Brave Heart

by Lindsay McKenna

  Wolf held his youngest sister of seventeen. They were surrounded by carnage. Six women and four children had gone out to hunt roots along the river. Something they did once a week to help feed the village. His eyes grew stormy as he swept his gaze across the inert bodies of the miners. “Why did they do this?“ he croaked.

  “It’s always the same,” Evening Star wept. “Why can’t the wasicun, the white man, leave us in peace? Redwing!” she wailed. “They killed her!”

  Bile crawled up into Wolf’s mouth. His lips thinned. Redwing’s throat had been slit and she had been raped. Squeezing Evening Star gently, he whispered hoarsely, “Come, we must get help. You must mount Wiyaka, and ride to the village. Get five warriors and extra horses.”

  Wiping tears from her round face, Evening Star pointed to the left. “She saved us, Wolf. The white woman charged the miners like ten warriors. She was swinging that oak limb as if it were a war club. If not for her, Redwing’s baby would have been killed. I don’t know if she was a member of their party or not. She struck like a thunder being, surprising all of them.”

  Wolf stood there looking at the white woman, who lay unmoving, the cradleboard beneath her body. “Ride for help, Evening Star,” he commanded. “I will do what I can until they arrive.“ Boosting her onto the black mare, he took his medicine parfleche from the rear of his cottonwood saddle. “Hurry!” he ordered, slapping the horse on the rump.

  As soon as Evening Star disappeared over the hill, Wolf turned to those who needed him. As medicine man, his life revolved around the well-being of his people. Little Swallow, his twenty-six-year-old sister, limped toward him, her face etched in pain. She too, had been raped.

  “Wolf,” she pleaded, “see to Redwing first.”

  “She’s dead.”

  Little Swallow winced as if struck. At her side was her daughter of three. “Then take care of the others first. I will be fine.”

  Wolf reached out. “Your daughter?”

  Little Swallow knelt down, examining her distraught daughter. “She is all right. She ran and hid in that bank of willows when the miners attacked us. All she has are some scrapes and bruises.”

  Nodding, Wolf turned his attention to the other two Indian women. One had a broken arm, the other suffered a broken jaw. Swallowing his hatred of the wasicun, Wolf couldn’t erase his curiosity about the woman with the red hair. She was a warrioress, challenging her own kind. Why? Weren’t all whites like these miners?

  He placed the broken arm between willow bark and then wrapped it with rawhide thongs to keep the bone in place. For the woman with the broken jaw, there was little he could do but give her herb to hold between her teeth to minimize the pain. And there was even less he could do for Little Swallow, who suffered without tears or complaining.

  “Cleanse yourself down at the river,” Wolf told her in a voice strangled with emotion.

  “What about the red-haired one? She bleeds heavily from the head.“ Little Swallow’s brown eyes narrowed. “She saved us from sure death, Wolf. Does she not deserve our help?”

  He scowled.

  “You are a wapiya, a healer,” Little Swallow began in a pleading tone, “and you’re bound by vows to save another’s life. Do that much for her. She saved Redwing’s baby, your niece.”

  Moved by Little Swallow’s impassioned words, Wolf nodded. The healer in him wanted to go to the white woman. But part of him, the part that had had so many of his family members murdered by the wasicun, wanted to leave her to die. Another part of him was afraid of her. Afraid! Why should he be afraid of a mere white woman? As he approached her, Wolf realized that she was anything but “mere.“ Her red hair lay about her face like a blazing halo of light from Father Sun. Crouching, he moved her arm aside to see if Redwing’s baby was unharmed. Relief fled across his hardened features as the baby, who had been named Dawn Sky, slowly opened her eyes, staring up at him.

  “Little one,” he soothed, setting aside the parfleche and carefully removing the cradleboard from the white woman’s arms. To his surprise and relief, Dawn Sky was uninjured. And like all good Lakota children, the baby hadn’t whimpered one cry during the battle. Straightening up, Wolf took the child in the cradleboard to the bank of willows, placing her with Little Swallow’s daughter. Making sure both children were well, Wolf walked back to the white woman.

  As he placed her on her back, he admitted in some small part of himself that she had been braver than any five warriors he’d ever known. Attacking six armed miners with nothing more than a tree limb was a great coup. For that, he would name her Cante Tinza, Brave Heart, even if it went against his beliefs.

  Hesitating in his examination of her, Wolf had never seen red hair before. It was thick like a horse’s mane and heavily matted with mud. His thoughts shifted to the women who sat wearily nearby. If they saw him vacillate in attending to her injuries, they would surely laugh at his unexplained cowardice. Picking up a thick strand of red hair, Wolf removed it from the region of her breasts. Blood had congealed across her bosom as well as on her right temple. Where to begin? The scowl on his broad brow deepened as he unbuttoned the front of her dress. His fingers trembled as he lifted away the thin material. An ivory chemise crossed her breasts, and that too was soaked with fluids from the injury. With an oath under his breath, Wolf pulled the knife from the scabbard at his side. Placing the point in the material, he slit it upward.

  A grunt of surprise escaped him as he pulled the chemise aside. The woman’s breasts bore deep, fresh burns. He hunched over, perplexed by the unusual wounds. She had small, firm breasts, their ivory roundness crowned with pink-tipped nipples. The urge to touch them, to see if they were as velvety soft as they appeared, moved through Wolf. Disgusted with his physical reaction to Cante Tinza, he turned his thoughts back to healing. He took a special powder ground from comfrey root and sprinkled it across the terrible scars on her breasts.

  “Who has done this to her?“ Little Swallow demanded, leaning over his shoulder. She jabbed her finger downward. “This woman has been hurt by wasicuns.”

  Wolf gave her a bare glance. “It could be the Crow who did this, too. They are known to burn great scars on the bodies of their enemies.”

  “Perhaps,” Little Swallow muttered, coming around to kneel at the woman’s head. Taking a cloth wet from the river, she pressed it against the head wound. “Has someone whipped her, also?”

  Glancing up from his work, he saw that Little Swallow was pointing to some fresh, pink scars that lay like ribbons across the white woman’s small, proud shoulders. “Let me dress these wounds first, and then we will find out,” he muttered.

  “She saved us, Wolf. Do not be bitter about trying to save her.”

  Compressing his lips, he held on to his anger. Little Swallow had been raped, and she was unraveling emotionally before him, her hands shaking as she daubed the blood away from Cante Tinza’s head wound. “I will do what I can,” he promised quietly.

  “I saw the hatred in her eyes,” Little Swallow whispered, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks. “She hated these miners. Perhaps they tortured or abused her—like they abused us….”

  “If that is so, then she has an even braver heart than I first thought,” he admitted as he carefully closed her chemise and rebuttoned her dress.

  “I have never seen someone fight with such fury, such anger,” Little Swallow continued.

  Wolf reached over, placing his hand on Little Swallow’s slumped shoulder. “Tanksi, sister, go and sit down. You are shaking like a young leaf in a storm.”

  Managing a wobbly smile, Little Swallow nodded. “You are right, tiblo, brother.“ Patting the woman’s shoulder, she whispered, “This one is special. I do not care if she has white skin—her heart is Lakota.”

  “You have always had an eye on those who are good and kind,” Wolf agreed. “Now, go. Sit and rest. The warriors will be here shortly to take everyone back to the village.“ It felt as if a hand were squeezing his heart. Wolf acknowledged his younger
sister’s words of wisdom. No longer did he try to hold his hatred as a barrier toward Cante Tinza as he moved to dress her head wound. If not for her courage, he could have lost the last of his once large family. He owed her much.

  His mind moved forward. Many things would have to be done. Once the bodies of the miners were found, the Lakota would be held responsible for their deaths by the wasicun whether they deserved it or not. Chief Badger Mouth would have to move the village; otherwise fort soldiers would kill all of them, swooping down upon them like hawks from the sky. Right now, there was an unstable peace between all Lakota and the wasicun.

  There were Lakotas who wouldn’t like the fact that he was going to take the red-haired woman into his tepee, Black Wolf thought. Badger Mouth would oppose it. Every family in the village of one hundred people had lost someone to the guns of the wasicun. They bore hatred toward the miners, who continued to steal their ancestral lands. With a sigh, Wolf gently ran his hand across her dirty forehead. She needed to be bathed, and her hair needed to be unknotted, washed and combed. Despite the torture Cante Tinza had undergone, there was still beauty in her face. As Wolf heard the sound of hoofbeats reverberating through the foggy dawn air that told the warriors were approaching, he wondered what color Cante Tinza’s eyes were.

  Chapter Two

  “You are not going to take her with you.”

  Wolf looked up from where he knelt at Cante Tinza’s side, now acutely aware of his hand on her shoulder. He held it there in a protective gesture when he saw the chief, Badger Mouth, approach him with a disapproving look on his face. The chief, more than sixty seasons in age, halted and glowered at him, hardening his weathered face. His words were an order, not a question. Around them, the warriors were helping the injured women and children to mount the extra horses, and none seemed interested in coming to Black Wolf’s aid.

  “She saved the lives of our women,” Wolf countered in an equally authoritative tone.

  “So Evening Star says,” the chief groused. He stood with the lance in his left hand, staring toward the south. “That sister of yours is like a blue jay, constantly chattering. All I heard riding here is that the red-haired wasicun saved our women and children from sure death.”

  “She is a warrioress.“ Wolf grew sure of that as he had time to study her thin, bony features. Her forehead was broad and unmarred, her eyebrows arched like the curve of a hawk’s wing, and she had a small, dainty nose with flaring nostrils. Although she was unconscious, her lovely mouth was pulled in at the corners, indicating the level of pain she suffered even now. There was a vulnerability to Cante Tinza, and Wolf found himself wanting to draw her from the darkness she resided within and bring her into light. Each moment he spent with her increased his questions as to who she was and what she was doing with the miners. She couldn’t have been friends with the miners if she defended the Lakota women against them, he guessed. In his heart, he sensed that she’d been injured by them. Why? He had to have time to find out after she regained consciousness.

  Badger Mouth snorted, watching through squinted eyes as the last of his warriors mounted. “You ought to leave her for buzzard bait just as we leave the other wasicun to them.”

  “Even our enemy, the Crow, would not leave a woman to die in this manner.“ Women were held sacred in the eyes of the Indians, no matter what their tribe.

  The chief glared at Wolf, his hand tightening on the staff topped with the skin of a badger. “It would go better in the village if she was Crow.”

  That was true, Wolf acknowledged. They had captured Crow women who, over the years, had decided to stay in their village and not return to their home. The Lakota women had come to accept them as their own, with time. “Little Swallow feels she has been tortured at the hands of these miners.”

  “She is wasicun, Black Wolf.”

  Slowly lifting his hooded eyes, Wolf held the chief’s challenging stare. “No,” he whispered, “first, she is woman. We Lakota recognize the strength and courage of our women. She is one who gives us birth, who gives us life through the milk that flows from her breast, and who is able to give her blood back to Mother Earth every moon. As men, we can do none of these things, making us less important. We have nothing to compare to a woman’s sacredness.”

  Irritated knowing that Wolf spoke the truth, Badger Mouth muttered, “Do what you want. You will anyway. But remember this, she is wasicun and, therefore, trouble. What of Deer Woman?”

  “She lays claim to my heart, but I have told her that she pines for the wrong warrior. She does not hold my heart.“ Wolf slid his hands beneath Cante Tinza’s small shoulders and long, curved thighs, lifting her upward. As her head lolled against her chest, something old and hurting broke loose in Wolf’s chest. In the past four seasons, his heart had been cruelly torn with the loss of half his family at the hands of the greedy wasicuns who killed for the gold metal that peppered the Black Hills. As Cante Tinza’s cheek pressed against the region of his aching heart, he felt comfort for the first time since then.

  “Ho! You make yourself twice as much trouble, Black Wolf. Deer Woman won’t take kindly to this wasicun sharing your robes and tepee,” Badger Mouth scolded.

  Walking carefully toward his ebony mare, Wolf ignored the chief’s warning. Deer Woman was an eighteen-year-old maiden who had fallen madly in love with him years ago. He’d never invited her affections, yet she constantly hinted that she’d like to be his wife. He wanted a mature woman for a wife—not a child in a woman’s body. Swift Elk, a brave who had yet to count coup, could marry her, he told himself. He was as young as she, and pined equally to have Deer Woman for his wife, yet she foolishly spurned his advances.

  “I will take this woman as I would any injured person into my lodge for care,” Wolf reminded the chief sharply. One of the older warriors, Tall Crane, held the woman as Black Wolf mounted Wiyaka. Wolf saw Tall Crane’s reaction to Cante Tinza as he patiently held her, waiting to transfer her to Wolfe’s arms once again. Did she have the ability to break down hated barriers with just her small form and fiery hair? Taking the woman from Tall Crane, Wolf settled her across his thighs, her body leaning against his.

  “Who is she?“ Tall Crane wanted to know.

  “A stranger.“ In more ways than one, Wolf thought wryly.

  “Do you intend to keep her?”

  “As a prize of war?”

  “Yes.”

  Wolf saw Tall Crane’s unbridled interest in the woman. Less than two seasons ago, he had lost his wife and son to an attack by the Crow. Since then, the warrior had been lonely, and in need of a family again. Although Tall Crane was well thought of in the village, and a good hunter, Wolf felt suddenly protective of Cante Tinza. “She is mine.”

  A sly smile crossed Tall Crane’s ample features, his chocolate eyes dancing with amusement. “Ah, so the wapiya finally takes a woman. Many maids will have their hearts broken to see you ride into the village with this red-haired one in your arms as your chosen mate. No doubt you will train her in the medicine ways to help our people?”

  Uncomfortable at the prospect of all the problems Cante Tinza would cause him because of his unexpected decision, Wolf glanced over at the gangling warrior, who rode a bay gelding. “If her hair is any sign, she will do exactly as she wants.”

  Laughing heartily, Tall Crane slapped Wolf on the back. “Well stated, my friend. A woman with hair the color of fire. Are you blessed or cursed, I wonder?”

  Wolf wasn’t sure. “She may not live long enough for either of us to know that answer.”

  Sobering, Tall Crane nodded. “Evening Star said she is a warrioress. I honor her for that. I do not care if she has white skin. If she helped save our women and children, then I consider her one of us.”

  Wolf glanced over at him. “Half the village will hate and distrust her. The other half will be wooed by her red hair, just as you have been.”

  “I cannot deny it.“ Tall Crane frowned. “Deer Woman will take your decision with great sorrow.”

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nbsp; The sweet, innocent face of Deer Woman danced before Wolf’s eyes. “She is a child.”

  “But with the body and desires of a woman.”

  Grimacing, Wolf said, “I have laid no claim to her. I have made that clear to the chief, and to her family.”

  Picking at the bay’s black mane disinterestedly, Tall Crane said, “Sometimes our heart chooses of its own accord, despite what our head tells us.”

  In that moment, Wolf hurt for his friend. Tall Crane deeply loved his wife and daughter. In a Crow attack by One Feather, ten Lakota had been slaughtered. Even now, he could see the grief in Tall Crane’s dark eyes. “There are four maids who look for husbands now in our village. Can you not soothe your heart with one of them?“ Wolf asked quietly.

  Patting his mount’s neck, Tall Crane shrugged. “None stirs my heart. I would do these fine maids an injustice by pretending otherwise.“ A sparkle came to his eyes. “Now, this red-haired one stirs me. She interests me.”

  A slight smile softened the line of Wolf’s thinned mouth. “There is spirit and courage in this one,” he agreed.

  “I honor your choice, my friend.“ And then the spark died in Tall Crane’s eyes. “But be careful. There are many who will hate her if she survives.”

  “If you speak of Deer Woman’s reaction…I find her incapable of hurting anything or anyone.”

  “She is as gentle as a butterfly,” Tall Crane agreed, “but do not be dissuaded by her demeanor. Thus far, no one has challenged her claim on you.”

  “Deer Woman will be disappointed, but she would never lift a hand in anger toward me or this red-haired one.“ There were too many other concerns for Wolf to think about. The village had to be moved immediately. The women and children injured in the attack would need continued care and attention.

  “I do not envy your position, Wolf. Your responsibilities are many besides having a heartbroken maid plus an enemy sleeping in your tepee. Be on guard.”