Savage Courage

by Cassie Edwards

  He feared his father would not have survived such an ambush, for he would have been one of the first the enemy, whether renegades or pony soldiers, would target!

  To kill a powerful chief would be something to brag about.

  Storm raised his eyes heavenward. “Please, Maheo, Great Spirit, do not let what I am thinking be true,” he shouted. “Please!”

  He rode harder until he entered the thick smoke. Then he slowed his horse down to a slow lope, feeling sick to his stomach at the sights that greeted him. Death was everywhere.

  “To-dah, no!” he cried.

  Tears sprang to his eyes as he dismounted and began running from person to person, checking to see if any of his fallen people might still be alive.

  It was obvious that they had been shot where they stood, unable even to defend themselves.

  And then Storm found his mother.

  He gagged when he fell beside her on his knees and saw that whoever had shot his white-skinned mother had also taken her golden hair, her scalp!

  “Ina, mother,” he sobbed. “How could they do this to you? How? And . . . why?”

  He hung his head and said a silent prayer over her, then broke away from her and turned to where his father lay only a few feet off.

  Chief Two Stones, a cousin to Geronimo, was severely wounded, yet clinging to life, and had somehow been spared the terrible fate of being scalped.

  When Storm fell to his knees beside his father and lifted his head onto his lap, he tried not to cry. He wanted to be a man in his father’s eyes, at least while he was still alive to see him.

  Storm knew what his future held for him and he had to prove to his dying father that he was worthy of the title of chief, for he was next in line after his father to lead his people.

  “My son, pindah-lickoyee, white-eye soldiers, came and killed. I . . . witnessed . . . your mother’s death. I could do nothing to help her. My son, you must flee to higher ground now, while you can,” Chief Two Stones said in a voice scarcely audible to Storm. “Take the other young braves with you ah-han-day, afar. Lead them to safety high up in the Piñaleno Mountains.”

  Chief Two Stones reached a quivering hand to one of Storm’s and clutched it desperately. “My son, remember to teach as I have taught you, that we Apache hold it a high virtue to speak the truth, always, and never to steal from our own tribesmen,” he said thickly. “Teach the children that the Apache warrior adheres more strictly to his code of honor than the white man does to his!”

  “Ahte, I will teach what has been taught me,” Storm said, hearing just how weak his father’s voice was becoming, and admiring Chief Two Stones for not thinking of death, but instead of the future of the children and what they should know in order to survive as Apache.

  “Son, you have proven yourself time and again to be worthy of the title of chief,” Chief Two Stones said, squeezing Storm’s hand. “It is now that I hand over the chieftainship to you. Go and make a new life, a stronghold, where no pindah-lickoyee can ever find you. But before you go to the mountains, find your sister Dancing Willow and the girls who are with her. Take them into hiding. Keep them safe and well.”

  “I will find them. And I will be a great leader,” Storm said. He swallowed hard. “I promise you that, Ahte.”

  “I know you will,” Chief Two Stones said, slowly taking his hand away from Storm’s. He rested his hand over his heart. “My breath will soon be gone from me forever, but I have enough left to tell you that the man who shot and killed your beloved mother, and then shot your father, was himself shot in the leg. With the last of my strength, I sent an arrow from my bow. It lodged in the evil white man’s leg as he rode away.”

  “I shall find him one day and make him pay,” Storm said softly. “I promise that I shall take revenge!”

  “Storm, I know this man’s name,” Chief Two Stones said breathlessly. “In the middle of the massacre, just before he attacked your mother, I heard the man addressed as Colonel Whaley.”

  He grabbed Storm’s hand once again. “Remember that name always, my son,” he said, his voice now barely a whisper. “Perhaps in the future you will hear of a pony soldier whose name is Whaley. If so, you will know he is the man who tore all of your people’s lives apart!”

  Two Stones again released Storm’s hand. He sighed deeply, closed his eyes, then gazed up at Storm again. “Leave now,” he said. “But before you leave, please join one of your mother’s hands with mine. I will die much more happily if I am reunited in this way with my wife.”

  Tears streaming from Storm’s eyes, he rose and took his mother’s cold hand and gently placed it in his father’s. He saw how his father’s fingers wrapped around his mother’s hand.

  “Thank you, my son,” Chief Two Stones said as he gazed over at his wife, whose face was still visible to him through the blood. “Although I first knew your mother as my white captive, I fell in love with her, and she with me. We had a good, happy life, and she bore me a son of that love. That son is you, Storm. You always made us so proud.”

  “I have always loved you both so much,” Storm said, swallowing hard. His older sister, a full-blood Apache, was from another time when his father had been married to one of his own people. She had died while giving birth to a second child . . . a child who did not survive either.

  Although a half-breed because of his white mother, Storm had all of the appearance and mannerisms of an Apache warrior.

  “Son, your heart is Apache,” Two Stones said, coughing blood as he spoke. “Lead! Be safe! Keep what remains of our band safe!”

  Storm glanced over at his mother again. He could hardly stand to think of the pain she had suffered before dying, as her lovely golden hair was removed. But at least she was at peace now, and soon his father would be joining her in the stars!

  “My son, why do you hesitate to leave?” Two Stones asked. “Why?”

  “Ahte, I just cannot leave you here like this while you still have breath in your lungs,” Storm blurted out. “Mother is dead. But . . . you . . . are still among the living!”

  “Storm—”

  “No, Ahte, I must follow my heart,” Storm said, quickly rising to his feet. “And it tells me to take you with me. But before we leave, it is my decision to remain here long enough to bury the dead.”

  “My son—”

  “Ahte, it is the only way, or I would never get a night’s rest for thinking about our people lying like this for—”

  “Do what you must,” Two Stones said, closing his eyes. “I understand.”

  “Even Ina,” Storm said. “I must separate you two in order to bury her.”

  “It is truly the right thing that you are doing,” Two Stones said. “But hurry, my son. Hurry. Do not take time to make deep graves. Bury the dead just deep enough so that rocks can cover them and protect them.”

  Storm nodded. He gathered together the young braves who were all that remained of his band. Some hurried around collecting rocks, while others began digging shallow graves.

  After all were buried, a travois was made for Storm’s father and they set out, pulling him behind them.

  Before long they had found the young girls and Dancing Willow and were telling them what had happened. Then together they started the long journey up the mountainside.

  After going only a short distance, Storm’s father passed to the other side. Storm’s heart ached anew at this latest loss.

  Remembering that his father had wanted to be with his mother, Storm risked returning to the place of death and buried his father alongside his beloved white wife.

  Then Storm returned to the others.

  They traveled onward.

  Storm was filled with such grief, he found it hard to bear.

  “I vow to find vengeance for my people, especially my father and mother,” he whispered to himself. “Some day I shall find the man who killed them . . . that Colonel Whaley!”

  Yes, when he was older and strong and ready, he would search for and kill the man respons
ible for the tragedy today. If he could find the man who was responsible for removing his mother’s beautiful golden hair, he would bring it back and bury it with her!

  His mother’s hair had been so lovely . . . like golden silk.

  Ho, yes, Storm might be a half-breed, but inside his heart and in everything he did, he was one hundred-percent Apache!

  He most certainly was not a pindah-lickoyee, and today he was no longer an ish-kay-nay, a boy.

  He was a man with a man’s duties and responsibilities.

  His eyes narrowed angrily, he spoke a solemn vow to himself, swearing eternal vengeance against this man called Colonel Whaley.

  Should Storm ever get the opportunity, he would make Colonel Whaley pay for what he had taken from Storm today!

  Chapter Three

  I never saw so sweet a face,

  as that I stood before.

  —John Clare

  Arizona, 1888

  A bugle blared, sounding officer’s call, awakening Shoshana with a start. Her eyes were wild, her heart pounding.

  Again she had dreamed of her mother, whose beloved face she now remembered so vividly, even though for many years it would not come to her.

  For so long, everything about that dreadful day fifteen long years ago had been wiped from her mind.

  But now, at age twenty, she did remember, and in this recurring dream Shoshana was once again in the arms of the cavalryman as he carried her on his horse away from the death scene of those she loved.

  But the dream was different this time.

  In it, as Shoshana turned once again to see the body of her mother one last time, her mother was being carried away by a large and beautiful golden eagle, its huge talons gently, lovingly, gripping her.

  The eagle had turned its golden eyes to Shoshana and seemed to have been telling her that he was carrying her mother to safety, that she was alive, and that she would be waiting for Shoshana to find her so that they could be reunited.

  “It seemed so real,” Shoshana said, scurrying from her bed. “The dream did . . . seem . . . so real!”

  She pulled on a robe and slid her feet into soft slippers, then hurried from her room and went to George Whaley’s bedroom door, where she knocked softly.

  After learning so much about her past and George Whaley’s role in it, Shoshana could no longer call him father as she had done until the truth of her background had been disclosed to her.

  When she was lost in another world, when she could not recall anything of her past, she had called George Whaley father.

  But not now!

  Never again would she address him as father!

  But she, who had had so much love and respect for her adoptive mother, still thought of her as the woman who’d taken her in and raised her with all the love of a mother.

  Although Shoshana remembered her true mother so very clearly now, she still thought of Dorothea Whaley with the same affection as always.

  And even though her adoptive mother had died a year ago from a heart attack, it still seemed strange that she was not there each day with her sweet smile and hugs that always prompted Shoshana to start her own day with a smile.

  Today Shoshana was too confused by the dream to smile even if Dorothea had been there.

  The dream. What could it mean? It seemed so real!

  When she heard a click-clack sound from beyond the door where she now stood with a pounding heart, she knew that George Whaley was coming to the door.

  He had a wooden leg, from the knee down.

  His right leg had been damaged irreparably by an arrow a few days after he had saved Shoshana and taken her to raise as his own with his wife, who had never been able to have children.

  Shoshana and George were now at Fort Chance near the Piñaleno Mountains, a place of beauty so enchanting, it had taken Shoshana’s breath away the first time she had laid eyes on it.

  The mountain had a mystical, haunting quality about it, as though—

  Her thoughts were interrupted when the door opened and she saw George Whaley standing there, staring down at her with his pale blue eyes. He leaned his weight on a fancy, pearl-handled cane.

  Shoshana was struck again by how much he had changed since the death of his wife. His face was lean. His lips had a purplish hue from his own weak heart.

  And instead of the thick crop of red hair that she had first noticed that day when he had swept her up onto his horse with him, he was now bald. His frame was no longer large, but instead shrunken and bent.

  But in his eyes, Shoshana saw the same love for her that she had seen from as far back as she could remember. His feelings for her surely could not be any more genuine than if he were her true father.

  And she had called him father, up until she discovered truths that made him more a stranger than a father.

  Now, no matter the hurt it caused him, she only called him father when she was forced to do so.

  Suddenly she was again overwhelmed by the dream that had only moments ago awakened her. She felt tears building in her eyes as George took her gently by an arm and ushered her into his bedroom.

  “Shoshana, tell me what’s wrong,” he said, turning to gaze intently into her dark eyes.

  More and more these days he was struck by her loveliness. It would be difficult to find anyone who displayed more grace, dignity, and self-possession.

  And not only that . . . she was blessed by innate good sense.

  She was petite in stature.

  Her hair was like her Apache people’s, black and glossy.

  Her eyes were very large, dark, and lustrous.

  He knew that if she had remained with her people, she would have been the pet of her tribe, who were called “Stately Ones.”

  Almost in one breath, Shoshana told him about the dream. “What can it mean?” she asked when she had related the most intriguing part of the dream . . . about the eagle carrying her Apache mother away, then telling her that her mother, Fawn, was still alive.

  “Could it be real?” she asked, her eyes anxiously searching his. “Could she be alive? You know how my dreams have often foretold things that later happen. Can this dream mean that my mother is alive?”

  She went to a window and gazed from it into the distance, at the vast mountain that stood near the fort.

  She had been told that a band of Apache were holed up there, high up in a stronghold, under the leadership of a young chief, Chief Storm.

  She was Apache.

  She was keenly aware of the silence behind her, and realized that again George did not wish to speak of the past, especially about that horrible day which she now recalled as though it had happened only yesterday.

  She turned to him again. “I know that you would rather not know these things,” she said, her voice breaking. “But as I told you, I felt an eeriness from the very first day of our arrival at my birthplace here in Arizona. It is as though someone is calling to me, especially when I look toward the mountain. It seems that someone is beckoning me there. Might . . . it . . . be my true mother? Can she feel my presence even now?”

  She went to George. She gazed into his faded eyes. “Do you hear what I am saying?” she murmured. “Or . . . are you trying to ignore it, thinking I will soon forget these feelings and continue on with my life as I have known it?”

  “It is just that I do not know exactly what to say,” George said, uneasy under her close scrutiny and the questions he wished would not be asked.

  He walked past her, the cane and his wooden leg making an ominous ringing sound against the oak floor, then sank down into a thickly cushioned chair before a huge stone fireplace.

  In his maroon satin robe with his initials monogrammed on its one pocket, he gazed at the slowly burning fire on the grate.

  “All that I do know is that I should never have brought you here,” he said ruefully. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” He looked over at her as she sat down on a chair across from him. “I truly thought you would . . . had . . . gotten past the
se feelings. But now I doubt that you ever shall.”

  “No, I never shall, and . . . I don’t want to,” Shoshana said, nervously combing her long, slender fingers through her thick, black hair, positioning it over her shoulders. “Since our arrival here, I have felt many, many things. I have felt my Apache people calling to me inside my heart. I feel different from the people here at the fort, even more strongly than that day when I learned just how different I was from the children I was growing up with in Missouri.”

  “Yes, and what happened there was unfortunate,” George said thickly. “I should have prepared you for such a situation.”

  “Yes, you should have,” she said, recalling that day as though it had happened yesterday. “When that boy called me a savage squaw and held me down on the ground and cut off the tail end of my braids, I knew how much white people, even children my own age, despise people of any skin color but their own. It is so unfair . . . so evil.”

  “Yes, I shall never forget how you came home crying,” George said, sighing heavily. “Your questions that day came so fast and furious, I found it hard to follow you. You wanted to know why those who you thought were your friends treated you in such a way, and why you would be called such a name. I know how it hurt you inside when that child cut off the ends of your braids.”

  “And you told me that, yes, my skin was different, and to go and look in a mirror so that I would see what everyone else saw when they looked at me,” Shoshana said. “I did. I looked into a mirror. I saw nothing different about myself that day than any other day when I played with those children. And I knew long ago that my skin was different from those other children’s, but I was never treated differently. I knew that I was an Indian, but until that day, no one approached me with prejudice. I was happy. I . . . I . . . felt loved.”

  “When I first brought you home, Dorothea and I wanted you to feel loved and to be happy. We especially hoped that you could forgive the wrongs and injustices done to your people on that day,” George said softly. “We always felt such love for you. We . . . I . . . especially, felt I owed you so much. You brought something into our lives that we could never have had otherwise.”