Prologue

      Montana Spring 1891

      There was lightning in the distance where dark clouds settled low over the buttes. Spring storms, all lightning display at first, were common here, and Tess Meredith loved to watch them—especially now that she had a companion who seemed to have a legend about every one of these natural occurrences…and every unnatural one, too.

       But even more than watching summer storms with her new and treasured friend, Tess liked to ride fast, hunt and fish, live in the outdoors enjoying nature and what she called “adventure.” Her father despaired of her ever marrying. Who would appreciate a young woman who had such accomplishments, not one of which had anything to do with traditional domestic occupations?

       Today Tess looked quite different from the way she usually did and quite grown-up for a fourteen-year-old. Her blond hair was piled neatly on top of her head, rather than flying free; she was wearing a long cotton dress with a high neck, rather than rolled-up dungarees and one of her father’s shirts. Polished lace-up shoes replaced the scuffed boots she always wore. Her father had beamed when he’d seen her earlier. Of course, he wouldn’t say a chastising word to her on the subject of her dress or her unladylike pursuits. He was far too kind to do such a thing. It was the kindness in him, so deep and so sincere, that made him such a wonderful doctor, Tess believed, for many who practiced medicine had skill, but few had his way with patients.

       She sighed and glanced over at Raven Following, the only man she’d ever known who treated her as an equal, not a silly child—or worse, a silly girl. He was a Sioux who had lived at Pine Ridge until about eight months ago. His shoulders, wide and powerful, did not move under the buckskins he wore. His long, thick black hair was braided and wrapped with narrow bands of ermine skins, and his strongly boned, handsome face was free of expression.

       Looking at him, Tess was filled with melancholy and curiosity. What did Raven see? For he seemed to see all manner of things around and in the far distance that she couldn’t. Sometimes it was difficult for her to believe he was only six or seven years older than she.

       “Are you scared?” she suddenly asked.

       “A warrior never admits fear.”

       She smiled. “Oh, pardon me. Are you nervous, then?”

       “Uneasy.” His lean, graceful fingers held a stick that he alternately toyed with and used to draw symbols on the ground. Now he was idly moving it from hand to hand. “Chicago is far away from here. I’ve never been to a white man’s city.”

       “Papa says you’ll be educated there and afterward you can get a job. He knows a man who will give you work.”

       “So he has told me.”

       She touched his shoulder lightly. He didn’t like to be touched, not since he’d been so badly wounded in the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, where the fury of the Hotchkiss guns of the soldiers had taken the lives of more than two hundred of his people, including his mother and two sisters. But Tess’s touch was different, and, she thought, tolerable to him, since she’d help nurse him through the agonizing recovery from having his body riddled with U.S. Army issue bullets.

       “It will be all right,” Tess said, her voice gentle and, she hoped, reassuring. “You’ll like Chicago when you get there.”

       “You are so very sure of that?” His black eyes were glittering with humor.

       “Of course! After Mama died and Papa told me he was going to take a job doctoring on the reservations, I was scared