Sacred Is the Wind (30 page)

Her people now … she hoped.

15

M
ichael stood on the edge of his garden and examined with pride the long green stalks of corn. Arrayed like soldiers on parade, he thought, then frowned, remembering soldiers, his father in battle. It had been years ago but Michael could still see Panther Burn leading his Dog Soldiers through the ranks of a company of troopers he had ambushed out among the badlands. He could still hear the clamor of battle as the blue-coats panicked and tried to fight their way out of the Cheyenne encirclement. Panther Burn dared their bullets and led his men in wave after wave that crushed the soldiers' resistance. The war chief took no prisoners but fought to the death. And when the last trooper fell, spitted on Zachariah's war lance, then the silence returned. Panther Burn wheeled his horse among the corpses and rode back to where the women and children watched from a ridge. Michael remembered how his father's arms were soaked to the elbows with blood. Oh, how the women had cheered his victory, yet Panther Burn seemed unmoved. Rebecca guided her son to his father. The stench of death clung to the air.

“You have done well, my husband. Again you have saved your people.”

“There will be more soldiers, always more. As numberless as raindrops,” Panther Burn said. “We have won today but in the days to come …” The war chief sighed. The dead Cheyenne were irreplaceable.

“If we cannot win, why fight?” Michael blurted out loud. The sound of his own voice brought him back to the present. He stared at the stalks of corn and glanced around, embarrassed. Yet he had said the same thing then, a mere slip of a boy speaking out of turn and enduring the withering look of his father. Now, as then, Michael's question remained unanswered. He shaded his eyes and studied the rolling thunderheads springing up in the west. Michael tested a single ear with his fingertips, reaching in among the husk's gossamer strands to feel the hard golden kernels. He glanced at his mother on her knees among the tomato plants. She was dutifully lining the bottom of a basket with orange-red fruits.

“If we get some of that rain the corn will ripen early. Though I staggered the planting, it looks as if it all will make at the same time,” Michael called to her. “And all need to be picked at once.”

“If the rain comes this far,” Rebecca said. She plucked the last tomatoes; the rest were green and she preferred to have them ripening on the vine. She hoisted the basket under her arm and started toward the house, ignoring the squash and cucumbers and peppers that needed harvesting right at her feet. Michael wagged his head in dismay. He left the garden and caught up to his mother and grabbed the basket out of her hands.

“I'll finish,” he said. She looked around and realized what she had left.

“No, you tend to the cattle,” she said. “And I the garden. I wasn't thinking.”

“Oh yes, you were,” Michael replied. “Of her.”

“
Saaaa!
What are you saying?” Rebecca snatched the basket out of his hands and started back to the garden.

“I am saying the daughter of Esther Bird Hat, your friend of long ago.” Michael fell into step with her. Kate had been on his mind too, though in an entirely different way. She knew it and said nothing. Rebecca continued on to the garden and began again to fill the vegetable basket in a determined effort to keep from discussing the matter further. Her feelings were her own and she wanted to keep it that way. She was perturbed that her son did not share her animosity toward the new doctor on the reservation. He was blind to the machinations of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, how the
ve-ho-e
were determined to destroy the sacred beliefs, determined to shatter the Great Circle. She closed her eyes and placed her hand on the warm dirt and solemnly, silently prayed, “Not while I live. Not while I live.” She lifted her heart not to Jay-ho-vah, the white man's God, but to
Ma-heo-o
, the All-Father of the Morning Star people, for he would hear her words and understand.

The jingle of reins and the drum of hoofbeats on the road out from Lame Deer alerted Rebecca and Michael, who had just saddled his horse. Rebecca's prayer faded from her mind as she recognized the carriage belonging to Kate Madison rolling toward them at a crisp pace. Michael led his roan gelding out of the corral, swung into the saddle, and waited by the gate as the carriage continued toward them, leaving a spiral of dust in its wake. Kate guided the mare off the road and toward the ranch house. She seemed a bit surprised at finding Michael and his mother, and with a sharp tug on the reins brought the mare to a stop a few feet from the man by the corral. Michael lowered his head until the dust drifted past.

“Good morning,” he called. When he raised his head Kate noticed a nasty bruise just below his left eye.

“You're hurt,” she said.

“James Broken Knife doesn't wrestle fair,” Michael replied with a wry grin. He reached in his back pocket and brought out a roll of bills, fifty dollars in all. “Then again, neither do I.”

“Sergeant Broken Knife has a broken nose,” Kate said. “One of his tribal policemen summoned me over to their headquarters last night. I had to cauterize it to stop the blood.”

“I hope you didn't come all the way out here to tell me about a nose.” Michael moved closer to the carriage. His shirt was unbuttoned to the waist and a bead of sweat rolled down from his neck and left a glistening path across his hard coppery flesh all the way to his stomach. He noticed her gaze left him to study the neatly arranged yard, the rough-hewn but well-constructed ranch house and outbuildings.

“You expected the son of the Butcher of Castle Rock to live in a buffalo-hide shelter and eat raw dog.”

“Maybe,” Kate said. “I suppose I did.” Michael nodded. He liked her honesty. He leaned in under the shade of the folding top.

“Well, I expected the doctor to be an old man with a long white beard. Not someone like you,” Michael said with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

“I am trying to visit as many families as I can, to let them know who I am and why I am here,” Kate said. She spied Rebecca on her knees in the garden. “But then, as you both seem to know me, I had better be on my way.”

“The reservation is a big place. Not every house is as easy to find. You ought to have a guide with you. Someone who really knows the area. Many families have made their homes well off the road and are not so easy to find as we are.”

“And where would I find such a guide?”

“I am at your service,” Michael said with a sweep of his hat and a gracious bow.

“I thought so,” Kate said, smiling despite herself.

“And not just a guide. Think of me as protection as well.”

“From what?”

“Wild Indians.”

Kate pursed her lips, reflected for a moment on his proposition. She wondered if he was daring her to accept, sensed he was. She could use his knowledge. And as for the dare, she did not doubt in the slightest her ability to handle herself in any situation. “Very well.”

“I'll saddle a horse for you,” Michael said. He started back into the corral, then stopped. “There are some places a buggy won't go. As I said, well off the road and back in the hills toward the Divide.”

“The Divide?”

“You'll see. And then you'll understand.” Michael paused a moment and searched in his saddlebags. He brought out a pair of faded dungarees. “The dress won't do. Change in the house.”

“Now, see here …” Kate started to protest.

“You won't look any stranger than you do right now. And you cannot ride in that dress.” Michael left her there by the gate. Kate tried to think of a better protest, but nothing came to mind. The problem was, he made sense. So she shrugged. Her woolen gray dress would have to go.

Kate tethered the mare to the corral fence and walked across the dusty yard to the ranch house. She paused by the picket fence where the bitterroot bloomed and called toward the garden, “Good morning, Rebecca.”

Rebecca did not answer. She had seen her son all but fall over himself for this “white” Cheyenne. Well, Rebecca Blue Thrush would put such a one in her place. She ignored Kate, who continued around the house to the garden. “I said—”

“I heard you,” Rebecca snapped.

“What is the matter with you? I have only come here to help.”

“You come to destroy. But maybe,” Rebecca's voice deepened in tone, becoming ominous, “… maybe I will not let you.”

“Once my mother was your closest friend.” Kate remembered conversations of long ago. “It is as my mother knew it would be. You blame my mother and father for what happened on the Warbonnet.”

“No. For not trying to stop it. I will talk no more. Except this: it were better if Esther Bird Hat had died with the rest of her people.”

“What makes you think she didn't?” Kate retorted, bridling at the older woman's accusations. “I buried my mother this spring. But I tell you this. Her heart was buried long ago.”

Kate spun on her heels and started back to the house. She wiped the moisture from her eyes and cursed her weakness. No one but Esther had ever seen her cry, and she resolved no one would now. Tears were for the weak. Kate climbed the steps to the dogtrot and stepped into the cool interior of what she took to be a living room. Hand-woven blankets, parfleche war shields, and tanned hides brightly painted with depictions of Indian villages and braves in battle were hung from the walls. Sturdy-looking hand-built chairs and a broad oaken table and—to her surprise—bookshelves filled the room. She recognized several titles on closer examination, Gibbon's
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
, Blackstone's
Commentaries, The Collected Works of Shakespeare
. Many of the books wre battered and worn, their spines crinkled and titles obscured. But she had seen enough to cause her to reevaluate her opinion of Michael Spirit Wolf. She checked the window and saw Rebecca standing near the bam.

Kate took a deep breath and willed herself to be calm.
Rebecca Blue Thrush … I am here to stay. I refuse to let you drive me off. This is my home and these my people, no matter what you say. I am here to stay
. Her eyes were dry now, her composure returned. She began to change clothes. Time was wasting and she wanted to meet as many of her people as possible. Not that her feelings were wholly Samaritan. She was intrigued by Michael. And a little frightened of him … or perhaps frightened of herself.

“My prizes.”

“Oh.” Kate jumped, turned around. Her shadow fell across the rows of books neatly sandwiched between the shelves. Michael stepped into the room as she finished buttoning her shirt.

“You have found me out, Doctor Kate,” Michael gently chided. He walked past her to the bookshelves, placed his hand upon the creased spines.

“‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold/ When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang/ Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,/ Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.'” He turned to look at her, the distance softening between them. He sighed, shrugged. “Not bad for an ignorant Indian.” He had committed the Shakespearean sonnet to memory.

“I never implied anything of the sort,” Kate replied, angered at what she read behind his words. “Maybe I will find my way alone, after all.” She started toward the door.

“You and I are much alike, Kate,” Michael said in a soothing tone. “We are used to doing alone. Even among our people, we are, in a way, alone.” He drew close to her. The smell of earth and honest toil clung to him. He seemed to her incapable of subterfuge. And she would not lie.

“You read me like one of your books. You must have had a great deal of practice,” Kate said. Michael leaned upon the doorsill. The muscles rippled along his forearm.

“Books,” he said. “Such a thing, to put thoughts, and feelings, the heart, yes, down on paper for all to read. And to understand. To laugh as I laugh, pray as I pray, weep as I weep.” His brown eyes took on a faraway look and sunlight washed over his clean direct features. His breath warmed her cheek like a kiss. “One day I will try, when my heart can no longer hold what it feels.” Kate moved toward him as if drawn to his warmth. And as quickly, Michael broke the moment, sensing Rebecca watching from the barn's interior. He stepped through the doorway and onto the porch.

“I have saddled the bay for you, it is docile as a kitten. Come and I will show you the lands of Morning Star.”

Kate wondered if she was being toyed with, suspected as much. But she followed anyway, unaware of the stirrings in her heart that overruled propriety and, in truth, left her no choice.

“What do you think of it?” Michael reined his roan gelding to a halt on the edge of an outcropping of pink granite and looked back at Kate to see if she would follow him onto the precipitous overhang. Kate had ridden often while growing up on the Madison farm. But the rolling countryside around Haverford was no match for the winding deer trails, the switchback path that climbed sheer walls, the steep ascents through slopes so choked with timber she almost swooned from the claustrophobic effect, only to be dazzled as the forest suddenly cleared, revealing vista after vista. But she was game if anything and proud enough not to let Michael Spirit Wolf best her. She urged her bay forward. “The Divide,” Michael said with a grand sweep of his arm as the sun broke from behind a cloud to bathe them in its golden light. More than a thousand feet above the rolling hillsides just to the west around Lame Deer, the cool air defied the warmth of afternoon's golden embrace. Peak after rugged peak formed an unbroken chain north to south as far as Kate could see, a stretch of jagged wilderness sixty miles long and fifteen wide that cut the reservation in half. It was a high and lonesome place, a place primeval, that left her awed. Its beauty lifted the gloom from her heart, for the morning had been one of awkward introductions to families who stared at her as if she had come from another world and listened politely if skeptically as she explained she was a healer. Names ran together in her mind, Buster Long Wing and his family of eight, Adam Red Dancer and his young pregnant wife, and Tobias Buffalo Head's children whom she had amazed with the anatomy chart that she had thought to roll up and place in her black bag. She had lanced a sore and dabbed it with iodine for Mrs. Buffalo Head—Kate had forgotten the woman's first name. Others too, all had listened and stared as if amused by some secret joke. She doubted if anyone outside of the community around Lame Deer would ever seek her out. As she watched the shadows shift and re-form upon the mountains, she followed from her vantage point the progress of a distant thunderstorm as it drifted down the narrow valley. Lightning stabbed earthward and a ponderosa pine split apart and ten seconds later the sound reached them, while above them against the cloud-bedecked sky a hawk seemed suspended in space as if it too had glimpsed for just a moment its place in nature's wondrous scheme. The problems of a country doctor, even a woman country doctor trying to make a place for herself, became minute before such grandeur, before life's unspoken meaning. Stillness, distant violent beauty, staggered sounds and more quiet, a herd of whitetail deer pausing—oh, she had just spied them—it was as if the world were a still life, Kate and Michael were held bound by the plan of God: the wind, still caught among the branches of the pines, the doves hesitating in their full-throated call. For an instant, time stood still, then life returned with the rolling thunder from far off. The hawk soared out of sight.