Black Eagle (27 page)

He nodded. “I understand.”

“I know she is alive. I know it!”

Again he nodded. “If you desire, we can stay in this place a little longer and I will continue searching for her.”

“Yes, please. You would do that?”

He nodded.

“Perhaps I can help.”

“Perhaps.”

He took note that
Ahweyoh
was cold, that she was shivering, and in order to restore some warmth to her body, he rubbed her arms up and down. She, however, responded to him in an unusual manner. At first, she remained mute, simply receiving his attention as her due, but then slowly she came alive, and her lips began an intimate exploration of him, there against his throat. Her fingers wound into his hair and rubbed against his scalp, and he thought that if possible, he might likely choose to remain here like this for the rest of his life.

At the very least, after the nightmare of Thompson's betrayal, as well as the ordeal of the rapids and falls, her attention toward him was a little like stepping into a bit of paradise. Mayhap the Creator, in His wisdom, was tempering the horrors of this day with some semblance of pleasure, after all.

Black Eagle groaned, and she, hearing it, whispered, “I thank the dear Lord that you are alive, and I thank you for following me into the falls. You could have easily left me to my fate.”

“Not possible.”

“I fear to disagree,” she murmured. “It would have been more than possible.”

He shook his head. “Not and remain honorable. Besides, when two people are bound together, not only with passion, but with love, the other person's fate becomes your own.”

She gulped, then whispered, “I have been wrong, Black Eagle. I have been very wrong.”

“Shhhh,” he uttered. “Do not try to talk.”

“No, I must. You have been right. It is not true that one person is another person's ‘better' because of birth. The English think of the Indian as beneath them, not worthy or smart enough to have rights. Yet look at you. Look at me. I would not be here but for you. How can I ever thank you properly?”

He nuzzled his head into her neck, and he said, “I think that you are going about it in a very good way right now.”

“Truly?” As if his words gave her courage, she ventured outward in her exploration of him, her kisses seeking out his cheeks, his eyes and nose, his lips. Her hands had twined themselves irreparably in his hair, and she confided, “I thought to never see you again, and were that to have been so, my feeling of loss would have been beyond endurance. How happy I am that you are here, and that I am here, and we are together.”

“I, too,” he said. “I, too.”

And he began to return her embrace, kissing her, deeply, lovingly, sacredly.

It is said by the elders
, he thought,
that if you save another from a certain death, their life belongs thereafter to you
. But, wise though this philosophy was, he felt the opposite was true for him.

He belonged to her. Now. Forever.

In his adoration of her, his tongue ranged into her mouth, withdrew from it, then reached in again, exploring the depths of her, thrilling to the clean taste of her. Again, he groaned. Again, she surged forward against him.

And she whispered, “Black Eagle, I little understand how it is possible after all that we have been through today, but I fear that I want . . . love.”

When she added, “Do you object?” he thought he might likely go out of his head.

“Object?” he said. “What sane man would object to an act of love?”

“I am glad to hear that you're willing,” she said. Her touch was broadening out in her survey of him, her palms extending lower and lower, down to his chest, which at present, was bare. Sometime today, somehow, he'd lost his shirt. He hadn't really taken note of the fact until this very moment. But he was glad of it. There was nothing there to stand between his skin and hers.

“There is a tattoo here on your chest and the same on your arms, as well.”

“So there are.”

“They are wolves.”

“It is my clan.”

She nodded. Farther and farther down, her touch ranged, her fingers coming to linger over his very erect, very male nipples. He shuddered with delight. And when her lips followed where her fingers led, he growled, deep in his throat.

“I want you to love me,” she murmured, as she rose up to run her tongue over his lips. “I want to know in a very elemental way that you are, indeed, real.”

“I already love you,” he said. “But I will make love to you, if only to demonstrate how very real we are to each other.”

“Yes,” she said. “Please.”

Her fingers fell down over him, to sweep away his breechcloth, hesitating there, over his stiff and erect manhood. She groaned, and, if possible, his hardening expanded. He might have brought her up over him, but she had already taken charge, and she moved into position so that she was straddling him. Bringing up her skirts, she settled herself down over him, joining their bodies in a most rudimentary way.

She sighed, and he moaned. And then she began to move against him sensuously, and bending toward him, she kissed his lips while her tongue delved deeply into his mouth, exploring his taste as thoroughly as he had many times done to her.

He was, indeed, a willing and active recipient of all she had to give and he let her take the lead, until, soon, he felt her begin that inevitable spiral toward release. It was an exquisite plateau she sought, and as her need for his strength consumed her, he took over command of their lovemaking, surging up within her. All the while his tongue swept the inner sanctum of her mouth, mirroring the active admiration of their bodies.

Her hands grabbed hold of his shoulders and her squirming took on a sensuality that had him spiraling out of control. He felt her plunging from that precipice, felt her release, and almost instantaneously he was bursting within her.

But it wasn't over. As their bodies opened up to each other, they became as one, together soaring upward above their physical being. Never, he thought, had he ever felt so close to another human being. Nor had he ever experienced being so close to eternity, as though by the act of love, some secret that bound them to this earth, was revealed.

With her, worlds opened to him. With her, he felt capable of anything. He loved her.

And when she whispered, “I love you. I will love you always,” it felt as if the whole world had shifted.

He smiled, and bringing her head down to his, he kissed her long and hard. Words escaped him. And in the end, all he said was, “I, too. I, too.”

 

 

They must have dozed, for he awakened suddenly. Alert, he listened, but he could hear little but the rush of the rapids. He said, “We must leave here at once and seek shelter.” He kissed her gently, then pushed her up, disengaging himself from her.

“Yes,” she said, as she came up onto her knees and flopped down beside him. “I do have a question I forgot to ask. Did you find any sign of Thompson?”

Black Eagle grimaced. “I found nothing of him. No trail, no clue, not even a remnant of his clothing.”

As she straightened up, she said, “At least I now understand why there were so many accidents on the trail.”

“Yes, I fear he was the cause. But come, we must move along. We are not yet in a safe place. Can you walk?”

She nodded. “Where will we go?”

“Not far,” he answered. “But because our enemies will look for us, we will have to discover a place that will be so well hidden that it will disappear into the landscape. The Ottawa will not give up our trail easily, I think, and they will send their scouts out, looking for us, so I must build us a shelter very well. Know this, it is one thing to try to fool the white man into not seeing what is there before him, it is another to try to trick an Indian scout.”

She sighed. “I suppose you are right, but won't they think we're dead? Why are they so persistent?”

“Because we killed four of their own. They will not forget easily. By now they will have discovered that there are no bodies, except perhaps that of Miss Sarah.”

Marisa caught her breath.

“They may, even now, be searching the ground for clues as to what has happened to us. If we remain here, they will certainly find us, and our fate will be sure and exact. We must go.” Arising, he helped her to her feet. “We must go quickly. Can you run?”

“I think so.”

“Then come, we had best find a good place to erect a shelter. It may take some time.”

And with this said, Black Eagle headed into the woods. “Lift your skirts,” he said to her before he broke into a run. “The material you wear tears easily and could leave a trail.”

She nodded, and then they were away.

 

 

They had literally run through the forest, sweeping over paths that weren't really paths, jumping over logs and branches, looking for what, Marisa could only conjecture. They climbed up a steep hill, ran down into the surrounding valley. And still they didn't stop.

And with each footfall, Marisa became more and more concerned over Sarah's fate. It seemed to her that they were traveling far away. Were they leaving her behind?

At last she had to know, and she called out to Black Eagle, who was far ahead of her in the lead, “Sir Eagle, how will we ever find Sarah, if we go so far away from the water?”

With her question, Black Eagle stopped and turned back toward her. Patiently, he waited for her to catch up to him, and when she came within hearing distance, he said, “We have not traveled far from the falls. I am circling the lake and the rapids, looking for something in the environment that I can use to make a shelter that will not be easily recognized for what it is.”

“Oh.”

He smiled at her. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” she said at once, not realizing that she was so until he mentioned it.

Motioning to her to come close, he opened a bag that hung from his shoulder, and he offered her the pemmican that was within it. She took a handful and plopping it in her mouth, she chewed. The dried meat, which was mixed with fat and berries, tasted wonderful, more pleasing it seemed than the richest meal she'd ever eaten. It was so good, she observed, “I'm surprised this didn't get soaked.”

“It is a little wet.”

“Hardly. 'Tis very appealing,” she said between bites.

He smiled at her, and bent down to steal a kiss. However, no more had he done so, than he was straightening up. And he was happily grinning. But he wasn't looking at her.

“There,” he said, pointing. “There is what I've been looking for.”

She gazed in the direction he indicated, but she could see nothing that could bring such delight. She said, “Truly?”

“
Nyoh
, and it is all because of you. Come, I will show you our new home.”

 

 

It was ingenious. It was simply brilliant. A large elm tree had fallen on its side, leaving a gap of about four feet between its trunk and the ground. Branches were spread out everywhere over the earth.

Looking at it in the raw, however, Marisa was less than pleased. Were they to spend the night inside a tree?

But that had been before Black Eagle had gone on to erect a shelter. First he had cut off some of the tree's upper branches, then he had spread them sideways over the trunk, which had created a lean-to, complete with enough branches over the top so as to form a ceiling. But the real stoke of genius had come in the form of scattering other branches over the ground, around and over the shelter, so that the hideaway literally disappeared into its surroundings.

Further landscaping with limbs, leaves and tufts of grass had hidden the shelter even more so by simply making it appear to be a part of the tree. Inside the shelter, pine boughs became their floor, while tree bark that he had carefully cut from the bottom of the elm tree, provided them with a ceiling.

Their door also consisted of the same tree bark, so, too, the walls of their shelter.

Black Eagle had then gone back to the stream to fill one of his bags with water, while another bag that he carried with him contained enough pemmican to see them through several days.

The shelter wasn't large—it was only about four feet in height—but it was big enough and long enough to allow them to lie down full form. That it was also warm and waterproof made it a bit of a haven in the wilderness.

However, Black Eagle had no more than set up the structure, than he had left, giving her strict instructions to be quiet and to make no fire. It was to be his task, he had told her, to backtrack and erase their trail from the forest floor.

She had meant to busy herself with little tasks, making their shelter more habitable, but in the end, she had capitulated to the tiredness of her body, and it wasn't until Black Eagle crawled into their shelter that she had awakened.

“It is I,” he'd said, announcing himself, and scooting in through their doorway.

It was dark inside the shelter, and she realized that she had slept the rest of the afternoon and evening away. Streams of moonlight filtered in through a few of the openings in their ceiling and walls, making Black Eagle barely visible to her. Sitting up and rubbing her eyes, she said, “Welcome home.”

“Ah,” he said in return, “that it were really true. That we shared a home together, and that I was returning from the hunt, loaded with game to serve us for many a supper in the months ahead.”

She smiled. “It does sound quite lovely, doesn't it?”

“
Nyoh
, I wish that it were so. But now that we are alone, and are safe from our enemies—at least for the night—I would look at you more closely. Are you hurt anywhere?”