The River Nymph

by Shirl Henke

  The chief’s eyes grew round and his dark skin paled noticeably. He stepped back, as if Daniels had offered him a live rattler. “The Grandfather Spirit has touched this one. Let us leave him in peace as he has said!” he commanded his followers in their own language.

  From above, Delilah, Sky and Horace watched the stampede that ensued when Clint tossed the second fire stick. The Tetons raced up the bank, some chasing horses that had already run off in terror, others leaping on their mounts to gallop away. Clint followed on foot, laughing as if he were indeed touched.

  “What did their leader say?” Delilah asked Sky.

  “He said my brother has been touched by God. It’s their way of saying…saying he’s crazy. Most tribes honor those who are insane—and yet avoid them as bad medicine,” Sky replied reluctantly.

  “Come back, Cousins!” Clint lit another stick and again tossed it where no warriors were too close. “See, there are fire sticks for everyone!”

  A third explosion rent the muddy ground, scattering horses and Indians. One rider was thrown from the back of his terrified pony and quickly jumped up to pursue the fleeing animal. Across the prairie braves were trying to control bucking horses or simply running away from the boat as fast as humanly possible. Several tripped and fell, only to bound up and continue the mad dash.

  “He looks as if he’s actually enjoying this,” Delilah said incredulously. “He could be blown to bits!” She watched in horrified fascination while Clint threw back his head and laughed wildly, shouting in a mixture of English and Sioux as he continued to lob the dynamite. “Do not flee, Cousins. Come back and smoke with Lightning Hand!”

  Sky looked down at the deck, a worried frown creasing her brow. Horace said in a low voice, “I begin to understand why you feel it would be judicious for your brother to return to St. Louis.”

  “Why, Sky? Why is he acting this way?” Delilah asked, stricken.

  Lightning Hand, the Pawnee Killer, was still laughing.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Come. I will try to explain,” Sky said to her friend. The two women walked into Sky’s cabin and sat down side by side. After gathering her thoughts for a moment, Sky began. “You know Clint saved me and my sister Teal from the blue coats, that he joined our people and married my sister. He lived as an Ehanktonwon. And he was happy for a while, I think….”

  Delilah intuited that she was about to hear something awful, cruel and frightening. She was going to hear about the side of Clint Daniels she had seen that night when he kissed her so roughly after disposing of Riley’s henchman. She rose and walked over to the secretary. After opening a small compartment at the top, she pulled out a bottle of brandy. “My uncle’s tonic,” she explained as she poured a little of it into two tea cups and handed one to Sky.

  They each took a sip. Sky made a slight grimace, then set it down, and Delilah followed suit. “When I was ten, I was sent by my parents to the school the Episcopalians ran for my people, just as my sister had been sent before me. I was not in our village when it happened. A raiding party of Pawnee ventured far to the north, marauding as they went. They had worked for the blue coats as scouts, but even the army could not abide their drunken insubordination. They were dismissed without pay. They turned against anyone in their path, red or white.

  “Teal was expecting her first child. When I visited a month earlier, she was just beginning to show the roundness that makes women everywhere joyous.” She stopped and took asecond sip of brandy. “That was the last time I saw my sister alive. When the Pawnee reached our small village, all of our young men were out hunting. Lightning Hand was with them. I have only heard accounts of what the raiders did and I regret the knowledge. It is too horrible to describe.”

  When she shuddered, Delilah placed her arm around her friend’s shaking shoulders and held her as both women felt tears slipping down their cheeks silently. Now she feared that she understood what the Teton chief had meant, calling Clint the famous Pawnee Killer.

  “My brother was the first to return to what was left…to find his dead wife. He would not listen to the pleas of the survivors to wait for the other warriors to return. There were a dozen Pawnee and he was but a single man. Yet he rode after the murderers in a rage of unbearable pain. Our cousin Blind Owl caught up to him just before he found the Pawnee camp that night. Lightning Hand gave Blind Owl his Spencer repeating carbine and told him to guard his back. Then…then he just walked into their camp and began killing everything that moved, shooting with both hands. When his pistols were empty, he used his knife. He killed them all.”

  “But they outnumbered him twelve to one. How could he have survived?” Delilah asked hoarsely.

  “When a man does not care whether he lives or dies, our mythology says it makes him invincible. I don’t know if it’s true, but I do know this: My brother did not wish to live after what he did to those raiders….”

  Delilah’s arms dropped to her sides. She gripped the edge of the settee until her nails bit into the brocade. “The darkness inside him…when his eyes turn from blue to gray…he’s remembering, isn’t he? He doesn’t care if he dies.”

  Sky nodded as tears continued to stream down her face.

  “He scalped them?” Delilah asked, the gorge rising in her throat.

  “No one among our band wishes to remember that tragedy, but they do laud his bravery. He brought back the trophies to our village. When word of the raid reached themission school, they sent me home. I saw long rows of scalps hanging outside his lodge on poles and knew the savagery of his vengeance would remain a blight on his soul.

  “He tried repeatedly to raise war parties against the Pawnee and other raiding tribes. Some of the young hotheads agreed, but our father, Talks Wise, said this was not the way to teach red people to stand together and learn to coexist with the whites. Clint drank whiskey and rode off alone many times. And…and he always returned with hair…Pawnee hair.”

  “He was trying to get himself killed,” Delilah said, reaching out to hold Sky’s clenched hands in her own.

  “He would’ve succeeded if my father had not intervened. He decided Lightning Hand should once more become Clinton Daniels and my guardian. He asked Clint to escort me to school back East and see that I received an education so I could help our people.”

  “How did your father convince him to do it?”

  Sky smiled. “At first Clint fought the idea, but a guilty man will do many things to atone. Teal and their child were gone, but I was his little sister, and he knew our father was right about the good that might come from my education. Before we left the reservation, he broke the scalp poles and buried his trophies. Then he sat and stared at the raw earth over them for several days. After that, he stopped drinking.”

  “You gave him a new reason to live,” Delilah said warmly. “And to think I accused him of being your despoiler.”

  “You were jealous, else you’d have seen that was not true.”

  Wanting to discuss anything but her tense relationship with Clint, Delilah shifted the subject back to Sky’s story. “How could he afford to educate you? And why so far away in St. Louis?”

  “St. Louis was the closest large city with fine universities, and he’d grown up in Missouri. That part of his life he has never spoken about. Someday, he will tell you. To make money for our journey, he went to the fort near our village and won enough for a stake. We traveled by horseback to thecity. He worked as a dealer at the Bud before the owner lost it to him in an all-night poker game. After that he made enough to enroll me in a female academy.”

  “He supported you the same way my uncle did me,” Delilah said. There was an ironic parallel between their lives. In spite of all he had done, Clinton Daniels possessed true nobility.

  “Yes, but I was not always grateful,” Sky confessed. “I quickly grew bored with learning how to pour tea and paint watercolors. I was rebellious, impatient to learn something useful.”

  Delilah smiled wistfully. “Yes, I felt the same way in
finishing school. Perhaps that’s why I jumped at Lawrence’s proposal.” She shook her head, remembering those days of childhood innocence. “You have obviously had a superior education. Not an easy accomplishment for a woman.”

  “Clint hired tutors from Washington University to teach me literature, mathematics and science. Then, in exchange for his forgiving a rather large gambling debt Attorney Burrows had run up at the Blasted Bud, Clint struck a bargain with the old curmudgeon. I read law with him for the past two years.”

  “You will do remarkably well for the Ehanktonwon, I’m certain.”

  “And when you and my brother return to St. Louis, what then, my friend?”

  Delilah met her gaze. “Are you certain he’ll agree to return?”

  “If he has you, he will,” Sky replied.

  Clint’s disquieting confrontation with the Teton renegades continued to worry Delilah, but she kept busy with her work as they made their way northward through Dakota Territory. Clint, too, worked diligently at being first mate, spending more time on the main deck than he did above it. So far, in spite of Sky and Horace’s attempts to throw them together, they managed to avoid each other most of the time.

  When they reached the bustling town of Bismarck, Captain Dubois announced that they would have to lay over a daywhile the engineers made more boiler repairs. Since the arrival of the railroad in 1870, the city had prospered from both river and rail trade. It was named after the German chancellor in hopes of enticing German American investors. Although that ploy had come to nothing, the brick and stone buildings on the bank of the Missouri indicated that it had become a city of some influence.

  “Hardly Chicago, but it does have a decent hotel and even an opera house,” Clint said as Delilah looked at the bleak, treeless hillsides and muddy streets.

  “We’ll have time enough for recreation after we return to St. Louis with our money,” she replied.

  “You mean to tell me you don’t want to spend a night sleeping in a spacious hotel bed that doesn’t sway with the current? Take a hot bath in clean water?” he added.

  “All right, that’s an enticement I can’t resist. I haven’t been able to wash my hair in clean water since…” She stopped and looked up at his grin. “Keep up the smugness and I’ll push you overboard again, Mr. Daniels,” she said, stalking away.

  “You’re going to like the town,” he called after her.

  The Prairie Grand was a solid brick building, two stories of large, square, unimaginative architecture. But Clint had been right about the size of the beds and the baths. She and Sky could even have heated water delivered to their rooms. “I can’t wait to get out of these muddy clothes and have a good, long soak,” Delilah said to Sky as they inspected the sitting room they shared between their bedrooms. The wallpaper was a garish red and the gas lamps were tarnished. “Your brother was certainly right. It isn’t Chicago, but it seems like being back in civilization after so long on the river.”

  “Just wait until sundown. Bismarck isn’t called the hardest town in the West without reason. It’s a good thing the saloons are on the other side of the railhead.”

  Delilah chewed on her lip. “Yes, I didn’t like the looks we received from some of the rougher elements when we disembarked. Adding alcohol to the mix won’t help their manners.”

  “Their hard looks were for me, not you,” Sky said. “Theyhate to see a woman of mixed blood pretending to be white. I’ve experienced that since I came to live in civilized society.”

  “Well, no one had better say one word around me or I’ll show him just how uncivilized a woman of unmixed blood can be,” Delilah replied adamantly. She had noted the hotel clerk’s sour expression when they had signed in and requested baths. But her uncle and Clint were with them, so the nasty little pipsqueak had not dared to say anything. “Was that why Captain Dubois didn’t come to town?” The thought had not occurred to Delilah until Sky’s explanation reminded her that he, like Clint’s sister, had mixed blood.

  “No, his reputation is legendary up the Missouri. They’d allow him a room, but he never leaves his command until a voyage is complete.”

  “That’s a pity. I would love for him to accompany us to the opera house tonight,” Delilah replied. In truth, she wanted him to act as a buffer, inhibiting Sky and Horace’s schemes. Her uncle had already hinted that Clint would escort her to the theatre and he would squire Miss Sky. She knew the two devious matchmakers would contrive to vanish and leave her alone with Clint.

  “Well, he won’t be there, but we will enjoy it. They’re performing Hamlet. Oh, what are you going to wear?” Sky asked casually as she opened the door to her bedroom.

  “It’s a bit chilly. I brought one of my old half-mourning gowns. I instructed the maid to hang it so the wrinkles will fall out a bit. I’ll probably have to pay to have it pressed,” she said.

  Sky placed her hand across her mouth to hide a grin. “Perhaps.”

  “What do you mean?” Delilah’s mind went on alert. Sky was up to something.

  When she turned to Delilah, her face was utterly innocent. “Oh, nothing, only that I hope your dress has survived the voyage. I’ll see you after we both soak in bliss.”

  With that, she closed the door behind her, leaving Delilah perplexed. Shortly after, two men carrying huge tin buckets of hot water filled the large tub, then left. Delilah locked thedoor behind them and then took the extra precaution of sliding the bolt on the door adjoining the sitting room. She wanted no surprise visit from Clint while she was relaxing in the water.

  After slipping from her clothing, she placed her toes in the steaming water and quickly withdrew them. Very hot! But the evening promised a chill now that they had traveled so far north. Late May in eastern Pennsylvania would be almost summery. The West was a strange and hostile place, hot as blazes one day, cold as winter the next. She padded across the room and picked up a bar of scented soap from the wash table. The essence of roses teased her nostrils. Lovely.

  She looked in the wavy mirror that hung over the table and inspected her body. Heavens, she was as golden brown as Sky! And there were freckles on her nose. Every part of her skin that was not covered—and that included her arms, face, neck and even the upper portion of her chest—had been tanned. Thoughts of Clint’s bronzed, naked body flashed through her mind. How did he manage to stay that way after spending so many years in civilization?

  “Why am I even thinking about it?” she scolded her image and turned back to the tub. “Ready or not, here I come,” she said, placing one leg into the water, which had cooled a bit. She got in and sank down with a sigh of bliss, leaning her head against the high back of the tub. “If I’m not careful, I’ll fall asleep and drown.”

  From the sitting room, Clint could hear the sounds of splashing water. His mouth went dry and his body hardened. He could picture Delilah’s pink, naked flesh glistening with soapsuds. His heart pounded as all the blood in his body rushed south. She was humming softly to herself now. The temptation to try her bedroom door was overwhelming. But he would give hundred-to-one odds that she had locked it before she took off so much as her gloves. Besides, they had an agreement of sorts. So far both of them had managed to stick to it.

  Sighing, he left his gift displayed on the settee and slippedout the hall door. Maybe a good, cold soak would put him right to face the evening. Somehow he doubted it. What had the woman done to him? He was going to endure a perfectly horrid rendition of Shakespeare just for the opportunity to be Deelie’s escort. Horace had come up with the crackbrained idea after learning Bismarck boasted an opera house and a troop of actors were in town. Having seen the talent of actors out West, he couldn’t help grinning. Horace would cringe the moment the Prince of Denmark uttered his first syllable.

  “Serve him right,” he muttered as he headed to his room.

  Delilah fussed with her hair after her blissful bath, brushing it dry when the hotel maid knocked on the sitting-room door, saying she was there to empty the tub and bring fresh
towels. Delilah called out for her to enter. Almost immediately, she heard the girl exclaim from the outer room, “Ooh, niver seen anything so grand, ma’am. Pure beautiful it is!”

  Considering the less than grand décor of the hotel, she asked, “Whatever are you talking about?” But the instant she opened the door from her bedroom and saw the green velvet gown spread across the settee, she stopped in mid-stride. It was the gown she’d tried on in Hermann and refused to buy because it was too great an extravagance.

  “How did that get here?” she asked, just as Sky appeared. “Uncle Horace didn’t—no, of course not. It was Clint. Did you put him up to it? Because if you did,” she went on, not giving Sky a chance to reply, “it was a useless gesture. It required major alterations.”

  Sky, dressed in a blue silk creation that matched her eyes, grinned as she walked over to the gown and held it up. “Hmmm, it looks as though it will fit now,” she said consid-eringly. “Why don’t you try it on and see?”

  “Don’t be foolish. It hung on me like a sack. Besides, I refuse to accept such a lavish gift, especially from Mr. Daniels. It isn’t appropriate and you know it.”

  Sky let the rich velvet ripple, catching the light. “Don’t besilly. We’re in Bismarck, a stone’s throw from some of the worst saloons west of the Mississippi. Propriety be damned. Just try it on.”

  “Sure and it does match yer emerald eyes, ma’am,” the maid said encouragingly.

  “Look at the lace. It practically drips from the bodice and sleeves,” Sky noted as she shook the gown slightly and the paler green folds of handmade lace rustled enticingly.

  “I’m not going to wear that dress,” Delilah gritted out, itching to touch the silky fabric as it changed colors with every movement.

  “You’ll really disappoint me. And just think, our next stop will be at Fort Berthold, where I’m rejoining my father’s people. It may be a year or more before we see each other again. Please, Delilah.” Sky held out the dress cajolingly. “You won’t be able to attend the play or have dinner if you don’t wear it.”