Reckless Heart (16 page)

Shadow did not argue with his father. The will to fight had gone out of the Cheyenne. People were dying every day. The children were hungry and the old ones were tired of fighting. Yes, perhaps going to the reservation was the answer—and when two Army scouts rode into camp early in the spring, promising food and shelter for all if Black Owl and his followers would surrender peaceably, Black Owl agreed to go.

“Perhaps this time the whites will keep their word,” Black Owl remarked without conviction. “If not, we will be no worse off than we are now.”

“You will no longer be a free man, my father,” Shadow said bitterly. “Is that not worse?”

“I am weary of running from the blue-coats,” Black Owl replied. “Weary of fighting. Our people must surrender or perish.”

“I am sorry to hear you say it, my father,” Shadow murmured sadly. “I fear I will never see you again.”

“Come with us,” Black Owl urged. “You cannot fight the white man alone.”

Shadow laughed hollowly. “I am not foolish enough to try. But neither will I surrender my freedom.”

Tears stung my eyes as I watched the two warriors embrace for the last time. As always, I was deeply moved by the love and respect they had for one another.

“May you travel in peace, my son,” Black Owl said solemnly.

“May the Great Spirit guard your journey and those you love,” Shadow responded, and we left his father’s lodge.

An hour later the Cheyenne struck their lodges and left Bear Valley for the last time.

Standing side by side, Shadow and I watched them out of sight.

Chapter Thirteen

Spring-Summer 1877

The snow was gone and the world was new. The trees were clothed in bright green, and the hills and valleys were bedecked with flowers. The rivers ran high and clear, icy to the touch. Red Wind and my little mare, Sunny, grew sleek and fat on the rich green grass that carpeted the plains. Shadow killed a buffalo, and we stuffed ourselves with juicy red meat. He was Adam and I was Eve and there was no evil in the world, only joy and love and laughter. We frolicked like happy, carefree children along the river’s grassy banks—swam daily in its chilly, refreshing waters, wrestled like bear cubs, chased each other through the fragrant forest, and made love under the warm blue sky.

But such bliss was too good to last.

I was tanning a deer hide one summer day, humming cheerfully as I worked. Shadow sat nearby, stringing a new bow. As I scraped the last of the meat from the hide, I mentally rehearsed different ways to tell him we were going to have a baby in December. I had not yet settled on the best way to break the news when Shadow suddenly dropped his bow and stood up, eyes narrowed as he stared across the river. Following his gaze, I saw four horsemen riding toward us.

That quickly, Eden was shattered.

“Soldiers?” I asked tremulously, hating the very sound of the word.

“No,” Shadow said, and his voice was puzzled. “Indians. Apaches.”

Apaches. Here? They were far from home. I felt a prickle of apprehension as the warriors put their mounts across the river. Of all the Indians in the West, the Apache were rumored to be the most savage, the most war-like. Worse, even, than the Comanche.

Shadow picked up his rifle and held it loosely in the crook of his arm as the four braves emerged from the water. They were short, stocky men, with coarse black hair and coppery skin—all dressed alike in cheap cotton shirts, worn buckskin leggings, clouts, red headbands, and tall moccasins.

Only one was armed with a rifle. The rest carried bows and arrows. Four abreast, they drew rein ten feet from where Shadow stood. There was a quiet moment as Shadow and the four Apaches appraised each other. Shadow spoke first, in sign.

“You have ridden far, my brothers. Come, eat with us, and then tell me why you have come to the land of the Tsi-tsi-tsis?”

With a slight nod, the four warriors dismounted. Shadow brought out his pipe, and the five men sat cross-legged in the shade of a tall cottonwood, smoking constantly, while I looked after the Apache horses and then cooked up a pot of venison stew seasoned with sage and wild onions. Like the good Cheyenne squaw I had become, I served the men before I ate, then went back to my deer hide, showing no outward interest in our visitors.

One of the Apaches had a long scar on his left cheek. This warrior spoke English, and he interpreted for the others when necessary. After dinner he explained why they had come.

“Once the Apache were a proud people,” he began. “There were no better fighters, no braver warriors in all the land. But then Cochise broke the arrow and made peace with the white eyes. We kept the peace because we loved and respected him. But now Cochise is dead and his son, Tahza, rules in his place. Tahza does his best, but he is not Cochise. Cochise would never have let the white eyes send us to San Carlos. San Carlos,” he repeated and made a sound of disgust low in his throat. “On the reservation, the white men give us food and clothing and expect us to be grandmothers to cattle.”

He spat into the fire and his eyes blazed with anger. “We are warriors, not women, and we wish to fight! We have no wives, no children. All are dead, killed by the white eyes. We,” indicating his three silent companions, “have heard that Two Hawks Flying is a great war chief among his people. But even a great chief cannot fight alone. If you will lead us, we are ready to fight at your side.”

Four pairs of ebony eyes stared hard at Shadow, waiting for his reply.

“It is a fight we cannot hope to win,” Shadow responded quietly. “Surely you know that?”

“We know,” the scar-faced Apache replied gravely. “But it is better to die in the heat of battle than wet nurse the white man’s cattle.”

“It is better to die like a man than live like a dog,” remarked one of the other braves, and his voice was heavy with bitterness.

“Yes,” agreed another. “Death in battle is swift. Far better than slow starvation at San Carlos.”

“I will have to think on it,” Shadow answered, and I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was deeply moved by their words and their trust.

It was ludicrous to think of five warriors doing battle against the United States Army. I knew it. The Apaches knew it. And Shadow knew it. Even so, I saw his eyes gleam with the desire to fight, and I knew he was excited by the idea.

Shadow and the scar-faced Apache, whose name was Calf Running, stayed up all that night. Lying in my bed, I listened as they spoke wistfully of the old days—those good days before the white man when the red man ruled the plains and the Great Spirit smiled on his children.

“The whites are without number,” Calf Running remarked in despair. “If you kill ten, a hundred come in their place. I think…I think their god must be more powerful than all the Indian gods combined.”

The next morning three Oglala Sioux rode into our camp. That afternoon a half-dozen Cheyenne drifted in—warriors all, armed and ready to fight to the death beside Two Hawks Flying, the last fighting chief on the plains.

I had often heard of that mysterious source of Indian communication known as the moccasin telegraph, and now I was seeing it in action. Daily, by twos and threes, warriors rode or walked into our camp. Like wildfire, word had spread to all the tribes that the Cheyenne war chief Two Hawks Flying was not going in, and the hot-blooded young warriors sought him out. They had tried life on the reservation and found it sadly wanting. Rations did not come on time, and when they did come, they were scarce and inferior. The whites would not give the Indians guns so they could hunt fresh meat, and the people were hungry. Dishonest Indian agents sold supplies meant for the tribes and pocketed the money, leaving their charges to get along as best they could. Parents gave what food they had to their children and slowly starved to death. Warriors watched their children die, watched their old people die, watched their wives die, and when they’d had enough, they slipped off the reservation and headed for Bear Valley.

At the end of a month, there were twenty-five warriors camped at the river crossing—Apache, Sioux, Arapahoe, a sprinkling of Blackfoot and Kiowa. They were men without families, without ties of any kind—men eager to fight the whites who had killed their kin and stolen their land, decimated the great herds of buffalo and penned the Indians up like cattle.

It was ironic, I thought, to see them united against the whites now, when it was too late. How very differently things might have turned out for the Indians if they had only laid their petty ancestral squabbles aside sooner!

Another twenty warriors straggled into camp over the next few days. When Shadow saw that, despite their low number, they were truly determined to fight, he agreed to lead them. And so it was to be war once more.

At first, I fought at Shadow’s side. Dressed in deerskin leggings and a fringed doeskin shirt, with my hair tied back and my face painted for war, I was indistinguishable as a woman—at least from a distance.

Our first battle is the only one I clearly remember. All the others blended into a hazy kaleidoscope of gunsmoke and noisy confusion.

That first skirmish was against a small cavalry patrol. It was one of the few times when we outnumbered the opposition. I remember I had a good Winchester repeating rifle, and as I was a pretty fair shot, I took aim at the tall Army horses, reluctant to kill the soldiers who were, after all, my people.

But my resolve not to kill anyone was quickly swept away when one of the troopers charged straight at me, and I found myself staring into his rifle’s awesome black maw. Time seemed to stand still then, and I noticed that the trooper had bright blue eyes and a tiny, heart-shaped scar on his left cheek. He was about my age, perhaps a little older, and I wondered if he was married…a father, perhaps. His uniform was dirty, his hands smeared with grime, and I stared, spellbound, at the long brown finger curled around the trigger.

Suddenly time accelerated again, and I knew he was going to kill me unless I killed him first. Woodenly, I squeezed the trigger of my own rifle, then stared with morbid fascination as his shirtfront turned crimson and he toppled from his horse. I had killed a man of my own race. Somehow, it was much worse than fighting the Indians that day they attacked the trading post back in Bear Valley. I saw the dead trooper’s face in my dreams for weeks thereafter.

Shadow, always sensitive to my moods, did his best to comfort me. Nights, when we were alone, he talked to me of his youth, telling me amusing stories and tales of his people in an effort to cheer me and obliterate thoughts of the man I had killed.

But it was his touch, the strength of his arms around me that brought solace to my troubled heart. Only in his embrace did I feel secure. Sometimes it seemed like the whole world had gone mad, and only Shadow, and the love we shared, remained constant and unchanging.

As time passed, the memory of the dead trooper faded, but the horror of the moment was never completely forgotten.

And still the battle between red man and white raged across the plains. No cavalry patrol was safe from our attack. We hit them early in the morning, before dawn, stealing their horses and killing their sentries.

Army supply wagons and civilian wagon trains were our favorite targets. We looted them for guns, ammunition, food, and clothing, and then we destroyed whatever was left. No prisoners were taken, and when I cringed to see women and children injured or killed, I made myself remember the stories I had heard of Sand Creek and the Washita and the hundreds of Indian women and children who had been senselessly slaughtered. It did not make me feel any better, really, and yet it helped me to understand the violent hatred of the Indians.

We harassed the Army forts, too, lobbing fire arrows over the walls late at night, when the soldiers were asleep and the sentries were sluggish. We never stayed around to fight the aroused troopers. Our arrows were just to remind them we were there—a way to keep them uneasy.

Occasionally, we engaged in a major skirmish with the Army, but such encounters were rare; as soon as the battle turned against us, we broke and ran. Small in number, we could not afford any heavy losses, and so we scattered like leaves in a high wind to meet later at a pre-arranged location.

It was a brutal way of life—always on the run, never able to sleep unafraid for fear of attack. And yet no one complained or spoke of quitting.

It was amazing to me that Shadow ever managed to build a good, closely-knit fighting force out of those warriors, for not only were their religious beliefs different, but so were their fighting techniques. Masters at mounted combat, the Sioux and Cheyenne fought for the sheer love of fighting, willing to face any odds to attain battle honors and personal glory.

The Apache, on the other hand, preferred to fight on foot. They were wizards at camouflage and could disappear into the landscape without a trace. They, too, fought for personal glory, but they rarely provoked a battle unless they were reasonably certain of victory. Before uniting with Shadow and the others, it had been their opinion that only a fool attacked a stronger foe.

But things were different now. They were not fighting for glory or honor or coup feathers; they were fighting for their lives and their freedom.

It was not an easy life, being the only woman in a camp of fifty men. I had thought, with horror, that I would be expected to cook for the entire lot, but Shadow made it clear at the outset that I was his woman alone. In words that were blunt and directly to the point, he warned his men that any warrior who touched me or offended me in any way would answer to him, and that if there were any objections to my presence in their ranks, he would leave and they could find themselves a new chief. It was, I suppose, a tribute to their faith in his leadership ability that no one spoke against his declaration, or seemed to resent the fact that Shadow had a woman when they did not.

When it became obvious that I was pregnant, Shadow refused to let me ride into battle. Secretly, I was glad to stay behind, for I did not like fighting, especially against my own race.

I was often lonely that year, for Shadow and his warriors frequently rode far afield, leaving me at one hideout or another for days at a time.

They returned from one encounter with the Army with their numbers reduced by ten good men. Three others were badly wounded. One of the injured braves was a Cheyenne boy only fifteen or sixteen years old. He had taken a bullet in the belly, low down.

I sat with him for three days while he hovered between life and death. I made him as comfortable as I could, but there was really nothing I could do for him, nothing to give him for the pain except a hand to cling to and the knowledge that he would not die alone.

Sometimes Shadow sat with me. We said little, but his presence was a great comfort to me. He had changed. He was more pensive, more withdrawn, and I knew the weight of leadership and responsibility for his men and for me sat heavy on his shoulders. Each time one of our warriors died, Shadow also seemed to die a little, as if he felt the pain of each man’s death.