Cheyenne Captive (14 page)

She prompted. “And then?”

“It was very hot,” he recalled softly. “The sun reflected off the soldiers’ buttons and spears of the
nutqui
, our warriors. There were hundreds of them, less of us, strung out in two opposing lines. I remember the salty taste in my mouth and, most of all, the sudden stillness just before the attack. Then the stillness was broken by the cries of a wheeling hawk, our young men singing their war songs, and the jingle of the bluecoats’ spurs. ”

He took the big knife from his belt, turned it over and over in his hands, and she knew he was remembering something that must have happened to him personally....

She started to reach out to him, to take him out of the memory, and then hesitated as he continued.

“Even
I
began to believe in the medicine men.” He laughed bitterly. “My Indian half is often at odds with my white half. We charged toward the soldiers, confident that their bullets would do us no harm. But a smart officer had heard of our medicine. One of them yelled an order and they drew sabers instead and charged us. The iron knives were like mirrors reflecting the sun.

He looked ruefully down at the weapon in his hands. “Our leaders had warned us the magic medicine was no good against anything but bullets. There was fierce fighting and some killed on both sides.” His hand went up to touch the cavalry button earring. “I counted coup that day several times and was given a new name. Before that day, I had been called Falling Star because I was born on the Night The Stars Fell.”

“The famous meteor shower in the autumn of 1833!” she exclaimed with excitement. “And I read of the cavalry charge last year!” Summer remembered the incident then. It had been only a small item in the back of the Boston papers. “
Biggest Charge With Drawn Sabers in the History of the Cavalry
,” she recalled the headline.

The man shuddered. “Yes, we fought because we had to, but it was not a good day. Finally, we fled like frightened children. Our medicine was bad and there were too many of the soldiers. But some did not live to see the sun set.” He stuck the knife back in his belt with finality.

Summer reached out to touch his arm, then stood up. “I know you are not a coward, not a frightened child. You are one . of the bravest of the brave. Tell me of the Dog Soldiers.”

He stood and took her in his arms. “We help with the ceremony of the Sacred Arrows, and in the northern band with the Sacred Buffalo Hat. We also help when moving the camp.”

His arms tightened around her and she felt the tension of him, knew he was holding back something, did not intend to tell her of the dog rope.

She prompted. “Is there not more?”

He kissed her forehead, not looking into her eyes. “Why worry yourself about that?”

She pressed her face against the buckskin of his hard, scarred chest, reveling in the warmth and male scent of him. “Tell me the main duty of a Dog Soldier,” she persisted.

She felt him hesitate, his lips brushing her hair before he spoke. “I suppose you will have to know sooner or later. Since so many are leaving, the duty will fall heavily on those who stay. We are the ones who follow the column when the band is on the move. In case of attack, we provide the rear guard action.”

“Which means?” Her heart sank at what she suddenly knew.
The bravest of the brave
...

“Which means, if the band is being pursued by enemies, the Dog Soldiers must hold their ground, try to delay the enemy while the rest of the tribe escapes.”

She felt the tears come and she turned away so he wouldn’t see them on her cheeks, but she couldn’t stop her voice from shaking. “In other words, you are a
suicide’ society!”

She would not ask about the brightly decorated band. Somehow, she knew it belonged to this terrible ritual of holding their battle line at all costs.

He came up behind her, put his hands gently on her shoulders. “I do not know this white word, ‘suicide.’ But if it means will the Dog Soldier sacrifice himself in a delaying action to protect the retreat of the old ones, of his women and children, the answer is ‘yes’!”

She drew in her breath sharply and he raised her hair, kissed the back of her neck. “What happens to the clan and the whole tribe is important, what happens to the individual warrior is not if he dies bravely. Our women will wail and cut themselves for him and stories will be told of his exploits around the campfires for many generations. Thus it is, thus it has always been.”

She could not bring herself to answer and he kissed the back of her neck again. “I expect nothing more, Little One, except that I might find a woman who would love me as I love her the few short years I live. I have never hoped that I would live to enjoy the luxury of warming my old bones by my grandsons’ campfire.”

She whirled in his arms, turned her tear-stained face up to him. “Don’t say that! We will both live to be very, very old together.”

He shook his head regretfully and bent to kiss her quivering lips. “Can you not see the whites are closing in on us from all sides? They are the ones who will end our history, not our old enemies, the Pawnee and the Crow. Although I do my best to keep my people on the peace road, I know it cannot last; the whites will not let it.”

He wiped a tear from her face with a gentle finger. “I already know, Summer, that I will not live to be an old man, any more than my father did. I have done the ceremony of the badger and I believe I saw my fate. But if I can only be granted a few more years by Heammawihio, the Great God Above, I shall die happy if I can spend those few years with you in my arms!”

“No!” she protested, kissing him, blocking out the words she didn’t want to hear. She had waited all her life for this man and she would not give him up easily. Tomorrow might bring all sorts of turmoil and hardship, but tonight, this long, chill night, he was hers alone.

Her fervent kiss seemed to flame him as a prairie fire takes dry buffalo grass. He moaned as his hands pawed at the long shirt that she still wore, pushing it up so his hot hands could cup her hips.

She felt his manhood rising against her belly as his mouth forced itself inside hers.

Her hands clasped his neck, pulling his face down to hers. Her soul cried out for him to enter her again as he had done the moment he had first awakened her to ecstasy on the hot sand of the riverbank and again by a small campfire in a hidden lair.

Everything else could wait for the troubled dawn, but now all that mattered was the way he lifted her easily and carried her to the soft buffalo robes; the way the firelight flickered on his face in the darkness.

“Summer, my little love . . .”

“My dearest, take me now . . . please take me ...”

And the prairie fire roared through both of them, wild and untamed and uncontrolled.

He made love to her all night. Finally, as the fire became only glowing ashes, they were both sated. He dropped off to sleep in her embrace, not waking until nearly dawn. The renegade Dog Soldiers rode out a little past daybreak. Outside his tepee, Iron Knife put his arm protectively around Summer’s shoulders and frowned as he watched the sullen group riding through the camp. It wasn’t a big group, he realized as he counted the men, a half-dozen Dog Soldiers who had accompanied Angry Wolf on the ill-fated stagecoach raid. But unfortunately, one of those was an important brave, Black Badger, an owner of the
Hotamsit
, the Dog Rope.

Squeezing Summer’s hand, he watched the ponies dragging the travois through the mud in the early morning chill. He had not told Summer of the responsibilities of the owner of the Dog Rope, but she had guessed part of it. This was one of the reasons he did not expect to live to be an old man. He and his
nahnih
, Lance Bearer, had often discussed its burdens. The fourth rope had been in the possession of another man who had died only a few days ago of an old wound and no one had yet taken that
Hotamtsit.

Summer interrupted his troubled thoughts with a question. “Are they all Dog Soldiers?”

“No, that one carrying the crooked lance is a Himoweyuhkis, an Elk-horn Scraper. Those two with their matched scarlet shields are Mahohewas, Red Shields.”

In all, he counted silently, there were probably not more than a dozen warriors and their families leaving with their big dogs and their ponies dragging travois. But the Tsistsistas needed every warrior should they have to go into a major battle.

Then they were gone, disappearing through the golden and green trees in the early autumn mist. Their women with their cradleboards on their backs walked behind the loaded travois, the young children running alongside the horses, shouting in excitement as the dogs barked.

He noted someone had packed up Angry Wolf’s things and taken them along, no doubt expecting the missing warrior would join them later on the Republican or the Smoky Hill rivers where the outlaw Dog Soldiers camped.

He said nothing as the group faded from view and he and Summer reentered their tepee.

“You were thinking of Angry Wolf, weren’t you?” she asked.

“No,” he lied, “I was only thinking how heavy the responsibility must be on the old chiefs this morning. We cannot afford to lose a dozen good men; our enemies are too many!”

She took his hand. “When you are chief, you will know just what to do and your people will prosper because of it.”

He smiled thinly at her. He would not tell her he could never be a chief now. He had broken a terrible tabu of his people and it would bring bad medicine to them and disaster to himself if he dared to accept the post.

So he only shook his head and sat down before the fire pit. “I do not think I want to be chief,” he sighed. “There is much responsibility and it is a thankless job.”

“You can’t mean that!” she declared. “It is a great honor, and since you understand the white world, you could help your people in the future.”

“Maybe I was too long in the white man’s world to think like an Indian.” He looked up at her. “A chief of the Cheyenne is supposed to think of nothing but his people. He is required to put away all his jealousies and hatreds and put the welfare of the tribe ahead of his own personal feelings and emotions.”

“Which means?”

“Which means, Little One, that like the owner of a scalp shirt, a chief must not involve himself in fights or arguments in the camp, show any jealousy, or take revenge even if some brave should steal his woman.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You mean, if some other warrior desire me and stole me away, you couldn’t do anything about it?”

He smiled as he stood up, taking her in his arms, reveling in the clean smell of her hair. “No, I would have to let him keep you and not even accept gifts from him for the offense as another man might. To fight over the possession of a woman is supposed to be beneath the dignity of a chief. They say if a dog dares lift his leg on a chief’s tepee, he must pretend not to see as he ignores anything that stands between him and his duty.”

She looked up into his eyes and he was hypnotized as always by their pale blue depths. “You would let another man take me without protest?”

Automatically, his hand went to the big knife in his belt. “I would gut him like a buffalo for even looking at you,” he warned, pulling her against him. “Jealousy is not an Indian emotion, but a white one. As I have said, my Indian half is often at war with my white blood.”

Her lips brushed the underside of his chin. “Do you really care so much for me?”

“You know I do,” he said softly. “And I humiliate myself by telling you how much I care. Do not ever take advantage of me, Summer Sky, and make me regret loving you as I never before loved a woman.” He knew his eyes flashed a warning. “You hold my
tasoom
, my soul, like a small, trembling bird in your hand. Do not crush it with thoughtlessness or faithlessness, Little One, for you alone can hurt me as no Pawnee or bluecoat soldier ever could!”

“I will never, never hurt you, dear,” she promised as she stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

“I should marry you in the manner of my people,” he whispered against her lips. “If I tied many ponies in front of your father’s lodge, would that rich chief accept them?”

Summer laughed. “I can just imagine what Silas Van Schuyler would say if Evans, the butler, reported there were ponies and blankets on the doorstep.”

Roughly he pushed her away. “You laugh at my expense, thinking me an ignorant savage!”

“No, dear.” She caught his arm. “I’m not laughing at you. It’s just that the whites do things differently, in case you’ve forgotten. I would marry you in the Cheyenne manner, but also I would like to be married in the white man’s way.”

He studied her intently, wishing he could believe she cared for him as much as he did for her. “You would marry me in the church if you could? You would say you wish to be my woman in front of all the whites?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “If it were possible, I would stand in front of all the whites in their legal ceremony and tell everyone how proud I am to be your woman.”

“But you are already my woman,” he reminded her as he took her in his arms and kissed the soft hollow of her throat. ”We cannot go to the white town and do as you want. The men would take you away as they did my mother and if you protested, they would say you had gone insane and threaten you with the asylum as they threatened her.”

The years among the whites came back to him in a painful rush and the scars on his back seemed to burn again as they had that night when the saloon girl was killed and he remembered how dangerous it was to trust any white.

“I know I am already yours,” she said patiently, “but I would still like the white man’s words said over us.”

“No!” He dismissed the idea with a shake of his head. “My father took Texanna in an Indian ceremony. They never had the white man’s words said over them, but no two people ever loved each other so much—”

“Until now.” She interrupted, kissing the underside of his jaw.

“Until now,” he agreed, crushing her against his chest, vowing silently never to let her go.

Later that day he took her around the camp, introducing her to people, trying to teach her a little language. Pony Woman volunteered to help her learn the intricate bead and porcupine quill work the Cheyenne were well known for and he left her in the care of his aunt for a while.

Even his
nehyo
, Clouds Above, nodded approvingly as they met in Iron Knife’s tepee later to share a pipe.

“It is good you finally take a woman, my nephew.” He nodded. “But I wish you had chosen one of our own maidens. You have taken so long in choosing, half the girls in camp were turning down marriage ponies, hoping you might be thinking of making an offer to their fathers.”

Iron Knife stared into the fire. “Perhaps I am too much like War Bonnet and only light hair and eyes like blue mountain pools can set my heart on fire.”

He felt the old man’s eyes on him. “Yes, you are much like my older brother,” he admitted as he smoked. “He looked like you but his skin was much darker. The white Texas girl’s blood flows also in your veins. She brought War Bonnet much heartache, you know.”

“She also brought him love like he had never known,” Iron Knife gently reminded the old man.

“Perhaps,” the old man admitted as his nephew blew smoke toward the sky. “But I am afraid you are going to find dealing with the white man’s world more difficult than merely sleeping with one of their women. They rape ours constantly but they are furious if we touch one of theirs! I warned my brother to amuse himself with the white girl a little while but not to let her take his heart. I told him to take a Cheyenne wife, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“My mother would never have left him if the Texas Rangers hadn’t carried us off while War Bonnet and the rest of you were away from the camp. She was big with child so she couldn’t run and I was no help in defending her. Several times she tried to run away and come back to my father until the whites threatened to lock her away and put me and the baby sister in an orphanage.”

His uncle looked at him in curiosity. “What does that word mean?”

Iron Knife shrugged. “I know only that it was such a terrible place that Texanna stopped trying to run away. She said it was a bad place where children go who have no parents or anyone to care for them.” He wondered again what had ever happened to the baby sister. He and his mother had left the sick child behind with their only friends, the man of God, the night the pair fled Fandango forever.

Clouds Above made a noise of surprise. “Why do they need this ‘orphanage’ place? Do not the whites take a second or third wife when a warrior is killed so that a woman and her children do not go hungry?”

“No, I know it seems strange, but they think it wrong to take more than one wife at a time.”

“No wonder then they must build a place to put these homeless children.” His uncle snorted and passed him the pipe. “Although your father never took a second wife, even though he must have known she was gone forever, he only lived alone and grieved for her. I have never seen a man so under the magic spell of a female as he was about that girl he called the Golden One, or any man so happy as when he finally found out where she was and led the raiding party to bring you both out.”

“And I know, at last, how he felt,” Iron Knife admitted softly as he smoked. “I will never take another wife, either. I want none but Summer Sky.”

The old warrior shook his head. “We are a warrior nation. So often a man falls in battle and there is some wailing female who must be taken as wife by some brave.”

“That is true,” Iron Knife said thoughtfully, “and I suppose we could never explain to the whites our habit of the second and third wife often being sisters of the first.”

Clouds Above seemed to study him keenly. “Does your woman have a younger sister for you to take as second wife?”

He shrugged. “I think she has mentioned one, a very young child. But it does not matter. I will marry only this one.”

He watched the pungent smoke drift in the dim light of the tepee, wondering when Summer would return from her lessons with Pony Woman. He grew increasingly impatient with his uncle and sometimes the Indian ways. The old man had not merely come to smoke, he knew. There was some business on his mind but it was not polite to rush right to the point as the white man did. He wondered if this were the reason the whites sometimes called the Indians “lazy,” because they were well mannered enough to take the time for first the food, then the smoking and the long conversations before finally coming to the point. He wondered when his uncle would finally get around to it.

“You may not think so now,” his uncle suggested, “but when this wife has a baby at her breast, you will need another wife, for you will not dare mount her for fear of getting her again with child. If that happens, her milk will not flow, starving the child she already has. That is another reason our men take a second wife.”

“I will face that when the time comes. I want no other woman.” He tried not to sound too short, wondering why the old man had come. He couldn’t be representing some hopeful girl, for it was always a respected member of the groom’s family who called on the girl’s relatives. Maybe he was only making polite conversation until he was ready to bring up whatever it was he had on his mind.

He took another puff of the pipe and passed it over. “You only took two wives,” he reminded his uncle gently, “and these last few years, you have had only one.”

Clouds Above accepted the pipe and drew deeply. “When Pony Woman’s older sister was taken by the white’s cholera, I decided one wife was plenty for me. And anyway,” he conceded, “I am an old man now and my blood doesn’t run as hot as it once did. If you insist on keeping this white girl, you should quickly get her with child so you may have sons to bring meat to your lodge when you are too old to hunt anymore.”

Would the old man never get to the point?
“My woman is eager to produce fine, strong sons for me,” he said in the soft, muscial Cheyenne tongue.

“Just make sure they are
your
sons!” his uncle admonished. “The white women have very loose morals and do not wear the
nihpihist
to assure their purity. She might already be carrying the seed of some white man.”

He very nearly lost his temper. “My woman is chaste!” he defended her hotly. “When first I took her, there was a scarlet stain. I would wager my life she would allow no man but me between her thighs!”

Clouds Above frowned and passed the pipe back. “I think you care for this woman too much,” he grumbled. “More even than you care for your own people. Do not let this small female blind you to your duty.”

“I am afraid it is already too late, my uncle,” he admitted as he smoked. “She has taken complete control of my heart and mind, pushing everything else out. Nothing matters to me anymore like this slight, yellow-haired one.”