The Savage Heart Read Online Free PDF

the wounded, even before the soldiers had stopped hunting the people who escaped the Hotchkiss guns. A young girl with her whole life ahead of her, completely blameless. You and your father were kind…and so courageous.”
    The contact with his hard chest was making her knees weak. She bit her lower lip, trying to regain some sort of control over her wandering senses. Her hands pressed gently into the silky stuff of his vest.
    â€œThis is…unconventional.”
    â€œWorking as a nurse isn’t?”
    She punched him in the ribs. “Don’t you start. I get enough guff from those old ladies in there.” She scanned the dark windows of the boardinghouse. Did a curtain move?
    â€œThey’re probably clutching the windowsills, dying to see what happens next.”
    â€œWhat happens next is that you let go of me so that I can get in out of the cold,” Tess said with far more confidence than she felt. Her reaction to Matt’s closeness was surprising and a little frightening. She hadn’t thought herself vulnerable to any man’s touch.
    His lean, strong hands moved down to her tiny waist and rested there while he continued to look intently at her.
    â€œYou aren’t like any other women I’ve ever known,” he said after a long, breathless silence.
    â€œDo you know a lot of women in Chicago who shoot bows and speak Sioux?”
    He shook her gently. “Be serious.”
    â€œI don’t dare.” She laughed. “I have…I have my life planned. I intend to devote it to the women’s movement.”
    â€œTotally?”
    She fidgeted in his grasp. “Yes.”
    â€œHave they convinced you that men are superfluous? Or, perhaps, suitable only for the purpose of breeding?”
    â€œMatt!”
    â€œDon’t look so outraged. I’ve heard members of the women’s rights groups say such things. Like the mythical Amazons, they feel that men are good for only one purpose, and that marriage is the first step to feminine slavery.”
    â€œIt is,” she said vehemently. “Look around you. Most married women have a child a year. They’re considered loose if they work outside the home. They must bend to the husband’s will without thought of their own comfort or safety. There is nothing to stop a man from beating his wife and children, from gambling away all they own, from drinking from dawn till dusk…. Oh, Matt, can’t you see the terror of this from a woman’s point of view, even a little?”
    â€œOf course I can,” he replied honestly. “But you speak of exceptions, not the rule. Remember, Tess, change is a slow thing in a large society.”
    â€œIt won’t happen by itself.”
    â€œI agree. But I also feel that it can’t be forced in any drastic fashion. Such as,” he continued coldly, “taking children away from their parents on the reservations and sending them away to government schools, making it illegal forthem to speak their own language—” he paused, smiling now “—even making it illegal to wear their hair long.”
    Her hands itched to touch his hair, as she had only once, in the early days of their relationship, when he was teaching her the bow. She searched his dark eyes, a question in her own. “Do you miss the old days?”
    He laughed shortly and let her go. “How can I miss something so primitive? Can you really see me in buckskins speaking pidgin English?”
    She shook her head. “No, not you,” she said. “You’d be in a warbonnet, painted, on horseback, a bow in hand.”
    He averted his head. “I’ll be late. I have to go.”
    â€œMatt, for heaven’s sake, you aren’t ashamed of your heritage?”
    â€œGood night, Tess. Don’t go out alone. It’s dangerous.”
    He strode away without a single look over his shoulder. Tess stood and watched him for a moment, shivering in the