White Wind Read Online Free

accepted the rabbits and prairie chickens. She bent down to examine the fur and feathers that would be made into clothing, decorations and other necessities.
    “You have provided well, my son. The tipi of Hawk Eyes will have fresh meat tonight. Golden Eagle is a great hunter,” she declared, running her fingers through the soft rabbit fur.
    Nodding his head in acknowledgment, Golden Eagle accepted her praise as his due. Kneeling, he selected a fine thick-furred rabbit and a fat prairie chicken and looked to the woman who had borne him. No words were necessary between them as he met his mother’s nod of approval.
    With valuable meat and fur dangling from each hand, he strode to the tipi of an old widowed woman whose husband had been his great-uncle.
     
    Chief Hawk Eyes watched the exchange between mother and son, and then came to stand behind his wife. His strong fingers closed over her hunched shoulders, massaging joints he knew would be tired and aching. Her moans of pleasure told him that, as always, she’d worked hard this day.
    Together they watched their son present the gift of food to Morning Grass. He smiled when he noticed tears of pride garnering in his wife’s earth-brown eyes.
    Seeing Eyes leaned against her husband’s warm solid chest, her eyes moving upward to the loving face of her husband. “Our son is kind, caring and sensitive to the needs of others around him.”
    Hawk Eyes returned his wife’s loving gaze. “Golden Eagle has grown into a fine warrior, wife. He will make a good leader when his time comes. He will provide well for his family and tribe,” Hawk Eyes stated as he too observed his son taking time at the end of a tiring day to talk to a lonely old woman.
    “Wild-Flower will be well provided for with our son as her mate,” he added, nodding his head in satisfaction.
    Hawk Eyes felt his wife stiffen at the mention of their son’s future wife. He stepped around her, his fingers cupping her face, lifting her gaze to his.
    “Our son will be happy, wife. The joining of the two tribes is meant to be. I know this to be true. I could choose no better woman to become our daughter than Wild-Flower. He will grow to love her in time.”
    His eyes narrowed when his wife looked away, unable to face him with her doubts. For the first time since his pledge to merge the two tribes. Hawk Eyes allowed himself to consider that perhaps he was doing an injustice to his son. Golden Eagle was not happy and his restlessness was becoming more apparent each day.
    Closing amber eyes, Hawk Eyes silently contemplated this indecision he felt. Surely the past five years of peace and the peace of the future were important matters to consider. As future chief, Golden Eagle would have a strong ally in Chief White Cloud. Also, White Cloud’s allies would become theirs as well. Wasn’t all this to help his son when the time came for him to guide their people and keep them safe?
    The two tribes had been at war for many years. Long ago a marriage pledge between Hawk Eyes’s mother and White Cloud’s father had been agreed upon to strengthen and give new blood to the tribes. But before the ceremony could take place, White Cloud’s father had fled with a white missionary woman he’d captured, one with yellow hair and blue eyes.
    His mother’s relatives had finally wreaked their revenge by slaying the warrior and his white wife when they returned several years later, but had not known about theiryoung son, who’d shown no signs of the white blood is his veins. Since then there had been countless raids and warring between the two tribes.
    The tribes recognized the need to right the wrongs of the past. The two families must be united by marriage as they should have been in the past. Therefore, it had been decided that the eldest son of Hawk Eyes would take as wife the eldest daughter of White Cloud.
    Surely his son would find happiness with Wild-Flower. After all, he reasoned to himself, she was strong and healthy and