smile before vanishing from sight.
Fiona wasn’t certain if it was a smile of comfort or of madness. Shaking with cold, she clutched the hide around her freezing body. She could see nothing but the gleam of distorted light filtering through the ice, hear nothing but the rush of the stream. Her hiding place seemed more like a tomb than a place of refuge, and she was too frightened to pray.
Without Fiona’s weight, Wolf Shadow retraced his path downstream swiftly. He had frightened the woman badly; he knew it, but he’d had no time to try and assuage that fear. At the same time that the mule had caught the scent of horses on the wind, he’d heard a faint whinny and smelled them himself. Not one horse, but several. Horses meant white men, and more than two whites—where none should be—meant trouble. He regretted having to take the life of the mule, but in another instant the beast’s braying would have betrayed their position. Fiona hadn’t understood the danger.
Wolf Shadow exhaled sharply. He was thinking of the woman again instead of concentrating on keeping them alive. By the sacred breath of Wishemenetoo! What was she doing to him?
Why had he left his friends to rescue a white woman anyway? She would bring him nothing but trouble—even she realized it. Involving himself with her endangered his mission. How was he to convince the Shawnee and Delaware to band together and reject the white civilization if he brought an Irish woman to the People’s land?
And she had not even the decency to be grateful for being rescued.
Wolf Shadow knew what Irish Fiona thought of him. He had seen the truth in her eyes. It was the same look that all whites gave him. Even in England ... even when he’d dressed in their clothes and eaten at their tables, even when he’d bested them at their own games ... they still thought of him as an animal—a crafty one to be certain, but still a wild beast.
He knew how a wolf must feel when a human stares into its eyes.
Men ruled the world now, but the old tales told of a time when animals had ruled. Wolf Shadow wondered if they would ever rule again. If they did, it would be because Wishemenetoo judged men and found them unworthy.
What was there about white-skinned men that made them so arrogant? If they stepped on a piece of land, they claimed it as their own. If they drank water from a spring, they built fences to keep other men and animals from drinking. If they entered a forest, they felt compelled to cut down the trees and burn them.
The land that Wishemenetoo had given to the red man was vast. There would have been room for the strangers to raise their families, game and fish and water enough to share. The Lenni-Lenape, those the white men called the Delaware, had welcomed the first Englishmen to their shores. Now they held the land along the salt sea in an iron fist, and the only red men there were the old and the dead.
Year by year, the English and the French moved steadily west, eating up the tribal hunting grounds, building their roads and towns, killing the red men with their diseases and their liquor. The white men burned the People’s cornfields and desecrated their sacred places. They murdered copper-skinned babies and made whores of the women. The bounties on Indian scalps were higher than the bounties on wolves.
With the fragmentation of the tribes, the Shawnee were becoming weak, unable to defend themselves from their hereditary enemies in the Iroquois League—the Seneca, the Mohawk, the Cayuga, the Oneida, the Onondaga, and the Tuscarora. Hemmed in by the Iroquois and the French to the north and the English to the east and south, the Shawnee and their Delaware cousins were being pushed westward. Soon their backs would be to the great river. Beyond lay the prairies, the home of fierce tribes who would defend their land to the death. The Shawnee must regain their power by allying themselves with the Delaware and the other Algonquian-speaking nations. They must unite
Fiona wasn’t certain if it was a smile of comfort or of madness. Shaking with cold, she clutched the hide around her freezing body. She could see nothing but the gleam of distorted light filtering through the ice, hear nothing but the rush of the stream. Her hiding place seemed more like a tomb than a place of refuge, and she was too frightened to pray.
Without Fiona’s weight, Wolf Shadow retraced his path downstream swiftly. He had frightened the woman badly; he knew it, but he’d had no time to try and assuage that fear. At the same time that the mule had caught the scent of horses on the wind, he’d heard a faint whinny and smelled them himself. Not one horse, but several. Horses meant white men, and more than two whites—where none should be—meant trouble. He regretted having to take the life of the mule, but in another instant the beast’s braying would have betrayed their position. Fiona hadn’t understood the danger.
Wolf Shadow exhaled sharply. He was thinking of the woman again instead of concentrating on keeping them alive. By the sacred breath of Wishemenetoo! What was she doing to him?
Why had he left his friends to rescue a white woman anyway? She would bring him nothing but trouble—even she realized it. Involving himself with her endangered his mission. How was he to convince the Shawnee and Delaware to band together and reject the white civilization if he brought an Irish woman to the People’s land?
And she had not even the decency to be grateful for being rescued.
Wolf Shadow knew what Irish Fiona thought of him. He had seen the truth in her eyes. It was the same look that all whites gave him. Even in England ... even when he’d dressed in their clothes and eaten at their tables, even when he’d bested them at their own games ... they still thought of him as an animal—a crafty one to be certain, but still a wild beast.
He knew how a wolf must feel when a human stares into its eyes.
Men ruled the world now, but the old tales told of a time when animals had ruled. Wolf Shadow wondered if they would ever rule again. If they did, it would be because Wishemenetoo judged men and found them unworthy.
What was there about white-skinned men that made them so arrogant? If they stepped on a piece of land, they claimed it as their own. If they drank water from a spring, they built fences to keep other men and animals from drinking. If they entered a forest, they felt compelled to cut down the trees and burn them.
The land that Wishemenetoo had given to the red man was vast. There would have been room for the strangers to raise their families, game and fish and water enough to share. The Lenni-Lenape, those the white men called the Delaware, had welcomed the first Englishmen to their shores. Now they held the land along the salt sea in an iron fist, and the only red men there were the old and the dead.
Year by year, the English and the French moved steadily west, eating up the tribal hunting grounds, building their roads and towns, killing the red men with their diseases and their liquor. The white men burned the People’s cornfields and desecrated their sacred places. They murdered copper-skinned babies and made whores of the women. The bounties on Indian scalps were higher than the bounties on wolves.
With the fragmentation of the tribes, the Shawnee were becoming weak, unable to defend themselves from their hereditary enemies in the Iroquois League—the Seneca, the Mohawk, the Cayuga, the Oneida, the Onondaga, and the Tuscarora. Hemmed in by the Iroquois and the French to the north and the English to the east and south, the Shawnee and their Delaware cousins were being pushed westward. Soon their backs would be to the great river. Beyond lay the prairies, the home of fierce tribes who would defend their land to the death. The Shawnee must regain their power by allying themselves with the Delaware and the other Algonquian-speaking nations. They must unite
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