Embrace the Wild Land (11 page)

Zeke picked up his knife and turned it in his hand. He knew he must explain the connection between Winston Garvey and Anna Gale, and how and why Anna Gale knew of the existence of Garvey’s half-Indian son. But to tell Wolf’s Blood that much would mean telling him that Zeke himself had slept with the notorious prostitute. How could he make a fifteen-year-old boy understand why he had done so? The thought of his infidelity still brought pain to his own heart, and now he must try to explain it to his son. He rose and walked to the edge of the hill, looking down at the little cabin far below and watching the younger children playing tag. It was such a peaceful picture. How he loved his family, and the love he had found through them.

“It’s possible Garvey would find out,” he answered his son quietly. “Because one other woman knows the boy exists—not his name or where he is, only that he exists.”

Wolf’s Blood looked up at his father. “Who is the woman?” he asked.

Zeke sighed. “Do you remember when we were in Denver, son, when we took your mother there because she needed to see a doctor badly?”

The boy’s eyes turned colder. “How could I forget Denver?” he hissed. “I hate Denver! The people there were cruel to us! That ugly white boy came down the street and called me dirty names! I jumped on him and beat him up good, but then a white man pulled me off and beat me and threw me in the street, where that horse rode over me! And when you tried to help me those men all jumped on you from behind and hurt you and took you to their jail. They were bad men, and that boy was evil! I saw the evil in his eyes.”

Zeke turned around and faced his son. “That white boy was Charles Garvey, Winston Garvey’s son.”

Wolf’s Blood’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “He was? Why did you not tell me this before?”

Zeke looked down at his knife. “Because I didn’t know how to explain it all to you, Wolf’s Blood.” His voice was strained and distant. He walked back to the small fire and knelt down across from his son. “When we went to Denver four years ago, I had no idea that Winston Garvey had shifted his interests to Colorado Territory. I thought he was still in Santa Fe. At the time you got in that fight with his son in the street, Garvey himself was away in the East, which was a lucky thing for us. If he had known I was in town, he’d have had me hung. He knows I can expose a lot of things about him, one of which is that he is very closely connected with the prostitute called Anna Gale.”

Their eyes held, and he saw the curiosity in Wolf’s Blood’s innocent gaze. “Anna Gale is the woman who helped to get you out of jail,” he mused. “And she got a doctor for me and gave me and my mother shelter.”

“That’s right,” Zeke replied. “You never questioned why Anna Gale helped us, son. And I never offered
a reason. But I had known her before. When I was searching for Yellow Moon, I had traced her to Anna’s place back when Anna was still in Santa Fe. It was Anna who told me where I could find Yellow Moon, but she wanted a price for the information. I couldn’t beat it out of her because I was in a civilized town and she was well guarded. I had to think about Abbie and my family and getting back home to them. I couldn’t risk a noose around my neck or being labeled as a wanted man, which is what would have happened if I had made trouble in Santa Fe. I was a half-breed. I never would have got out of that town.” He gripped his knife tightly, frustrated by the times when he could not use it to get what he wanted because of the white man’s laws and trickery. “Anna Gale wanted only one thing from me, son. So I gave it to her.”

He met the boy’s eyes again, and the boy’s heart began to race a little faster as it suddenly came to him what his father was telling him. “You … slept with her?”

Zeke saw the desperate disappointment in the boy’s eyes. “It isn’t what you think, Wolf’s Blood. I’m only telling you all of this so that you understand the connection—between Winston Garvey and Anna Gale, and me.”

The boy blinked back tears. “But … you love my mother!”

“Of course I love your mother! I’d cut out my eyes for your mother! But I’m trying to explain to you about the other kind of war, Wolf’s Blood! The
white
man’s war!”

The boy shook his head. “Women like that—they are filth!”

Zeke threw down the knife. “Damn it, Wolf’s Blood, I’m trying to explain something to you!” Their eyes locked for a moment in both love and anger. Then
Wolf’s Blood looked down at the flames.

“Tell me what I should know, Father,” he said quietly, his voice dejected. Zeke’s heart ached with a longing to have the boy understand.

“I was desperate by then to find Yellow Moon, son. I had rescued Bonnie and got her back to safety, but I’d been shot in the process and my wound still wasn’t healed. I was tired and I was lonely for Abbie and my family. I had already come close to losing my life more than once in my search for Yellow Moon and had killed a lot of men to get that far. I was close, Wolf’s Blood! So close! All I had to do was sleep with Anna Gale to get my information and I could find Yellow Moon and go home. There are many things about men and women you don’t understand yet, but some day you will discover that there can be sex without love. There is no beauty in it, no pleasure, no satisfaction. I did nothing more than provide stud service to a scheming whore. But it was my only weapon at the time. I played the white man’s game to find out what I needed to know. Anna Gale used me, but I also used her. And there wasn’t a moment when your mother was not on my mind. What I did tore at my soul, but I had to find Yellow Moon, and I could only pray your mother would understand that, because I knew I could not and would not hide it from her.”

“She … knows?”

“Of course she knows! And she knows how it pained me to be untrue to her, because I made myself suffer. I made my own atonement, punished myself physically so that she would understand, so that I could offer some sign to her that I did not sleep with Anna Gale for the pleasure of it. When I left Anna’s place to go after Yellow Moon, I made a sacrifice. I turned to the Indian ways and chose to make myself suffer physically so that the pain on the inside would not be so great.” He held
up his left hand; most of the little finger was missing. “I did this.”

Wolf’s Blood’s eyes widened. “You … you said that was an accident!”

“It was no accident, son. I’ve never known quite how to tell you. But now maybe you’re old enough to understand, and it’s our secret now. Yours and mine and your mother’s. It took more courage than I’ve ever needed to do this, Wolf’s Blood. But I knew it was necessary. I found a quiet place alone and I cut off my finger. And then I wept, Wolf’s Blood. I wept for a long time—and prayed to the spirits that Abbie would understand and forgive, for such things are hard for a white woman to understand. And I hope you, too, will understand. This is my sign, Wolf’s Blood.” He held the finger closer. “This is my atonement—proof of how much I love your mother.”

Wolf’s Blood studied his father’s eyes. He knew the true heart of this man he worshipped and admired, and he knew how strong was the love between Zeke and Abigail Monroe. Of that love he had no doubt, nor did he now doubt his father’s reasons for sleeping with Anna Gale. He grasped Zeke’s hand.

“If my mother could understand, then I, too, understand,” he told Zeke. “This Anna Gale. She is the link, then, between you and Winston Garvey, a way he might find out about Joshua?”

Zeke nodded and squeezed the boy’s hand lovingly, then rose, walking to his horse and retrieving a small pipe from his parfleche. He began stuffing it with tobacco. “Anna knew Garvey years before, back in Washington,” he explained. “Garvey would find clients for her, and she managed to get information from them that Garvey could sometimes use later against them.” He lit his pipe. “Then Garvey set her up in business in Santa Fe during the Mexican War, where
he planned to come out himself after he retired and get himself set up—buy up land, establish banks, and in general increase his wealth tenfold by getting out here before the whites began surging west to settle. Garvey more or less owned Anna for years. She hated the man, but she was at his beck and call. When gold was discovered in Denver, they both headed north to reap the benefits from the miners and new settlers. That’s how Anna ended up in Denver at the same time we were there. And then when she saw us in trouble she decided to help us.” He puffed on the pipe quietly for a moment. “I guess in spite of what she was, she had developed fond feelings for me after the night I spent with her. I don’t know why, for she was a woman who took in men and cast them out like you cast away nutshells after eating the meat, but she considered me special, and for some reason she had fond memories of me. So she helped us when you got hurt and I got thrown in jail.”

He puffed on the pipe again and Wolf’s Blood watched him. “Did that woman love you?” he asked curiously.

Zeke thought for a long moment. Anna Gale was exceedingly beautiful, a wasted woman who might have turned out differently if not for her childhood. “Perhaps,” he replied. He puffed the pipe again and turned to face the boy. “At any rate I wanted to do something for Anna for helping us out of a bad predicament. She’d been kind to Abbie at a time when Abbie was helpless and alone in a strange city, her husband in jail and her son badly wounded and lying in the street. If not for Anna, God only knows what might have happened to Abbie that day, or to you. So I gave Anna a weapon to use against Winston Garvey, because she hated the man, and I hated him, too. After seeing his son again and hearing from Anna how demented the
boy was, I knew the last thing Winston Garvey would want would be for his own son to discover he had a half-brother who was part Indian. So I gave Anna a weapon to use against Garvey and free her of her indebtedness to the man. I only told her enough to threaten Garvey. I told her that he had a half-breed son. I told her nothing more, and since Garvey has no idea I was in Denver and that the information could have come from me, it isn’t likely he would ever make the connection. But there is always the possibility, which is why you and I and your mother must never reveal we know anything about a half-breed boy born to Yellow Moon. Yellow Moon is dead, and as far as we are concerned, never had the child. If anyone should ever ask about it, you know nothing of it. Understood?”

Wolf’s Blood nodded and rose. “I understand, Father. I understand many things now. I am glad you told me of this so that I will never deceive my cousin, Joshua. And more than that, I understand better about men like Winston Garvey.”

Zeke took the pipe from his mouth and walked closer to the boy. “Always remember the warnings I give you this day. Men like Winston Garvey don’t know the meaning of love. They have no heart. They marry for power and money, and their children are nothing more than something to be nurtured in the ways of evil so that they can carry on the father’s empire. The Winston Garveys of this world think they are better than other people, destined to rule and own; and if he thinks someone like myself is in the way of his climb to glory, he’ll try to cut me—or you—down. He uses people for his pleasure and then disposes of them. His kind will cry out publicly against the Indian and then turn around and sleep with slave squaws. He pretends to be pure and pious, but he is filth on the inside. Such men know nothing about being one with God and the
elements—about the joys of being free, of hunting alone, watching an eagle, talking to the animals, sleeping close to the earth with the smell of grass and wild-flowers in your nostrils. Such things are riches to us. But they are nothing to men like Garvey. He hungers only for wealth and power. And I predict right now that his son, Charles, will be worse than the father. Remember that—and remember his name.”

Wolf’s Blood nodded. “I will remember all these things, Father. I hate such men. I remember that day in Denver. It burns in my stomach! I hate such men the way my uncle, Swift Arrow, hates them. And if they ever come and try to take me away to their world, I will kill them! And if those I do not kill still want me, they will have to catch me first. Just let them try to catch Wolf’s Blood!” He smiled haughtily, even though his eyes were watery. “They will never catch me. And I will never go to that world, Father. Do not ever make me go there!”

Zeke reached out and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’ll never make you go there, son. You aren’t made for those places. You’re made for freedom, and because you are the way you are, your heart is pure and your soul will be free, and the wind will always be at your back.” He bent down and picked up the infamous knife, holding it out to the boy. “Grab hold, son, and get a feel of the balance.”

Their eyes held in a new understanding. Wolf’s Blood slowly reached out and grasped the buffalo jawbone handle of his father’s notorious weapon.

“I want you to get your mind off that other world, son,” Zeke told him. “This is your time—the year you have chosen through your own vision to become a man and suffer the Sun Dance ritual. Because of what you know about your enemies, you are even stronger now—wiser. It is good that you know these things so
that when the celebration comes, your eyes will be open to good and evil. This is important. Evil lurks in all of our hearts, Wolf’s Blood. It is up to each man to decide which side shall win his soul—the good or the evil. The evil side is the easy way. To truly be strong, to truly be a man, means standing up for what is right, against all odds. It means fighting a power worse than all the evil that surrounds us. It means fighting the evil inside ourselves and being strong from within. It is my own inner strength that has pulled me through many bad experiences and saved me in all the times that I came close to losing my life in battle. And when a man finds his own inner power and strength, then he chooses a weapon as a warrior, a weapon that represents his strength, an extension of a man’s power. For me this weapon is the knife. Now you yourself have been practicing with it. I have watched you. In so many ways you are like me. Perhaps you also will choose the knife as the extension of your power.”

The boy looked at his father again. “I want to learn more,” he said, his eyes suddenly strangely cold. “I want to be as good as you with the knife. I am good with a lance, but a man cannot easily carry a lance every place he goes. A knife can be taken wherever I go.”