Wild Thunder (14 page)

Hawk hung his head in shame.

“Remove him from the stake!” a woman's voice rang out at the far edge of the village as three horses came into sight, a woman on one of them. “Remove him
now
. He does not deserve to be treated this way, Strong Wolf!”

Strong Wolf's heart leapt into his throat when he recognized the voice. He turned on a heel and stared at the woman of his past, the very woman who so long ago had reduced him to less than a young brave in her eyes!

“Doe Eyes?” he gasped.

Proud Heart took an unsteady step backward. “Sister?” he said in a low gasp, his eyes filled with wonder. “Sister Doe Eyes?”

Hannah paled at Strong Wolf's reaction to the woman entering the village. She stared at the woman and saw her loveliness.

And Hannah was instantly jealous!

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My senses, as though of hemlock I had drunk.

—J
OHN
K
EATS

 

 

 

Doe Eyes ran to Hawk when nothing was done to release him. As she gazed up at him, she desperately sobbed his name and clutched at his hands. “Why did you leave without me?” she cried. “You did not even say a good-bye. Is your love less for me than mine is for you?” She glanced over at Strong Wolf, then Proud Heart, then pleaded up at Hawk with her dark eyes. “Tell them, Hawk. Tell them that you are here only because your mother forced this upon you.”

“They already know, but they do not listen,” Hawk said, his voice breaking. “I was wrong, Doe Eyes, to leave in such a way. I should have never listened to my mother. Our future, yours and mine, is what suffers from her misguided, evil ways.”

“That proves, Hawk, that she has no feelings except for herself,” Doe Eyes said, her voice rising in pitch. “Think of yourself, Hawk. Not your mother. Tell Strong Wolf and Proud Heart that you are sorry, that you meant them no harm.”

“It . . . is . . . too late,” Hawk said, his eyes locking with Strong Wolf's. His eyes shifted slowly to Proud Heart.

Having never seen, or known of Doe Eyes's affection for Hawk, Strong Wolf was rendered speechless. Their love for one another had been kept from everyone. And as he listened to them, he could not help but think that what they said was all a ploy, to hide the truth that they had worked together on this plot against him and Proud Heart.

Strong Wolf had learned long ago never to trust Doe Eyes. She had so coldly turned him away after she had learned of his secret past.

No one since had made him feel as small, as useless. Doe Eyes was a woman without a heart, and he suspected that she would do anything to reduce him to a pitiful nothing again in everyone's eyes!

Hannah was too stunned to move as she watched this woman with Hawk, someone who had surely meant something to Strong Wolf in his past. Since Hannah had known Strong Wolf, no one had ever rendered him speechless as he seemed to be now in the presence of this woman! It was as though he was in a spell!

Hannah wanted to shake him, to bring him back to his normal self, yet still she felt helpless in what she was witnessing today. She just stood there, an observer, an outsider, feeling useless, and wishing she had gone on to her brother's house. She regretted having to see Strong Wolf placed in this position.

Doe Eyes ran up to Strong Wolf. “Please, Strong Wolf, please release Hawk,” she cried, her hands in tight fists at her sides. Tears streamed from her eyes. “Please believe me when I
know
that Hawk's mother is the reason he is here spying on you and Proud Heart. He was forced to come to the Kansas Territory.”

When Strong Wolf refused to respond, she went to Proud Heart and flung herself into his arms. “Brother, please help me,” she begged. “Help me to make Strong Wolf see reason.”

Proud Heart eased her from his arms and glared down at her. “Sister, did I ever know you?” he said. “And what of our parents? Surely they do not approve of you being here!”

“I knew you would not understand,” she said, then ran back to Strong Wolf and grabbed him by an arm.

He recoiled and yanked his arm away.

“Hawk would never harm you nor my brother!” Doe Eyes said, dropping her hands to her sides. “If so, would he have not done it already? He has been here long enough to do you both harm, then return to Wisconsin.”

Strong Wolf gazed down at her, his eyes narrowed with hate. “You have no right to be here,” he said venomously. He gestured toward Hawk. “
He
has no right to be here, no matter the reason. He is a man. He is a warrior. He could have stood up to his mother and told her that a man does not obey a mother!”

“You know his mother,” Doe Eyes cried. “She is strong-willed. She has a way about her! A son is rendered helpless before her, even if he
is
a powerful warrior who will one day be chief of his people!”

“He who follows the skirts of his mother is . . . not . . . a man!” Strong Wolf emphasized between clenched teeth.

“Does it truly matter?” Doe Eyes sobbed. “Free him. He will leave you, untouched.”

“He would leave me untouched?” Strong Wolf said, then laughed fitfully. “You, who have no feelings, come into my village and try to pretend that you do? Pity Hawk if he has fallen into your trap. That means he has become ruled by
two
women, not one.”

“Strong Wolf, I know that you have had bad feelings for me for many moons now,” Doe Eyes said, wiping tears from her cheeks. “I beg you not to take your feelings for me out on Hawk.”

She lowered her eyes, then looked slowly up at him again. “I'm sorry for having treated you so badly when you professed your love for me those many years ago. I'm sorry for having hurt you like I did with my rejection, and in the way that I did it, so thoughtless, so cruel. Please don't take it out on Hawk! I can't help but love him!”

Hannah stifled a gasp, yet knew that she shouldn't be surprised. Strong Wolf's reaction to this beautiful Indian maiden's presence was curious.

A part of Hannah was jealous over knowing that Strong Wolf had loved another woman.

Another part of her knew that it didn't matter that he had, for he loved
her
now.

“What I do with Hawk, and how I choose to do it, has nothing whatsoever to do with you,” Strong Wolf said, glaring down at Doe Eyes. “You were dead to me many years ago. You do not exist in my heart, mind,
or
my world. I look at you now and see nothing. When you talk, I hear only the wind!”

Doe Eyes followed Strong Wolf's eyes as he turned to the white woman. She knew now that his heart was filled with another woman, and her skin was white. She watched Strong Wolf with much interest, and then the lady.

As Strong Wolf gazed at Hannah, he could see the wonder in her eyes. He now knew that he might be forced to tell her the full truth about the relationship between himself and Doe Eyes, and finally explain about the dark secret that had caused Doe Eyes not to love him.

But now, for the present, he had Hawk to deal with!

He went to Hawk and glared at him. “You say you are innocent?” he said, folding his arms across his powerful chest. “That you would not have killed me and Proud Heart had you not been caught in the act of spying?”

“Had I planned to truly do it, it would have been done!” Hawk cried. “The opportunity was there. I was so close to you both, sometimes I could have reached out and touched you!”

“I should have smelled your snake breath,” Strong Wolf snarled.

“Free me, Strong Wolf,” Hawk said, squaring his shoulders. “I will return to my people. I will never cross your path again.”

“Return to your people and be ridiculed by your mother because you did not do as she ordered?” Strong Wolf said, laughing. “I think not.”

“I have learned much by being away from her willful ways,” Hawk said. “I have learned that if I am ever to be a leader of my people, I must learn to be more like my father, whose strength and prowess gain the admiration of your people. When I return and stand up to my mother, then my people will be able to look up to me as a man worthy of my father's title of chief.”

“Even if I set you free, so that you could return, unharmed, to your people, you will never have the same respect and admiration as your father, Chief Buffalo Cloud.” Strong Wolf laughed sarcastically.

“Give me the chance to,” Hawk said, his eyes wide as he gazed over at Strong Wolf.

“You beg like someone who still hangs to a mother's skirt tail,” Strong Wolf said, again laughing at Hawk.

“To live, I will do whatever I must,” Hawk said, firming his jaw.

“If you were a true man, one who would be a great leader, you would die like a man!” Strong Wolf said, then grabbed his knife from the sheath at his right side and sliced the ropes at Hawk's wrists and ankles, freeing him.

“Thank you, thank you,” Doe Eyes cried, running to clutch onto Strong Wolf's arm.

He glared down at her and wrenched his arm free. “Wench, thank not this man who hates the very sight of you,” he said. “If it were you on the stake, I would laugh and walk away from you.”

Doe Eyes gulped hard, inched back away from him, then went and flung herself into Hawk's arms. “Let us leave this horrible place,” she cried.

“He goes nowhere,” Strong Wolf said, slipping his knife back into its sheath. “I do not release him out of kindness. He now has to prove his innocence to me, or never walk, alive, from this village of the Potawatomis!”

Doe Eyes turned burning eyes to Strong Wolf. “You will not allow either of us to leave this place alive,” she said, glowering at Strong Wolf. “For so long you have resented me. Now you have the chance to silence me forever!”

“Again all I hear is the wind when you speak,” Strong Wolf said, placing his hands on Doe Eyes's upper arms. He bodily set her aside to get to Hawk, then glared into Hawk's eyes. “The test today is a simple one, but the sort long used by my people when someone has gone against them.”

Hawk said nothing.

Doe Eyes ran to Proud Heart. “Again I implore you to help me, my brother,” she cried. “Help
Hawk
. For my sake, brother? Please?”

“Doe Eyes, when you chose to travel the road of life with Hawk, you knew then what the end would be for you where family was concerned,” he said. “I hardly know you now as a sister.”

“And all because I love Hawk?” she uttered.

“That, and also long ago my feelings for you changed when you put ridicule on the shoulders of my best friend Strong Wolf,” Proud Heart said, his voice breaking. “I knew not what caused the ridicule, but I did know that it caused pain in my best friend's heart. That pain then became my own, your
brother's
.”

Doe Eyes stepped away from her brother, then went and clung to Hawk's arm.

Touched by Proud Heart's words, his loyalty as a friend, Strong Wolf stared at him for a moment, and exchanged smiles with him when Proud Heart turned his eyes to him.

Then Strong Wolf nodded to a warrior. “Bring a mustang to me that has not yet been tamed for riding,” he said solemnly.

The warrior nodded.

He returned soon with a feisty black mustang that yanked his head back and forth against the rope that was tied around its neck. Its dark eyes were filled with spirit. Its body was powerfully muscled, the mane sleek and shining beneath the rays of the afternoon sun.

“Hawk, you will ride this pony,” Strong Wolf said, taking the rope from the warrior and giving it to Hawk. “If you can break it by taking the devil out of it, then your innocence will be proved and you can leave before the moon replaces the sun in the sky.”

Hannah was surprised that such a small challenge as this would be enough to free Hawk!

“Follow me,” Strong Wolf said as he glared at Hawk.

Hawk held onto the rope, occasionally eyeing the frisky mustang, as he followed Strong Wolf to the outskirts of the village, where there was room for him to go through the process of taking the wildness out of the mustang.

Marking the path of the public trial, the Potawatomis people stood in two parallel lines, their faces solemn.

Hannah stood beside Strong Wolf, her heart pounding with excitement as she watched Hawk trying to mount the steed. She had ridden many spirited horses in her lifetime. She had enjoyed the challenge of taming them, then training them to become something wonderful, gentle, and loved.

Like an arrow sprung from a strong bow, the horse, with extended nostrils, plunged forward. With all of his might, Hawk drew the strong reins in.

The horse halted with wooden legs.

Hawk was thrown forward by force, but he did not fall off.

The maddened creature pitched with flying heels. The line of men and women swayed outward.

Then they moved forward again, safe from the kicking, snorting thing as Hawk managed to hold it at bay.

The mustang was fierce with its large black eyes bulging out of their sockets. With humped back and nose to the ground, it leapt into the air again.

He did this over and over again, but still Hawk did not fall from the steed, or let up on fighting for his freedom.

Doe Eyes watched, afraid for her loved one. Should he lose,
she
would lose, and he was all that she wanted out of life.

“Do not fail,” she whispered.

Then she raised a fist into the air. “Fight for your life, Hawk!” she screamed. “Choose life and
me
.”

Hawk fought hard to stay on the mustang as it went in mad, crazed circles, its mane shaking back and forth as if it were insane.

Then suddenly the steed came to a shimmering stop. Wet with sweat and shaking with exhaustion, it stood with its head hung.

Heaving hard, sweat pouring from his brow, Hawk slid from the horse. He went around and faced the mustang, their eyes locking. He reached a hand toward it, smiling broadly when the horse nuzzled the palm of his hand as though he were a friend for life.

Loud shouts came from the men and women. The wild mustang was conquered!

Strong Wolf went to Hawk in two long strides.

Hawk turned and faced him.

Strong Wolf placed his hands on Hawk's bare shoulders. “You have proven yourself,” he said. “You can go. And the horse is
yours
.”

“Strong Wolf, please believe me when I say that I have never wanted to be your enemy,” Hawk said. “I want a family! Not enemies! I have never hated you. It is my mother's hate that has come between us. I want you as a friend.”