Embrace the Wild Land (15 page)

Abbie knew the ritual itself would be hardest on Zeke, for he had suffered it himself and well knew the agony of it. Watching his son make the sacrifice would be a terrible thing for him, yet his heart would also swell with pride. Already she could see the pride, as he sat straight and tall on the big Appaloosa he rode, riding among his people, almost haughty in the fact that all were going to the Sun Dance celebration to witness Zeke Monroe’s son take a bold step into manhood. They would forget about wars and treaties and white encroachment. They would be Indians and they would celebrate in the old ways. Soon their small party would meet up with a much larger delegation of Cheyenne, and together they would ride to a place along the Smoky Hill River, where even more Cheyenne waited, among them some Cheyenne from the North, who had
dared to come into territory the government had forbidden them to enter. All of them took great amusement and excitement in daring to go where they pleased. They knew such days were numbered, but they would cling to them as long as possible. The Cheyenne made no trouble for the whites. They could not understand why the whites wanted to make so much trouble for them.

They crested a hill and saw in the distance below a small wooden farmhouse, something that had not been in this particular pathway in years before. They drew their mounts to a halt and Zeke studied their surroundings. Between themselves and the farm was a creek, heavily wooded.

“We’ll go around a ways,” he told Black Elk. “Keep to the creek and the trees. There’s no need to cause trouble for whoever lives there, but if they spot us, they may be the ones to start something.”

Black Elk said nothing as they headed toward the stream, but his chest hurt at the sight of the farm that had not been there before. More and more it seemed that wherever they went they saw yet another white settlement. There seemed to be no end to the numbers of white people from the mysterious East.

They guided their mounts into the shallow stream, and Bucking Horse laughed as water splashed on him.

“Be still, son,” Blue Bird Woman ordered her little boy, her heart aching at the fact that her child could not even laugh as a child should laugh, for fear the whites might hear him.

They followed the stream for nearly a mile, then moved onto the opposite bank and into the trees. But they were greeted by fence posts and could not continue.

“Damn!” Zeke swore. “We’ll have to go back into the stream and go even farther down.”

“No!” Black Elk snapped, angry at these constant interferences with his free travel. “We will go over the fence!” He headed his mount for the fence before Zeke could say a word, and to Zeke’s horror, he realized the fence was barbed wire. Black Elk kicked his horse into a jump, but the animal did not see the topmost line of wire. A back leg caught on it and the animal came crashing down, pulling the wire and two posts with it. Blue Bird Woman stifled a scream and Zeke quickly dismounted.

“Everybody stay put and be quiet!” he ordered. “Wolf’s Blood, come and help me. You, too, Falling Rock.”

The women sat helplessly, watching the men hurry over to to Black Elk, who was quietly cursing in his own tongue as he crawled away from his struggling, badly injured mount. He got to his feet, his eyes blazing with anger at the idea of the fence being there at all, blood streaming from a bad cut on his arm.

“Katum!”
he hissed, wiping at the blood and staring at his horse, its flesh badly torn. “What is this terrible thing?” he asked Zeke, looking at the man with horror in his eyes.

Zeke’s chest hurt for the man. “It’s called barbed wire, my brother. From now on when you see a fence, take a closer look before you try to leap it.” Their eyes held in a new and torturous understanding, and he saw the pain in Black Elk’s. “We’ll have to kill the animal, Black Elk,” Zeke spoke up. “I’ll do it with my knife. That way we won’t make any noise.”

Black Elk blinked rapidly. It was not easy for a Cheyenne man to kill a horse. Horses were their most precious possession, and they were loved and cared for like good friends. Abbie could hardly stand the pain in Black Elk’s eyes, and Blue Bird Woman looked away as Zeke pulled his knife from its sheath. Black Elk knelt
down and gently stroked the animal’s forehead, saying something softly to it in Cheyenne; in the next moment Zeke’s big blade found the animal’s heart.

Black Elk turned and walked a few feet away. Zeke wiped blood from his knife onto the grass, then shoved it back into its sheath and approached his brother, while Wolf’s Blood stood staring at the dead horse, a new hatred and determination in his dark eyes.

“I’m sorry, Black Elk,” Zeke told the man.

Black Elk only nodded, staring into the distance at the farmhouse. “Is this the way it shall be then? We shall be pushed into one small corner of this land, and there we shall stay and starve to death?”

“I can’t answer that, my brother,” Zeke told him. “I wish that I could. We can only pray for the best.”

Black Elk shook his head. “I am beginning to understand why some of the other tribes fight harder—why they raid and steal and kill. One day the Cheyenne will also find it impossible to be peaceful. A man can bear only so much.”

“That is true, Black Elk. But you must also keep in mind that some whites are going to force your hand. Some want you to feel as you are feeling now. They want you to raid and make war. Because then they can point their fingers and yell about how they were right all along. They can talk about how bad the Indian is—how ruthless and cruel. You must be careful not to fall into their trap and do the very thing they expect you to do. It would be easy now to ride down to that farmhouse and burn it and kill everyone inside. But there are those who would be glad to have you do so, my brother. It would give them the OK to kill every Indian they see.”

Black Elk sighed. “I do not understand this kind of fighting, Zeke—with words and barbed fences.”

“Of course you don’t,” Zeke replied, turning away,
himself filled with rage and a need to kill, his Indian blood screaming for the freedom his people deserved. His heart wrenched at a quiet sob, and he looked up to see Blue Bird Woman crying and Abbie also wiping her eyes. His children all stared at the horse with frightened eyes. Surely they wondered where their future lay, and he suddenly realized that each of them would have to make a difficult choice one day.

“Zeke, someone comes!” Falling Rock spoke up, running back to his mount to retrieve his rifle. Black Elk whirled, his dark eyes blazing, and he hurried to his dead horse and yanked his own rifle from the animal. Seven men approached from the other side of the creek, some in buckskins, some wearing what looked like an attempt at fashioning a uniform, a couple of them in the regular cotton clothing of white men. All were white, some sporting grizzly beards, all well armed. Abbie’s heart froze. She had seen such men before, one terrible night when they attacked her and Wolf’s Blood when the boy was just a baby. And on that night, Zeke Monroe had wielded his knife in a bloodbath of defense of his family.

Zeke stepped into the stream to face the approaching men. “You women get into the trees!” he ordered. “Get the children into some cover.”

They moved quickly, Abbie’s heart fearful now, for surely there would be trouble. “Black Elk, keep your senses!” Zeke was telling his brother. “You’re angry. Let me do the talking. And whatever happens, don’t kill anyone. Try to only wound them if they make trouble.”

In the next moment Wolf’s Blood was standing beside his father, his rifle in hand. He had dismounted and left Lillian on his horse, handing the reins to Abbie, who had taken the girl with the others to shelter.

“Get back out of the way, son,” Zeke said quietly.

“No,” the boy replied in a determined voice. “I will not obey you this time, Father. You should not stand alone in defense of my mother and brothers and sisters. I can fight and shoot now.”

Zeke wanted to argue, but the boy was right, and Zeke could not help but be proud of the way he stood there, obviously unafraid, eager for a challenge. Yes. He was very much like his father.

The white men splashed into the creek water, and Black Elk moved up behind Zeke, while Falling Rock stood off to the side, rifle in hand, glaring at the strangers.

The seven men halted their mounts and stared at the three Indian men and the young boy. All had caught sight of the women moving into the trees.

For a moment nothing was said by either party, as the white men lined their horses in a straight row in front of Zeke and the others. The man directly in front of Zeke glanced at the bloody, dead horse still lying over the broken fence. Then his eyes moved to Black Elk’s bleeding arm and he grinned. “Appears you Injuns is learnin’ it don’t pay to try to jump a white man’s fence,” he sneered.

“E-have-se-va!”
Black Elk hissed, moving around to the other side of Zeke.
“Zetapetazhetan!”
he swore, raising his rifle into the air.

The white man who had spoken watched Black Elk carefully, his own hand resting on a gun he wore in a holster on his hip. The other six men sat in stony silence, all with rifles in their hands, ready to use them on a signal. One of them was very young, a rather homely boy with glittering, evil eyes. Wolf’s Blood spotted him right away, and he stared at the boy, meeting the white boy’s hateful glare with his own unafraid eyes. The white boy looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place him.

“You redskins is a little out of your territory, ain’t you?” the apparent leader spoke up. “You look like Cheyenne. Cheyenne belong down on the Arkansas River.”

“We’re doing harm to no one,” Zeke spoke up, surprising the man with his English, spoken too well for a full-blood. “We are going to meet others for the annual Sun Dance. Leave us, and we will be on our way.”

The white man shook his head. “No way. I don’t know who you are, mister, and I don’t care. Appears you’re a breed, else you wouldn’t be so tall and you wouldn’t talk like a man who’s been around white folk a lot.” He shifted in his saddle, relaxing more. “Now to men like us, a breed is even slimier than a full-blood Indian, and there ain’t one of you who belongs here. You’re all going with us to the nearest fort—and we’ll see that your, uh, women … get back where they belong safely.”

Some of the others snickered, and the younger boy looked down a haughty nose at Wolf’s Blood.

Zeke gripped his knife more firmly. “We are going farther north,” he replied coolly. “And our women will
go
with us. Who the hell are you, anyway? You own this property?”

The white man spit out tobacco juice and pushed his hat back off his forehead. “We’re Colorado volunteers, just doin’ a little scoutin’ to see what Indians is strayin’ off their allotted land.” He glanced at the younger one. “And we’re givin’ the young one here some training. His pa is a real powerful man. Wants to raise the boy the right way—give him school learnin’ and also give him some real live experience in the field, so to speak.” He spit more juice as the younger one sat grinning proudly, and Wolf’s Blood’s heart raced. He had seen this one someplace. But where? Where? “The boy’s pa has a lot of influence in Indian affairs,” the white man
went on. “Wants to raise the son to know all the ropes.” The man snickered and looked at the boy again, then back at Zeke. “At any rate, we saw your tracks way back in Colorado Territory. We could tell by the travois you was draggin’ that it was most likely Injuns, and since our job is to keep an eye on the movements of you straying bastards, we figured we’d follow and see what you was up to. Give the boy here some experience in trackin’.” He leaned farther forward, as though to make a point. “The boy’s pa intends for him to get a fine education and come back out here and be an officer in the Colorado army.” He wiped some tobacco juice from his lip. “You Injuns ought to remember this boy’s name. I reckon’ you’ll have a lot more run-ins with him in years to come. Name’s Garvey. Charles Garvey. And he hates Injuns real good. His pa is Winston Garvey. Ever hear the name?”

Abbie stifled a gasp, and Wolf’s Blood almost blurted out a string of hateful words when the man said the name, but he checked himself, remembering his father’s warning about Winston Garvey. Zeke remained amazingly calm, showing no reaction at the mention of the Garvey name. But he cast a quick, sly glance at the young man, realizing the importance of remembering what Charles Garvey looked like. The boy glared back at him, finding both Zeke and the younger Cheyenne boy familiar. But he also could not place them.

“I never took much stock in a man’s name alone,” Zeke replied, looking back at the apparent leader of the motley group of men. “And if you’re really Colorado volunteers, then you’re out of your territory, mister. You’ve got no right tracking us into Kansas.”

“We can track you anyplace we want!” the Garvey boy spoke up. “And you’d best remember my name, redskin, just like the man said. My father has a lot of influence in Colorado Territory, and men like you had
better have respect for your superiors!”

Wolf’s Blood stiffened with a need to punch the boy, and Zeke scanned the group of men scathingly. “I don’t see one man here who is better than I,” he glowered. “A name doesn’t make a man better. It’s his courage and skill and honesty that makes him a man, and I doubt any one of you can boast of any of those things. Now I’d suggest you all leave, because we’re going where we damned well please!”

“You Indian filth!” the Garvey boy growled. “We will show you who is the better man when we take you to the fort with us under arrest and throw you in the stockade! And we will show your women what their purpose is for existing!”

“You aren’t taking us anywhere!” Wolf’s Blood warned. “Nor will you touch my mother or sisters, white trash!” He could not control his youthful anger then; his finger squeezed the trigger of his rifle and a bullet ripped across the shoulder of Garvey’s horse, just grazing the boy’s right thumb enough to sting badly and startle the lad. Wolf’s Blood had deliberately missed, taking great pleasure in Garvey’s wide, frightened eyes.

After that, everything began happening fast and all at once. Charles Garvey’s horse began rearing in startled pain from Wolf’s Blood’s bullet, and the Garvey boy struggled to keep the animal in control, his own heart pounding with fear. Zeke dodged a bullet fired by the leader of the men, then dove at the man, physically ripping him from his horse and quickly picking up the man’s own dropped rifle and smashing the butt across the man’s face, while another of the men aimed his rifle at Zeke.