The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series) (13 page)

      
Hugh talked a great deal about his lifelong love of the army and high hopes for serving his country. He came from a fine old Baltimore family who lived in genteel poverty after the war. Winning an appointment to West Point had been the dream of a lifetime. He had graduated third in his class back in 1868, then was sent immediately to join Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer on his summer campaign against the Plains Indians.

      
If he adored the army, he idolized his commander, General Custer. Hugh explained to her the general's rank was only brevetted to the great man for heroic exploits during the war, but his star was definitely on the rise. And Hugh Phillips's star would ascend right with it and the Seventh Cavalry.

      
“You should have seen the general at Washita,” Hugh said with his eyes aglow as they sat around his aunt's dinner table one evening. “He split his command into four forces and they rode into old Black Kettle's camp at dawn, cutting off every hope of escape for the savages.”

      
“Now, Hugh,” Marybelle admonished gently, setting aside the Waterford wine goblet she had been sipping from. “You mustn't frighten us womenfolk with such bloodthirsty tales of red Indians.”

      
“What do you think of the Cheyenne, Hugh?” Stephanie knew Chase had been captured during that raid, nothing more. He had not wished to speak of it. Understanding his pain and resentment at being dragged back to Boston in chains, she had not pried. But now she wondered if Hugh had seen Chase as a seventeen-year-old prisoner. If so, he gave no indication of it. She dared not reopen old wounds by asking. She would not want Hugh to think her crazy—or still in love with Chase—if she mentioned what Chase had told her of his people. But was what he had described true? Or were the Cheyenne really the savages everyone thought?

      
Hugh considered her question thoughtfully, as he did every one Stephanie posed to him, a trait he knew pleased her. “They are primitive, of course, but not without their own code of honor. They make dangerous adversaries on the battlefield. Beyond that, I've had no personal dealings with them. The best thing would be for the army to contain the Cheyenne and their Arapaho and Sioux allies far away from miners and settlers.”

      
“But they held the lands in the West for centuries. Have we the right to just take it from them?”

      
Before Hugh could answer, her father interjected, “Don't be a ninny, girl. What can an ignorant savage do with fertile soil or gold? He doesn't farm and he doesn't mine. White civilization—good old American enterprise—has the God-given right to use that land. And with the army's help, we'll do it.” He gave her a quelling look that might have indicated he was angry with her defense of Chase Remington's people...or more likely meant that he simply found her romantic altruism bad for business. She had subsided and the topic of conversation changed.

* * * *

      
“I'm to report to the general in Kentucky next Monday,” Hugh announced the following week as they rode through the park, the Summerfield groom following at a discreet distance.

      
Stephanie could sense the regret in his voice. “After all you've told me about the general's exploits, I'd think you would be thrilled to finally rejoin him.”

      
“It will mean leaving you behind. As much as I want to return to active duty, I don't relish being without that smile.” He reached over and touched her cheek gently, bringing forth the desired effect.

      
When they dismounted by the fountain and let the groom cool their horses, Hugh took her hand in his and said earnestly, “Soon we'll be leaving Kentucky. Bound for the High Plains. Stephanie, the West is incredible. Vast, wild, magnificent!” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, then stopped himself self-consciously. “You must think me an incurable romantic...or a fool.”

      
“Never a fool, Hugh. As to being incurably romantic, I don't think that's such an awful thing.”

      
He squeezed her hand gently. “I'd hoped in the past month that you'd come to regard me fondly, Stephanie. I know that I'm not a rich man but my lineage is good and your father has approved of me. I would like to pay you court, with your permission.”

      
The hesitancy tugged at her heart. Hugh was the polar opposite of Chase, who took whatever he wanted without an instant's hesitation. Blazes! Why did she keep making comparisons between them? Chase was gone and Hugh was here. Chase had deserted her for his savage red brethren. Hugh was steadfast and decent and, she was certain, quite desperately in love with her. But was she in love with him? Or was her heart so bruised and battered that she could never truly love again?

      
Grow up, young lady
. Stephanie could still hear aunt Paulina's sensible admonition.
It's a dreadful thing not to become a woman when one ceases to be a girl.
She must possess the courage to live again.

      
“I would like that very much,” she replied to Hugh.

      
Over the next several months, they exchanged letters regularly. He wrote of the boring routine of camp life in backwater Kentucky. When they were given a special assignment in the Dakota Territory, he painted a vivid picture of the vast herds of buffalo blackening the great plains and even described the imperious yet jovial charm of the Russian Grand Duke Alexis, whom Custer had the honor of squiring on a hunt.

      
His letters were utterly wonderful. Stephanie read them and pictured in her mind's eye the vastness of a cloudless bowl of blue, which the Cheyenne called the Endless Sky. She saw plains filled with huge shaggy bison, snow-capped mountains and icy clear rivers, all beneath a brilliant beaming sun. The images were her solace through the bleakness of another Boston winter.

      
When Hugh received leave the following spring, he rushed straight to Boston and asked her to marry him.

      
Stephanie accepted.

      
They were wed in a grand Episcopal Church in Baltimore, for Hugh's family was High Church and asked that the ceremony be held in the cathedral. Oddly during the elaborate nuptial mass, Stephanie caught herself fleetingly wondering what the Reverend Jeremiah Remington, stern Congregationalist that he was, would have thought of it. Any memories of his grandson, she forced from her mind, vowing to be a good wife to the handsome man who beamed down at her with a look of complete adoration on his pale handsome face.

Chapter Six

Bighorn Mountains, 1872

      
Chase stared down at the teeming village below, stretched in a horseshoe configuration with the opening facing east, as was the custom of the People. Every camp he had visited looked the same from a distance, young men practicing with their bows, girls hauling buckets of water, women scraping buffalo hides while old men smoked and prayed and small children laughed and played with toys. Perhaps this time he would find them. Hopefully, he guided his big stallion down the ridge toward the village.

      
The Elk Society sentries scrutinized him suspiciously but let him ride past.
They know I’m a breed
, he thought to himself. Dressed in old buckskins and a pair of worn moccasins he had bought from an Arapaho trader, he rode without a saddle in the manner of all horse Indians. Outside of a locket from his mother and Thunderbolt, he had kept little from his old life in Boston, only a small amount of money, which was almost gone now. He had been searching for months. What if they were all dead?

      
But no. In every camp he had visited they remembered Stands Tall and Red Bead, brother and aunt to Vanishing Grass whose half-blooded son had been taken prisoner by the White Eyes. From all accounts, his family had returned to the mountains from where their Northern Cheyenne relatives had first come south. Tracking down the survivors of the Washita Massacre had not been easy, for Black Kettle's band had scattered to various camps ranging from the Nations to the Yellowstone country.

      
And so he had gone from one camp to another, not certain of the welcome his white blood would bring. The People's hearts had been hardened against all
veho
since Sand Creek and Washita. The White Father had broken the Medicine Lodge Treaty and sent his Blue Coats to attack peaceful hunters and burn more villages filled with women and children. Quickly he had learned he must disavow all traces of the white world. He could not look completely Cheyenne, but he could at least abandon hard-soled boots, hats and haircuts. Most camps received him warily but hospitably, offering food and shelter, telling him what they knew of his uncle and great-aunt to aid in his search.

      
The task was not a simple one for the hunting grounds of the Plains Tribes stretched fifteen hundred miles from the Canadian border to the Staked Plains of Texas. His search was further complicated because the main bodies of Northern and Southern Cheyenne left their large summer encampments every fall, scattering into small bands.

      
Sooner or later he would find his remaining family. Then what? The question had nagged him when he slept alone beneath the vast canopy of stars. He felt a kinship with the land but could he reestablish his ties with the People?

      
Thunderbolt picked his way through the loose rocks to the edge of the camp. By this time two small boys had discovered the visitor and watched with wide, glistening black eyes as he dismounted. The women ignored him, continuing their chores, but a group of young warriors whose weapons bore the markings of Crazy Dogs, the most militant of the warrior societies, approached him.

      
A big barrel-chested warrior with Sun Dance scars proudly displayed on his chest blocked Chase's path. “What do you want here, White Eyes?” he sneered.

      
“I search for my father's brother and their mother's sister who have rejoined the Northern Cheyenne,” Chase replied fluently in their tongue. “My uncle is Stands Tall, son of Iron Kite and brother of Vanishing Grass who was my father. I am called Chase the Wind.”

      
The suspicious look on several of their faces began to dissipate but their leader's expression only hardened more.

      
“Stands Tall spoke of your capture. You have lived among the White Eyes many seasons. Why do you return now?”

      
‘That is for me to explain to my uncle,” Chase answered levelly as a sudden wave of excitement caused his pulse to leap. “Is he with this band?”

      
“He is here,” a second Crazy Dog replied, stepping past his more hostile companion. “I will take you to him.”

      
When the first man reached menacingly for the knife at his waist, another placed a restraining hand on his arm, saying, “It is for the council to decide, Pony Whipper. Let him pass.”

      
Chase's steady gaze never left Pony Whipper’s face. He stood poised on the balls of his feet, his hands hanging loosely at his sides, waiting to see what the other man would do. Only when Pony Whipper muttered an angry curse and stalked away did Chase nod to his guide to lead the way. He walked past the rest of the Crazy Dogs, feeling their animosity. They want nothing to do with whites, even half-whites. After seeing what the coming of the railroads with their influx of settlers had done in the south, he understood their hatred.

      
He followed the young warrior through the village, looking neither to the left nor right, letting the People study him in open curiosity. There would be time to learn their names later—if the council allowed him to stay. Soon they stood in front of one of the largest lodges in the village, at least seventeen skins. When he saw the bent shoulders of a thin old woman straighten up from the quilling she was doing on a ceremonial shirt, his heart leaped in his chest.

      
Red Bead was still alive! Her wizened face was seamed like ancient parchment and her toothless gums gave it a hollow appearance but her small black eyes were clear and shrewd, still shining with keen intelligence as she nodded in recognition.

      
Just then the lodge flap opened and a tall figure emerged. Age had not diminished Stands Tall, who at fifty-two was still as lean, straight and vigorous as ever. Silvery hairs gleamed in his heavy black braids and the creases around his eyes and mouth had grown deeper. When he smiled at Chase the years fell away.

      
“You are just as I remember you,” Chase said simply as the older man opened his arms to his dead brother's only child and Chase embraced him.

      
“And you are a man grown now,” Stands Tall replied, holding his tall muscular nephew's arms.

      
“What of the others—Song Bird and Red Water?” Chase asked, glancing to the lodge door.

      
“My wife and my younger son are dead.”

      
“I know Little Sun perished in the Washita Massacre,” Chase said sadly, remembering Stands Tail's elder son, a fearless warrior. “But I saw Song Bird escape with Red Water.”

      
“Only to fall prey to another of the white man's killing ways. The spotted throat destroyed them two winters ago.”

      
Although his uncle's face remained impassive, Chase could feel the older man's pain. “I am sorry I was not here to mourn with you.”

      
“Always our aunt said you would return to us. I confess I doubted Red Bead. My heart is glad that I was wrong.”

      
“There was a reason for Chase the Wind's sojourn with the spider people but it is over now. Freedom Woman has joined her husband,” Red Bead replied in a voice that rasped softly with age.