Tame the Wild Wind

by Rosanne Bittner

  “If that is what you call it.” He dismounted. “It is where the coaches carrying men west to forts and towns stop for fresh horses. I call it a settlement because it is a place where white people gather, and where white men stay to feed those who travel and to take care of the horses that pull the coaches.”

  Faith realized now that the slight accent she had detected was French, since he had told her his father was a French trapper. That was all the information he had offered, and she wondered about his childhood, what had happened to his father, why he’d chosen to live among the Indians instead of whites.

  He ordered her to sit down while he unhitched the oxen, something she’d had to show him how to do, since Indians never used such contraptions, but he had easily understood, and she was grateful for his strength and help. “Indian men usually never do this,” he said later, carrying an armful of deadwood he’d collected from a nearby stand of trees. “The women carry all the wood, make the fires, do the cooking, make the tepees, clothing, moccasins. They clean the animals, scrape and tan the hides, cure the meat.”

  Faith sat on a fallen log, watching him curiously as he piled the wood nearby. “That’s not so different from what white women do. But, then, white men work hard at farming and such. The women help with that, too. Do your people farm?”

  “Some do, on the reservations. None like it. It is better to hunt, find wild plants, kill the deer and the buffalo. But the whites are killing off the game. That is why we try to keep them out of what is left of our hunting grounds.”

  “Have you made war against whites? Since you left Minnesota, I mean?”

  He finished arranging wood for a fire, building it in a tepeelike fashion over a pile of dry weeds. “I have,” he answered without looking at her. “Light the fire. I will cut some meat from my deer and share it with you.”

  Faith did as he asked, glancing over to see him deftly slice off some meat with his big hunting knife. She wondered if he had used that knife to scalp some poor white man or woman. How strange that he was now helping her. He could so easily live like a white man, if he chose. He stabbed the meat onto a sturdy green branch he had cut earlier when they’d stopped to rest for a few minutes. She had wondered then what the stick was for but had not asked. He walked over and held the stick over the fire, saying nothing. Finally he met her gaze, and Faith felt embarrassed. He clearly knew she’d been staring at him.

  “I have never known anyone like you,” she admitted. “You…where I come from, for a man to wear almost nothing at all is considered very sinful.”

  “Sinful? What is sinful?”

  “Bad. Wrong.”

  He shrugged and shook his head. “It is not wrong to stay cool when it is so hot. You should take off more of your own clothes.”

  Her eyes widened with indignation. “I’ll do no such thing!”

  There came only the second smile since he’d found her. Faith was astonished at how handsome he was when he smiled. She had never thought of an Indian man as someone who could be handsome.

  “White women seem determined to be as uncomfortable as possible. I remember ones in St. Louis—”

  “St. Louis! You’ve been to St. Louis? I’ve never even been there.”

  He turned the meat. “I used to go there with my father when he took beaver- and wolf- and deerskins to sell. We went by riverboat.”

  “Riverboat! I’ve never been on a riverboat! You’re supposed to be an Indian, someone who knows nothing about whites, yet you’ve ridden a riverboat to St. Louis!”

  He turned the meat again, and fat dripped into the flames, making a hissing sound. “I was very young, perhaps ten. My father was killed on one of the trips. White men stabbed him for his money. That is when my mother and I went to Minnesota to find her family. Since then I have lived among the Sioux. My mother was called Yellow Beaver. She remarried when we came back to the Sioux, and she had a baby girl. They were all killed by soldiers.”

  Faith gasped. “I’m sorry.” His father was killed by white men, his mother by soldiers, his wife and son by buffalo hunters. “I still don’t understand why you’re helping me, just because I’m alone. You should want to let me die. Surely you hate most whites.”

  He took a moment to reply. “There are good people and bad people no matter what their race. You are good. And you are carrying. The life within you is innocent. If I end your life, I also end your son’s or daughter’s. It is not fair.”

  Faith put a hand to her stomach. Did that mean he would have killed her or let her die if she had not been pregnant? “Do you have education?”

  “Only what my father taught me. I read a little, but he did not have much education himself. He could read French better than English.”

  “What is your white name?”

  He scowled. “White women ask too many questions. I liked it better when you were too tired to speak.”

  Faith straightened in indignation. “I was only trying to make some conversation.”

  “You should rest.”

  “I only think about Johnny when I rest. I’d rather not think about any of that. It hurts too much.”

  He nodded. “I know the hurt. It takes many years to go away.” He met her eyes again. “Now I will ask you a question. How old are you?”

  “Why?”

  He rolled his eyes. “You answer a question with a question.”

  She sighed in frustration. “As far as I know, it’s July. That means next month I will be eighteen. How old are you?”

  He shrugged. “I know only by a stick I carry. My mother told me to cut a notch in it each summer. I was ten summers when she told me that. Now there are eighteen notches on the stick.” He grinned again. “See? I know how to count the white man’s way.”

  She rested her elbows on her knees. “So you’re twenty-eight.” She wanted to ask about the scars on his arms and chest, but she was afraid to. Maybe they were from some secret sacred ritual, or maybe from fighting soldiers…or white settlers.

  He turned the meat once more. “You are very young and with child. What will you do when you reach help?”

  “I don’t know,” she sighed. “I guess I will decide when I get there.”

  “You will not go back to where you came from?”

  She shook her head. “No. I wasn’t happy there. Somehow I will make a new life for myself here.”

  He handed her the stick to hold for a while. “This is not a good place for a young white woman with a child and no husband.”

  “I’ll survive.”

  Tall Bear admired her courage. “I think perhaps you will. You are a strong woman. You are also very beautiful. It will be easy for you to find a husband.”

  The words surprised her. He thought she was beautiful? And she was such a mess! She figured the part about her being strong meant more to such a man than being beautiful. “Thank you, but I don’t feel strong or beautiful.”

  Again he smiled that rare smile. “I have never seen such red hair, except on a man who once hunted with my white father. He was from a place called Ireland, and he had many red marks on his face.”

  “Freckles,” Faith told him.

  He nodded. “I had forgotten what they are called.”

  Faith poured herself some coffee. “You say your father was French. Do you remember much of the language?”

  He shrugged. “Enough to speak it a little and probably understand it if someone spoke it to me. I am not sure anymore.”

  “What was your father like?”

  He stared at the flames. “Again you ask many questions.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He sighed. “My father was a good man. His name was Alexander Beaumont, and we were very close.”

  Faith smiled slyly. “So I know part of your English name, or French, I guess I should say. It’s Beaumont.”

  Tall Bear scowled, surprised at how easy she was to talk to, how easily she managed to get him to answer her infernal questions. “I must tie my deer carcass high in a tree near the fi
re. Wolves will come after it again tonight.”

  He rose and took something from his gear, and Faith realized it was clothes. She watched him pull on deerskin leggings and shirt, his body reminding her of a muscled animal. She felt relieved that he had put something on, had wanted to ask him to wear more clothes but was afraid it would be some kind of insult. She could not quite get over feeling guilty looking at his near-naked body.

  He walked over to where he had left the deer lying over a log. Rope was already tied around the deer’s hind legs, and he used it to drag the carcass to a pine tree. He threw the rope over a branch and pulled, hoisting the gutted deer until it hung high in the air.

  “Did wolves come after it last night?” Faith asked. “I slept so hard, I didn’t even realize.”

  “I was up most of the night keeping them away. I had to lay the deer on top of your wagon.”

  Faith was astounded she had slept through all that, and it gave her shivers to realize he’d been climbing around the wagon while she’d slept inside. He could just as easily have climbed inside. But he didn’t, she told herself. She decided to ask no more about his father. It seemed to hurt him to talk about the man. He was suddenly quiet again, walked off to unload his gear and tend to the animals. He brought them all closer to the fire, tying them to various trees, and she noticed he now carried a six-gun, worn with an ammunition belt around his hips.

  “There are many more wolves here than where we were last night,” he told her. “It will be another sleepless night for me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Faith answered.

  “It is not your fault. It is because of the deer I have with me. I am very much accustomed to staying up at night to protect a kill. We will eat, and you must get your rest.”

  Faith thought it humorous the way some of his statements were like orders. Yes, sir, she felt like replying. She carried the meat to the wagon and put it in two tin plates, handing him one. She set them on the wagon gate, climbed inside, and took out knives and forks, but when she turned back around, he had already taken his piece of meat and was holding it in his hand and eating hungrily. She put his knife and fork back in the wagon, sat down on the gate, plate in lap, and ate using knife and fork.

  Tall Bear finished quickly, drinking from the water barrel then and making up his bed beside the fire. He laid a rifle beside it and lay down, saying nothing more. Faith dipped some water into a wash pan and washed the plates and her utensils, feeling bad that Tall Bear would have to lie half-awake all night. Already she could hear the howling of wolves. She drank some water and added some wood to the fire, then climbed into the wagon. She did not bother putting on a nightgown, afraid she might have to jump out of the wagon to help Tall Bear chase off wolves.

  She lay down, realizing how wrinkled she would be come morning, how terrible she would look. But out here she supposed it didn’t much matter what a woman looked like.

  Her eyes closed, and finally she drifted off. She was not sure how long she had slept before she was awakened by growling and snarling. Tall Bear! Was he all right? She sat up and looked out the back of the wagon to see him walking around the fire with a burning stick, waving it around and making growling sounds, trying to scare off wolves. She could see their yellow eyes, and Clete’s frightened horse as well as Tall Bear’s were whinnying and tugging at their ropes.

  “I’ll help you!” she told Tall Bear. She climbed out and pulled a burning branch from the fire.

  “Do not go out of the light of the fire. If we keep them at bay long enough, they will give up.”

  Faith did as he was doing, darting back and forth, yelling at the wolves to get away. She screamed and turned when she heard a gunshot then. Tall Bear stood there with a smoking handgun, and a wolf lay sprawled not far from him. She began waving the stick again, but the yellow eyes had disappeared.

  “The gunshot frightened them away for the moment,” Tall Bear told her. He took the big hunting knife from his waist and leaned over the wolf. “Thank you, Spirit Wolf, for offering yourself to save us.”

  Faith frowned at the words. What did he mean? He deftly slit open the wolf’s belly then, and she grimaced when he reached inside and cut out the wolf’s innards. Her eyes widened when he began spreading bloody wolf guts in a ring around the campsite. “What are you doing?”

  “The smell of their own dead will keep the others away,” he told her.

  She watched silently for a few minutes. He came over to the water barrel and asked her to pour water over his hands to wash them. She dipped a small bucket into the barrel and set it on the wagon gate. “Here. Just dip your hands in here and wash them.” She studied him as he did so, thinking again what a handsome, virile, skilled man he was. “Why did you thank the wolf after you killed it?” she asked, handing him a towel.

  He faced her, standing close. “All creatures have soul and spirit. We are all the same. Whenever we kill an animal for food or clothing, it is like killing one of our own kind. We thank it for offering itself to sustain us. This wolf offered itself to save us from the others.”

  She should think that was a silly thought, but she could see the sincerity in his eyes, and the way he said it made her believe it must really be so. “I never would have thought of it that way. He was going to attack you.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But he was only pretending, so that I would shoot him. Now the others will leave us alone.”

  “Are you sure? I can stay up and sit by the fire with you if you like.”

  Their eyes held, each wondering for a fleeting moment what it would be like to stay together always. Tall Bear had never been attracted to a white woman before, but this one…he liked her courage. She was not a weeping, shrinking flower like so many others. She did not look at him as though he were dirt. He liked the way she had climbed out of the wagon and helped him scare off the wolves. “It is not necessary,” he told her. “You must rest.”

  He walked back to his gear and took a piece of rawhide from it, coming over to tie it around the wolf’s hind legs. He hung the animal low in a nearby tree, then returned to his blanket. Faith climbed back into the wagon, thinking what a strange turn her life had taken, lost and alone in the wilds of Wyoming, pregnant, widowed, fighting off wolves with a half-breed Indian she hardly knew, yet with whom she felt safe. She never would have dreamed back in Pennsylvania she would ever be in such a predicament.

  Morning came on bright and warm. After sharing biscuits and coffee with Tall Bear, Faith climbed back into the wagon to change clothes and brush her hair. She twisted her thick tresses into a bun at the nape of her neck, then took a mirror from her trunk, frowning at the look of her sunken cheeks and the circles under her eyes. The skin of her hands was rough, partly from all the scrubbing she’d done all winter in Chicago, combined with exposure to the western sun and dust. She dug out a jar of cream she had purchased in Chicago and rubbed some on her face and hands. “I’ll be an old woman by the time I’m twenty,” she muttered.

  She hoped the slat bonnet she wore every day was protecting her face. She tied it on, and having changed into a clean blue calico dress, she supposed she looked as good as she was going to look for meeting whomever she would meet at the stage station. Since she had to drive the oxen herself again, and Tall Bear had said it would be evening before she arrived, she supposed she would just be a dirty, haggard mess again by the time she got there, and what little primping she did now would be useless.

  She lifted the canvas and climbed out of the wagon to see that Tall Bear had already cleaned up the campsite. Clete’s horse was tied to the back of her wagon. Faith wondered how much money she might be able to make if she sold the oxen and wagon and horse. Perhaps it would be enough to get her all the way to California by stagecoach. She could find work there, she was sure.

  She watched Tall Bear finish hitching the oxen, thinking how easily he could live like a white man. He had already tied the deer and wolf to his horse, and she was glad he still wore his buckskin clothing. His hair hung loos
e, and there was a beaded ornament tied into one side of it. He still wore the claw necklace, and she realized she had never seen him take it off. She suspected it was special to him for some reason.

  She tried to envision him in battle, raiding white settlements…killing…It was difficult to imagine, since he had been so good to her. Her heart felt heavy at the thought of having to say good-bye to him. She would always wonder what happened to him, if he was all right.

  He turned, caught her watching him, and smiled. “Today you will be with people of your own kind. I will always remember you, Faith Sommers.”

  Why did she feel like crying? “And I will remember you, Tall Bear. What…what is your white name?”

  He walked to his horse. “It does not matter. I no longer use it.”

  “Well, I know your last name was Beaumont. Don’t you ever think about living like a white man? You are just as much white as Indian, you know.”

  “I do not need to be reminded of that.” He mounted his horse in one sleek movement. “White men have brought me too much sorrow. Come. It is time to go, or you will not reach this place by nightfall, and I must get back to my village. I will go with you only a little way, and then, if you follow where I say, you will find the station. It is on a trail that is easy to follow, a white man’s road. You should come to no harm, but it would be wise to keep your rifle handy. Do you know how to use it?”

  “I’ll manage. Johnny showed me how to use it.” Her chest hurt at the thought of Johnny.

  “We must go.” Tall Bear headed his horse out of the stand of trees, and Faith followed, almost hating to leave the place. She realized she felt safer with this Indian man than she would once he left her on the “white man’s” trail. She switched the faithful oxen into motion, and for the next three hours there was no talking, only walking, the sun growing hotter. They finally came upon a very obvious trail, two rutted lines of hard ground with a little grass growing between. Apparently many wagons and coaches had used the road. Tall Bear turned his horse west onto the road, then rode back to her, pointing. “That is the way you must go. Do not stop for long, and you should arrive before the sun sets. Perhaps while you are walking, you should carry that six-shooter gun you took from the white man who killed your husband, just in case other white men come along who have no respect for your honor.”