In the Shadow of the Hills

by Madeline Baker

  I was forbidden to mention or refer to my life with the Cheyenne in any way. Dressed in expensive city clothes, with my hair cut short, my Indian heritage was less pronounced, and Old Trevor hoped that eventually everyone would forget that I was a half-breed.

  There were dozens of parties to welcome my mother home. Smart fashionable parties attended by beautiful people: women dressed in silks and satins, dripping with diamonds and emeralds and costly furs; men attired in elegant black broadcloth and crisp white linen.

  One man showed up at every party. He also appeared at the mansion at least three times a week. His name was Roger Wentworth, and he was a Senator. I didn’t care for him much, but Katherine’s eyes sparkled whenever he came to call. I couldn’t believe a woman who had spurned a man as virile and handsome as Sun Seeker would welcome the attentions of a man like Wentworth. My father had been a warrior. But this man, Wentworth, was nothing but a pale-faced dandy. Comparing the two was ridiculous, for Sun Seeker had been an eagle while Wentworth would never be anything but a sparrow.

  Nevertheless, Katherine looked forward to his calls, and looked for him whenever we went out.

  The first party we attended was a formal sit-down dinner attended by thirty of my mother’s closest friends. It was the worst of all. I was seated about halfway down the table, sandwiched between a banker named Claude Caldwell, and a railroad tycoon whose name was Jay Callaghan. Our host, a dapper, gray-haired man named Fitzsimmons, sat at the head of the table. His wife, Martha, sat at the other end. She had rings on every finger and they flashed and sparkled like fire and ice whenever she moved her hands. Wentworth was there, too, of course, seated across from my mother.

  The table, covered with a fine damask cloth, was set with translucent china, gleaming silverware, and shimmering crystal. Maids arrayed in crisp black uniforms accented with snowy white collars and cuffs served us an elaborate seven-course meal.

  The conversation at the table made a gentle hum in the room, punctuated by the delicate ring of silver on china, and an occasional burst of quiet, well-bred laughter.

  I was getting along pretty well, which is to say I was being pretty much ignored, which suited my just fine. I had nothing to say to these people, nothing at all. And they had nothing to say to me. They looked, though, sending me furtive glances filled with curiosity.

  The men at my end of the table were discussing railroad stock, trade agreements, oil wells, and banking. I had assumed the men at the other end of the table were discussing similar things until Claude Caldwell waved his fork in my direction and said, loudly,

  “Tell me, young man, why do the Indians take scalps? I mean, isn’t it a rather grisly habit?”

  All other conversation in the room came to an abrupt halt as thirty pairs of eyes swung in my direction, waiting for my answer.

  Caldwell’s wife, Rose, laid a restraining hand on her husband’s arm. “Really, Claude, the dinner table is no place for such talk.”

  “Hush, Rose,” Claude said, shaking off her hand. “Speak up, young man. Why do your people engage in such a barbaric manner?”

  “It’s part of our religion,” I replied, stifling the urge to get up and run out of the room.

  “Religion, you say? Would you care to elaborate on that?”

  “Claude...”

  “Let the boy talk, Katherine. He hasn’t said a word all night.”

  “The Indians believe a scalped enemy will be forever shamed in the Afterworld,” I said tonelessly.

  Claude grinned skeptically. “What about not fighting at night? Is that part of your religion, too?”

  I nodded. “We believe that a warrior killed at night will forever wander the earth in darkness.”

  “Is it true that Indian men take more than one wife?”

  The question, tinged with a hint of envy, came from Jay Callaghan. I could understand his desire for another wife. The one he had was as fat as a buffalo cow, and almost as ugly.

  “Yes.”

  Several of the women gasped, their faces expressing shock and disapproval. One or two cast pitying glances in my mother’s direction, but she was watching Roger Wentworth, waiting for his reaction.

  “Egad!” Caldwell exclaimed. “The damn savages are polygamous, just like the bloody Mormons!”

  Laughter rippled up and down the length of the table.

  “Is that right, young man?” Fitzsimmons inquired.

  “I don’t know anything about any Mormons,” I answered stiffly.

  “Of course you don’t,” Fitzsimmons replied kindly. “But, tell me, does having more than one wife come under the guise of religion, too?”

  “I don’t know what that means,” I said curtly, “but among my people, the women outnumber the men. If a warrior can care for more than one wife, he does so.”

  “Ah, the noble red man!” There was scorn in Jay Callaghan’s voice.

  I felt my temper rise. Wishing there was some way to bring the subject to a close, I cast a surreptitious glance in Old Man McKenna’s direction, but he was leaning back in his chair, his face impassive, waiting to see if I’d sink or swim.

  “I think it makes good sense,” Rose Caldwell remarked. “Tell me, John, did you have an Indian sweetheart?”

  I thought briefly of Snow Flower, murdered on the banks of Sand Creek, her life’s blood staining the ground. I did not want to share her memory with these people, and so I shook my head. “No.”

  “No girl, and you a big handsome boy?” Rose chided with a smile. “Were all the Indian girls blind?”

  Several of the women giggled. A few cast curious glances at my mother, their thoughts as transparent as the crystal goblets on the table. They were wondering again, wondering what my mother had been forced to endure in my father’s lodge. In my father’s bed.

  There were other questions, most in poor taste, and when it began to get out of hand, the hostess stood up. Smiling benignly, she said, “Ladies, shall we leave the gentlemen to their port and cigars?” and glided out of the room.

  There was nothing for the other women to do but follow.

  Left alone, the men’s conversation returned to business, and I sat back in my chair, relieved that I was no longer the center of attention.

  Unfortunately, that incident was far from rare. The newspapers were filled with detailed accounts of Indian treachery, real or imagined, and I was obviously an Indian. Wherever I went, people gawked at me with unabashed curiosity and apprehension, and I often had the feeling they were waiting for me to explode into violence to prove that I was indeed the heathen savage they believed me to be.

  Of course, even though I never tried to scalp anyone with a butter knife, or demanded a slab of raw meat for dinner, I had to admit I did not fit well into polite New York society. Nor did I try very hard. Accustomed to eating with my fingers or a knife, I found the abundance of silverware that accompanied mealtimes a nuisance. Accustomed to running around in little more than a clout and moccasins, I found long-sleeved shirts, wool pants, vest, coat, and cravat stifling. Stiff collars that threatened to sever my head from my neck were a constant torment. But the white man’s shoes were the worst torment of all. During the first few weeks, I deliberately lost one pair after another, but new ones miraculously appeared to take their place.

  To my mother’s consternation, I preferred the solid comfort of the floor to spindly-legged chairs, plush settees, or my own feather bed. The only thing I found to admire in all the white man’s wealth was the luxury of hot water. Once I got used to it, I had to admit that bathing in a tub was far better than washing in a cold river, though I would never have admitted it to anyone. After the relative quiet of the plains, the noise of a big city was overwhelming, even a little frightening. Sirens, whistles, bells clanging, carriages rumbling from one end of town to the other at all hours of the day and night, massive clocks that chimed the white man’s time, the excited babble of voices speaking a dozen different languages and dialects all combined into a mad symphony.

  An
d the sights! They were not to be believed. Horse-drawn carriages driven by ebony-skinned men; uniformed policeman; Chinamen clad in flowing robes of rich silk and brocade; painted whores in garish satin and black net stockings; fancy restaurants; laundries and hotels and saloons, fire engines and bakery wagons, long black hearses drawn by black horses. Everywhere I looked, I saw things I had never dreamed of. The food, the clothing, the religion, everything was strange and hard to comprehend.

  Speaking of religion, I found the white man’s concept of God incomprehensible. For an hour each Sunday morning, we sat in a whitewashed square building and listened to a man clad entirely in black preach about death and the endless fires that burned in hell, waiting to consume the heathen. And we all knew who the heathen were!

  Occasionally, the minister spoke of a man called Jesus. Jesus was the name of the white man’s God, and the vehoe had killed him in a way that made the Apache look like beginners in the art of torture and death.

  I was not surprised to learn the white men had killed their god, for the white man killed everything. He had no respect for life. He killed the buffalo for its curly hide, leaving tons of meat to rot in the prairie sun. He chewed up the earth with plows, and blasted great holes in the mountains. He polluted the rivers and streams in his search for yellow iron. Everywhere the white man went, he left his mark upon the face of Mother Earth.

  Not so the Indian. He lived in harmony with nature, taking only that which was needed to sustain life. When he killed a deer for meat, he asked the spirit of the deer to forgive him. He recognized the fact that all things were alive: the rocks, the hills, the grass, the trees. All had life. All possessed a spirit that must be honored. The Indian did not defile Mother Earth. He did not re-route rivers or bring mountains tumbling down. The buffalo was his brother, supplying every need, and nothing went to waste. Horn, hide, hooves, tail, tongue and bladder, all had their uses, whether for meat, clothing, robes, or utensils.

  Still, I could not help feeling that the white man’s God was more powerful than all the Indian gods combined, for the white men prospered and multiplied, while the red man perished.

  School was a daily trial. The headmaster, Mr. Reuben Maycox, had a tongue sharper than a Lakota scalping knife, and he dearly loved to sharpen it at my expense. He often read to us out of the daily newspapers, asking for our opinions on current affairs. He especially enjoyed reading articles relating to Indians.

  “Ah!” he would say, peering down at me over the rim of his spectacles, “I see Mr. McKenna’s red brothers killed and scalped four innocent pioneers near the Powder River last month.”

  Or: “Well, Mr. McKenna, I see your red brothers attacked a small settlement in Montana. Tell me, Mr. McKenna, what is the usual procedure for such an attack?”

  Or: “Stars above! A band of Mr. McKenna’s red brothers attacked a wagon train and made off with three women and five children. Tell us, Mr. McKenna, what happens to the poor unfortunate souls taken prisoner by your people? Is it true the children are roasted alive, and the women are violated by every buck in the tribe?”

  I couldn’t help but wonder what the parents of the other students would think of his crude questions.

  Sioux, Comanche, Apache, or Crow, they were all Indians and therefore, all my brothers. Sometimes I tried to answer his questions, but more often than not, I merely sat mute until he tired of baiting me and moved on to something else. Naturally, the boys in the class took their lead from Maycox and they assaulted me with great quantities of verbal abuse, both inside the classroom and on the street.

  One day a picture of an Indian scalping a white man appeared on the blackboard. The white man looked remarkably like Mr. Maycox. Needless to say, the schoolmaster did not take kindly to such artwork and demanded that the artist step forward. When no one confessed, he accused me.

  I protested I was innocent, which I was, but to no avail. I was made to stand before the whole class while Maycox meted out six swats to my backside with his ruler. The pain was negligible compared to the humiliation.

  The following day Mr. Maycox discovered a dead rat in his desk drawer. Again, I was unjustly accused. Again, I professed my innocence. This time I received twelve swats.

  Later that day, still burning with humiliation, I overheard Lester Simms laughing with two other boys about how they had gotten that “dirty redskin” in trouble with the headmaster.

  That day, after school, I waylaid the three of them and beat the shit out of them with my bare hands.

  Repercussions were swift. The parents of the three boys immediately complained to my mother, who sought her father’s advice. McKenna’s advice was that I needed a good hiding. He gave it to me himself, with a horsewhip. It hurt like hell, but what hurt worst of all was the way everyone assumed I was guilty, not only of ridiculing old Maycox and harassing him with a dead rat, but of beating up Simms and his cronies for no apparent reason.

  Still, the satisfaction of whaling the daylights out of those three boys more than made up for the whipping I received.

  Bad as school was, the endless stream of parties and sociables was worse. I had trouble making polite conversation. Unlike the whites, who spoke volumes but said little, the Cheyenne did not engage in meaningless small talk. I soon discovered that white girls could talk for hours about clothes, coiffures, perfume, and their latest beaux, while the boys rambled on about who was the best wrestler, who had the fastest horse, who had seduced the most girls, whose father had the most money.

  Not only was I a wash-out at making polite conversation, but I couldn’t dance, either. Katherine had done her best to teach me, but I had stubbornly refused to learn. The dances of the whites seemed foolish, their games were childish. Among the Cheyenne, I had been a man, not a boy. I had provided my lodge with meat, I had endured the Sun Dance, I had killed three men in battle at Sand Creek. Little wonder I found their talk of clothes and the like foolish and inconsequential.

  Despite my feelings, my mother dragged me to every social event in the city, determined that I meet all the “right” people. I was, after all, a McKenna, and heir to the family fortune.

  Oddly enough, the girls seemed to like me. They swarmed around me like bees to a hive, which only made the boys dislike me all the more.

  One girl particularly caught my eye. Clarissa Van Patten was her name. She was a tiny thing, with finely chiseled features, honey-gold hair, and a radiant smile. But most striking of all were her eyes. They were the most beautiful shade of green I had ever seen, reminding me of springtime on the prairie.

  The first time I saw Clarissa was at a birthday party at the Van Patten mansion. I was standing off by myself, wishing the night would end, when Clarissa walked over to me.

  “May I have this dance, Mr. McKenna?”

  Her voice was as warm as a May night on the plains, as soft as new grass.

  “I don’t dance,” I replied curtly.

  But she was not to be discouraged so easily.

  “Come along,” she said. “I’ll teach you.”

  She took my hand, and I felt the warmth of her touch flow through me. For a moment, her gaze met mine, and I knew she felt that same warm surge of energy.

  Somehow, with Clarissa in my arms, her vibrant green eyes glowing with merriment, the white man’s style of dancing no longer seemed silly.

  “You see?” Clarissa said gaily. “There’s nothing to it. Are you really an Indian?”

  “Yes,” I admitted, and waited for her eyes to turn cold with revulsion. But there was no change in her expression. And no derision in her voice as, tilting her head to one side, she said, “Don’t Indians dance?”

  “Yes, but not like this?”

  “I love to dance. Would you show me one of your Indian dances sometime?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How do you like New York?”

  “I hate it.”

  “Really? It’s supposed to be one of the most exciting cities in the world.”

  “Is it?”

>   With an exasperated sigh, Clarissa peered up at me through the dark fringe of her lashes. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

  “No,” I answered succinctly, and began to laugh.

  Clarissa smiled at me, pleased by my laughter. “I’ve never met an Indian before,” she remarked candidly. “Are they all as tall and brown as you are?”

  “No. Some are short and stocky, like the Apache. And we come in a variety of colors: red, brown, copper. Some Indians have light skin and have to be careful not to get burned in the sun.”

  Clarissa laughed. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you? Who ever heard of a sun-burned Indian?”

  “Well, it happens.”

  “Do you miss your father and your people very much?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think he’ll ever come to see you, here, in New York?”

  “My father is dead,” I said bitterly. “He was murdered at Sand Creek.”

  “I’m sorry, John,” Clarissa said sincerely. “Why don’t you just tell me to mind my own business?”

  “Perhaps because I’d like my business to be yours,” I said quietly.

  Clarissa looked at me for a long while, her clear green eyes intent upon my face. And then she said, “I think I should like that very much.”

  We danced every dance together that night. I couldn’t believe such a beautiful creature wanted to be with me. She wore a blue satin gown tied with a dark blue velvet sash. Unlike the other women, who wore their hair piled atop their heads, Clarissa’s hair fell down her back in a waterfall of honey-gold waves. And every time I looked into her eyes, I saw the awareness of the attraction that flowed between us, as warm as sunlight, as bright as the lightning that sometimes danced across the plains.

  I didn’t feel uncomfortable or shy with Clarissa. Caught up in the magic that sparked between us, I forgot everyone else and for the first time since being dragged to New York, I felt at ease.

  We saw a lot of each other after that night, though I never did figure out what she saw in me. Once, when I asked her why she went out with me when she could have her pick of any of the young bucks in town, she laughed softly, impishly, and then, batting her eyelashes at me in a way that made me laugh, she said,