Candace McCarthy Read Online Free Page B

given up the hope that someday he would find his sister and reunite Jane with her child. Since Richard, Jane’s husband, hadn’t come home for a long time before the attack, Daniel had no choice but to assume that the man had died, killed in the line of duty.
    Daniel had taken Susie to the settlement at Michili-mackinac in the Michigan Territory, where the first blacksmith shop had been available to the Indians. He’d worked with two other men, making weapons, household items, and other metal objects wanted by both the Indians and the whites. When word reached the settlement that the US government had promised to open and maintain two more shops, Daniel had left to set up a new shop in the northern part of the Wisconsin Territory. He and Susie settled near Jack Keller’s trading post, which had been there for less than a year. Jack had been glad to welcome the blacksmith and the little girl. He was grateful for the company and enchanted by Daniel’s niece. The men became quick friends, then later, they regarded each other as family. When Rebb Colfax showed up at the blacksmithy one day, sent by the government with a load of firewood for Daniel’s forge, he was invited into the Keller and Trahern’s family circle.
    There was a good relationship between the three men and the little girl. When the missionaries came with business for all three men, they were welcomed and assisted as they adjusted to this rugged life. But as time passed and more settlers moved into the area, most of them within a day’s ride from the trading post, Daniel realized what the government was trying to do with the help ofthe settlers and the missionaries. Daniel’s opinion of all of them fell, and he became a champion for the Indians who had become his friends.
    As he left Susie’s room and headed to his own, Daniel thought of John and Amelia Dempsey and what their arrival would mean to the Indians, especially his friend, Black Hawk, an Ojibwa war chief.
    John Dempsey had claimed to be a physician. A discussion with Jack after the pair left confirmed that the man had purchased supplies that only a doctor might need. And he had a medical bag, which Jack saw when he’d helped load their wagon with supplies.
    Daniel believed John Dempsey was who he said he was, but the daughter Amelia … He had a mental image of sable brown hair tucked back in a knot at her nape … brown eyes in an unforgiving face, and pink lips that looked too full and too sweet to belong to a pious woman.
    Amelia Dempsey had told Jack she thought he was rude. Had he been rude? Daniel wondered. No, he hadn’t been rude, he decided. Just cautious and a mite unfriendly, because he didn’t want to encourage them to stay.
    The doctor’s daughter reminded him too much of his late wife Pamela. Not in looks, for Pamela’s coloring had been much darker than Amelia’s. The similarity came in their behavior. Amelia was a woman who considered men like himself inferior. She was a woman like Pamela who teased a man and played with his affections until he was hooked and well on his way to hell. He’d managed to put Pamela from his mind; he would do the same with Amelia Dempsey.
    “Go home, Miss Amelia,” Daniel murmured as he stripped off his shirt, then tugged off his breeches. “Go home where you belong and leave us and the Indians to live in peace.”
    * * *
    Miriam Lathom was a dark-haired young woman with kind eyes. When she arrived at their door the morning after their arrival, John and Amelia took to her immediately. She had a soft voice and a graceful way of moving. Her face could have belonged to an angel; it had a glow that seemed to come from the inside. While her features radiated warmth, her manner would calm even the most disturbed soul, Amelia thought.
    There was much that needed to be done to make the infirmary and the back rooms more livable and patient-ready for Dr. Dempsey’s work. Miriam came each day to help as Amelia unpacked and arranged her father’s