. Let us use the moment in the way we both desire."
"I so badly want to," Jolena said, her breath catching in her throat when Spotted Eagle leaned a soft, quavering kiss to her lips, silencing her every doubt, bringing forth within her waves of rapture that began cresting, as though her passion were a tide following the command of the moon.
As he lowered her into the buffalo robes that lay on the floor beside the fire, she weakened with passion as his kisses became more demanding, his hands trembling as they disrobed her.
When even Spotted Eagle's clothes were tossed aside, and Jolena felt his weight pressing on her body, she spread her legs and welcomed him as he quickly and magnificently filled her.
Smothered with feelings that were overwhelming her, Jolena thrashed her head back and forth as Spotted Eagle's thrusts within her became rhythmically fast, his lips moving from one of her breasts to the other.
Then he rolled away from her. Their hands began moving on each other's bodies, and they met each other, touch by precious touch.
Jolena sucked in a wild breath of rapture when Spotted Eagle laid his hand over the fronds of black curls at the juncture of her thighs, then thrust a finger inside her.
She then sought out his throbbing hardness and when she found it, she began moving her fingers over him, smiling as his body trembled with pleasure. As he stroked her, she continued moving her fingers over him.
Then Spotted Eagle moved over her again and in one deep thrust had himself deeply inside her again. He enwrapped her within his powerful arms and placed his cheek to hers. "I would be an empty shell without you," he whispered. "But while we were separated, I did not have to touch you to feel you in my mind."
"My darling, I carry you with me always within my heart," Jolena whispered back, moving her hips with him, pulling him more deeply within her as she locked her legs around him. "I love you so."
"I will pay your father a great bride price," Spotted Eagle said, kissing his way down to her breasts. He flicked his tongue around a nipple, drawing a guttural sigh of pleasure from deeply within Jolena. "We will marry soon."
For a moment Jolena was catapulted back to another time and another father. Bryce Edmonds had spoken often of how beautiful a bride Jolena would be in a dress of white against her copper skin. He had always counted on the day that he would have the honor of giving her away in a beautiful marriage ceremony in their church.
She had to wonder how he would react when he saw this dream shattered. She knew that he was not well enough to withstand the riverboat ride to the Montana Territory, and she knew that it would be asking the impossible of Spotted Eagle to go with her to Saint Louis to be married.
He would remind her that she was Blackfoot and must be married in the Blackfoot tradition. And she would agree without further thought. She had been denied too many Blackfoot traditions as she was growing up in a white community.
Now she wanted to absorb each and every one of them within her heart so that she could eventually not even think about the time when she was forced to follow the road of the white people instead of her own true people!
Spotted Eagle sensed that Jolena's heart was no longer in their lovemaking. He paused and leaned away from her so that their eyes could meet and hold. He placed a gentle hand to her cheek.
"What is troubling you?" he said softly. "Never have you before been in two separate places while we were making love. Where has your mind taken you? S
hall mine follow and join you, to share with you that which is taking you from me?"
Jolena swallowed hard as she gazed back at him. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "My mind wandered. It won't again."
"It will, unless you free your mind of what is worrying you," Spotted Eagle said, leaning a soft kiss to her brow. "Tell me what is in your heart. I shall help you put it behind you."
"When you mentioned marriage to me, my thoughts went to my father in Saint Louis," she murmured, casting her eyes downward. "I know that when we speak vows, it will be done in the Blackfoot tradition. My white father will be left out."
Jolena moved her eyes slowly up again. "That saddens me, Spotted Eagle," she murmured. "I feel that I owe him loyalty for how he has so devotedly raised me as his."
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