Cheyenne Song

by Georgina Gentry

  Glory played with her bracelet, thinking. “Don’t talk about that. Despite the hardships, these have been the most wonderful weeks of my life.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders. “For me, too.”

  She laid her face against his broad chest and closed her eyes. “Maybe we shall make it all the way and live wild and free; after all, we have made it this far.”

  He grunted and stroked her hair. “That is true; no one ever dreamed we could travel almost fifteen hundred miles with all those soldiers trying to stop us. The soldiers must be the most surprised of anyone.”

  “Desperate people can be very determined. If the group splits up,” she asked, “which one will we go with?”

  “Does it matter to you?” He looked down into her eyes.

  Glory shook her head. “As long as we are not separated; I don’t care, my love. The only thing that ever worried me was that Howard might come after me.”

  “Proud One,” he hesitated, “there is something I should have told you; I didn’t know how.”

  She caught the reluctance in his voice, looked up, startled. “Mercy, he’s looking for me, isn’t he? You found out somehow. He’s coming after me and—”

  “Proud One, he’s dead.”

  Of all the things he might have said, this startled her the most. “How—?”

  “Back at Sappa Creek. We caught him and his brother killing homesteaders and robbing them, evidently laying the blame on Cheyenne. I was not the one who killed him.”

  No, this couldn’t be true. “How—how do you know it was my husband?”

  Wordlessly, he reached into his waistband for a small, gold-framed portrait.

  She took it, recognizing it, then handed it back. Funny, she didn’t feel anything except relief. “Howard would have killed me eventually because I wouldn’t beg; he liked his women groveling.”

  Two Arrows smiled. “Have you ever begged for any reason in your whole life?”

  “Never! ”

  He put his fingertips under her small chin and tilted her face up to his. “Whatever happens, Proud One, I want you to know, I wouldn’t change places with any man in the world.” He bent his head and kissed her.

  “Me either,” she breathed, then opened her lips, taking his tongue into her mouth in a slow, languorous way, sucking it deeper as she caught his hand and placed it on her breast.

  His big hand covered her breast, raking his thumb back and forth across her nipple until she gasped for air and reached to pull his face down, offering him the gift of her breasts and smiling with contentment as he pleasured himself with them. His free hand went to slip her doeskin skirt up. He laid his head in her lap, kissing her bare thighs, then he turned his head ever so slightly and kissed something else while his hand caressed and squeezed her breast.

  She gasped at the sensation of his warm tongue.

  “You like that?”

  “You—you know I do,” she whispered, and spread her thighs slightly apart.

  His mouth moved against her body again. She reached down and held his dark face against her, insisting that he continue to kiss and caress her with his tongue.

  When she could stand no more, she gasped and began to breathe loudly, going rigid under his seeking mouth. Now he reached to take her hand in his, bring it across his lips. “You are my woman,” he said solemnly, “and I will always look after you and protect you, Proud One, no matter the danger.”

  She yearned for nothing so much as to be carrying his child. If only that could happen. “Ne-mehotatse,” she whispered.

  He gathered her into his arms, holding her close to his heart while he kissed her breathless. “Ne-mehotatse, my Proud One.”

  Little Wolf and Dull Knife were going their separate ways. It had cleared a little, but it was still cold and snowy, so that everyone’s breath hung on the air like ghostly shadows. Now the Cheyenne gathered around their leaders, each man making his own decision.

  Two Arrows thought this was the hardest choice he had ever made; this choice between which leader to follow because after crossing the Platte River, the fleeing Cheyenne were finally going to part.

  Old Moccasin Woman and her little granddaughter, Grasshopper, decided to go with Dull Knife’s group because she had friends in the Lakota camp.

  On the other hand, Redbird had distant relatives among the few Cheyenne camping somewhere in the wilderness that she hoped to find, so she elected to take her baby, Brave Dream, and go with Little Wolf. Two Arrows sat cross-legged and smoked the last bit of precious tobacco he possessed, thinking over his choices. “Proud One, you will go wherever I choose?”

  She nodded. “It makes no difference to me as long as we are not separated. You make the choice, my love.”

  He studied her, loving her because she trusted him enough to put her very life and future into his hands. He noted suddenly that she looked very weary and drawn. “Are you ill?”

  She shook her head, “No, of course not. I may be a little tired, but I’ll be fine once we settle in for the winter and stop this constant travel.”

  He stared at her; marveling at how Indian she had come to look with her black hair in braids and her skin browned by the past few weeks of relentless sun. If the Cheyenne didn’t find a place soon where the people could rest and eat plenty of good, warm food, Proud One might sicken and fall along the way as others had. “I have made my choice,” he said gravely. “We follow Dull Knife.”

  She nodded, not questioning his choice or asking why he had chosen thus.

  He was glad because he did not want to tell her that he made his choice because with Dull Knife, they would pass near Fort Robinson. There would be an infirmary at that northern Nebraska post. If Proud One should fall ill, Two Arrows wanted to be able to detour to the fort, where medicine and a doctor were available. The soldiers would capture him if he did so, maybe throw him in prison, but nothing mattered but her welfare. Besides, no one could ever take away the memories of the weeks he had spent in her arms.

  The day the Cheyenne split into two groups was a cold, windy day in the Moon When Water Begins to Freeze on the Edges of Streams that the whites called October. They divided the food and supplies, even the guns. There were scarcely two dozen guns in the whole lot, Two Arrows knew, and most of them were old relics. Even for these, the Cheyenne had only one or two bullets each. With these few outdated weapons, a handful of determined, brave people had outfought and outmaneuvered more than ten thousand of Uncle Sam’s best soldiers. No wonder the army was embarrassed and angry!

  So Two Arrows and Proud One went with Dull Knife’s little band, and for the next several days, Two Arrows began to hope they really were going to make it all the way to the Red Cloud reservation. He could only pray Little Wolf’s group had been so lucky.

  With Proud One riding snug against his broad back, Two Arrows reined his horse in and looked for the wolf that had led them all the way from the Indian Territory. No one had caught a glimpse of the great furry beast in days. “I’m afraid it has deserted us. That is not a good omen.”

  She put her arms around his waist and hugged him. “Maybe it is a good omen; maybe the wolf thinks we’re safe now. How many more days do you think it will be before we’re safely with the Lakota?”

  “With this weather?” He turned his face up, feeling the tingle of delicate snowflakes melting on his brown face. “Who knows? The drifts make very hard going.”

  He looked around the landscape that was white in every direction, the north wind howling like a sulking coyote. “No soldiers would be crazy enough to be out in this, so if we can make it a few more miles, we can lose ourselves among the Lakota.” Two Arrows reached to place his big hand to cover her small ones.

  “I am so glad it’s almost over. To tell the truth, I don’t know how much more of this hard travel I could take.”

  Two Arrows looked down at her arms and felt remorse that she was so thin. She’s not well, he thought. If I weren’t so selfish, I should take her to the fort. Lieutenan
t Krueger, if he were alive, would want her back, no matter what. Giving her up would be like tearing Two Arrows’s heart out. He didn’t want to think about that—at least, not yet. “I love you, Proud One.”

  “Then that’s all that matters,” she whispered, her breath warm against his back.

  He nudged his thin, tired horse forward, following the trail Dull Knife’s band had left. As was the custom, the dog soldiers were bringing up the rear, ready to fight and die, if necessary, to cover the retreat in case of attack. The wind stirred up the northern Nebraska snows, and he turned his horse into the arctic blast and kept riding, glad for the warm feel of his woman against his back. “Within a week, we should be safe among the Lakota.”

  The way she tightened her grip on his waist and pressed her face against his muscular back let him know how happy she was. “We’re going to make it,” she said, and her voice was full of hope. “We’re going to make it all the way!”

  October 23, 1878

  Captain J.B. Johnson, leading two companies of the Third Cavalry, hunched his broad shoulders against the northern Nebraska cold and looked back at his troopers. Damn, if they could just make it to shelter. “Hey, Lieutenant?” he reined in and pulled off his gloves, blowing on his numb fingers a long moment and pulling the fur of his coat collar up against his red ears, “this is a helluva time to be out on maneuvers, isn’t it?”

  The other laughed, frost on his dark mustache. “Nobody was expecting this blizzard to blow in; it isn’t fit for man or beast out here.”

  “Well, you know what the poem says: ‘Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.’ God, I can hardly wait to get where it’s warm!”

  They began to ride again, the wind whipping up the snow so that visibility was poor. The horses were having a hard time of it, Johnson thought, the drifts were deep, and the sand hills of this prairie state seemed endless. It would be easy for a man to get lost out here.

  A grizzled old scout came out of the fog, urging his black horse forward; its legs churned up the white snow as it moved. “Hey, Captain Johnson!”

  “Hey, Zeke! Beginning to think you were lost!” The captain reined in, watching the scout making his way to him through the snow.

  “Captain, there’s something out there, moving toward us, thought it was ghosts at first.”

  Johnson felt a chill go up his back, but he laughed. “Only crazy ghosts, I presume; no sane one would be out in this blizzard unless he was under government orders.”

  The other brushed snowflakes from his ragged beard and gestured. “You’d better come up on this rise and have a look, sir.”

  Johnson nudged his bay gelding forward and rode up on the snowy rise and reined in. For a long moment, he saw nothing and was annoyed. That old coot had been drinking bad booze again, he thought, and was seeing things that weren’t there. He stood up in his stirrups, angry with the scout. “I don’t see a damned thing, Zeke, and you wouldn’t either if you’d quit drinking that white lightning.”

  The scout spit a stream of brown tobacco juice into the snow. “I saw something, sir,” he insisted.

  Captain Johnson cleared his throat, leaning forward in his saddle to stare into the blinding snow. “Maybe it was a small herd of buffalo or wild horses.”

  Zeke shook the snow from his beard again, staring into the vast distance. “Buffalo’s all killed out by hunters, probably not a couple of hundred left in the whole West. Hey, look!” He pointed.

  Captain Johnson strained his eyes, looking in the direction Zeke pointed. For a long moment he had a sudden, chilling feeling that he was seeing specters moving silently through the blowing snow. Or maybe it was nothing at all. He chided himself for his own active imagination, or perhaps he was going loco from living out here on the Plains; the West would do that to a man. Maybe it was only shadows or snowflakes whirling up in the relentless wind.

  The gale whipped the snow into a fury, taking the very breath from his throat. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled, or maybe it was only the north wind. Whatever it was, it sent the hairs on Captain Johnson’s neck rising as he remembered every ghost story he had ever heard about werewolves.

  There was no sound save the warning wail that drifted on the cold air. Then out of the snow in the distance rode the specters. They were so faint on the horizon that he was not sure for a long moment what it was he saw—or if he saw.

  Then Zeke gasped. “Injuns; God Almighty! Injuns!”

  Abruptly, Captain Johnson knew what he was seeing; this small band of riders slumped on thin, stumbling horses moving north. He looked a long moment, torn between pity and admiration. “Fifteen hundred miles,” he whispered. “And we thought they were dead out there somewhere to the south.”

  Then he remembered his duty. “Zeke, get to the fort at once; we may need reinforcements.”

  “Yes sir.” He stared into the blizzard just before he wheeled his horse to ride out. “Anything else?”

  “Tell headquarters,” Captain Johnson said, and he didn’t know if he was sad or jubilant, “tell them we’ve found their missing Cheyenne. They’re almost out of Nebraska, heading north!”

  Glory had been half-dozing, riding against Two Arrows’s warm back as they rode through the blizzard. When she felt him stiffen, she came immediately awake. “What’s the matter?”

  “Hush, Proud One,” he said softly. “Perhaps they do not see us in this blinding snow.”

  Cautiously, Glory peeked around him. In the distance on a little rise, she saw the outline of men on horses. She rubbed her eyes, not sure she hadn’t imagined them. Blue uniforms. Oh, please no, dear God. Surely we haven’t come all this way, only to be caught just before we reach our destination. “What—what are we going to do?”

  His hand went to his rifle and his voice was resigned. “They—they’ve seen us.”

  Glory felt the tears starting in her eyes and blinked them away, knowing they would freeze on her face. “I don’t want to be separated from you, my love.”

  The soldiers rode out of the mist now, rifles at the ready, swinging to surround the ragged little group. She could see the shock on the young officer’s face. “Good God!” he said. “Is this pitiful little starving bunch that wild, dangerous horde of bloodthirsty savages the telegraph lines have been humming over? Why, there’s probably not more than a hundred or a hundred and fifty, most of them women and kids.”

  Two Arrows smiled ever so slowly. “Scared white men make us much more than we are.”

  “You speak English?”

  Two Arrows nodded.

  The officer and his soldiers looked around at the other ragged, shivering people. “Who leads this band? Let us eat and talk.”

  Two Arrows nodded to Dull Knife, who rode forward, his dark face set and tragic.

  So near and yet so far, Two Arrows thought; we almost made it, just like the Nez Perce, we almost made it. Perhaps there is still hope, there weren’t that many soldiers.

  Dull Knife spoke in Cheyenne to Two Arrows, who rode forward. “My chief says he will talk. You have coffee and food?”

  The young officer grinned, his face red from the cold. “And tobacco and sugar, too.”

  The soldiers relaxed, evidently pleased they wouldn’t have to fight today.

  The people dismounted. Two Arrows reached up for his Proud One, helped her down. “Keep silent,” he said in Cheyenne. “Do not give yourself away.”

  She nodded, keeping her head down. Two Arrows quickly erected a shelter against the wind from some blankets and motioned old Moccasin Woman and little Grasshopper to join Proud One. “Build a little fire. The soldiers will bring food.”

  The old woman made a face. “It chokes me to eat the soldiers’ food.”

  Two Arrows looked around at the soldiers who were dismounting and building a big fire. “There are not all that many of them. Perhaps tonight, as they sleep, we can slip away like ghosts.”

  Glory smiled. “There’s still hope. The wolf tried to warn us, and it’s still out there
, wild and free as a Cheyenne’s heart. Get some hot food for all the children and old ones.”

  “And for you, too,” he said softly, and reached out to touch her face as he turned to go. October; our freedom ends in October. Only a year ago in October, Two Arrows had been the one to spot the escaping Nez Perce as Chief Joseph’s people struggled to make it to the Canadian border and freedom. Because of him, the army had surrounded the luckless Nez Perce and stopped them just short of their goal. Only a handful had escaped in the darkness to freedom. Now Two Arrows, who had helped capture the Nez Perce, was in exactly the same fix. Perhaps this was only justice.

  Two Arrows strode proudly through the snow toward the big fire. The other warriors were gathering there in the lee of a bluff, out of the wind. They were all ragged, their moccasins full of holes, their ribs showing. Ah, but they were proud! Their heads were up as if they had just returned from the Little Bighorn or the fight on the Rosebud or a dozen other battles where they had whipped the white men.

  The young officer sat down cross-legged on the blanket and offered tobacco all around, staring at the tired, cold Indians. “Fifteen hundred miles,” he whispered in a tone of awe. “Fifteen hundred miles on sheer guts. This will be something I can tell my grandchildren.”

  Two Arrows watched the soldiers from the corner of his eye as he accepted the tobacco with half-frozen fingers. Bluecoated sentries watched the whole proceedings. There would be no chance to overpower this bunch; but perhaps tonight, as the whites slept ...

  They smoked in silence, Two Arrows relishing the taste of tobacco. The smell of strong hot coffee blew on the wind as the iron pot steamed on the fire. For only a moment, he remembered his life as an army scout and the half-forgotten taste of the good food and the fine blue jacket that had been his. There had been money in his pockets and thick blankets. There had been whiskey, plenty of whiskey.

  The thought crossed his mind as he smoked and stared into the fire that even now, he could probably rejoin the army scouts. He could tell them he had been forced to ride along against his will, tell them where to find Little Wolf’s band. For this, the soldiers would give him his blue coat again and a bottle of whiskey.