Sacred Is the Wind (33 page)

Sam Madison closed the journal and sat quietly, listening to the storm abate. He closed his eyes and pictured Kate as a child, pictured Esther dead, pictured himself forever running from the truth about himself. He read the journal of his own heart, entry after entry he had written by simply being alive. He had cast aside his missionary zeal because he had found that part of himself false. In a moment of blind panic he had set the course for his life and Esther's. He bunched his eyes shut and tried to fight the overwhelming tide of guilt that threatened to engulf him and to destroy what remained of his life. He lost all sense of time, a tear spilled down his cheek. A hand wiped it away. He looked up at Kate. She wore a simple dressing gown and a coarse cotton robe. Her hair hung long and lustrous black.

“Father …”

“How can I help? I mean … here … where you belong?” He stammered, cleared his throat.

“I do have a favor to ask,” she said, sitting beside him on the couch and placing her hands in his. “Something I think only you can do, with your influence and reputation. Something only a Madison can accomplish. I think.”

Sam nodded. He wanted to feel like a father again. “What do you need?” he asked.

“A favor,” she said.

“For you?”

“For him,” Kate said, looking past her father. Sam turned.

Michael Spirit Wolf stood in the doorway.

17

S
unlight drifted in through a hole in the curtains behind the couch and roused Michael from dreams of vast herds of cattle covering verdant hills and he and his mother sitting on the porch of the grand ranch house he intended one day to build. The sun was shining too, in this dream-scape, and he was at peace with the world. He stood on the porch and breathed in the warm summer air. He glanced to his right and Kate was standing there with her hair hanging down and the sun in her eyes and her beauty rivaled the world itself, for the breeze pressed her dressing gown to her body outlining the contours of her legs and hips as she turned to smile at Michael. In silence there was nothing to say. They knew one another, and what they had shared was the stuff of dreams, of eternity itself. Michael grudgingly looked away and saw his mother beside him, stand. Rebecca pointed toward the hills. Michael lifted his eyes to the skyline and glimpsed his father standing on the rim of the valley. He saw Panther Burn start down, his hand raised in greeting, his voice ringing with a jubilant cry. Together now, his parents, and Kate nearby, and a sprawling ranch before him … Michael felt complete. He was whole. And he was … dreaming.

He woke and worked a kink out of his back as he sat up, his fingers kneading the small of his back. He ran a hand through his hair and swallowed to clear his throat. The house was quiet. The chair across from him empty. He wondered if Mr. Madison had returned. Michael had told his father's story to the white man. Sam listened and even seemed sympathetic. Panther Burn's actions were no less barbaric than those of the townspeople and militiamen who had massacred a peaceful village of Southern Cheyenne. Yet Panther Burn had been betrayed, singled out and handed over to be punished, taken to prison at Fort Dodge down in Kansas. By the time Michael had finished his tale and the rain ceased falling Sam was ready to be alone. He left by the back door, walked off into the darkness. Kate gave Michael a blanket and offered him the couch for the night. He remembered now the way she had looked in her dressing gown and robe, her hair unbound and lying in luxuriant folds about her shoulders.

He crawled out of his makeshift bed, listened to the quiet, pulled on his boots, buttoned his shirt and tucked it in at his waist. His gaze drifted to the stairway; the shadows at the top of the stairs beckoned him. He started forward, drawn by a spark of desire that burned within him, that he dared to kindle into flame.

He waited in the hallway; the windows at either end were shuttered and left the upstairs in darkness. One bedroom door was open and Michael could see the bed within had not been slept in. He looked around at the door on his left, stepped toward it, grimaced as the wood floor creaked underfoot. He reached out and placed the flat of his hand against the door and felt it give beneath the pressure. The door swung open and Michael stepped into Kate's bed-room. She was turned on her side, one arm along her thigh, the other lost in the folds of her pillow. Quietly, on the balls of his feet, Michael crossed the room to her side and looked down at her. A sheet covered her legs and waist. She sighed, rolled over on her back. Her hair like a sleepy storm, her lips as red as chokecherries against her smooth, tawny features. Nipples dark as blood pressed upward like twin delicate buds against her cotton bodice. And her eyes, blue as the sky at dusk. She was awake … she glanced toward the open bedroom door. He seemed to read her thoughts.

“What on earth …”

“Your father has not come in yet. I think he looks for answers among the clouds.” Michael smiled and shrugged. “I can think of worse places.”

“What on earth are you doing, Michael?” Kate asked, finally finding her voice. Odd, she wasn't alarmed. Surprised, but unafraid.

“Ahhhh. Dreaming, I suppose.” Michael leaned forward. The mattress shuddered beneath his weight. “Thank you for trying to help me. For trying to help my father.”

Kate pulled the sheet up to her neck. “Really, Mr. Spirit Wolf, couldn't that wait until morning? I mean until I was up and about.”

“My thanks could, but not this.” Michael pressed his lips to hers. His kiss hinted of desire, yet he did not try to take more than she would give. The kiss was ended prematurely by a sudden knocking at the front door. The rapid hammering sounded urgent. Michael straightened and then turned and walked out of the room. Kate gasped and hurriedly wrapped herself in a robe and hurried out into the hall and managed to catch Michael at the top of the stairs.

“Wait, for heaven's sake. That may not be my father. What will people think to find you coming out of my house at such an hour?”

“They will think what a lucky man is Michael Spirit Wolf.”

“Michael, do you know what the word ‘brazen' means?”

Michael furrowed his brow. He wasn't sure of the meaning. Tyrell Gude had given Michael all the books he owned. As of yet he had only worked his way through part of them, mostly the Shakespeare. And a copy of Malory's
Mort d'Arthur
of which he was especially fond. But “brazen”? “No,” he said.

“Well, you ought to look it up. I think the dictionaries invented it for you.” And with that, Kate brushed past him, and tying her robe at her waist, hurried down the stairs to the front door. She slid the bolt free and yanked it open. Father Lee Hillary stood on the other side of the screen door. His shoes were caked with mud from slogging across the street to the clinic. Mud discolored the hem of his black robes. Kate tried to remain unperturbed but her reaction was one of horror. Why a priest, with Michael having spent the night under her roof. Of course, he need never know.

“Why, Father Hillary. What is it? Are you ill?”

“I must speak with Michael. It is urgent. Forgive me if I am interrupting any-uh-thing.” Hillary coughed nervously.

Kate blushed. So much for reputation. “You are not interrupting anything!” she said pointedly and stood back to allow the priest to enter. He spied Michael sitting in the middle of the stairway with a somewhat bemused expression on his face. Whatever humor he had found in Kate's predicament faded as he saw the expression of grave concern on the priest's face.

“I have some bad news. It came while I was having morning coffee with Tyrell. A telegram …” Father Hillary glanced around at Kate, who also had forgotten about her embarrassment, then he looked back at Michael. “I stole it. Tyrell's probably already looking for me.” He held out a wrinkled page to the young Cheyenne rancher. Michael took the dispatch and began to read.

Sam Madison watched the mist that coiled on the valley below, writhed like some tormented spirit, denizen of an earthly hell invisible to the eyes of men. He had left his coat behind and stood his ground, looking every inch the citified stranger in his wrinkled finery. He glanced down at his mud-caked shoes and the brown-spattered hem of his trousers. If the men at the club could see him now. He lifted his gaze to the horizon, where the sun's golden fire washed over the land and scoured the haunted hills, chasing the vapors of the night, banishing the mist.

“It has been a long time,” Sam said aloud. It was difficult to see the sunrise in the cities of the north. It was dark and then it was light. So then, here was the sun. He waited out the night. And what of answers? To use his influence to gain Panther Burn's release might spell trouble for Sam later on. It certainly would not help his reputation and might even cost him some of his business contracts with men who felt the wild savages of the West got exactly what they deserved, especially savages like the “Butcher of Castle Rock.” The sun warmed his stub-bled features. Sam ran a hand across his jaw. I must look like the most desperate vagrant, he thought to himself. In truth, he had acted out of desperation. Why not let Kate run out of his life if that was what she wanted? Why follow her these thousands of miles from the comfort of hearth and home, to return to the frontier, which he had sworn never to do? Somewhere, Esther must be laughing at him.
No, not laughing … oh God, not weeping, though, please. Esther, forgive me. I do not understand. What broke me long ago and caused me to flee, to abandon everything I held dear? Now it is too late. At least for us, but perhaps not for my darling daughter. You see, I still love her, always have, as I loved you although I could no longer tell you because you could no longer hear me
. He had failed his wife long ago, had feared to take a risk. Well, by heaven and hell and all that was holy in this world or the next, he would not fail his daughter.

Sam spun around on his heels and marched down from the hilltop back to the winding road leading out of town. He slogged through the mud but paid it no mind. It would wash off. In truth he needed a good hot bath and a fresh change of clothes if he was going to confront the local Indian agent with his intentions. Then a courtesy call at Major Halliwell's in Fort Keogh to present his case to the officer in charge of the military presence in this part of the country. And last but not least, a wire to the Secretary of State, who owed Sam Madison any number of favors for the financial support Sam had given to the campaign of Benjamin Harrison. Whatever the current temperament of Congress, money could generate a veritable torrent of sympathy for Panther Burn. And who knew, perhaps Sam Madison might come off being regarded as a humanitarian.

Sam touched his throat. He had worn a white collar once, but the worldly had warred with the saintly and won. It was impossible to recall the past. Sam Madison/ humanitarian, or Sam Madison/Indian lover—none of it mattered. Whatever the outcome, Kate had presented him with a second chance, the opportunity to atone in at least one small way. And he might just win his daughter's love in the process. He cared for nothing more and hoped for nothing less.

He worked his way through the last few remaining yards of mud and paused on the back porch, looking back at his tracks. He could see a line of men heading for the mill at the edge of town. Some rode horses, others crowded into a wagon, and a number were afoot, preparing to climb atop the stacked timber and work the remains of once mighty ponderosas into the voracious iron jaws of the mill's rip saws. Sam had a task of his own to attend to. He kicked off his shoes and stepped into the kitchen, and spying Kate at the other end of the hall, hurried toward the parlor.

“Kate, I am glad you are up. I'll see it through. I will not rest until Panther Burn is … free …” He stopped, seeing the priest and, near him, Michael, still sitting on the stairway.

“This is my father, Sam Madison,” Kate said. The priest nodded. The tension was almost palpable. The Seth Thomas clock, nestled in between the medical books over the mantel, chimed once, tolling the half-hour.

“What's happened?”

Michael handed over the telegram he had just read aloud to Kate. Sam unfolded the piece of paper.

TO TYRELL GUDE, INDIAN AGENT
:

INFORMING YOU THAT AS OF YESTERDAY JULY 24, 1889, PANTHER BURN A WAR CHIEF OF THE NORTHERN CHEYENNE ESCAPED A WORK DETAIL OUT OF FORT DODGE STOP KILLED ONE SOLDIER WOUNDED ANOTHER STOP BELIEVED HEADING FOR RESERVATION IN MONTANA STOP PLEASE INFORM CAPTAIN MORBITZER STOP SEE THE SOLDIERS STATIONED AT CAMP MERRITT ARE ALERTED STOP A UNITED STATES MARSHAL WILL BE DISPATCHED TO HELP IN THE APPREHENSION SHOULD THIS RENEGADE ELUDE CAPTURE IN THE SOUTH AND REACH THE RESERVATION STOP EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION STOP PANTHER BURN IS TO BE TAKEN DEAD OR ALIVE STOP
.

“I am grateful for your good intentions,” Michael said. “But you are too late. My father is already free. And he is coming home.” Michael looked up at Kate, hurt in his eyes, his voice trembling. “He is coming home.”

Book Three

18

September 1, 1889

H
ere on the border between Montana and Wyoming, Marshal Sabbath McKean really couldn't tell where one state began and the other ended. He peered at the tendril of smoke spiraling upward against the backdrop of amber hills and figured that was Wyoming. He looked north, the way he ought to be heading, and then turned his horse to backtrack his own trail. Someone was following him and had been since Sheridan. Sabbath had a sneaking suspicion just who it might be. Not Panther Burn—the Cheyenne would never reveal his whereabouts with such a fire. No. This was a white man's fire.

With the sun a ruby-red ball balanced on the rim of the hills to his right, Sabbath McKean walked his buck-skin gelding around the twisted stump of a lightning-shattered cedar and continued straight into the night camp of the two men whose fire he had glimpsed from afar. A massive, granite-fisted hunk of beef and bone stood and raised his Winchester 76 about waist-high and levered a shell into the rifle's chamber. The second man was slight of build, thin-limbed, birdlike in appearance, what with his bony frame and black coat and trousers. His face was angular and pale and his hair, a startling white, hung to his shoulders. He held a broad-brimmed felt black hat in his hands and he waved it toward Sabbath, inviting him into the camp. Sabbath recognized both men and noted with self-satisfaction that being forty-seven had not dimmed his intuition—even if he needed specs to read sign now. Yes, Sabbath McKean's once hawklike vision was trapped behind round wire-rimmed lenses. He was not the kind of man, though, to count the wrinkles in his own reflection. Sabbath measured his life on how well he did his job. On the down side of forty, Marshal Sabbath McKean could still track a fly across piled coal. Bald, clean-shaven save for an enormous carrot-red mustache that curled at the tips like twin fishhooks, he wore faded Levi's and a trail-worn buckskin shirt with an elegantly polished U.S. marshal's badge pinned to his sheepskin coat. Short, broad-shouldered, solid as stone, Sabbath looked every inch what he was.