Climb the Wind: A Journey Into Another Past

by Pamela Sargent

  The woman had been useful, and that had mollified Touch-the-Clouds, who had been furious to discover that there was even one enemy survivor. Jane had known all of the scouts and had confirmed that all of them, including the ones whose bodies she had seen while scouting with her comrade Isaiah, were dead. She had drunk a lot of whiskey while pointing out this man and that, speaking their names in a clear voice as if wanting to make certain that Lemuel and Touch-the-Clouds and all of the warriors would hear them. She had kept her composure in the midst of the carnage until they had come upon the body of a Negro, and then she had dropped to her knees, whispering his name: “Isaiah.” Someone had taken the dead man’s scalp; others had stripped him of his clothing. Lemuel had expected her to cry. Instead, she had screamed out his name, over and over again, until her voice was little more than a rasp.

  Jane tilted the flask again. “I am a coward, Rowland,” she said. “I know I’d be better off dead myself, but I’d still rather be alive.”

  “That isn’t cowardice,” he said.

  He had asked Touch-the-Clouds to spare her, and the Lakota had been reluctant to show any mercy, but he had finally agreed. She would not be allowed to leave Lakota territory, at least not for now, and would be killed if she tried to escape. Jane had accepted this command passively, and then Touch-the-Clouds had given her to Lemuel, obviously wondering why he wanted her. Her face was plain and weather-worn, wisps of drab blond hair hung down from under her hat, and her skinny body was that of a boy; about the best Lemuel could say for her looks was that she had all of her teeth. She cursed like a soldier and had, he was beginning to see, too much fondness for whiskey. Still, she had been a scout and claimed to be a good shot. At least she now had a chance to survive out here.

  Glorious Spirit and Victorious Spirit sat by another campfire. The two brothers were watching Rubalev, their usual half-smiles on their faces. They were, one of them had said to Lemuel, pleased that their arrow-rockets had worked so well. “We make more better ones,” Victorious Spirit—or Glorious Spirit—had told him. “Make with bigger noise, more boom, bring down whole mountain next time!” The Chinese man had showed his teeth in a broad smile.

  Rubalev was singing his kill song again. “You were alone,” he chanted, “and so was I, but it was you who fell, and I who struck you with my coup stick.”

  Jane said in a low voice, “That yellow-haired son of a bitch has the devil in him.”

  Lemuel got up and climbed the slope, suddenly wanted to be away from the kill songs and the dead.

  White Cow Sees and Katia had raised a small wickiup of hides and branches by dusk. The sun set behind the hills to the west and still their husband had not ridden to them. Soon a rider came and said that Touch-the-Clouds would come to them the next morning. He gave the older son of Touch-the-Clouds a doll that he had made with some of the green picture paper he had taken from a dead soldier’s pockets, before Yellow Hair Rubalev and the Orphan of the East had told the men that the paper had value and should be saved, and used later to buy more weapons.

  The two women ate some dried meat and then curled up under their buffalo robes to sleep. Katia woke abruptly in the night. At first she thought that one of the children was murmuring in his sleep, and then realized that the sound was coming from outside.

  She slipped from under her robe, pulled on deerskin boots, and crawled out of the shelter. Someone was singing in the distance. She could barely hear the song, but knew at once that it was not a Lakota or a Cheyenne chant.

  There was light on the slopes of the Mountain Goat. Tents had been raised near the mountain, tents of white cloth unlike the Lakota dwellings made of painted hides. Several campfires were burning, and brightly enough so that she could make out the forms of blue-coated men sitting around the flames. She found herself walking toward the mountain, following the stream that led toward it, unable to turn back. The music had changed; instruments accompanied the singing, instruments that sounded like trumpets.

  The men around the fires were not Indians. She saw that when she was closer. They were soldiers, seated by covered wagons, leaning against the wheels. Several of the men had tucked flowers into the headbands of their hats.

  I am seeing ghosts, Katia thought. The fires began to die, one by one, until the mountain was dark and the tents hidden by night. The only fires she could see now were those of the warriors camped below.

  Katia kept walking toward the mountain, following the black snake of the creek in the moonlight. She was near one of the wagons when a man’s voice called out her Lakota name. “Graceful Swan!” The voice sounded as though it came from a great distance. “Graceful Swan!”

  She moved away from the wagon and climbed past the bodies that still lay on the slope. “Katia,” a voice said behind her, the same voice that had been calling her Lakota name before. She knew that voice. Lemuel Rowland was calling to her.

  Katia turned to see a man’s shadowed dark shape standing just below her. “I heard them singing,” she said. “I saw them on the mountain.”

  “The warriors?”

  “The dead soldiers. The Blue Coats. They were here. I think their ghosts are still here. Why did you come here?”

  “Because I heard men singing,” Lemuel Rowland said. “It was a dream I was having. I fell asleep and heard them singing and then I found myself climbing up here with no memory of waking up.” He shook himself. “Maybe I am still asleep.”

  “You’re not asleep.” Katia turned away from him and continued to climb until she saw the glow of a fire above her. She moved toward the fire, thinking that it might be another vision, and then saw two women seated near the flames.

  “Walking Blanket Woman,” Katia said to one of the women, “why are you here?”

  “I sit with the dead chief of the Blue Coats.” Walking Blanket Woman waved an arm at the darkness beyond the fire. Something lay there, under a robe. Katia could smell it now: a rotting corpse. “I came here,” Walking Blanket Woman continued, “with Young Spring Grass to sit with the dead chief who is her kinsman, who is the father of her son.”

  Young Spring Grass smiled. Katia could see by the light of the fire that the Cheyenne woman’s arms and legs bore several bloody gashes.

  “He is dead,” Young Spring Grass murmured. “I rejoice that he is dead, but he is also the father of my son, so I have cut at myself with a knife in mourning for him.” She lifted her head. “He would not listen when he was told to ride away from here, to leave this place with his men. Now his Long Knives are all dead because he would not listen. I have pierced his eardrums with my awl, so that he will hear better in the next world.” She picked up a stick, thrust it into the flames until it caught fire, then held it toward the dead man.

  His face was now visible above the robe that covered him. Katia had seen his face before. She said, “I know this man.”

  “You know him, too?” Rowland asked, moving closer to the women; he was speaking to her in English now. “Did you meet him when you were living with Rubalev? He was in Washington from time to time—perhaps you saw him there.”

  “No,” she replied. “I didn’t meet him in the Wasichu world. I saw his face in the real world, the world my visions show me. I saw him last summer, when we camped near the valley of the Greasy Grass River.”

  “But how—”

  She sat down. “I hear the ghosts again,” she whispered.

  Rowland said, “I hear them, too,” and took her hand. The voices swelled around them, the voices of men singing “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” singing as though they knew that they would never see those girls again. Katia could not see the men, but she felt the presence of bodies crowded together and heard them cough and clear their throats and make gulping sounds as they drank.

  “They’re here,” Katia said, “they’re with us.” They were still alive somewhere, not in this world, not in the world of spirits, but in a place that was near, that was real, but that she could not reach. “They didn’t die,” she murmured. “That was an
illusion. The bodies we saw here aren’t real. They came to the Black Hills and they left again and then they died somewhere else. I saw that man—”

  “Custer,” Rowland said. “That dead man lying near us was Custer.”

  Katia took a breath. “This is what happened last summer,” she said. “I was out riding, alone. I left our camp and rode out alone. It was so sudden, that feeling that I had to be by myself.” Her hands were shaking; she pressed her palms together. “White Cow Sees didn’t stop me. No one tried to stop me. Later I was told by a medicine woman that she had seen from the look on my face that a spirit had taken possession of me.”

  “Go on,” Rowland said.

  “I rode toward the river and then I heard cries and then I was in the midst of a battle. Lakota and Cheyenne warriors were all around me, screaming war cries. I rode with them and bullets flew around us, but somehow I knew that none of those bullets could touch me, that I was protected. The warriors were riding toward a ridge where some soldiers—” She covered her face, remembering how fiercely the blue-coated soldiers had fought. It had been hand to hand in the end, the Blue Coats fighting with rifles and bayonets.

  “He was there,” Katia continued, “the man called Custer. I saw him fall when a bullet struck him in the chest. I saw him die.”

  She fell silent for a while. The invisible men that she could not see were still singing, but more faintly.

  “What happened then?” Rowland asked.

  “I don’t remember. I think that I fell from my horse. When I came to myself, I was lying on the ridge where I saw the man Custer die. My horse was grazing near me. I rode back to our camping circle to find my husband waiting for me. He was angry. I told him what I had seen, and he grew angrier.”

  Her hands were shaking again as she remembered how furious her husband had been. Telling him of the battle in her vision had only made him angrier. What did it mean? he wanted to know. Was it a warning? Was it something that would come to pass, or something that had already happened? When she could not answer, she had feared that he might beat her. He had not, but his rage had terrified her more than any beating.

  Katia struggled to compose herself. “He said that it might be a vision,” she said in a low voice, “or that it might be the work of evil spirits. He said that he had been patient, that he had waited to see if I had any of the power and strong medicine he had seen in me when I was a girl, but that all I had brought to him was a vision he could not understand. But now I think I may know what it was telling me.”

  The invisible soldiers were no longer singing. Behind her, Walking Blanket Woman and Young Spring Grass were chanting softly: “You did not listen, Long Hair. You did not listen.”

  “What does your vision mean?” Rowland asked.

  “Tonight, when I came here, and saw the soldiers and heard their singing, I knew that they were still alive somehow, in a world we can’t reach. Then I saw the body of Custer here, and the same face I saw at the Greasy Grass.” She paused. “I think it means that these men weren’t meant to die here, that they were meant to die somewhere else, in the place where I saw them in my vision. What my husband has done here has changed what will happen, and I don’t know whether that will help him or destroy him.” Katia plucked at her long braids. “Maybe this can all be explained another way. Maybe it only means that I have gone mad.”

  “If you’re mad,” Rowland said, “then so am I.” He turned toward her. “I heard these men in my dream, I saw them. I had—” He rested a hand lightly on her arm. “I’ve had the feeling before that something that has happened in this world hasn’t truly happened at all. It’s a feeling that doesn’t come upon me often, but when it does, it’s powerful enough to make me think that much of this world is an illusion.” He shook his head. “Illusion seems the wrong word, but I don’t know how else to say it.”

  She said, “It felt to me as though this battle happened and also didn’t happen.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that captures how I felt.”

  “But that is impossible.” She drew away from him. “My husband is right. My visions, whatever they may mean, are useless to him.”

  “You may have another vision, my wife. That may make the meaning clear.”

  That was her husband’s voice. Touch-the-Clouds had said the words in English. He stepped out of the darkness into the dim light of the fire. He had put aside his war bonnet, and wore only one eagle feather in his hair. Katia wondered how long he had been standing there, how much he had heard.

  “This was a victory,” Touch-the-Clouds continued, “to strike fear in the hearts of the Wasichu and to keep them away from Paha Sapa. Now you tell me that it may not be the victory we were meant to win.”

  “I do not know—” Katia began.

  “If it had been only you, my wife, who saw and heard the ghost of the Blue Coats who lie here, I might doubt that your visions have much to tell me. But the Orphan has also seen and heard them.”

  Katia glanced back at the fire. Young Spring Grass and Walking Blanket Woman were watching and listening, but they would not have understood what was being said. It did not matter; they had probably heard the hardness in her husband’s voice. She was suddenly afraid of what he might do.

  “You had a vision here,” Touch-the-Clouds went on. “Perhaps to find out what it means, you must go back to the Greasy Grass, where your earlier vision came to you, and seek another vision.”

  His words had the sound of a command. “And when must I do this?” she asked.

  “Soon. Before the next moon. I must know if there is anything to this before we fight again.”

  She lacked the power to protest. What was she to him? A childless woman, one he had taken as a wife only because he had believed that she had good medicine and that her visions might show him what would come to pass. If she could not be a true woman to him, then she would have to seek visions, as a warrior did. He would have to send her on a quest for another vision, even if it might mean her death. She had grown stronger among the Lakota, but she doubted that she would survive a solitary quest. She was not likely to reach the Greasy Grass and the ridge where she had last seen Custer until near the end of the Moon When the Geese Shed Their Feathers. The weather would grow colder after that, the autumn winds would begin to howl.

  Rowland said, “I also saw the ghosts of the Blue Coats here, and heard their songs.”

  “So you tell me,” Touch-the-Clouds said.

  “Searching for visions of how to fight should not be the business of women. Perhaps I am the one who should go on this quest.”

  “It is not the business of most women,” Touch-the-Clouds responded, “but my wife Graceful Swan claimed to see visions of what would come to pass as a child, and now she tells me that she saw this battle in another place.”

  “We shared this vision,” Rowland said, “so perhaps I should seek another vision with her.”

  “Then go,” Touch-the-Clouds said, “and search together. Leave tomorrow at dawn. Do not stop at any of the camps you may see along the way, for I want nothing to cloud any visions that may be sent to you. We will hunt buffalo and then camp by the Crazy Woman Creek during this moon. If you have not returned to me by the Moon of Falling Leaves, I will send someone after you.”

  He climbed swiftly to where the two women sat with the body of Custer, took out his knife, cut at the dead man’s head, then made his way back down to them.

  “Here.” He put a lock of Custer’s hair in her hand and closed her fingers around it. “Perhaps this will help to guide you.”

  “I have no choice,” Lemuel Rowland was saying to the man called Rubalev, the man with the devil in him. “She can’t come with me, so I have to leave her with you.”

  Jane looked from one man to the other. Rowland stood near the impaled corpse of one of Custer’s dogs. Rubalev closed the box in which he was collecting greenbacks scavenged from the dead, then looked up. “If she even thinks of escaping,” Rubalev said, “I will kill her.”

&nb
sp; “Hellfire,” Jane muttered, “don’t you think I know that?” Lem Rowland had come to her with a story of having to ride northwest with a wife of Touch-the-Clouds. He had said something about dreams and visions that she did not really understand. She had been persuading herself that maybe having to stay with him would make captivity more tolerable, and now he was turning her over to the Russian. She would never be able to look at Rubalev without remembering how much he had enjoyed dancing with Charley Reynolds’s scalp.

  “She’s been a scout,” Rowland said, “a Pony Express rider, and a wagon driver. You might find her useful.”

  Jane had not slept much, and Rowland looked as though he had not slept at all. The sky was growing light in the east; he would be riding out soon on his mysterious journey. Rubalev glowered at her, as if trying to decide whether keeping her alive might be too much trouble for him.

  “You are telling me,” Rubalev said, “that if she attempts to escape, she has the skill to survive.”

  “Damn it all, Rubalev,” Jane said, “I know enough to know when I have a chance and when I don’t, and right now I don’t. I know what you did to Charley. I know what you’d do to me.”

  “He won’t shoot you,” Rowland muttered, “unless you try to get away, and if he does, he’ll have to answer to me.” He stared at the light-haired man until Rubalev looked away.

  “I wish you luck, Rowland,” Rubalev said, “but I think you are foolish to go. If no vision comes to her, she will be of no further use to her husband. I am hoping that she has not lost the powers he values so much, but if she has, you would have been kinder to leave her to her death.”

  Rowland said, “You care nothing for her.”

  “You are wrong. It is she who has failed me.”

  Rowland’s face was grim. The anger in his eyes was enough to make Jane skittish. He’d kill that blond devil if he could, she thought. Rowland spun around quickly and strode away.