She shook her head but kept her focus forward as she fought the burn assaulting her eyes. Papa’s death made all the losses feel so fresh. She managed to swallow enough of the knot in her throat to keep her voice from wobbling. “Our father sold the ranch three years ago, before we moved to Richmond.” After Mama died.
He’d never been vocal about his love for Mama, but there had always seemed to be respect and affection between them. Juniper had never realized the extent of it until he uprooted all of their lives so dramatically and sank into his shell of grief in that dark townhouse.
It had taken a full two years for her and her sisters to draw him back into something of a normal life. Then they’d only had a few more months with him before...
Silence threatened to sink over them again, and she didn’t have the strength to break it, not with the memories weighing on her.
“Oh!” Lorelei’s squeal jerked Juniper upright, and shespun in her saddle. Her sister clutched the coyote pup tight to her chest. “You’re not running away again. Do you hear me, Boots? Settle down.”
The animal seemed to understand the words, for it ceased squirming and seemed to sigh with relief, tucked there against its mistress.
Juniper turned to face forward again and caught Riley’s dubious look over his shoulder as he muttered, “Not sure we should have brought him.”
She almost smiled. He didn’t sound frustrated about the animal anymore, just grumpy. “There’s no place to lock him up in our lodge. He would get past the door flap too easily.”
His expression turned dry. “That’s because he’s a wild animal. Wild animals are supposed to run free.”
She widened her eyes in the sweet look she’d always charmed Pa with. “Lorelei will set him free as soon as he’s old enough to find food on his own.”
Riley only shook his head. He might not have made peace with her sister’s unusual pet, but at least he realized how futile it was to try to convince her to let him go.
Lor had never been able to look away when an animal needed help, no matter how unlikely that she could save it. Not since that first tragic time.
One of the barn cats on the ranch had a litter of kittens, and Lorelei had been enamored with them. But when she’d made a nest in a water barrel and sealed the top tightly to keep the stable hand’s pup from finding them, all six helpless babes had smothered. Lorelei cried every day for two weeks and wouldn’t even look at another animal, much less go near it, for a full month.
Then something had changed in her. Maybe it was findingthe injured bird beneath the tree and successfully nursing it back to health. Ever since then, Lorelei had been drawn to creatures in need, and no amount of reasoning could convince her not to help.
By the time they’d been riding at least an hour, the endless rows of lodges between their path and the river had finally fallen away, and a small grove of trees stood ahead.
“Are we getting close?” She glanced at the man riding beside her.
Riley’s hat brim was cocked up as he eyed the landscape before them. The strong lines of his face stood out in his profile. His nose just the right size, his strong chin not quite buried under the beard—every feature proportioned perfectly to form a rather pleasing picture.
But not a picture she should be staring at.
“I haven’t been down this way since the tribe came to the rendezvous, but I heard we should see their lodges on the other side of those trees.”
“That’s what I heard too.” Mr. Dragoon spoke up from behind her. “The Peigan are the only band of Blackfoot allowed to come to the rendezvous, as they tend to be more peaceable than the Bloods or the Blackfoot proper. Still, we all make sure to camp north of them. The Snake Indians and the Flatheads and the Nez Perce all camp farther above the trappers. They’d rather the Peigan not be here at all, but as long as they don’t do their warring during rendezvous, the Peigan are allowed.”
“How many Peigan Blackfoot are there?” Rosemary asked the question, but they’d all been wondering. Exactly how hard would the search be?
Juniper glanced again at Riley. A crease had formedin his brow, and he didn’t look like he was planning to answer.
Thankfully, Mr. Dragoon did. “Well ... I don’t rightly know for sure. Maybe a thousand? Most of the Blackfoot live north of here, up near the Marias River and beyond. Not sure anyone would really know the answer to that.”
A weight pressed in Juniper’s chest. “How far away is the Marias River?” They’d been hoping to find this woman here at the rendezvous, since they’d heard many natives came for the festivities. Then they could return East with the supply wagons. Clearly they’d far underestimated the situation.
“Three weeks’ travel, at least. Depends on how far your mount can go in a day or how many saddle horses you bring along to trade off.”
Riley finally made a sound, a snort that showed he disagreed with the assessment. “It’s farther than that. And Blackfoot country stretches all the way up into Rupert’s Land.”
“Do you know if there’s a giant boulder in the shape of a windmill in that area? Our father said it was quite an impressive spectacle. I have a sketch of the way he described it, but I left it back at our lodge. He said Steps Right’s people were camped near it.”
Riley slid her a look, and his mouth pressed as though he was measuring his words. “I’ve never seen anything like that, but it isn’t likely to help much anyway. The Blackfoot travel with the food. There’s not much chance they’ll still be camped in the same place they were two decades ago. You said it’s been twenty years, right?”
She fought the disappointment coursing through her anddid her best to straighten her spine, though her body wanted to wilt. But before she could answer, he lifted an arm to point in front of them.
A few lodges appeared ahead, nearly identical to the ones they’d just left behind. As they rounded a cluster of trees, the full camp spread out before them. Figures stood beside the dwellings, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups of three or four.
