Elizabeth Lane - Shawnee Bride

Stillness lay like a wall between them, growing thicker, heavier. “The Shawnee found you and took you in?” Clarissa prompted when she could bear it no longer.

“They offered me everything I thought I’d lost,” he said. “Family. Honor. Kindness. A life filled with meaning and purpose.”

“And when they put you on trial—” a bitter undertone had crept into Clarissa’s voice “—did you prove yourself worthy to live among them?”

“Yes.”

She strained to hear his half-whispered reply.

“As I have had to prove myself many times over. Even now.”

The canoe shot forward as he drove the paddle hard into the current. Clarissa stared bleakly ahead—trees, willows and water blending into streaks of muted spring color. She knew now why Wolf Heart had taken her prisoner, and why he would never let her go. To show compassion for a white captive would prove, to him and to all his adopted tribe, that he was not a true Shawnee. He would be an outcast, torn from a world he had come to know and love.

She could expect no mercy from him.

They were passing through a level stretch of river. Here the floodwaters had crept outward across the bottomlands to form a lake, so calm and glassy that the current was scarcely visible. Clarissa stared down at the clouded water, wondering what lay beneath it. Surely, with the river spread so wide, it could not be more than a few feet deep in any spot. Better yet, the bank on the near side was thick with brush and willows. If she could reach them, it might be possible to duck beneath the water, then surface and hide in the shelter of the trailing branches until Wolf Heart gave her up for drowned.

Clarissa’s mind reeled with the daring of her idea. It was a reckless scheme, to be sure. But a fighting chance at escape was better than no chance at all.

She glanced back at Wolf Heart, hoping to catch him off guard. He was watching her intently.

“How far is your village?” she asked in a ploy to lure him back into conversation.

“Not far.” His paddle rippled through the silky water. “We will be there before sundown.”

“You were a long way from home when you found me,” she ventured. “What were you doing?”

“Trailing a bear.”

“A bear?” Clarissa’s reflexes jerked. She imagined herself lying unconscious on the riverbank, the monstrous beast lumbering out of the trees to sniff at her inert body.

“It came to nothing,” Wolf Heart said. “I lost the trail not long before I found you.”

“At least you won’t be coming home empty-handed.” Clarissa made a show of finger-combing her matted curls, drawing his gaze upward as, beneath her skirts, her legs shifted for the leap to freedom. Her pounding heart seemed to fill her whole chest and throat as she tensed, then sprang upward and hurled herself out over the surface of the river.

For the barest instant she hung suspended between sun and water. Then the cold strangling wetness closed around her and she began to sink. Her kicking feet groped for the bottom that, by all reason, should have been within easy reach. It was not there.

Too late, Clarissa realized how wrong she had been. The nver was far deeper here than it had appeared from the surface, and now its strong undertow was pulling her down. Her bursting lungs released a trail of bubbles in the darkness. Her mouth gulped for air and took in water. Her legs and arms thrashed frantically as her oxygenstarved mind began to dim.

She was already beginning to drown.

Wolf Heart cursed under his breath—a white man’s curse—as his prisoner plunged over the side of the canoe and vanished headlong into the brown swirl of water. His annoyance was directed more at himself than at Clarissa Rogers. He should have known she would try something like this.

His first impulse was to dive in after her, but he swiftly checked himself. To jump into the river would mean losing the canoe and all his provisions. It would be easy enough to paddle to shore ahead of her. That way he would be there waiting to confront her when she staggered, dripping and exhausted, onto the bank.

He turned the canoe broadside to the current, expecting at any moment to see Clarissa’s head bob into sight, her russet hair streaming behind her like a long wet foxtail as she stroked through the water. The undercurrent was strong in this part of the river, but the bank was no more than a stone’s throw away. A good swimmer would be able to cover the distance in a few minutes’ tune. And surely, if Clarissa was not a good swimmer, she would not have jumped.

Seconds passed, measured in long deep breaths and expectant heartbeats. More seconds crawled by, and still she did not appear. Wolf Heart’s instincts shrilled in alarm as he realized something was wrong.

In a flash his lean body knifed into the river, leveling out an arm’s length below the surface. Water filled his vision, so murky with silt that he could barely see his own hands, let alone any sign of Clarissa.

Sick with dread he stroked deeper, heading downstream, the way the current would have carried her. The boyhood ordeal by which he had earned his pa-waw-ka served him well now. Every morning, for four long winter moons, he had forced himself to dive naked into the frigid river. On the final day, with the whole village looking on, he had made three dives, the last one carrying him beneath the ice to the Ohio’s dark bed, where his searching hand had clasped the translucent shell he carried now in his medicine pouch.

That long dive came back to him now as he groped for Clarissa’s slender, elusive body. He remembered the fear, the darkness, the deadly cold. As he had once found his pa-waw-ka, he knew he had to find her.

Lungs bursting, he surfaced at last. His eyes scanned the milky surface of the river as he gulped air, then dove again. Could she be playing with him, hiding somewhere out of sight, laughing behind her hands as he searched frantically in the water? He would not put that past the little vixen—but no, a black inner certainty told him the danger was real.

The current was rougher here. Wolf Heart could feel its pull as the river swept him toward an outcrop of rocks. If he did not find her soon…

His pulse leaped as his fingers brushed a mass of flowing hair, long and fine and silky to the touch. He seized it, and in the next instant felt her head, her throat, her face. He reached lower and caught her waist. She did not respond.

With a wrenching tug, he pulled her body clear from where it had wedged between two underwater boulders. She drifted beside him, as lifeless and unresisting as a doll, as he kicked for the surface, made a final upward lunge and broke with her into the sunlight.

Clarissa lolled in his arms, blue from lack of air. A vein pulsed along the curve of her throat, but she was not breathing.

He plunged for the shallows, lifting her in his arms as his feet found bottom. Her wet hair fanned over his arms, its color like polished cedar. Her gown clung in water-soaked tatters to her delicately curved body. Wolf Heart glanced down at her closed eyelids, remembering her laughter, her maddening questions, her astounding courage. Bursting with effort, he surged ahead, bulling his way through the resisting water. Time and distance crept at a nightmare’s pace as he fought his way toward the river’s edge.

At last he broke free of the water, lurched onto the bank and rolled Clarissa belly-down onto the grass. With his knees, he straddled her waist, his urgent hands working her ribs, lifting, squeezing to imitate the motion of breath.

Why hadn’t he let her go free, back there in the woods? She was such a harmless creature, as fragile and innocent as a fawn. He could just as easily have trailed her back to Fort Pitt, protecting her from a distance until she reached safety. Now, whether she lived or died, it was too late. He had destroyed whatever life she had known, as surely as if he had crushed her skull with a war club.