Embrace the Wild Land (9 page)

“Married an Indian woman then?”

Danny smiled softly. “No, sir. Married another white woman.”

Johnston’s eyebrows arched. “And he lives among the Cheyenne?”

“Mostly. They do have a cabin down on the Arkansas River. But it’s right smack in Cheyenne country. Abbie is quite a woman, a very lovely person, in looks and character. She’s one brave lady.”

Johnston fingered his mustache. “This Zeke sounds like the kind of man we could use on the Confederate side,” he commented. “Is he as big as you?”

Danny grinned. “Bigger! But Zeke would never take sides in this war. He has no ties with Tennessee—no desire to ever come back. His only concern is the Cheyenne—and his own family.”

“Too bad.” Johnston studied Danny thoughtfully, liking the young man right off. “So, you went west to find this Zeke and ended up in the army. A lieutenant at Fort Laramie. Takes rugged men to last out there on the frontier. I admire your courage and strength, Monroe. I most certainly can use you.” He leaned forward across the table. “We’ve got to hold Bowling Green, Mr. Monroe. And Nashville. The Green River, the Tennessee and the Cumberland Rivers are our supply routes. We’ve got to keep them open. Nashville is important because of its industry. Here we get our uniforms from clothing factories, arms and equipment from other factories. Several railroads lead to Nashville. We must secure Tennessee and keep all of these routes open. The area on the Green River around Bowling Green, all the way down to Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee is vital. Vital! The Federals know this, and they’re already building forces under Generals Grant and Sherman. I intend to be ready for them! The Confederates can and will win this war, Mr. Monroe.” He rose again. “And fine young men like yourself will help us win it!”

Danny rose and put out his hand again, shaking the
general’s vigorously. “Thank you, sir.”

“I’ll consider your former service and let you know in the morning what your command will be, Mr. Monroe.” Their eyes held in mutual love for the South and the Confederacy. Then Johnston let go of Danny’s hand. “Tell me, son. You served out west apparently for a long time. Do you miss it?”

Danny sighed, his eyes softening with a special love. “Every man who goes out there misses it, sir. There’s something about it that kind of grabs at a man, keeps pulling him back toward the setting sun. I expect I’ll go back out, once this war is over.”

Johnston nodded. “You love it. I can tell.” He searched Danny’s eyes again, wanting to be certain of the man’s loyalty. “But you still love Tennessee more, don’t you?”

Danny swallowed and nodded. “Tennessee will always be home, sir. It’s in my blood.”

Johnston smiled softly. “Good. Welcome to the bloody war, Monroe. May God keep you safe.”

Winter winds howled outside, but Zeke and Abbie sat by the hearth, warm and comfortable. Abbie sewed on a new pair of winter moccasins for her husband, made from the shaggiest part of a bull buffalo hide. The thick hair would be turned to the inside, creating a natural insulation that made for much warmer footwear than the conventional boot.

The house was quiet, with only the sound of the crackling fire and the soft strumming of the mystic mandolin, an instrument Zeke Monroe played very seldom now, but one he played well. The music he made with the instrument was always a source of fascination and excitement for the children, and this night it had lulled them all to sleep as they lay in their beds listening to their father play and sometimes sing songs he had
learned back in that mysterious place called Tennessee.

Abbie held a particular love for the old and beautiful mandolin, for when first she met Zeke Monroe on a wagon train west, he had played the instrument for her, helping soothe her fears and loneliness with his music. When he played and sang, he presented a picture that was in stark contrast to the vicious and vengeful man Zeke Monroe could be. There was nothing Indian about him when he strummed the mandolin strings. His mellow voice and the Tennessee mountain songs he sang turned him into a purely Tennessee man, and Abbie treasured those moments, for she felt as though she could own and control that side of him. She loved everything that was Indian about him, yet that was a part of him she could never fully share, for no matter how well she understood the Cheyenne religion, customs and language, the fact remained that she was white. There was a side to him that belonged only to Zeke—the side that was called Lone Eagle, the side that had visions and drew power from the spirits of the earth and the elements. But when he played his mandolin and sang for her, he was a man she could share fully, and he gave her, willingly and lovingly, a little part of the world from which she had come so many years ago—a world she had given up for him.

He stopped strumming and sat watching the flames for several silent minutes. She put down her sewing and watched his dark, troubled eyes, as he flexed his right hand.

“Is your arm bothering you again?” she asked. The knife wound Blade had inflicted upon him four months before at Fort Lyon had not healed quite right, and at times his arm felt numb.

He shrugged and flexed his hand more. “Just a little. I want to keep working it. This occasional numbness could mean my death if I’m using my knife in self-defense.
I think if I work it enough all the strength will come back.” He sighed. “Guess my old age is making me so I don’t heal so fast any more.”

Abbie laughed. “Zeke Monroe, there is no such thing as age with a man like you. You’ll never be old. All the years do to you is make you more handsome. You’re as hard and strong as the day I met you, and you know it. Soon as I laid eyes on you I decided I’d not let you get away, because I’d never again see a finer specimen of man, and you had those gentle eyes on top of it. I thought my heart would jump right out of my mouth when you volunteered to scount for my pa’s train.”

He snickered and looked at her with a twinkle in his eyes. “Now you sound like the little girl you were then, always pouring gushy, flattering words over me. Remember that time you blurted out to your sister all those fine compliments about me, all my wonderful attributes, trying to defend me because she tried to discourage you from being interested in me? Everybody on the train heard you, you crazy kid, and there I was trying to keep the others from knowing you had an interest. I was afraid they’d look down on you.”

She raised her chin defiantly. “I didn’t care one whit what they thought! And any woman who tells me I shouldn’t be with you is just jealous!”

Zeke chuckled and shook his head. Then he sobered as he studied the scar on his arm again. “I sure have my share of these. Sometimes I wonder how I can still walk on two feet. I should have been dead about thirty times over. I’ve been close to death so many times I try not to even count.”

She began stitching on a moccasin again. “Men like Cheyenne Zeke don’t go down easy,” she commented. She sewed quietly for a moment, then raised her eyes to his again, herself sobering. She had noticed the scar on
her own left hand, put there by a jealous Arapaho woman who had once wanted Zeke for herself and had attacked the white woman he had married. And there was the scar on her back and breast, where a Crow arrow had penetrated her body. How many years ago was it? And yet it seemed like yesterday. Zeke had saved her life then, draining a terrible infection with his own knife.

“We both have scars,” she commented. “Inside and out. It’s the wounds on the inside that hurt the most, Lord knows.”

Their eyes held and then he suddenly looked away. “God, Abbie, you never should have married me,” he said quietly.

She caught the little boy tone again and refused to let him feel guilty for anything. “Look at it this way, Zeke,” she told him. “What other man would have put up with a strong-minded woman like me? I’m too independent and fiesty for the ordinary man. As some men put it, I have too much spirit. I needed a man as strong and mean as you to keep me in my place.”

He met her eyes again and saw the teasing look in them. Then he broke into a grin. “Abbie-girl, I believe you’re probably right.”

She nodded. “Of course I’m right.”

He picked up a heavy rock he kept near the hearth and began bending his arm to exercise the stiff muscles.

“I’ll bet I’m right about something else, too,” she added, this time more serious.

“What’s that?”

She pulled at a strip of rawhide. “Oh, the way you played that mandolin tonight—your music was kind of sad.” She met his eyes. “You’ re worried about Danny, aren’t you?”

He stopped lifting the rock and leaned back to study her. “Woman, the way you read my mind, I swear I’d
better be careful not to think about some other woman, or you’d be coming at me with a skillet aimed at my head.”

She laughed lightly. “You’re exactly right.”

Immediately both of them sobered. For one night there had been another woman—the prostitute called Anna Gale. But that had not been out of desire. It had been out of necessity, for Zeke Monroe had never desired another woman but his Abbie since the first day he’d set eyes on the virgin child he knew he must claim for himself. Anna Gale was something that had happened a long time ago, a brief, forced interlude to gain vital information. It was something they had long ago decided to never again discuss.

He sighed and leaned forward, turning his eyes back to the crackling fire. A mantle clock above the fireplace ticked peacefully. It had been a gift to her from Zeke many years ago; “something from the world you should be living in,” he had told her. They still lived in a
tipi
when he first bought it for her. The cabin had not yet been built. She used to set it on an upturned log before she had a mantle to set it on. Now she had one made of stones Zeke had dug from the bed of the Arkansas River and put together with earthen clay. He had lamented at the time that the mantle was not made of fine marble, but Abbie loved it just the way it was, for loving, hard-working hands had built it.

“What made you start thinking about Danny again?” she asked.

He moved his eyes to hers. “Talk of the war,” he told her. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. Black Elk came to see me today while I was out in the north pasture. He said runners had come to their camp telling them a General Albert Pike was enlisting the services of Indians to help the Confederates. Seems the Confederates, hopefully with the help of Indians, plan to attack
every fort along the Arkansas and maybe even move on into Denver.”

She stopped her sewing and paled. “Oh, dear Lord! They shouldn’t get involved in that, Zeke!”

“That’s what I told him. He said William Bent had given them the same warning. I told Black Elk that to join up with the Confederates would only make things worse for the Cheyenne, no matter how many guns or whatever else the Confederates offer them. I don’t see the South winning this war, Abbie. The Union is too many and too strong and too industrialized. The government will one day come down hard enough on the Indians without having the excuse that the Indians aided the Confederates. That’s all the remaining fuel they need to wipe out every red man west of the Mississippi. The worst part is that if there is even a hint out in these parts that the Indians are joining the Confederates and planning to raid along the Arkansas, Colorado will arm itself full force. You know how scared and crazy the settlers get at the mere hint of Indian trouble. I don’t like it. I don’t like any of it. It’s easy enough to shoot an Indian as it is, without the excuse that he might be aiding the rebels.”

“What did Black Elk say he would do?”

“He’s a wise man. He listens to men like me and Bent. I think he intends to stay out of it.”

She sighed deeply. “I should hope so.” She frowned. “Why would the Confederates want anything out here anyway? I thought the concern was between North and South.”

He rose and paced. The confines of a cabin in winter always made him restless, like a bobcat in a trap. She knew that in the morning he would go riding again with Wolf’s Blood, no matter how cold it was.

“You forget that there is no longer just North and South, Abbie. “We’re surrounded now. There’s California,
and that state is pro-Union. They’ll surely send troops east to help the Union, and the South knows it. Their only hope to stop that is to bottle them off by cutting off their ability to get through the West on their way. Besides that, there’s gold out here, and the South needs that gold.”

She felt a chill. “I don’t like to think about it. I just pray that Danny is all right—and his family. And I pray that none of it comes here to our peaceful little ranch.”

She looked up at him and they were both consumed by the sudden premonition that the war, no matter how much they tried to stay out of it, would somehow come to their doorstep and try to separate them. He walked over to her, bent down and placed his hands on each arm of her rocker. He came closer and kissed her hair, her eyes, her cheeks, her chin, her mouth, suddenly needing her. She returned the kiss hungrily, as tears slipped down her cheeks. He released the kiss and moved his lips over her cheek and to her neck.

“Zeke—” she whimpered.

“Don’t say it,” he groaned. “Just don’t say it, Abbie-girl. I’ll not let us be separated again. I can’t stand to be apart from you.”

“Oh, Zeke, why does there have to be war and fighting everywhere? Why can’t we live in peace? I don’t want any part of the fighting.”

“Hush, Abbie.” He covered her mouth again with his own, moaning as he kissed her almost desperately. When his lips left hers she saw the terrible need in his eyes. She rose and set her sewing aside, and he lifted her in his arms and carried her into their small bedroom. He set her on her feet again and removed first the knitted sweater she wore, then her tunic. Neither of them spoke as he drank in her nakedness in the dim light that filtered through the curtains at the doorway of
the room. His own earthy provocativeness and rugged power seemed to fill the small room, and again she marveled that her small self could please such a man. He ran his hands over her body, touching nipples that were taut from the cold air, for they were not near the hearth now, and the temperature was bitter outside the log walls.