27 

How’s Moon Song?” Skypilot asked when he went back inside, with the rifle over his arm, unloaded and the ammunition safely in his pocket.

Fallen Arrow had awakened. “She’s up and asking for you.”

“I think there’s someone here she needs to meet.”

“Who?” Fallen Arrow asked. “There is no one here except us.”

Skypilot did not answer. Instead he opened the bedroom door to Moon Song’s room, where she lay curled up beside Standing Bear. She was conscious and was stroking the baby’s face.

“How are you feeling?” he asked while the wild man stood beside him.

“Not well, but much better,” she said. “I will try to get up soon. We cannot stay here forever.”

“I don’t know about that,” Skypilot said. “I think we probably could if we wanted to.”

She sat up and looked at the two men. “What do you mean?”

“I was not wrong in my calculations after all,” Skypilot said. “We’re on your land. Right in the middle of it as a matter of fact.”

“But why is he here?” she asked. “Are you a squatter? It is all right, if you are. You helped save my life. I will be happy to let you stay and share my father’s land.”

“No, it’s your property and your cabin. I’ve just been the caretaker until you came.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “My father’s letter said nothing about a caretaker or a cabin.”

The man looked at Skypilot.

“Don’t look at me,” Skypilot said. “You tell her.”

“My name is Benjamin Webster,” the man said. “I’m your father.”

Her eyes widened. “That can’t be true. My father is dead.”

“I thought I was dying when I wrote that letter,” he said. “The doctors insisted that my problem was inoperable and irreversible. They suggested I get my affairs in order and then make myself comfortable and await death. I followed their orders exactly. Except for one thing. They expected me to go to my home in Boston to await death. Instead, I decided that if I had to die, I would prefer to do it where I could see my beloved lake and trees, the place where I’d been the happiest in my life. I bought a tent and a ticket on a steamboat and a little food. I climbed to the top of this mountain where I could see forever out into the lake, and I waited to die.

“I waited a very long time. One morning I decided that if I was going to die anyway, I might as well accomplish something while I was waiting. And so I walked to Marquette, bought some tools, and decided that I would start building a cabin for you so that you would have some shelter when you came. I built this cabin where it could be seen for miles; that way you could find it. I didn’t expect to be able to do much, maybe fell a few trees, drag a few rocks over for the foundation. Except something strange happened. The more I worked, the stronger I felt. I was twenty when you were born. I just turned forty. I’m not young, but not so terribly old. Before long, I began to feel nearly as strong as I had when I was twenty and living here.

“It’s the oddest thing. I don’t know what happened. All I know is I’m still here. I can’t explain it, and I certainly didn’t mean to lie to you, but two weeks to live turned into two months, and now it’s been nearly eighteen months and I never felt so strong and healthy in my life.”

The man was standing at the foot of the bed as he told her all this. As he finished, he simply shrugged, and then became silent as he stared at the floor, apparently waiting for her to decide how she was going to react.

“Come here,” she said.

The man walked over to her.

“Give me your hand.”

He gave her his hand.

And then she did one of the sweetest things Skypilot had ever seen. She opened her father’s hand, placed a kiss in the middle of it, and closed it back up. “Will you hold it tight forever?”

He watched as her father, with tears streaming down his face, got down on his knees, reached for her hand, lifted it palm up, placed a kiss in it, and closed it into a fist. “I held it tight, my little one, forever and ever, just like I promised the last time I saw you. I held it so tight it gave me life.”

Skypilot could hardly bear it, the thought of his beloved Moon Song remembering the parting gesture of her father after all these years.

As Moon Song and her father embraced, he remembered the first time he’d seen her—a young Indian girl with a baby. She had barely registered with him until he was hurt and she chose to take care of him. Who could ever have guessed all that had gone on in her life before he met her? How many other stories were waiting just outside this door?

It was not his place to watch this reunion. It was a holy thing and not for his eyes. He turned, left the room, and closed the door softly behind him.