Free After the Thunder by Genell Dellin Page B

all to an eternal hell—it would be Cotannah who’d be killed!
    Bricks began to fall, fast, hard. One of them, two of them, looked to be striking the child, others rained down on Cotannah, who was grabbing for her.
    Then out of nowhere, a blurred figure streaked into sight from the opposite side of the building, coming at a noiseless run. A man. Braids streaming behind him.
    And it was over while Jacob was still a half dozen yards away: the man reached Cotannah, who had just picked up the baby. He bent his head beneath the onslaught of flying bricks and pulled them both into his arms without ever slowing his pace. Then he hurtled sideways out from underneath the scaffold, whirling in a circle to keep his balance as he straightened up. Through some miracle he stayed on his feet and kept running to the shelter of the trunk of the big sycamore.
    Underneath its swaying limbs, Walks-With-Spirits, Cotannah, and the baby stood safe, wrapped in each other’s arms.
    A rage exploded inside Jacob, a rage more murderous than any he had ever felt in his life. The man was awitch, he did have evil powers, for he had taken the trap Jacob had set and had turned it against him, had used it to make a huge fool of him!
    He forced his legs to move faster. If he didn’t hurry up he would look even more foolish because even the two crippled-up old ones would also get there before him. How would Cotannah look at him now? She had saved the baby, that wicked witch had saved her, and he, Jacob Charley, had done nothing but stand with his mouth hanging open, watching. He would be a laughingstock throughout the Nation and beyond it, even among the whites!
    The panic that Cotannah always felt when any man’s arms first surrounded her still didn’t come, not even after they’d stopped against the trunk of the tree and she knew no one was hurt. Walks-With-Spirits was holding her trapped against him with muscles that flexed hard as iron ropes across her back, but she felt safe, completely safe, instead of scared.
    Yet why wouldn’t she? He had just snatched her from death. Her and Sophia.
    “I thought this baby was going to die right in front of my eyes,” she said, barely able to catch enough breath to talk to him past Sophia’s curly head. “Then I thought we’d been snatched up by a … tornado. You’re … as strong as one.”
    Walks-With-Spirits smiled, the light burning in his eyes warming her like a fire. Then her gaze drifted down to his mouth and stayed there, on his lips. His mouth was so sensual, so lush when he smiled!
    Suddenly that feeling came over her again that she’d had out in the road, that tantalizing sensation that she knew him somehow. From somewhere. But she wouldhave remembered, she couldn’t have forgotten, if he had ever looked at her this way before.
    “If I’m strong as a tornado, then you’re brave as an eagle,” he said. “You dived into a
hard
rain to save this little one.”
    “Those were the biggest hailstones I’ve ever seen.”
    They both laughed.
    Sophia began to struggle between them, but Walks-With-Spirits paid her no mind—he didn’t loosen his grip one bit.
    “If … you weren’t holding … us, I’d drop … her,” Cotannah gasped. “My arms feel … weak as water. They’re shaking.”
    He nodded and tightened his hold on her.
    “I won’t let you fall,” he said. “Nor the little one.”
    “Where did you come from?” she asked breathlessly. “All of a sudden you were right there.”
    “I was crossing the street when Basak the mountain lion told me you were in danger.”
    Her mind reeled. Mountain lion? It had brought him to save her? Basak meant “snap” in Choctaw, she thought wildly. Had it snapped out the words to him?
    “Me? Or Sophia?”
    “Basak said ‘babies.’ ‘Silly babies.’ Why were you under that framework, anyway?”
    Now he sounded irritated. Disapproving of her, as usual. She felt a stirring of disappointment.
    He glanced toward the scaffold and so did