Six Months Later . . .
JOHNNY HAD NEVER seen the river look like that. Even in his youth, when the sunsets had often been spectacular, he’d never seen the twilight sky open up and pour out its fire, turning the water’s surface to a necklace of dark jewels set in gold.
The crowd that had gathered for the ceremony alongside the riverbanks seemed silenced by its beauty. Or perhaps it was the woman walking among them who created the hush. The water’s jeweled surface was Honor’s backdrop as she approached the canopy of cottonwoods where Johnny stood with Chy Starhawk. In her fringed and beaded buckskin dress and with her hair around her shoulders, she looked as if she’d risen from the river’s golden radiance.
“Johnny,” she said, his name on her lips even before she’d reached him. Tears sparkled in her eyes as if she were reliving some tender moment of their adolescence. She came to stand beside him and took his dusky hand, reminding him how different they were, and how much the same.
Johnny thought about the gamut of emotion he’d experienced in their relationship—the young love and reverence, the hurt, the hatred, the grief—and realized he’d come full circle. Perhaps he could never love her with the same fierce purity of youth, perhaps their innocence was gone forever, but the reverence was there, the sweetness that ripped through his heart and seared his soul like fire. His feelings for her were as deep and spiritual as they were animal. They’d taken on a unifying force that seemed as elemental as the earth itself.
Their hands joined, they turned to face Chy Starhawk and to silently receive his blessings. In the ancient language of the Apache, the shaman said a traditional prayer for the woman first, and then for the man, after which he turned in each direction of the compass, offering sacred pollen to the four winds.
When he was finished, Chy Starhawk stepped aside, and the minister of the church Honor had attended as a child stepped forward. “We are gathered here today to unite this man and this woman in holy matrimony,” he said to the crowd.
Blood roared through Johnny’s heart, blocking out everything else the clergyman said. Johnny heard nothing but the low thunder of the river behind them, the answering thunder of his pulse. He was aware that Honor had released his hand, that she was standing beside him, but nothing else reached his consciousness until the minister repeated the phrase, “Who gives this woman . . . ?”
In the silence that followed, Johnny turned to the crowd and saw Hale Bartholomew rise. The older man’s blue eyes were lit like torches in the frail bones of his face. They burned with the pride of his bearing and the last vestiges of his indomitable will to win. Honor’s father was reluctant in his surrender, but Johnny accepted the grace with which the older man met his gaze, the wisdom with which he acknowledged what was inevitable. They might never be friends, Johnny realized, but they both loved the same woman, and that would keep them from being enemies, from meeting in the battleground of the courtroom.
“I do,” Hale Bartholomew said. “I give this woman.” Johnny watched as Honor’s eyes filled with tears. He wanted to stop the ceremony and take her into his arms. He wanted to shield her from anything and everything that could hurt her, but he knew her pain came from joy. She hadn’t expected her father to come to this ceremony, or that he would ever dignify their union in such a way.
Johnny reached for her hand, gripping it tightly. As they turned back to the minister, something that might have been tears blurred his own eyes. He felt her joy, her pain. He wanted her to feel his reassurance. It would be all right. They would balance the years of heartbreak with as many years of happiness. Only tears of joy, Honor, he promised silently, swearing to do everything in his power to keep that vow. Only tears of joy.
The crowd rose to their feet as the minister pronounced the couple husband and wife. As Johnny turned to Honor, he caught a glimpse of familiar faces among the guests—Chase Beaudine with a cowboy hat tilted low over his eyes and a dimpled redheaded baby in his arms. His wife, Annie, was standing next to him, very proud, very pregnant. Even Geoff Dias was there, sitting on his Harley at the back of the assembly, a raffish smile on his face. But what Johnny didn’t see as he bent to kiss his new bride was the hawk soaring over their heads.
It swooped and dipped above them, its snow-white wingtips silvery in the sunlight as it pulled out of a graceful dive and swept upward, ever upward, rising to meet the falling sun. Chy Starhawk saw the magnificent creature and turned, following the bird’s ascent until, in a sudden, brilliant flash, it disappeared from sight. It was a good omen. All things would flow in harmony for the new couple, the sun, the moon, the stars. Their love, brought to life at the river’s edge, would be fruitful, just as the spring floods made the earth warm and the soil fertile. The seed of their seed would be favored for generations to come.
The shaman smiled. His blessing had been heard.