Return of the Spirit Rider (Leisure Historical Fiction)
Page 32
Standing outside the lodge, Lockhart choked and said, “Father, it is Panther-Strikes. It is your son. I have come to take you with me.”
There was a rustling inside the tepee, then several mumbled phrases that sounded like pieces of prayer, and a weak invitation to enter. Lockhart went inside the lodge to see a pale Stone-Dreamer lying on a painted buffalo robe. His usual white buckskin shirt and leggings were filthy. Entering behind Lockhart, Touches-Horses said quietly that the streaks of blood along the holy man’s right sleeve and shoulder belonged to Spotted Horse, who had died after the great battle at the greasy grass. Stone-Dreamer had tried to save him, but couldn’t.
Kneeling at the old holy man’s side was Morning Bird. She watched Lockhart enter. Her face was tense. Without words, her eyes sought Lockhart’s directly, and held them seeking an answer, then glanced away.
“I have come for you, Morning Bird,” Lockhart said, his voice billowing with emotion as he lifted the feathers from his pocket and displayed them. His Lakotan flowed as if he had never stopped speaking it. “I want you to be my wife— and to go with me to my home. To become as one as your birds of the morning have done. I have asked Touches-Horses to go as well. And now I ask Stone-Dreamer.”
Morning Bird rose in one motion, tears washed across her tan cheeks and her whole body trembled. She half-fell, half-ran to Lockhart and wrapped her arms around him. The cardinal feathers in her fist brushed against his neck.
They embraced and the world was only them.
She whispered in Lakotan, “My heart ached for you. I think you not come back. I think you care for me then only because of my sister.” Her voice lay across his fevered face like a gentle spring breeze. Holding up two cardinal feathers like his, she said, in hesitant English, “I…Morning…Bird, I…love…you.”
“When I first saw you, that is so. But you are very different than your sister.” Lockhart choked, glancing at the feathers in his hand. “I love the difference.” In English, he added, “I love you. You, Morning Bird. I want us to have many children together.”
“To raise them as wasicun?” she asked gently in Lakotan.
“To raise them to be free and strong—and caring.”
“I want the same. With all my heart, I am yours.” She laid her feathers in his hand with his two.
Stone-Dreamer’s feeble words broke into their reverie. “M-My son! M-My son! I knew you would come. T-The tunkan sang to me. T-They told me you were coming.” He pushed back from Lockhart. “T-They told me you were hurt. You were in a fight. Darkness surrounds Black Fire I am told. Where are the others?”
Kneeling by his father’s side, Lockhart returned the small feathers to his pocket and said he had been attacked by a Cheyenne war party, but that his wounds were slight, then told of Black Fire’s massacre and said again what he wished to do, take the three of them with him.
Stone-Dreamer held out a shaking hand for Lockhart to take. “T-The Grandfathers are with you, I see,” Stone-Dreamer whispered. “I prayed to Wakantanka …that I might live long enough…to see you once more, my son. They have honored…my wish.” He stopped talking, fought to breathe, then continued, “I-I know you did not…I-like my t-telling…about the G-Grandfathers…being with you. I-I k-know you did not. But t-they are, m-my son. They are.”
Lockhart started to respond, but the dying holy man kept talking.
“I-It was they…who brought you h-here,” Stone-Dreamer said. “A-A cave is n-near. R-Remember it? You and I went there…w-when you were a boy.” He pointed a feeble finger toward the east, shut his eyes. “T-The stones there, they wait for me. Bury me there, my son. Do not have concern about a Ghost-Keeping Lodge. The Grandfathers will care for me.” He rose slightly, using his arms for balance. “D-Do you wear the stone of Eyes-of-the-Wind?”
“Yes, my father.” Lockhart touched his ear.
“You…and C-Crazy Horse…sacred stones…”
Lockhart whispered, “My father…I came back to tell you…the stones sang to me. They told me where you were. Eyes-of-the-Wind will guide you to the spirit land. He told me so.”
Morning Bird reached up and touched the old man’s face. “He is gone, my love.”
It was raining the next morning when Lockhart, Morning Bird and Touches-Horses completed the burial scaffold in the cave and held the funeral ritual itself. They killed his fine white horse and laid its body near the four upright poles so Stone-Dreamer would have a good mount in the Other-Side-Land. His medicine bundle, medicine pipe and the watch and chain were laid beside the wrapped-in-buffalo-skin body. Stone-Dreamer’s red shield was hung from a post on the west. Lockhart’s shield was carried on his pack horse. The old holy man’s lodge was ceremonially burned.
As they were preparing to ride away, Lockhart reined up, dismounted and removed his warrior shield from the pack. With Touches-Horses and Morning Bird silently watching, he laid it at the covered entrance to the cave.
Lockhart looked at Touches-Horses, then into Morning Bird’s beaming face. At the corner of his eye, a tear was finding its way out. “The Grandfathers know you well. But the shield of your son, Panther-Strikes, will protect you on your way to the Ghost Road.” He took a deep breath. “And I will be listening to the stones. Always.”
HIGH PRAISE FOR COTTON SMITH!
“Cotton Smith is one of the finest of a new breed of writers of the American West.”
—Don Coldsmith
“Cotton Smith’s is a significant voice in the development of the American Western.”
—Loren D. Estleman
“In just a few years on the scene, Cotton Smith has made a strong mark as a Western writer of the new breed, telling it like it was.”
—Elmer Kelton, Seven-time
Spur Award–winning author
“Cotton Smith is another modern writer with cinematic potential. Grand themes, moral conflicts and courage are characteristic of his fiction.”
—True West Magazine
“These days, the traditional Western doesn’t get much better than Cotton Smith.”
—Roundup Magazine
“Hats off to Cotton Smith for keeping the spirit of the West alive in today’s fiction. His plots are as twisted as a gnarled juniper, his prose as solid as granite, and his characters ring as true as jinglebobs on a cowboy’s spurs.”
—Johnny D. Boggs, Wrangler and
Spur Award–winning author
“When it came to literature, middle-age had only three good things to show me: Patrick O’Brian, Larry McMurtry and Cotton Smith.”
—Jay Wolpert, screenwriter of The Count Of Monte
Cristo and Pirates Of The Caribbean
“From his vivid descriptions of a prairie night to his hoof-pounding action scenes, Cotton Smith captures the look and feel of the real West.”
—Mike Blakley, Spur Award–winning author