IRONHEART

by Rachel Lee

  "I don't want you to think about sacred pipes or any of the rest of it," Zeke said. "I just want you to do it. So I'll give you the pipe I started for you, and you can finish it."

  "I've only got one arm."

  "It's enough. You only need to do a little carving. I even have the knives for you to use."

  "Zeke…"

  Zeke silenced him with a wave of his hand. "You do it, boy. You carve something on the pipe and it'll be yours. Do it. And while you're doing it, stop thinking with your head. It's been getting in your way for as long as you've been here. I'll get the pipe."

  Frustrated, Gideon stared after him and resigned himself to his fate. It appeared he was going to carve a pipe whether he wanted to or not.

  Several paces away, Zeke suddenly halted and faced him once more. "Ironheart."

  "Mmm?"

  "Sara's thinking with her head right now. In a little while she'll start thinking with her heart. Be sure that you're doing the same."

  Thinking with head or heart, what was the difference? Gideon wondered irritably. Either way, Sara would be furious, and any explanation he could offer sounded pretty pathetic, even to his own ears. What had made so much sense two weeks ago right now seemed to fly in the face of all common sense.

  Zeke showed up ten minutes later with the damn pipe. Settling on the bunkhouse step beside Gideon, he removed the hide wrapping from the half-made object. There were two pieces, the long, straight wood stem, and the red stone elbow that was the bowl.

  "I drilled out the venter of the stem and carved the bowl for you already," Zeke said. "I figured you wouldn't know how to do it."

  "I don't know how to do any of this, old man."

  Zeke chuckled softly. "You'll learn, boy. You'll learn. This first pipe you don't have to make entirely by yourself. When you make your next one, I'll show you step-by-step, including finding the right ash branch for the stem and getting the red stone for the bowl. Did you know there's only one place on earth where you can find that stone?"

  Zeke shook his head. "Never guessed."

  "White men call the place Pipestone, Minnesota. The Lakota say the buffaloes died there and shed their blood so that we could live. But I'll tell you all that at another time. Or better, get Chester to tell you. He knows a lot more than I do.

  "Right now, all you have to do is carve something on the stem. A buffalo, or an eagle. Maybe a turtle. Whatever. Choose something not too difficult. All that matters is that you make it yours."

  Then he picked up a second bundle and brought forth another pipe. In spite of his sour mood, Gideon drew a long, appreciative breath. This pipe was a work of art, intricately carved, decorated with feathers, stained and painted in beautiful colors.

  "I made this," Zeke said. "I spent many, many hours on it when I was lonely, after my wife died, before Sarey needed me to come here. The work helped me to see with my heart when my head would only grieve. Someday, Ironheart, you will make a pipe this beautiful. But for now, just make a pipe. Any pipe. Tonight."

  Gideon picked up his pipe stem and moved it around until he figured out how best to brace it so he could work on it. Anything, he told himself, was better than doing nothing.

  * * *

  Sara had already started dinner when Zeke returned to the house. Industriously, she was chopping and peeling and dicing for stew. Zeke paused to wash his hands at the kitchen ink

  "I'll do that," he said.

  "I'll do it. You worked hard this afternoon on the sweat lodge."

  "And you work hard all the rest of the time." Sara turned and pointed at him with her peeler. "Sit down, Grandfather. Have some tea."

  The old man smiled. "Yes, Granddaughter. How very respectful of your elders you are."

  "I didn't say one disrespectful thing."

  "No, but you were thinking of it."

  Sara's smile appeared reluctantly. "Go on. Relax." He didn't speak again until he was seated at the table with a tall glass of ice tea. "Joey's taking longer than I thought he would, fixing that fence."

  "Where'd he go?"

  "Up by the falls." Every spring, snow runoff softened the ground and made the fence near the falls sag, and every spring it had to be shored up again.

  "Well, he probably got hot and decided to take a little dip. Or just to play hooky." It wouldn't be the first time.

  "Maybe."

  "I wish he hadn't gone up there by himself."

  Zeke sighed. "Sarey, we can't live like prisoners because of what has happened. Besides, whatever they were looking for is something they expected to find in the house or one of the cars. And they always come in the dark. There's no reason why they should bother Joey when he's mending the fence."

  True, thought Sara, and let it go. She was only trying to distract herself, anyway, from thoughts of Gideon's betrayal, from noticing how badly she hurt and how empty she felt. "Did Gideon tell you about Micah?"

  "Yes."

  "You don't feel used or betrayed?" She turned to look at her grandfather.

  "No. I can see why he wanted to keep his secret until he was sure of the kind of man Micah is."

  "But he used me to meet Micah!"

  Zeke's expression never changed. "Did he? Did he really?"

  Frustrated, Sara turned back to making the stew. Zeke could be absolutely infuriating when he got into one of his inscrutable moods. Sometimes she felt as if she were living with Socrates and was caught up in some kind of philosophical dialogue. It was maddening!

  A little while later her thoughts wandered over to the bunkhouse, and she wondered what Gideon was doing. Packing his suitcases, maybe. And that made her think of the trunk of her grandfather's belongings.

  "Grandfather? Why do you keep all your things over at the bunkhouse? Why did you pack your wedding picture?"

  "Those things are keepsakes for you and Joey. They're meaningless to me."

  She turned and looked at him. "How can you say that?"

  "Because it's true. All that is important is in my memory, but the past is the past, Sara. One learns from it, perhaps cherishes it a little, but then must leave it behind. I loved your grandmother, child, but I cannot allow my grief over her death to color all the remaining days of my life. No one should allow the past to govern the future."

  Sara swiftly turned back to her task, while a niggling little voice in the back of her mind asked: was that what she was doing? There seemed to be no answer beyond the uneasy sinking of her stomach.

  * * *

  Gideon looked down at the pipe stem in his hands and decided that the damn buffalo head looked as much like a buffalo as it ever would. At least the horns, however crooked, were identifiable. He set the knife down and brushed wood chips from his jeans, realizing with a sense of shock that several hours had passed. Now it was supper time.

  He wasn't sure he should go up to the kitchen. Sara, he suspected, would be relieved if he didn't, and given his sense of iniquity, he wasn't sure he ought to. On the other hand, he was feeling more strongly than ever that he really needed to stick this one out, that for once in his life he shouldn't bail out of a relationship without making a stab at repairing the damage. That it was time to stop skating on the surface and face the currents underneath. Time, perhaps, to face the possibility that someone might need something from him … and that he might need something from them.

  On the other hand, he found himself thinking, Sara hadn't even given him a chance to explain what he'd done, which just proved the premise under which he had always functioned: people were fickle and wouldn't hesitate to drop you at the first provocation. She had drawn all her conclusions without asking him his side of the story.

  And it hurt. Closing his eyes momentarily, he admitted to himself what he'd been refusing to face for two weeks now. He cared what Sara Yates thought of him, and it hurt that she had judged him without even asking his reasons. Not that his reasons justified his actions, he admitted with painful honesty, but if she cared about him, wouldn't she at least want to hear his side o
f it?

  All of which led him right back to where he had begun years ago. Caring hurt, so he didn't want to care too deeply. And love was a word people used to manipulate one another. He'd fallen into that trap long, long ago. So long ago that the woman was only a dim memory of a blond, blue-eyed hussy he'd initially likened to a fairy princess, only to discover she more closely resembled a succubus.

  Part of that mess, he acknowledged now, had arisen from his own youth and an overwhelming desire to be … loved. The word nearly stuck in his mental craw. Love had turned out to be a blond bimbo who was taking him for every cent he earned and ridiculing him to her friends. One who, when he had overheard her denigrating him, had turned on him with a scornful smile and proceeded to inflict verbal wounds to his soul. One who had come to know him well enough that she knew exactly what to say, exactly how to hurt him.

  He had thought himself well past that episode until the other night when the words "half-breed savage" had spilled out of him. Some wounds, it seemed, never healed.

  They were the legacy of love.

  Sara Yates wasn't anything like that blond bimbo from twenty years ago, so he'd fallen into the trap again, he realized, the trap of wanting to be loved. And it was obvious now that she didn't love him. Not with the kind of love he'd always longed for and never believed in. If she had loved him that way, she might have been angry at his deceit, but she wouldn't have turned her back on him.

  He looked down at the rough pipe he held and fit the stem into the bowl. The bowl represented Woman, Zeke had said, and the stem represented Man. The Tree of Life.

  Sometimes they sundered, Gideon thought, separating the pieces and looking at them. And when they did, they were incomplete. Useless. No one could smoke a broken pipe. But he had never found the glue that could hold the pieces together.

  And once again he faced the dark possibility that it just didn't exist.

  * * *

  Joey appeared at dinner with a dark bruise mottling his cheekbone.

  "What happened?" Sara asked immediately.

  Joey shrugged. "I wasn't paying attention and tripped, that's all. Forget it."

  "Did you get that fence all braced?" Zeke asked.

  "I need to go up again in the morning. I'll have it done before lunch." He shifted irritably and stabbed at a pea with his fork. "It'll get done. You don't need to ride me."

  "No one's riding—" Sara broke off at a sharp gesture from Zeke. Silence reigned for a couple of minutes.

  "Where's Gideon?" Joey asked suddenly.

  "Guess he's late," Zeke remarked.

  Joey looked at Sara. "What did you do? Drive him off? Every other guy who's ever—"

  "Joey Yates, you be quiet right now," Sara said sharply. "It's none of your—"

  "It's my business, all right!" Joey shouted, causing Sara and Zeke both to stare at him in astonishment. "Ever since George dumped you, you treat men like rattlesnakes. Even me! You never believe me! Never! You're always so damn sure a man is lying or cheating or—"

  "Silence, boy," said Zeke. It was a tone that cut through Joey's tirade and brooked no argument.

  "You never even listen," Joey shouted and jumped up from the table, heading toward the door.

  "Joey." Zeke's voice stopped him. "Ask Gideon to join us. Then come back here and finish your supper. I'm giving you ten minutes."

  Joey stomped out without answering.

  Sara looked at Zeke, aware that her lower lip was trembling and that she wanted to cry again. This day had been hell, and she felt as if she was losing everything she loved. "You should have just let him cool off," she said to her grandfather.

  "It's time he learned self-control," Zeke said. "High time."

  Sara nodded, knowing he was right about that. But… "What do you suppose he meant, that we never listen? That I don't believe him?"

  "I guess one of us didn't hear something we should have. And maybe we'd better ask him when he calms down."

  * * *

  Joey found Gideon still sitting on the bunkhouse steps with the pieces of the pipe in his hands. Gideon looked up and greeted him with a nod.

  "You argue with somebody?" he asked the boy.

  "Tripped."

  Gideon seriously doubted it, but he let it go. Joey sat beside him.

  "Grandfather talked you into making a pipe?"

  "Your grandfather is an irresistible force."

  A soft snort escaped Joey. "Yeah."

  Gideon held up the pieces. "My carving leaves a lot to be desired."

  "It looks like my first pipe," Joey said. "Actually, I think mine was a lot worse. The bowl wasn't as straight."

  "Zeke carved everything except the buffalo."

  Joey leaned over for a closer look. "Oh." Then he snickered.

  Gideon chuckled in spite of himself. "Yeah, I know." He picked up the square of hide in which Zeke had originally kept it and wrapped the pieces.

  "I'm supposed to bring you back for dinner," Joey said.

  "I wasn't sure I ought to show up."

  "I wondered. What happened? Did Sara give you hell over something? She's impossible. I think George made her hate men. Or at least never trust them."

  And I made it worse, Gideon thought. "Well, I gave her cause," he said to Joey. "I wasn't exactly upfront with her."

  "So?"

  Gideon looked at him, a little startled. "So?"

  "Well, it's not like you've known her for years or anything. It's only been a couple of weeks. It takes longer than that to tell somebody everything, especially the important things." He shrugged. "Not that she would have listened, anyway."

  Gideon turned to look straight at the boy. "What didn't she hear you say?"

  Joey looked down at his scuffed, dusty boots. "Oh, hell, it doesn't matter now."

  "Sure it does. That's the second time you've mentioned it to me. What was it, Joey?"

  Joey hunched his shoulders. "I told her I didn't steal that damn car. I didn't even know it was stolen. I thought it was Les Walker's car. He said his dad gave it to him, and he let me drive it. But nobody believed me. Everybody believed Les when he said he never saw the car before."

  "Why do you think that happened?"

  Joey shrugged, then finally looked at Gideon. "Probably because I'd been cutting up so much at school and Les never got into trouble. Probably because I look like a punk. Probably because I was the only one in the car. But Sara should have believed me. Grandfather should have believed me."

  "And what about Les? Why did he set you up like that?"

  "Because of Daisy Halloran. She said she'd go to the prom with me, and Les thought she was going to go with him. He was pretty pi—ticked off about that. We even had a fight over it in the school parking lot. I won." He shrugged. "Daisy went to the prom with him."

  So much for love.

  "I believe you," he told Joey.

  The boy turned and looked doubtfully at him. "Why? Just because I said so? Nobody else did."

  "Just because you said so."

  Joey almost grinned. Gideon could see it. Then the boy suddenly looked away and scuffed nervously at the ground. "Maybe we better go up for supper. Grandfather only gave me ten minutes."

  "Let's go, then," Gideon said, rising with the pipe still in his hands. He felt a little like Daniel going into the lion's den, except that Daniel had had virtue on his side. And Daniel had only had to face a lion, not an angry woman.

  * * *

  Chester Elk Horn spent most of the next morning by the sweat lodge, praying. Gideon looked over to that end of the meadow a number of times and had the eerie feeling that he could feel a gathering of forces in the air. The hair on the back of his neck stood up a little even as he tried to tell himself his imagination was running away with him.

  And then the mustangs showed up, hours earlier than usual. The mares, as always, hung back by the trees, but the stallion came prancing right over to Gideon and butted him gently on the shoulder.

  Touched by this display of unequivoca
l trust, Gideon reached up with his one good arm and patted the horse awkwardly.

  "It's hell sometimes, boy, isn't it?" he heard himself whisper huskily to the horse.

  He'd had plenty of time during the long, dark hours of the night to face the unexpected loneliness of Sara's absence. Plenty of time to consider how much misery he was suffering from an emotion he didn't believe in. Plenty of time to wonder how he was going to cope with the emptiness from here on in.

  He'd been ripped up before in his life. Hell, it was the primary reason he tried not to care. Barney's death, he had thought, had completely gutted him. Now the loss of Sara showed him he hadn't been gutted, after all. There was still enough feeling in him, still enough caring, to ache for that woman. God, he thought, pressing his cheek to the stallion's sleek neck. God, it hurts so bad.

  The mustang nickered softly and then pulled away, trotting off toward his mares.

  Gideon watched him go, wishing he were a mustang rather than a man, and then turned toward the bunkhouse, intent upon working on his pipe. He wanted that buffalo to look like a buffalo before he offered the pipe to Chester later.

  Because he was going to offer the pipe. He was going to do the sweat and seek a vision, because he needed answers and direction, and neither seemed to be coming from the meanderings of his own mind. Minute by minute he flopped back and forth between trying to force Sara to listen and waiting until she calmed down enough to be willing to hear reason. He could understand that she felt betrayed. If that had been the sum of it, he would have known exactly what to do. But that was only half of it. The other half of it was that Gideon was feeling betrayed, too. By her.

  Instinct said to turn his back on the whole mess and walk away right now. His heart said otherwise. Sara Yates and her soft brown eyes had somehow become more important to him than protecting himself.

  And it was time to figure out just what that meant.

  * * *

  "Gideon! Gideon!"

  Sara called to him from the yard, and the insistent, almost panicked note in her voice brought him across the meadow at a full run from where he'd been listening to Chester explain the strips of colored cloth, called Shina, that he was hanging over the altar in the lodge.