Cheyenne Captive (43 page)

“He did. But I was already engaged to Silas Van Schuyler and my parents were pressuring me to marry Silas. Shawn and I had only that one summer and then, with winter, I had to make a decision, a choice.”

“And you chose Silas Van Schuyler instead?”

Priscilla tried to laugh and her voice became a ragged sob. “I know you can’t understand that, can you? Now that I look back, neither can I! But you have to understand Shawn was so poor and all I could think of was how terrible it would be to have no money and how Boston society would laugh when they heard about it. I couldn’t see any other way out since my parents had lost their fortune.”

“Was Shawn so terribly unsuitable?”

The deep silence was broken only by the crackling of the fireplace logs. Summer heard the big grandfather clock downstairs chiming as she waited.

“Shawn was my father’s gardener,” Priscilla said finally. She went back to the window and stared out at the falling snow as Summer regarded her in stunned silence.

“It was snowing that night, too,” Priscilla said as if speaking to herself. “I was supposed to meet Shawn under the street lamp across from my parents’ home and we would run away together. I remember standing at the upstairs window with my luggage, looking down on him as he waited patiently for me.”

Summer stared unbelievingly at her. “And you didn’t go down to meet him?”

Priscilla shook her head as she stared unseeing into the night and her shoulders trembled slightly. “No, I let the man I loved turn and walk out of my life because I was afraid and weak. Other people’s opinions and luxury meant too much to me. I have to live now with that choice I made and isn’t it ironic that I’ve got all the money and social position I want? I’d give every bit of it away to have a chance to go back and make that decision again.”

Tears came to Summer’s eyes. “Do you not know where this Shawn O’Bannion is? Have you never heard from him?”

“No. He’s never tried to contact me again. Does that surprise you? Can’t you imagine how he must have felt as he walked away that night through the snow?” Priscilla’s voice was tinged with regret and bitterness.

“And is that man my father?”

Priscilla bit her lip. “I wish to God he were! No, you’re Silas Van Schuyler’s children, all right; all of you. I let him purchase me like a fine-blooded brood mare, and so I’ve cheated him, too, you see. I wanted luxury and money: He wanted a beautiful, blue-blooded wife, whether she loved him or not. We both got what we thought we wanted, and in the end, we have nothing to share but bitterness and regrets. But just once, I would like to see someone in this miserable house make a wise choice and be happy.”

She went over to her desk and fumbled in the top drawer. “I do have a little cash of my own, Summer. Let me buy you a ticket, send you back to your lover.”

Summer choked back her tears. “I—I don’t get the luxury of a choice like you did, Mother. You see, the man I loved is dead.”

Priscilla paused and looked up at Summer. For just an instant, their eyes met. They understood each other, not as mother and daughter, but as two women who have loved and lost and know the pain it brings.

“I’m so sorry,” Mother said, pouring herself a glass of sherry from the decanter on the desk. “I didn’t understand. I—I didn’t realize . . .”

“So you see now why I’m going to marry Austin Shaw next June.”

“I don’t blame you, then.” Mother gulped the liquor. “I don’t blame anyone for trying to escape from this house, from the wreckage your father and I have made of our lives.”

She lifted the lid of the music box. As the sad little tune tinkled out, she took her drink and went back over to stare out the window at the falling snow. “I hate winter,” she said in a whisper. “Summer is the time for roses, and love, and the cold brings only sad memories and regrets . . .”

Summer watched her mother drain her goblet and stare out the window at the snow, knowing Priscilla had forgotten her daughter was even in the room.

Very quietly, Summer walked out and her mother never turned around. Even with the door closed behind her, she could hear the faint music. She went back to her own room and wept for herself and for Priscilla locked in a prison she had made herself. She could not erase the image of the young, handsome Irish face staring hopefully up at the window of the fine Beacon Hill home of her grandparents. She could almost feel the heartbreak and the indecision of her mother as she let the man leave without her. But Priscilla Blackledge could have had the man she wanted; Summer lacked the luxury of the choice.

She lay sleepless on her bed the rest of the night, listening to the chimes of the grandfather clock echoing through the big, gloomy house as the hours passed. Grimly she pushed the scene from her mind and began to make wedding plans.

Her brother David was the one in the family most excited about the marriage although Silas was in as good a mood as Summer had seen in a long time. Even pouty little Angela smiled at the prospect of all the festivities and the part she would play in the wedding as the flower girl.

Only Mother retreated back into her narcotic haze as if saddened by the coming wedding and hardly spoke to anyone at all. It was almost as if she and Summer had never talked that night. The mental door that had seemed to open slightly now slammed shut forever.

Austin returned to the city of Washington after the holidays but wrote daily letters full of adoration. Summer tried to write words of love to him but the best she could do were short, gossipy notes about how the wedding plans were shaping up and what was happening among Boston society during the following weeks.

Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, the well-known Boston social leader, gave a ball in March to raise money to build a tomb for Washington at Mt. Vernon and it was a great success. Summer attended with David during one of those weekends he was home from Harvard.

Now that she had committed herself to the marriage, Summer didn’t allow herself second thoughts or regrets. There was much to be done to put on a wedding that would be the biggest event of the summer social season among the wealthy. A message was dispatched to Todd to get himself home from Kansas in time for the June wedding but weeks passed with no answer from him.

Crocus pushed up through the melting March snow and Austin was home on leave, joining Summer and the ladies in the music room as they worked on decisions concerning the wedding. Only Mother drank her sherry and stared out the window with a remoteness that showed her lack of interest. Summer, Mrs. Shaw, Maude, and the Osgoode sisters showed Austin the fabrics that had been chosen and tried to keep Coaldust, with Angela chasing him, from becoming tangled in their ribbon samples.

Curious, Summer looked up as she heard a loud, impatient rapping with the brass knocker on the front door and Evans hurried to answer it. Robert Shaw burst into the room, his florid complexion even redder than usual. He stalked in waving a crumpled piece of paper.

“Why, Father Shaw.” She rose hurriedly to meet him. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s Todd!” he blurted, waving the paper. “A message finally got through! Todd is missing!”

Before anyone else could move, Elizabeth Shaw shrieked, half-rose, then collapsed back in her chair.

“Quick! Her smelling salts!” Austin rushed to her side.

“Mrs. O’Malley,” Summer said as the maid poked her head through the door, “please bring a glass of water.” She had to grit her teeth to keep from adding,
to pour on Elizabeth Shaw who insists on being the center of attention even in the middle of a real tragedy.

The other women broke into chatter like a gaggle of excited geese. Summer moved hurriedly to Mrs. Shaw’s side. Priscilla turned around to watch, almost as if she were a disinterested spectator at someone else’s home.

Robert Shaw knelt on one side of his wife’s chair, rubbing her limp hand frantically while Austin waved the smelling salts under her nose. “Are you all right, Elizabeth?” the man asked several times before her eyelids fluttered weakly.

Mother’s eye caught Summer’s and seemed to confirm what Summer was already thinking:
What a mother-in-law Elizabeth Shaw was going to make with her continual fainting spells even though she was as tough as her pilgrim ancestors and would probably outlive everyone in the room.

“What—what has happened to my dear son?” Her hands fluttered as she clutched at her heart and her eyes seemed to glance around to make sure everyone was hovering anxiously.

“Now now, dear.” Her husband tried to get his considerable girth up off his knees by her chair. “It may not be all that bad! All I know is that he soon tired of the dullness of Kansas farms and went off to Cherry Creek to seek adventure in the gold strike.”

“Cherry Creek,” Summer thought aloud. “That’s Cheyenne hunting grounds somewhere around the Arkansas River and Bent’s Fort.”

Austin looked up from his vigil at his mother’s side. “You’ve been there?”

“No.” Summer shook her head. “I just know the area from hearing the Indians talk. There’s a new town at the gold strike called Denver.”

Maude rolled her spaniel eyes. “Do you suppose the Indians got Todd?”

This comment evoked fresh wails from the tiny, bridlike woman and Summer glared at the banker’s daughter.

“Now, Mother, don’t worry!” Austin cleared his throat and hesitated a moment. “Knowing how much this will worry you till we hear from him, I’ll go out there myself, find Todd and bring him back.”

Mrs. Shaw stopped moaning immediately and looked around in triumph. “What a wonderful idea! Why, I never would have thought of that! Will the army let you do that?”

“Of course they will!” Robert Shaw stopped pacing the Chinese rug. “Of course he can do it! If that will make you happy, Elizabeth, I’ll use my influence in Washington to get Austin assigned to Fort Leavenworth on a temporary basis. It won’t be any problem from there to take an army patrol and go search western Kansas and the gold digs.”

“But what about the wedding?” Maude whimpered. She had obviously been looking forward to her role as maid of honor.

Summer had already been annoyed with Mrs. Shaw over today’s discussions. Austin had wanted to use David as his best man but Elizabeth Shaw was insisting on Todd in that capacity. Austin’s mother had just won that round before Mr. Shaw walked in. Summer had begun to have doubts about whether she really wanted to go through with this at all. She felt a mixture of both guilt and relief as she heard Maude’s question. She had only felt a little relief that this new calamity might delay the whole thing; now guilt brought a dark cloud to her face.

“Don’t worry, Summer,” Austin said, evidently misreading her expression. “This won’t affect our wedding plans at all. Tomorrow is the first of April and the wedding isn’t until the end of June. That’s plenty of time to go find Todd and get him back here for the wedding.”

The Irish maid puffed back into the room with a glass of water and handed it to Mrs. Shaw. “Here ’tis, missus!”

Elizabeth Shaw didn’t even thank her as she took the glass and sipped it. “But the Indians! Suppose, like Maude says, the Indians have gotten Todd?”

Angela looked around at all the people, the big cat in her arms. “Summer knows the Indians well enough to bargain with them and she speaks the language, too.”

All faces turned toward Summer. “Well,” she began uncertainly, “I do speak a little Cheyenne, not much. I do know enough sign talk to carry on the barest conversation with many of the plains tribes.”

Mr. Shaw turned and eyed her thoughtfully, his hands clasped behind his back. “Didn’t you say that area was Cheyenne country?”

“Yes, but—”

“That’s it!” Mrs. Shaw leaped to her feet. “That’s the answer! You can accompany Austin and the patrol to look for Todd!”

“Now, Mother.” Austin cleared his throat and pulled out his pipe nervously. He acted as if he might put it in his mouth, looked at all the ladies, returned it to his pocket. “Now, Mother,” he said again, “I don’t think taking Summer out there is a good idea at all! After all, she’s had a terrible ordeal in the West and it would almost be like reliving it to return to that area—”

“I really wouldn’t mind,” Summer said quickly, remembering how much she had loved the wild country. She would like to see it one more time, inquire after the safety of the others of the tribe before she closed the door forever on that part of her past. “If it will be of any assistance in helping find Todd, I’ll be happy to go along and do what I can.”

“But you just can’t go off out there unchaperoned!” Maude declared dramatically. “Think of your reputation!”

“I don’t like your insinuation!” Austin flushed. “I would never do anything ungentlemanly or even think such!”

No, he wouldn’t,
Summer sighed, thinking wistfully of the uncontrolled passion of another man.

“I’ve got an idea that should solve everyone’s problem.” Mother suddenly entered into the conversation with a gleam in her eyes. “I’m sure Silas will agree to let her go if we send Mrs. O’Malley along to look after her and chaperone.”

“May the saints preserve us!” The Irish maid’s eyes rolled heavenward and she crossed herself.

“Well, it’s settled then.” Mr. Shaw rubbed his hands together with obvious satisfaction. “Just as soon as I can make arrangements, the three of you will be leaving for Fort Leavenworth!”

Summer shivered in spite of herself, feeling excitement tempered with a sense of danger. She wanted to return one more time but she wasn’t at all sure the Cheyenne would be glad to see her if their paths crossed.

“Start packing, Mrs. O’Malley,” she said, trying not to look too excited though her heart pounded. But in her mind, there was a trace of sadness as it went back to that terrible October day the cavalry had attacked the camp.

Ohahyaa! Ohahyaa!
The wailing cries of grief rang out all around Gray Dove. She looked about at the destruction and the soldiers riding out that October morn. Death and destruction reigned as tepees blazed and wounded horses tried to rise, and, failing, lay there kicking and neighing pitifully.

But there were too many human dead to think of wounded horses. Sadly, the survivors dug through the wreckage. A new, trilling cry went up each time they found another body or one seriously wounded among their friends and relatives.

Gray Dove stood numbly, watching her own tepee burn, knowing her own father and two brothers must still be in there. When the fire went out, she found them with the empty whiskey bottles beneath them. Probably they had been in such a drunken state they never knew what was happening as the cavalry charged into the camp. But they had been dead to her long before today.
The white man’s liquor had taken them a long, long time before,
she thought bitterly. Gray Dove stood and looked at the charred bodies without tears. A small child wandered past her, shrieking for its mother but she did not bother to comfort or help it.

All she could think of now was Iron Knife. Turning, she ran toward his tepee, the wail of women and the terrible smell of burning flesh stinging her nostrils.

She could almost taste the rage of her betrayal. Jake Dallinger had been responsible for this, trailing her back to camp instead of meeting her at the old fort as she had planned. She hadn’t been so smart after all.
He was even more cunning and evil than she was herself
, she thought grimly as she ran through the smoldering camp.

His tepee still stood undamaged but he lay crumpled his back before it.

“Iron Knife!” she screamed. “Iron Knife! Are you alive?”

He did not answer and desperately she knelt at his side. He seemed to be breathing shallowly and there was a large, bloody wound gaping in his shoulder.
Someone had probably been aincing for the heart and missed.
Frantically, she tried to drag him inside the tepee, out of the cool air, but he was too big for her to move alone. She found Lance Bearer and another warrior helping Two Arrows, who was slightly wounded. They helped her drag Iron Knife into his lodge. Pony Woman and Pretty Flower Woman stayed to help the other, while Clouds Above went in search of the medicine man.

Quickly, Gray Dove washed the wound and covered him with warm buffalo robes. The old man entered with his bag of medicines and charms.

“Many have been wounded or killed!” the old man sighed as he opened the bundle. “The smell of death is everywhere!”

“Can you save this warrior?” She hovered anxiously. “I will give you any ponies I have left of my father’s herd if you will help!”

“I will do all I can because I am a friend of this Dog Soldier and knew his father well. But think not of ponies since the army has run off all but a few stragglers.”

He got out his rattles and medicines, spread white sage on the tepee floor.

Iron Knife opened his eyes as the old man stopped the bleeding and began his singsong chants, shaking the rattle over the wound. “What happened?” he asked weakly, and, seeming to remember, tried to get to his feet. “My lance! Give me my knife!”

Gray Dove restrained him gently, relieved that he was strong enough to resist. “Rest easy, big warrior, the soldiers are gone now.

But he struggled to get up. “We’ll want to ride after them and attack—”

“There are no horses left to ride,” Gray Dove said, taking his big hand in hers. “And most of the warriors are too hurt to fight—”

“My family!” He struggled to get up.

“They’re alive,” she reassured him. “Lie still!”

“Summer!” he gasped, struggled up on one elbow. “Summer Sky! Where is she?”

Gray Dove gritted her teeth so hard she hurt with the jealousy that consumed her.
Would she sever heard the end of the white bitch?
“That one has gone with the soldiers!” she informed him. “She is no longer in this camp!”

“Summer . . .” Tears came to his eyes and he swore white man’s curses. “I thought she loved me! I never thought she would leave!”

Gray Dove pushed him down and ran her hand gently across his scarred face. “Remember this! It is I who have loved you without limits all these years! I would never ride away with the soldiers and desert you!”

“The white priest!” he gasped. “I told her he might betray the Cheyenne and go to the fort! I was going to warn the old chiefs to move the camp this morning!”

She hardly dared hope as she stroked his face and watched the old medicine man work his charms. “You knew the girl talked to the priest?”

He closed his eyes almost as if he could not believe what had happened. “She said she had asked him to do the white marriage vows for us. It must be him who brought the soldiers. Who else could it be?”

She almost smiled to herself at her luck and moved in to take advantage of his confused thinking. “She probably didn’t ask him about marriage, she probably lied to you! No doubt what she did was ask him to send the soldiers for her. Remember this, you can trust my love as you could never trust a white girl’s. She has not only betrayed you to the soldiers, but in doing so brought death and destruction down on your people!”

He drifted into unconsciousness, still protesting weakly. “I thought she loved me ... She said she would never bring trouble to my people. . . .”

“Sleep, my love,” she whispered. “There is no reason for the soldiers to return. They got what they came for.”

“The horses,” he whispered. “Did they get my stallion and the little mare called Starfire?”

The mare he had brought as a gift to the other girl,
she thought savagely, but she only said, “Yes, they are both gone as is most of the herd. Maybe sometime when all the men are recovered, they can raid the fort and get back some of the horses.”

“Summer . . .” he whispered faintly over the medicine man’s chants. “Summer, where are you? I need you....”

Gray Dove stayed by his side as he drifted off to sleep. She felt no guilt or shame in letting him think the white girl and the kindly priest had betrayed the Indians. She felt only a sense of relief that she was covering her own tracks, knowing how vengeful the Cheyenne could be to a traitor. She had meant to get rid of her rival and it was only Jake Dallinger who had complicated things. She grimaced angrily, thinking of his trickery, of the reward he had done her out of. If she ever got a chance, she would deal with the cunning scout.

She never left Iron Knife’s side all night sitting there cramped and cold. Without sleep, she watched his face, willing him to live, holding water to his fevered lips when he moaned.

Outside, the trilling for the dead continued through the night as dogs howled and searched through the wreckage for a scrap to eat. But the people were too cold and hungry to think of dogs. Most of the dried meat for the winter, the buffalo robes, and tepees had been burned by the soldiers.

In desperation, to keep the big warrior alive, she took a haunch off a dead pony and cooked it, spooning it between his lips. But she dare not tell him what it was. Horses were like brothers to the Cheyenne and they would not eat such meat unless they were starving. They were not like the Kiowa, the Dotaine, who relished the taste of horse meat and thought it a delicacy.

Within a day, the camp took on some semblance of order and those who were not hurt gathered up a few horses and went hunting. The tepees and clothing that were not burned were shared generously by all. The dead could not be wrapped ceremoniously for lack of robes. They were taken out to high burial scaffolds with few possessions.

Old Scalp Taker was among the dead, shot in the chest. His body, in the bloody scalp shirt, and a few prized possessions were placed on the scaffold on a windswept hill. Had he been killed far away on a war party, his body would have been left where it fell as was the custom. But now he was carried up to the hilltop followed by the shaman and grieving friends and relatives to be left forever between earth and sky.

The shaman sang,
“Ma Ka mai yo tsim an stom ai,”
over and over, meaning “Great Spirit-making Maker!” as the people following along entreated Heammawihio in behalf of the fierce old chief who had served his people long and well.

One of the fine remaining horses was led beneath the death scaffold and killed so he might go with the dead man. “Go, Little Brother!” The shaman gave instructions to the pony as he stabbed it. “Go carry the warrior up the Hanging Road to the sky where buffalo run plentiful and free so the brave chief may chase them through the clouds forever!
Ohahyaa! Ohahyaa!”

Old Scalp Taker’s second wife and daughters slashed their legs and cut their hair short to show their grief. His old first wife did all that and sacrificed two of her fingers with a sharp knife to display her sorrow.

The trilling sounds of grief went on for days as the dead were gathered and placed on scaffolds. It seemed to Gray Dove as she listened that the wailing went on forever. Even as she kept constant vigil by Iron Knife’s bed, she could hear it through the night and it awakened her. She was uneasy that the people might learn who was responsible. Many among the Arapaho had lost loved ones, too, and they would thirst for revenge almost as much as the Cheyenne.

One of Pretty Flower Woman’s brothers had been shot through the hand by a soldier and the bones shattered. When Gray Dove saw it, she knew he could die since the Cheyenne did not practice amputation. What good was a badly crippled man to either himself or his tribe in this hard struggle for survival?

The hand was treated with the medicines available and chants sung over it. Then they could only wait and watch his brave, stoic face grow gaunt with suffering. Soon red streaks ran from the wound up the arm and it began to fester and smell.

Seeing his face as he sat quietly, Gray Dove knew he suffered great agony. But he did not cry out for such was not the way of the tribe. Word went through the camp that he had called in his older brother and asked him to take the grieving young wife and children as his own so they would not starve.

Finally, the young warrior’s jaws seemed frozen in place and he could not open them in that mystery Gray Dove knew the whites called “lockjaw.” His grieving little wife tried to spoon broth between his teeth. But at last, he wrapped himself in his blanket, turned his face to the back of the tepee, and died. After his body was taken to a burial scaffold, the tepee was torched because he had died there. His belongings were given away and his sad little family moved to become part of the older brother’s brood.

Days passed and the weather grew colder. It was long past time for the camp to be moved but the lances of the Mahohewas, the Red Shields, were still taken down each morning. There were too many badly injured to be moved even though they might be in danger of a second attack if the soldiers decided to return. But who knew what the whites were thinking?

Two Arrows recovered and all three of the men of that family toiled hard at the hunting to keep the camp supplied with meat since there were many hurt. Pony Woman and Pretty Flower Woman tried to check on the big Dog Soldier, but Gray Dove kept her vigil jealously and wouldn’t let them do anything. No task was beneath her in caring for him and she worked possessively, washing his muscular body and cleansing the wound.
No woman would touch him again but herself,
she vowed,
and someday he would recognize and appreciate her devotion.

Sometimes as she washed his fevered body with cool water, she wondered at the scars on his back. The sun dance marks and old wounds from his many battles were common. What mystified her were the scars on his back and face like those made with a lash. Gray Dove had loved him from the first moment she had seen him as a young warrior riding into that fort in Nebraska so many years ago. But of his past among the whites, she knew nothing except what everyone knew of the stolen girl, Texanna. Something terrible had happened to him to drive him back to the Cheyenne but that had happened before she first saw him.

Day after day, she sponged his fevered face and spooned food into his mouth. At night, often, he moaned and muttered, but she crawled under the robe and held him close to quiet him and whispered, “It will be all right, my love. I am here and I will never leave you.”

He would mutter and pull her to him and cry out, “I thought you had left me! Don’t go! Don’t leave me!”

Gray Dove knew he thought of the white girl, but as she pulled him against her and warmed him with her body, she was satisfied. He could not love a ghost forever when he thought the yellow-haired one had betrayed him. Only once in all these ten years had she managed to tempt him into making love to her and that had been a long time ago. As a young warrior, he had tried the firewater once and he was almost senseless in the grass when she followed him there in the darkness and offered her body. He had taken her like any male animal might take a female; not knowing or caring, she thought. And the caring made all the difference in the world between lust and love. She’d had the one from him, now she hungered as always for the other.

Gradually, his mind and his strength seemed to return to him and with it a great sadness so that he sat and stared into the fire without speaking.

Gray Dove did not mourn her dead father and brothers since they mistreated her when they drank and worked her hard to get more money for whiskey. As far as she was concerned, all the family she had had died when the Pawnee had attacked the little party up on the Platte.

Finally, one morning Iron Knife seemed strong enough to walk about the camp and watch the preparations that were being made to move the band. When he returned to the tepee, he breathed heavily as he came in and sat down.

“Rest!” she commanded him. “You are not strong enough yet to move too much and it will be awhile before you are fully recovered. Here,” she thrust a bowl of warm stew in his hands, “I have made food for you.”