by Anita Mills
“No, Mommy! I want to play in the water with Wild Horse!”
“I told you we have to be careful you don’t get burned more,” Margaret explained, yanking the girl’s dress down over her head. “Now be a good girl and try buttoning your dress by yourself. The buttons are in front. Show Mommy you can do it.” She looked at Wild Horse, who had turned around to watch her. He wore a deerskin apron over his loincloth this time, but his legs were still bare, the sides of his buttocks revealed. Over his brawny chest he wore only a deerskin vest. His arms were bare and most of his chest revealed. His hair was pulled back and tied into a tail at the back of his neck, a neck that still showed bruises. The burn marks were a darker red and showed some scabbing, but the injuries did not distract from his chiseled, handsome face.
“You had no right sneaking up on us like that!” she told him. “No right looking at my little girl…and at me.”
You liked it when I looked at you, he wanted to tell her. “What is wrong with looking at something precious and beautiful?” he asked aloud. “Do you think that because I am Cheyenne, I would do something terrible? I am not a man who looks upon little girls with bad thoughts. She is just a child, and she makes me think of Singing Bird, my own daughter.”
“I can be your little girl,” Evy said innocently.
Wild Horse smiled softly and looked at Margaret. “You see? She is not afraid of me. Why are you? Because you are a grown woman? Do you think I came here to violate you?”
Margaret’s cheeks grew ever hotter. She turned to pick up the blanket and picnic basket she had brought. “We have to go, Evy.”
“But, Mommy—”
Margaret gasped when a strong hand grasped her arm. She looked up into Wild Horse’s dark eyes. So close! He was so close, and there was a scent of wildness about him that stirred her deeply. She felt wicked and sinful, part of her enjoying his touch, another part of her telling her she should run. “Let go of me!” she demanded.
“I want you to stay. I want to talk,” he told her.
She had to force herself not to drop her eyes and gaze at his bare chest. What was this terrible temptation? “About what?”
“Just to thank you for helping me two suns ago…and for not telling the soldiers I am here.”
“Fine. I accept your thanks. Now let go of me.”
He frowned, letting loose of her arm. “What do you fear, Maggie?”
The way he spoke her name stunned her. The words were said softly, and for him to call her Maggie in an almost affectionate way brought another tingle that spread throughout her body. “I…I’m not afraid.”
“I see it in your eyes. I am not here to hurt you. I told you why I am here, and it brings me joy to see and listen to your little girl.”
Margaret looked around nervously. “It’s dangerous for you to be here. Someone could see you. You’re taking a great risk.”
He smiled softly. “I am not afraid.”
I am, Margaret thought, afraid of myself, not of you. Somehow she suspected he knew that, and she resented him for it. “Major Doleman has men out looking for you,” she reminded him.
“I know this. My people tell me.”
She watched his eyes. “You’ve been hiding at the reservation?”
He nodded. “I do not have family left, either my own or my wife’s. I stay with friends.”
Margaret moved away from him to where a tree shaded the grass. She set the blanket and basket on the ground again. “I’m sorry about what happened to your family. Major Doleman told us about it. We had dinner with him, the same day I saw you here at the pond.” She spread the blanket out in the shade, wondering if God could ever forgive this sin of wanting to stay here alone and talk with an Indian man. “He also told us how you kept a prisoner with you in order to learn English. He thinks you did it to help keep your people from being cheated in treaty making.” She looked back at him and saw some anger return to his eyes.
“It did little good. Even when treaties say wonderful things and promise us much, white men in place called Washington find a way to break it or to twist meaning of words. Your leaders are determined to have us all dead or pushed together on one little piece of land, and I know that they have power to do this. They are many, and we are few now. It is only a matter of time. My own fight will not help much, but I do it for pride. A man cannot just lie back and let others walk over him, even when he knows he cannot win.”
Margaret frowned. “I’m worried, Wild Horse. I truly am. I disagree myself with a lot that has happened. I have even argued with my own husband over his ideas for helping the Cheyenne.” She turned and called to Evy to come and sit down on the blanket and eat, then met Wild Horse’s eyes again. “I brought some ham and bread and a jug of water. Would you like to eat with us?”
He looked around himself this time, and he reminded her of a wild animal. He seemed to be literally sniffing the air, his eyes studying the shadows in the trees around them. “I will sit,” he told her then. “There is no one near.”
She studied him in utter fascination. “Would you really know it if someone was near, even if you couldn’t see them?”
He nodded. “I would know it. You whites do not keep all your senses trained. You are soft. You are used to living inside walls that destroy your sense of smell and hearing and seeing.”
Margaret smiled and sat down on the blanket. “You’re probably right.”
Evy ran over and sat down beside her. “Are you going to eat with us, Wild Horse?” she asked.
The man smiled, and again Margaret was struck by how his whole face changed when he grinned. His teeth were even and white, his lips full. She imagined him playing inside a tipi with his own children. Were they so different after all? What was it like for an Indian woman when her man made love to her? She imagined they were much freer about it, perhaps lying naked in the light of day, taking a special joy in the act.
She nearly gasped aloud then at realizing what she had been thinking. She kept her eyes averted from Wild Horse, afraid he would read her thoughts. “I’ll make you a sandwich,” she told him. She quickly cut some bread while he sat down, bending his legs and crossing them. Evy plopped down on her knees in front of him.
“Can you finish buttoning my dress?” she asked him.
He touched her cheek. “I will try, but my hands are big and clumsy for such little buttons.”
Evy giggled at the remark, holding still while he buttoned the last few at the top of the bodice of the dress. Margaret thought how utterly furious Edward would be if he knew she was letting an Indian man touch Evy, or that he had seen their daughter naked…had seen his wife with her chest bared and her legs showing. She took secret pleasure in realizing how drastically she was disobeying her husband’s wishes. She made a sandwich and poured some water into a tin cup. “It isn’t much,” she said, as she handed him the food.
He smiled softly, his fingers touching her own when he took it from her. “It looks like good meat. White men who make deals with government to sell them beef for reservations take money, then they sell good meat someplace else and give us bad meat. It is same for other supplies they bring us—all bad, no good. They make money from government, then make more from others who buy the good things from them and give them clothes and blankets that are worn and full of holes, fruit that is old. I could tell you many stories about how bad it is.”
Margaret frowned. “But the government should know what is going on!”
He smiled bitterly. “They do know! They simply do not care.” He shook his head, his eyes moving over her again. “You are so innocent of the truth, you and your husband both. Does he not know that as long as bellies are hungry and feet are cold, my people will not listen to what he has to say? He will not win them over until he helps to do something about how we are being cheated. Tell him to write to those who sent him here, people from his church. They can gather good things, good blankets and clothes and shoes and even food. If they would send these things, and if he would write letters to your Father
in Washington, tell my people he understands how they are being cheated and that he is trying to stop it, then they would listen to his teachings about your Jesus.”
Margaret’s face brightened. “That is exactly what I told him a couple of nights ago! I told him he first has to truly care, that the Cheyenne know when someone is sincere. We argued about it.” She handed a sandwich to Evy, who faced Wild Horse and sat cross-legged just like he did. “Evy, that is not a ladylike way to sit,” Margaret chided. “Put your legs together and pull your dress down.”
Wild Horse swallowed a bite of his sandwich. “Why do you care how she sits? This is most comfortable way to sit when you have nothing to lean against. You should try it yourself.”
Margaret could not meet his gaze, totally embarrassed at the thought of sitting with her knees apart that way, even though her dress covered her. “It is a sinful way for a lady to sit,” she said quietly, making herself a sandwich. When Wild Horse did not reply, she felt her cheeks growing hotter. Wild Horse probably had not even given thought to the implications of a woman sitting that way. She was the one who had made it seem sinful and suggestive, and was angry with herself for making it into something embarrassing.
“Can I please sit this way, Mommy? I want to sit like Wild Horse sits,” the child begged. “Why is it bad?”
Margaret looked at her, then she heard a soft chuckle from Wild Horse. She was surprised to hear him laugh at all, but for the moment it irritated her. He was laughing at her. He knew she was embarrassed, and she was even more furious with herself for planting such thoughts in his head. She moved to the farthest corner of the blanket, wondering what he must think of her sitting in the grass like this with her. “Sit however you like then,” she told Evy. “Just don’t ever sit that way in front of your father.”
Several moments of awkward silence followed while Wild Horse finished his sandwich. Margaret ate only a small piece of meat and drank some water, her appetite gone. It was Wild Horse who finally broke the silence.
“Why is it you vehoe think it is so bad to show your skin or to sit a certain way? Why must you wear so many heavy clothes when it is hot? Our little children always run naked in summer. Our women wear only light deerskin dresses with nothing under them. There is nothing bad in this. I think it is white man who makes it seem bad, because we have learned white men think with their manparts instead of with their heads. Because of this, little children cannot be naked and free, and their women must hide themselves under many layers of clothes.”
Margaret could not bring herself to look at him. “Please don’t talk that way in front of Evy.” She breathed deeply to compose herself, shocked by his words, yet finding no argument for them. Did he realize how she longed to swim naked with Evy? The man was uncomfortably perceptive. She wished she could argue his point, but she knew he was right. If Indian children could play naked and Indian women could dress freely and comfortably without fear of Indian men getting the wrong ideas and attacking them, then which race was the more virtuous?
“What is a manpart, Mommy?” Evy asked innocently.
Wild Horse laughed aloud, and Margaret was mortified. She quickly rose. “Please leave, Wild Horse.” She looked down at him, and he lost his smile.
“How easily offended you are. Do you not see I am trying to make you understand how my people think?” He set aside his sandwich and stood up to face her. “You think we need saving, that we cannot possibly be happy unless we live as you do. Do you not understand we were happy before you came? My people were once joyful and innocent. Our children sleep right beside the mother and father. They often see the mating, and they think nothing of it, because it a natural thing. They learn early in life that it is beautiful, a part of loving one another. Why should a child be taught it is wrong? It only makes them learn to be afraid of it so that later in life they never know how to enjoy it. I am thinking that you have never enjoyed your man.”
What was this intense grip at her insides? Why did his bold and sinful words stir her to the bones? “You have no right speaking to me like that, certainly not in front of Evy.”
A sneer moved across his face, and he shook his head in disgust. “Think about what I have told you. If you want to win my people, learn to share their joys and laugh with them. Learn not to be so serious all the time.”
He put the back of his fingers to her cheek, and she could not bring herself to move away from him or even to take offense.
“I will come back here again when your husband is preaching at agency. If you want to understand more, you will come, too.” He took his hand away. “I will tell you about what we believe, about Maheo. I think perhaps he is no different from your Jesus. Perhaps he is Jesus, come to us in another form with a different name. I will teach you that your God and mine are not so different.”
He turned and quickly vanished into the underbrush, and Margaret stood there transfixed, her mind whirling with confusion, her body feeling on fire from his touch.
Edward watched his wife cut him a piece of bread. He wished she had not been so right about some of the things she had said the other night, wished even more that he could tell her so, but the fear of punishment for forbidden thoughts and emotions was still great in him. He could still see his father’s angry, condescending looks whenever he “erred,” could still feel his mother’s coldness. Most of all he could still feel the paddle that often bruised his hips and legs and back, or the whip that left red welts on him. If they could be so unforgiving and dole out such punishment to their own son, what would God do to him if He took disfavor with him?
He loved his God, but his parents had also taught him to be afraid of Him. Part of his reason for coming here was to prove to his parents that he was a faithful servant, willing to go even to such a remote, dangerous, and lonely place as Indian Territory, to bring God’s word to a people who had never heard it. Was Margaret right in saying that the Cheyenne sensed his heart was not in this? That he was here just to prove something to himself and his family and not because he particularly cared about the Cheyenne?
No. He must not admit to such a thing. Nor could he admit to himself or anyone else that he did sometimes want Margaret just for the woman she was, that he did sometimes feel a great passion, an absolute lusting after her, or that he did sometimes want to discuss her opinion about things. He wasn’t sure now just how to tell her or that he should even be thinking such thoughts, for all his life he had been told all these things were wrong.
“The major says that Indian, Wild Horse, is supposedly dead,” he said aloud. He noticed she hesitated in buttering his bread. What was that look on her face?
“Oh? How do they know that? Did they find him?” She handed him the buttered bread, meeting his eyes, but Edward thought she looked startled, even afraid he might be right.
He took the bread, watching her closely. “No, but the soldiers who went after him say they ran into some cattlemen who claim they caught him with stolen cattle, and they hanged him. The soldiers went to find the body, but it wasn’t there. Now they’re not sure what to believe. I can’t imagine a man could get himself out of a noose. The captain feels his own people found him and took down his body, but he believes, and so do I, that the Cheyenne would surely be more upset, maybe even do something drastic, if they found a leader like Wild Horse hanged. Those at the Darlington Agency haven’t even seen Wild Horse, or heard anything about his dying. The Cheyenne there have a way of keeping in touch with the wilder ones who continue to roam and raid, so they would probably know.”
“So the captain doesn’t think he is dead?”
“He doesn’t quite know what to think.”
“What would he do if he found him alive?” she asked cautiously. Edward cut a piece of meat with more vigor than required, and Margaret knew he was becoming irritated again that she should dare to ask questions about army matters.
“What difference does it make, Margaret? They would send him off to prison, I suppose. He stirs up too much trouble.”
<
br /> Prison. Such a beautifully spiritual man in such an awful place. It didn’t seem fair. And the way Edward had said her name, so cold and with anger. He had never spoken it the way Wild Horse had the other day, with a kind of touching reverence.
“Wild Horse helped me button my dress once,” Evy spoke up.
She swallowed some peas, and Edward frowned. “Evy, you are going to have to stop making up these stories. God does not approve of little girls telling tall tales. I have never had to punish you for anything in your life, but I will if you keep letting your imagination run away with you like that.”
Evy pouted, and Margaret ached to defend her innocent daughter. She was on the verge of blurting out the truth, for Evy’s sake, when Evy looked at her and grinned, seemingly unaffected by her father’s threats. She covered her mouth and giggled, and Margaret decided not to say anything yet. If it came to Evy being terribly upset or unnecessarily punished, she would have to betray her word to Wild Horse that she would not tell where he was, although she knew she would have to tell eventually. Maybe Wild Horse would just leave again and never be found. Then she could keep her secret forever. Yet the thought of his leaving brought an ache to her heart, stirring a loneliness she could not explain. She realized that when the day came that she could never see the man again, she would miss him.
It had been five days since their last meeting. Because of the sinful way the man made her feel, she had stayed away from the pond the last time Edward went to the reservation. Had Wild Horse gone there and waited for her? Was he angry? Disappointed? Maybe he had already fled again. It seemed incredible he would stay so close and risk being arrested by the soldiers, maybe sent to a prison in Florida, just so he could come to the pond and see her again. The thought of it gave her a feeling of worth and being wanted that Edward had never given her.
Had Edward thought about the things she told him? He behaved as though their conversation of a few nights ago had never happened. They finished supper with little more conversation, and then it was time for Bible reading and prayers. Evy fell asleep before Edward was finished, and he insisted Margaret wake her up, that she must not sleep during the reading of the Word. Finally he finished, and Margaret put Evy to bed. By the time she finished her own chores for the evening, Edward was already in bed. She changed in the darkness, crawled in beside him on the feather mattress and curled up to go to sleep, but he turned to her, pushing up her nightgown.