A Whisper In The Wind (23 page)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Custer was coming. The whole camp talked of it day and night. Scouts brought word that Custer had left the fort, and with him were “Star” Terry and “Red Nose” Gibbon. And with the blue-coats rode the hated Crow scouts. Reports of Custer’s progress toward the Little Bighorn arrived daily, and daily the preparations for war increased.

Michael’s emotions ranged from excitement to dread. The most famous Indian battle of all time was about to be fought, and he would be in the thick of it. It was awesome, frightening, exhilarating.

Needing to be alone to sort out his feelings, he left the sprawling Indian camp, moving downstream until he came to a bend in the quiet river. He came to an abrupt halt as he neared the riverbank, for there, sitting on a flat rock, was Crazy Horse.

Crazy Horse. He had always been a man apart. His hair was not black but dark brown, and his skin was almost fair. As a boy he had been called Curly and often mistaken by traders for a captive.

The Oglala war chief glanced over his shoulder at Michael’s approach.

“I did not mean to disturb you,” Michael said, taking a step back.

“Come, sit with me,” Crazy Horse invited. “I grow weary of my own thoughts.”

“What are you thinking?” Michael asked as he sat down beside the Lakota warrior.

“Can you not guess?” Crazy Horse replied with a wry smile. “Yellow Hair is ever in my thoughts.”

Michael nodded. Custer was on everyone’s mind just now. “Do you expect to win the battle?”

“Of course. Tatanka lyotake has foreseen our victory.”

“Then what is it that troubles you?”

“The other battles, the ones that will come after.”

“Our people grow few in number,” Michael remarked. “Perhaps it is time to surrender.”

“No.”

“You cannot fight forever.”

Crazy Horse shrugged. “We will fight until the last warrior lies dead on the plains.”

“And if you knew you could never win, that the people would go down in bitter defeat, would you still fight?”

“I am a warrior. What else should I do? Sit with the women and cry after the old days?” Crazy Horse stared at Michael, his dark eyes thoughtful. “Why do you ask me these questions?”

“Because I am afraid for you, for our people. I have lived with the white man, Crazy Horse, and they are numberless as the blades of grass on the prairie. You cannot fight them all.”

“You are one of us,” Crazy Horse mused slowly, “and yet you are not. Who are you, Michael Wolf? Why do you tell me these things? Do you think I do not know what lies ahead?” A great sadness filled the war chief’s voice. “I know we cannot defeat the blue-coats. I know that, in the end, we will lose our homeland, our freedom. Your own prophet, Sweet Medicine, foretold the coming of the whites, the destruction of our way of life. But I cannot surrender without a fight.”

Michael nodded, his heart suddenly heavy as he heard Sitting Bull’s voice echo in the back of his mind:
What will be, will be.

“A man cannot change his destiny,” Crazy Horse remarked. “When I sought my medicine dream, I saw a warrior mounted on a horse that constantly changed colors. The warrior carried no scalps. His body was decorated with hail spots and a streak of lightning. Bullets and arrows flew at him, but they could not touch him. A storm raged around him, yet he passed through it unharmed. People reached out to him, but he rode through them, a red-backed hawk flying above his head. This warrior was the warrior I was destined to become. The white man cannot harm me. Only my own people can bring me down. Until then, I must fight.”

Michael felt a chill pass through him as he recalled how Crazy Horse had died, killed by an Army bayonet while his own people blocked his escape.

“A man cannot change his destiny,” Crazy Horse said again. “I will meet mine when the time comes.”

Michael grunted softly. Looking past Crazy Horse, his thoughts turned inward. Perhaps it had always been
his
destiny to travel back in time, to find Elayna. Perhaps he was meant to be here, in the land of his ancestors. Perhaps he had been born in the wrong time, and he had been sent here because this was where he really belonged. Who could say?

“It is my destiny to lead my people,” Crazy Horse said, his voice strong with conviction. “I would have it no other way.”

The war chief placed his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “It is not my fate to die in battle,” he said with a note of regret. “Nor yours. We will both know victory before defeat,
le mita cola.
Let us savor the good things of life while we can.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

June 25th started like any other day. Michael
went to the river to bathe with some of the men while Elayna prepared breakfast.

When they returned to camp, sentries brought word that Custer was near.

Custer. For a minute, it was as though all time had stopped. Michael looked at the village, the clear blue sky, the children at play, the warriors sitting outside their lodges, the women laughing, and he knew it was all about to come to an end. Custer was coming.

He saw Sitting Bull striding through the camp. A white missionary lady had once called the Hunkpapa medicine man tender, gracious, and invariably sweet. Perhaps he had been so, once, but no more. He was a man possessed of a deep and abiding hatred toward those who would not leave him and his people alone. He had told his young men to be merciless when they were raiding.

“If you find someone, kill him and take his horse and his weapons,” Sitting Bull exhorted. “Spare no one.” This from a man who had been known to spare the lives of captives, who had once declared that all prisoners must be freed or adopted into a family so there would be no slaves in his camp.

Gall rode into the village a few minutes later saying they had seen soldiers crossing the divide between the Rosebud and the Bighorn. Shortly thereafter, he had seen Reno and Custer separate their forces. And even while he was talking, a cry went up that the white man was coming.

The sound of shots being fired near the upper end of the village where the Sioux were camped spurred Michael to action and he ran to his lodge and swept a frightened Elayna into his arms.

The moment he had been dreading had come.

“It’s Custer,” he said flatly. “Stay here and you’ll be all right.” He buried his face in her hair and let his senses fill with the touch of her, the scent of her. “Promise me you’ll stay here.”

She was trembling and couldn’t stop. He was going to fight, and nothing she could say would stop him.

“Promise me,” he said again.

“I promise,” she replied. “If you’ll stay with me.”

“I
can’t. I’ve got to find Yellow Spotted Wolf. We’ve got to find Badger before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“I don’t have time to explain it to you now.” His arms tightened around her as he kissed her with all the love in his heart. “Stay here,” he said again. “Custer’s men never made it this far.”

She looked up at him, frowning. Never made it this far. What did he mean? He spoke as if the battle had already been fought. She wanted to question him, but he was drawing away from her, and she couldn’t bear to let him go.

“Michael!” She threw her arms around him and held him close, breathing in his scent, loving the feel of his body next to hers. “Be careful,” she whispered. “Promise me.”

He nodded, kissed her again, and then he was gone.

“Oh, Michael,” she murmured, and then, not knowing what else to do, she dropped to her knees and began to pray.

Outside, the Indian camp was in turmoil. Women gathered their children and ducked into their lodges while the warriors grabbed their weapons and war ponies and hurried toward the battle.

Michael ran toward his great-grandfather’s lodge, but he was too late. Mo’ohta-vo’nehe, Yellow Spotted Wolf, and Badger were already gone.

Mounting his horse, Michael galloped downstream to where Custer’s men were fighting. He had to find Badger before it was too late.

But it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Thousands of warriors swarmed along the Little Bighorn, their war cries filling the air. Great clouds of dust were stirred by churning hooves and running feet, adding to the confusion of the battle.

He saw Crazy Horse riding ahead of him, a magnificent warrior mounted on a black horse. Crazy Horse carried no scalps. His torso was decorated with hail spots, a streak of lightning curved from his forehead to his chin.

Michael saw the Oglala war chief lift his rifle overhead, heard him holler
“Hoka-hey,”
heard the other warriors chant the Lakota kill cry,
“Huhn! Huhn! Huhn!”

The fighting was intense now. He saw soldiers and warriors struggling in hand-to-hand combat, saw dozens of blue-clad bodies lying on the ground. The scent of blood and death filled the air. Once he saw a soldier with fair hair and he wondered briefly if it was Custer, but before he could be certain, he saw Yellow Spotted Wolf fighting with a broad-shouldered trooper. And then Yellow Spotted Wolf was on the ground and the trooper’s knife was only inches from his throat.

A cry of rage boiled up inside Michael as he urged his horse toward Yellow Spotted Wolf. Lifting his lance high overhead, he raced toward the two men, his voice piercing the din as he drove his lance into the trooper’s back.

A thin, high-pitched wail escaped the soldier’s lips as he fell forward, dead before he hit the ground.

With a shouted cry of victory, Michael grabbed his great-grandfather’s forearm and lifted him onto the back of his horse.

“Where’s Badger?” Michael hollered. “Is he safe?”

“Ai!”
Yellow Spotted Wolf replied. “I remembered what you said and I sent him to stay with the horses so he would not be near the fighting.”

Michael grinned, but before he could reply, his horse was shot out from under him and he hit the ground, rolling. From the corner of his eye he saw Yellow Spotted Wolf scramble to his feet, and then Michael was fighting for his life as a shrieking white man tried to drive a bayonet into his stomach.

Time seemed to slow and he was aware of the sun on his back, of the intense hatred blazing in the soldier’s pale blue eyes. The man grunted as he lunged forward, and Michael smelled the stink of tobacco on his breath, sensed the fear that poured from him like sweat.

He was keenly aware of his own feelings as well. His heart was hammering wildly, perspiration trickled down his back, his palms were damp, his blood hot. He dodged right, then left, then ducked under the soldier’s guard and yanked the rifle out of his hands. With a cry born of desperation, he reversed the weapon in his hands and drove the bayonet into the soldier’s belly. He felt the blade slice into flesh and muscle, saw the blood flow in the wake of the blade as he jerked it free, saw the fear and the pain that twisted the man’s face before he died.

And he knew he had killed the man in vain. The Indians would win the battle, but they would lose the war. Custer would die, and in dying, he would become a national hero, the subject of endless books and movies. Sitting Bull would go to Canada, Crazy Horse would be killed at Camp Robinson, and by the end of the decade virtually all of the Plains tribes would be confined to reservations.

It didn’t matter what he did here, on the battlefield. The fate of the Indians would be sealed with Custer’s death. All that mattered now was Elayna.

Dropping the rifle, he began to run back toward the village. The fighting was almost over. Only a handful of whites remained alive at this end of the village, though he knew that Reno and his men were entrenched in another part of the valley, fighting for their lives.

Elayna
. He whispered her name as he ran.

He didn’t hear the gunshot, was hardly aware of the pain as the bullet grazed the side of his head. There was a loud humming in his ears, a sudden weakness in his legs, a burst of light, brighter than the sun, inside his head, and then he was falling, falling, into a deep black void…

Chapter Forty

He was gone without a trace. Yellow Spotted
Wolf, Soaring Eagle, and Mo’ohta-vo’nehe searched for him until dark, but to no avail. Michael was gone.

“I fear he has gone back to his own time,” Yellow Spotted Wolf remarked as he walked Elayna to her lodge.

“His own time? What do you mean?”

Yellow Spotted Wolf shook his head slowly. “I do not know how to explain it to you, E-layna. He was here, yet he was not.”

“You’re talking in riddles.”

“Life is a riddle. The man you knew as Michael Wolf has not yet been born.”

“That’s impossible. He was here.”

“Sometimes we must believe the impossible. I cannot see the wind, yet it is there. Michael was here, and yet he was not. He came to us from a distant time, to fulfill an old man’s dream.”

Elayna shook her head, refusing to believe such nonsense. Yellow Spotted Wolf was talking about traveling through time, and that was impossible. And yet, if Michael hadn’t been killed, where was he? And if he had been killed, why couldn’t they find his body?

“Who can explain the Great Mystery of Life?” Yellow Spotted Wolf mused. “In the beginning, I did not believe what Wolf told me, but he knew of events before they happened, and he told me other things, personal things, and then I knew he was who he claimed to be.” Yellow Spotted Wolf gazed deep into Elayna’s eyes. “Wolf was not my cousin. He was my great-grandson.”

Elayna stared at Yellow Spotted Wolf, her mind reeling. Could it be true? She thought of the remarkable resemblance between Michael and Yellow Spotted Wolf, the mannerisms they shared, the close bond between them. Had that bond been forged in another time? Had Michael Wolf come from the future?

It explained so many things, she thought, dazed. His command of English, the fact that he didn’t talk like the other Indians, random comments he had made that she hadn’t understood.

Tears filled her eyes. She should be glad he wasn’t dead, yet he was still gone, separated from her by time instead of the grave. Yet she still felt bereaved. She had loved him and he had been taken from her.

“He belongs here, with me,” she murmured. She looked up at Yellow Spotted Wolf, silently beseeching him to make everything right again.

“I believe he would rather be here, with you,” Yellow Spotted Wolf said quietly. “He loved you very much.”

“Then why was he taken away!” she cried, her heart filled with despair. “It isn’t fair.”

“I believe Wolf was sent here to discover who he was, and to save my brother’s life. He has done those things, and I believe that
Heammawihio
has sent him back to his own time, where he belongs.”

But he belongs here, with me.
The words were a cry in her heart, and she railed at Fate, wondering at the twist in time that had brought them together only to tear them apart.

Hemene and Mo’ohta-vo’nehe tried to persuade Elayna to stay the night with them, but she refused, wanting to be alone with her memories, her grief. She tried to find consolation in the fact that he wasn’t dead, only gone, but his loss was just as permanent, just as painful.

Of course he wasn’t dead, she thought, the tears streaming down her cheeks. He couldn’t be dead. He hadn’t even been born yet.

“Oh, God,” she sobbed, “please bring him back to me. I love him so much!”

She prayed all that night, but in the morning, nothing had changed. Michael was gone and the Cheyenne were preparing to leave the valley. Benteen and Reno were still entrenched in the hills above the Little Bighorn, but Sitting Bull had called off the fight. There had been enough killing. It was time to move on.

Yellow Spotted Wolf came to see her first thing in the morning. “What will you do now?” he asked.

Elayna shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“You are welcome to come with us,” Yellow Spotted Wolf offered. “My family is yours.”

“Thank you,” she replied, “but I think I’ll go home.”

Yellow Spotted Wolf nodded. “‘Star’ Terry and his men will be here soon. They will take you back to your father.”

“Yes.”

She sat in front of her lodge, watching the Indians break camp. She saw several warriors wearing blue coats and Army hats, others had McClellan saddles strapped to their horses, and still others carried Army-issue rifles or sabers.

To the victor belong the spoils,
she thought bleakly.

She saw a little girl playing with a gold watch, saw a little boy toss a handful of greenbacks into the air.

By midafternoon the Indians were gone.

The following morning, June 27th, General Terry and Colonel Gibbon arrived in the valley of the Little Bighorn.

The soldiers assumed that Elayna was a captive who had been left behind, and she saw no reason to change their mind. She was too sick at heart to try to explain her relationship with Michael. What difference did it make, now that he was gone.

She wanted only to go home, to forget the sight of two hundred men lying dead under a hot prairie sun, their bodies stripped and mutilated, splashed with darkening blood, the dead horses, the stink of bloated carcasses and decaying flesh, the hordes of hungry flies.

Forget, she thought, forget everything.

She murmured the word over and over in her mind as she rode out of the valley with Terry’s column, forget, forget, forget. Forget his voice, his smile, the touch of his hands, the taste of his lips.

Forget, she thought bleakly. Not if she lived to be a hundred.

Her reunion with her father was bittersweet. She was happy to see him again, to assure him that she was well and healthy, but each step away from the Little Bighorn seemed to widen the gulf between herself and Michael. She had felt close to him there, even though he was gone.

She told her father everything, how Michael had taken her to live with the Cheyenne, how she had tried to hate him and couldn’t, how he had disappeared after the battle with Custer.

“I love Michael Wolf,” she said quietly, fervently. “I always will.”

Of course, Lance came to call. He brought her a bouquet of wildflowers, but the closeness they had once shared was gone. She was no longer the innocent, trusting young girl she had once been, and he was a stranger to her now.

Everything she had thought she missed seemed foreign. Her chemise and petticoats and dresses felt cumbersome, her shoes pinched her feet, her bed was too soft. And her heart was empty, so empty.

She began to help her father in the infirmary again, needing something to occupy her mind, to fill the long, lonely days.

She went to visit her friend Nancy, who had finally gotten Sergeant O’Farrell to the altar. Elayna could not help feeling a twinge of jealousy as she listened to Nancy’s rosy plans for the future.

Later, walking home, Elayna wondered what her own future held.

She had been home almost a month when she began to suspect she was pregnant. Counting back, she realized she hadn’t had her monthly flow for over six weeks. Pregnant. She held the knowledge that she was carrying Michael’s child close to her heart, cherishing it. Michael was gone, but she was no longer alone. His child was growing beneath her heart.

Her father did not share her joy. He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes suddenly old.

“Are you sure?” he asked heavily.

“Yes.”

He let out a long sigh, his shoulders sagging with despair. “How far along are you?”

“About two months, I think.”

He hated himself for the thought that entered his head. He was a doctor, dedicated to the preservation of life.

But she knew what he was thinking. “I want this baby, Father. It’s all I have left of Michael.”

“Elayna, you’re so young. Have you thought what people will say? And what about the child? What kind of life will it have?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, and left the room.

But later, alone, she realized why her father had been so upset. Her child would be a half-breed, born in a land where Indians were despised. People would shun her when they discovered she had loved an Indian, and they would hate her child as well.

She could not let that happen. For days she fretted over what to do, and at last she decided she had to leave Camp Robinson. Feelings against Indians were not so strong in the East. She would go to New York or maybe Philadelphia and have her child there. She would find a job, perhaps in a hospital.

The hardest part was telling her father of her decision.

“Leave?” Robert O’Brien exclaimed. “Where would you go?”

“New York, I think.”

“But you’d be alone. How would you live? Who’d look after you?”

“I’ll be all right, Father. I can’t stay here and be your little girl forever. Surely you can see how impossible it would be to stay. I’d be an embarrassment to you.”

“Nonsense! You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.”

But her mind was made up. She needed to get away, to make a new life for herself, for her child.

But first she had to return to the Little Bighorn. She wanted to walk where Michael had walked just once more, see the river, smell the grass, touch the earth where he had stood. Perhaps if she went back and told him goodbye her heart would find peace.