by Karen Kay
No, at this moment, all he knew was Julia, all he cared for was Julia, and if he were a little less diligent in his observations, a little less cautious because of it…well, so be it.
Nothing could harm him. Not now. He knew it. All of nature knew it, and incredibly, nothing challenged him.
He had been leading them through the tall grasses, following a buffalo path a little south before turning off of it to travel once more to the west. Julia walked along behind him, holding the pony by its buckskin reins, the animal keeping a significant distance from them, as though it, too, was unwilling to break the intimate bond between its masters.
Neeheeowee narrowed his eyes. How he wished to impress Julia. He wondered if she knew just how good a tracker and a hunter he was, and if she did, would she be proud of him, knowing she would never have to want for meat or for clothing? He wanted her to feel safe with him, he wanted her to admire his skill, he wanted her to know he could provide for her. And, oh, how he wished to provide for her.
There wasn’t much else he could give her, not even the stability of a home; yet he wanted to give her the best that he could, within his ability. He wanted her in his arms, in his life, in his home, he…
What was he thinking? Had he gone mad? He could not take her home. To do so would be to degrade her, for he could not marry her, not ever, not if he wished to keep good his promise to the memory of his wife. It was a startling thought for him.
He could not take her home, not if he wished to preserve Julia’s honor. Why hadn’t he remembered this earlier? He grunted, the sound deep in his throat.
He had not thought his actions through. All he’d known was that he couldn’t let Julia go, the thought of her leaving more than he could bear. But in keeping her with him, wasn’t he treating her falsely? He had asked her to accompany him and in doing so, hadn’t he implied that he would marry her? Wouldn’t she expect it of him?
“I need to stop,” Julia said in Lakota, reaching out to touch his shoulder, interrupting his thoughts.
And though it took him a moment to translate the unfamiliar Lakota words, when he finally did, he nodded and turned his back to her, giving her the privacy she required.
Neeheeowee gazed out over the prairie, frowning while he waited for her.
It was true. She would expect marriage from him, and he couldn’t give it to her.
He might live with her…might even perform most of the duties of a married man with her, but he would not marry her…nor would he take anyone else as wife…ever. At least, not unless the path he had chosen for his life changed forever, which was a very unlikely prospect.
No, he couldn’t marry her, and not just because she was white. Neeheeowee carried within him deep scars. Scars in the form of vows that could not be broken, paths that could not be changed, not ever, unless…
An image swept before him, and Neeheeowee suddenly saw his grandfather’s face appear before him, the old man’s words clear, as though he were speaking to his grandson even now.
“There will come a point in your life, my son, when something new will enter your life. Do not fight it when it happens, for it will bring good things to you. But I must caution you to think with your heart at this time, for the senses of your mind will only confuse you.”
Neeheeowee shook his head. The image dissipated, the words faded, leaving Neeheeowee feeling wholly disconcerted. He hadn’t thought of that conversation in years, had barely even remembered it. These had been his grandfather’s parting words to his young grandson, the old man straining to speak even as he lay dying all those years ago.
Neeheeowee drew his brows together. Why did he remember it now? Had his grandfather’s ghost returned to deliver the message?
Was this a message related to Julia? Without doubt she was something new in his life. Yet what could Julia, a foreigner, an alien to his culture, have to do with him, with his life? Hadn’t he already chosen his own direction, a path he had vowed to take—a life devoid of anything Julia could offer him?
Julia touched him on the shoulder and Neeheeowee turned so quickly, she gasped.
He smiled. “I did not mean to frighten you,” he said in Lakota, his words broken and slow. He drew her into his arms, hugging her to him as though she might suddenly disappear. And as he stood there, his arms wrapped around her, it all came back to him.
It was the summer of his thirteenth year and Neeheeowee’s mother had just rushed up to hug him as he returned to camp from his first vision quest. It had been a fruitless quest, for Neeheeowee had not dreamed, had seen no visions. He had been gone into the hills four days and four nights, with no food or water; clad only in his breechcloth, bearing only his wits for protection. He had fasted as his elders had instructed him; he had waited, sung his medicine songs, opened his arms to the wind which blew on up to him as though it would speak. But it said nothing. It blew on by him. He’d waited, but nothing else had visited him.
And there, up on that hilltop, it had started.
The young boy had despaired. Nothing had happened… no vision had visited him, no illusion had materialized in the wind.
He had left camp jubilant; he came home, downtrodden and miserable, trudging into camp as though he had been to war and lost. He’d been gone four days, and he had nothing more to show for his efforts than the tattered rags of his breechcloth and moccasins.
“There goes Neeheeowee after his vision quest,” he heard people say as he passed. “Do you think he will take his place with his fathers as a great medicine man?”
“Look, there goes the son of Heseehee. What do you think his vision is?”
And so it went. He tried to tune out the voices of the others, but by the time he reached his mother’s tepee, Neeheeowee felt worse than when he had climbed down from the butte that morning with his uncle who had been his sponsor. Neeheeowee then had to relay the bad news: He’d had no vision.
His mother followed Neeheeowee into their lodge and smiled at him, yet she said nothing, simply setting about doing her normal chores, putting out food and new clothing for her son.
After a while, his father entered the tepee and, moving around to the men’s side of the lodge and sitting next to his son, his father said, “You are welcomed home, my son. There will be plenty of time to speak of your vision quest. Do not feel you have to talk now. Rest, relax. We are glad to have you home.”
And Neeheeowee, not willing to admit to his failure all at once, gladly agreed.
“There is a storm brewing up ahead,” Julia spoke to Neeheeowee, breaking into his reverie, and Neeheeowee nodded, coming back to the present.
He thought of the softness of her words, and immediately he tried to think of something to make her speak again. He wasn’t sure when he had ever heard such a pretty, lilting voice, and he wanted to listen to it some more.
They had begun to speak to one another in Lakota even though the going of it had been slow at first since neither of them had been given call to use the language much. However, it was better than nothing and at least they were able to converse and understand one another now.
Neeheeowee groaned as he let out his breath, wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t remembered that Julia might still understand a little Lakota.
“Come,” Neeheeowee said, setting Julia away from him. “I must find us somewhere where we can wait out the storm.”
She nodded and, stepping from his embrace, picked up the buckskin reins of their pony. Neeheeowee waited until she was ready, and then, with a quick motion of his head, turned, striding back through the tall buffalo grass.
But Neeheeowee hadn’t gone far before his past began to intrude upon the present, the weight of his memories reminding him of a gathering gloom, moving in and spreading a gray hue over all it touched. Neeheeowee felt his happiness begin to fade, if only for a little while, and although he still paced through the grass, leading his party, his attention stuck on the past, beginning to replay scene after scene of incidents he would rather not recall.
“You are the favored son of a great medicine man,” Neeheeowee heard his father speaking as though the older man stood before him. “Do not worry overmuch that you have not yet had a vision. It will come, my son. It will come.”
But it hadn’t come. Neeheeowee had made several vision quests, some in his youth, some as he’d grown older. And always the result was the same; the wind would visit him, would rush on up to him, but just as quickly would blow past him with no dream there in it, no vision to carry back to the medicine man to interpret, no purpose to fulfill. And while it might seem strange to an outsider that a vision quest could either make a man or break him, to the Indian male, the vision quest was a necessary part of life, one he did not engage upon lightly. For to dream meant that Maheoo, maker of all, had shown one his chosen path, it then being up to the individual to ensure that the dream came to fruition.
But Neeheeowee had no dream; no path to follow, no purpose to fulfill. He stood a man alone.
“My son,” Neeheeowee heard his father’s words again. “You try too hard. Maheoo cannot speak to you when your heart is already full. Forget that you are the son of a powerful family of medicine men. Perhaps the ways of your fathers are not within your true path.”
“Or perhaps I am not worthy,” the young Neeheeowee despaired. “Maybe I do not have the power to heal and to see things as you do. This could be Maheoo’s way of telling me.”
Heseehee, or Ridgewalker, as Neeheeowee’s father was called, smiled at his young son. “You speak with all the fervor of youth, my son,” he said. “I see in you great power, but you do not know it, have not felt its influence in your life. But you will, and it may be that you will have to live, to experience life before you can dream. My son, I think Maheoo tests you.”
“But why?” Neeheeowee asked. “Why not someone else? Why can I not have a vision as all my friends have?”
His father only smiled at him. “Only you can answer this, my son.” Heseehee laid his hands on his son’s back. “I do not tell you this to comfort you. I tell you this because it is what I see. When Maheoo believes you are ready, you will dream. But you may have to prove yourself worthy first, for, my son, you have great power. And this is all I have to say to you.”
Heseehee had taken on another youth as apprentice for the role of medicine man amongst their people and Neeheeowee had stood back, watching, wondering what was wrong with him that he couldn’t dream. Finally Neeheeowee had approached another, one known to dream, and, as was custom, had solicited that one to seek the vision that Neeheeowee lacked. Effectively, Neeheeowee had bought himself a vision.
The vision brought back to him by another had been in the form of a hunter or a tracker, and Neeheeowee had done his best to fulfill that vision, becoming the best hunter, the best tracker within the entire Cheyenne nation. His skills as a hunter had been renowned, and he had earned himself great recognition within the bands of his tribe. He had even become a sought-after matrimonial “catch.”
But Neeheeowee remained dissatisfied. He had married, he had even felt happiness with his new wife and yet, there had been something within him that would not let him be, something that made him ache for more. And he knew there lay some other purpose to his life—just ahead—but what, he could not grasp.
And then, he’d taken his wife on that fateful hunting trip, and Neeheeowee knew that had he been stronger, wiser, more able to dream, she would have never died. In truth, Neeheeowee blamed himself for his wife’s death as much as he blamed the Pawnee, and he was uncertain he could ever free himself from that guilt.
It had been a wonderful, sunny day, that day. All had gone well for him on the hunt and Neeheeowee was feeling quite happy with himself. The wind blew at his back as he approached their makeshift camp, so he had no sense of what lay ahead of him.
The camp looked the same as when he’d left it only a day earlier except that no dogs barked, nor did any birds sing. Perhaps he should have taken note of the lack of activity ahead of him, but he didn’t. He’d had too good a hunt to worry about things he didn’t know, couldn’t perceive. Besides, his spirit soared at his good luck on this and the previous day, and he was anxious to share the stories of his encounters as well as the meat of his hunt with the others.
It wasn’t until he was well within the camp that the smell of death assailed him, horrible and exacting in its message. It hit him hard. His spirits, which had been sweeping the heavens, plummeted. He knew at once what had happened.
“Hova’ahane! No!”
He dropped his game, running to the camp tepee he and his wife shared. Perhaps she had been taken captive, perhaps she still lived. He could rescue her.
He threw back the rawhide at the entrance to their lodge and, looking inside, he screamed. “Hovaahane! Hovaahane!”
She lay on the ground, there inside, her head scalped, her stomach torn open, their unborn babe cut apart from her.
Neeheeowee screamed. He cried. He wailed, the sounds horrible upon the afternoon breeze. But his grief did not bring his wife or his child back, did not bring the others back. Nothing did.
He knew then, as he picked up the remains of their bodies, what he would do. He knew then the reason for his lack of a vision. His life became suddenly filled with purpose, and a truth took hold within him: The hunter’s life had not been a true path for him. It had been a mistake. No wonder Neeheeowee had felt there was something more for him. No wonder he had lacked purpose, almost ached with it.
But no more. He knew with certainty where his future now lay. And for the first time since he had started his string of vision quests, he knew why he had become the best tracker, the best hunter within the Cheyenne nation. He would use those skills to accomplish his true purpose in life: to kill the Pawnee murderers.
He fell to his knees, right there in that small hunting lodge, his tears falling onto the dead bodies of his wife and child.
“Ehani nah-hiwatama.
Napave vihnivo.”
He sang the song over and over.
“Ehani nah-hiwatama.
Napave vihnivo.
My Father,
He hath shown His mercy unto me.
In peace let them walk the straight road.”
And there, bent down, in that lodge, it hit him, a sudden “knowledge,” the awareness that he had caused these deaths; indirectly, but caused them nonetheless. He had been following the wrong path. If he had been on the right course, none of this would have happened. For all knew the grandfathers’ teachings: Following the wrong trail in life will bring a man nothing but disaster.
Neeheeowee wailed to the skies above, moaning his sorrow, his grief. But nothing brought his loved ones back. Nothing. And there, on the floor of that tepee, before Maheoo, before the ghosts of his wife and child, before all, he vowed complete devotion to their spirits, promising that this man to whom his wife and child had looked for protection, this man known to others as Neeheeoeewotis, this man would not rest, would not marry, would not even live again until the Pawnee murderers breathed no more.
Lightning streaked across the western sky, bringing Neeheeowee back to the present, reminding him that he had better keep his mind on finding some sort of shelter before the storm caught them unprepared. He paused, looking around him, finally seeing off in the distance a spot which was not too high, not too low. It was not the best he could do, but it would afford them at least a meager amount of safety.
He headed toward it now.
It was odd to think of it now. In all these years, nothing had tempted him away from his purpose; nothing, not family, not duty, nor even the seeking of honor in battle. Nothing, that is, until Julia.
Julia.
He wondered again why he had asked her to come with him without being more prepared to accommodate her. Had it been momentary aberration on his part? A sudden drop into insanity, thinking he could make her happy despite the type of life he led?
No, he decided, closing his eyes and sighing. It had been none of these things
. He could not part with her. It was that simple a truth.
And though he knew he did her a great injustice since he could offer her none of those things a woman seemed to desire most, he could think of nothing else to do but to find a way to make it up to her. For of one thing he was certain: Julia had insinuated herself into his life, into his affections, and he would do all he could to keep her with him.
No longer did he have the terrible nightmares that had plagued him for so long. No longer did his face show a constant frown. No, he would not let her go, not unless she decided she could not stand the life he offered her. And even then…
It left him in an interesting dilemma.
He longed to protect Julia, to save her from any possible harm, yet he remained the one person most likely to bring her the greatest hurt of all: the inability to make her wife, in fact.
He would have to tell her. She had the right to know it all. But oh, how he shied away from the telling of it. She would not understand. And why should she? She was white, unused to his ways, his beliefs. How could he expect her to understand what even his own people found hard to comprehend?
He breathed out loud. There was nothing for it. He would have to tell Julia. He would also have to suffer the consequences of her demands on him to take her back to the fort, her possible hatred. For of one thing he became suddenly certain: he would not take her back. Somehow, some way, now that she was with him, he would keep her with him.