Warrior's Embrace (73 page)

She held her breath, waiting. At last he
spoke.

“Good luck, Kate.”

“I don’t need luck. I plan to make my
own.”

The Appaloosa thundered off and disappeared
down the side of the mountain. Kate could hardly see through the
blur of her tears, but she sat tall and straight on her stallion in
case Eagle Mingo had come to the top of the ridge to watch.

o0o

Alexandria, Virginia

Martha’s suitcases lay open on the bed.
Outside her open French doors she could hear Cousin Clara whistling
as she walked toward the paddocks, where she would leave explicit
and lengthy instructions for the care of her Thoroughbreds.

One last dress hung in the closet, waiting to
be packed, a blue sequined gown that Clara had said made her look
classy but available, like a woman who might be interested in a man
but didn’t necessarily need one. Martha took the dress off the
hanger and held it against her body, then twisted around to see
herself in the mirror.

She looked like what she was, an old woman
trying to appear young.

“Silly old fool,” she said. But she put the
dress into the suitcase anyhow. No sense in going off to Europe
half cocked, which was another of Clara’s favorite sayings, one
she’d used the day they went shopping together for their trip.

“Clara, you’re going to corrupt me,” Martha
had said.

“It’s high time somebody did.”

Martha went through the French doors and
stood on the balcony, watching her cousin. Clara strode through the
paddocks like a woman who knew exactly where she was going and what
she was going to do when she got there.

Martha envied that, Clara’s sense of purpose.
She herself still felt as if she were drifting around in a little
boat in a big, scary sea. She wondered if she would ever be able to
find any direction without Kate ...and without Mick.

At the thought of her husband, her hand flew
over her heart, and she thought she might be turning into one of
those women who suffered dizzy spells.

“Martha.”

As if her thoughts had popped out of her head
and become real, Mick stood in the center of the room next to her
bed, where the blue sequined gown spilled out of the suitcase.

“Mick ...I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.”

Mick Malone
apologizing
? Was the
world coming to an end?

“You look good, Martha.”

Suddenly she was glad that she’d dyed her
hair red and that her dress was pink, and that her new shoes made
her look three inches taller.

“Thank you, Mick.”

He glanced at her suitcase, and then back at
her, suddenly an old man, his bones shrunken too small for his skin
and his bluster nothing more than a faint breeze.

“Are you going somewhere, Martha?”

Was she? Even with Mick standing in the
room?

“Yes. Clara and I are taking a little jaunt
to Europe.”

He stood watching her while the grandfather
clock in the hallway chimed the hour. Then slowly he moved across
the room.

“Am I too late?”

Almost shyly he reached out and squeezed her
hand. She wished he would tell her that he loved her, tell her that
he was sorry for all the months and years of isolation. But it was
enough that he had come.

“No, Mick. You’re not too late.”

Witch Dance

Indian paintbrush colored the hills and
red-tailed hawks wheeled upward to the burning blue sky. Eagle rode
hard, his long hair braided and blowing in the wind. Just the other
side of the ridge, Kate’s clinic stood under the trees with an OPEN
sign on the door. He hadn’t seen it, but he knew.

Governor Eagle Mingo knew everything
...except how to live with a broken heart.

He raced toward the Blue River and, stripped
naked, swam until his arms were heavy. Lying on a rock, he let the
sun dry his skin while the seductive music of the river called to
him.

Kate. Kate.

He heard her name everywhere, in the voice of
the river and the silence of the stars, in the new dawning of the
east and the gentle sleeping of the west. At last, his skin warm
from the sun, he rode toward his father’s house.

Winston sat in his favorite chair under the
trees, propped up by cushions and shelling peas from Dovie’s
garden.

“I thought you might come today,” Winston
said.

Today. An auspicious occasion. A turning
point.

The wedding invitation lay open on Eagle’s
hall table, engraved with their names, Anna Mingo and Larry
Carnathan.

Eagle dismounted and leaned against the trunk
of a massive oak.

“Are you and Mother all right?”

Winston’s black eyes could still pierce in
spite of his age and his illness.

“What use is it to keep trying to fly with a
broken wing?” Winston popped open the green pods and forced the
peas out with his thumbnail. “The old ways are disappearing, Eagle.
Nothing we can say or do will stop that.” He cast the empty shell
carefully into the open paper sack sitting beside his chair; then
he studied his son. “Dovie and I are fine. How about you?”

“Kate lives and breathes no more than fifteen
minutes away from my ranch, and I am separated from her by honor
and duty and a tradition that I can no longer justify.”

“Where is the honor if your heart shrivels
within you? What is duty that it should steal your happiness?”

“Our nation ...even our family is becoming
homogenized.”

“One man alone can’t stop it.” Winston
reached for the peas, and concentrated as he popped them into the
pottery bowl he held on his lap. “In my illness, I’ve had much time
to think, and I’ve come to believe that courage is more important
than blood.”

The courage of a woman who rebuilt her clinic
from ashes. Eagle pushed away from the tree and knelt beside his
father’s chair to help shell the peas.

“...And that old blood can become stagnant if
it’s not mixed with new,” Eagle added.

“You’ve given this much thought,” Winston
said.

“Yes. I was compelled to. The roots of my
heart are forever entangled with Kate Malone’s, and the strongest
winds cannot separate us.”

A breeze ruffled Winston’s long gray hair as
he silently performed the task that Dovie had set for him. Eagle
waited beside the chair, his hands moving among the peas and his
heart already flying across the prairie.

“And what conclusions have you come to?”
Winston asked finally.

“A wise leader can adopt the exigencies of
modern society and yet retain tribal heritage.”

“You are very wise, my son.”

o0o

Kate escorted her patient to the door—Bethany
Martin, her face shriveled like a prune and her hands curled under
with the arthritis that constantly plagued her.

“I knew you’d be back.” Bethany gave her a
toothless grin, then pressed a box into her hands, its sides greasy
from the cookies that were stacked inside.

“And how did you know that, Mrs. Martin? Are
you taking up clairvoyance as well as needlepoint and cookie
making?”

“Nope. Plain old common sense.” She tapped
Kate’s chest with a knotty finger. “You’ve got a stout Chickasaw
heart. You’re unconquered and unconquerable.”

“You bet your sweet boots, I am. Nobody’s
going to drive me out of Witch Dance again. Not ever.”

Bethany giggled. “My boots are no longer
young and sweet, but they still get me where I’m going.”

Kate watched as the old woman climbed into
her car, adjusted her hat then set off in a cloud of dust.

Her first patient. And there would be many
more.

When the dust settled, she tipped her face to
the sky and the noonday sun fell over her like a benediction. There
was a new warmth to the sun, a new welcome in the sky. Kate knew
that she was finally home.

She had turned to go back inside her clinic,
when she heard the thundering of horse’s hooves. Shading her eyes,
she looked into the distance.

Eagle Mingo rode into view.

He stopped at the top of the hill, backlit by
the sun. Hope thrummed through her, but she stood still at the
door, not yet trusting, not yet believing. On the hillside Eagle
dismounted and stood gazing down at her as if he, too, could
neither trust nor believe.

Suddenly the silence was rent with the cry of
an eagle. As the majestic bird spiraled upward, the sun lay along
his wings and spread its heat outward, burning, until the glow
touched their hearts.

Without taking his gaze from Kate, Eagle bent
to gather a bouquet of Indian paintbrush. She reached behind her
and turned the sign on the clinic door. CLOSED FOR THE DAY.

Eagle mounted his stallion, then, holding the
flowers high as he might carry a banner of victory, he raced down
the hill, riding hard, straight toward the clinic. Kate cast aside
her white lab coat and started running, running to meet the
future.

When the horse was even with her, Eagle
dismounted. His eyes never left hers as he held out his hand.

“
Waka
ahina uno, iskunosi
Wictonaye. Waka
.”

“Yes,” she said, reaching out to him. His
hand closed around hers.

“This time forever,” he said.

The Eagle

The river sang its timeless song, and out
of its waters rose the Eagle, magnificent and golden.

The sun slanted along his wings and
reached outward, spreading its warmth to the one who lay upon the
colored blanket, touching her hair with fire.

His heart. His soul. His mate.

He glided downward softly, tenderly,
folding her in his wings until he was lost in the deep womb that
had nourished his sons

The End

.

I want to thank the following people who so
generously shared their time and talent with me during the writing
of this book: Glenda Galvan, Chickasaw Nation, Ada, Oklahoma; Buddy
Palmer, Julian Riley, and the staff of the Lee County Library,
Tupelo, Mississippi, for sharing their knowledge of Chickasaw
history; Dr. Charles Montgomery and Ruth Ann Wilson, R.N., Tupelo,
for medical information; and Dr. Lynn Cox, All Animal Hospital,
also of Tupelo, for unabashedly describing the mating ritual of
horses.

A special thanks to Earl J. Cacho of
Victorville, California, for allowing me to use his face on the
original cover. A renowned wildlife and western artist, Earl is
from the Tarasco tribe of Michoacan, Mexico.

I’ve taken literary license with some of the
magnificent Indian customs and legends, and I take full
responsibility for any errors I might have made in portraying the
sickness that stalked the Chickasaw children. In any event, I could
not have written
Witch Dance
without the help of these
wonderful people, and I am eternally grateful to them.

-o0o-

The Language of Silence
by Peggy
Webb (September, 2014, Simon & Schuster). Review: “Following in
the footsteps of her tiger-taming grandmother, a woman flees her
abusive husband to join the circus in this masterful, heartfelt
work of women’s fiction.” Trade paperback, audio and ebook.

The Oleander Sisters
by Elaine
Hussey (August, 2014, MIRA). In summer when Neil Armstrong walked
on the moon and Hurricane Camille blew away the Mississippi Gulf
Coast, sisters discover just how far they will go to save someone
they love.

Phantom of Riverside Park
by Peggy
Webb (March, 2014). Review: “Lyrical and deeply moving.”

o0o

Peggy Webb is a USA Today best-selling author
from Mississippi with 70 books to her credit. She writes romance,
women’s fiction and the hilarious Southern Cousins cozy mystery
series starring Elvis, the basset hound who thinks he’s the King of
Rock ‘n’ Roll reincarnated. Her peers call her a “comic genius.”
She also writes literary fiction under the pen names Anna Michaels
(for Simon & Schuster) and Elaine Hussey (The Sweetest
Hallelujah, MIRA, July 30, 2013). Pat Conroy calls her literary
work “astonishing.” This critically acclaimed author has won many
awards, including a Romantic Times Pioneer Award for creating the
sub-genre of romantic comedy. Several of her romances have been
optioned for film.

Peggy is a member of Novelists, Inc., Authors
Guild, International Thriller Writers, and Romance Writers of
America. She is excited about bringing her romance classics back to
readers as E-books. The award-winning
Touched by Angels
and
A Prince for Jenny,
as well as the Donovans of the
Delta series, have all been Kindle Top 100 bestsellers.

Follow the author on her websites:
www.peggywebb.com/
and
www.elainehussey.com/
and
on
Facebook
and
Twitter
.

o0o

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