Climb the Wind: A Journey Into Another Past

by Pamela Sargent

  And while Washington dithered, the Indians grew more stubborn in their resistance, more bands disappeared from the reservations and the lands near the agencies, and it was rumored that more of the tribes were smoking the peace pipe with old enemies.

  The men riding behind Caleb were quiet now, but he had heard their grumbling back at Fort Riley. The blacks were not the only soldiers capable of deserting. If they kept letting the redskins get away with more raids without striking back severely, other men would lose heart. Presumably any other deserters would have enough wit to flee east instead of west, to safety instead of into territory full of savages.

  What bothered him about this bunch of deserters was that they hadn’t deserted all of a sudden, but with some forethought. They had to have been thinking about it, planning for it. Given that niggers did not, as far as he could tell, have much natural equipment to think with, he was struck by the care they had put into their desertion—the stolen food they had taken with them, the extra weapons and horses. The blacks who had come back to the fort, who had refused to run off with the deserters, were soon looking as if they regretted having made the choice to return.

  The trail of the deserters was fairly easy to follow. They had not buried the evidence of their fires, or made much effort to hide their tracks as they rode west. He and his men kept on the trail until the sun had set and it was time to make camp.

  They were up before dawn, shivering in the cold as they mounted their horses. The flat land soon gave way to small hills, which made Caleb more wary. He preferred a flat plain where he could see what was coming from far off; men could be ambushed from hills.

  “Bunch of niggers,” a man behind him said. Caleb knew his voice for that of Bob Tenefer. “I say maybe we oughta let the redskins have’em.”

  Jeb Kearns was riding back to them. “Saw something up ahead, sir ...” he gasped out as he reined in his horse. “... ain’t gonna like it.” He caught his breath. “There’s tracks of Indian ponies up ahead. There’s the tracks of Washburn’s men, and then they meet with these redskin tracks, and then they go on like they’re riding together, Washburn’s men and the Indians.”

  Washburn was the black sergeant with the deserters. “Hold on,” Caleb said. “Riding together? Like they been captured?”

  Kearns shook his head. “Like they just met up with each other. Like they stopped there a bit to rest up and then rode on. No sign of somebody trying to get away, or a fight.”

  It sounded like a trap. Caleb felt a prickling at the back of his neck. Given his druthers, he would have ordered his men back to the fort right now.

  “Kearns,” he said, “your platoon’s coming with me. The rest of you wait here two hours and then come after us.” He didn’t like dividing his forces that way, but liked the idea of leading them all into a trap even less. “If we haven’t caught up with them by tomorrow night, we’re heading back to the fort.”

  He rode on with Kearns, the other men behind them. The trail was now leading them northwest. There were more hills around them. By evening, they stopped to make camp. After sunset, the second column had caught up with them.

  Caleb posted guards, then tried to sleep. In the middle of the night, one of the sentries came to his tent to wake him. “Sir,” the man whispered, “I think they’re out there. Do you hear it?”

  He threw off his blanket and sat up. For a moment, he could hear the distant sound of chanting and wailing, and then it died.

  “I think we better get ready to meet them,” Caleb said. It was too late to turn back and hope that they could outrun them. The men dug makeshift barricades of dirt, cleaned their rifles again, and waited.

  At dawn, they saw the tiny shapes of men on horseback against the horizon. Caleb squinted, counting them, seeing that they greatly outnumbered his men. Then the strangers began to ride toward them, dust billowing around the legs of their mounts.

  He threw himself behind one dirt ridge and took aim, then saw that one of the Indians in front was carrying a white banner. “Hold your fire,” he shouted to his men. “Looks like they want to talk.”

  Most of them were Cheyenne; he could tell that by their war bonnets. Others were Sioux, and a few he recognized as Kiowa. The sight of them all together made him even more uneasy, and there was another man with them, one with light brown skin and a black man’s woolly hair.

  Caleb stood still as they rode toward him. Most of them reined in their horses and halted two hundred feet away while a group of five, the woolly-haired man among them, trotted toward Caleb. His men were ready to shoot if anything went amiss, but taking on this band would be suicide; they outnumbered his men at least four to one, possibly more. Also in their favor was that every one of them, as far as he could see, had a rifle and wore an ammunition belt, and several had pistols at their waists. Where had they stolen all that firepower?

  The woolly-haired man, who looked like he might be a light-skinned Negro, raised one arm. He wore a loose cloth shirt, leather leggings, and the leather shield of an Indian brave hung from his saddle. “I’ll speak for my comrades,” he said without preamble. “You are in pursuit of ten deserters—am I correct?”

  Rough as the man looked, he had a precise, almost prissy, way of talking. “You got that right,” Caleb replied. “Lieutenant Caleb Tornor of Company F of the Seventh Cavalry. I’ve got orders to bring those men back dead or alive. If they’ve changed their minds, we’ll take them back with us. If they’re dead, I’d be obliged if your—comrades—” he almost spit the word, “would let us take back the bodies.”

  “They are not dead,” the Negro said, “and they would prefer not to ride back with you.”

  A nigger with airs, Caleb thought as he listened to the man talk; a nigger with airs running around with a pack of savages. “I don’t know that unless they tell me so themselves,” he said.

  The Negro smiled. “Then you’ll just have to take my word for it. They’re not in your country anymore. They have decided they would rather be part of another nation.”

  “I don’t know what kind of nation that would be,” Caleb said. “There’s nothing out here except for Indians and buffalo—maybe a few coyotes.”

  “There are people who have been granted these lands by treaty. If others choose to join them, they are welcome here. That’s the message we give you to take back with you if you leave peacefully. Keep your soldiers and settlers east of Fort Laramie, and keep your railroad tracks away from the buffalo grazing grounds in the northern Plains, and there is no reason for us to fight. And, as I said, anyone who wants to live among us is free to do so.”

  “Renegades,” Caleb muttered. “I thought the Indians didn’t want settlers out here.”

  “They wouldn’t all be settlers. They could be—” The man paused. “They could be Cheyenne, Kiowa, Lakota, Comanche, Crow—depending of course on which people they chose to live among.”

  “Renegades, you mean.” Caleb spat, filled with disgust and contempt for this pale-skinned smooth-talking darkie and the black deserters. “I’ve got to talk to my men.”

  “Fine,” the Negro said. “We’ll wait yonder.” He said something else to the Indians with him in another tongue, and then they rode back to where the other Indians were waiting.

  “Sir,” Jeb Kearns said, “I seen him before, the one talking to you.”

  Caleb tensed. “Where?”

  “Junction City—and I seen him talking to Josiah Washburn. They was standing out in the street, just talking. And a month later, I seen them talking in a saloon.”

  “You’re sure it was the same man,” Caleb said.

  “I’m sure.”

  He could put it together now. Washburn and the others had not only decided to desert, they had known where they were going. His stomach knotted. He could understand the black soldiers wanting to desert. Army life got to some men after a while, and there had been more discontent among the troops lately as they waited for their commanders to act. He could even understand a bunch of men making fo
r the frontier and hoping they could stay alive out there. But these men had joined the savages. Whatever he thought about darkies, whatever other lacks they had and however inferior to the white man they were, he had always assumed that they hated Indians as much as he did.

  Caleb looked around at the other men. “All right,” he muttered. “They outnumber us. They’ve got enough firepower to wipe us out, and we can’t outrun them. We’ll have to go back without the deserters.”

  Bob Tenefer whistled. “Glad I won’t be in your boots when you report to Custer.”

  Caleb did not want to think of that. Maybe this time, he told himself, somebody’ll do something when they hear about this. Maybe they’ll finally turn Sheridan loose.

  He left his men and beckoned to the Negro and the Indians. The man began to ride toward him, with two braves on either side. Caleb swallowed the anger that suddenly welled up inside him.

  FIVE

  A few days after Katia came to the camp of Touch-the-Clouds, she had a dream in which she heard a woman’s voice speaking her old name, the name she had forgotten. When she woke, she remembered that her name was Graceful Swan and that the voice she had heard in her dream was her mother’s. She spoke her name to the wife of Touch-the-Clouds and the other women, only to find out that they had known it all along, that the chief had given it to them, but had been waiting to see if she would discover it for herself.

  Things were a little easier for Graceful Swan after that. White Cow Sees, the wife of Touch-the-Clouds, brought her into her tepee and told her that their mothers had been the daughters of two sisters. As she looked after the dogs with the other women, worked at buffalo hides, watched over the younger son of White Cow Sees, and cooked game, Graceful Swan felt some of her old life coming back to her. Sometimes she could imagine that White Cow Sees was the mother she had lost, and that little had changed for her since her childhood. At other times, when she watched White Cow Sees fashioning an adze from bone, sewing beads on deerskin in elaborate patterns that Graceful Swan had forgotten how to read, or spreading fat on a hide to prepare it for softening, she thought of how much lore she had lost, how much she might never master. Often, she was too tired even to think of whether she was happy or unhappy.

  Grisha left two days after they arrived, to ride west with Denis Laforte and two Lakota men, saying only that he would come back before the Moon of the Shedding Ponies. In his absence, Graceful Swan went about her work, making herself as useful as she could to White Cow Sees. She saw no sign that Touch-the-Clouds intended to make her his wife, as Grisha had predicted. Instead the chief seemed indifferent to her presence.

  Perhaps Grisha had been mistaken. Maybe Touch-the-Clouds, despite his horses and his followers and the means to care for more than one woman, preferred to keep only one wife. White Cow Sees had given him two sons, and was growing heavy with her third child.

  After seventeen days, Grisha returned to the camp. He went into the tepee of Touch-the-Clouds, and the two men spoke for a while. That night, the chief asked Graceful Swan if she would become his wife. She searched his face for some sign of longing or passion, but saw only the same distant indifferent gaze she often glimpsed in Grisha’s eyes.

  She and Touch-the-Clouds were married in early summer, during the Moon When the Ponies Shed. White Cow Sees, her nearest female relative, provided her with a tepee and some household goods, although Graceful Swan was certain that Grisha had come to some sort of bargain with the chief in payment for them. She was carried on a blanket to her own tepee, where a feast was held, and she listened in silence as the men told stories of past battles and the women spoke of their children.

  Graceful Swan’s new husband spent one night with her before leaving the camp to meet with a Kiowa chief to the south. He was silent during their lovemaking and said nothing to her afterward before he rode away, but Graceful Swan knew from the sounds she had often heard in the night that Touch-the-Clouds felt more passion for his other wife. Perhaps more time had to pass before her husband could show the same feelings for her.

  When Touch-the-Clouds returned, he spent one night with White Cow Sees and the next with Graceful Swan. This time, he was gentler with her, and held her face between his hands after he had spent himself.

  “You have not been unhappy here,” he said as he stretched out at her side.

  “No, I have not,” she said.

  “My other wife has a liking for you.” His words warmed her. “Were you unhappy in the world of the Wasichu? Or were you content to leave it?”

  She did not know what to tell him. There had been many moments of unhappiness among the whites, especially during her years at school, when the other girls had whispered about her behind her back and sometimes openly insulted her, but nothing that had evoked deep sorrow or despair. She had been reasonably content in Grisha’s house, living on the fringes of his life. Sometimes she wondered if all the feeling had been burned out of her by the massacre at her father’s camp.

  “The world of the Wasichu seems far away now,” she said at last.

  “It is coming closer to us,” he said softly. “I must find out more about it before it swallows us,” and then she heard a sound from him that might have been a laugh.

  Two days later, when she was outside working at a hide with White Cow Sees, the great chief Crazy Horse came to his camp with ten of his warriors and said that he wanted to talk. Graceful Swan had heard from the others about how strange Crazy Horse looked, with his pale skin and reddish-black hair, and he looked strange even to her, after all of her years spent among palefaces. As Crazy Horse dismounted, Touch-the-Clouds made a short speech of welcome, invited the other chief into his tepee, and told Graceful Swan and White Cow Sees to remain outside.

  • • •

  Grisha was walking toward them from a tepee at the edge of the camp. In exchange for a couple of bundles of cloth and some metal pots, one warrior and his family had given him a place in their tent.

  “You are not to enter,” White Cow Sees said to him as he neared the chief’s tepee. “Our husband and Crazy Horse have much to say to each other.”

  Graceful Swan saw Grisha’s eyes widen as White Cow Sees spoke the name of Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse, Tashunka Witko ... she sounded his name to herself silently. He was a great chief and a fierce fighter—that much everyone knew. He was said to possess strong war medicine and often wandered off by himself to seek visions. Some of the people who had spoken of him to her sounded both admiring and fearful. Now she knew from the look on Grisha’s face that he was afraid of Crazy Horse.

  He said, “I have heard that Crazy Horse is a man of few words.”

  White Cow Sees motioned toward her husband’s tent with her head. “That is so, but he has many words to speak to my husband today.” She walked off, her baby strapped to her back.

  Graceful Swan looked away from Grisha. “What is it?” she whispered in English.

  “I think that Crazy Horse came here to tell your husband that he cannot trust me.” He paused. “That he should not trust me.”

  “But you are his friend.”

  “Crazy Horse does not think so.”

  At that moment, the entrance flap of the tepee was lifted. Crazy Horse came outside, followed by Touch-the-Clouds. When Graceful Swan looked at the two Lakota men, they kept their eyes from her, as though refusing to see her.

  “In your camp,” Crazy Horse muttered, “I feel farther from the real world than ever.”

  “The Crow have made peace with us,” Touch-the-Clouds responded. “Some of the buffalo soldiers, the Wasichu Sapa, have decided to join us. Even some of the Wasichu will fight with us.”

  “The Wasichu are our enemies,” Crazy Horse said.

  “Not all of them. The Yellow Hair in my camp is my ally.’’

  Crazy Horse looked directly at Grisha then, raising his head to gaze at the taller man with his black eyes. “It is this Yellow Hair in your camp who brings you to violate our sacred places. He has brought men from far away. He
disturbs the spirits. He brings bad medicine to the Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, the center of the world.”

  “He is doing what my visions told us we must do. He is carrying out what my visions showed me we had to do to keep our lands, and I saw those visions before I ever laid eyes on him.”

  I should not be here listening to this, Katia thought. She wanted to run away from the men, but could not bring herself to move.

  “Your visions did not tell you to violate our sacred places,” Crazy Horse said, “to rob the ground of its yellow metal and dust, to bring in men and wagons from far away.”

  “Our sacred places have not been violated. We are taking only what the spirits have given to us so that we can win our war with the Wasichu.”

  Crazy Horse motioned at Grisha. “Is that what the Yellow Hair tells you? We should be at war with his people, too.”

  “We are not at war with him. The Wasichu to the east took his people’s northern lands from them. We are not at war with his comrade, the man called Laforte.” Touch-the-Clouds stepped back from the other chief. “I will tell you what the Yellow Hair is. His people came here from far to the west, but others of his people came here long ago, at the beginning of the world. They are both our ancestors and the ancestors of the Yellow Hair.”

  Crazy Horse shook himself.

  “His ancestors and ours come from the same chief,’’ Touch-the-Clouds went on, “a great chief who lived long ago on the other side of the world. This chief lived among bands of horsemen who warred with one another. He forced them to make treaties, and they became a nation of warriors. And when they were bound together, they rode against an enemy who lived to the east of them, a people with weapons and riches that were greater even than those of our Wasichu enemies.”