Her lips parted as though she might respond. But upon further consideration, she closed her mouth. In due time, however, she said, “I truly don’t know what to say. If this is your honest viewpoint of my people, it is not a complimentary one.”
“So it is not.”
She shivered.
He drew her into his arms and said, “Too much talk and not enough lovemaking.”
Sarah smiled. “Surely, sir, you’re not thinking of making love here? Here beneath a ceiling of tree branches and leaves?”
“I am,” he said. “It will keep us warm, if you are willing.”
“’Tis not a point I can argue … sir.” She smiled.
He grinned back. “What?” he questioned. “You do not disagree? ”
“Am I that bad, sir?”
“Bad? You are good. Very good.” As he took her in his arms, he brought her into a position up and over him in a straddle-like pose, and he repeated, “You are very good, indeed.”
They traveled through thickets and brambles with stickers that stuck to her dress and petticoats. They stepped through streams that froze her moccasins to her feet, requiring the two of them to stop while White Thunder rubbed them back to life. And always it was cold.
“Why do you not warm your own feet?”Sarah had asked once, after observing that White Thunder never attended to his own needs. Indeed, were it not for her, he might not have stopped at all, but would have continued on their path, acting as though nothing untoward had happened.
“My body does not require attention,” he had explained. “I have bathed in cold and icy water all my life. Even in the dead of winter, the wintry swim is a necessary part of life.”
Sarah shivered. “I can’t imagine anything worse.”
“It is not bad,” he said. “Over time, the body craves it.”
She shook her head at him. “If you say so.”
Soon they were back on the trail, even though it had begun to rain and drizzle. In the distance, the roar of a waterfall was becoming more distinct, for this, according to White Thunder, was where he’d found her.
At last they reached the area of the falls. Though Sarah witnessed them only from afar, their roar drowned out all other sound.
I had fallen down those?
She shivered as she watched the utter power of this natural wonder.
But it wasn’t White Thunder’s intention to stop and admire the marvel of the falls. He was plodding on ahead, and was so far distant from her, it required her to run to catch up with him. Perhaps she was making too much noise in her mad dash toward him. Whatever the cause, at last White Thunder turned and stopped, waiting for her to draw even with him.
“Is there a reason you usually travel so far ahead of me?”she asked as she came to stand beside him.
“There is,” he answered without looking at her. He pointed forward. “The danger is in front of us, not behind us. I must stay well in advance should there be peril, either from man or animal. In this way, you might escape while I fight the menace.”
“Oh,” she murmured in acknowledgment. “It is interesting because it is much different in my society. Men in English society are considered mannerly only when they follow the woman.”
“I know,” he said. “But I would not be doing my duty were I to lag behind you. It could cause you to meet the danger head-on, while I am in safety at the rear.”
“I see. Thank you.”
He nodded.
The rain had started in earnest now, and in her haste, she slipped over the wet leaves and fell to her knees. Immediately White Thunder was at her side, helping her up.
“Mr. Thunder,” she said, coming up to her feet. “Is it really possible that I fell down those falls and survived?”
His arms spanned her waist as he set her back on her feet. “It is my belief that this is so.”
Sarah shook her head. “’Tis a shock I wasn’t killed.”
He placed his arms around her and brought her into his embrace. “Almost, you were,” he said. “Almost.”
As the rain fell in torrents around them, they stood in the middle of the forest, clinging to one another. He said, “We will begin our search for your friend and her husband here. If they survived the falls, they would have stayed here to mend themselves and their equipment, since no warrior of any merit would dare the forest without an adequate defense. And if they stopped here, there will be a shelter somewhere in this vicinity. That is what we’ll be looking for.”
“I see,” she replied, raising her face to his, a perfect invitation for a kiss. Happily he accommodated her.
There was something erotic and magical about kissing your lover in the middle of a rainstorm, if only because the downpour itself seemed to magnify the fire inside. It was another moment of pure heaven, and Sarah cherished it, committing this, too, to memory.
But wonderful though it was, they couldn’t long stand in the middle of a forest, in the midst of a rainstorm. Soon, they were heading out again on the trail.
Somewhere along the way, Sarah asked, “Aren’t you afraid that the rain might freeze our tracks to the ground so that anyone could follow us?”
“I might be concerned if it stopped raining,” he answered, “but because it continues, there is little danger of that happening.”
“Oh.”
Onward they traveled, slowly now, searching for clues. One day turned to the next, and still they found nothing definite.
For Sarah, these days of constant wandering had begun to blur. In truth, because their path required her to traverse a muddy, cold, gray and wet land, the days were beginning to take on the color of pure misery. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the landscape, or what White Thunder was doing. More to the point, it simply was not the sort of journey that a woman might enjoy. Indeed, the land they traveled over was the kind of terrain that even a rabbit wouldn’t have dared navigate at this time of year.
Always, the ground seemed to be moist and littered with the sight and scent of decaying leaves, bushes and undergrowth. The trees were brittle, and hosted so many branches that they often scratched Sarah as she passed them by, and her clothes were torn by thorns and stickers. Her hair had long since escaped its knot to hang in curls down her back, which, due to the drizzle, had taken to springing into waves and ringlets.
But if the days were wretched, the nights were enchanting, perhaps making up for her daily travail. Each night White Thunder fashioned a temporary shelter, one that was built from whatever was to hand. Each night, after making love, they slept in one another’s arms. In the morning they bathed, she in the relative comfort of their refuge, and he in some nearby stream. Always the feel and scent of nature was all around her, the dirt, the leaves and the freshest air she’d ever breathed.
It happened on a beautiful, sunny day. They came upon the body of a man, months decayed. He had certainly been a huge man, Sarah thought as she turned away from the sight.
Carefully, White Thunder bent to examine the ground around the body.
“There was a struggle here,” he said, “but most of the prints that would tell the complete story of what happened are long gone.”
“Is the man a Mohawk, sir?”
“No, Ottawa.”
Sarah breathed out in a sigh of relief. “Thank the dear Lord. I was afraid it might have been the young man who was so besotted with Miss Marisa. You are certain he is Ottawa? ”
He nodded. “Ottawa.”
“How can you tell he is Ottawa? Without a doubt?”
White Thunder pointed toward the man’s feet. “Do you see the cut of his moccasins?”
“No. I … I don’t want to look.”
“The pattern of beadwork, the cut. His style of breechcloth, clothes, weapons. He was Ottawa. He was struck several times, also; the blow to the head was the fatal blow. The man who did this was protecting something.”
“How do you know that?”
“It was unnecessary to beat this dead man so many times. Whoever it was that fought him was ensuring the Ottawa’s death. One has to ask why?”
Sarah shook her head.
“Loved ones or a loved one was near, perhaps endangered. Only then does a man become so savage.”
“Oh, I see,” said Sarah.
“Besides, clamped in the Ottawa’s hand is some red hair. Was your friend’s hair red?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “It is possible they camped close to here.”
“They? ”
“By these clues, I think we have found the trail of your friend and her Mohawk protector.” Reaching into one of the bags that he carried around his shoulder, White Thunder withdrew what looked to Sarah to be a dried herb.
Carefully, he crumbled the herb in his hand, then sprinkled it around the body of the dead Ottawa. After some moments, he said some words in his own language over the body before he at last came up onto his feet.
Turning toward Sarah, he gestured. “Come, let us search for the place where they built their shelter. If I am right, I believe we will find it close to here.”
In the end, it took White Thunder several more days of hunting and inspecting the forest around him to locate the shelter, which was nestled in a deeply wooded valley. Constructed as it was, alongside a fallen tree, it first looked to be nothing more than the loose branches of an old, dead tree. But as he pulled one branch after another aside, the inside of the structure was revealed.
Whoever built this, thought White Thunder, was a good man. Smart.
“This is where they stayed,” he told Sarah. “Come, let’s see what clues they left us.”
“Then she’s alive?”
“I cannot say how she is now, but when this was built, she was alive—do you see over there?”He pointed into the shelter.
“No, what?”
“Look closely.”
“I see nothing, sir, but branches and grass.”
He bent and picked up a small piece of white lace. He said, “Unless our Mohawk warrior has taken to wearing a lady’s decoration, I think we can assume that your friend stayed here.”
“Let me see that.”
White Thunder handed her the material.
“Yes,” said Sarah. “I recognize the design of this. ’Tis Marisa’s.” She brought her gaze up to meet White Thunder’s, and White Thunder found himself yearning to take this woman in his arms and make love to her here, now, under the broad light of day.
He might have done it, too, were it not a dangerous thing for a man to attempt, given where they were and the circumstances of war that surrounded them. He had always been attracted to Sarah, thus he’d felt no qualms in agreeing to their pretense at being man and wife.
But since they had started out on the trail, each day brought a new facet of her personality to the fore, and he was finding himself becoming more and more besotted with her. Her gentle ways, her kind encouragement to him, her courage in the face of so much adversity, was acting as a balm to his heart.
Plus, her beauty continued to enchant him. He knew the harshness of their travels was not a woman’s favorite abode. While on the move, she couldn’t treat herself to the niceties that women tended to favor: she couldn’t always manage the condition of her hair, her body or her clothes. Yet, oddly, he couldn’t remember ever desiring a woman’s companionship more … not even Wild Mint’s. Certainly, he had loved Wild Mint. He loved her still.
But he nursed a fascination for Sarah that was new to him. Indeed, he didn’t quite understand it. For one thing, he never grew tired of looking at her, and he couldn’t ever seem to get close enough to her. Always he found himself inventing little reasons to touch her.
“What do we do now?”Sarah asked him, bringing him back to the present moment.
“We will stay here tonight,” he answered. “This shelter can be easily rebuilt and made comfortable. The structure is Iroquois built and made.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” he said. “Do you see how the builder uses the bark against the frame of the structure? The way the poles are positioned? This structure is Iroquois built—Mohawk, specifically. Your friend’s sweetheart was taking no chances with her being accidently found. I can only imagine that the Ottawa somehow discovered your friend and was taking her away when she was rescued by her Mohawk husband.”
“I still don’t understand, Mr. Thunder. How do you know these things?”
“I don’t. Not completely. But it’s what I believe happened. We saw the remains of a man who was killed viciously. His attacker was protecting something. Only then is a man so vicious. And whatever he was protecting must have been close by for the attack to be so gruesome. Therefore, one must assume that the Ottawa found your friend and that she was rescued by her Mohawk husband.”
“Oh. It seems simple when you say it, but I didn’t see it.”
“Only because you don’t know what to look for and are not trained to look.”
“Perhaps.”
“They probably left here immediately, thinking that the shelter was no longer invisible to an enemy eye. Where they would go from here, I can only speculate.”