Cherokee Storm

by Janelle Taylor

  “That’s barbaric,” she answered. She felt cold, colder than she should have been on a mild summer night. Where was Storm Dancer? Had he been part of the mob? Or was he one of the savages that would now torture and murder a helpless captive?

  “Aye,” Flynn agreed. “Almost as barbaric as a man who would slay innocent babes in their mother’s arms. War is never pretty, girl. Skin color don’t matter. It’s the same everywhere. Weeping and dying.”

  “But why?” she demanded. “Why would anyone do this?”

  “Same reason every war’s been fought since Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden. Land. Land, girl. That’s why men fight and die. Because land is life. The strongest claim it and the weak ones who lose it die.”

  “It’s wrong,” she protested. “This is Cherokee land.”

  “Aye. And it was Irish land the English took with steel and shot. All the same.”

  “What will you do, Da? What will we do?”

  “Try and ride out the storm. Same as we’ve always done. Try and stay alive.”

  The journey home was fast and silent. Gall and his two Cherokee companions spoke only in their own language. Shannon’s father rarely spoke at all. They drove the animals hard into dawn, and when the sun rose over Bald Mountain, they kicked their mounts into a gallop.

  Hours later, Shannon caught sight of the post compound. The gates were shut, and a single thread of cooking smoke rose from the house. She glanced at Flynn. His horse’s hide was streaked with sweat, and foam flew from its nostrils as he covered the final distance, pulling ahead of her by several lengths.

  “Take care,” Gall called.

  He had remained close while Pine Martin and Black Walnut had ridden one on either side, keeping careful watch. However distasteful they had found the task of escort duty, they had done their jobs well. None of them had seen another human—hostile or friendly—on the trip.

  Shannon smiled at Gall. “Thank you for riding home with us.”

  He reined his spotted mount close to Badger. “Don’t trust him,” he said.

  “Who?” The pony slowed to snatch a mouthful of grass, then stopped, sides heaving. When she tried to pull up his big head, the animal mouthed the bit and laid back his ears in stubborn rebellion.

  Gall rolled his eyes. “I never took you for a fool, Shannon. Storm Dancer cares nothing for you. Another woman to boast of.”

  She yanked at the reins but Badger kept eating. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I saw you leave the camp in the night. You went to him, didn’t you?”

  She felt herself flush. “That’s none of your business.”

  “He boasted to the young men that he would have you.”

  Anger replaced her shame. “That’s not true,” she flung back.

  He shrugged and motioned to the two braves who sat watching them. “Ask them.”

  “You know I don’t speak Cherokee.”

  “Who stood beside you in the cornfield when the villagers would have driven another stake in the dance ground for you and your father? Where was he then?”

  A sour taste rose in her throat and she felt suddenly sick. “He went after the raiders. He said he—”

  “You are just a white woman to him. He would never have you to wife. Never take you to his mother’s house.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes. “How can you speak about him like that?”

  “All my life he has taunted me for my French blood.”

  “Where’s your loyalty? Storm Dancer is your cousin.”

  “He is my cousin, and I know him well. Better than you.”

  “He wasn’t there. He would never have watched and done nothing.”

  Gall shook his head. “If you think that, you are as stupid as he believes.”

  “He wouldn’t have left if he’d known—”

  “He left you to the Englishman, didn’t he? Left your bed to go to Feather Blanket’s furs. Together they laughed at you.”

  “That’s a lie. He wouldn’t.”

  “Shannon!” Flynn had reined in and was waving to her. “Come on! Why are you stopping?”

  Gall leaned down and smacked Badger on the rump with his bow. The pony leaped ahead, and it was all Shannon could do to hold her seat. By the time she caught up with her father and looked back, Gall and his friends had put heels to their mounts and were galloping away through the tall grass. She averted her face so that Flynn wouldn’t see the tears streaking her cheeks.

  “No sense getting complacent,” he said. “Sooner we’re behind the walls, the better.”

  She had to ask. “Before, when…when the Cherokee turned on us…did you see Storm Dancer anywhere?”

  Flynn turned shrewd eyes on her. “Why?”

  “He’s our friend.” She heeled Badger into a rough trot. “I just wondered if he—”

  “Didn’t see him. Not when the English attacked. Not after.”

  “Oh.”

  “I didn’t see you either. Not until later—in the cornfield. You must have run when the shooting started,” he said.

  “A man chased me,” she said, carefully trying to avoid an outright lie. “He thought I was Indian. I ran into the dark. Then I fell, and…”

  “Thought as much,” Flynn said. “Lots of confusion. The shelter where you were sleeping with the other women, it burned. Dove was killed. Did you know that?”

  “Dove?” Sorrow gripped her. How could that sweet, shy girl be dead?

  “You were lucky to get away.” He coughed. “I was scared, girl, scared half to death. Worried that you were—”

  “No, I’m good, Da. Nothing but a few scrapes and stone bruises. I hid in a blackberry thicket.”

  “Good thinking,” he said gruffly. “Knew you had a knack for takin’ care of yourself, darlin’. If anything happened to you, well…” He coughed again.

  “Let’s get on to the post. See if Oona’s heard the news.”

  “How could she? We rode so fast, and it only happened last night.”

  Flynn scoffed. “Shows what you know about Oona. She may wear a white woman’s dress and bake Irish soda bread, but she’s pure Indian. Uncanny, the way they know stuff. You wait and see. ’Course, what she knows and what she tells us could be a different shade of horse altogether.” He slapped his mount’s neck with the reins and guided the animal back toward home.

  Miles away, Storm Dancer knelt beside a stream and washed the blood from his hands. Four Englishmen he had found. Four who would never return to their homes and families…four who would never claim the bounty on the Indian scalps they carried in their saddlebags.

  They had found tracks early in the day where the fleeing band of scalp hunters had split up. These four had turned east while the larger group had continued north on through the pass toward the English Fort Hood. The nine warriors from Split Cane’s village had followed the larger group. He had chosen to track these men alone.

  He had seen Dove’s body after the murderers had taken their pleasure with her. They had committed butchery as well as rape. Feather Blanket’s death had been an easy one compared to the younger girl’s. Dove’s mother had invited the village to a feast to celebrate her daughter becoming a woman, but she died an innocent child who had never known a man until the beasts who walked on two feet had come.

  He had tracked the guilty ones and had done what must be done. He had taken them by knife and blowgun and arrow. The last he had drowned in this stream. He had dragged the louse-ridden and bearded monster into the bushes and left his body to be devoured by wolves.

  Storm Dancer’s conscience bore no guilt for the executions.

  Who these white men were and why they had come so far into the Cherokee lands, he didn’t know. Perhaps they had taken the pay of the French and attacked the Cherokee so that his people would turn against the English. Perhaps they were simply killers whose crops had failed or who would rather hunt women and children than deer or bear. It was said around the campfires that the governors of Pennsylvania and Virgin
ia paid yellow gold for Indian scalps.

  Maybe they wished to murder the Cherokee and claim the rich cornfields and hunting grounds for themselves. White men believed they could own the earth as well as the water. They thought nothing of hunting until every deer was shot and every beaver trapped. Wherever they went, they dirtied the streams, cut down the trees, and lorded it over men whose skins were a different color. What reasonable man could know why they did anything?

  The scalps that the raiders had taken from the Cherokee he wrapped tenderly in a blanket. He had built a small fire and burned cedar bark and tobacco so that his prayers for the dead Cherokee would rise with the smoke. He would carry the Tsalagi scalps to his own village where the shaman would offer up holy rites. Later, a runner would carry the remains reverently back to their clans so they might be laid with the dead. It was right that a Cherokee enter the sky path whole.

  Lastly, he pulled the saddles and bridles off the horses of the dead Englishmen and turned the animals loose. He was no thief. He wanted nothing their foul hands had touched. The rifles he smashed on the rocks and threw into the water. The knives and hatchets he buried.

  As he extinguished the fire, he recited the ancient words of a potent curse his grandmother had taught him. “May you thirst and never drink. May you never see the light of sun or moon or hear the laughter of one who loves you. May your souls be lost and your names forgotten. May you never be born again so long as rains fall and the mountains stand.”

  When he had left the war party, he’d gone on foot as a lone wolf hunts. A man on horseback cannot travel silently, and he cannot cross the steepest mountain or swim the swiftest mountain river. A predator could not weigh himself down with weapons or with belongings. Now that his quarry was dead, he could set off for his mother’s village unburdened by unimportant things that would slow his journey.

  A lone wolf travels fast and far.

  Among his people it was said that a warrior in his prime could run from the Cherokee heartland to the campfires of the Iroquois far above the river the whites called Hudson in the time it took the sun to pass overhead as many times as a man had fingers on his right hand. He himself had made that journey in his eighteenth year, and the sun was still high on the fifth day when he ate roasted bear among the Seneca. On this day, there was no need for such haste, but he ran in the same manner just the same.

  Storm Dancer’s heart was troubled, and he must speak with Cardinal, his betrothed. He must tell her what had passed between him and Truth Teller’s daughter, and they must decide what course to take.

  He ran without stopping for drink or rest. He ran as though his soul depended on it.

  It did.

  As Flynn had suspected, Oona already knew that the peace between the English and the Cherokee had been shattered. Typically silent Oona had waited until they had eaten supper before sharing more terrible news. Not only had Split Cane’s village been attacked, but two others, as well.

  One, a smaller Cherokee settlement, had been overrun, most of the people killed, the houses burned, and the gardens and fruit trees cut down. Water Bear’s town, closest to the Green Valley and Fort Hood had been destroyed as well. There, many of the men had been on a trading expedition with tribes farther west. Their families had remained to tend the crops and were left unprotected.

  Through chance, a small girl and her grandmother had been in a high valley gathering berries for making dye. When the child’s keen eyes had seen the party of strange white men riding through a pass below, the older woman grew alarmed. The two built a fire and the grandmother sent smoke signals into sky, warning the town.

  The people had gathered their little ones and their elderly and fled into the depths of forest. They reported only one death in the village, an English thief who ransacked the shaman’s lodge and violated sacred belongings. When he had ripped open a bright colored basket tied shut with leather thongs, he’d been bitten by a tame rattlesnake that the healer used in his medical practice.

  “Had the men not been away, the English would have found a different welcome,” Oona finished. “None would have remained to murder Tsalagi at Split Cane’s camp.”

  “Who were they?” Flynn demanded, shoving his empty plate aside. “Who could possibly be so stupid as to want to ruin our friendship with the Cherokee nation?”

  Shannon couldn’t keep from asking, “Were other Indian towns attacked? What about Storm Dancer’s village?”

  Oona had shot her a sharp look and ignored her question. “According to Ghost Elk, white militia men from Virginia came to the fort, saying that they were seeking the murderers of a planter and his family at Pine Hill.”

  “That was last fall,” Flynn said. “Archie Whiggs’s plantation. That’s five days’ ride east from here. And I thought everyone had agreed that the killings were committed by renegades or his own slaves.”

  “He was a bad master,” Oona said. “He deserved to die, but not his wife and family.”

  “If any slaves had a reason to revolt, it was Whiggs’s,” her father agreed. “He was a hard man. They said he beat his people and used the women cruelly.”

  Oona nodded as she poured Flynn another mug of tea. “Only silver, clothing, and four horses were taken.”

  “Aye. They left more in the field, along with twenty head of cattle.” Flynn slowly filled his pipe with fresh tobacco. “Most tellin’, whoever did the killin’ left the rifles. They didn’t even burn the house.”

  “Shawnee would have taken scalps and guns,” Oona agreed.

  Shannon toyed with her china teacup, one of the few remaining from her grandmother’s set that her mother had carried so carefully from Ireland. “Why blame the Cherokee?”

  “This has more the look of men wantin’ Cherokee land than justice,” her father said. Oona spoke to him in Indian and he translated. “They wanted soldiers from the fort, but the major refused. Ghost Elk claimed he saw Creek Indian scouts with them.”

  “It’s wrong,” Shannon protested, looking at her father. “All that killing. It’s unfair.”

  “The Cherokee have long memories.” Flynn pushed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. “These Virginians have lit a fire that may consume us all.”

  They sat late by the fire talking. It wasn’t until Flynn went out one last time to make certain all was quiet that Oona turned to her. “You did not listen to me, did you? What have you done?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you think your father is a fool? If he finds out that you and Storm Dancer—”

  “We’ve done nothing!”

  Oona scoffed. “Lie to a man if you wish. Do not lie to me. You have shared a blanket with Storm Dancer. Deny it if you can.”

  Shannon stared at the floor, unable to say anything in her own defense.

  “His mother’s village is deep in the mountains. Very strong. No white men could find it, let alone catch them unaware.”

  Shannon had felt a surge of relief. “Thank you.”

  “I do you no favor. And you do him no favor by forgetting who you are. Your father would kill him if he knew.”

  “We knew that nothing could come of it—that we are of different worlds.”

  “You knew, but you broke the laws just the same.”

  “One night.” Shannon looked at her father’s woman earnestly. “Was that so terrible? Are what you and Da are doing any less—”

  “Is not the same!”

  “You’re Indian.”

  “Do not try to run from what you have done.” Oona’s gaze bored into hers. “I warned you.”

  “Storm Dancer—”

  “Keep your voice down. Your father will be back in a moment.”

  “You don’t understand,” Shannon whispered.

  “It is you who do not understand,” Oona flung back hotly. “Storm Dancer, of all men, is not meant for you. He is a prince. A holy man. A man who is destined to save his nation. It will bring you nothing but pain and tears to desire him. And you may bring him death.”

&nb
sp; “It’s over between us anyway. It was just one night.” Shannon folded her hands, trying not to think about him, about the way he’d touched her, the way it had made her feel.

  “And if you carry a red child in your belly?”

  “That’s not possible.” The enormous implication of the risk she’d taken suddenly enveloped her. She couldn’t be pregnant. Not after one night. Hadn’t she seen the merry dance the maids at the tavern had done? Nan had assured her that a woman only took if she did it with the same man for weeks. Oona was just trying to scare her.

  “I hope for you that what you think is true.” Oona leaned over and banked the fire before looking back at her. “My child will be Indian. It does not matter that Flynn is white. In the eyes of your people, I am nothing. My child is nothing.”

  “I don’t feel that way.” She realized that it was true. Her first shock and revulsion had changed. Oona’s baby would be Da’s child, her brother or sister. And the color of its skin wouldn’t matter. Not to her.

  Oona sighed as she swept the hearth clean. “You have a heavy burden. If you have a red child, your life is over. No white door would be open to you. The English would spit on your child and call it bastard.”

  “I’m not with child. I can’t be. Storm Dancer—”

  “Speak of him no more to me. Forget him.”

  Shannon snatched a candle and retreated to her room, escaping before her father returned and saw that she was upset.

  She closed the door and leaned back against it. What had she done? She wasn’t stupid. She knew the risk a woman took when she slept with a man not her husband. Had she lost her mind that she’d forget reason for one night of desire?

  Gall had said awful things. They couldn’t be true, but what would make him be so cruel? The man who’d made love to her would never have mocked her among his own people.

  Wax dripped down over the side of the pewter onto her hand. Quickly, she set her candle on the table and sucked at the finger. She gazed into the mirror wondering how Oona had known. Did what she and Storm Dancer had done show on her face?

  She could see no difference in her features…no scarlet letter branded on her forehead. On the outside, she was the same. But in her heart, in her soul, everything had changed.