“Lizard and Coyote began to argue. Lizard said hands should be like his feet because he could grab things and hold on very tight.
“Coyote said no, hands should be like his, because he could dig and run very fast.
“Lizard said no, his way was best. That made Coyote angry and he chased Lizard, who ran into some rocks to hide. Then Coyote built a fire to drive Lizard out of his hiding place.
“Lizard climbed on a high rock above the fire and waved to the other animals, crying, ‘Here I am. Help me.’
“The other animals saw Lizard waving his hands and they thought Lizard had won the argument. And that is why people have hands like Lizard, with five fingers.”
Jassy clapped her hands, delighted with the winsome tale. She had never imagined Indians telling fairy tales to their children.
“Does he know a lot of stories like that?” she asked.
“Han. Among our people, storytellers are valued. Our history, and our hero legends, are passed from the old to the young. Is it not so among the wasichu?”
“Yes, but we also write our histories and our stories in books.”
“Books?”
“On paper.” Leaning forward, she wrote her name in the dirt. “This is writing. My people can communicate with each other in this way. We write our words in books…” Jassy frowned thoughtfully. “You know how your people keep a winter count on hides? Well, books are like your hides, except they’re made out of paper.”
Tasunke Hinzi nodded. “Writing seems like a good thing.”
“Yes.”
He sat there for a moment more, and then rose smoothly to his feet. “Tell my kola I will be back later.”
“I will.”
Jassy watched Tasunke Hinzi walk away. Indians were nothing like she had been told. She had been terrified of the Crow, but they had treated her well enough. The Lakota, too, were just people. True, they believed in different gods, their lifestyle was vastly different from hers, as was their language. But people were people wherever you found them. They loved and laughed, they fought and cried, they worried about their children and cared for their old ones. Some were easy to like, and some were easy to hate. But they were all just people, making the best of what they had.
Knowing that, she didn’t feel like such a stranger.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Two weeks passed. By the end of the second week, Creed was sitting up for longer and longer periods of time.
By the end of the third week, he was able to go outside to relive himself.
Another week passed, and he fretted over the weakness that plagued him. The slightest exertion left him exhausted. It galled him to be bedridden. The ache in his chest was bearable but constant. But worst of all was the fact that he was too sore to make love to Jassy.
Ah, Jassy. She tended him day and night, hovering over him like a red-haired angel. She did everything she could to make him comfortable, listening while he complained, ignored him when he acted like a spoiled child. But he couldn’t help it. And he couldn’t bring himself to tell her that she was the cause of his most urgent distress, that even though he wasn’t physically strong enough to take her in his arms and make love to her, her nearness, her touches, her very scent, kept his body in a constant state of arousal, a fact he managed to keep hidden beneath a buffalo robe.
Another week passed, and his strength began to return. He spent his mornings walking with Jassy along the river. It was good to be alive, good to be among his People again. Aside from Tasunke Hinzi and Mato Wakuwa, there were only three or four faces he recognized from his childhood. Were all the others dead, he wondered, or enduring the living death of the reservation?
He spent his afternoons resting in the sun, drinking in the sights and sounds of the village. Jassy had become friends with a white woman who had married one of the warriors. Once she was certain Creed was well on his way to recovery, she spent almost every afternoon with Sunlata, learning Lakota ways, helping Sunlata with her four children.
Creed let out a long sigh. Jassy was with Sunlata now, learning how to make moccasins, and he was alone in the lodge. Lying there, his eyes closed, he listened to the familiar sounds of his childhood. He could hear women laughing as they erected a new lodge nearby. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of drumming.
He heard Mato Wakuwa telling stories to the children, and he remembered the days when he had sat at the shaman’s feet, enraptured by the medicine man’s tales. Mato Wakuwa must be a hundred, Creed thought, for he had been an old man when Creed was just a boy. For a minute, he listened as Mato Wakuwa told the story of why Bobcat’s face is flat. It was a Coyote story. Coyote, the trickster, figured in many of the Lakota stories. In this tale, Coyote sang a magic song to put Bobcat to sleep, and then Coyote began to push on Bobcat’s face, pushing harder and harder, making Bobcat’s face flatter and flatter. When Bobcat woke up, he felt funny, and then he smelled Coyote all around. Certain something was wrong, he ran to a lake and looked at his reflection, and when he saw what Coyote had done, he went looking for Coyote, and when he found him asleep, Bobcat sang his own magic song, and then he began pulling on Coyote’s nose, until it got longer and longer.
“And that,” he heard Mato Wakuwa say, “is why Bobcat has a flat face, and Coyote has a long nose.”
The children begged for another story, but Creed’s mind drifted away from the account of how Crow came to be black. Instead, he reminisced about his childhood. He had never been ashamed of his Indian blood. It had been a good way to grow up. Early in life, a Lakota boy learned to take pride in himself, and in his people. He was taught to be proud of his accomplishments, to try to be the best in whatever he did. His first kill was honored. When he was fourteen, he went out alone to cry for a vision.
It was one of the things Creed regretted most, that he had never had the opportunity to seek a vision, that he had never received a warrior’s name. He wondered now if his life might have turned out differently if he’d had a spirit guide to instruct him.
And then, from out of nowhere, he found himself thinking of his mother, something he hadn’t done in years. He recalled his bitterness when she had forced him to leave the People and go back east to Philadelphia. He had despised her then, for forcing him to cut his hair, for burning his buckskins, for insisting he speak English, for sending him to a private school where he was taunted and teased unmercifully until he blackened one boy’s eye and broke another’s nose. That had earned the respect of his peers, if not their affection. It had also earned him a severe tongue-lashing from his mother and several swats across his backside from the headmaster.
Most of all, he remembered the time he had been arrested for busting up that saloon. He’d never forgiven her for letting him spend two months sitting in that damn jail.
Creed swore under his breath at the memory. He had never hated anyone the way he had hated his mother for leaving him in that squalid little cell.
Now, he wondered if his mother was still alive, if she had ever remarried. With a frown, he realized he might have some half-brothers or sisters living in the East, maybe some nieces and nephews.
He glanced over his shoulder as Jassy entered the lodge. As always, just the sight of her made his blood race. Dressed in a doeskin dress that was almost white, with her red hair loose about her shoulders, her skin tanned a light golden brown, he thought her the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.
“Hi,” she said, smiling.
“Hi.”
“Were you sleeping?” she asked.
“No, I was just…” He shrugged. “Remembering.”
“Oh?” She sat down beside him, automatically taking his hand in hers. “What were you remembering?”
“What it was like growing up here. I hadn’t realized how much I missed being with the People.”
“I like your people, Creed.”
“Do you?”
Jassy nodded. “They aren’t anything like I was told.”
A wry grin touched his
lips. “Did you expect to see them dancing naked around a bonfire while eating their young?”
“Of course not! But, well, I guess I didn’t expect your people and mine to have so much in common.”
“They like you, too, Jassy.”
“I’m glad.”
Their eyes met, and Creed felt a rush of heat surge through him as he gazed at Jassy. His woman. His wife. It had been weeks since he had made love to her. Too many weeks.
“Jassy…”
“It’s too soon,” she said, her voice filled with regret. “Your wound…”
“It doesn’t hurt near as much as another part of my anatomy.” He gave her hand a gentle tug. “Come here.”
“We shouldn’t…” she argued, but there was no conviction in her tone. “What if someone comes in?”
“They won’t, not as long as the door flap is down.”
It was too soon, she thought again, but she wanted him so badly, needed him so desperately, needed to feel his arms around her, to touch him and taste him. She’d come so close to losing him.
He pulled her down beside him and she turned on her side, her arm wrapping around his waist as her lips sought his. He kissed her long and hard, and then his tongue slid over her lower lip, and little flames of desire exploded in the deepest part of her.
They made love slowly, drawing out every kiss, every caress, getting to know each other again. Creed forgot the pain of his wound in the joy of holding Jassy close again. Her scent surrounded him, the silk of her hair teased his chest, her hands and lips stroked him gently, arousing him as no other woman ever could until, with a low groan, he rose above her, sheathing himself within her.
They fit together like a hand in a glove, he mused, and then all thought was gone, swallowed up by waves of pleasure and sensation as his life poured into her.
*
Late summer gave way to fall. The trees changed their gowns of green for shimmering leaves of orange and red and yellow. But here, in this place, time had no meaning. Creed ate when he was hungry, slept when he was tired. Here, in the land of his birth, he could put all his doubts and fears behind him. It didn’t matter that he was a half-breed, that he was an escaped convict, that he owned nothing but the clothes on his back.
He spent his days with the men, gambling, reminiscing, or simply resting in the shade. Sometimes he sat in the sun, absorbing the sights and sounds of the village. He watched some boys race their ponies along the riverbank, watched a handful of women erect a lodge. And always, his gaze strayed toward Jassy. She was learning to make moccasins, to cook over an open fire, to jerk venison, to tan a hide.
In the five weeks they’d been in the village, she had managed to pick up a smattering of the Lakota language: Iyuskinyan wancinyankelo was a phrase she used often. It meant I’m glad to meet you. Higna meant husband, mitawin meant wife, Ake u wo meant Come again, Le mitawa meant This is mine, loyacin he meant Are you hungry, tokiya la he meant Where are you going? She had expressed some surprise when she asked about the Lakota word for goodbye and learned there wasn’t one. Creed had explained that his people felt that the conclusion of a talk was obvious and therefore required no formal word of parting.
Another two weeks passed. Early one morning, he went hunting with Tasunke Hinzi. Although Creed had been too stiff and sore to draw a bowstring, it had been good to be on a horse again, to ride across the plains in the company of warriors. He had returned feeling better than he had in weeks.
Day by day, his strength increased, as did his appetite. For food. For Jassy. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her. Sometimes he made love to her for hours, arousing her slowly, plying her with kisses and soft caresses, bringing her to the brink of ecstasy only to draw back and start again, delighting in her soft moans of pleasure. At other times, he took her swiftly, his hands and lips bringing her to fever pitch in only moments. And sometimes Jassy turned the tables on him, batting his hands away, refusing to let him touch her while she covered his face and body with kisses and sweet caresses, until he ached with the pain of wanting her. Only then did she allow him to participate, to taste and touch.
But fast or slow, in command or subject to her will, the flame between them burned ever brighter until he couldn’t remember what it had been like without her at his side.
*
They were sitting in the shade by the river. Another week had passed, and Creed had finally started to feel like his old self.
Lying back on the grassy bank, he stared up at the cloudless blue sky, thinking there was no place else he’d rather be.
“What was your father like?”
He glanced over at Jassy, who was sitting beside him, her feet dangling in the water, one hand splayed across her abdomen.
“He was a medicine man, like Mato Wakuwa. When I was little, I wanted to grow up to be just like him. There was no man in our village who was more respected.”
“What was his name?”
“Rides the Wind.”
“What does your Indian name mean?”
“White Crane.”
Jassy looked thoughtful a moment. “Do the Indians baptize their babies?”
“No.” Creed sat up. Plucking a blade of grass, he twirled it between his thumb and forefinger. “Four days after a baby’s born, the parents invite everyone to a feast for the naming of the child. The father and the mother’s mother give gifts to their friends, to the holy man, and to the poor. When the feast is over, the father announces the name chosen. I was named after my father’s father.”
Creed gazed into the water. If he’d gone on a vision quest, he likely would have received a new name.
“Is your father still alive?”
“My father was killed in battle when I was thirteen.”
“And your mother?”
“I don’t know. I ran away from home when I was seventeen and I never went back.”
“How did your parents meet?”
“My mother was wounded in a raid. One of the warriors brought her to the village and left her with my father. He tended her wounds.”
“And they fell in love,” Jassy exclaimed. “How romantic.”
“Not exactly. My father fell in love. My mother hated everything about the Indians, including me.”
“I’m sorry, Creed,” Jassy said softly.
“Yeah.” He tossed the blade of grass into the water and watched the current carry it away. To this day, he didn’t understand why his mother had refused to let him stay with the Lakota. She had made it clear that she didn’t approve of him, that she was ashamed of his Indian blood, yet she had insisted on dragging him back east. Why?
“Haven’t you ever wondered what happened to her?”
He shook his head. “I can honestly say I’ve never given her a thought until we came here.”
“Maybe, after we find Rose, we could look for your mother.”
“Maybe, although I doubt if she’d be too happy to find me on her doorstep.”
“It’s hard, when your mother doesn’t love you,” Jassy murmured. “I wish…”
“What, honey? What do you wish?”
“I wish I knew where my daddy is, if he’s still alive. It’s silly, I guess. I don’t even remember what he looked like.”
With a sigh, Creed put his arm around Jassy’s shoulder and drew her up against him. “I was a pretty good bounty hunter, you know. I could probably track him down if you really want to find him.”
Jassy looked up at him, at the tenderness in his eyes. “You’d do that for me?”
“If you want me to.”
“I don’t know. He probably wouldn’t be any happier to see me than your mother would be to see you.”
A faint suspicion rose in Creed’s mind as his gaze swept over Jassy. “Why this sudden interest in my mother and your father?” he asked, frowning.
Jassy shrugged and looked away, but she could feel Creed’s gaze on her face, feel the heat climbing into her cheeks under his intense scrutiny.
“Jassy…�
� Creed swallowed hard. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”
Hesitantly, she turned to meet his gaze. “Would you mind?”
Suddenly speechless, he could only stare at her. Pregnant! He tried to tell himself it was bad news, that he didn’t want to be a father, that he had no right to bring a child into the world when his life was such a mess, but none of that seemed to matter now. He felt a smile pull at the corners of his mouth, felt a sudden excitement stir in the pit of his stomach.
Springing to his feet, he grabbed Jassy and held her tight. “I think it’s great!” he exclaimed, and lifting her in his arms, he twirled her around and around. The sound of her laughter mingled with his, and then, breathless, he put her down, his hands resting on her shoulders.
“Jassy.” He shook his head, overcome with awe to think that she was carrying a child. His child.
She smiled up at him, her eyes shining with love, and he knew she had never been more beautiful than she was at this moment, with her love shining in her eyes, and a new life growing beneath her heart.
“I was afraid you’d be mad.”
“No.” He tilted her chin up, then lowered his head and kissed her. “I’m not mad. I love you, Jassy.”
“And I love you!” she whispered fervently, and throwing her arms around Creed’s neck, she kissed him with all the love in her heart.
*
Winter came in a rush of wind and rain. Now that Creed was well again, they had moved into a lodge of their own. Creed had traded his horse to Tasunke Hinzi’s wife, Wakinyela, for enough hides to make a lodge, and then Sunlata, Wakinyela, and a dozen of the women had got together and sewn the hides together for the cover.
Jassy was amazed to find the Lakota lodge stayed warm and snug, even in the midst of a storm. The inner lining kept out drafts and dampness and prevented rain from dripping off the poles. The warm air rising inside the tipi drew in cold air from the outside, which came in under the cover and went up behind the lining, creating a perfect draft for the fire and taking the smoke out with it.
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