White Eagle's Touch (38 page)

“Bad things happen at these trading posts,” he’d said. “Besides, I will need you to tend to our ponies until we can return here to secure them. You know that I cannot take them with me to the fort. Always, when we have done this in the past, we lose these animals to the white man’s trade. And the ponies would alert any enemy to my movements with my wife. Such would be too dangerous. No, it is better that we leave them here.”

It had been an honor that White Eagle had requested of the lad. The boy, having no choice but to relent, had taken possession of their mounts and of Katrina’s doll, which she asked him to care for until she returned to claim it.

High upon a ridge the next day, they caught sight of the fort.

It looked different, here, under the embers of a setting sun. Just what it was that was so unusual, Katrina couldn’t quite say, only that it appeared…unsightly.

This time of year, there were fewer Indians encamped around it, for one thing. In truth, Katrina espied only one tepee, a far cry from the hundreds of lodges that had been pitched there during the early summer. In the distance a herd of horses munched on deliberately planted bunchgrass, while farther away, some cows, properly corralled, were being milked.

Looking at the fort now made the structure appear, not so much a beacon in a sea of wilderness as she had once supposed, but more like a white sore upon the beauty of the land, its walls and bastions appearing foreign and prickly, instead of welcoming.

She was amazed at her change of viewpoint.

The landscape had changed too. The prairie, during the beginning stages of fall, looked naked and withered, the trees along the riverbanks had taken on a yellow coat, while the river itself appeared shallow, with several more sandbars present than had been there a few months previous.

Flocks of ducks and geese congregated along the river, while numerous blackbirds and ravens circled the woods, their calls to one another filling the prairie.

“I don’t want to go down there just yet.”

That had White Eagle glancing at her in a hurry, though all he said was, “Humph.” Presently, he turned his pony around, to trail back down the ridge the same way they had come up it. He said, “We will set up a temporary camp here, although we must be careful. We are in the territory of the Assiniboin, who might still be vengeful over our recent raid on them.”

“But these people here wouldn’t be of the same band of Indians.”

“Word travels fast on the moccasin trail. They will have already heard of the raid. We will not be able to build a fire, because that would alert our enemies to our presence. We will have to eat only the dried beef and pemmican for our meal unless we can find some berries.”

“That is fine with me.”

He nodded then and looked for a place to camp for the night.

He found it in a glen of trees. It was perfect she was to think, later that night; black night, star-filled sky, large, golden moon shooting silvery light upon them.

It seemed so long since they had been alone and she wanted to have this night to themselves. Soon, others might try to force her to leave him, soon, she would have to confront those things that haunted her: the marquess, her uncle. But not tonight. She would have this night with her husband.

He lay beside her.

She touched his face, his hair, running her hand over his cheekbones, downward toward his neck, her touch a light caress.

“It seems so long since I have been alone with you, my husband.”

He gave her a gentle smile. “I, too, have missed this.”

“We are no longer on the warpath.”

His smile grew broader. “So we are not.”

“I have been wanting to hold you.”

He didn’t move. “As have I you.”

“We could…”

“So we could.”

She gave him a gentle shove. “Can you not take a hint?”

He laughed. “I will, I think, enjoy teasing you all of my life, my wife.”

This having been said, he rolled over to position her beneath him. He took a lock of her hair and twirled it around his finger. “I have not told you for many nights how much I love you. And this is a great oversight on my part. For I not only love you, I admire you. None of what we have done has been easy for you, and yet you never cease to try to learn, and just when I think you might never grasp the ways of my people, you surprise me with more valor than even the best warrior.”

“Do you mean that?”

Again, he smiled at her. “I would not say it if I did not mean it. And I have come to realize that without you, I am only half-alive. I did not realize that, all those years ago when you were taken away, so too, did a part of me go with you. Only when you came back into my life did I begin to feel the blood again flow through my body, only then did the wind whisper to me that I had at last found my woman. And I have been thinking perhaps that it is this which a man is supposed to share with his woman, many moments of pleasure. And I tell you now that I pledge myself to the task of always trying to make this so for us.”

Katrina could hardly speak.

Not only because of what he said, the way in which he said it, but because she, too, knew that this was all a person should ever ask of another: that they help each other to create many moments of pleasure.

She said, her voice not over a whisper, “All my life, and perhaps beyond, I will love you. Do not forget this.

I do not know what will happen when we go to Fort Union. There are many things there, as yet unresolved for me. But know that no matter what happens, I will love you always…and, somehow, I will be with you.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her, softly, gently, with all the passion of a man in love, before he said, “I know that you will be with me. For you see, I will never let you go.”

“Oh, White Eagle,” she cried, and threw her arms around him, bringing him down toward her, there to shower him with kisses. “I’m going to hold you to that promise.”

And he said, as he began to remove her clothes, “See that you do, my wife. See that you do.”

They were awakened by the firing of cannons.

He did nothing more than look up from his bed, his weapons already in his hand. He held her in place, signaling her not to move.

He relaxed. “It is only the white man’s mystery boat returning to the fort.”

“Oh, the steamboat.”

He nodded. “Come,” he said, letting her rise. “Let us put on our best clothes and go down to the fort today.”

What could she say? She could only agree.

The
Assiniboin
had just pulled into its dock next to the fort, and one could almost feel the excitement of the residents of the fort even from the distance she and White Eagle still were from it.

Amazingly enough, Katrina observed that there were two forts there now, one having been built upon an opposite bank of the Yellowstone River, and she wondered at the ability of these men to form another post so soon.

“Your uncle should be down there.”

“Yes,” she said, “at last.”

“Do you worry over what he might say about our marriage?”

“No, do you?”

White Eagle didn’t answer all at once. Presently, however, he said, “A little. I have not given him anything of worth to have justified my taking the reward of having you for my wife. I will have to ensure this is corrected as soon as I am able.” He hesitated. “Do you worry over what the other white people will say?”

She threw her head back. “Yes. And not just because the bourgeois or the engages might disapprove of my taking an Indian husband. I worry over the marquess. I still fear he may make some trouble for me. Especially when he goes back East, where neither you nor I will be to defend ourselves…or my reputation.”

“And that is so important to you?”

She hesitated. “Yes, I believe that it is. Why should it not be? In some ways it is all that a woman has.”

“Is it? Does a woman not also have a man to depend upon, to protect her?”

“Does she? And what does that man do if her reputation is tainted?”

“If he is truly a man of honor, he will defend her.”

“Oh? Is that the way of the Blackfeet?”

“It is the way I think.”

She gave White Eagle a glance from under her lashes, and she asked, “And the Blackfeet? What do they think?”

He paused. “While it is sometimes the case that my tribe, a man’s society, has been known to administer justice in a cruel way, it is not the way of all men. And though it has happened that a man’s friends, if they have reports that a woman has been unfaithful, will try to take matters unto themselves, to degrade the woman they feel has wronged their friend, a man should not allow this. A man should be strong, and not listen to the tongues of these men, since it is well-known that people in a group will often do things that no ordinary man, on his own, would ever consider. A man, to be a man, must rise above such things. And a man, no matter the opposition, should protect his woman, even against his own friends. If he fails, he has only himself to blame. For no one can truly know what happens between two people, except those two people.”

Katrina stared out over the land. Presently, she said, “I have seen some women accused of things they did not do. Sometimes a woman can arouse the jealousy of another, sometimes another is just simply spiteful. What if some of these reports that your tribe acts upon are untrue?”

White Eagle hesitated, squinting his eyes against the sun. “There have been instances where a woman has been unjustly accused; such happenings are few. But it makes no difference. A man should defend his woman and his family, no matter the accusation.”

Katrina glanced at White Eagle, unable to fathom the depths of this man that she had taken as husband. He sounded so wise and so observant. How had one so young learned so much?

“My grandfather,” he answered, as though he knew her thoughts. “My grandfather was a medicine man and had great powers. He knew much and had observed many things. I have seen him cause the heavens to rain, or a storm to disappear. I have witnessed him predict the future with accuracy. Much of what he knew, many of his ideas, he passed on to me, that I might make use of them and give them to others and to my children. Someday I will tell you more of what he said, and you will be pleased, I am sure.”

Katrina glanced up toward the heavens. A grandfather who could control the weather and predict the future… What else did she not know about this man? What else would she discover? And she wondered, as the years passed, would there still be more strange ideas she would learn from him? She sighed, certain it would be so. It might, after all, take her a lifetime to realize it all.

She certainly hoped that it would.

The smells of muddy water and smoke, unwashed flesh, horse and cow manure hit them all at once, and so it was that with these impressions, Katrina wouldn’t have needed her eyes to know that they had arrived at the fort.

They were admitted inside at once, no one really taking much notice of them in all the excitement of the arrival of the steamship.

Katrina soon learned that Mr. McKenzie, along with about twenty men, had left to travel southward, journeying toward the Little Missouri and were not expected back for several months. He had left Mr. Hamilton, a man who admittedly hated Indians, in charge of the fort, but Katrina saw little to worry over, the man being too busy with other matters of importance to pay them any mind.

She looked in vain for Rebecca, or even the marquess for that matter, but she could find neither.

She was just about to go and search out Mr. Hamilton, or perhaps a clerk so that she might ask about her friend, when she became aware of the happy laughter of a feminine voice…that voice speaking English.

Katrina turned toward the sound, spotting a woman she had never seen until this moment, although she was one of the most beautiful women Katrina had ever seen. Dressed in a golden brown redingote dress, trimmed with black lace, and crepe hat, the woman’s red hair was swept up into curls framing her face.

There could be no doubt as to this lady’s background, not with her proper speech and elegant manners. Yet, Katrina noted, this lady smiled up at an
Indian
gentleman, who was dressed in the traditional buckskin and breechcloth of his heritage, which made the two of them an interesting couple. And Katrina did not doubt that these two people were a couple. One could not fail to observe it, if only in the mere glances the lady gave the gentleman, the fleeting touches, the look within her eye.

“Really, Gray Hawk,” she heard the lady say, “I hardly think that—”

“Nitakkaawa,”
the Indian replied calmly enough with, Katrina could tell, deep pleasure in the word. She noted, too, that this Indian gazed with little expression upon his face at…White Eagle.

Katrina stood aghast as this beautiful lady, turning to see White Eagle, said, “White Eagle, it has been some time since I have had the honor of seeing my husband’s more-than-friend.” The lady held out her hands in a gesture of friendliness. “Come closer, and let me introduce you to my father, who has made this long journey here to visit us.”