Climb the Wind: A Journey Into Another Past

by Pamela Sargent

  “I have asked him a few. He’s talked about his past and how he came to Washington, but not much else. I suppose it’s none of my concern.” He paused. “Would it be unmannerly of me if I asked you how you came to be his ward?”

  She lifted her head. He was gazing at her, looking as if he might actually be curious about her.

  “You are a Seneca, an Iroquois,” she said. “Grisha told me that. I am Lakota—a Sioux, the whites would call me.”

  “I know something of the Sioux,” he said. “I lived among them for a short time, when Ely Parker and I were on a mission to investigate complaints about the agencies on the reservations. It’s a hard life, it takes strength and courage to live it.”

  He paused. “I was brought up by a white family,” he continued. “They were kind to me in their way. They were the people who gave me my name.” He sat back and she saw that he was still waiting for her to answer his question.

  “My people are dead,” she said, “my father and my mother and uncle. We had a treaty with the whites, but a band of Blue Coats came to my father’s camp and killed everyone there except for me and one old woman. We were spared only because they didn’t find us, or else they would have killed us, too.”

  She saw sorrow in his eyes and looked away. He would have seen a lot of death during his time as a soldier; she wondered that her story could move him. He had, after all, admitted to having worn the blue uniform of the men who had killed her father and mother. “We rode to another camp, and that was where I first saw Grisha. I have lived with him ever since. He has been kind.”

  “It might have been kinder to leave you in the East instead of bringing you West again.”

  She glanced at him. “I do not know why you say that.”

  “It must remind you—” He fell silent.

  “I do not have so many memories, Mr. Rowland. I recall only what I care to of my early life, and those things that I do remember do not cause me pain any more. And if I had not wanted to come, Grisha would not have forced me to go.” She said that without knowing if it was true. Grisha had never forced her to do anything. Her gratitude to him and her knowledge that, without him, she could neither live in the white world nor return to her own people had made it impossible for her to defy him, to do anything except what he wanted of her.

  “How long are you to stay in St. Louis?” she continued. “Do you plan to settle there?”

  “I don’t know. I’m already thinking that I should have stayed in the East and found work there, perhaps in New York. There will be more fighting in the West, fighting that’s futile. I would rather not be close to it.”

  He had to mean that he was tired of fighting. She did not think that he was a coward.

  The door opened, and Grisha entered from the hallway. “It is settled,” he said as he took off his hat. “We are leaving as soon as we can.” He came to the table and sat down, then glanced at Rowland. “I heard you speak to Katia of fighting.”

  Rowland tensed. “I didn’t mean to say anything that might upset her. I was saying only that—”

  “I understand, Mr. Rowland. And you cannot upset Katia with talk. And what fighting is it that you regard as futile?”

  “That of the red men trying to hold on to their lands in the West. Please don’t misunderstand me.” Rowland looked at Katia for a moment. “My sympathies are with them, but they’ll be lucky if they can keep even some of their land.”

  Grisha leaned back and folded his arms. “I would like to hear your reasons for believing that.”

  “They are outnumbered, greatly outnumbered. Their weapons are no match for those of soldiers and settlers. They have no industry at all, no places to make the things they would need to fight people with many more resources. They would be even worse off than the Confederates were toward the end. The most that they can hope for is to hold off the settlers and miners and all the others after their land for a few more years, and then to be allowed to live on their reservations in peace.”

  Rowland’s words were those of a man who was resigned, but there was still a hopeful sound in his voice. He does not want to believe his own words, Katia thought; he is fighting them even as he speaks them.

  “Your comrade Donehogawa is their voice in Washington,” Grisha said. “He will try to hold the government to its treaties.”

  “It won’t do any good,” Rowland said, “not in the long run. The best he can do is to keep the peace long enough for the Indians there to agree to stay on the lands allotted to them. If the commissioner stands in the way of too many men who covet the western lands, they’ll find the means to get him out of their way.”

  Grisha rubbed his chin and was silent as Katia poured him some coffee. He sipped from his cup, then said, “I have a story to tell you, Lemuel Rowland, a story of what happened in a place far from here. Would you care to hear it?”

  “Surely,” Rowland said, “if only to pass the time.”

  “This is something that happened hundreds of years ago in the lands bordering the motherland of my ancestors.”

  Rowland gazed steadily at Grisha.

  “Far to the east,” Grisha began, “there was a rich empire inhabited by millions of people. To the west, outside the wall that bordered the empire, bands of horsemen roamed. The wealthy empire had great candles that could be fired into the air, siege engines, all manner of weaponry, and trained armies as well, while the horsemen, who were poor and lived in tents, had only their swords, bows, and lances. The empire’s soldiers were many, while the horsemen were few, and yet the horsemen conquered the empire and became its rulers.”

  Rowland looked doubtful. Katia had heard the story once before, and knew that Grisha had told it to a few others.

  “I see that you do not quite believe me,” Grisha said, “but it is the truth. These horsemen also conquered the lands that lay west of them. They took those of my own ancestors, as it happens. I have often thought that I am in part a descendant of those conquerors—my grandfather had claimed to be such.”

  Some of the doubt left Rowland’s face. “You wouldn’t be telling me this tale,” he said, “unless you thought it had some bearing on what we said earlier.”

  “That is perceptive, Mr. Rowland.”

  “You say that this happened long ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “These horsemen didn’t have to face Springfields and Enfields and Spencer repeating rifles.”

  “That is so, Mr. Rowland, but they were still greatly outnumbered and without weapons that were the equal of the eastern empire’s—yet they conquered it.”

  Rowland looked thoughtful. “Then I must assume that this great empire, despite its wealth and its weapons, had weaknesses that allowed the horsemen to win—a lack of the will to fight, perhaps, or a loss of morale among their troops.”

  “That is part of it,” Grisha said, “and also that the eastern empire was divided and had three rulers, and that some of their armies chose to go over to the invaders. And these horsemen were quick to learn.” He paused. “Before this time, the horsemen had fought among themselves, but one chief united them and led them to conquer much of the world. This chief was called Genghis Khan.”

  “An inspiring story,” Lemuel Rowland murmured.

  “And you are thinking that it is only something that happened long ago and far away.” Grisha finished his coffee and poured himself another cup. “I have another story for you, one about a people long ago who left one land for a new land—who settled in this land long ago.”

  Rowland frowned. “I’ve heard enough stories about the early white settlers.”

  “I am talking about something that happened long before that, Mr. Rowland. An old man who was one of my teachers told me this tale. He believed that, long before these horsemen I spoke of became conquerors, some of their ancestors had left their land for this one. It must have been a long and difficult journey—they would have had to go through Siberia and then find a way to cross over to Alaska.”

  Katia tensed; s
he had not heard this story before. Siberia and Alaska—she had only the dimmest notion of where they were, although she had seen them marked on maps.

  “They would have had to use boats,” Rowland said, “and the ice and cold surely would have made such a crossing difficult. Unless it was so cold, and the strait so frozen, that they could walk across it.”

  “My old teacher had reason to think that Siberia and Alaska were not separated by water, that a land bridge once connected them. He believed that these people long ago crossed that bridge and came to this land. This should be of some interest to you.”

  Rowland raised his brows, looking doubtful.

  “How do you think the ancestors of your people came to be here?” Grisha glanced at Katia. “Or the Lakota, or the Cheyenne, or any of the tribes who were here before the white man came?”

  “I’ve heard a number of stories,” Rowland replied. “All of them come down to this—the Creator, or Divine Providence, put us here, or perhaps we were always here, from the time God made the world.”

  “Or you came from elsewhere,” Grisha said. “My teacher believed that the peoples here might have come from the same place where these horsemen I spoke of—the Tatars—lived later. He had reasons for believing this. One was the physical resemblance of the Aleuts we knew to Tatars, and another was tales that he heard from a few old natives. So there you have it—the red men here might be the brothers of men far to the west, across the Pacific. And the men of the Plains are horsemen, as were the Tatars.”

  “There were no horses here before the white man came,” Lemuel said.

  “But they are horsemen now. It is as if they recalled what their ancestors once knew, is it not?”

  Katia gripped the arms of her chair. A sharp pain bloomed inside her head; she closed her eyes, afraid that she might faint.

  “Miss Rubalev,” she heard Rowland say.

  “I’m all right,” she whispered.

  “Do you wish to rest?” That was Grisha’s voice.

  “Yes. I shall be in my room.” She got to her feet and stumbled toward her room, waving Grisha away before he could help her.

  She lay on her bed in the darkness, waiting for the pain to leave her. In a while, she heard a soft knock on the door and then it creaked open.

  “Katia?” Grisha said. “Denis came back. I sent him out again with Rowland, to amuse him and show him the city.”

  She opened her eyes. Grisha came inside and sat down in a chair near the bed. “Will you be well enough to travel?”

  “Yes. Of course.” The pain was fading. “It is nothing.”

  “What happened, Katia?”

  “It was something you said.” She swallowed. “I had a dream last night. I thought that the spirits were trying to speak to me again.”

  “What did you dream?”

  “I saw Touch-the-Clouds, at the Sun Dance, but another man was with him. Touch-the-Clouds spoke of the circle closing and said that the man with him was his brother, come to him from far to the west, across the water.”

  “Ah.”

  “I didn’t know what this meant,” she went on. “Then you spoke of those—those horsemen, and how—” She rolled her head from side to side on the pillow. “It made me think of my dream.”

  “You have not lost your gift, then. Touch-the-Clouds will be happy to hear that.” He was silent for a while. “Your vision was not unlike his own, the vision that showed him his purpose. Do you know what I was in the years before I found you?”

  Why was he asking that question? she wondered. He never spoke of those years.

  “I was an adventurer,” he continued, “my only skill that of thinking up ways to make the money of others my own, along with some small talents that could aid me in this business—a good memory, a strong body, an ear that helped me to master other tongues. I left San Francisco in the company of scouts and trappers, thinking that I might find ways to make more money in the East when the war came, as I was certain it would, and that along the way I would learn a few things from my companions. And then I met Touch-the-Clouds, and knew that he—”

  Grisha cleared his throat. “There are times when one is seeking without knowing it, looking for what it is one must do without knowing what it is. One of the brothers of Touch-the-Clouds told me of his first vision, when he had gone out alone as a youth to seek it. He came back with his name and his vision of a brother far away, one who would come to him and fight at his side. And then Touch-the-Clouds told me himself of the hoop that would be mended, and of the brother who would aid him. He described his vision to me—the man on horseback with his tunic and belt and sword and bow and the shaven head and black braid coiled behind his ears—and I knew that he had seen a Tatar. And I knew what it meant. Now the same vision has come to you.”

  “But I do not know what it means,” she murmured.

  “Genghis Khan conquered China and Russia. Other khans followed him, his sons and grandsons, but he was the khan who ruled most of the world. And Touch-the-Clouds is his brother, the man who can be the American Khan.”

  “What are you talking about?” Katia whispered.

  “The American Khan, the ruler in these lands.”

  She raised herself on one elbow, frightened by the tone in his voice. “Grisha, if he can keep the Lakota hunting grounds, that will be enough, and he will need the consent of the other chiefs for that.”

  “Ah. Yes, perhaps.” He sat back in his chair, and she had the feeling that he regretted his words to her. “What do you think of Lemuel Rowland?”

  “That he is unhappy. That he will soon forget us. If you were hoping that he would come west with us, I am sure that he will not.”

  “Do you think he is trustworthy?”

  “Yes. I don’t know how I know that, but I see it. Grisha—” She sat up. “Let me stay in St. Louis.” He gazed at her steadily. “Or send me back to Washington.”

  “What is it, Katia? Are you afraid?”

  “It isn’t that. I’m of no use to you here.”

  “I will leave it to Touch-the-Clouds to decide that. You will come with me, Katia.”

  Of course she would. She had nowhere else to go, no means of supporting herself. “I am of no importance to him,” she said, “but I will go.”

  “Yes, you will. Do you think I took you in for nothing, for no reason? I think I know what Touch-the-Clouds intends for you. I think that he intends to make you his wife.”

  FOUR

  Caleb Tornor thought of Fort Riley as the ends of the earth. He had grown up amid Pennsylvania’s green hills, but even a boyhood passed in a desert might not have prepared him for this desolation. The wind blew so hard across the flat Kansas plateau that the blowing sand could scour pots. To the west was emptiness and Indians—Cheyenne, Sioux—not that it mattered much to him which particular tribe of redskins he encountered.

  Now, riding out from the fort, he began to appreciate Fort Riley. There was something of civilization inside its walls. There was nothing civilized out here, on the empty flat land stretching to nowhere, nothing but Indians and the buffalo they hunted.

  He could not for the life of him figure out why the Negro soldiers had deserted, but they had, and his orders were to bring them back, one way or another.

  Buffalo soldiers, the Indians called them. The redskins were afraid of them, some said. Caleb had heard that they wouldn’t scalp a black man they had killed because they thought it was bad medicine, although maybe it was only because the hair wouldn’t make for an impressive scalp. Maybe the deserters thought that the redskins would be too afraid to come after them, but they wouldn’t be too fearful of ten men to kill them all, even if they did leave them their hair.

  And if we find the niggers first, Caleb thought, they’re not much better off than they would be with the redskins. George Armstrong Custer wasn’t an officer to let men get away with desertion. Some had tried it a couple of years ago and been shot for their trouble, and they had been white men. “Bring them back dead or alive
” was the colonel’s order, not that Caleb would have cared all that much about what happened to the black men.

  Caleb had fought in the war, not to free darkies or to preserve the Union, but because he had lacked the money to buy himself out of the draft. As a soldier in the Army of the Potomac, he had expected to be afraid most of the time, terrified of dying and maybe even more afraid of losing a limb and having to drag through the rest of his life with a shattered body. He had seen men lying on the battlefield with their own bloody entrails clutched in their hands, had heard them scream in pain as their damaged legs and arms were cut away from the rest of them. He had known dark fear, but also the exhilaration of knowing that he was alive while others were dead, and that some of the dead had died at his hands. His comrades had longed for their homes, but Caleb soon realized that he was not like the other soldiers. The longer he was away from the farm where he had grown up, the more pallid and tiresome and tedious his past life became. He had not gone home when the war ended, but west.

  He had been with Custer and the Seventh ever since the winter campaign against the Cheyenne, when they had been ordered to kill all the warriors in the camp of one of the chiefs. It had been easier simply to shoot at any Indian rather than to try to sort out women and children and old people from the fighting men. Custer had found himself a girl in that camp, although he had been quick to abandon her before rejoining his wife. Caleb still did not know how Custer could have wanted a redskin girl in his bed, however pretty she was. Some of the men might sink that low, but he never had, not yet.

  Young Jebediah Kearns rode up ahead, peering at the ground. Most of their Indian scouts had run off long ago, disappearing into the Plains. Caleb cared for Indians considerably less than he cared for blacks, but a few of the Crows could be tolerated, and once they had been useful. Now they preferred even the company of their old enemies the Cheyenne and the Sioux to that of the United States Cavalry.

  Caleb knew that the Indians could be beaten. Custer was itching to go after the Cheyenne for their raids; General Sheridan was ready to mount a campaign against their winter camping grounds. But Washington was holding them back. Some said that the expense of fighting Indians, especially in the wake of the War Between the States, was draining the Union treasury. Others claimed that the commissioner of Indian Affairs had talked the president into holding the troops back.