A Whisper In The Wind (24 page)

PART FOUR

Chapter Forty-One

Awareness returned slowly. He felt a soft gentle
breeze ruffle his hair, felt the tickle of a blade of grass against his cheek. Slowly, reluctantly, he opened his eyes.

He was lying at the base of a large white tombstone.

Sitting up, he gazed out over the valley. In the distance he could see where the Indian village had been located. He was on Custer Hill, he thought absently. Markers showed where George Custer, his brothers Tom and Boston, his nephew Autie Reed, and the remnant of the Seventh Cavalry had died. The original graves had been dug in haste on the battlefield, with soldiers being buried where they had fallen.

Later, in 1881, as many graves as could be found had been opened and the bodies reinterred in a common grave around the base of the memorial that listed the names of all the dead.

The Custer Battlefield. He had once seen a brochure that called the battlefield a place where ghosts still walked in broad daylight. The Indians referred to the Park Rangers as ghost herders.

Ghosts. He could almost see them now, the spirits of Custer’s men, riding into history and legend. To this day, scholars debated the Battle of the Little Bighorn, schoolchildren studied it, historians pondered it, Hollywood made movies about it, some portraying George Custer as a hero without equal, others branding him an arrogant fool.

Rising, Michael gazed at the markers indicating where Companies E and C had been overwhelmed and defeated. The battle was over, he thought bleakly. It had been over for almost eighty years.

A deep sadness filled his heart. Yellow Spotted Wolf was dead. And Elayna was dead, forever lost to him now.

Had it all been just a dream, after all?

He shook his head, groaned softly as a dull ache quickened in his temple. Lifting his hand to his head, he felt the blood dried in his hair. Glancing down, he saw the scars on his chest, souvenirs of the Sun Dance.

It had not been a dream, after all.

He heard voices and he whirled around, his heart leaping with hope. But it was not Elayna. It would never be Elayna again.

They were tourists. A man and a woman and three small children. They were staring at him strangely, as though they were looking at a ghost. And that was what he felt like, he mused ruefully. A ghost from the past.

“Pave-eseeva,”
Michael murmured as he walked past the astonished family. “Good day.”

It was over twenty miles to Lame Deer. He’d gone about a mile and a half when a Park Ranger picked him up and drove him to the reservation.

He spent the night in his great-grandfather’s house, alone. Sitting on the floor in the living room, he felt the tears sting his eyes, felt the ache in his heart, the emptiness, the loneliness. He went to the window and gazed out into the darkness and it too was empty and alone.

In the morning, he went to the Trading Post and bought a pair of Levis, a blue cotton shirt, and a sack of tobacco. He borrowed a truck from old Two Bulls and headed for the Black Hills, his buckskin leggings, clout, and tobacco pouch folded in a neat bundle on the seat beside him.

He stopped at Johnson Siding to rent a horse and discovered that the big gray gelding and the chestnut mare had wandered home in his absence. He apologized to the man for letting the horses get away from him. Minutes later, mounted on the big gray gelding, he was riding hard for the hills.

He found Eagle Mountain without any trouble. No one had been there since he left, and he found his clothing, boots, wallet, and sleeping bags where he’d left them, along with Yellow Spotted Wolf’s battered suitcase.

He stared at the old cardboard valise, wondering how much time had passed since he had prayed for a vision. He wished fleetingly that he’d checked the date before he left Johnson Siding, but it didn’t really matter, not now. He thought a good guess would be a week, judging by the horse droppings.

A week, he mused. Was it possible he had lived a year in a week?

Shaking his head, he walked down the hillside to the stand of timber where he had left his great-grandfather’s body. It rested where he had left it, high in the fork of a tree, still neatly wrapped in the Morning Star blanket.

He felt a sense of peace as he stood there, a new depth of love and respect for the man who had been his great-grandfather. He understood now why Yellow Spotted Wolf had never been happy on the reservation. He knew why the Sioux and the Cheyenne had never been able to adjust to the white man’s way, why they never would.

His people were hunters, not farmers. They had been born to roam the vast sunlit plains, not to squat on a few acres of barren ground and raise crops and cattle. The Cheyenne had been a part of the earth, the sky, the trees, and the grass. The song of the wind was in their blood and in their hearts, and the wind did not sink roots and settle in one place. The wind moved over the face of the land, taking little, leaving little behind.

He bid his great-grandfather a quiet farewell, and then he returned to his campsite. Stripping off his shirt and jeans, he donned his buckskin leggings and clout.

Moving away from his belongings, he raised his arms overhead and offered a prayer to
Heammawihio,
and then he offered tobacco to the four directions, to the sky above and to the earth beneath his feet, and when that was done he prayed again, his voice loud and clear as he beseeched the spirits to send him back to his people, back to Elayna.

He prayed all that day and into the night, and when the sun rose above the mountains the following morning, he was still praying, his voice hoarse, his throat dry, his eyes damp with tears.

He stayed on the mountain for three days, and on the morning of the fourth day he admitted defeat. The magic, the power, whatever it had been, had left him.

He had been sent back to his own time, and here, it seemed, he would stay.

Chapter Forty-Two

Los Angeles seemed unusually loud and crowded after the quiet beauty of the plains. The men, clad in suits and ties, seemed overdressed for a warm summer day, the women, wearing layers of clothes and makeup, looked stiff and artificial, like wind-up dolls.

Gerald Walsh had been gruff when Michael returned to work. He had berated Michael for leaving without a word, for failing to keep in touch, for staying away so long, but, in the end, he had patted Michael on the back, offered him condolences on the loss of his great-grandfather, and told him to get back to work.

Work. It had lost its appeal. His office was small and ugly. The phone was a constant annoyance. His car was noisy and confining when compared to a horse, the skies were crowded with airplanes. His bed seemed too soft, his furniture too hard. His suits were bulky, restricting his movements; he thought his ties might strangle him; his shoes were stiff and uncomfortable.

He had never realized how congested the city was, cluttered with houses and factories, with trucks and buses and cars that backfired and tires that squealed. He hated keeping time by a clock, hated the picket fence that enclosed his apartment house, the tall chain-link fences that surrounded vacant lots.

He missed the vast blue prairie sky, the rolling hills thick with buffalo grass, the soft sigh of the wind in the high country. He missed the Cheyenne people, and Yellow Spotted Wolf, and Elayna…

Soon after his return to Los Angeles, Melinda had called and they had gone out to dinner and a movie. It had been a dismal evening. The food seemed overcooked, the restaurant smelled of food and wax and the mingled scents of cologne and perfume and dust.

Later, Melinda had asked him what was wrong.

“Is it me?” she had wanted to know. “Have I changed?”

Michael had assured Melinda that what was troubling him had nothing to do with her. She hadn’t changed. He had, and nothing was the same anymore. And when he kissed her good night outside her door, they both knew it was for the last time.

Elayna. He could think of nothing else as he drove home. What had her life been like after the Little Bighorn? Had she married, had children, lived to a good old age?

Elayna. Elayna.

He took a week off from work and went to Camp Robinson. It was a state park and museum now, famous because Crazy Horse had died there. Elayna seemed very close to him as he walked around the grounds, remembering. He tried to find out what had happened to her, but there was no record of Elayna or her father.

He stopped at Lame Deer on the way home and had a long talk with old Two Bulls, and in the course of the conversation learned that Badger had not been killed at the Little Bighorn. He had ridden with Crazy Horse after the battle, and then fled to Canada with Sitting Bull. He had followed the old chief to Standing Rock when Sitting Bull returned to the United States. He had been at Standing Rock with Yellow Spotted Wolf during the Ghost Dance, and it was there he had been killed, along with Sitting Bull and eleven other Indians.

There was a touch of irony in the fact that Badger had died with Sitting Bull, Michael mused, for Sitting Bull had said the past and the future could not be changed, but Michael had changed a small part of the past by saving Badger’s life, and Sitting Bull had died with a man who should have died fifteen years earlier along the banks of the Little Bighorn.

But it was not Sitting Bull he grieved for, or Badger, or even Yellow Spotted Wolf as he boarded the plane for Los Angeles. He grieved for Elayna, for the life they might have shared, for the love that was forever lost to him.

He threw himself into his work when he returned to Walsh Cadillac. He worked seven days a week, twelve hours a day. He frequented the bars along Hollywood Boulevard, drinking in an effort to forget her, but she was ever in his thoughts.

In mid-September he turned in his resignation. Gerald Walsh offered him more money, a new Caddy, a bigger office, if only he’d stay, but Michael just shook his head. He was going home, back to Lame Deer.

The reservation that had once seemed like a prison now loomed as a haven of refuge. He felt the need to be with his own people, to listen to the tales of the old days, the old ways, to hear the language of the Cheyenne.

He left his expensive suits in his apartment, donned a pair of Levi’s and a cotton shirt, slipped on his moccasins, and headed for home.

At Lame Deer he moved into his great-grandfather’s house. He’d expected to feel lonely, but the spirit of Yellow Spotted Wolf seemed to fill the house. It was there, in the lance that Yellow Spotted Wolf had carried to battle at the Little Bighorn, in the warbonnet that had belonged to Mo’ohta-vo’nehe, in a pair of worn, brittle moccasins that Michael found under the bed.

He went for long walks, stopping to talk to the people he knew. The Cheyenne were wary of him at first. They remembered how anxious he had been to leave the reservation, never returning until Yellow Spotted Wolf called him home.

Gradually Michael won them over. He was no longer a brash, impudent teenage boy, but a man, one who bore the scars of the Sun Dance on his chest. When that fact was made known, the elders of the tribe summoned Michael to a council meeting. The Sun Dance had been outlawed by the white man years ago. How had Michael come to have such scars?

Michael was hesitant to tell them the truth, but in the end he told them the whole story, and when he finished, he felt as though he had discarded a tremendous burden. It felt good to share his experience, to relive the days he’d spent with Mo’ohta-vo’nehe and Yellow Spotted Wolf, and the telling had brought Elayna close once more.

There was a long silence in the council lodge after he finished his story. He had been prepared for their laughter, for their ridicule, their disbelief. But no one laughed. The old ways were still strong in these men, as was their belief in dreams and visions. But, more than that, Michael’s words had carried the ring of truth, and they never doubted him for a moment.

Old Two Bulls passed the pipe and as Michael drew the smoke deep into his lungs, he felt as though he had truly come home.

Chapter Forty-Three

It was on a warm, clear day in late October when
Michael returned to the banks of the Little Bighorn. It was here that he had last seen Elayna. He wished now that he had kissed her one more time, told her he loved her, would always love her. There were so many things he wanted to tell her, to share with her.

He reined his horse to a halt where the Cheyenne camp had been. Dismounting, he walked back and forth along the shore, trying to recall exactly where his lodge had stood. Here, perhaps? Or here?

The wind rustled the leaves on the trees, sighing wistfully as it played among the leafy branches.

Standing on the riverbank, he gazed into the distance, and in his mind he could hear again the sounds of battle, the shrill cries of the Indians, the rapid bark of gunfire, the twang of a thousand bowstrings, the frightened whinny of a horse, the sobs of the wounded. He heard Crazy Horse’s call to battle,
“Hoka-hey!
It is a good day to die!” And he heard Elayna’s voice, begging him not to go.

Almost, he could hear it now… Heart pounding, he whirled around, but it was only the wind crying through the trees.

Sweat dampened his brow and trickled down his chest, and he felt his mouth go dry.

“Elayna.” He murmured her name as he tore off his shirt and flung it aside. He tossed his hat to the ground, then raised his arms above his head and gazed into the sun.

“Heammawihio,
help me!” he implored. “I have no tobacco to offer you, no sacred smoke, only the blood I shed at the Sun Dance pole. Hear me, I beseech thee, send me back to my people, back to the woman who holds my heart.”

He paused, listening, waiting. The sun seemed to grow brighter, hotter. She was here. He could feel her presence.

He cried out to the gods again, and as he did so, he removed the knife from his belt and made a long, diagonal slash across his chest. “Help me,
Maheo!”
he cried, raking the blade over his chest a second time. “Send me back where I yearn to be.”

He cocked his head to one side, listening, and he heard her voice, like a whisper in the wind, calling to him through the mists of time.

She was there. He could feel her presence.

A breeze stirred the leaves, and its touch on his cheek was soft and gentle, like a caress.

She was there. If he only had faith enough to believe, he’d turn around and she would be there.

He drew a deep breath, murmured a silent prayer, and slowly turned around…

And she was there.

For a timeless moment they gazed at each other, hardly daring to believe, and then they were in each other’s arms, laughing and crying as they held each other close, afraid to speak for fear of shattering whatever magic had brought them together.

After a long while Michael drew back, though he didn’t let her go for fear of losing her again. “Are you real?” he whispered. His hands stroked her hair, caressed her cheek.

“Are you?” Elayna smiled through her tears as she drank in the sight of his face, a face she had thought never to see again. Her fingertips explored the two shallow cuts on his chest. “What happened?”

“I was praying, begging
Maheo
to send me back to you,” Michael replied, and then smiled. “But he sent you to me instead.”

Elayna nodded. She had heard Michael’s voice and it had brought her here, to the future, but she was too thrilled to be in his arms again to care where they were, so long as they were together.

“Ne-a-ese, Maheo,”
Michael murmured fervently.

“Yes,” Elayna echoed softly. “Thank you, Father.”

Michael felt the laughter bubbling in his chest as he lifted her in the air and whirled her around. “I’ve so much to show you!” he exclaimed. “So much to tell you.”

“Just tell me you love me,” Elayna said, her laughter mingling with his.

“I’ll tell you and show you, every day of our lives,” Michael promised.

And he did.