The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series)

by Shirl Henke

  Since Chase was dead the thought of going on held no appeal, even without the specter of Hugh menacing her. But the baby she carried had become her reason to live. She would protect Chase's child at any cost. Their love may have been doomed, but their son or daughter would have a chance. She was positive Jeremiah Remington would move heaven and earth to reclaim the child of his heir. If only she could find a way to reach the old man.

  A wire to Boston was the most immediate solution but it still presented several problems. Given the way Hugh had set people to watch her, getting to the telegraph room would be difficult enough. Convincing the operator to send it would be virtually impossible. And then there was always the danger that the old man would wire back to Burke, expecting his son to escort her home. A small bubble of hysteria welled up in her as Corporal Briggs knocked on the door with her bathwater.

  Hugh had gone to his office, no doubt awaiting a wire from town announcing Chase's death. Then he would have to deal with the other warriors captured with Chase. She prayed Blue Eagle was among them, still alive, although certainly the army would hold some sort of kangaroo court and hang every able-bodied man left alive from the White Wolf's stronghold. The rest, old people, women and children, would be shipped off to a reservation. Hopelessness filled her heart and tears burned her eyes as she thought of her children. Smooth Stone and Tiny Dancer had been orphaned once more. Stephanie prayed they would survive reservation life. If only there was some way she could rescue them.

  “I can't even rescue myself,” she murmured dejectedly. After bolting the door, she quickly stripped off her clothes and threw the expensive green traveling suit on the floor. Because it was a reminder of Hugh's hideously cruel games at the jail, she would never touch it again. The small beaded pouch with Anthea's locket inside still hung suspended between her breasts by its thin leather thong. Stephanie pulled it over her head and carefully laid it on the small table beside the tub, then climbed into the water. She took only long enough to bathe away the contamination she felt from this ghastly night, then dried off and donned a high-necked cotton night rail, carefully concealing the beloved keepsake from Chase beneath the neckline of the gown.

  Tomorrow she would think of a way to contact Reverend Remington. Tonight she was so bone weary, physically and emotionally, that she swayed on her feet. Pray God Hugh stayed away until morning. With Mrs. McPherson just down the hall, she felt reasonably secure for the night. Hugh would not want to start more gossip by smashing down her door. To be on the safe side, she braced a chair beneath the heavy brass knob before making her pallet on the floor and sinking onto the hard boards. In moments she slipped into an exhausted sleep.

  Across the compound in his office, Hugh sat with a half-empty bottle of whiskey on his desk. Holding the amber contents of his glass up to the lantern light, he studied it while his mind ran over various ways to kill his wife. An overpowering urge to beat her to death with his bare hands almost won out, but he realized that would lead to his own ruin. No, she must appear to die by her own hand.

  “How to accomplish it?” he muttered. The deed must be done soon before anyone learned Stephanie had an Indian bastard in her belly. The thought that a filthy breed could set his seed in her while he had never been able to ate at Hugh's guts like a cancer. He took another swallow of whiskey. At least by now the bastard should be dead, dangling from a tree limb.

  He still had the pleasant duty of executing the other bucks who rode with Remington. There would be some sort of perfunctory hearing first, but it was only a formality. Burke was handling the matter with the Interior Department. It should only take a week at best. Then he could order those savages to be marched onto the parade grounds and shot. “Some small consolation,” he said, taking another drink of whiskey. Of course, not as much consolation as watching Bedekker flay Chase Remington's back raw, after he had dragged the breed behind his horse for three days. Hugh smiled and leaned back, putting his feet up on the edge of his desk, turning his thoughts again to how he would handle the disposition of his wife.

  This pleasant divertissement was interrupted suddenly when the silence outside was broken by hoofbeats and the jangling of harness. It was past midnight. No one should be riding in or out of the fort at this hour. The only men authorized to move about now were the telegrapher and the guards on watch and they were afoot. Hugh swung his feet down and sat forward, reaching for the pistol at his side. Whoever had just arrived entered the headquarters building, storming toward his office.

  Without bothering to knock, Burke Remington shoved the door open and stepped inside. “Your celebration is a bit premature,” he said, scowling at the nearly empty whiskey bottle.

  Phillips stood up, holstering his gun. Remington looked haggard, almost wild eyed, not at all the urbane Boston aristocrat. A feeling of uneasiness swept over Hugh. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean my nephew's escaped from the Rawlins jail. Vanished into thin air without a trace. I've put that idiot of a sheriff to searching but I doubt he'll turn up anything. The deputy who was on duty's missing, too.” Burke combed one well-manicured set of fingers through his thick gray hair and began to pace.

  Hugh cursed and reached for the bottle once more. “Someone must've bribed the deputy, but who?” Instantly his thoughts flew to Stephanie. He grimaced as he swallowed the last of the whiskey, realizing she had not been alone for a moment.

  “I don't know who freed him, but I have my suspicions,” Burke replied ominously. “I'll deal with that matter in my own good time. Now the priority is finding Chase.” Burke paused in his pacing and studied Phillips. The major's eyes were bloodshot and his uniform wrinkled. “You look like hell. The last thing I need now is for you to fall apart. I want that half-breed cur dead.”

  “Not as much as I do. My darling wife's carrying his bastard!” he blurted out before he could stop himself.

  Remington blanched. “Why the hell didn't you tell me sooner! All I need is for that to get back to old Jeremiah.”

  “No chance. You can't imagine I'll let her live to disgrace me more than she has already. I was just planning her suicide when you walked in.”

  “No, wait. Let's not do anything too hasty. This may be just the bait we need to lure my bastard nephew under our guns. I understand that Indians are quite sentimental about their brats. I suspect Chase doesn't know he's to become a father or he would never have let Stephanie go.” Burke stroked his jaw consideringly.

  Phillips's face, already mottled from drink, grew even redder. “If you think I'll let a whisper of that get out and ruin me—”

  “Obviously not among your soldiers,” Burke said, dismissing, the major's outrage. “Among the savages. Those men you have in the stockade—the bucks who probably raided with Chase...what if they learned that the White Wolf would soon have a cub? And that Stephanie was desperate to escape from her bluebelly husband?”

  “I don't see how that will matter once I execute the bastards,” Hugh snapped, not liking the turn the conversation had taken.

  Burke sighed patiently, once more the smooth politician in control of the situation. “You won't shoot all of them. You will let one or two escape. They'll either lead us to Chase or Chase will come to us: We hold the key—Stephanie and the child.”

  What Remington said made sense but it rankled Phillips that anyone else, even the damned savages would know about his disgrace. He cursed the whiskey that had loosened his tongue. If word ever got out among his men... He refused to even think about the subtle whispers and sly laughter at his expense. At length he said, “You don't realize, how big this country is. Half the Department of the Platte spent over three years searching for that goddamned raider and came up empty. He managed to pillage right under our noses and slip past trap after trap.”

  “Then you didn't know who he was—and you didn't hold his woman and child hostage. Surely you can figure a way to lure him in so he can't escape.

  The following evening Mikko Bedekker and his corporal spread a rumor among
the Cheyenne, laughingly reporting that the major's white wife was carrying a red baby in her belly. On guard duty, they pretended to be drunk and gossiped scurrilously in earshot of a number of women. They knew at least one could speak English, a pretty young thing named Kit Fox. Then Kit Fox and several other women were selected to serve food and tend injuries among the White Wolf's warriors being held in the stockade.

  Blue Eagle and Plenty Horses listened intently as Kit Fox explained what she had heard from the drunken Blue Coats. “I fear her white husband will kill her and the child. She spoke little of this Hugh Phillips when she was with us, but I know he is an evil man.”

  Plenty Horses struck his fist impotently against the stone wall of their cell in frustration. “What can we do caged up, waiting for the Blue Coats to kill us?”

  “If only you could escape,” Kit Fox said fervently.

  “The White Wolf would come to free us if only he was able, but he was gravely hurt when Phillips took him away. I do not believe the White Eye soldiers will wait long to kill us,” Blue Eagle replied in a stoic voice.

  “But he himself has escaped. The soldiers have said this. I have watched the guards. They are stupid and careless,” Kit Fox said, fighting down the fear clawing at her. My husband cannot die! My brother and sister cannot die! “If they continue to let me bring you food, perhaps I can find a way to distract them. Green Grass will help me. She and Swan Flower can steal the keys to this locked up place while the guards drink whiskey in the evenings.”

  “I have never heard of soldiers being allowed to get drunk on duty,” Plenty Horses said suspiciously.

  “I do not want you near the soldiers, Kit Fox,” Blue Eagle said sternly. “It is too dangerous.”

  “What is safe? Waiting like rabbits in the compound, surrounded by soldiers until they decide to herd us all to a reservation in the hot country where we will sicken and die? If you can escape and find the White Wolf, he will know what to do,” Kit Fox argued.

  “He has a hiding place with a white trapper, a Frenchman on the Sweetwater. I know where this Gaston de Boef can be found,” Blue Eagle said in resignation. It was a slim chance, yet the only chance they might have.

  The next night Kit Fox found the same guards on watch at the stockade. This night their drunkenness was no ruse. They had passed a bottle back and forth between them until the corporal passed out against the wall while the one called Bedekker studied the comely Cheyenne female with hooded eyes. The keys lay out on the table beside the empty whiskey bottle.

  “You and me could have some fun if you want to,” the sergeant ventured with a lopsided grin, stumbling to his feet, leaving the keys unattended. “Just leave that gruel for the bucks 'n' come out back,” he wheedled. “I got lots of pretties,” he added slyly, pulling a tangle of beaded necklaces from his pocket and holding them up in one meaty fist. He did not understand or approve orders which allowed cutthroat Indians to escape but at least the wench was mighty pretty for a redskin. She would be his payment for taking the risks in this crazy scheme of the major's.

  Bobbing her head eagerly, Kit Fox put down the kettle of greasy tasteless stew and followed the big foul-smelling soldier outside into the darkness. No matter what he does I will not cry out. Her family would be free.

  In moments Swan Flower had sneaked into the small room from down the hall and scooped up the keys to Blue Eagle and Plenty Horse's cell. If only she could free the rest, but they were far down at the opposite end of the stockade and there was no time.

  “Where is Kit Fox?” Blue Eagle asked as soon as they were outside the cell.

  “She went with the big soldier,” Swan Flower replied unhappily.

  Blue Eagle looked at his brother-in-law. “Go and search for horses. I will see to my wife, then we will meet you down by the riverbank in the cotton woods.”

  The two men split up after relieving the unconscious guard of his carbine and pistol. Within the quarter hour Blue Eagle came loping down the riverbank to where his brother-in-law waited with several Cheyenne ponies.

  “Where is Kit Fox?” her brother asked.

  “I knocked the Blue Coat out before he could defile her, but she refused to come with me. She said we could ride faster without her and that she must remain behind to care for Smooth Stone and Tiny Dancer. We will go to the White Wolf. Surely he will know a way to free them all.”

  The two riders slipped silently through the trees and vanished into the moonlit night, unaware of the white men in the stockade who watched the scene through field glasses.

  “This sure as hell better work, Remington,” Phillips gritted out.

  “I know that red savage. He'll come for his brat, believe me,” Burke replied.

  * * * *

  “It's a trap,” Chase said flatly after crawling back from the edge of the escarpment that overlooked the railroad tracks below.

  “I knew it must be so,” Plenty Horses replied. “Our escape from the drunken soldiers was too easy.”

  “I still believe your woman carries your child,” Blue Eagle said to his leader. “Will you abandon her without learning the truth?”

  “I asked Gaston if he saw her get on the train. He hadn't but she could’ve been waiting for it in Rawlins around the time Phillips dragged me in,” Chase said grudgingly. “The bastard could have captured her and forced her to do his bidding.” The raw lacerations on his back still ached abominably although they were starting to heal thanks to the herbal poultices with which the Frenchman had treated his wounds. He had not told anyone about Stephanie watching with her white husband while he was beaten. The memory was even more painful than his injuries. “I will find a way to reach her...but I don't know if she wants to be rescued,” he added enigmatically.

  “The White Eye soldier will kill her if we do not save her,” Plenty Horses stated flatly and Blue Eagle chorused his agreement.

  “Perhaps.” Chase sighed. “But I can't ask you to risk your lives for one woman when the rest of our band will need you. You must go search out Stands Tall on the reservation at Fort Fetterman. If our people have not already been sent there, they soon will be. The soldiers at the fort will see only two more starving Indians gone tame in return for rations. You two and my uncle can help what is left of our people slip away and join Little Wolf in the Tongue River basin. He has promised me he would help us.”

  “What will you do?” Plenty Horses asked shrewdly. “Once you asked me to safeguard your wife if you were dead. What if the Blue Coats kill you?”

  “I will do what must be done for my wife. Your first duty is to the People. Go with my blessings, my brothers. Perhaps one day we will meet again.”

  “If not here, then on the Hanging Road to the Sky,” Blue Eagle replied gravely.

  Chase watched his friends ride away, then turned his attention back to the cluster of buildings situated on the bend of the river. Stephanie waited down there—in fear of her life? Or in hopes of seeing him ride into Hugh Phillips's death trap?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  After nearly two nerve-wracking weeks of being isolated and guarded as if she were a dangerous convict or a lunatic, Stephanie was happy to smell fresh air and feel the sun on her face once more. She breathed deeply, grateful the nausea that had been plaguing her upon arising for over a month had at last abated. She had no idea why Hugh had invited her to ride with him today, but suspected that he and Burke were plotting something together. She was amazed he had not killed her yet.

  Stephanie had made several abortive attempts to escape, but the more she tried to slip past her guards, the more certain everyone on the post became that she was deranged and intended to harm herself. Visitors and guards alike looked on her with pitying eyes. She knew they whispered about her and “poor Major Phillips” when they left the commandant's quarters. However did the loyal husband endure the tragedy of his wife being dishonored by savages?

  How neatly her death would solve Hugh's problem and complete his revenge. Chase had been lynched in Rawlins and
his warriors executed by a firing squad on the parade grounds. As the shots rang out that awful morning, she had squeezed her hands over her ears. At dinner the same evening, Hugh and Burke had eaten with relish as they discussed the executions, forcing her to sit at the table with them and endure the verbal torture. She could not swallow a bite as she thought of her friend Kit Fox, now widowed. If Blue Eagle and Plenty Horses had survived the battle at the stronghold, then both had surely died before that firing squad.

  Stephanie longed to talk with someone who understood how she felt and accepted her in spite of the heinous sin of loving a half-breed renegade. The only one who would understand was Hannah, but Hugh had forbidden the Quaker to visit his wife. As the lieutenant escorted her to the main corral, her eyes swept furtively across the parade grounds searching for her friend's thin, gray-clad figure outside the infirmary. She knew Hannah would have tried to help the remaining people from Chase's band while they were held at the fort, but the survivors had now been sent to the military reservation at Fort Fetterman.

  Stephanie prayed her family and friends among the Cheyenne had been spared. Would she ever learn their fate? She reached up and felt the small beaded pouch between her breasts, her keepsake from Chase, a legacy for the grandchild of Freedom Woman and Vanishing Grass.

  Then she saw Hannah across the parade grounds, a tiny figure carrying a bundle of bed linens that seemed almost as big as she. The wind would carry away her words if she dared to call out a greeting—or an entreaty for help. Even if Hannah heard her plea, disobeying Hugh's orders would only result in her being evicted from the post. Hannah did too much good here for Stephanie to jeopardize the Quaker's work for her own selfish needs.