Madeline Baker - Lakota Renegade

by Lakota Renegade (lit)

  When that was done, he picked up a knife and knelt beside Creed. She had thought Creed to be unconscious, but now she heard his voice, low and edged with pain as he spoke to the Indians in their own tongue.

  Jassy's stomach plummeted to her toes as she got her first glance at the gunshot wound in Creed's chest. To her, it looked enormous. The edges were red and ragged. Blood welled from the wound, trickling down his chest, to be wiped away by one of the other Indians. The stocky Indian, who Jassy had decided was probably the tribal medicine man, began chanting again as he passed the blade of a knife through the smoke, and then he began to probe the wound in Creed's chest.

  Creed swore a vile oath as the blade pierced his flesh. At a word from the medicine man, the other two Indians took hold of Creed so he couldn't move.

  Jassy turned away, unable to watch, as the medicine man dug the bullet out of Creed's chest.

  The low sound of chanting filled the lodge.

  Once, she heard Creed cry out in pain.

  And then there was a soft grunt of satisfaction, and she guessed the medicine man had dislodged the slug.

  She turned around then, her gaze settling on Creed. His face was pale, and he was sweating profusely. His eyes were closed, and she wondered if he had passed out. She fervently hoped so.

  She drew back from the doorway as the two warriors left the lodge. The medicine man noticed her then, apparently for the first time. He stared at her for a long moment, and she held her breath, waiting for him to order her from the tipi. Instead, he motioned her to come closer.

  "Pehanska," he said, "your woman here."

  Creed's eyelids fluttered open. "Jassy?"

  "I'm here." Hurrying toward him, she knelt at his side and took his hand in hers. "You'll be all right," she said, but even as she spoke the words, she wondered how he could possibly survive. His hand was hot where it rested in hers; his eyes were fever bright.

  Her gaze slid to his chest. The medicine man had packed the wound with a poultice of some kind, then covered it with a strip of cloth. "Can I get you anything?"

  "Water."

  Jassy looked at the medicine man, who handed her a canteen. Jassy stared at the container, at the letters "U.S." stenciled on the side. Lifting Creed's head a little, she held the canteen to his lips.

  The medicine man watched her for a moment, then rose to his feet. "You stay," he said, and left the lodge.

  "Jassy, don't be afraid," Creed said. "If anything happens to me . . ."

  "Nothing's going to happen," Jassy exclaimed. "You're going to be fine."

  "They won't hurt you. If anything happens to me, Tasunke Hinzithe warrior wearing three eagle featherswill see you safely back to Rock Springs."

  Creed closed his eyes as a wave of pain swept through him. He was badly hurt, and he knew it, just as he knew his chances of survival were slim. But Jassy would be taken care of. She was his wife, and the Lakota would respect that.

  "Creed?"

  He heard the worry in her voice, and he opened his eyes. "I'll be all right."

  She smiled through her tears. "Of course you She sat beside him all that night, wiping his body with a cool cloth in hopes of bringing down the fever, spooning broth into his mouth covering him with a heavy robe when chills wracked his body.

  The hours passed slowly as she endeavored to combat the recurring chills and fever. The medicine man came and went several times through the night, bringing broth and tea for Creed, offering Jassy a bowl of hot venison stew. He changed the poultice every few hours and added sage and sweet grass to the fire. Once, he sat beside Creed for twenty minutes, chanting softly as he drew an eagle feather through the smoke, drawing it over Creed.

  Dawn came, and there was no change. Creed was unconscious now, his face ashen, his breathing rapid and shallow. He was going to die, she thought numbly.

  Needing to be alone, she left the lodge and walked away from the village, not stopping until she came to a winding river. Kneeling on a patch of dew-damp grass, she folded her hands and stared at the brightening sky, a prayer rising in her heart as the sun climbed in the sky.

  "Please," she murmured. "Please let him live. I love him so much. Please, don't take him from me. He's all I have in the world."

  She gazed at the brilliant bands of color that spread across the sky, thinking she had never seen anything so beautiful.

  "Please," she murmured, knowing that a Being who could create such beauty had the power to heal, to be merciful.

  "Please, I'll be so good if You just let him live. . . ."

  The sound of a woman weeping drew him from the edge of eternity. With an effort, he opened his eyes. At first, he saw only darkness, and then he saw Jassy sitting beside him, her head bowed, her hands folded in her lap, her checks wet with tears. He gazed at her for several minutes, wondering why she was crying. It was an effort to stay awake, to breathe, to think.

  Jassy was crying. He longed to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he lacked the strength. The darkness of oblivion whispered in his ear, promising to shield him from the pain that rocked him with every breath. It was tempting, so tempting. For a moment, he considered surrendering to the darkness. All he had to do was close his eyes and let the blackness carry him away.

  But then he heard Jassy's voice again. She was praying for him, her words thick with tears. She was crying for him, he thought, crying because he'd been hurt and she thought he was going to die.

  Summoning all his strength, he moved away from the velvet cloak of darkness. "Jassy?"

  "Creed!" His name was a cry on her lips, a cry of joy, of relief. Of love. "How do you feel?"

  "Like hell."

  Her smile was bright enough to light a city.

  "I've been so afraid," she murmured. "So afraid."

  Her hands moved over him, caressing his cheek, adjusting the blanket that covered him, resting on his brow to take his temperature in the way of women the world over.

  "I don't understand why the Indians tried to kill you, and then brought you here."

  "The Indians didn't shoot me, honey. It was Rimmer."

  "Rimmer! Why?"

  "I don't know. Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine. Are you hungry?" she asked. "Thirsty?"

  'Thirsty."

  "You need to eat something."

  "Later."

  He drank the water she brought him, then lay back and closed his eyes. He'd been close to death before, he recalled, but never this close.

  "Creed?"

  "I'm okay, Jassy. Just tired." He felt her take his hand in hers. "Don't worry, honey. I'll be all right. Why don't you get some sleep?"

  He tugged on her hand, pulling her down beside him, his arm slipping around her shoulders to draw her up against him.

  Minutes later, he was asleep.

  Lying there beside him, her head resting on his shoulder, Jassy offered a silent prayer of thanks to all the gods, both red and white, for sparing the life of the man she loved.

  He did not make a good patient. He was too weak to do more than sit up for a few minutes at a time. He knew it, but he didn't like it. Being idle made him irritable. He didn't like having Jassy wait on him hand and foot. He didn't like being bedridden. He didn't like the fact that he couldn't even get up to relieve himself.

  He snapped at Jassy and growled at Mato Wakuwa, the medicine man, until they both threatened to let him lie there and rot.

  Tasunke Hinzi came each day to visit, and Jassy learned that Tasunke Hinzi and Creed had been childhood friends. Sometimes she sat near Creed while the two men reminisced about the old days, before the army had attacked their village and taken the survivors to the reservation.

  Now was one of those times.

  Jassy listened as Tasunke Hinzi spoke of the time on the reservation, unable to believe that the Indians had been driven from their homeland and subjected to such inhumane treatment. She had always been taught that the Indians had been sent to the reservations for their own good, that they were housed and
fed and clothed. But Tasunke Hinzi told a different story.

  The days at Standing Rock had been hard, he said. There had never been enough food or blankets. The old ones had longed for home, and they had sickened and died at an alarming rate. The children had been hungry all the time.

  The women grieved; the men grew angry. After a few months, the warriors began to leave the reservation. One by one, they had slipped away, and after a while, the women and children had followed.

  "My people will never go to the reservation again," Tasunke Hinzi said vehemently. "We will live here, or we will die here, but we will never again submit to the wasichu."

  Tasunke Hinzi glanced at Jassy. She had discarded her wasicun winyan clothing for a doeskin dress and moccasins. Her only adornment was the choker at her throat. He remembered it well, remembered Pehanska's pride when his grandmother, Okoka, had made it for him. That had been long ago, he thought sadly. Long ago.

  Abruptly, Tasunke Hinzi rose to his feet. "Ake wancinyankin ktelo, kola," he said, nodding at Creed, then Jassy.

  "Tanyan yahi yelo," Creed replied. "I'm glad you came."

  Jassy watched Tasunke Hinzi duck out of the lodge. He treated her with respect, but she couldn't help wondering if he harbored a secret dislike for her because she was white, because her people had stolen his land and murdered his relatives.

  Later that day, Mato Wakuwa came in to check on Creed's wounds. Mato Wakuwa didn't speak much English, but he always had a smile for Jassy, and as the days passed, she grew more and more fond of the old man.

  Sometimes, when Creed was asleep, she went outside to sit in the sun. Mato Wakuwa could often be seen sitting outside his lodge surrounded by children and adults alike.

  This day was no exception. Sitting with her back against the lodge, Jassy watched the faces of the children, smiling as their expressions changed from awe to humor.

  She glanced up as Tasunke Hinzi approached the lodge.

  "Hau," he said, dropping down beside her.

  "Hello."

  "How is Pehanska?"

  "Much better, thank you. He's asleep just now."

  Tasunke Hinzi nodded. "Rest is good."

  "What is Mato Wakuwa telling the children?"

  Tasunke Hinzi listened for a moment, then smiled. "He is telling them the story of why people have five fingers."

  "Stories, really?"

  "Han. He is telling them that, in the beginning of the world, there were only animals. One day, no one knows why, the animals held a council and decided to make people. All went well with their design until they came to hands.

  "Lizard and Coyote began to argue. Lizard said hands should be like his feet because he could grab things and hold on very tight.

  "Coyote said no, hands should be like his, because he could dig and run very fast.

  "Lizard said no, his way was best. That made Coyote angry and he chased Lizard, who ran into some rocks to hide. Then Coyote built a fire to drive Lizard out of his hiding place.

  ''Lizard climbed on a high rock above the fire and waved to the other animals, crying, 'Here I am. Help me.'

  "The other animals saw Lizard waving his hands, and they thought Lizard had won the argument. And that is why people have hands like Lizard, with five fingers."

  Jassy clapped her hands, delighted with the winsome tale. She had never imagined Indians telling fairy tales to their children.

  "Does he know a lot of stories like that?" she asked.

  "Han. Among our people, storytellers are valued. Our history and our hero legends are passed from the old to the young. Is it not so among the wasichu?"

  "Yes, but we also write our histories and our stories in books."

  "Books?"

  "On paper." Leaning forward how your people keep a winter count on hides? Well, books are like your hides, except they're made out of paper."

  Tasunke Hinzi nodded. "Writing seems like a good thing."

  "Yes."

  He sat there for a moment more, then rose smoothly to his feet. "Tell my kola I will be back later."

  "I will."

  Jassy watched Tasunke Hinzi walk away. Indians were nothing like she had been told. She had been terrified of the Crow, but they had treated her well enough. The Lakota, too, were just people. True, they believed in different gods and their way of life was vastly different from hers, as was their language. But people were people wherever you found them. They loved and laughed; they fought and cried; they worried about their children and cared for their old ones. Some were easy to like, and some were easy to hate. But they were all just people, making the best of what they had.

  Knowing that, she didn't feel like such a stranger.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Two weeks passed. By the end of the second week, Creed was sitting up for longer and longer periods of time.

  By the end of the third week, he was able to go outside to relieve himself.

  Another week passed, and he fretted over the weakness that plagued him. The slightest exertion left him exhausted. It galled him to be bedridden. The ache in his chest was bearable but constant. But worst of all was the fact that he was too sore to make love to Jassy.

  Ah, Jassy. She tended him day and night, hovering over him like a red-haired angel. She did everything she could to make him comfortable, listening while he complained, ignoring him when he acted like a spoiled child. But he couldn't help it. And he couldn't bring himself to tell her that she was the cause of his most urgent distress, that even though he wasn't physically strong enough to take her in his arms and make love to her, her nearness, her touches, her very scent, kept his body in a constant state of arousal, a fact that he managed to keep hidden beneath a buffalo robe.

  Another week passed, and his strength began to return. He spent his mornings walking with Jassy along the river. It was good to be alive, good to be among his people again. Aside from Tasunke Hinzi and Mato Wakuwa, there were only three or four faces he recognized from his childhood. Were all the others dead, he wondered, or enduring the living death of the reservation?

  He spent his afternoons resting in the sun, drinking in the sights and sounds of the village. Jassy had become friends with a white woman who had married one of the warriors. Once she was certain Creed was well on his way to recovery, she spent almost every afternoon with Sunlata, learning Lakota ways and helping Sunlata with her four children.

  Creed let out a long sigh. Jassy was with Sunlata now, learning to make moccasins, and he was alone in the lodge. Lying there, his eyes closed, he listened to the familiar sounds of his childhood. He could hear women laughing as they erected a new lodge nearby. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of drumming.

  He heard Mato Wakuwa telling stories to the children, and he remembered the days when he had sat at the shaman's feet, enraptured by the medicine man's tales. Mato Wakuwa must be a hundred, Creed thought, for he had been an old man when Creed was just a boy.

  For a minute, he listened as Mato Wakuwa told the story of why Bobcat's face is flat. It was a Coyote story. Coyote, the trickster, figured in many of the Lakota stories. In this tale, Coyote sang a magic song to put Bobcat to sleep, and then Coyote began to push on Bobcat's face, pushing harder and harder, making Bobcat's face flatter and flatter. When Bobcat woke up, he felt funny, and then he smelled Coyote all around. Certain something was wrong, he ran to a lake and looked at his reflection, and when he saw what Coyote had done, he went looking for Coyote. When he found him asleep, Bobcat sang his own magic song, and then he began pulling on Coyote's nose, until it got longer and longer.

  "And that," he heard Mato Wakuwa say, "is why Bobcat has a flat face, and Coyote has a long nose."

  The children begged for another story, but Creed's mind drifted away from the account of how Crow came to be black. Instead, he reminisced about his childhood. He had never been ashamed of his Indian blood. It had been a good way to grow up.

  Early in life, a Lakota boy learned to take pride in himself and in his people. He was ta
ught to be proud of his accomplishments, to try to be the best in whatever he did. His first kill was honored. When he was fourteen, he went out alone to cry for a vision.

  It was one of the things Creed regretted most, that he had never had the opportunity to seek a vision, that he had never received a warrior's name. He wondered now if his life might have turned out differently if he'd had a spirit guide to instruct him.

  And then, from out of nowhere, he found himself thinking of his mother, something he hadn't done in years. He recalled his bitterness when she had forced him to leave the People and go back East to Philadelphia. He had despised her then, for forcing him to cut his hair, for burning his buckskins, for insisting that he speak English, for sending him to a private school where he was taunted and teased unmercifully until he blackened one boy's eye and broke another's nose. That had earned the respect of his peers, if not their affection. It had also earned him a severe tongue-lashing from his mother and several swats across his backside from the headmaster.

  Most of all, he remembered the time he had been arrested for busting up that saloon. He'd never forgiven her for letting him spend two months sitting in that damn jail.

  Creed swore under his breath at the memory. He had never hated anyone the way he had hated his mother for leaving him in that squalid little cell.

  Now he wondered if his mother was still alive and if she had ever remarried. With a frown, he realized that he might have some half-brothers or sisters living in the East, maybe some nieces and nephews.

  He glanced over his shoulder as Jassy entered the lodge. As always, just the sight of her made his blood race. Dressed in a doeskin dress that was almost white, with her red hair loose about her shoulders, her skin tanned a light golden brown, he thought her the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.

  "Hi," she said, smiling.