Sunflower (16 page)

Ely Parker was the first of his race to be appointed commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but except for the fact that he was Indian, he was no different from the many other friends and army companions who had been appointed to office by the newly elected President, Ulysses S. Grant. Determined to achieve the reforms called for by numerous committee findings filed over the previous decades, Grant had placed Ely Parker at the head of the bureau in the hope that he would act swiftly and fairly to end injustices committed against the Indians who were being forced to live on reservations under the unsympathetic control of the military.

“Your father would come back to haunt me if anything had happened to you while you were working for me, Caleb.” With an easy motion, Parker directed Caleb toward a pair of deep leather armchairs near the windows. “I was ready to send out a search party.”

Caleb smiled. “And just who would you have them search for?” he asked, crooking a skeptical eyebrow at his superior. “A renegade Sioux or a Spanish grandee studying the flora and fauna of the West?”

“You’re right there, Caleb. I wasn’t sure which identity you had assumed,” Parker admitted. “I wasn’t even sure where to look for you.”

“I cut a pretty wide trail, General. I ended up in Iowa, where I inconveniently caught the measles.” Caleb was still for a moment as he pushed the memory of Analisa from his thoughts. “That held me up for a good month.”

Caleb shifted in his chair before he continued. “Things are as bad as the commission reports indicated, perhaps even worse. I’m ready to give you the full details, but I’m afraid it will take quite a bit of time.”

“Time seems to be a commodity there’s no end of here in Washington.” Parker tapped the arm of his chair with a long forefinger. “The President wants his peace policy implemented as soon as possible, so that should help things move a little more swiftly. While you were gone, Congress passed a bill forbidding military personnel to hold civil office.”

“That means any military men doubling as Indian agents will be ousted.” Caleb sat forward in his chair.

“Right. And Grant wants the changes accomplished as soon as possible. He’s decided the Indian agency appointments should go to men who’ve been recommended by religious leaders, and he has the support of the newly appointed Board of Indian Commissioners.”

Leaning forward, his forearms on his knees, Caleb stared intently at Parker as he spoke. “General, it may take months or even years to replace all the Indian agents in the territories. Meanwhile, the crooked ones will still be duping the government by misappropriating funds and holding back supplies promised to the Indians on reservations. They’re starving already. The ones who are no longer willing to be treated like animals become renegades.”

Ely Parker stood and walked to the window, pulling aside the curtain to stare out at the bright sunlight of a late summer day. Always the military man, he kept his spine ramrod straight, his shoulders squared. The September heat was close and still. Noise from the traffic on the street below drifted up into the second-story windows.

“You’re the last to return, Caleb. All of the reports have been grim, I’m afraid.” Slowly, hands in his pockets, Parker turned toward him, his face lined with worry. “If you’ve no objections, I’d like to send you back out there after we’ve met with Grant and you’ve filed your report. You aren’t under any obligations to accept the assignment, of course, and you know I hate to ask you to put your law practice on hold any longer, but very few men have your qualifications and your ability to infiltrate both sides—white and Indian. If you accept, you’ll be in a dangerous position, so I won’t blame you if you refuse. Things are going to heat up fast, especially when military men are forced to give up their agency appointments. I have a feeling they aren’t going to accept the changes very readily and will be looking for ways to circumvent the orders.”

“Meaning they might find civilians they can control and try to put them into the positions the army is in charge of now?”

“Exactly.”

Caleb stirred as the northbound train gathered speed. He had listened intently that day, giving needed firsthand information to Parker, noting the sincere worry and frustration of the man as he faced the monumental task of restructuring an unwieldy government agency. Caleb had known, too, when Ely Parker suggested that he return to the West, that he would accept the assignment. He wanted to help end the suffering of his mother’s people, and he valued the commissioner’s high opinion of him. Parker, an aide to General Grant, had worked his way up to brigadier general by the end of the war. It was his hand that had copied the terms of surrender signed by Lee at Appomattox, after Grant first scratched out the dictates on the pages of his order book.

When the Civil War broke out, Caleb’s father had insisted that his son complete his education before he enlisted. Caleb was twenty-one the year Clinton Storm died, and he would wait no longer. The year was 1863. As a soldier in the Army of the United States, Caleb had served under General Parker, admiring the older man’s determination to rise above the prejudice he faced because of his Indian blood.

It was Ely Parker who had encouraged Caleb to enter Boston College after the war and earn a law degree, something Parker himself had been denied. When the conflict was over, Caleb resigned from the army and did as Parker suggested. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1869. When his former general asked him to serve as a secret agent in the Indian territories, working for the cause of his mother’s people and, indeed, all Indian peoples, Caleb could do no less than accept the challenge.

The train slowed and pulled to a stop, drawing Caleb’s thoughts back to the present. A glance at the frosted window told him the sleet was still falling. Thoughts crowded his mind, and at the forefront of those thoughts was Analisa. She had haunted his waking hours and walked in his dreams. Parker was sending him west again. He could return to Analisa if he chose to.

If he chose to? How could he not? he thought. What man in his right mind could walk away from a woman like her? He crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his hands in his armpits to warm his fingers. The car was cold and drafty, the seat next to him still empty. Slowly the train began to roll forward once again. Within a few moments, Caleb had fallen into a peaceful sleep. He rode out the rest of the journey toward Boston dreaming of Analisa’s cornflower-blue eyes.

The back door of the imposing town house swung open noiselessly as Caleb, surefooted and silent, his saddlebag slung over one shoulder, entered the warmth of the kitchen. With a quick look around, he took in the pots and cooking utensils lined up against the brick walls and hanging on hooks from the low ceiling beams. Across the room, near a sturdy chopping block, a plump woman in a white muslin cap and thick wool dressing gown stood with her back to him. A long silver plait hung down her back and swung slightly as she worked. He could not see what she was doing, but was certain she was preparing a midnight snack. She worked with speed and in silence. With gliding steps, he moved up behind her. He slid one arm around her ample waist, drew her against him, and leaned down to whisper in her ear.

“If you aren’t careful, I won’t be able to get my arms around you, and I know you will miss my amorous attentions.” With that he nuzzled the smooth, warm skin near her ear, enjoying the kitchen smells that mingled with the scent of her talcum.

The pipe clenched between her teeth forced her to speak out of the side of her mouth. “Unhand me this minute, you sneaking red-blooded scoundrel!” She raised a long-handled wooden spoon and rapped it sharply against his head and shoulders, hard enough to make him notice without doing any real harm.

Caleb threw back his head and laughed, enjoying the old woman’s curses of disgust. “My, but it’s good to be home again.” He continued to ignore her struggles. “Do you know how much I’ve missed your cooking, Abbie Oats?”

His question stilled her movements and with a twinkle in her eye she squirmed around to face him and looked at him flirtatiously.

“No. Just how much have you missed my cooking?”

“Enough to travel all the way from Washington in this weather just to have a taste of your—” he stopped long enough to see what it was she was working on, then added—“fresh-baked apple pie.”

“Here,” she said, handing him the wedge she had already cut. “You can sit for a spell and start on this while I get you a mug of milk. Or would you prefer coffee?”

“Milk would be fine. You always did know how to please a man.” He gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek, then he took the plate to the table near the fire. “Is Ruth here?”

“Of course. She’ll be surprised and happy to see you, Caleb. “You know she worries about you as if you were her own son,”

“I know, and I should have written more often, but sometimes it’s hard to get a letter off when you are out in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’m sure she understands. I’ll go call her. She went up to bed not two minutes ago, so I’ll probably catch her even before she has time to change.”

“Maybe you should wait. I can see her in the morning.” His mouth full of pie, Caleb’s words were a mere mumble.

“Lose your manners out there? Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

“Some things never change.”

“I’m going up to get Ruth. She’ll be mad if I don’t let her know you’re home. You just finish up and meet her in the hallway.”

“Thanks, Abbie,” Caleb called out as the stout figure disappeared through the doorway. He looked around the room and thought of the many hours he’d spent here in the warm kitchen with Abigail Oats. She’d been the cook at the Storm house for a good thirty years and was more in charge of the place than its true owners were. Having befriended Caleb when his father brought him to Boston after his mother’s death, she was, for a time, his only companion other than his headstrong father. Clinton Storm had been determined, after the death of his Sioux wife, Gentle Rain, that his son would learn to live in the white world, and so he had returned east with Caleb to claim his inheritance, one of Boston’s most prosperous shipping companies.

“You’re home!”

Ruth Decateur Storm moved quickly down the steep wooden staircase, appearing exactly the way Caleb remembered her. Her violet wool gown was partly hidden by a paisley shawl that blazed in a riot of yellow, gold, black, and green. It had been knotted over one shoulder, carelessly draped across the other, and then forgotten. Thick eyeglasses rode precariously atop her head, the stems thrust into her mass of wildly curling hair, which was only slightly laced with gray and had been tucked and pinned on top of her head with no thought to fashion or sophistication. She was a short woman—the top of her head came to a point just below his collarbone—and yet Caleb felt that she could fill a room with her presence. Exuberant, determined, positive—all of these things Caleb thought of when he thought of Ruth. Blinking her warm hazel eyes, she scanned her stepson quickly from head to toe and back again before she reached up to embrace Caleb in welcome.

Clinton Storm had remarried when Caleb was nineteen. Ruth Decateur, half Clinton Storm’s age, had been a wealthy, eccentric spinster of thirty-eight when she had met and fallen in love with the handsome widower. She soon became more than a stepmother to Caleb; she was his friend and as close a confidante as he had ever let anyone become. After Clinton’s death, Ruth had remained in the Boston house, always happy to greet Caleb and determined to make him feel the place was still his home. She even saw to it that the maids left the dusting and care of his “savage museum pieces” to her, for his room was a storehouse of Sioux artifacts. Its walls were lined with an assortment of beaded and feathered reminders of his Indian heritage. Powder horns, spoons, and ladles fashioned from buffalo horns, a hide painted with images that told the story of Caleb’s ancestry, a quill-decorated breastplate and horse mask, a quiver of painted arrows, and a bow fashioned by Caleb himself—these were but a few of the pieces stored in the room that had been his refuge during the lonely years when he’d walked a thin line between the white world and that of the Indian.

“You look wonderful, Caleb. Your mysterious mission must have agreed with you!” She took in his tall figure, his neatly trimmed hair, and the fine arched eyebrows. Dressed in a well-tailored suit of wool tweed’, he looked quite polished and sophisticated, from his starched white shirt collar to the somewhat muddied but obviously new shoes. “Come in now, and tell me all about it.”

He looped his saddlebag around the newel post, tucked her arm into the crook of his elbow, and walked her down the long, narrow hallway. They separated to enter the small informal parlor at the end of the hallway. A deep armchair and ottoman stood near the fireplace. Caleb, like his father before him, always chose to sit there, so Ruth moved to sit on the floral-print straight-backed settee.

“I hope you’re here to stay for a while, Caleb. It seems so long since you’ve been home. Are you planning to spend Christmas with me?”

Caleb eased himself into the chair before he answered. “I’m not sure yet, Ruth. I do intend to stay at least a week, but General Parker wants me to go back out west as soon as I can.”

“You have an important decision to make in the next few days.”

Ruth’s comment was a statement of fact, not a question. Caleb wondered again at her uncanny knack for knowing what was in his mind. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of learning she was right just yet. It was disturbing enough to think she knew what preoccupied him.

“I’m not reading your mind, Caleb, so don’t look so concerned.” She ignored his startled expression as she made herself comfortable. “Your chart shows you have some strange energy around you. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you didn’t have some sort of major decision to make. Why, with Mars in conjunction with your moon, as it was in late August, anything could have happened.” She watched him closely as she added, “It might have been a good time for romance. Did you meet anyone interesting last August?”

Caleb wondered how Ruth would react to the news of his sudden marriage to Analisa? And how could he explain the reason for the marriage? If he knew Ruth, and he felt he knew her well, she had already spread his astrological charts over the library floor. He pictured her trying to determine by the position of the stars exactly which day would be right for him to meet the woman who would fulfill his destiny. But Caleb sensed there was more to Ruth’s insight than her ability to read the charts. It was as if her hazel eyes could see through him.