Chapter One

Angelique Miller sat on the seat of her father's covered wagon. She watched intently as her father, Henry, and step-mother, Anna, walked around the small farm with the older couple. They had moved west from Tennessee to Oklahoma in hopes of a better life. Angelique had made the move with her parents because the pain of losing her finance, Charles James, was too much. A year had passed since his death, but it was still too painful to remain in Tennessee with her extended family and especially, Charles' memory.

Angelique's eyes never left her parents as her five year old sister, Hannah, climbed into her lap. "What's daddy and mommy doing," she asked as she slid into Angelique's lap. Wrapping her arms around Hannah, she said, "They're looking at the farm." "Why," Hannah asked, rubbing her sleepy eyes. "Is this where we're gonna live?" "If it's where daddy decides too. And if the man wants the amount of money daddy will pay him," she said, not realizing that she had started rocking Hannah in a motherly way.

Angelique's thoughts turned to those of Charles and how they should be married now with a home of their own. She would soon be eighteen and she felt that she was turning into a spinster. All of her friends back in Tennessee had been married since they were sixteen or seventeen. "Normal age for a woman to marry," her Grandmother Miller had always said. "Wait much longer than that and you're too old." Angelique felt a hot tear roll down her cheek.

"What's wrong," Hannah asked. "Nothing," Angelique answered. "You're thinking of Charles again, aren't you," Hannah asked with a sad look on her childish face. "Please don't cry Angelique." Angelique couldn't keep from smiling at Hannah. She looked as if she had lost Charles instead of her. Together they watched in silence as their parents shook hands with the older couple before returning to the wagon.

Angelique and Hannah got into the back of the wagon. "What did the man say," Hannah asked; her small face glowed with curosity. "Well," Henry said as the wagon pulled away from the small house, "he said that if we agree to take most of the furnishing and help them pack what they want, we can have it cheaper than what the flyer at the gerneral store advertised." "When do we get to move in," Angelique asked. "We'll come back tomorrow and start helping them. It shouldn't be but a day of two after that."

They had drove a little further when Anna said, "Are you not going to tell them about the Indians?" "I was," Henry said solomnly. For some reason, Angelique didn't believe that her father had intended to tell her and Hannah about the Indians. "What about them," Hannah asked, her face once again filled with curosity. "Mr. Jacobs said that there is a small tribe of Sioux that live not far from here. They have helped the Jacobs over the past ten years and they are not a threat. I hope that they prove to be just as kind and peaceful with us as they were with the Jacobs. What worries me most is you, Angelique."

"Me," Angelique said in a startled voice. "Why me?" Looking over his shoulder, Henry gave his daughter one of those "worried father" looks. "Because you're young and female. And," he pause, "that's what young braves are interested in. And because Hannah will also grow up." Angelique could see the worry in his eyes and the hear the fear in his voice. She had not thought much about the Indians that lived on the plains. Or the stories that she had heard about white women that had been taken captive. She had been too busy feeling sorry for herself to think about anything else.

Three days later, Angelique and her family waved "good-bye" to the older couple as the left. It was a warm spring morning and now the chore of setting up the house the way her parents wanted it was next. Angelique and her step-mother found it to be the perfect day to air out the house and to do "spring cleaning". Hannah found it to be more of a game than a chore. She was having too much fun shaking out rugs and helping to beat the dust from the larger ones. It had been her that had noticed the Indain sitting on his horse in the distance. Anna calmly called for Henry and the four of them stood watching the lone Indian as he watched them.

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