Wild Embrace

by Cassie Edwards

  Before accepting Earl’s handshake, Sheriff Nolan turned to the spittoon and spat out another long stream of juice.

  He wiped his mouth and mustache on the back of his right hand, then offered it to Earl. “Nice to make your acquaintance,” he said, chuckling beneath his breath when he saw Earl grimace as he took the hand with traces of tobacco juice on the fingers.

  Earl wiped his hand on the leg of his pants, then glowered down at the sheriff. “I’ll be waitin’ to hear from you,” he warned. “If I don’t hear soon, I’ll take out after the damn outlaws myself.”

  “That wouldn’t be wise,” Sheriff Nolan said, placing his fingertips together before him. “You’d just complicate things. Let the professionals do the job. You just get back to your fishery. I’ll send word as soon as I know.”

  Hesitating, yet knowing that he was only one man and did not know the countryside as well as those who made a living hunting outlaws, Earl nodded and left the prison.

  With a heavy heart, he mounted his stallion and headed back for home. His thoughts were on Elizabeth, and how it had been between them through the years—how he had been the one to hold back on love.

  It was her mother’s fault. If Marilyn had not fled to parts unknown, Earl would not have had the need to reject his daughter.

  He hung his head. He knew that he should hate his wife for having deserted him, yet he knew that he was the cause. Just as now, as he was the cause for his daughter’s life to be in peril.

  Before he realized it, he was home. The miles had been eaten up while his mind had been absorbed by thoughts of the past and the future.

  He gave his horse’s reins to Everett. Then he went inside the house, where he was met by an anxious Frannie.

  “Elizabeth?” Frannie said, her eyes wide as she followed Earl toward the parlor. “Do you know any more about Elizabeth?”

  Earl stopped and turned and gave her a watery stare. “As far as anyone can tell, she’s been abducted,” he said, his voice breaking.

  Maysie stepped beside Frannie, just in time to hear the disheartening news. Her knees grew weak and she felt a desperation rising within her. Guilt pressed on her heart.

  “No!” she cried, placing her hands to her cheeks, tears flooding her eyes. “Elizabeth has been abducted? No! Please, no! Oh, God, I’m to blame. If I’d never told Elizabeth about the women at the prison, she’d have not gone there! Who abducted her? Who?”

  “Apparently the man who set the Indian free from prison,” Earl said. Then he took a step toward Maysie and glared down at her. “And, yes, young lady, you are to blame. If not for you, my daughter would be home now, safe!”

  Maysie stared up at Earl with stricken eyes. Then she bolted up the steep staircase, wailing distraughtly.

  Frannie went after her, also wailing.

  Earl hung his head, and went into the parlor. He walked lifelessly to a window and drew the sheer curtain aside, staring into the trees.

  His beloved daughter. Where was she?

  He tried to distract himself from his anguish with other thoughts. He knew he must go back to the Suquamish Indian village. He had to convince them that what he offered was for their best interest, as well as his own.

  “My fishery,” he muttered to himself.

  He wondered how he could make plans for the future now, when he did not know if it would include his daughter?

  He was ridden with guilt for having neglected her.

  First his wife, and now his daughter.

  He had never been a God-fearing man. But now he could not help but think that God was punishing him for all of his transgressions against humanity, especially his own kin.

  Chapter 13

  Ah!—With what thankless heart

  I mourn and sing!

  —BARRY CORNWALL

  The sun was splashing the sky a brilliant crimson as it lowered behind the mountains in the far distance. Elizabeth sat in the saddle behind Strong Heart, clinging to his waist, apprehensive about soon entering his village and meeting his people, especially his parents. She knew Strong Heart’s bitterness over white people well enough. Surely his people’s feelings were even stronger against white people.

  If so, they would not take to their chief’s son having fallen in love with a white-skinned woman. Her mere presence might make life awkward for Strong Heart, and that was the last thing that she wanted.

  Yet he was strong willed. Perhaps he would overlook any resentment toward her.

  She glanced down at her clothing. The fringed buckskin outfit fit her loosely. A rope around her waist held the breeches up. She had rolled up the legs so that she would not trip over them as she walked, and she had rolled up the sleeves of the shirt to her elbows.

  Although she knew that she must look comical, at least it had made traveling on horseback with Strong Heart more tolerable.

  Strong Heart noticed hawks circling in the air up ahead. They must surely be flying above his village. It would soon be within sight once they rode up a slight butte. His roan’s footing was sure on the loose and crumbling rock.

  His keen senses picked up a faint odor of smoke and ash, sending a warning to him that all was not right.

  He surveyed the soaring hawks, realizing that they only flew like this in a group, if death was on the trail. Or in a village, he thought grimly.

  Elizabeth could feel how Strong Heart’s muscles had suddenly tensed. His breathing had quickened and he was concentrating strangely on several hawks in the sky.

  “What is it, Strong Heart?” she asked, clutching even more tightly around his waist as he kicked his moccasined heels into the flanks of his horse and sent it up the rise, to the top.

  Strong Heart had not heard Elizabeth. All that he heard was the crying of his heart as he peered down and saw the destruction of so much of his village. Half of its cedar homes had been burned to the ground. The burnt totem poles listed crazily. The sight chilled his blood.

  The devastation was everywhere.

  He could see the people of his village roaming about, their heads bowed, their wails reaching clear into his soul. While he was gone, tending to his own affairs, his village had caught fire, somehow. And by the sound of the wailing, several of his people had died.

  “Mother!” he gasped. “Father! Are they allright? Aieee,” he cried with a shrill yelp, sending his horse into a hard gallop toward the remains of his village.

  When he arrived, he dismounted in one leap, and forgetting Elizabeth, began running toward his father’s longhouse. It still stood proud and untouched by the ravages of the fire that had swept through the village.

  As he continued to run, he also saw that his longhouse still stood, saved by the people who loved him and his parents so much. They had probably allowed their own dwellings to burn in order to save their chief’s, and the one who would next be chief.

  He was followed by many people who reached out for him, crying his name. Strong Heart did not stop until he came to the entrance of his parents’ lodge. Then he hurried inside.

  What he saw made him teeter, for his father was lying on his sleeping platform, his eyes closed, otter fur pelts drawn up to his chin. “Father,” he cried out, rushing to kneel beside the sleeping platform. He could not understand how his father had been harmed when his dwelling had been saved. Unless, unless, being the kindhearted man that he was, he had gone to help the others, and perhaps falling debris had struck him.

  Strong Heart’s mother came into the longhouse with a jug of water balanced on her shoulder. When she saw Strong Heart, she sat the jug down and went to kneel beside him.

  When Strong Heart felt her presence, he turned to her and, with tears splashing from his eyes, he quickly embraced her. “You were not hurt by the fire?” he asked, holding her tightly to him, her usual scent of sweet grasses now ruined by the stink of smoke.

  “Your mother is well enough,” Pretty Nose murmured, then coughed fitfully. She eased from Strong Heart’s arms and covered her mouth with her hands, continuing
to cough until she was red in the face.

  When she finally stopped, she cleared her throat and gazed sadly up at her son. “The smoke,” she said hoarsely. “It entered my lungs. Still I cannot rid myself of the burning feeling left by the smoke.”

  Strong Heart stared with pain for a moment at his frail mother. Then he looked at his father again, whose eyes were now open, watching Strong Heart. When his father’s hand reached out, Strong Heart circled his fingers around it and clung to it.

  “My father, how are you?” Strong Heart said, seeing much pain in his father’s eyes. He wanted to believe that part of that pain was from the loss of some of his beloved people, and the devastation the fire had caused.

  “Your father has a heavy heart,” Chief Moon Elk mumbled. “So much hope was taken from me yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?” Strong Heart said, recalling the fierceness of the thunderstorm as he and Elizabeth had clung to one another beneath the protection of their tent. “You say this happened yesterday. Was it lightning, Father, that caused the fire?”

  “No, not lightning,” Chief Moon Elk said somberly. “The fire was set by—”

  Chief Moon Elk stopped in mid-sentence and looked fiercely into Strong Heart’s eyes. “Four Winds?” he asked, his voice low and threatening. “You set him free? He is free to roam and do as he pleases now?”

  “Ah-hah, that is so,” Strong Heart said, puzzled by his father asking about Four Winds. What could Four Winds have to do with the fire?

  If it had not been started by lightning, then by what? Or by whom?

  “He is with you now? He has come to our village before riding on to his village in Canada?” Chief Moon Elk asked suspiciously.

  “No, he did not come here. Once free, he rode separate from me,” he said. His eyes widened when he remembered that, in his haste to check on the welfare of his parents, he had left Elizabeth alone. He wanted to rush to her now, but the matters of his people came first. Especially now that so much me-sah-chie, bad, had befallen them.

  “That is as I thought,” Chief Moon Elk grumbled, turning slowly away from Strong Heart. “He was probably among those who came and ravished our village. He was not recognized, but it was renegades like Four Winds who rode side by side with the white men as they tossed torches on our people’s dwellings. They sent many of our people to their deaths with sprays of arrows and bullets.”

  Chief Moon Elk’s eyes flashed with anger as he threw aside the otter fur pelts, and revealed a gunshot wound in his right leg. “Four Winds may have even sent the bullet into your father’s leg!” he shouted.

  Strong Heart sat there, aghast and speechless over what had happened while he had been gone. Chief Moon Elk drew the pelts back in place again and turned his eyes from Strong Heart.

  “My son, you should have let the white man hang Four Winds,” he said bitterly. “Four Winds is me-sah-chie, to the core!”

  Pretty Nose placed a gentle hand on Strong Heart’s arm. “My son, it is best now that you let your father rest. His wound has been treated well enough by me, but his heart—it still pains him, terribly.”

  She flung herself into Strong Heart’s arms. “My son, it is so good that you are home again,” she cried. “Pay no heed to your father’s anger about Four Winds. I believe that you would not have allowed him to be set free just to come and harm us. I truly do not believe that Four Winds had any part in the attack on our people. It is just someone for your father to blame, so that he does not feel so to blame, himself, for our tragedy.”

  Strong Heart held his mother close. “If anyone is to blame,” he said thickly, “it is I. I should have been home, protecting our people, instead of—”

  He closed his eyes tightly, trying to block out thoughts of where he had probably been at the very moment of the attack. In Elizabeth’s arms, his people and their concerns far, far from his mind. While he was making love to his la-daila, his people had needed him.

  And he had not been there for them.

  Pretty Nose pulled away from Strong Heart and peered up at him. “My son, you are only one person, she tried to reassure him. “You cannot be everywhere at once. No one expects you to be.” She paused, then added, “While in Seattle, you did not find your grandfather? He is dead, is he not, my son? Your grandfather is surely dead!”

  Strong Heart held her face between his powerful hands and leaned down and kissed her on her pert nose. “I searched and I did not find,” he said. “But I do not allow myself to think that he is dead. I shall return to Seattle when I can, and search again, Mother.”

  Then his thoughts flew again to Elizabeth, seeing her sitting on the horse, afraid, as his people surrounded her. Perhaps they had even pulled her from the horse. She was white. And white men, accompanied by Indian renegades, had only yesterday come to their village and wreaked havoc in their lives! They could suspect her because her skin was white.

  Without further words, Strong Heart left the longhouse at a run, then stopped in dismay when he did not find Elizabeth anywhere. His heart pounded as he looked in all directions. Seeing his longhouse, he wondered if she could be there.

  With swift strides, Strong Heart went to his longhouse. He found Elizabeth inside sitting beside a fire. There was even a pot of soup hanging over it.

  Strong Heart’s eyes went to the Indian who was kneeling beside the fire, slowly stirring the soup. It was Many Stars, a lovely, petite Suquamish maiden who served Chief Moon Elk and his son devotedly. Although the same age as Strong Heart, she had been widowed twice. She now spent her time helping others, warding off any man’s attempt to court her. She had declared that she would never love again. She had experienced the pain of too many losses already.

  When Elizabeth saw Strong Heart standing in the doorway, she bolted to her feet and ran to him. She flung herself into his arms and clung to him. “Thank God you’ve come. If not for Many Stars, I may have been slain. She grabbed me away from several of your people. They see me as the enemy, Strong Heart. They hate me.”

  Many Stars smiled up at Strong Heart. “It was just a few who reacted foolishly to seeing Elizabeth on your horse,” she said, rising to her feet, her eyes as dark as midnight as she gazed up at Strong Heart. “I guessed she was your woman since she was riding on your horse, and wearing your clothes. I brought her to your lodge. I knew that was what you would want.”

  Strong Heart reached a hand to Many Stars’s soft, copper cheek. “Mah-sie, thank you,” he said softly. She was comely as always, in her mountain sheepskin dress that was beautifully ornamented with quill beads. Her hair was neatly plaited in large braids that hung down over her breasts. “Now return to your parents. Help them build a new dwelling. I saw that their longhouse was among those that burned, yet I was thankful to see that your parents were among the survivors.”

  Many Stars nodded. “Ah-hah, they survived and I will return to my chores alongside them. We were the lucky ones. We still have one another, while others have lost loved ones.”

  Guilt flooded Strong Heart’s heart again, for having not been there to look after the welfare of his people.

  Yet he felt blessed that it had not been worse than it was. All of the village could have been destroyed and all of his people could be dead.

  His thoughts went to Four Winds, also wondering about his innocence or guilt in this. Yet it was just not logical to think that Four Winds would repay Strong Heart in such a way for having helped him to escape from the prison.

  No. Four Winds could have had nothing to do with this. Strong Heart would keep that thought while trying to find out who did.

  “Go with care,” Strong Heart said to Many Stars as she slipped outside.

  Elizabeth eased from Strong Heart’s arms. “Your parents?” she queried softly. “Are they all right?”

  “Both are alive, but my father lies with a leg wound.”

  “I’m sorry about your father,” Elizabeth responded. “I hope it’s not serious.”

  “In time he will walk again,” Strong He
art said sourly. “But for now, when he is needed the most by his people, he is incapacitated. He needs my leadership now. I will lend it to him to lessen his burden. I will be his legs. I will be everything for him.”

  “How can I help?” Elizabeth asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. For that brief moment, when her life had been threatened by those few Suquamish, she had seen just how much she could be resented by the Indians. In truth, she was quite shaken by the incident. But for Strong Heart, in his time of need, she would have to brush her fear aside.

  “It is perhaps best if you return to Seattle,” Strong Heart said. Saying this to her made it feel as if a knife were cutting into his heart, for he never wanted to let her go. But for now, he had to put his people before his needs.

  Elizabeth paled. “You no longer want me?” she said, gasping. “Now that I want to be with you . . . you will send me away?”

  Strong Heart softly held her shoulders. “My la-daila, I have much to make right in my world. That includes you. I should have never taken you against your will. You are free to go. And I have much to do. I must help set things right for my people. And I trust you now, my la-daila. I know that you would never lift an accusing finger at me. I know that you love me too much to ever want harm to come to me.”

  “If you know that I love you, and I know that you love me, why then do you still send me away?” she pleaded.

  Strong Heart placed a finger to her lips to silence her. “Listen to what I have to say,” he said quietly. “Ah-hah, our love is strong between us. But there is more in life, than love between man and woman. I have always aspired to match the deeds of my father. I have spent much of my time hunting, fishing, wrestling, and swimming—preparing my mind and body for a worthy life, the life of a leader. So many of my people are now in their death sleeps due to the vile actions of the renegades and outlaws. I must guide those who are still alive!”