Wildest Dreams - By Rosanne Bittner Page 0,114

wildest of warriors. Luke stepped cautiously up beside Lettie, and the boy stared back at them... light hair... blue eyes. Luke inhaled sharply, recognizing the boy he'd seen the morning after he'd been shot, the one who had given him water. "Nathan," he said.

The boy showed no signs of recognition. He breathed heavily from a bullet wound in his side, which he had not let Dr. Manning remove. His wrists and feet were tied to the side rails of the cot on which he lay, so that he could not escape.

"We had a time getting him calmed down," Tracy told them. He unlocked the cell door. "He's wild as a bobcat, amazingly strong for his age and condition. Is he your son, Mrs. Fontaine?"

Lettie could hardly move or speak. He was older. All the baby fat was gone; but she would know her Nathan anyplace. "Yes," she finally answered. "He got that little scar under his left eye one day when he fell. He was only about a year and a half old. He cut his left knee badly in that same fall." She stepped inside the cell, moved a little closer, wondering how she was going to keep her knees from collapsing. The boy lay there panting, dirty, bloody, his eyes wide with fear and hatred. He watched her carefully as she leaned to look closer. He lay there wearing only a breechcloth, apron, and breastplate, his legs and arms bare. "There it is," Lettie told Luke. "The scar on his left knee." She closed her eyes. "My God," she moaned. Luke could see her begin to sink. He grabbed hold of her as she broke into tears.

The boy, who only knew himself as White Bear, watched them both in surprise and confusion. Why was the woman crying? There was something about her that was faintly familiar, but he was not sure what it was. Did these white people know him from when he was a small boy? Half Nose had told him he had found him abandoned along the white man's trail to the gold fields. The tall man with the very blue eyes also looked familiar. Wasn't he the one he'd seen badly wounded a few winters ago, lying among the dead buffalo hunters? Nathan. The man had spoken that same word that morning, when he had given him water.

What did Nathan mean? Was it a name? Here and there he had understood a word or two of what people were saying, and he supposed it was because somewhere deep in his mind he remembered those words from when he was very little, before his white parents had either died or deserted him. He wished he could remember more.

Luke kept an arm around Lettie, who wiped at her eyes with a handkerchief and turned to look at her son. "So grown up!" she said through a shivering sob. "Oh, Luke, it's Nathan. I know it's him. Why did Half Nose lie to you? Why couldn't he have just bargained with you, given our son back to us?"

Luke blinked back tears of his own. "A son for a son. He wanted us to feel the pain of his loss, but at the same time he wanted us to stop hounding him, stop searching for Nathan. Jesus, Lettie, I'm so sorry. If there had been more of an army out here then, I could have attacked, forced his hand—"

"No." She squeezed his arm. "He probably would have just killed Nathan for spite. At least he's alive." She left him to move closer and kneel beside the cot.

"Be careful, Lettie. He's as wild and full of hate as any full-blood. You can see it in his eyes."

Lettie sniffed. "He's my son... my boy. He wouldn't—" She touched his arm, and the minute she did so Nathan's whole body jerked. He gritted his teeth and spit words at her. Lettie pulled her hand away. "Oh, Nathan, my precious Nathan!"

The boy wondered at the look the white woman was giving him. It was so loving, so agonizingly sad. Why did she care about him? He looked at the other man who had come into the cell behind the white man. He was a Crow Indian! He could tell by the way the man wore the feathers in his hair, and by the way he was dressed mostly like a white man. The Crow people had given up long ago, had turned to the white man's ways, many of them even accepting the