by John Benteen
Which settled that, he thought. Then Barbara said softly from behind him, “Jim.”
Nerves raw-edged, he whipped around. “What?” he snapped.
She laid aside the moccasins she was stitching. “Something’s wrong. What is it?”
“Nothing,” he rasped, dropping the flap, lashing it into place, coming back to the fire. “Nothing at all.”
Barbara shook her head, blue eyes grave. “Don’t lie to me. There’s been something wrong ever since you came here. Something gnawing at you. You’ve been restless, short-tempered ... ”
“It’s only being snowed in.”
“No. No, we’ve spent too many winters together. Usually you’re glad of the rest. But not this time.”
“I tell you, it’s nothing!” he snapped. “Now, shut up, leave me alone!” He reached for his tobacco pouch. Instead of the usual Indian mixture of tobacco and red willow, it contained marijuana, a weed he had learned to smoke from Mexicans. For him, it served as substitute for the whiskey he could not handle; now he rolled a cigarette.
Barbara’s eyes narrowed. “That’s the second of those today. Usually you smoke only one, and that at nightfall.”
“I’ll smoke when and where I feel like it.”
“All right.” Barbara rose, went to the door, peered out at the snow. Suddenly she turned. “I want to know,” she demanded angrily. “We’ve got months to spend together, snowed in here. Tell me what it is!”
Sundance opened his mouth to protest again, then closed it. “All right,” he said at last. “I guess you’re entitled to know. Come here, sit down. I’ve got to talk fast before Tall Calf comes back.” When she was seated on the robe beside him, he told her.
She listened, with dawning amazement, comprehension, and then horror. “No,” she whispered. “No. Not another war.”
“The last one,” Sundance said grimly. “This spring and summer is going to be the end of it, one way or the other.”
“And my father—” Her voice trembled a little when she said those words. “He could stop it, keep it from happening?”
“Sure he could; he’s got the power, the influence, the money.”
Barbara got to her feet. “And all he wanted,” she said incredulously, “was for you to bring me to him at Bismarck for just two days? And you didn’t?”
“Don’t be a fool,” Sundance rasped. “All he wanted to do was get you where he could grab you without any Cheyennes around to stop him. Do you think that if you went to Bismarck, you’d ever come back, that he’d ever let you come back?”
“But you didn’t tell me,” she whispered. “You didn’t tell me, and now it’s so late. There’s so much
snow.”
“What good would it do to tell you? What good would it do to tell Tall Calf and the others, now? Let them have their winter of peace, then let them fight when the time comes.”
“And be killed,” Barbara whispered. “Be massacred.”
“They won’t be massacred. They’ll fight, and fight hard.”
“But they can’t win,” she said, her voice full of tears. “You know that.”
“They can try,” Sundance said. “We can try.” He looked at her with narrowed eyes, feeling that coldness within him again.
“And so many will die. Not only men, but women, children. And you didn’t tell me. You didn’t even tell me what he said until it was too late.”
Sundance said harshly: “Do you want to go to him? Do you want to go back to New York? Maybe he’s right; maybe you ought to be out of it.”
“That’s not the point.” Barbara licked her lips. “No, I wouldn’t go with him, no matter what he asked of me, except ... unless ... ” She rubbed her face. “Unless it would save The People.” Unconsciously, she lapsed back into Cheyenne. Then her voice rose. “But if it would save them and their hunting grounds, what difference does it make what happens to me?”
“It makes a lot of difference,” Sundance rasped.
“To you, to me, but we don’t count.” Barbara began to pace the teepee, hands linked together. “Not when it’s a matter of the survival of the whole tribe.” Her voice broke. “And all I had to do was go to Bismarck, to see him.”
“Well, you can’t go now. Nobody could get through that snow out there.”
She whirled on him suddenly, furious now. “Damn you!” she snapped. He had never seen her so enraged. “What right do you have to make a decision like that! Who are you to play God with the lives of a whole tribe! No wonder you’ve been savage with this eating at the inside of you!”
“And I tell you,” Sundance roared, “it wouldn’t make any difference! He wants you back and he hates my guts. Once he got us in Bismarck, he’d have you and kill me! Goddammit, don’t you understand? Custer! Custer and his Seventh Cavalry, at Fort Abe Lincoln just outside of Bismarck! Custer hates me as bad as George Colfax does, and he’d like nothing better than to please your father by helping him out! I could stand against Colfax and his gunman Shell and even any others he might bring on, but I can’t fight the whole Seventh Cavalry single-handed! The minute you set foot in Bismarck, you’re on your way back to New York! The minute I do, I’m dead—and nothing changes for the Indians, nothing!”
“That’s what you say, but we don’t know that. Suppose ... suppose he meant it, suppose he kept his word?” She swallowed hard. “Suppose there was a chance and you ... you threw it away?”
“And suppose all that snow out there melts tonight,” Sundance grated. “Stop it. It makes no difference now. The chance is gone. There’ll be no getting to Bismarck until the spring thaw, and by then the wheels will be in motion.”
He sprang to his feet, came to her, took her hand.”Goddammit, don’t you think that if there had been a chance, I’d have taken it? Even if it had cost me you, even if it meant my life.”
But Barbara pulled her hand from his, turned away. “They took me in,” she said, voice trembling, “Tall Calf and The People. They took me in and made me one of them, and showed me a life I never knew existed. They were kind to me, and gave me ... a sort of love I never had and had always wanted. No matter what happens to me, I’ll always be grateful for that. But now ... if war comes, everyone who dies will be on my conscience. Because I’ll never know whether or not I could have saved them. He is my father, after all. And if I could explain to him what these people are like, make him see ... if I did what he wanted me to, even went back to him, back to New York, even if it meant”— She hesitated, swallowed hard—“giving up you and everything else I love, then maybe I could change things, and it would be worth it. Because I would do anything to save them, anything ... ”
Sundance sat down wearily. “I had to make a decision and I made it, and it’s too late to change it now. The responsibility is mine, not yours. Barbara— Two Roads Woman. Try to—”
“No,” she said harshly. “No. Don’t talk to me anymore. Just leave me alone. For right now, that’s all I want. For you to leave me alone.”
That night, they slept on opposite sides of the teepee. Tall Calf and Magpie Wing noted it but made no comment. Such things happened between man and woman sometimes; and it was none of their concern; time would heal it.
Sundance had lain awake for a long time, had heard Barbara stirring restlessly across the tent, knew that she was not sleeping either. Then he had dozed. Now he came awake, instantly alert, aware that something was wrong, but not sure what. Instinctively, he reached for his Winchester, cocking his head and listening to see what had awakened him.
The inside of the teepee was strangely smoky; that meant the wind had changed and altered the draft. And with that realization, as his head cleared, he knew.
Outside, the wind still howled, but with a different sound. Mingled with it was the sound of dripping water, melting icicles. Sundance swore soundlessly. He rolled out of his robes, slid across the tent to the door, lifted the flap.
The gust that blew in was warmer by fifty degrees than the wind had been the day before. Outside,
day was breaking, gray as lead, and everything that was not tied down was flapping wildly in the warm gale. Then he was aware of a presence beside him, at his elbow: Barbara. “Jim,” she whispered. “Jim, it’s a Chinook.”
“Yes.” Sundance let the flap drop. They came, sometimes, during the winter, these warm winds that melted the snow like magic. But infrequently, and almost never in November, never before the turn of the year. But the way this one blew now, the depth of snow would be cut in half by afternoon; if it kept up all day, by morning bare ground would be visible in places. Every depression in the prairie would become a creek and every creek a river and every river a sea ...
And now Barbara clutched his arm. “Jim.” Her voice was excited. “Do you know what this means? It means we can get to Bismarck!”
He turned on her fiercely. “Don’t be a fool! How long do you think this will last? Two days, three, at the most, and then there’ll be another blizzard. We’d never make it; we’d get halfway there and the next norther would come and catch us in the open—”
“We’ve got to try. Don’t you understand? We’ve got to!”
“No!”
She sprang to her feet, went to the fire, stirred its ashes and put on more fuel. A flame sprang up, lighting the interior of the teepee. Tall Calf and Magpie Wing, in their robes, stirred but did not awaken. Barbara pulled on leggings and furs, went outside, changed the smoke flaps. When she reappeared, her hair was tousled, her face wet with moisture. “Everything’s melting,” she whispered. “Eagle’s fresh and I could borrow Tall Calf’s best horse ... There’s a chance now.”
“I said no!”
She looked at him a moment. Then she nodded. “All right. I’ll go alone.”
“The hell you will!”
“You can’t stop me,” she said calmly. “Not you or Tall Calf or anybody. I’ll walk to Bismarck if it comes to that.” Then she seized his hands. “Jim, please. I’d rather be dead out there on the prairie than live the rest of my life having the end of the whole Cheyenne tribe on my conscience.”
Sundance was silent for a moment. He listened to the wind, still roaring, felt its warm breath coming under the bottom of the teepee. Then, slowly, he nodded. “All right,” he said. “We’ll take the risk.”
Tall Calf was furious. “Bismarck? It’s madness! Why Bismarck? Now?”
And there was nothing Sundance could tell him, dared to tell him, except the one thing that an Indian could not argue with. “It is Two Roads Woman’s medicine. She has had a powerful dream that says she must go. And the warm wind coming in November is a sign that her dream was true. She must follow her dream or she will become ill and die.”
Tall Calf could say nothing to that. Magpie Wing was distraught and cried, but a dream was a dream, medicine was medicine and there was nothing to say. So they worked furiously, Barbara and the older woman assembling rations, Sundance and Tall Calf bringing in the horses: Eagle; Tall Calf’s own war horse, a strong bay; and a pack horse almost as swift and strong. There were robes and furs to be assembled, dry firewood—the difference between life and death—to be packed. In three hours, it was ready; daylight had come full, and already the level of the snow had dropped by a foot. Tall Calf’s whole band stood around in wonder, and there were prayers said and sung for their safe journey. Just before Sundance lifted rein, Tall Calf came to him, face working strangely. “She is my daughter, Sundance,” he said hoarsely, “and I love her very much. Take good care of her. And if the winter catches you, seek out a village of the Sioux.”
“We will, Father,” Sundance said. Then he touched Eagle with his heels, and they rode.
All day the Chinook blew strongly, steadily, growing warmer. Sundance and Barbara pushed the horses eastward through its blast without mercy, determined to make every foot of distance possible before the weather changed. Bismarck was more than two hundred and fifty miles as the crow flew and farther on the ground, and every second counted. Even so, they made slow progress; the ice on creeks and rivers had already become too brittle to support a horse, and the streams were beginning to flood. When nightfall came, they camped in a sheltered hollow in the valley of the Yellowstone, spreading their robes in a shelter of buffalo hides stretched over willow poles. Exhausted, they slept like the dead, but Sundance was awake long before sunrise, had Barbara up, and they pushed on. The Chinook still blew, but with lessening intensity.
The next day’s ride was a repetition of the first, except that they kept to higher ground, for the Yellowstone now was in full spate. Before nightfall, they swung in a southerly direction, crossed the Powder—no longer a mile wide and an inch deep, as the saying went, but a roiling, brawling cascade in which they both got thoroughly soaked. Again they found shelter in a cleft of hills, picketed the horses, which cropped exposed grass greedily. The sun went down in the west in a blaze of blood-colored light. But the Chinook wind still blew.
In the morning, it had ceased. The temperature had dropped slightly, but the air was clear, the sky cloudless. It could have been a day in early spring. With fodder in their bellies, the horses pounded along tirelessly over ground growing ever more rough and broken. They made good time—until they hit the Little Missouri. There nothing like a ford existed any longer, though a buffalo trail led down to the water’s edge. Barbara drew in her breath in dismay at the sight of the chocolate-colored torrent. “Sundance, how can we—”
He shrugged. “We’ve got to, that’s all.” He lashed the packhorse’s lead rope to the saddle of Tall Calf’s bay. “You take Eagle’s tail,” he told Barbara, “and go in upstream of me. Whatever happens, hang on, he’ll get you over. And if you get in trouble, I’ll be downstream to catch you.”
She nodded, then looked back at the water. Both were silent for a moment; it was a long risk, and there was no assurance the two of them would reach the other side alive. Then Barbara said, “Jim ... ”
“Yes,” he said. He went to her and kissed her long and hard. Then he slapped Eagle on the rump, and the big horse waded in and began to swim, Barbara clinging to his tail.
Sundance swung up on the packhorse, leaned forward and lashed Tall Calf’s bay. The Cheyenne war-horse went boldly into the current, dragging the reluctant pack animal along. When both horses were in the stream, Sundance slid back, dropped off the packhorse and seized its tail.
The water was like ice; its chill nearly paralyzed him. Teeth chattering, he turned his dripping head, saw the roan bulk of Eagle working against the current, swimming strongly. Barbara’s head was a golden blot against the chocolate-colored water.
The current bore them swiftly downstream; the animals quartered it as best they could. It seemed to take forever before Sundance saw Eagle, still on the upstream side, find solid footing, lurch up and out. Barbara staggered weakly along behind and, once on shore, leaned exhaustedly against the stallion.
Then Tall Calf’s horse grunted, found ground beneath its front hoofs, lunged out, and the packhorse followed suit. Shivering, Sundance emerged from the water. He was exhausted, too, but he knew there was no time to lose. He whistled for Eagle, and the stallion followed the bay into the woods along the river, Barbara walking alongside, clinging to stirrup leathers. Sundance tied the horses and, with numb hands, unlashed the packs. He found dry tinder and kindling in its carefully constructed waterproof bag, with trembling fingers used flint and steel to strike a spark. He blew it into flame, nursed it carefully, expertly, as Barbara gathered dead twigs from the lower branches of the trees—squaw-wood that would be drier than that lying on the ground. Even so, it took time for it to dry and catch. Presently, however, Sundance had a roaring blaze before which he and she dried their clothes and gear. He rubbed down the horses thoroughly, while Barbara cooked a meal. They pitched their shelter for the night, and in the warmth of the buffalo robes, she lay tightly against him. “Jim,” she whispered, “I think we’re going to make it; I really do. Only two more days, if this weather holds.”
“If it holds,” Sundance said.
/> She was silent for a moment. Then she said. “It’s got to hold. Even if it doesn’t, we’ve got to get to Bismarck somehow. So much depends on it.”
“Maybe,” Sundance said thinly.
“It does. I know it. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that I can influence him. Especially with Irene gone. Surely we’re close enough now that even if the weather changes, we can make it.” She put her arm around him. “And if—”
Sundance said, “Hush. Be quiet.” He sat up. shoving back the robes.
Barbara blinked. “What’s wrong?”
Sundance did not answer. Instead, he crawled to the doorway of the temporary wikiup, stuck head and shoulders out. It was warm, spring like, pleasant; and not a breath of wind stirred. Even so, a curious silence lay over the prairie. No buffalo bellowed, no wolf howled or coyote yapped. He looked toward the picketed horses. They had stopped grazing, and their heads were high, turned northward, ears pricked. He turned his face upward. The sky was cloudless, full of stars.
Sundance drew in a deep breath of the fresh, clean air.
Then he crawled back into the wikiup. “Get up,” he said harshly. “Get the gear together. We’re going to ride tonight.”
“Jim?”
“Goddammit,” he rasped. “Don’t argue. Do what I say. We’ve got to make time, all the time we can.”
Barbara looked at him a moment, then slid reluctantly from the warmth of the robes. “All right,” she said and began to pack.
They pushed the horses hard, pounding furiously along the heights of the valley of the flooded Heart River all night long, in moon and starlight. Still that curious hush persisted, that strange breathlessness of wind and air. Dawn found the animals and their riders far eastward of the Little Missouri, but at the limits of their strength—and dawn came red, the sun bleary behind a haze of mist. Barbara swayed in the saddle. “Jim ... Can’t we rest?”