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repeated the action, while he struggled to find the word he wanted to say. “…new words. Not understand.” He finally said.
    “Oh, I’m sorry. I spoke French to the dogs. Have you never heard French before?” She asked, wrinkling her brow.
    He just shook his head slowly.
    “Oh.” She said quietly. She had thought that everyone had at least heard the language at some time in their lives, but she really had no idea how these people lived or who they had had contact with. “Well, I…” She started to speak, suddenly feeling awkward, but he interrupted.
    “You stand in rain.” He said, raising his hand and slowly lowering it, wiggling his fingers a little.
    It was the oddest thing for him to say, she thought. It caught her off guard and she laughed. “Oh, the rain doesn’t bother me. I’m used to it. It rains a lot where I come from. You stand in rain too.” She said, smiling and was pleased when a small smile appeared on his lips. “You come in the house?” She asked, then laughing at herself, corrected herself. “Would you like to come in the house?”
    He glanced uneasily at the door, not answering. Elizabeth waited, thinking how strange it was that he would rather stay outside in the rain. But maybe he thought she was strange also.
    He turned his attention back to Elizabeth, eyeing her face, her hair and her clothing. His stare was intense, but Elizabeth sensed that he wasn’t being rude; he was just immensely curious about her. She wondered if she was the first white woman he had ever seen. He was the first Indian she had ever seen in person, (other than Thomas Rolfe, but he was half Indian,) and she was enormously curious about him. For a moment, she forgot that she had invited him inside the house, but when she thought of it again and almost said something, she stopped because he started to move closer to her.
    This time the dogs kept still, but Elizabeth wasn’t paying any attention to them, only to this young man who couldn’t keep his eyes off of her. She held her breath as he stopped directly in front of her. She could smell him now, or maybe it was the wolf-skin that she smelled, and she tried not to wrinkle her nose. She saw the smooth skin of his chest and his flat stomach, and something greasy-looking had been smeared all over his body. Maybe that was what she smelled. Her eyes glanced over his nipples, dark and small, and she felt heat rush to her face in embarrassment.
    His hand came up and she guessed that he was going to touch her or her clothing. She decided she would let him because deep down she wanted to touch him too, no matter how inappropriate, his hair, the wolf-skin, the shell necklace around his neck. She stood perfectly still, barely breathing, as he touched the fur lining of her hood. She had to look up to see his face because he was as tall as Robert was. Her heart sped up; she didn’t think he would hurt her, but there was that small seed of doubt in the back of her mind.
    Then his fingers moved into her hood and he touched her hair at her temple. He petted it, feeling the texture on his fingertips, and suddenly he smiled, his expression full of delight.
    Their eyes met and he said, “Hair of fox.”
    “No!” She laughed, misunderstanding his meaning. In spite of the drizzling rain, she pushed her hood all the way back and pulled her hair out of the cloak, sweeping it all over one shoulder. “See? I do not have fox hair!”
    His eyes widened again at the luxuriousness and the color of her hair. Indeed her hair did remind him of a fox’s bushy tail. He touched it again, rubbed it between his thumb and fingertips.
    It was at that moment that the front door opened and Robert appeared along with Nathan and Dolnick. Owasewas quickly dropped his hand and stepped back so fast that he nearly tripped over his own feet.
    The dogs started barking like crazy, heading for the open doorway and Elizabeth tried to calm them while simultaneously trying to hear what Robert had said.
    He