Fireblossom

by Wright, Cynthia

  "She's over there," Runs Away snapped, then stalked off in the opposite direction, toward the village.

  Although he had an uneasy feeling about what had just happened, Fox's mind was overflowing with thoughts about his own life, and about Maddie. Runs Away had directed him toward the crowd that ringed the bowl of strawberries, but he still couldn't see anything except women garbed in buckskin dresses and moccasins. Then, as he drew nearer, one of the children moved just enough for him to glimpse a mane of marmalade hair. Yet this woman appeared to be Lakota. She wore a pretty dress of doeskin, fringed and beaded, and seemed to be in charge of the gathering. Even as Fox reached forward, past the excited little boys, to touch the kneeling woman's shoulder, she was speaking a lilting phrase of the Lakota language. A baby girl came toddling toward her, plump cheeks smeared with berries and sugar, one hand outstretched to receive another treat.

  "Hun-hun-he!" the woman said, laughing, as the baby toppled into her lap.

  Fox realized that she hadn't noticed his touch in the midst of all the activity. He saw Maddie's friend, Strong, watching him from across the circle. She looked amused. Feeling slightly annoyed, Fox bent down and once more tapped the woman's shoulder.

  Time seemed to slow her movements as she turned and looked up simultaneously. The silky, curling, dawn-colored hair swirled out to make a graceful frame for Maddie's glowing face.

  Fox knew that his mouth was open, but he felt frozen. Before he could react, Maddie had jumped up, hugged him, and pirouetted with her pale arms outstretched.

  "What do you think?" she exclaimed. "Isn't it lovely? I feel so much better now that I'm dressed properly. I mean, I know that I'm still out of place with this hair of mine, but ever since Strong gave me this beautiful dress, I've sensed a change in the way the other women treat me." She ran her hands over it admiringly, then looked straight into Fox's eyes with an irresistible grin. "Don't you think it's flattering, too? I feel so free—so unrestricted! Well? What do you think? Honestly, Fox, if you don't approve..."

  Managing finally to close his mouth, Fox shook his head and laughed. "Madeleine Avery, you are the prettiest little Fireblossom I've ever seen! Is that better?"

  Maddie pulled him by the hand until they were nearly hidden by a giant cottonwood tree, then threw her arms around his neck. "Are you certain?" she coaxed.

  "Completely." Captivated, Fox lifted her off the ground in his arms, wound his fingers through her long curls, and then kissed her. Maddie's mouth was ambrosia, opening to welcome him while she squirmed happily in his embrace. At length he lifted his head and observed, "You feel damned good in that dress. I don't miss all that underwear of yours a bit."

  She giggled. "Neither do I!" Then her features softened and she caressed his stubbled cheek. "I've missed you."

  His brows flew up in disbelief. "Looks to me like you've been busy these past couple days. You've worked a lot harder to fit in here than you ever did in Deadwood, and a lot of people never would've believed you could manage this. At least in Deadwood you could get by speaking English, living in a house, wearing the gowns you brought from Philadelphia, eating the same kind of—"

  "Boring," Maddie interrupted gaily. She had opened her mouth to continue when something caught her eye around the back of their cottonwood tree. Standing on tiptoe in her soft moccasins, she drew Fox's head down and whispered, "Do you remember the young woman I told you about who never bathes and rarely speaks? There she is, sitting in the grass under that far tree, watching everyone else eat strawberries. Her eyes are so sad. I want to speak to her, but I confess that I'm a little frightened."

  Fox leaned around the tree and looked at the woman who sat alone a few yards away. She wasn't very old, but her appearance confirmed his guess that she was in mourning. Maddie was right: under ragged garments, matted hair, and dirt-and-ash-smeared skin, the girl was pretty. Now, as if feeling his thoughts, she lifted her chin and stared directly into his eyes. Even from a distance, her gaze was haunting.

  Fox stepped back behind the tree, oddly shaken. "I—I'm sure she's in mourning. There are other widows in the village, but my guess is that this one is more visible and disturbing because she's so young." He paused, thinking. "She reminds me of a beautiful bird that was struck down unexpectedly. She's lost someone she loved deeply, and her dreams died, too."

  Maddie seized this theme. "Yes! She's like a bird whose wings have been broken!"

  He wrapped an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. "You're developing a very tender heart."

  "Won't you ask Kills Hungry Bear about her?" she begged. "Perhaps there's something we can do to help her."

  "Yes, I'll ask him. In the meantime, let's take a walk, just the two of us. I need to talk to you about something important."

  Maddie fell into step beside him as he strolled away from the group of women and the village. A deep, abiding happiness surged up inside her. For nearly two days she had kept as busy as possible, trying to keep her mind off Fox, wondering what he was doing and how he'd be changed when he returned. When he'd told her before he left that he was on the verge of banishing his demons, Maddie had sensed that the gulf between them was narrowing at last. He was coming closer and closer to the place where she waited for him... and now she felt a little shy and nervous.

  "Do you have news of my sister?"

  Fox looked over to see that her cheeks were pink, her eyes shining through the veil of her lashes. Beguiled, he managed to reply, "I mean to look into the matter this very day. I've been a little... distracted. I apologize." He squeezed her hand. "Do you mind if we talk about me first?"

  Maddie discovered that they were all alone. The village was tiny in the distance; she hadn't realized how far they had walked. The grass that grew along the stream bank was lush and the two of them sat down in it and faced each other. It was as if there was an aura surrounding Fox that hurt her eyes.

  "Is this going to change us?" she murmured.

  His handsome face was grave. "Maddie, I'm ready to tell you that secret. Do you still want to hear it?"

  * * *

  Burnished pastel light heralded an especially glorious sunset. Maddie lay beside Fox in the deep grass. She felt sore inside, her heart aching, her eyes swollen from crying.

  "How in heaven's name could you have kept so much hidden for so long?" she queried.

  "I didn't see that I had a choice."

  "Now, you must tell me everything."

  He was exhausted. "I have!" The story had taken an eternity—the gaps in his past he'd never filled for her, the details of his dilemma at Little Bighorn, the guilt-soaked weeks he'd spent in Deadwood, and, finally, a careful account of the last few hours he'd spent with Kills Hungry Bear, then making a new beginning in the cool, starlit stream.

  "You men! You think you've given a complete explanation when you serve up a lot of bones with no meat on them!" Maddie sat up, animated again. "I can't tell you how angry it makes me to think about Custer, forcing all those men to follow him on his quest for glory. You were the only one with any sense, Fox! You did the right thing rather than blindly obeying like some kind of—sheep!"

  "Well, there's truth in that—female truth." He smiled wryly. "The fact is that soldiers have to obey. Wars couldn't be won if each man decided to question his superior officer. No doubt there were others among the Seventh Cavalry who had reservations about our policy, but arguing with Custer wouldn't have changed anything."

  "But you spoke up! You voiced your doubts that night in Custer's bivouac!"

  "Yes, but he didn't have the power of God over my future. I explained, didn't I, that I went only as an adviser? I was there in Grant's service, not Custer's. Also, I didn't share the other men's loyalty to the Seventh Cavalry. I'd been with them only a few weeks before the battle." Fox leaned up on an elbow and looked into Maddie's eyes. "The other soldiers had spent a long, long time enduring hardships on the western frontier. They'd grown accustomed to looking at the world through Custer's eyes... but I was too l
ong out of the army and too exposed to the true story of the Indians, to fall so readily into formation."

  She nodded, digesting his words.

  "Custer knew it, too. He saw that I had another agenda—when we were on the train together from Washington. That's why he was so defensive whenever I challenged him. You know, I sensed that I was wading into a mire when I acceded to the president's wishes. I knew I'd encounter a lot of moral conflicts, but my mother argued that they'd be there whether I went or not. She felt I was hiding my head in the sand by staying out of the mess we were making with the Indians. She said I might be able to do something to help, to shed light on the truth, if I joined the Seventh Cavalry." Fox's gaze softened as he spoke about his mother. "Annie Sunday is a rabid idealist, very brave and confident. Like most of her theories, this one sounded unimpeachable when it came out of her mouth—but became less workable the farther West I got. It's really a shame that the Indians couldn't have enlisted my mother to speak for them in Washington. No one would dare break a promise to Annie Sunday."

  "Isn't her last name Matthews?"

  "Strictly speaking, yes... but she's never been good at living in the shadow of a man." His tone was warm, affectionate.

  Maddie was beginning to adjust to the revelations of the afternoon and now she realized how little she had really known about Fox. "I always sensed that you were hiding something... I mean, I could never even get a straight answer out of you about your full name, for heaven's sake! But now... well, it's as if I'm meeting you all over again. You even talk differently now! Before, you occasionally spoke like an educated man, but—"

  "I'm good at talkin' like a frontiersman, ma'am," he agreed. "Can't go around saying words like 'unimpeachable' and 'agenda' or folks'll look atcha funny. Wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea and think I'm a dude like that fancy friend of yours who's a New Haven Winslow!"

  She cuffed him in mock outrage, and Fox caught her hand and held it, kissing the sensitive surface of her palm. "Graham was not my friend! If he thought that he was, it was only because you encouraged him, Mr. Daniel Matthews!"

  "Star Dreamer to you, Fireblossom." Smiling, Fox drew her down until she lay on top of him, happily ensnared in his embrace. "Oh, Maddie, I've been sick at heart for so long." He kissed her, then kissed her again. "The secrets begat more secrets, until I felt like a stranger even to myself. A fraud."

  "And now?"

  He grinned. "It's as if I've been let out of jail. I didn't understand it before, but I needed to come here and be with the Lakota people, the same ones who killed Custer and all those soldiers, in order for me to finally sort through it all." Maddie's silken tresses rippled downward, making a curtain about their heads. Tenderly Fox caressed her cheek, fingers feathering over the alabaster softness of her throat... "I feel a thousand pounds lighter. There's light ahead of me instead of darkness. I can live with myself."

  Tears sprang to her eyes. "Oh, Fox... now, if we can find Sun Smile, everything will be perfect"!

  "You sound like my mother, tying all the loose ends into a pretty bow. I agree on one score: you and I have both learned a lot about ourselves in the few days since we've come to Bear Butte." He sighed. "I know now that the line dividing human beings isn't that clear-cut. I can't be all white, blazing my way through the West with the rest of my race, but neither can I turn my back on my heritage and live as an Indian."

  "We'll sort it all out after we go back to Deadwood," she replied firmly. "The first thing you can do is assume your true identity."

  Maddie had been pressing herself against him, kissing his ear, so it took Fox a moment to realize what she'd said. When he did, he rolled her over into the grass so that he was looking down at her. Seeing her face, winsome with its dusting of freckles and big, beautiful green eyes, he was struck again by the power of his attraction to her, his need for her—all of her. He didn't understand it, but it was there, spellbinding and insistent. With an effort, he forced himself to speak.

  "I just want to say one more thing, now—before I lose myself in your eyes.... I can't be Daniel Matthews after we go back to Deadwood. I may feel courageous, but I'm not stupid. Confiding in Kills Hungry Bear and in you doesn't qualify this secret for public consumption, sweet. We can't tell anyone else."

  She was shocked, confused. "What? Why not?"

  Fox gave a short bark of ironic laughter. "Have you forgotten the public's view of the massacre, as they call it, at Little Bighorn? If I berated myself for riding away from the Seventh before they met their doom, what do you think everyone else would think of me? I'd be a pariah in Deadwood or anywhere else I went for the rest of my life!" Fox scowled, his mood darkening to one that was more familiar to them both. "I'd be notorious. The only survivor of the infamous bloody massacre!"

  "But, Fox..." Horrified, Maddie tried to think. "If everyone who was with Custer died, how would anyone know that you were at Little Bighorn? Lots of people in Deadwood are lying low. No one would be suspicious if you took back your full name and became more open and respectable, if"—she blushed charmingly—"if it was obvious that you were in love."

  "Ah." He gave a sage nod. "I see. Deliver me from any more of these neat little female maps for my future! How anxious you are to civilize me, to believe that true love and marriage will suddenly erase the events of that day from my past."

  "I didn't mention marriage," she protested hotly. "Let me up!"

  Fox complied and sent her an uncompromising stare. "You didn't have to. But that's not the issue. Far from it, in fact. You have conveniently forgotten, Madeleine, that the Seventh Cavalry was divided into three separate battalions that day, just minutes before I rode away over the hill. All of Custer's men were killed, but most of the others survived. Because Reno and Benteen's battalions fought on the other side of the hill from Custer, people tend to forget about them." He ran a hand over his eyes, wearily. "I cannot."

  Maddie's heart seemed to be caught in a vise. "You mean... that some of those other soldiers might have seen you ride away before the battle? And some of them could point a finger at you if they heard Dan Matthews was living in Deadwood?"

  "Only Custer and I know what really happened—that I left because he ordered me to—and Custer can't back me up. The rest of the men don't know what was said, and it's not hard to guess what they thought when they saw me ride away from them, in the opposite direction of the camp. If one of them met me in Deadwood, I wouldn't stand a chance. I'd make a convenient scapegoat."

  Her frustration with him melted away, replaced by surging love and a tug of despair. Maddie hitched up her doeskin skirt and crawled onto his lap. "Oh, Fox, why does life have to be so difficult?"

  "Damned if I know." He bent his head to kiss the pulse points on her throat. "Lucky for us, there are distractions...."

  Chapter 21

  August 10, 1876

  "You must sample the wasna Runs Away has made," said Kills Hungry Bear. He unwrapped a skin made from tripe to display the chokecherry-meat-grease hash that the Lakota considered a delicacy. "She worked very hard to have a good supply for our celebration last night in honor of your dream and name, but then she became shy and kept it hidden. She feared that her wasna was not as tempting or delicious as that made by some of the other women." Kills Hungry Bear shrugged slightly and whispered, "Do not repeat this, Star Dreamer, but I think Runs Away might be right. She is not as good a cook as my wife, Little Dove. I do not like the idea of living at the agency, but I miss my family. I hope that the dangers will pass and she will not be afraid to come to me." He watched as Fox, yawning, tasted the hash. "I talk too much. Too much excitement and not enough sleep these past days."

  Fox nodded agreement. He could barely swallow Runs Away's wasna and hoped that his friend wouldn't expect him to eat any more. "I, too, am tired, but the dancing and feasting last night made many warm memories. I am grateful to the people for giving me such a fine celebration."

  "Fireblossom was very fetching in her new clothes," Kills Hungry Bea
r observed. "She enjoyed herself?"

  "Very much...." Fox fell silent as his friend sampled the wasna; he waited to see what the reaction would be.

  "Hmm..." Kills Hungry Bear chewed slowly, nodded, chewed, nodded, wrinkled his brow, puckered his lips, then finally cried out, "Bleh! Ugh!" He spit the bite into his hand, stared at it accusingly, then turned his shocked stare on Fox. "How could you swallow that—that offal?. I always thought that you were a person of refined tastes, but—"

  "Now, stop right there!" Outraged and amused, Fox protested, "I felt as you did, old friend, but I didn't want to offend you by suggesting that Runs Away cannot cook!"

  "Why not?" Kills Hungry Bear queried mildly. "She is not my wife."

  Laughing, Fox fell back on the buffalo robes and looked up through the smoke hole at the patch of blue sky high above. "Ah... I sometimes think I could stay here forever. It's a nice dream."

  "You whites always want to be Indians after you see how well we live. You are one the people could accept, and I would like it if you stayed, but I know it is not what you really want. You are ready to fit all the pieces of your life together. Is this not so?" Kills Hungry Bear used a quilled tamping stick to prepare his pipe for smoking. "If I were to say all that I think, I would tell you that I sense you are making plans to leave our village and return to the town you call Deadwood."

  "Yes." Fox watched the fragrant smoke swirl upward and wreath Kills Hungry Bear's face.

  They were silent for a moment, then the Lakota warrior passed the pipe to his friend. "You have noticed a young girl in mourning? A sad sight. Her clothes are torn, she has slashed her arms and legs and rubbed ashes in the cuts, and her hair is ungroomed." He shook his head. "She was once the most beautiful maiden among all the Teton Lakota band. She had sparkling eyes the color of a goshawk and long, shining, sweet-smelling hair and a smile that made strong men weak."