“I think you will not,” Snake said. “For all I know, you will tell the bluecoats where we are and they will send soldiers to hunt us down.”
“I would never do that to my mother’s people!”
“This is not for me to decide.” Snake rubbed his ugly face thoughtfully. “You will ride with us for now. Tall Bull can make the final decision about what to do with you!”
There was nothing she could do but ride south with them. Now that she had realized she could never be a real Cheyenne, they were not going to let her go.
Perhaps she could reason with them. “You should all go peacefully back to the reservation,” she told Snake as they stopped to rest at a small creek. “In the long run, you can’t win against the whites. They are as many as the snowflakes in the winter.”
“Your cowardly words make me wonder if you are really a niece of Tall Bull’s!” Snake’s lip curled in disdain. “We will not return to the Indian Territory, even if they kill us to the last man. You know the reputation of the Dog Soldiers. We are the bravest of the brave, the best of the warrior societies, and would rather die in battle than be white man’s Indians on a reservation!”
For that she couldn’t blame them, Luci thought. There was no dignity in sitting day after day with nothing to do but eat the white man’s free food. No, it wasn’t free. Letting the government care for them made them trade their dignity and their most cherished possession, their freedom, for the rations.
Luci said, “So what will you do?”
Snake shrugged. “We will raid and kill as we have been doing, of course! It is all we can do.”
“In the long run, the white soldiers will hunt you down and kill you.”
“We know that.” He looked at her a little sadly. “But we would rather live a few brief months as warriors than live many, many years like cowards on our knees, begging before the Great White Father in that place called Washington!”
There was no reasoning with them, no solution, and maybe even no right or wrong, Luci thought sadly. No matter how well intended anyone was or how many treaties were signed, Plains Indians and white farmers would not be able to live peacefully side by side. The warriors would soon forget what they had signed and be back killing and raiding as they had always done. If there were no enemy tribes to attack, the Plains warriors would raid the white farmers and ranchers.
“Where do you suppose my uncle will want to lead us?” she asked as they mounted up and took off south again.
Snake said, “After a few raids, maybe back up to that place in the rolling hills east of the Shining Mountains. The grass is tall and green there, the spring clear and cold.” He called it by its Indian Name.
Summit Springs, east of the Rockies. She remembered the place vaguely. Once when she was small, she and her mother had ridden to that place in northeastern Colorado Territory to visit her uncle.
Snake looked her over admiringly as they rode. “You are very pretty, even if you are only half Cheyenne. Do you have a man?”
How should she answer? She didn’t like the way Snake looked at her as if he could already imagine her in his blankets. Yet she dare not say that she had been the woman of a hated Pawnee scout. “I–I am only seventeen winter counts old. My mother had not made any promises for me when she died suddenly.”
“Plenty of Cheyenne girls your age are already married.” Snake smiled at her.
She felt cold chills go down her back at the hint in his words. Luci dropped back and rode with the crippled boy for the next few miles.
“I am Morning Star,” she said to him as they finally dismounted again to eat and rest.
He looked at her shyly, holding fast to a ledger book. “I am called Bear Cub. I have watched you. I think you are the prettiest girl I have ever seen.”
Luci laughed. “I am not so pretty. What is this you carry?”
He hesitated a long moment before offering the ledger for her inspection. “I draw the battles I have seen for our people to remember, since I will never be much good as a warrior.”
She took the ledger, watching with pity and admiration as he hobbled about on his bent, twisted leg. When Luci opened it, she gasped with admiration. “Why, Bear Cub, these are wonderful!”
There was page after page of drawings. They were crude, but showed a great deal of talent. By beginning at the front of the book and turning the pages, she could follow many of the battles the Cheyennes had fought over the past several years. Here for all to see was the Kidder Massacre, the fight at Beecher’s Island last September, where a handful of Forsythe’s scouts had held off a large group of Cheyenne for nine days until a rescue party had arrived to save the soldiers.
Bear Cub watched her expression. “It was at that fight that we lost the great war leader, Roman Nose, because his spirit medicine had been broken.”
Luci nodded, remembering what she’d heard from the white soldiers. That battle, too, had happened in eastern Colorado Territory.
“We outnumbered them,” Bear Cub said, “but because they had repeating rifles, we could not defeat and overrun them. So now we have the new rifles, too.”
“You have a great talent, Bear Cub,” she said as she handed the book back to him. She thought of David Van Schuyler at the fort, the medic who painted as a hobby. David seemed like a sympathetic and deeply caring person. “I know a white man who is an artist, too. Perhaps he would help you sell your work, find you good teachers back East–”
Bear Cub shook his head. “I cannot leave my people. Even I can do a little–guard the horse herds, make records of their fights. I am lucky to be alive, after the whites shot me at Sand Creek and left me in the snow to die.”
“In the long run, if the Cheyenne insist on fighting, you will all die.”
He looked at her solemnly. “In the end, all people die, Morning Star. But maybe some of us will make our death count. We will show our bravery and be remembered. No warrior can hope for more than that.”
She had forgotten this was the outlook of the Dog Soldier, the bravest of the brave. This crippled boy could never be a great warrior because of his leg, but he could help his people a little against the whites. He wanted nothing more.
Snake walked up just then. “Useless pictures! As useless to his people as the crippled boy who draws them! If he were not my second wife’s little brother, I would not take him along! When his leg was shattered, he should have been left to die in the snow!”
The boy flushed and looked away in humiliation.
Luci’s heart went out to him. “His pictures are good,” she declared. “A hundred years from now, maybe people will still look at them and think of the one who put history on paper so all could remember what happened these few short months.”
“No, he and his silly pictures will soon be forgotten,” Snake sneered, and turned to walk away. “Deeds like mine, like your uncle’s, will be remembered.”
Luci and Bear Cub both watched Snake’s retreating back as he walked away to see to the setting up of camp.
Bear Cub sighed. “He is right. I am of no use to the tribe.”
“That’s not true,” Luci patted his hand. “I believe that Heammawihio has some grand design and that we all play our parts in it, important, even if small. You will play some part, too. Just be patient.”
He looked down at her hand on his. “Morning Star, how old are you?”
“Seventeen.” She felt much older with all she had seen and experienced.
He bit his lip. “I–I am fifteen. That’s not much difference. Has a warrior spoken for you?”
She could see where this conversation was headed and she did not want to hurt this shy, sensitive boy. “I have not even thought about things like that, Bear Cub. I wanted to live among my mother’s people awhile, get to know them, and learn their customs. Then there will be time enough to think of marriage.”
“I saw Snake staring at you. I think he will make an offer to your uncle.” Bear Cub looked at her earnestly. “He is a rich man of many ponies
.”
The thought made her shudder. “Doesn’t he have two wives already?”
“Yes, but the first is nursing a child and my sister is expecting one any day.”
She nodded in understanding. It was forbidden to have relations with a nursing mother because to impregnate her would stop her milk and the baby would starve. She knew from things her mother had said that a Cheyenne wife nursed a baby three years. No wonder Snake might be wanting a new wife in his blankets.
Mercy! How had she gotten herself into this mess and how could she get herself out? She had a horrible vision of herself spread out on a buffalo robe with Snake’s ugly face kissing her breasts as he rammed his manhood deep inside her, riding her roughly and brutally until his seed spilled into her womb.
It was all so sad and futile that she put her face in her hands a long moment, willing herself not to weep in sheer frustration. Any day now, the Fifth Cavalry would be departing Fort McPherson in an offensive against her people. No, not her people. She didn’t have a people. Like Johnny Ace, she was caught between two worlds and belonged nowhere. Johnny Ace. Beloved enemy. As a scout, he would be riding out in front of those troops when they came up against the Cheyenne. He might be killed. Bear Cub might be killed.
And yet, all she could think of at this moment was how she might end up as Snake’s woman with his body between her thighs as he enjoyed her and gave her his child.
Chapter Twenty
Major North wiped the sweat from his face and studied the man limping into his office. Once the man might have been a handsome rake, but dissolute living showed in his ravaged face.
“Major North, I believe you sent for me. I’m Manning Starrett.”
“Have a chair, Mr. Starrett.” North pulled one up for the man and tried to smile, although he somehow already didn’t like the man. He certainly looked like Winnifred, but strange how the Denver man made him think of someone else. But who? “Hot, isn’t it?”
“Let’s get right to the point.” The man leaned on his cane and glared at him with bright blue eyes. “I didn’t spend my valuable time coming all the way from Denver just to discuss the goddamned weather! I’m a busy man, Major.”
“And of course I’m not!” Immediately he regretted his sarcasm. He needed to be compassionate, knowing what this father faced. “I’m sorry, Mr. Starrett. Here at the fort, we’ve all been under a strain because of the Indian trouble.” He needed to prepare Starrett. The man didn’t look as if he was in good enough health to take much stress. “Have you seen your daughter yet?”
“Hell, no! I just got in! I don’t know what this is all about, Major, but it appears for an important taxpayer, the army could take the time to send my daughter to Denver with a patrol and save me this trip.”
“We feet all the taxpayers are important,” the Major said gently, sitting down behind his desk. He hadn’t even asked about Winnifred, North thought with a sinking heart. Somehow he had hoped that the arrival of her father would help the pitiful girl. She had improved very little since she’d been rescued. But now that he had met Starrett . . .
“Goddamn it to hell! I had to leave a lot of urgent business in the hands of my associate,” Starrett grumbled, fingering his cane, “and since the stage isn’t running, I had a helluva time getting a private coach that wasn’t scared of Injuns.”
“I’m sorry to inconvenience you, but it seemed necessary, under the circumstances.” North held his temper but just barely. If he threw this rich man out of his office, no doubt the Fifth Cavalry would get even fewer supplies than they were now getting. Since Grant had just become President, maybe that old general would do better by the army.
“That’s what I’m complaining about,” Starrett said, “Nobody’s told me what in the goddamned hell happened!”
Was there an easy way to tell a man his daughter had been raped and tortured by fifty savages and, as a result, seemed to be insane?
North steepled his fingers and studied them. “The stage your daughter was on was attacked by a party of Dog Soldiers armed with repeating Winchesters.”
He reached into his desk drawer, took out one of the shiny cartridges, and tossed it to the other man, who automatically caught it and stared at it. For a moment, he seemed almost speechless, rolling the cartridge about in his palm. “Ironic,” he whispered, “ironic!” He tossed it back. “Where’s the stage itself? The troop bring it in?”
It seemed like a strange question to North, but he had already decided Manning Starrett was a strange man. “No, it was too wrecked. We just left it to lie out there beside the trail.” He waited a long moment, growing more and more agitated. “Mr. North, aren’t you going to ask about your daughter?”
The other man shrugged. “She’s alive, didn’t your telegram say that?”
“Well, yes, but–”
“Then what else in the goddamned hell is there to know?”
The obvious had not even occurred to him, North thought suddenly, and then felt both dislike and pity for the man. “Mr. Starrett, I–I don’t know how to tell you this, but Winnifred may need a lot of tender, gentle care to ever be what she was before. She’s been through a terrible ordeal.”
He glared back with steely blue eyes. “Meaning what?”
He was not sure he could bring himself to say it, although he was a tough, professional army man. To say it brought back the ghastly memories of finding her. “She–she’s . . . been outraged.”
“Outraged?” Starrett looked blank for a long moment. Then the horror of what North meant seemed to slowly dawn on him. The blue eyes widened and he gasped audibly. “You–you don’t mean to tell me those savages had the gall to take the daughter of the richest, most important man in Denver, and–”
“Probably all fifty of them,” North interrupted. He couldn’t stand to hear the word said. The sight and smell and terror of the girl were too recent.
Starrett opened and closed his mouth several times like a fish out of water fighting for air. “How dare they!” he seethed. “Wait until I complain to friends in Washington about what a rotten job the army is doing in protecting taxpayers!”
“And while you’re at it,” North fired back, “tell them we’re trying to protect a gigantic prairie with a few troops against thousands of warriors from most of the Plains tribes! And we’re doing it with the remnants of Civil War weapons while the hostiles have better arms than we do!”
Oh, my God, what had he done? The other man looked as if he might go into shock, and die right here in front of him.
“Mr. Starrett, let me get you a drink.” He dug around in the desk drawer, sure that there might be a bottle in it. There was. He handed it over and watched the man’s hand shake as he took a gulp. “Do you want to see her now?”
Manning Starrett looked as if no words were registering. “How dare they? And with Winchesters I . . .” His voice trailed off. Obviously he was taking it as a personal insult.
North waited for the other man to show concern for the girl herself, but he only said again, “How dare they!”
Getting up, North went to the door and told an orderly to have one of the medics bring Winnifred over. “I’ve sent for her. She’ll need a lot of care if she’s ever to recover from this ordeal–”
“Recover? Was she shot?”
“Well, no, but–”
“Then what in the Goddamned hell is this about ‘care’ and ‘recover’? Poppycock!” Starrett banged his cane on the floor, seemingly recovered from the shock. “Do I look like someone in good enough shape to care for some invalid? I need a live-in nurse myself, Major. That’s why Winnifred is coming to live with me!”
North pulled at his mustache. What he needed to tell him was even worse, if possible, than the fact that she had been raped. But how?
Staring past Starrett’s shoulder out the window, North saw David Van Schyler leading Winnifred gently across the parade ground toward the office. Bless David’s sensitive, caring heart!
The girl was still a great beau
ty, her ebony hair pulled up with ribbons, her soft batiste dress of sunrise pink tied with a wide sash of deeper rose-colored silk.
“Mr. Starrett,” he said softly, “I’m not sure Winnifred will ever be able to care for anyone in the shape she’s in, but maybe with time, she’ll improve.”
He could tell by the other man’s face that he didn’t have the slightest idea what North was hinting at. He only look annoyed that his well-laid plans had been thwarted. “I had everything worked out,” he grumbled. “Now Billy probably won’t want to marry her. No self-respecting white man would take dirty Injuns’ leavings!”
North winced. He had to tell him the rest, since Winnifred was almost at the office. Now he regretted deeply that he had sent for her. But would it have been any better dealing with the cranky rich man an hour or a day or a week from now? “There’s something else. Winnifred’s been through a terrible ordeal and is reacting to the shock by withdrawing into herself. I’ve seen men behave like this after surviving a battle. Sometimes they eventually get better, sometimes they don’t.”
“What in the goddamned hell is that supposed to mean?” Starrett exploded. “Are you telling me she’s as crazy as her mother was? Of all the rotten luck! I send for a daughter to look after me and now she turns out to be a liability! Her mother died in a madhouse, you know that?”
Of course he hadn’t known, but it didn’t matter. He watched Winnifred come to his door. The medic gave her a reassuring pat on the arm, knocked, and walked away.
North stood up. “I’m afraid, Mr. Starrett, that instead of your daughter assuming the burden of care for you, it’s going to have to be the other way around.”
“I didn’t bargain for that. I didn’t agree to it!”
North lost his temper. “Winnifred didn’t bargain for what she got, either!” He went over and opened the door. “Hello, Winnifred,” he said softly. “Come in. Your father’s here. Everything will be all right now.”
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