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"Where is he?" asked First Rider with quick and deliberate hand motions. If the man were still within the fort, he personally would deliver to this "husband" the justice the man rightly deserved.

"He be not here. Afeard he is of me," answered Henrik in English.

"How long ago did he leave?" Again the question was asked with sign.

"The day before this."

" Soka'pii, good, " First Rider said aloud.

Then, using sign, he said, "His tracks will be fresh.

" Still kneeling on one knee in front of the girl, he turned toward her again and signed, "Before we begin, I must pray to Sun, the Creator, and ask Him to heal your wounds.

Here, take my hand. We will pray together. "

When she slipped her hand into his, her touch caused a bolt, much like a strike of lightning, to pound through him.

Worse, he suddenly craved to pull her in close to him and comfort her.

Indeed, he practically ached with the need to bring her into his arms and never let her go.

One shock upon another struck within him.

However, this was not right; this would not do. Though his feelings for her were honest, what was happening to him was unacceptable because of who he was and what his purpose was in being here with her.

But then, as though to make his physical problem worse, quicker than one could even think it, a picture flitted through his mind, it being an image of him making love to this woman.

He felt the lightning-like strike course through him again, all the way from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, and he rocked sideways as he knelt before her.

This wasn't right. He had not been summoned here for this reason. He reminded himself about his relationship with Otahki; she was an honored friend, an almost-sister, and he had come here to help her, not seduce her.

Thinking back, however, he recalled again that four years ago they had shared a moment of spiritual awareness with one another. But, it had been no more than that. Spiritual. Nothing else. Certainly nothing like this had happened.

Taking a deep breath, he forcefully dislodged the image of the two of them in each other's arms from his mind.

And, though these thoughts and pictures seemed to happen faster than time itself, it didn't matter.

He had, indeed, seen the mental depiction of the two of them together.

To pretend it hadn't happened would have been a lie.

Perhaps Old Man's trickster-like spirit was playing havoc with him.

Alarmed at his continued unwelcome reaction to her femininity, he again found it impossible to speak, nor could he move without announcing and clearly illuminating his desire for her.

But, he had to talk and he had to proceed with the ceremony.

Her hand was still within his own, and not a word of prayer had he yet uttered.

As he gazed into her eyes, which he knew to be a deep, dark blue, he wondered how he could have been unaware of her touch upon him all those years ago.

But, back then it hadn't been like this.

He had felt nothing except the admiration he might feel toward a girl whom he had thought of as an almost-sister to him.

Still, whatever his reaction was, he had to carry on. And so, since his voice didn't seem to be working, he used his free hand to sign, "Before we begin, we must bring the Creator into the healing to be done, since it is the Creator, only, who heals. We will pray to Sun with my pipe."

Her only reaction to this statement was to stare straight back at him.

Then, carefully, tenderly, he placed her hand back onto her knee, and, removing the bag from around his shoulder—it housing his newly-made pipe—he withdrew the object and then meticulously lifted it from its soft buckskin bag, its four attached eagle's feathers falling down from the cedar stem of the pipe and the beaded shafts of these feathers clicking together.

Placing the pipe's tender wrappings onto the bed, he held the pipe stem firmly in one hand and added the sacred tobacco into the pipe's red, catlinite stone bowl with his other hand.

Then, arising and stepping toward the fire in the room, he took up a coal from it and quickly lit the tobacco.

Pacing back toward Otahki, he bent again on one knee before her, and, offering his hand again, he ignored the thrill of her touch and brought her up to her feet so she was standing with him.

Setting her hand back to her side, he took hold of the pipe with both of his hands, and, lifting it up, he took a puff upon it and blew smoke first to the Creator, then down to the Earth, then to the sacred four directions.

Only once this was done did he begin his prayer in the Blackfoot tongue:

"O Creator, have pity upon me and upon my friend whose eye and face are damaged.

"O Creator, I come to you with an open heart. Outside this fort are new clothes recently made. These I give to you where they lay as a sacrifice to you for your blessing in healing this woman.

"O Creator, I know the heart of this woman, and she is good. Have pity upon her and upon me, for I wish to heal this wound in her eye and the bruises on her face.

"O Creator, this is a beautiful woman, and she should retain her eye so she might bring joy into this world with her beauty.

"O Creator, pity me. Help me to take this stick from her eye without damaging her eye and help me to bring hope into this woman's heart again.

"O Creator, I have said it."

He helped her to sit down again upon the edge of the bed and, laying his pipe atop its sacred bag, resumed his position on one knee in front of her. He then signed, "Can you see out of the damaged eye?"

"A little," she answered him in English.

It was a language First Rider was learning out of necessity, but, though dialects usually came easily to him, this particular vernacular caused the tongue to whip the teeth as though angry with them, creating sounds foreign to his ear.

Indeed, the Pikuni language was so much prettier sounding.

But, his biggest problem with the language was how many rules it broke in order to convey a thought. It broke so many of the rules for speaking, it was hard to know how to use the English expressions well.

And when she asked, "Does thou think me own eye will come out when thou tries to remove the stick?

" he could barely answer her. Indeed, he was struggling within—fighting not only himself and his newly discovered inclinations toward her—but he was also enraged at this "husband" who had let out his wrath upon an innocent woman—a woman whom a husband should treat with the respect she is due.

But, swallowing both of these desires, he merely shook his head and said, "I try…be gentle."

She nodded, though he noticed a tear was gently falling over her cheek. In reaction, he reached out and touched the tear, wiping it from her face and placing it, instead, upon his own countenance. "No need…cry," he said. "I take…your…tears…and pain upon me. It…go well." He smiled at her.

Reaching out, he again grasped her hand in his and held it firmly, noticing that even her hand trembled. Then she gulped as more tears fled down her cheeks, rushing over her countenance, onto her breast…a womanly breast, he noted.

Then, still clutching her hand within his, he began to sing the song of healing, the same words and weird melody given to him by his Big-Person mother.

As he sang, he made motions around and toward the stick stuck in her eye, never touching it, though his hand and his fingers looked as though he were pulling the object out.

Over and over he repeated the actions as he sang.

The song went on and on with no change in the condition of her eye. But, he didn't cease either his actions or his singing.

Then it happened, and when it did, his heart rejoiced: this beautiful woman began to sing the healing song along with him, slowly at first, but then, as though the words and sounds were not a distant memory, she sang the strange sounds, lyrics and odd tune perfectly, as she had once done in the past. And, though First Rider thought again how odd it was that this young woman should know his Big-Person mother's song almost as well as he, he kept making the same hand motions, his gestures looking as though he were pulling the object free from her eye, yet never touching either the eye or the stick.

And, it was with some surprise when he found he, too, was crying.

Yet, tears or not, he continued to sing along with her.

How long they sang the strange uneven melody of the song over and over, he didn't know, but it little mattered.

He would keep reciting the "words," along with the odd-sounding music to the rhythm of his motions.

He would do it through the night and the coming day, if necessary.

So greatly was he intent upon the healing song and removing the stick without damaging her eye, he was unaware of his success until he felt the stick jump out from her eye and into his hand.

Quickly, he held the piece of sharp wood up and looked at it against the light of the fire, then, anxiously, he glanced at her to see if her eye remained firmly in its place.

Her eye, with its deep-blue-colored iris, was still perfectly situated within her eye socket, though there was bleeding there at the side of her eye.

Relieved at his triumph, he drew in a deep breath.

There would be no quick actions needed on his part to put the eye back into place, which would have been required had the eye moved when the stick had released.