Savage Winter by Constance O'Banyon Read Free Book Online Page B

other. She hoped she would always be worthy of him.
    “Joanna, I must also tell you that I will be going away for a while,” he said softly.
    “How long will you be gone?” she asked, feeling a deep sadness that he was leaving.
    “I do not know how long I will be away. The buffalo are moving in a westerly direction, and I must follow them.”
    Joanna shivered in spite of the hot night, feeling a deep foreboding in her heart. She wanted to beg him not to go, but she knew, as the wife of the chief, she was expected to act the part.
    “I will miss you,” she said, closing her eyes to keep the tears from seeping through.
    “Come,” Windhawk said, standing up and pulling her to her feet. “I leave in the morning. I want to be with you before I go.”
    Joanna’s heart was heavy as she realized both Windhawk and Tag would be going away. She managed to smile in spite of her grief as Windhawk led her into their lodge.
    That night, as Windhawk lay sleeping beside Joanna, troubled thoughts continued to plague her. She couldn’t tell Windhawk that she didn’t want him to go away. He would only laugh at her fears. What did she sense? Was it only that she didn’t want him to leave her…or was it a premonition of disaster…a warning of some kind?
    Joanna curled up beside Windhawk, and in his sleep he pulled her tightly against him. She tried to push her troubled thoughts aside, but she couldn’t. Reaching for Windhawk’s hand, she clasped it tightly against her. How would she live if anything should happen to him? She tried to tell herself that she was just being foolish, but it didn’t seem to help.
    The next morning when she saw Windhawk on his way, she tried to smile, so he wouldn’t suspect she was troubled. The feeling of unrest only deepened when Tag left that afternoon. She sighed, thinking a woman’s lot in life was to wait and worry about the men she loved.
    The uneasy feeling stayed with Joanna for days, until she finally pushed it to the back of her mind.
    Joanna went about her daily tasks with a heavy heart. She hadn’t seen Windhawk for over a month and she missed him terribly. She was also lonesome for Tag. Had it not been for the fact that she had her friends to talk with, she would have been miserable.
    It was apparent that Amanda was happy with Tall Bear, and it gladdened Joanna’s heart to see her friend so contented. She remembered all too well when Amanda had been captured by the Piegans and forced to live with their chief, Running Elk, until Windhawk had rescued her.
    And she could share Amanda and Tall Bear’s joy that they were expecting a baby, because Joanna now knew she was going to have Windhawk’s child. She waited each day for him to come home so she could tell him the happy news.She hugged her precious secret to herself, telling no one, since she wanted Windhawk to be the first to know. If her calculations were correct, the child would be born in midwinter.
    Joanna was helping Sun Woman hang strips of buffalo meat on a drying rack, while Windhawk’s sister, Morning Song, worked nearby, grinding berries to add to the meat for seasoning. Joanna felt a closeness to Sun Woman that she had never felt for her own mother, and she adored Windhawk’s lovely, soft-eyed sister. They were her family now.
    Sun Woman looked at Joanna with concern. “You must rest, my daughter. You have labored very hard today. Did you not scrape the hair from the buffalo hide, as well as help me butcher and dry the meat? I would not want anything happening to you while my son is away.”
    “I will rest when you do, my mother,” Joanna said with determination. Joanna was one of the few who ever dared disagree with the stubborn Sun Woman.
    “Yes, but you are not like the Indian maiden who has been trained to labor hard,” Sun Woman argued.
    There was a time when Joanna would have been hurt by a statement like that from Windhawk’s mother, but that was before the older woman had accepted her. She now knew that