It had been hours since the white hunters had attacked, but she was still gripped by the fear that some of them lurked at the river-bank below, poking through the burned-out remains of the small encampment. She gathered the little boy closer and brushed her hand over his brow, murmuring words of comfort that she could not give.There was no comfort for either of them. Whispering Rain squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth against the impulse to keen forth her grief with a high-pitched wail, as her people had done since ancient times. It was imperative that she hold her emotions in tight rein.Even more pervasive than grief was the anger Whispering Rain felt. The supreme irony was that the hunters had descended upon them just when the small family had been heading peaceably into their midst, to the town called Lexington.They were going there at the insistence of Whispering Rain's mother, a white woman, Amy Parker had lost her youngest child to the smallpox, had watched the boy slip away in an ooze of pus and fever.
