Dakota Dream Read Free Page A

images around her.
    Dominique lay still, straining for lucid thought, searching for some understanding of what was going on inside her muddled head. Then her brain sent its final message just before she passed out: The odds of surviving this little adventure, or even the night, were as good as finding an orchid blooming on the snow-dusted riverbanks.
     
      Chapter Two
     
    Jacob Redfoot sighed with satisfaction, and then rolled over onto his back. He glanced over at Spotted Feather and smiled. A Lakota woman knew how to serve a man, knew when to speak and when not to. What arrogance made the crazy woman in his lodge think he would seek or find this kind of gratification with her—in the arms of a white woman—even if he was born of the same kind?
    Surprised by the disturbing, unbidden thought, he clenched his fists in anger. I am Lakota, he grumbled inwardly. He had become one nearly twenty winters past on the day a Crow raid destroyed his family. Chief Gall of the Hunkpapa Sioux tribe had found him, a frightened trembling child, and taken him in as his own. Forced by circumstance to accept the Lakota life as a youngster, when Jacob grew to manhood, Chief Gall offered him a choice: to return to the people of his birth and make a place for himself in white society, or to remain with the Lakota and prove himself as a warrior. The choice had been easy. The Lakota were the only family he knew, the only people he trusted. Until he'd found the crazy white woman, he'd almost forgotten the physical differences between himself and his adopted family.
    Shaking off the troubling thoughts, Jacob slammed his fist into the rug and again growled, "I am Lakota."
    "Have I not pleased you?" a small voice whispered at his side.
    "Yes, Spotted Father, you have pleased me well. Now silence your tongue if you do not wish to anger me." Half expecting her to make some kind of reply, Redfoot laughed at his own folly, and then turned his back to her.
    Although she'd been widowed only a few short weeks, already this berry-skinned woman was easing the pressure on many a warrior's loins, giving of herself, but never asking for anything in return. The complete opposite of the golden-haired woman he'd pulled from the river. How did the white men manage if all their women were like this "gift" he'd found along the frozen banks of the Missouri? Why had he even bothered to save her from the icy grave?
    But he knew, of course. It wasn't just that cloud of golden red hair floating among the chunks of ice that beckoned him, nor was it her white-skinned beauty. Redfoot would have pulled a worthless Crow warrior out of those icy waters—even if only to kill him later in hand-to-hand combat. That way, it would be a fair death, an honorable end to an otherwise useless life.
    Angered as he thought of the Lakota's most hated enemy, the Crow, Redfoot allowed his mind to drift back to the woman, to her glorious multicolored hair. Red, gold, and yellow streaked her curls, as if the Great Spirit himself had dipped his fingers into a fiery sunset, an early morning's dawn, and a starlit night, then passed them through the silken strands of her hair. His breath caught as he thought of the locks so like the stars, the color of which reminded him of the woman he'd once called Mother.
    His throat tightened. Redfoot swallowed hard and rolled onto his side. He'd been expecting this, yet still memories of another time, another heritage, shook him, rolling his gut into a tight ball. How would he manage when the Lakota's plans for him finally reached a climax and he returned to the world of the whites? Would memories of this past life, of the gentle yellow-haired woman of long ago, cloud his judgment, jeopardize those he now called family? He wouldn't, couldn't, let such thoughts interfere with his mission. He would have to find a way to harden his mind and heart to the past and to the woman whose presence seemed to draw this forgotten part of him to the surface.
    Redfoot closed