Free Native Wolf by Glynnis Campbell Page B

winno."
    Though the song saddened her and a single hot tear made its way down her cheek, she continued to sing...unaware that the half-breed had awakened.
    Chase felt a prickling sensation, like a spider creeping across his flesh, as the faint song pierced the black night and his memory. It was a Konkow song, one his father had sung to him when he was a boy. The voice was weak, broken by soft sobs, but he still recognized the tune and the murmur of the words.
    As the melody continued, echoing eerily against the cave walls, the breath caught suddenly in his chest. What if it came from a chindin , a ghost, using the white woman’s voice to speak to him in a tongue he understood? Could his grandmother’s spirit be calling to him through the woman?
    With nerves stretched as taut as a curing hide, he twisted toward the girl and snarled, “Hush!”
    She gasped. He’d startled her. But at least the haunting music faded from the cave.
    "Why do you sing that song?” he hissed, his voice harsh with alarm.
    She sniffled. “Leave me alone.”
    He jumped to his feet and stalked toward her. He heard her scuttle back, but there was only rock wall behind her. He lunged forward in the darkness, grabbing for whatever he could reach. She shrieked, but his own fear made him insensitive to hers. He wadded the front of her camisole in his fist, yanking her toward him.
    "How do you know that song?" he demanded. Unlike his flippant brother, Chase believed in the spirits. He’d received visions all his life, and he knew their power. The white woman couldn’t possibly know the song she sang. It must have come through her from the world beyond.
    The girl shivered in his grasp, like a captured fledgling. "M-my mother sang it."
    He ground his teeth. "You’re lying."
    "No." He felt her fluttering breath upon his face.
    "That’s not the song of a white woman."
    "No. My...my Konkow mother sang it."
    He tightened his fist in the fabric, drawing her nose to nose with him. Konkow mother? What kind of fool did she think he was? Claire Parker was no half-breed. Chase should know. Native blood was impossible to hide. This woman had wide green eyes and sun-bright hair, delicate bones and skin the color of a white deer.
    He whispered the words into her face. "Konkow mother? You have no Konkow mother."
    To his amazement, she didn’t argue with him. Instead, her chin trembled at his accusation, and she began to weep.
    Her soft sobs caught at his heart, and his superstitious dread quickly dissolved. Whatever spirits might have lurked in the cave had probably fled at the sound of the woman’s weeping. He should release her and leave her to her tears.
    Yet he couldn’t bring himself to let go of her. She might completely collapse if he did. He wondered what troubled her so much. Then he smirked in self-mockery. Aside from the fact that she’d been abducted from her home, dragged through the hills, and forced to sleep in a cave with a stranger.
    "Why are you crying?" he demanded, wincing as his voice came out harsher than he intended.
    His words only inspired a new flood of tears, and he cursed that gift he had for frightening ladies and babies. He loosened his fist in her camisole. But to his amazement, before he could retreat to a safe distance, she seized his hand between her two, clinging to him as if he were a bark canoe in a raging river.
    "I did have a mother," she insisted with a sob. "I did. I had a Konkow mother. She taught me that song." She held fast to his hand now, squeezing it, her words rushing out like a babbling spring that must hurry over the rocks before it’s swallowed up. "She sang the song to me every night. It was a song of her tribe. She—”
    He snatched his hand back with a curse. He saw clearly now. The woman was trying to trick him. She hoped to gain his confidence, to convince him that she wasn’t a white woman, not the enemy, not the daughter of Samuel Parker, but a daughter of his father’s people, the Konkow.
    He shook