Wild Ecstasy (32 page)

“Echohawk, I had thought that perhaps White Wolf had . . . had stalked and killed you,” Mariah said softly.

“Do not fill your thoughts with that snake!” Echohawk grumbled. “Never will he be the cause of my death.”

Mariah's eyes wavered; then she helped him from the ground. “I've brought the toboggan,” she said softly. She spied his horse tethered close by to a low tree limb. “This time you will ride much more comfortably on the toboggan than on Blaze.”

“But you can't pull the toboggan with my weight on it,” Echohawk fussed, cringing again when a sharp pain shot through his injured arm. “No-din, you are with child.”

“I am strong,” Mariah argued. “So is the child that grows within my womb.”

Echohawk struggled free from her grip and went to Blaze. He uncoiled the reins from the tree, then managed to get himself into the saddle. “Get the toboggan. Attach it to the horse. We will ride together on Blaze into the village.”

“You are a very stubborn man,” Mariah said, sighing. She shuddered when she stepped around the dead animals, then went to the toboggan and did as Echohawk asked. When she climbed into the saddle behind him, and clung to his waist, a sudden fear gripped her. In his eyes she could already see signs of a fever, surely caused by the wound.

Chapter 32

—Rossetti

 

 

 

This was so familiar to Mariah, as though it were only yesterday that she had sat beside Echohawk in his wigwam, he in a fevered state and she bathing his heated brow. She had managed to get a medicinal drink made of dogwood bark between his lips, a concoction used against fevers.

She had learned many more ways of healing since Nee-kah's earlier teaching. When Echohawk had a minor wound, she knew how to use sumac leaves to stop the bleeding and sphagnum moss to bind it up. If medicine was necessary, she knew how to prick the skin with a sharp bone tool so that it could enter the patient's body.

The fire's glow the only light in the wigwam, Mariah gazed down at Echohawk, who lay beneath many blankets, asleep by the fire. Her eyes saddened as she bathed her husband's fevered brow again, as she had all through the long, weary night.

Before, when he had not known her identity, only that she had cared for him with compassion, he had recovered. And she kept praying to her Lord that this time would be no different. She had cleansed and wrapped his wounds. She had forced medicinal herbal liquids through his parched lips. She had allowed a Mide priest to come and speak over him. She had bathed him with cool compresses all night.

Now all that was left was the waiting, and her continued silent prayers....

She looked beyond Echohawk at the crib where their young son lay sleeping. She was filled with pride and love as she listened to his steady breathing, recalling that first night after he had been born and how strange it had been to have another person breathing in their wigwam.

But, ah, how she had cherished the sound!

Their son!

Oh, how he filled their lives, even more than she had ever expected. For many months her life had been centered only around Echohawk. Now she had two people who relied on her, and this was wonderful, for while she had been growing up, it had been only herself, fending for herself.

She had been so very alone as a child and young woman.

She looked up at the smokehole, seeing shadows softening into a light orange glow. “It's morning,” she whispered. “It's another Chippewa sunrise.”

“No-din?”

Echohawk's whisper drew Mariah's eyes back to him. When she found him looking at her, a slow smile fluttering on his lips, she almost shouted with joy. She reached a hand to his brow, gasping with delight. His fever had broken! The crisis had passed. He was going to be well again.

“Echohawk, oh, darling,” Mariah said, tossing her cloth aside. She twined her arms around his neck and kissed him softly on the lips, then drew only slightly away from him, gazing lovingly into his eyes. “You gave me a scare, you know.”

“Did I not tell you that I always pay my debts, my darling No-din?” he said softly. “My debt to you, always, is to stay alive, is it not?”

“Always, my love,” Mariah said, beaming. She eased her lips to his mouth and kissed him sweetly, content, yet still fearing the day that White Wolf and Echohawk would come face-to-face, weapon-to-weapon. . . .

 

 

Known as Flame for her fiery red hair, not to mention
her temperament, beautiful Reshelle Russell wants only
one man, the one she can't have—or so she is told.
But since childhood, Flame has known that the proud
Chippewa warrior, White Fire, is meant for her. Now a
grown woman, she has embarked on her quest for him,
in defiance of her father, an elite army commander.

 

Imprisoned for three years by an enemy tribe,
White Fire has returned only to discover that his wife
is dead and his young son has been taken by a wealthy
white couple. It seems nothing can penetrate his cold,
embittered heart, much less heal it—until he lays eyes
on Flame once more. And soon it is clear that together
they can fight to regain all he has lost, amid a passion
that was destined to last for a lifetime . . .

 

 

 

 

After my children were grown, I found myself restless, searching for ways to busy my idle hands and mind. I discovered my love of writing, and I was drawn to the mystique of Native American lore. The Chippewa people have largely been ignored by historians, and
Wild Ecstasy
was a pleasure to write.

 

Having lived in St. Louis for thirty years, my husband and I moved to a small town when he retired from teaching. My dream house is peaceful and quiet, where an occasional curious red fox ventures onto the sun deck and peeks into my office, and where I can watch swallows building their nests and raising their babies right outside my kitchen window. It is a perfect place to create my stories.

 

I feel blessed to have found a “second life,” the first having been spent raising two happy and healthy sons. Writing my Native American romances is my small tribute to those beautiful first people of our land, who have suffered so much injustice.