Wild Thunder Page 15

  “Have I not shown in many ways my friendship toward you?” Strong Wolf demanded. “Is that not enough? Enough to believe Strong Wolf over evil white men? Strong Wolf has always been the white man’s friend. I have always spoke well of those who are good at heart. I feel that you, a great war chief, would not hurt my people. You know that my objective is not war. Had it been, I would have attacked and killed the war chief and his soldiers long ago!”

  “Don’t threaten me,” Colonel Deshong said, his eyes squinting angrily. “And as far as friendships go, when someone says they have proof of even a friend’s guilt, I have to investigate.”

  “I am a true friend,” Strong Wolf said tightly. “And to strengthen my friendship with you, the war chief for this territory, I offer to go again for more meat for you and your men.” He offered to do this, knowing that with men like Tiny around, he needed this strengthening of camaraderie with the colonel.

  Colonel Deshong’s eyebrows forked. “As a matter of fact, we do need more meat,” he said, smiling up at Strong Wolf. “You are a true friend for offering to bring more for our tables.”

  “You will soon have it,” Strong Wolf said, then looked more somberly down at Patrick. “And do not forget that favor when evil men might again wrongly accuse me of crimes I have not committed.”

  “And now that that is behind us, what has brought this lovely lady to the fort with you, Strong Wolf?” Patrick said, rising from his chair. He went to Hannah. “You surely did not come just to listen to the two of us have a heated discussion.”

  “No, not quite,” Hannah said, laughing awkwardly. She tilted her chin, causing her long golden hair to tumble down her back, her dress more feminine than usual. And today she was not riding a horse. She had come in a buggy. “I have come to ask you to do a special favor for me.”

  “Why, certainly,” Patrick said, clasping his hands behind him as he rocked slowly back and forth. “Just ask and it is yours.”

  “Would you please send a wire to my parents and my sister in Saint Louis?” Hannah said, sending a beaming smile over at Strong Wolf, who stood with his eyes on her.

  He had placed his anger behind him and now waited for her to announce their upcoming marriage.

  “Why, I would be happy to,” Patrick said, unclasping his hands. He reached a gentle hand to Hannah’s arm. He led her to the desk and handed her a pen. “Just write down what you wish to be sent, and I shall do you the honors.”

  Hannah took the pen, smiled over at Strong Wolf, then dipped the pen in the inkwell. She wrote out the message that her parents would soon be reading, and then one for her sister.

  She knew to expect an explosion from her father and pitied her mother having to be the one to calm him. He would have to understand that Hannah was no longer his concern; she was a woman with her own mind.

  And as for Clara? She knew that Clara would be happy for her. But would Clara be willing to give up her ambitions of teaching? She was just about to graduate from college.

  Hannah only hoped that Clara would care enough for Hannah’s future with her husband to come and help her establish it. Her hand trembled as she wrote that note to her sister. It was the more important of the two!

  She signed her name to the notes and handed them to the colonel. “I believe I have covered everything in my notes to my parents and my sister,” she said, smiling to herself at his reaction when he read them, then stared up at her.

  “Yes, sir, I am going to marry Strong Wolf,” Hannah said, linking her arm through Strong Wolf’s. “As soon as my parents can accept the marriage and will arrive here to share the happy event with me.”

  “We would like for you to be there also,” Strong Wolf said, addressing Patrick.

  “It would be my pleasure,” Patrick said, nodding.

  Hannah turned soft eyes to Claude. “And you, Claude,” she said, smiling at him. “Would you please?”

  “Why, most certainly,” Claude said, smiling widely over at her, and then Strong Wolf. “I would have been hurt to the core had you not included me.”

  Hannah turned to Strong Wolf and hugged him, then watched as Patrick sent the wires.

  When it was done, she sighed. “And now to await the responses,” she said, giving Strong Wolf a nervous glance.

  Strong Wolf placed an arm around her waist. “We will go now.”

  Claude went to Strong Wolf and placed a hand of friendship on his shoulder. “Congratulations,” he said, his eyes warm. “Just let me know when to be there for the wedding. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” He stepped away from Strong Wolf and gave Hannah a gentle hug. “I wish you all the happiness in the world.”

  “Thank you,” she said, returning the hug.

  Patrick went to Strong Wolf and shook his hand. “I envy you,” he said, giving Hannah a glance. “My wife passed away a few years ago. I’ve never considered marrying again. But should someone like Hannah come along and give me a second glance, I think I’d jump at the opportunity of having such a woman to grow old with.”

  “Why, thank you,” Hannah said, surprised. She even welcomed the colonel’s arms around her as he gave her a pleasant hug.

  She then walked to the door with Strong Wolf, for the moment feeling content.

  “I’ve much to discuss with Patrick,” Claude said, as they stepped outside onto the porch. “And if a wire comes in from your parents, I’ll personally bring it to you, Hannah.”

  “I hope that will be soon,” Hannah said, stepping up into her buggy.

  Strong Wolf swung himself into his saddle and rode beside her buggy through the wide gate of the fort, then rode in silence until the fort was far behind them.

  Then he reached down and grabbed Hannah’s reins. “Do not return home just yet,” he said, his eyes imploring her. “Too many things have gotten in the way of our being together. Let us hide ourselves in the woods today so that we can be alone. No one will find us to interrupt our moments together.”

  “I had planned to spend the rest of the day with Chuck,” Hannah said, her heart thumping at the thought of doing otherwise. “I feel as though I have neglected him, Strong Wolf. Soon I will have to tell him our plans. I don’t want to have any regrets.”

  “I need you,” Strong Wolf pleaded. “For a little while, Hannah? Then you can return to your duties to your brother.”

  Understanding his needs, which matched her own, Hannah nodded. “Yes, darling,” she murmured. “For a little while. I want nothing more than to be with you.”

  He leaned down and kissed her, then led the way through the forest until they came to a slow, meandering stream, over which hung a thick foliage of oak and elm trees. The shade was cool. The breeze was gentle. Everywhere overhead birds sang and flew from branch to branch. Squirrels scampered beneath the trees, gathering long lost acorns from last autumn.

  “It is absolutely perfect,” Hannah said, gazing around her. Wild roses climbed the trees, in pinks and reds, their fragrance sweet and spicy.

  Strong Wolf removed a blanket from his buckskin bag that lay across his saddle. He took the blanket and spread it on the ground close to the stream.

  He reached out a hand for Hannah. She went to him and sat down beside him. For a while they watched the minnows at play in the water.

  Then Strong Wolf turned Hannah toward him and drew her into his arms. His lips came to hers in a frenzy of kisses, his hands quickly unbuttoning her dress.

  As he lowered the dress down to her waist and her breasts were revealed to him, he moaned as his hands swept around them, their softness, their firmness, sending a hunting passion through him like a whip crack.

  Hannah abandoned herself to the wondrous feelings that swam through her as his hands kneaded her breasts, his lips drugging her. She reached up beneath his shirt and ran her fingers over the smoothness of his skin, over his muscled chest, then gently pinched his nipples until they became hard against the palms of her hands.

  Needing more than this, wanting everything today, Strong Wolf eased a
way from Hannah and yanked his shirt off. He stood up over her as he slipped his breeches down, the urgency he felt for her springing into sight.

  “Remove your clothes,” he said as he kicked his breeches away, then stepped out of his moccasins.

  Hannah moved to her knees and slipped her dress over her head and tossed it aside, then as he watched her, she lay down on her back and slid her undergarments slowly and seductively down her legs.

  Swallowing hard, passion overwhelming him, Strong Wolf knelt down beside her and grabbed her undergarments and yanked it away from her. He removed her shoes and stockings, then straddled her and probed with his throbbing hardness between her thighs, where she opened herself to him.

  Her blood quickened, and she closed her eyes in ecstasy when he entered her in one quick thrust, filling her magnificently.

  She shuddered with desire and tossed her head back and forth, moaning throatily as he moved within her.

  Strong Wolf wove his fingers through the soft glimmer of her hair and brought her lips to his, his free hand moving over her silken body, touching and caressing her secret places.

  Her whole body quivered as the slow thrusting of his pelvis brought her ecstasy. She swept her arms around his neck. Her soft, full thighs opened more widely to him as she placed her legs around his waist. She clung and rocked with him, sighing against his lips as he reverently breathed her name while kissing her.

  His hard body against hers, the way they were locked together, so sensually, made a flood of emotions overtake Hannah. How could she have lived before him? She had not known that such paradise existed on this earth. Her breath quickened with pleasure as his lips brushed her throat, and he sank his mouth over a breast, his tongue flicking the nipple.

  “I adore you,” she whispered, her face hot with her building passion. “I love you. I shall always love you.”

  Strong Wolf gazed into her eyes and swept damp locks of her hair back from her face. “You are mine forever,” he whispered.

  He once again claimed her lips with his in a heated kiss, his tongue thrusting between her lips, touching hers, the fires of his passion burning, spreading, heating up his insides like an inferno.

  “More,” Hannah whispered, hardly recognizing her voice in its huskiness, or herself, in her brazenness. Her voice quivered emotionally with excitement. “Don’t stop. Love me. Fill me more deeply. I need you! Please, Strong Wolf. More!”

  Responding to her need, the very air charged with their building pleasure, Strong Wolf plunged himself more deeply into her pulsing cleft, feeling the clasping of her moist inner flesh. He gripped her shoulders. His mouth brushed her cheeks, her ears, then lightly and tenderly kissed her eyelids.

  “My woman,” he whispered into her ear. He felt his temperature rising, her spasmodic gasps proving that she was nearing her own sought-for release.

  He pressed his cheek against one of her breasts and fell back into a wild, dizzying rhythm inside her, his breath filling the morning air with its gasps of pleasure.

  “Now!” Hannah cried, feeling the familiar sensations that came moments before finding total ecstasy within the arms of her beloved. “I feel it. Oh, Strong Wolf, now!”

  She clung to him as she became overwhelmed with pleasure, the spasms of his body proving to her that they had reached the ultimate of pleasure together.

  Afterward they lay together, clinging, breathing more easily. Hannah was suddenly aware again of the birds in the trees overhead, of the soft spiraling of the sun as it laced its way through a break in the trees, and of a distant voice of frogs vibrating from the thickets that grew down into the stream.

  “I really must go,” Hannah said, easing gently from Strong Wolf’s embrace. “I promised Chuck that I would study the journals again today. I . . . I . . . just can’t seem to understand their entries.”

  Strong Wolf grabbed her by the wrist and brought her down beside him again, but only to give her one last kiss. He kissed her, then rose with her from the blanket and dressed.

  “One day soon you will not have to think of journals,” Strong Wolf said, sliding his fringed, buckskin breeches up his muscled legs. “You will be my wife. It will be good to know that when I come to my lodge, you will be there.”

  “Always,” Hannah said, going to him, running her fingers over his chest. She leaned down and flicked her tongue over one of his nipples, smiling when she heard him suck in a wild breath of pleasure.

  “My woman, do you wish to return to your brother today?” Strong Wolf said, taking her gently by her shoulders, leading her away from him.

  “Yes, I must,” Hannah said, eyes innocently wide.

  “Then, do not torment this man who will soon be your husband by sending his heart into another spinning,” he said, laughing softly. He bent over, grabbed his shirt, and quickly had it over his head.

  “One day soon I shall torment you all I wish,” Hannah mocked as she finished dressing. “For I will be with you both day and night. I shall torment you mercilessly with my kisses and caresses.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair in an effort to remove the tangles, then gasped with pleasure when he drew her against the hard frame of his body to kiss her again.

  She gyrated her body against his, wanting more, regretting having to leave him. “I need you,” she whispered, her one hand feeling his own need through the fabric of his breeches. “Should we, perhaps, wait awhile longer?”

  “No, it’s best not,” Strong Wolf said. He eased her away from him. “You go your way. I will go mine. Soon our paths will not have to cross, but come together as one. We will only say good-bye for short intervals when I am gone to tend to the duties of my people.”

  Sighing, Hannah watched him shake the blanket out, then fold it and return it to his parfleche bag. She walked then to her buggy and climbed onto the seat.

  Taking up the slack reins, she gazed over at Strong Wolf as he swung himself into his saddle.

  “We don’t dare kiss good-bye,” Hannah said, knowing that to even touch him again would most certainly alter her plans for the day.

  “No, we dare not kiss again,” Strong Wolf said, smiling at her. “Nor even touch. Good-bye for now, Hannah. We will be together again soon.”

  “Yes, soon,” Hannah whispered as he wheeled his horse around and rode away from her.

  Now familiar with the land, Hannah knew her way back to her brother’s ranch. She had only a short way to go, already at his pastureland.

  She gazed in the distance at her brother’s ranch house, admiring it. Then she looked at the outbuildings and gazed at the bunkhouse. She could see several men mulling about there, and thought of Tiny.

  “The weasel,” she murmured. “But how on earth am I ever to get my brother to fire him? Even this last incident probably didn’t convince him that he is up to no good. What is his hold on my brother?”

  Her brother had explained away Tiny’s latest attempts at discrediting Strong Wolf, by saying that Tiny was hardly different from a large majority of white people who didn’t like Indians.

  Yet she felt as though she had achieved something by her latest talk with her brother. As she had talked against Tiny, the very man who made the daily entries in her brother’s journals, she had watched Chuck take out a magnifying glass to study the figures on the pages.

  She could tell by his reaction, that although mainly seeing shadows and light as he had looked at the figures, he had seen something that had caused him to glance up at her, his face pale with discovery.

  He had seen something questionable in the entries!

  Yet again he had scoffed about it, saying that Tiny wouldn’t have the nerve to try and alter the figures.

  Not knowing anything about bookkeeping, Hannah felt helpless, yet at least she knew that her brother’s suspicions had been aroused.

  And if Clara would agree to come and see to Chuck’s best interests, she would know whether or not Tiny was scheming to swindle her brother, for she was a skilled mathematician.

/>   “Clara, you’ve got to come,” she whispered, then rode on toward the house, frowning at Tiny as she passed by him.

  His sly smile sent goose bumps up and down her flesh.

  Chapter 23

  Thou must be true thyself,

  If thou the truth wouldn’t teach.

  —HORATIUS BONAR

  The next day, Strong Wolf and several warriors were on the hunt for the colonel’s meat. Three deer were tied to the backs of horses, with plans to kill at least one more before heading back to the fort with the friendship offerings.

  As Strong Wolf rode onward, a blue heron flew out from the brush, its wide wings flapping in a slow beat.

  Looking down at the ground, Strong Wolf saw the whiteness of thistle seeds, that which the Maker had placed on the earth as a cushion for those who traveled often in the forest.

  He saw jewelweed, balm against the sting of nettle and poison ivy. He also saw the three-leaved raspberry, the fox grape, and the leaves of ginger.

  Yes, he thought to himself, it was a good place for his people, a land of loveliness. He was proud to have led them there, although he was constantly faced with challenges with the white man.

  The hunt was needed today to again guarantee solid friendships with those at the fort.

  He was willing to do this as long as they, in turn, displayed their ways of friendship toward the Potawatomis!

  The sun was warm on Strong Wolf’s bare chest. His breechclout fluttered in the breeze as he spied another deer in the path a short distance away.

  He drew a right rein, his horse stopping at the command.

  He yanked his bow off his shoulder, slipped an arrow from the quiver and notched it to the bowstring, then took steady aim. He whispered his prayer to the deer.

  He looked quickly elsewhere when a sudden spattering of gunfire rang through the dense forest, the sparks of the blast catching Strong Wolf’s eyes just as he saw movement.

  Proud Heart rode up to his side. “White hunters!” he cried.

  Soon they realized that the white men were more than that. While one of the white men went and stood over the downed deer, the others came out of hiding on horseback from all sides and surrounded the Potawatomis braves, their rifles aimed at them.