Wild Ecstasy

Book 5: Wild Series

by Cassie Edwards

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Romance; Western Romance

Synopsis

“A shining talent!” — RT Book Reviews Fate revealed their forbidden love. Passion allowed them to follow their hearts. Beautiful and fiery of spirit, Mariah Temple is the daughter of a tyrannical father whose contempt for Native Americans has given them every reason to hate him. Echohawk is the daring Chippewa brave sworn to avenge the wrongs done to his father and his people. But when Mariah and Echohawk meet, the forbidden is unavoidable—bloodlines no longer matter, differences are swept away, and the two become inseparable . . . until a fiercely guarded secret tears them apart. A future together would seem impossible, yet nothing can diminish the smoldering, restless heat of their desire. Praise for Cassie Edwards “A sensitive storyteller who always touches readers’ hearts.” — RT Book Reviews “Cassie Edwards captivates with white hot adventure and romance.” —Karen Harper “Edwards moves readers with love and compassion.” — Bell, Book & Candle

Release date: September 27, 2016

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

The Minnesota Wilderness August 1824

The evening shadows were long. The sky was awash with a crimson blush as the sun faded on the horizon, a mellow sighing of turtle doves breaking the cool, deep silence.

Riding in a canter ahead of a slow procession of many travois being dragged behind horses and dogs, Echohawk saw a frightened buck on the run, the white rosette of its rump seeming to hang for the smallest fraction of time at the top of each frantic bound, like a succession of sunbursts against the darkening forest.

Then Echohawk gazed down at the river at his one side, admiring the reflection of the green foliage of the maple, birch, and aspen trees that lined the riverbank, disturbed only by silver-scaled fish that now and then came to the surface with a sudden flip that started circles of ripples.

A deep, throaty cough, one that was filled with pain, drew Echohawk from his silent reverie. Echohawk jerked his head around, and rage filled his dark, fathomless eyes as he gazed down at his father, Chief Gray Elk, who lay on a travois behind Blaze, Echohawk’s prized rust-colored stallion. Echohawk’s father’s pride had been stripped from him, as well as his health, by a vile white man the whites of whose eyes were o-zah-wah, yellow, the color of a coward’s.

Echohawk’s gaze moved beyond his father to the many other travois. Some transported bundles of blankets, parfleches of dried meat, and those who were too elderly to ride or walk.

Others carried the wounded from a recent raid on their village, a village they had chosen to leave behind—a place of sadness and many deaths.

Even to let himself conjure up memories of the man he now called Yellow Eyes sent spirals of hate throughout Echohawk. Because of him and his Sioux friends, led by the renegade White Wolf, many proud Chippewa had died, Echohawk’s wife and unborn child among them, his father among the wounded. Because of Yellow Eyes and White Wolf, the Chippewa had been uprooted and a new place of peace and prosperity was now being sought.

Echohawk’s eyes narrowed when he recalled another raid on his father’s people twelve winters ago, when Echohawk had been a young brave of eighteen winters. His people had suffered many losses at the hand of those vile white men that day. And then, as now, the conflict had caused his band of people to move elsewhere, never wanting to stay where there had been so many deaths . . . so much blood spilled.

But Echohawk was proud to know that his chieftain father had wounded the white leader that day. Surely the man even now hobbled around on only one leg!

Echohawk tightened his reins and brought his horse to a halt. He turned to his people and thrust a fist into the air. “Ee-shqueen! Stay!” he shouted, the responsibilities of his father’s people his own until his father was able to perform in the capacity of chief again. “We shall rest for a while, then resume our journey!”

Echohawk sat for a moment longer in his saddle, observing his people. He could see relief in their eyes over being allowed to rest, and realized only now how hard he had been driving them to get them to their planned destination.

But the fate of his people lay in his hands, and he realized the importance of getting them settled in a village soon, and into a daily routine. When the snows began coloring the ground and trees in cloaks of white, many deaths would come to those who were not prepared.

Dismounting, his brief breechclout lifting in the breeze, his moccasined feet making scarcely a sound on the crushed leaves beneath them, Echohawk went to his father and knelt down beside him, resting himself on his haunches. “How are you, gee-bah-bah, Father?” he asked, gently rearranging the bear pelts around his father’s slight form. His heart ached with knowing how it used to be before the vicious raid. His father had been muscled and strong. Vital. All of this had been robbed from him at the hands of Yellow Eyes and White Wolf, and someday, somehow, the evil men would pay. . . .

“Nay-mi-no-mun-gi, I am fine,” Chief Gray Elk said, his voice weak. With squinting eyes he looked past Echohawk at the loveliness of the surroundings, feeling serenity deep in the core of his being.

He turned his gaze back to Echohawk, a smile fluttering on his thin bluish lips. “Soon we shall be there, my son,” he said, wheezing with each word. “Do you not see it? Do you not feel it? This is a place of peace. A place of plenty. Surely we are near Chief Silver Wing’s village. Surely we are also near Colonel Snelling’s great fort, where Indians come and go in peace. Ah, my son, they say there is much good trading at Fort Snelling. We have been wrong not to move our people closer before now.” He coughed and paled. “It is best that we are here, my son. It is best.”

“Ay-uh, yes, and we will soon be making camp,” Echohawk said, nodding. “Our scouts have brought us to the Rum River. It is the same river that flows past Chief Silver Wing’s village. It is this same river that flows into the great Mississippi River that flows past Fort Snelling.” He nodded again. “Ay-uh, soon we will be there, gee-bah-bah.”

Gray Elk slipped a hand from beneath the pelts and clasped onto one of Echohawk’s, in his eyes a gleam of hope. “My son, Chief Silver Wing and I have been friends since our youth, when, side by side, we fought the Sioux for territorial rights,” he said, sucking in a wild gulp of air, then continuing to speak. “It will be good to see him again.”

Gray Elk’s grip tightened on Echohawk’s hand. “When Chief Silver Wing last came to me and we shared in a smoke and talk, he spoke of the abundance of wild rice plants that bend heavy with rice in the countless lakes and marshes near his village, and skies that are alive with waterfowl,” he continued softly. “Soon we share all of this with Chief Silver Wing and his people. Soon you will participate in the hunt again while our women gather the rice. Once more our people will be happy, Echohawk.”

“We shall ride together on the hunt, gee-bah-bah,” Echohawk encouraged, wanting so badly for this to be so. If his father died, his heart would be empty. He had lost his mother during an intensely cold winter fifteen winters ago, and his wife and unborn child only recently. Surely the Great Spirit would not take his father from him also!

“You will get well,” Echohawk quickly added. “You will ride your horse again.”

But Echohawk doubted his own words. His father was a leader who had ruled his people with kindly wisdom, and was struggling to stay alive long enough to see that his people could begin a life anew close to two old friends, one Indian and one white. They planned to make camp within a half-day’s ride from Chief Silver Wing, also Chippewa, and a half-day’s ride from Fort Snelling, where Colonel Josiah Snelling was in charge—a friend to all Indians.

Echohawk, a wise and learned man at his age of thirty winters, knew that his father had another reason for having chosen to make camp close to Chief Silver Wing’s village. Gray Elk hoped that perhaps Echohawk might find a wife among Chief Silver Wing’s people to replace the one that he was mourning.

But Echohawk did not see how anyone, ever, could take his wife’s place in his heart, nor the child that Fawn had been carrying within her womb at the time of her death. Because of her death, Echohawk had thought strongly of taking his own life, his grief was so intense, but had known that his father and his people needed him too much for such a cowardly act—and also because a suicide had no chance to enter into paradise.

“It is wise, my son, to move more closely to people that can be relied upon,” Gray Elk said, as though sensing his son’s doubts. “And trading will be profitable with the white people who frequent Fort Snelling. Echohawk, you can trade in beaver. As you have seen on our journey here, buffalo and deer abound in this region, and Silver Wing spoke of muskrat and marten that were as plentiful as mice.”

“Ay-uh, it will be good hunting and trading, Father,” Echohawk said, remembrances of his last hunt flooding him. Had it only been thirty sunsets ago when he had brought home a fat venison for his wife to cook? Had it only been thirty sunsets ago when he had watched her lovingly as she had sat across from him eating and laughing softly at his tales of the hunt? His gut ached with loneliness and despair, even now hearing the ring of her laughter and seeing the peace and love in her dark, beautiful eyes.

Gray Elk slipped his hand from Echohawk’s and patted his cheek gently. “Echohawk, it is soon the smoky time, when leaves put on their war paint and the war drums of the wind become louder,” he said, a quavering smile touching his lips. “It is time to place sadnesses from your heart and choose a woman to warm your bed. And must I remind you, my son, that you are the only son of your father and must sire a son yourself. My grandson, your son, will be the future defender of our people, whose lives will depend upon his courage and skills. If the child is a girl, she will be the future mother of a noble race.”

Gray Elk patted Echohawk’s cheek again, then lowered his trembling hand and slipped it beneath the warmth of the bear pelts. “For our people, place sadnesses of your loss from your mind and heart,” he softly encouraged. “That is the way it should be. It is for you to ensure the future of our band of Chippewa. Only you, my son. My time is soon over.”

Weary from the lengthy dialogue, Gray Elk exhaled a heavy sigh, then closed his eyes. “Gee-kee-bing-gwah-shee,” he said, barely audible. “My son, I am getting sleepy. I . . . must . . . sleep.”

Guilt spread through Echohawk like wildfire. His father, a man of fifty-seven winters, was recovering much too slowly from a bullet wound in his chest. It had been hard to listen to his father pour his heart and soul out to him without being torn with anger and guilt, Echohawk having failed at defending his people the day of the raid. The raiders had come too suddenly upon his people while so many of them were away from the village, burning off the pine needles from the ground to ensure against forest fires later. Echohawk had been among those setting and controlling the fires. By the time word had reached him of the massacre, the raiders had had a head start on him and his braves, and during the chase had slipped away like ghosts in the night.

Echohawk had returned to his injured wife just as she had spoken her last words to him. She had revealed to Echohawk that a white man with the eyes of a coward and the renegade Sioux White Wolf had led the attack. It was the man with the eyes of a coward that had fired the bullets that had felled both Fawn and Chief Gray Elk.

Echohawk brushed a kiss across his father’s brow, then rose to his full height, tears streaming down his cheeks. He doubled his hands to his sides in tight fists and looked up at the darkening heavens, vowing revenge.

But first he had his father’s wishes to fulfill. Then he would find the man with the eyes and heart of a coward. Also, one day he would come face-to-face with White Wolf. The renegade Sioux would not die an easy death.

“Vengeance will be mine!” he said beneath his breath, then turned his gaze back to his father when he awakened long enough to speak a few more words.

Dutiful son that he was, Echohawk knelt down again beside his father. He leaned his ear close to his father’s lips, for his words were now no more than a whisper.

“May the Great Spirit watch over you, my son,” Gray Elk said, very aware of the despair and hurtful anger in the depths of his son’s dark eyes. “He will guide you in which way is best for our people once I am gone. Remember this, Echohawk. Hungering for vengeance is like a festering sore inside one’s heart. It will never heal.

“Peace, on the other hand, can give you comfort. Even as I lie here, a victim of hate and greed, I am at peace, for it was not I who initiated the raid which ended in many deaths and sorrows. Those that did are condemned forever to walk paths of darkness, their souls never to find peace. Practice restraint as taught to you as a child, and live in peace, my son. It is best for the future of our people.”

Echohawk flinched when his father again grasped his hand. “Echohawk, if you should die before you father a son, the future chief of our people, what then of our people?” he said, his voice filled with desperation. “Find a woman who will be the ‘flower of your wigwam.’ Have a son soon. At a very early age see that he assumes the task of preserving and transmitting the legends of his ancestors and his race.”

Echohawk was at a loss for words, not knowing how to cope with his father’s soft, tormented pleadings for a grandson. Echohawk did not see how he could ever desire another woman. His very soul even now cried out for Fawn, his beloved. He could still feel her softness within his arms. He could still hear how she so sweetly spoke his name. None other could be as sweet! As wonderful! How could he make such a promise that he felt he could not keep?

Yet he knew that what his father had said was true. The future of their people did depend on a succession of sons, and to have sons, one must have a wife.

But one’s heart must be ready for a wife! Echohawk despaired to himself.

“Go to nee-ban, sleep, Father,” Echohawk urged as he once again slipped his father’s hand beneath the warmth of the pelts. “Wah-bungh, tomorrow. We shall discuss wives and grandsons tomorrow.”

Gray Elk gazed up at Echohawk, the slowly rising moon casting enough light on his son to enable him to see him and his handsomeness, and be assured that here was a man who would not go wifeless for long. How could any woman resist such a tall and vigorous, good-looking man with sparkling dark eyes? How could any woman not notice Echohawk’s hair that was as thick and long, and as black as the raven’s wing, and his hard and proud mouth? And how could any woman not want to bear Echohawk a son, knowing that his offspring would have the same muscular strength, the same easy grace, and the same power of endurance as his father?

Echohawk arched an eyebrow when he saw a strange sort of peace pass over his father’s face as he closed his eyes, his features smoothing out as if he had just entered into a pleasant fantasy. As troubled as Echohawk was, he wished that he could join his father in the same sort of magical place, where all sadnesses are left behind.

But he realized all too well that many responsibilities awaited him.

Rising to his full height, he did not turn to look at his people. He quickly mounted his horse and began riding away in a slow canter, his father’s travois dragging behind him, knowing that soon everyone would follow.

Ay-uh, so much depended on him.

His people’s very existence.

One Year Later,—August 1825

The bedroom was flooded with sunlight, revealing a room of inexpensive tastes, and a father and daughter in conflict. Mariah Temple stood defiantly before her father, her jaw tight with anger. She clenched and unclenched her hands at her sides, finding it hard to continue obeying a father who, since Mariah’s mother’s death twelve long years ago, had become unreasonable in his demands.

“Papa, you can’t force me to cut my hair,” Mariah said, her voice flat with determination. “You can’t expect me to go that far to please you.” She glanced down at the way she was dressed and shuddered, then gazed angrily up at her father again. “I’ve worn these damnable shapeless breeches and scratchy shirts because I had no choice after you burned all of my dresses. You even burned Mother’s so I couldn’t sneak into one of them.” Her lips curved into a sullen pout. “Papa, I can hardly even recall how it felt to wear a dress.”

Her fingers went protectively to her hair. She drew its long red tresses back from her shoulders and cupped as much of it as possible within her hands. “I shan’t ever forget how it feels to have long hair, because I won’t ever agree to cutting it,” she snapped, taking a step back from her father as he moved toward her, dragging his lame leg behind him.

“Are you finished?” Victor Temple said in an impatient growl. “My, but you do go on sometimes, just like your mother used to. Not only do you have her looks, but also her temperament.”

His gaze swept over Mariah. Each time, it was a new shock to him to see a daughter so startlingly pretty, with eyes so dark and velvet brown on a flawless face, and abundant hair that gleamed and rippled with such life it seemed more vivid than the brightest red. Her short straight nose was that of an appealing and mischievous young woman. Her lips were rosy and soft, and there was nothing weak about her pretty chin.

She is so small and vulnerable, Victor thought to himself with a quick rush of tenderness. And so proud and bullheadedly stubborn!

“If I am like my mother, so be it,” Mariah said, lifting her chin proudly. She had been six when her mother had died, the mystery of it always troubling her. Her father had not let Mariah see her mother on her deathbed, nor had he explained how or why her mother had died at such a young age.

But it was the remembrances of her mother the six years that she had shared with her that still filled Mariah’s heart with such love whenever she let herself get caught up in missing her. No mother could have been as sweet—as understanding.

She peered intensely up at her father, recalling how he had been before his wife’s death. In appearance he had changed, now weathered with age at fifty-five. He was a round-shouldered man with a leathery face and brush of chin whiskers, and with a lame leg that made his movements jerky and sometimes uncontrolled.

Those many years ago, before his leg affliction, he had been handsomely neat, always clean-shaven, and had always stood proudly tall and square-shouldered. Although Mariah had thought him to be a decent sort of man at that time, it was the years since that had colored her image of him.

And it had not only been the death of his wife that seemed to have changed him, she mulled to herself. The change had happened shortly after the burial, when he had left to have council with some of the Indian chiefs in the area, having brought his wife and daughter to the Minnesota wilderness to establish a trading post long before Fort Snelling had been a part of the setting.

At that time, as now, it was not unusual for her short-tempered father to get into conflicts with the neighboring Indians to establish his territorial rights if they would not meet with him and speak peacefully of sharing the abundance of wildlife in the area.

This one time in particular, when her father had been gone for several days, he had returned from a skirmish with some Indians, wounded. He had almost lost his leg as a result of that battle, hardening his heart into someone Mariah did not even enjoy calling “father.” He had become a bitter, unpleasant man, one whom most called sinister. Mariah herself was very aware of the crooked dealings and raids that her father participated in with the devious, evil Tanner McCloud.

Just the thought of Tanner McCloud made shivers run up and down Mariah’s spine. He was a man of no scruples, who surely did not know the meaning of honesty. And with the whites of his eyes yellowed by some strange, unknown disease, he was also a man who was anything but pleasant to look at. When he gazed at Mariah with those yellow eyes, she always felt as though he was undressing her. For sure, Mariah wearing men’s attire had not fooled him. He knew what lay beneath the bulky oversize jackets worn over her cotton shirts, and breeches twice the size of what she should be wearing, held up by a rope tied at her waist—a girl having developed into a woman at her ripe age of eighteen.

“And so you want to be like your mother, eh?” Victor said, brandishing the scissors in the air as he talked, as though they were a weapon. “Do you want to be dead at age twenty-three?” He slipped the scissors into his rear pants pocket and grabbed Mariah by the arm. “Daughter, that ain’t going to happen if I have anything to say about it. I’ve protected you just fine these past years. I don’t intend to stop now.”

Mariah paled. “Papa, please don’t,” she begged, trying to jerk free of his grasp. “My hair is all that is left that is pretty about me. At least at night, when I remove my dreadful mannish clothes, I can look in the mirror and see that I am a woman. Papa, do you want me to forget? Do you? Don’t you ever want to see me married to a fine gentleman? Don’t you even want grandchildren?”

“And where do you expect to find what you call a ‘fine gentleman’ way out here in this wilderness?” he scoffed, grasping her arm more tightly. “Those I have met are anything but what I would want for a son-in-law. Most are filthy, with only one thing on their minds when they see the flash of a woman’s skirt. Their one concern is getting that skirt lifted and pokin’ her until they get their hunger for sex filled for that moment.”

Mariah gasped and her face became flushed with embarrassment, her father having never before spoken of sex in her presence.

But even this did not stop her argument. “While gathering supplies at Fort Snelling, I saw many men who were surely gentlemen,” she said, daring him with a haughty gaze. “The soldiers are all so very polite. And . . . some are quite handsome.”

She cast her eyes downward. “But of course, none have ever approached me,” she murmured. “They think they are walking past a young lad when they pass by me in the courtyard of the fort.”

She looked back up at him with an anxiousness in her eyes. “Papa, I’ve always fooled them before by wearing my hair coiled beneath my hat,” she said in a rush of words. “Please? Please let me continue hiding my hair instead of cutting it.”

“That only works if the hat stays in place,” Victor said, going to the window, peering down below at the pack mules being unloaded. He could see many prime pelts among those being carried into his trading post, and did not want to take much more time with this chore at hand. He wanted to make sure those who assisted him at his post did not cheat him while his back was turned.

He wheeled around and faced Mariah again. “The day you tripped over a bale of hay at the fort? Your hair came rushing out from beneath your hat like streamers of sunshine. And who had to be there, to be witness to the truth of your identity? That damned Colonel Snelling and his wife, Abigail. Since then they haven’t let me alone, chiding me for forcing you to wear breeches and shirts. Why, Abigail even forced one of her dresses on me one day and flat told me to let you wear it. Of course I burned it as soon as I got it home.”

Again he turned and stared out the window, anger filling him at the thought of Josiah Snelling and of their relationship long before they had met again while Fort Snelling was being built. Victor had assumed that Josiah Snelling was in his past when he brought his family to the Minnesota wilderness.

But after all those years they were forced to endure one another’s company again, for Victor was not about to move his successful trading post to rid himself of the colonel again. He had even had to place all thoughts of vengeance against Colonel Snelling from his mind, finding the supplies at Fort Snelling too valuable not to go to the fort and buy them when necessary.

Mariah often accompanied him, only because he had seen her worth in assisting him choose the proper kitchen supplies.

Otherwise she would have been kept at the trading post, away from the wondering eyes of Colonel Snelling. Should the colonel have ever looked close enough, he might have seen too much that was familiar about her.

Victor turned abruptly and went back to Mariah. He grabbed her by the wrist and turned her so that her back was to him. He yanked the scissors from his pocket and lifted them to her hair. “Now, let’s not hear any more argument about this haircut,” he snarled. “It’ll be done in a flash.”

Tears began streaming from Mariah’s eyes when she felt the first yank on her head as the scissors began to slice through her thick hair. “Oh, Papa, why? Why?” she demanded, sobbing. “I’ll never understand! Never!”

“First, Mariah, there’s that damnable Tanner McCloud. I’ve got to put his ideas of wantin’ you from his mind once and for all. I’ve got to make you as unpleasant to look at as possible. Cuttin’ your hair seems to be the only way. That damn Tanner. He’s been askin’ me every day for permission to marry you. Now he won’t bother me with such nonsense.”

“You don’t have to cut off my hair because of him,” Mariah wailed, feeling ill at her stomach when she saw her first lock of hair fall at her feet. “You know that I’d never let that man get near me. Papa, I have a mind and will of my own. And I can shoot a firearm same as you. You taught me well enough. If that man came near me, I’d not hesitate shooting him.”

“It’s not only him,” Victor said, continuing to snip away at her hair. “Your mother’s prettiness got her in trouble with men more than once. I’m here to make sure that don’t happen to you.”

A sob lodged in Mariah’s throat when another thick hunk of hair fell at her feet. She closed her eyes, knowing that she would end up being the ugliest woman in the world!

“What do you mean by that?” she finally said, slowly opening her eyes again, forcing them away from the hair piling up on the floor. “What sort of trouble did my mother get into with men?”

Victor momentarily drew his scissors away from Mariah’s hair. He stepped around in front of her. He looked down at her with narrowing gray eyes. “You forget I ever said that,” he flatly ordered. “That was a slip of the tongue. Just remember that when you’re as pretty as a picture, men are drawn to you like bees to honey.” He stepped behind her again and resumed his cutting. “That’s what I meant about your mother. She had men fallin’ at her heels from all walks of life. It’d be the same with you, if I’d allow it. But I ain’t. So don’t give me no more mouth about it.”

Mariah stood numbly quiet until her father was finished with the dreaded chore. When she heard him place the scissors on her nightstand beside her bed, she stared blankly down at the hair on the floor, and became choked up all over again with the need to cry.

But there were no more tears. What seemed to have taken their place was a building resentment toward her father, which she feared was nearing hate.

Kneeling, she began to scoop up her precious strands of hair, its softness like the down of bird feathers against the flesh of her hands. She stiffened inside when her father’s shadow fell over her.

“There is something else I have to say to you,” Victor said, drawing Mariah’s eyes quickly up. He placed a hand at her elbow and helped her up to stand before him.

“Oh, no, Papa,” she cried. “Whatever more could you want with me? Haven’t you already done enough?”

“What I have done, for the most part in your behalf, is to guarantee your survival here in the Minnesota wilderness in case something happens to me,” Victor said, gripping Mariah’s shoulders with his hands. “I have taught you enough of the Sioux and Chippewa tongues for common purposes, and taught you the trick . . .