Thunder on the Plains

by Rosanne Bittner

  She turned away with the baby, and Colt reached out for her; but suddenly a painted Pawnee warrior jumped up in his face and screamed, slashing at him with a huge knife. Colt started to cry out, in reality letting out a groan and jerking awake. He sat up quickly, his body bathed in sweat. His breathing came in near gasps for a moment as he struggled to get his bearings. He looked around the tipi, which was dimly lit by the fading coals of an earlier fire.

  He was alive. He touched his face, wiping sweat from himself, throwing off his heavy covers of buffalo robes, not even realizing at first how cold it was inside the tipi, for outside the January winds howled across the northern Kansas plains so fiercely that the tipi skins billowed in and out. He had seen enough of these well-constructed dwellings to know it would not blow apart, but it was getting a mighty test tonight.

  “You have had a bad dream.”

  Colt looked over at White Buffalo, who had risen up on one elbow, looking across the glowing coals at him. Sits Tall stirred slightly, snuggling closer against her husband. The sight made Colt’s insides ache for LeeAnn. He nodded in reply to White Buffalo’s statement.

  “It is common to have such dreams after losing loved ones or after making war,” White Buffalo told him. “Do you want to talk?”

  Finally the cold air made Colt shiver, and he pulled a robe back over himself. Because of the severe cold, he was fully dressed under the covers. He lay back down. “I saw her this time…my wife,” he said quietly. “She took our son from me and told me that they were home now, that they were all right. She told me to go back to the living.”

  White Buffalo moved out from under his robes, making sure his wife was well covered. He reached over to a backrest, where another robe lay, and put it around his shoulders, coming to sit cross-legged near the dwindling fire. He reached to his right, where some buffalo chips were stacked, and added some to the fire. A few flames flickered upward.

  “You drew much Pawnee blood, and you needed that,” he told Colt. “Now it is done. You carry the scar of a Pawnee knife across your forehead, a sign that you sought vengeance for what was done to your family. You even took three Pawnee scalps. It was good that you could do these things, but, my friend, at heart you are a white man. It is the white man’s world in which you were raised, and it is the white man’s world to which you must return. I think maybe that is what your woman was telling you—to go back to where you belong.”

  Colt sat up straighter, listening to the moaning wind outside and thinking how it resembled the way he felt. “I have nothing there anymore.”

  White Buffalo poked at the fire with a stick. “As my father would say, you are still very young. You have much life ahead of you. You will find a reason to live again.”

  Colt looked across the fire at him, thinking how White Buffalo and Many Beaver had become the best friends he had had since Slim was killed. “I don’t know if I ever want to leave.”

  “When you think about it more, you will know it is the right thing to do. I will not like saying good-bye to you, Colt Travis; but you do not really belong here, not forever. You must go back to the world that is familiar to you, and I must go on struggling to save what land is left to us. I am not such a fool as to think I can keep this life until I am old man. Already your white brothers are filling up the land, killing our game, bringing their diseases. Your white man’s government makes promises and breaks them again, sends its soldiers to hunt us down when we have done nothing wrong. You should leave us while I still think of you as my good friend, and before soldiers or others come who will force you to choose. It is then I might come to hate you, and I do not want to hate you.”

  His eyes held Colt’s gaze, and Colt felt the painful loneliness again squeezing at his heart. Where would he go? Who was there left in his life that mattered? Still, he knew White Buffalo was right. This was not a world in which he could forever remain. He turned and grasped his parfleche, pulling it to his lap and opening it. He reached inside, taking out a gold-plated chain watch that had been his father’s. White Buffalo had seen it before, and had admired it greatly. Colt handed it across the fire. “Here.”

  White Buffalo frowned, reaching out to take the watch. “I can listen to the little sound it makes again?”

  “You can keep it. Do you remember what I showed you, how to wind it?”

  White Buffalo nodded, surprise in his eyes. “You wish to give it to me? A gift?”

  Colt nodded. “A gift.” White Buffalo looked at the watch almost reverently. “It’s a thank-you gift, White Buffalo. You and your people saved my life, helped me find a reason to want to live again. Thank you for letting me join you on the Pawnee raids, for letting me taste my share of Pawnee blood.”

  White Buffalo closed the watch into his fist. “This is a fine gift, Colt. It was your father’s. It is not an easy thing for you to give away.”

  “You’ve been good to me, fed me, gave me shelter, friendship.”

  White Buffalo rose, walking to a looped string of rawhide that hung from a tipi pole and to which his painted prayer pipe was attached. He untied the pipe, turning then and walking back to the fire, handing it to Colt. “We do not accept a gift without giving one in return. This is my gift to you.”

  Colt took the pipe, holding it carefully, recognizing the friendship such a gift represented. “I accept your gift with great honor. I will always treasure it.”

  “You will leave us, then?”

  Their eyes held in mutual friendship and feelings of sorrow. “I think I must,” Colt answered. “But I will wait until the spring.”

  White Buffalo nodded. “It is the right thing to do. I will not forget you, Colt Travis.”

  Colt’s throat suddenly ached. “And I will not forget you, White Buffalo.” He thought he detected tears in White Buffalo’s eyes. “Life is just a series of good-byes, isn’t it? People move in and out of our lives, they go on to new places, sometimes they die.” He sighed. “Seems like somebody wants me always to be alone.”

  White Buffalo shook his head. “It will not always be so. We have the company of our memories, and someday another will come into your life to help you forget your woman.”

  Colt shook his head. “Maybe to love in a different way. But I will never forget. Nor will I forget that it was partly my fault.”

  “It is easy to blame oneself. But you should not. My father says all things happen for a purpose, that some people are just gifts that are with us for a while until we grow in a new way and are ready for new things. There is another purpose for your life, Colt.”

  Colt smiled sadly, watching the small fire for a moment. “I can’t imagine right now what it would be, my friend, but I hope you’re right. I hope you’re right.”

  ***

  In spite of the heavy fur coat and hat and muff Sunny wore, the cold January wind bit at her mercilessly, only emphasizing the loneliness and horror of the moment. She stared at the deep hole into which her father would soon be lowered, almost oblivious to the hundreds of people, including congressmen and businessmen from Washington and New York, who had come to pay their last respects to Bo Landers.

  Sunny was not even sure how she had gotten to the burial site. The entire funeral service was just a blurred memory. She remembered only grabbing hold of her father and pleading with him to come back to life.

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the Methodist minister said.

  Not Bo Landers, she thought. Men like that don’t die. They don’t turn to dust. It isn’t possible!

  She heard nothing of the final eulogy. She heard only a booming voice, a little girl’s laughter. She felt herself being bounced on her father’s knee, smelled his cigar smoke. She saw ledgers, saw her father’s hefty finger pointing out figures and explaining to her everything about Landers Enterprises, explaining that someday it would all be hers. That was to be seen, for the will was still t
o be read. Oh, how she dreaded it, dreaded what Vince would say and do.

  She looked across the grave at Vince, saw the tears in his eyes and the resolute tenseness of his tightly clenched jaw. He was not about to cry over a father he felt had somehow cheated him. Sometimes she felt sorry for Vince, who somehow had come to think his father didn’t love him and who had struck back in vicious ways, done things he must have regretted. Was he wishing his father were alive again so he could apologize and tell him he loved him? Was he wishing he had visited his father more often before he died?

  Eve stood beside him, not a tear in her eyes. She was a cold woman from a cold family that fed on money and attention. Eve was an only child who had had anything she wanted all her life. Now she would want Vince’s fair share of Landers Enterprises, and she would most certainly force Vince to do what was necessary to get it.

  She felt Vi’s arm wrap around her then, giving her a tender hug. How could she have gotten through this without Vi’s companionship, her help in caring for her father? Stuart stood next to Vi, weeping openly. In spite of his own differences with his father, Stuart seemed genuinely grief-stricken. Sunny was glad that he and Bo had become a little closer before Bo’s death.

  For the moment none of that mattered. The fact remained that Bo Landers was dead, and it all seemed like a bad dream. Sunny wondered if her near collapse during the funeral had sapped all her energy and bled her of all her tears, for now there were none to shed. There was only a kind of numbness.

  “These things always hit harder after a few days or weeks have gone by,” she remembered someone saying. Was it the doctor, or Vi? “You’ve got to share your feelings, Sunny, turn to others, let us help you.”

  Sunny wondered if anyone truly understood her grief and need. All her life the center of her world, the person in whom she confided, the person she spent most of her time with, was her father. She had a few girlfriends, and they were spoiled and giddy. None of them would ever have to shoulder the responsibilities that were soon to be given to her. How could she share that with them? Mae was good to her, sympathetic, but she came from a world that didn’t understand the kind of life she would lead now.

  Vi kept an arm around her. At least Vi understood a little of what she was feeling. Vi had married into this world of wealth and power and responsibility. “It’s time to go, Sunny,” Vi was telling her.

  Sunny blinked and looked at her. “But I…I didn’t hear what the preacher said,” she objected. “It can’t be over yet. Make him say it again! It’s too soon! And too cold! They can’t put Daddy in the ground when it’s this cold! He’ll get the chills!”

  She felt more people gathering around her, grasping her arms, making her leave. She began screaming at them that she had a right to stay, that they should put plenty of blankets over her father to keep him warm. Finally, she called to her “Daddy” to make them stop pulling at her. She screamed for him, felt herself being dragged into a coach.

  Moments earlier she had thought she had cried as much as anyone could, but now the tears came again, in sobs so bitter and deep that they made everything hurt. Vi’s arms came around her again, trying to soothe and comfort. She heard Stuart telling her everything would be all right. “I’ll help you, Sunny. No matter what happens with the will, you aren’t in this alone. I’ll cooperate however I can.”

  He didn’t even realize her devastation was over the personal loss of part of herself. She couldn’t care less if she was left with one penny. Her father was gone, and nothing mattered anymore.

  “Think of something that makes you feel at peace,” Vi was telling her. “Of Christ, or wildflowers, the mountains. You’ve talked so much about the mountains, Sunny. Think of the land out west, how quiet it was, how much you loved it.”

  Sunny struggled through her sobs to remember the serenity of another time, another place, saw herself riding over the rolling hills. But that was another Sunny, one who supposed her father would live forever and who had given no thought to what she would do when he was gone. It wasn’t fair that people had to die, not fair to the deceased, and not fair to the loved ones left behind to struggle on alone. She clung to Vi, wondering how long it would be before the ache of it left her. Maybe it never would.

  ***

  Activity at Fort Kearny was high, soldiers everywhere, one regiment riding out just as Colt was riding in. Several emigrants were camped about the fort, but Colt knew it was too early in the spring for many to have made it this far yet on their journey west.

  Colt trotted his prize Appaloosa gelding, called Dancer, toward a small log structure that carried a sign reading Pony Express. The horse was a gift from White Buffalo, and the sight of the soldiers leaving brought memories of his good friend, as well as worry. He called out to a soldier passing nearby, slowing Dancer. “Where are those soldiers going?” he asked. “There isn’t some new campaign being waged against the Indians, is there?”

  “Hell, no,” the soldier answered. “Haven’t you heard? The country’s at war, North against South. Those soldiers are headed back east.”

  “War!” Colt drew the reins tight on Dancer. “I knew there was a problem over the slavery issue, but I never thought it would lead to war. Is it that bad?”

  The soldier frowned as though he thought Colt was a little crazy. “Where in hell have you been, mister? We’ve got a new president, Abraham Lincoln. Ever since he was sworn in, southern states have been seceding right and left. Lincoln is against slavery. Now some forces from South Carolina have attacked Fort Sumter. Hell, the damn Union commander there surrendered. Now the South thinks it can win other battles. They want to form their own country, elect their own president. Can you believe that one?”

  Colt shook his head, realizing that since wandering off alone after Slim died, then marrying LeeAnn and living out on the Plains with no neighbors, he had not kept up much on national events, nor had he cared, especially after losing LeeAnn and Ethan. For months he had lived the even more remote life of a nomadic Indian, giving little thought to what might be going on in the white man’s world.

  “Thanks for the information,” he told the soldier. War, he thought. What the hell kind of a mess is this country getting itself into? He had never even heard of Abraham Lincoln. He shook his head in wonder as he trotted his horse to the Pony Express building, dismounting and looping the reins of Dancer’s bridle around a hitching post. He walked on long legs into the building, where another sign hung over a desk reading Russell, Majors, and Waddell. “Morning,” he said to a bearded man who sat at the desk.

  “Morning,” the man answered. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for work. I rode partway here with a man driving a freight wagon, and he told me about the Pony Express. Sounded like something I’d like to do.”

  The man behind the desk looked him over warily, and Colt didn’t think he had ever seen anyone with quite so red a beard. “And why do you think that?” the man asked.

  Colt shrugged. “Sounds exciting. I know the country, and I’m a good rider; and right now I need something that will keep me real busy, keep my mind off personal things.”

  “Like what?”

  Colt shifted his hat, revealing part of a fresh scar that began above his right eyebrow and ran down his right temple to his ear. “That’s my business. Do you need a rider?”

  The bearded man scowled, deciding that from the looks of the tall, strong-looking young man before him, it was best not to pry. “Have a seat,” he told Colt, indicating a wooden chair, the varnish worn from its seat. Colt obliged, removing his hat. “My name is John Stanley,” the man told him. He rolled up a newspaper and swatted a fly.

  “Colt Travis,” Colt answered, studying the man’s thick reddish eyebrows and the mass of freckles on his aging face and on his arms and hands.

  “How old are you, Travis?”

  “What’s the date?”r />
  Stanley grinned a little, glancing at his calendar. “May 27, 1861.”

  “Then I was twenty-four seven days ago.”

  “We generally hire only young boys, some only fifteen, up to about twenty. The less weight, the faster the horse.” Stanley pulled open a drawer and took out a wad of tobacco. “And they have to be orphans.”

  “I was orphaned at fourteen,” Colt answered, watching the man put the tobacco in his cheek. “I can assure you there isn’t one person in this country who gives a damn whether I live or die. And like you say, it’s true less weight makes a faster horse,” he added. “But there’s also something to be said about experience. I’ve led wagon trains since I was orphaned—been to Oregon four times, California twice. I’ve fought Indians and I’ve lived with them—can communicate with Sioux, Cheyenne, Crow, Blackfoot, Shoshone—” He hesitated, the bitter hatred still burning in his gut. “Pawnee,” he finished. “I can shoot straight, even from a galloping horse. I know what to do for wounds; and I know this country like the back of my hand.”

  Stanley just stared at him a moment, chewing on the tobacco, then turning to spit into a can beside his desk. “You’ve made your point,” he said. “We’ve lost two riders recently, quit because of being shot at by outlaws looking to steal the mail—probably think there’s money in it. At any rate, some have the courage for the job, and some don’t. I expect there ain’t much that scares off the likes of you. Pay’s a hundred and twenty-five a month, but there’s no guarantee the job will last long. The government is already building a telegraph line clear across the country. A lot of the more important news will be carried that way after that, so there won’t be so much need for us riding hard to carry it. The Butterfield Overland stage line carries mail too, so we figure the job is good for as long as it takes for the telegraph to get finished. After that I expect we’ll be out of business.”