Sabrina took another step away from him. “I’ll leave you to your patient and your work, Doctor,” she said. She stared at the senator a moment longer, lowering her voice. “You’ll never find her!” she promised very softly.
She turned and exited the room.
The senator watched her go, anger darkening his face. Then he started to laugh. And he looked down at his blanketed knees and then at his feet.
God bless America. Oh, Lord, yes. God bless America.
His toes were twitching. Twitching. Moving. Within a little more time, days…weeks…
He’d be walking again. But no one would know. No one. In fact, she just might be the first to share the joy of his recovery.
When she tried to run.
And he ran right after her.
The fire flickered warmlyagainst Hawk’s face. Ghosts of the past still seemed to dance within it, playing upon his memory.
When his father came for his mother, Flying Sparrow took on the Christian name of Kathryn. She was still very young herself and very beautiful. Many warriors had wanted her over the years, but she had chosen to remain with her father, and as a boy, Hawk realized that she had waited. That she had believedin her heart that her courageous white warrior would return for her. She had lived for that day and for her son.
She had been Thunder Hawk’s support in all things. He loved her. She was leaving. He was old enough to make choices for himself, yet…
The white man had given him a Christian name as well. He was to be called Andrew David Douglas. The white man didn’t try to influence him. He came to him and told him that he would love him always and welcome him always, just as he had made his place with the Sioux and knew that he could come to them.
Thunder Hawk was still not sure about the white man. But Mile-High-Man had reminded him that he must learn to listen to many languages. The message in his vision quest must be obeyed.
Both his grandfather and his mother begged him to give David Douglas a chance.
He sat with his grandfather one day, still torn and demanding to know why he should do so.
“David Douglas is a chief in his land. A lord, they call him. He is honored in Scotland, as his father before him.”
“We are nowhere near Scotland. We have Americans encroaching on us always!”
His grandfather smiled, nodding his wise old head. “He came here like a warrior in his way, to make his own mark. Perhaps because the nomad’s blood was in his veins. Because he had read of wide-open prairies, of endless vistas, of tall grasses that stretched forever. He read about people who were different. He came here to explore, and we seized him but did not kill him. Even faced with certain death, he was a friend who wanted to know us, rather than hate us. He sought knowledge, wisdom, those qualities we seek ourselves. He needed to learn our religion, our way.”
“He left us.”
“His father and brother died. His white wife was very sick. He loved both wives and did his duty to the woman he had taken first. When he could have lived a life of greatest comfort, he returned here. His place is in another land. His heart is here. Now he has arranged it that others care for the title and property that will go to his older son by the white way, yet he has come here with that son as well to live near the rivers where we place our villages. He knows your world. He learned it with his blood. He was our captive first, then our relative.” He took a very deep breath, looking at Hawk. “One day, a tide of white men will come. I saw it many years ago, in my own vision.”
“The tide already comes!”
His grandfather raised a hand in acknowledgment. “You have yet to see the wave! There will be blood before then. We will fill the prairie with our blood, nurture it, give to it. But we cannot stem the flow of white men. Therefore, some of us must befriend them. Some must fight, and some must die, and some must live. Else we have died and bled for nothing. Do you understand?”
“I understand I should fight!”
“The hardest fights are often those we wage within ourselves. Tell me, Thunder Hawk, when a Sioux brave has two ponies and his neighbor has none, what must the brave do?”
Thunder Hawk frowned. “Give his neighbor his second pony. We must always look after one another. We must always be generous. We are taught this from birth?—”
“Then you must be generous with this man who is your father. You will always be Sioux. You will also always be white. You cannot be selfish with yourself. You must share your love with your mother, with your people—and with your white father.”
His grandfather’s words had heavily influenced him as had his vision and the words of the holy man.
But in the end, the main reason he had gone to live with Lord David Douglas was because he learned that Flying Sparrow—Kathryn—was ill. She lost weight daily. She could not sew the buffalo hides into a tipi, a garment, or a parfleche in which to carry things. She couldn’t live where the smoke sometimes wafted back into the tipi in winter. Where there might be raids by whites or Crows or other enemies, where she might have to run in the cold and the snow. She needed the care that Andrew Douglas longed to give her. Hawk could begrudge David much, but he couldn’t deny that the white man loved his mother. That love was apparent in every move that the man made.
So he came to discover just what the white blood in him meant.
Life was different. So different.
