Savage Hero

by Cassie Edwards

  She embraced Brave Wolf, then turned and stood at his side, his arm around her waist, as they both watched Night Horse go to the hut.

  “She is truly the most beautiful little girl I have ever seen,” Mary Beth said as she smiled up at Brave Wolf. “One day I, too, will give you a child. I know it, Brave Wolf. I . . . just . . . know it.”

  “You fret too much over it,” Brave Wolf said. He turned her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “My wife, my sunshine, do you not know that you are enough for me?”

  “You are so wonderfully sweet to say that,” she murmured. “I do love you so much, Brave Wolf.”

  “As I do you,” he said, then dropped his hands and took hers. “As soon as we give my brother time enough to see and hold his child, I want to go and hold my niece.”

  “You will adore her,” Mary Beth said, smiling at the memory of the child’s tiny sweetness.

  “In four days she will be named,” Brave Wolf said thickly. “In four days . . .”

  Mary Beth knew that although he tried to comfort her, he longed for a child as much as she did. It was in the way he gazed at the birthing hut, and in the way he talked about the child, and even in his anxiousness for her to be named. She must find a way to have a child for him.

  If not, oh, what then?

  Could he truly see her as enough forever?

  She doubted it, for he was a proud chief, who would surely want to show off many children to his people. Otherwise, would he not look less virile in their eyes?

  Yes, it did worry Mary Beth. How could it not?

  It seemed that in the end, her marriage would depend on whether or not she was able to have a child.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  And this maiden,

  she lived with no other thought

  than to love and be loved by me.

  —Poe

  It was spring, in the grass-growing moon, when everything was new and smelled sweetly of flowers.

  It was a time of hope and love, as the women prepared packs of extra moccasins and pemmican for their husbands to take along on the hunt.

  Two days ago Mary Beth had joined the women in singing farewell songs of encouragement to Brave Wolf and his warriors as they left the village on their prancing, magnificent steeds. Each warrior had carried his own choice of weapon, some bearing guns, others bows and arrows, and others spears.

  It was wonderful to see the harmony of the Crow hunters who would bring home a bounty of meat, her husband in the lead.

  Mary Beth had just returned from the river with Dancing Butterfly and the other women, their baskets and pots filled with fresh water.

  Mary Beth inhaled deeply and smelled the savory smoke of elk meat being roasted over a large outdoor fire. The meat had come from an earlier, briefer hunt three days ago. Each husband had brought home a supply of fresh meat to sustain his family during the long hunt.

  She stood with Dancing Butterfly, watching Little Horse playing with a group of other four-year-olds.

  All Crow boys, even as young as four, were subjected to vigorous training in running, swimming, wrestling, archery, racing, hunting, and riding. But on this early morning, they were enjoying a time of play and camaraderie. Some splashed in the stream, laughing, while others played tag.

  “My son grows more and more into his father’s image,” Dancing Butterfly said, pride in both her eyes and voice. She turned and looked toward her tepee, then smiled at Mary Beth. “Night Horse tells me our newborn daughter is in my image.” She laughed softly. “Of course he would say that, even knowing she is too young to look like anyone but herself.”

  “Yes, she is only two weeks old,” Mary Beth said, as she looked at Dancing Butterfly. “You have two daughters and one son, yet your body shows no signs of ever having had any children. It is as voluptuous as it was before you had children.”

  “It will be the same for you,” Dancing Butterfly said, then sucked in a quick breath and paled. “I am sorry. What I said made it sound as though you have not had a child, yet you have. How could I forget about your son David? How could I be so insensitive?”

  “Many have forgotten about him,” Mary Beth said, sighing. “I never shall, though. Never, never.”

  Then Mary Beth gave Dancing Butterfly a warm hug. “And do not feel bad about what you said,” she murmured. “I know what you meant.”

  She stepped away from Dancing Butterfly and gazed down at her own flat belly. She placed her hands on it. “Soon, ah, soon, all will know that at long last their chief’s wife is with child,” she said excitedly. “For too many moons now I have seen our people’s eyes watching me, filled with disappointment and sadness as they gaze at my stomach. They wish for a son in their chief’s image, one that can one day be as great a leader as his ahte, his father. I have felt so, so inadequate because of those looks.”

  “I am sorry you have felt that way,” Dancing Butterfly murmured. “Had our people known how they were making you feel, they would feel bad, too, for they love you, Mary Beth. Everyone loves you.”

  “And I love them,” Mary Beth said, turning to go back to her lodge.

  “Come inside my lodge with me,” Dancing Butterfly encouraged. “Bead with me for a while. I know how concerned you are about our husbands not being home from the hunt yet. They do not usually stay away as many nights as they have this time.”

  Mary Beth looked toward the outer perimeters of the village as she had done so often since daybreak. She was puzzled over why it should take so long for the warriors to return. No doubt with the dwindling herds of buffalo, it was more difficult to find the animals.

  She was especially eager for Brave Wolf to return home this time. She was certain now that she was finally with child.

  She had not told Brave Wolf yet because she had not wanted to disappoint him in case she was not pregnant after all.

  Now that she had counted off six full weeks since her monthly should have started, she was ready to tell Brave Wolf the wonderful news. She smiled when she saw a deer bounding away into the forest thicket.

  “It is so wonderful to know that you are with child,” Dancing Butterfly said. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”

  “I wanted Brave Wolf to be the first to know, but I just could not wait a moment longer to say it aloud to someone,” Mary Beth said, beaming. “That person should be you. You are such a wonderful friend.”

  Dancing Butterfly giggled. “When we first met I did not treat you like a friend,” she said softly. “I was so cold . . . so cruel . . . so untrusting.” She sighed. “I was so wrong.”

  “You were right not to trust me,” Mary Beth said. “I am white. Not many whites had given you cause to trust them.” She sighed and smiled. “I am so glad that you soon saw me as no threat to your people and decided to take me into your heart as your friend.”

  “Special friend,” Dancing Butterfly corrected. She dropped her hands from Mary Beth’s and knelt when her son came running to her, his eyes wide with excitement.

  “Mother, White Coyote opened his eyes,” Little Horse cried, flinging himself into his mother’s arms. “I just saw him do it. His eyes are such a pretty color.” He glanced toward the sky, then smiled again as he looked at his mother. “They are the color of the sky.”

  He stood up and grabbed one of his mother’s hands, then reached for one of Mary Beth’s. “Come. See,” he said eagerly.

  Mary Beth took one of Little Horse’s tiny hands and went with him and Dancing Butterfly to a small hut made of willow branches, where they crawled inside.

  Mary Beth’s heart went out to the lone white coyote that had rejoined its tiny brothers and sisters in nursing. There was a difference between him and the others, for they were not coyotes at all, but kittens.

  Two days before Brave Wolf had left for the hunt, he had found an abandoned white coyote pup not far from the village. He had searched for its mother, but finally gave up on finding her.

  Devoted to his nephew Little Horse, he had brought the
pup home to him.

  It was Little Horse who had ever so nonchalantly taken the pup and placed it amid five kittens as they nursed from their mother. The pup was soon nursing alongside them, as though it had been born with them.

  The mother cat had taken the pup in and licked and groomed it as though it were her own.

  Mary Beth was touched deeply by the sight of the kittens and coyote together, the kittens all black, contrasting with the white. And seeing the tiny pup, she had finally gotten over the fear of coyotes which had stayed with her from the first moment she had heard them howling in the darkness.

  She smiled down at the mother cat, who seemed to smile back at her, for this was the very cat that had once belonged to Colonel Downing. Sweetness, as Mary Beth had named her, had given birth to many litters, all grown now and happily keeping the Crow people’s cornfields free of white-footed mice, and the huge and ugly kangaroo rats that abounded in Montana.

  “You cannot see White Coyote’s eyes now,” Little Horse said, sighing. “He is feeding again. But you can come back later to see or I can bring him to you when he is through feeding.”

  Mary Beth patted him on a cheek. “He is a beautiful puppy,” she murmured. “I’m glad you love him so much.”

  “Uncle Brave Wolf was so nice to build this special birthing hut for the mother and her kittens,” Little Horse said. He smiled from ear to ear. “I want to give one of these kittens to each of my special friends.” He turned pleading eyes up to Mary Beth. “Aunt Mary Beth, can I? Can I have these kittens for my friends?”

  “Yes, sweetie, you can,” Mary Beth said. She laughed softly. “There are always enough kittens to go around. It seems that Sweetness has a male friend somewhere who keeps her belly filled with kittens.”

  The sound of horses outside the hut made Mary Beth turn. She and Dancing Butterfly exchanged big smiles.

  “Finally they are home,” Mary Beth said, hurrying from the small hut.

  Just as they got outside and stood up, Mary Beth saw the large group of warriors entering the village, but there was someone else among them.

  Her heart skipped a beat, and she grabbed Dancing Butterfly’s hand. “Is that a child on a pony beside Brave Wolf?” she asked, her voice breaking. “Oh, Dancing Butterfly, am I seeing right? Is it a young boy? Is his hair golden?”

  Dancing Butterfly gazed intently at the child, whose skin was sun-bronzed and whose waist-length hair was the color of wheat. He rode proudly in his small saddle and wore only a breechcloth and moccasins.

  “Yes, Mary Beth, you are seeing a young brave who is surely around nine winters of age and whose hair is the color of wheat,” Dancing Butterfly said, her own heart pounding at the sight, because she knew that she had just described Mary Beth’s David!

  “Oh, Lord, oh, Lord,” Mary Beth cried, bolting toward them, her braids bouncing on her shoulders, her arms outstretched as the child came closer on his pony.

  “David!” Mary Beth cried. “David! David!”

  “Mama!” he cried as he leapt from his horse and began running toward her. “Mama!”

  They met halfway.

  Mary Beth fell to her knees and gathered him into her arms.

  She clung and sobbed.

  Brave Wolf dismounted and fell to his knees beside his wife and the young brave he would gladly call son. He gathered them both within his arms.

  Mary Beth gazed at Brave Wolf. “I do not know how you managed this, but, oh, thank you, thank you,” she said, the tears hot on her lips. “My son. He is home. He is safe. He is alive!”

  David clung for a moment longer, then as Brave Wolf leaned away, the child looked into his mother’s eyes. “Mama, I never let myself forget you, your love, the prettiness of your smile and eyes,” he said, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Mama, I knew that I would see you again.”

  He lowered his eyes, then looked into hers again. “Mama, I remembered the prayer I said each night back at our home in Kentucky and I prayed that same prayer often, hoping I would find you when I became a great warrior who could travel far and wide to search for you,” he said. “But Brave Wolf, who I now know is your husband, found you for me.”

  “We were hunting,” Brave Wolf said. He placed a gentle hand on the child’s shoulder. “Two Cheyenne warriors, one a powerful chief, joined our hunt. While we were becoming acquainted, I told him about you and that you were white. The chief told me about his adopted son, who is also white. I asked how he came to have the child, and for his description. It was moments later that I knew I had found David. And just as I thought it, the warrior spoke David’s name to me, as his name was before he gave him the Cheyenne name Lone Bear.”

  “Lone Bear . . .” Mary Beth said, framing David’s tanned face between her hands. “My son . . . Lone Bear.”

  She slowly looked at her son, up and down, smiling at how healthy and tan he was. She could hardly believe that he was there for her to love and touch forever and ever!

  Then her eyes went to a warrior who came up beside Brave Wolf.

  Brave Wolf placed an arm around the warrior’s shoulder. “This is Black Feather, who has fathered Lone Bear since the day he rescued him from a band of renegades,” he explained. He nodded from Black Feather to Mary Beth.

  “Black Feather, this is Mary Beth, my wife,” he said, pride in his eyes and voice. “This is Lone Bear’s mother. Is not she as beautiful as I described her to you?”

  Black Feather smiled and nodded. “Ah-hah, yes, and even more,” he said. He reached a hand out to Mary Beth. “It is good to finally meet the mother of my son Lone Bear.”

  Mary Beth hesitated.

  Her smile waned.

  She didn’t like the way this warrior still spoke about David as though he were his . . . his to keep.

  “I see that what I have said put alarm into your eyes,” Black Feather said, slowly lowering his hand to his side. “Although I still refer to Lone Bear as my son, I know that in truth he is yours, and that I must say farewell to him today. It is my wife, who is barren, who will find it difficult to accept this reality. He has become everything to my wife . . . and to me.”

  “But you will not ask for him to leave with you?” Mary Beth asked hopefully. “You truly give him back to me although it is obvious how much you want and love him?”

  “It is only right that he be with his true mother,” Black Feather said. “He kept you alive inside his heart. He spoke of you often. We sent out many search parties for you but never found you.”

  “You were so close, yet so far?” Mary Beth said.

  “No, we were never close, not until recently,” Black Feather said. “My people are new to this land. We are a misplaced people now. We have been ordered onto a reservation. We were on our way there when we stopped just long enough for me and my warriors to hunt. That is when we came across Brave Wolf. He shared his meat with us. Then we shared talk.”

  “Which led you to mention my son?” Mary Beth softly questioned.

  “It was your husband who asked if I had seen in my recent travels a white boy living among any tribes I have been with,” Black Feather said. “Guessing he was referring to my white son, I hesitated to tell him, yet when he talked of a mother whose heart was hurting, I could not keep the truth about my white son to myself any longer.”

  Tears flooded Mary Beth’s eyes. “Thank you, oh, thank you, for being honest and open with my husband,” she said. She bent to her knees and drew David into her arms once again. She gazed up at Black Feather. “But I know how hard this has to be for you, and for your wife. She will surely be as heartbroken as I was when I lost my son to those renegades.”

  “At first she will be, but after she has had time to think about it, she will be happy that Lone Bear is finally reunited with his true mother,” he said thickly. “You see, you were always in his nightly prayers. I was there at his bedside with him. I heard them.”

  Mary Beth was deeply touched that her son would use the Christian prayers that she had so devotedly taught
him. She was touched that this Cheyenne chief would allow him to, had even joined his nightly prayers.

  All of this time, when she was so worried about her son, he was with a caring, wonderful family, instead of with the renegades being taught their evil ways, which meant that God had also answered her prayers.

  “You say that you have been ordered onto a reservation,” Mary Beth said. “The Crow were also, but thus far we have been allowed to stay on land that was given to the Whistling Waters Clan by treaty. Were you not included in such a treaty?”

  “We Cheyenne have signed many treaties with the white eyes, but the white eyes broke them all,” Black Feather said, his voice cold and flat. “We have been ordered to the reservation. If we do not comply, we will suffer because of it. My people have suffered enough. We go to the reservation. We will make our home there.”

  “Stay with us,” Brave Wolf quickly said. “We can make room for you. We can ride together on the hunt. We can be as one people.”

  Black Feather gazed over his shoulder at the many Crow people who were crowded together now, watching.

  He turned his eyes back to Brave Wolf. “You are kind to offer, but that would seem to be the easy way out,” he said. “But what might appear easy for us would bring hardships on you.” He sighed. “My brother, I must return now to my people. I must go to my wife, who is in mourning as we speak . . . mourning for a son whom she can no longer call hers.”

  David rushed to Black Feather and flung himself into his arms as Black Feather knelt and received him. David clung to him. “Ahte, father, I shall miss you so much,” he said with a sob. “I . . . shall . . . miss Ina.”

  “I know,” Black Feather said, gently stroking the boy’s back. “In life, there are many things that one must face and deal with. This is just one more thing for you.”

  “Yes, I know,” David said, slowly leaving the comfort of arms that had held him often these past winters.

  He stepped away from Black Feather, then stood at Mary Beth’s side. Her hand took his, their fingers intertwining. “But I am so happy to be with my true mother,” he said. “Please tell my other mother that I shall always remember her and love her, but I must be with my true mother.”