“There is no pulse,” he said, turning to give Lauralee a reassured stare. “We are finally rid of this vermin. The growth of the cancer stops here, today.”
He went to Lauralee, gave her a comforting hug, then stepped away from her and held her at arm’s length. “Your nursing skills are needed,” he said thickly.
“What do you mean?” Lauralee said, seeing the concern in his eyes. “Who needs me? Where is this person?”
Dancing Cloud explained about having found the Indian woman at the foot of the cliff. He explained that she had helped him find the cabin.
Lauralee paled. “Oh, no,” she cried. “That must be Brian Brave Walker’s mother. Where is she? I must go to her.”
“Brian Brave Walker?” Dancing Cloud said, arching an eyebrow.
“Clint McCloud was his father, the Indian woman was Clint’s wife, Brian’s mother,” Lauralee blurted out, seeing the disbelief in Dancing Cloud’s eyes.
“He . . . ?” Dancing Cloud said, numb from the knowing.
“Yes, he,” Lauralee said, taking his hand. “Now let’s go to Brian Brave Walker’s mother. I shall do what I can for her while you also work your magic with your herbal medications.”
Hand in hand, they left the cabin and the man who had been like a dark thundercloud over both their lives for too many years to count.
Chapter 30
A mind at peace,
A heart whose love is innocent.
—LORD BYRON
The sound of a steady beat from a drum filled the evening air just outside Dancing Cloud’s cabin. Low chants rose and fell in rhythm with the drumbeats.
Several days had passed and Lauralee had hardly left Soft Wind’s bedside after Dancing Cloud had brought her to the bed on the loft. Lauralee had bathed her fevered brow and force-fed her broth when she barely awakened.
But no matter what Lauralee did, nor no matter how dedicated she was to her patient, she had seen Soft Wind slowly slipping away. The head wound had been too severe to heal. There were other broken bones, and one of her lungs had collapsed. The end seemed inevitable. It would come soon. Very soon.
Lauralee realized today that Soft Wind lay closer to death than ever before. She could tell by the strange sort of rattling sounds emerging from deeply within her one lung.
And it had been a full day and night now since Soft Wind had been able to take any nourishment.
Brian Brave Walker edged in next to Lauralee and gazed down with tear-filled eyes at his mother. He fell to his knees beside the bed and clutched her thin, frail hand in his.
“Mama, please don’t leave me,” he cried. “Papa is dead now. You can live a life of peace. You are among your own people, Mama. Can’t you hear their chants? Everyone wants you to live.”
A knot forming in her throat, her heart going out to this small child, Lauralee tried to take Brian Brave Walker’s hand to draw him into her embrace.
She jumped with a start and gasped when he turned and gave her a look that made her want to shrink away to nothingness. The hate in his eyes was so intense, it seemed to burn into Lauralee’s very soul!
“Leave me alone with my mama,” Brian Brave Walker said, his voice low and even and emotionless. “She will hear me if I talk long enough today. I know it. “
“Brian Brave Walker, darling, your mother can’t hear anyone now,” Lauralee said, knowing that he must be prepared for what would soon transpire.
Yet Lauralee also knew that Brian Brave Walker must not be denied these last moments with his mother.
“But stay and talk to her as long as you wish,” she quickly interjected. “I will leave you alone with her. You shan’t be disturbed.”
Lauralee pushed herself up from the chair, and when she placed her feet on the floor and she felt suddenly dizzy, she realized just that quickly how worn out and weary she was. She had not slept all that much. When she had, she and Dancing Cloud had laid on a pallet of furs before the fireplace, taking what little comfort they could in the lonely midnight hours by holding each other while they slept.
Lauralee sighed and walked toward the ladder that led from the loft. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. She wove her fingers through her tangled hair. She looked down at her drooping, wrinkled cotton dress.
While caring for Soft Wind so feverishly, she had neglected herself. In the end she had hoped that it would be worth it. She had hoped that she could help Soft Wind pull through this crisis.
Yet all along Lauralee had known the severity of Soft Wind’s wounds and had truly never thought that she would live.
Turning to back herself down the steep, narrow ladder, she gave Brian Brave Walker and Soft Wind one last, lingering look.
Then feeling empty and useless, she went on down the ladder.
She was glad to find Dancing Cloud sitting in the plush overstuffed chair beside the fire. As never before, she needed his arms around her now. She had not been able to win Brian Brave Walker’s friendship, much less his love.
Did he see his father when he looked at her?
She wondered now if he could ever see her in any other light.
The damn Yankee had harmed the child in so many ways without even having to touch him physically. It had all been inside the child’s head.
That was not the sort of illness that Lauralee knew anything about. She had just learned how to treat physical wounds. Not those inflicted on one’s soul by a mad, twisted father!
Lauralee moved listlessly over to the chair, then sank down and rested her head on Dancing Cloud’s knee. She became warmed through and through when he began lovingly stroking her hair.
“There is nothing more than I can do for Soft Wind,” she said, blinking tears from her eyes. She stared into the fire. “When she dies, Brian Brave Walker is going to blame me.”
Dancing Cloud bent low and placed his hands at Lauralee’s waist and drew her up to her knees, then lifted her onto his lap. “My o-ge-ye,” he said, cuddling her close. “No one could have put such heart in caring for someone as you cared for Soft Wind. I have stood back and observed Brian Brave Walker watching your gentleness toward his mother. Deep down inside himself he knows that you have gone way beyond what most would do for someone who is ill.”
“When your Shaman came and spoke over Soft Wind, Brian Brave Walker thanked him,” Lauralee said, her voice breaking. “Darling, he has not given me the courtesy of one thank you, even though I have spent countless hours at his mother’s bedside. I haven’t done this for his mother to receive thanks. But I deserve some sort of courtesy, don’t you think? I truly don’t believe he understands my feelings, nor me. He may hate me forever only because my skin is the same color as his father’s.”
“At present he cannot see past his fear of losing his mother, nor beyond his grief and despair,” Dancing Cloud said, brushing a soft kiss across Lauralee’s lips. “Give him time, my o-ge-ye. He will move into your arms for comfort.”
An involuntary shiver swam across Lauralee’s flesh. “She is going to die,” she murmured. “Before the night is over, she will be dead. The poor child. He will feel that he has lost everything in the world when he loses his mother.” She swallowed hard. “I know. I experienced it, myself.”
“It is different for Brian Brave Walker,” Dancing Cloud said. “He has someone who wishes to take him in as ‘family.’ He will never be an orphan.”
Lauralee gazed up at the loft. Candlelight wavered from a candle beside the bed, the soft light spreading. “Soft Wind was conscious enough, enough times, to tell me that she was originally from this village,” she said, shuddering when she caught the sound of Soft Wind’s death rattles as they became more pronounced. From her experience with seeing patients die, Lauralee knew that Soft Wind had hardly any time left at all.
“I questioned around,” Dancing Cloud said, releasing Lauralee as she eased from his lap and sat down on a chair beside him. “None of her relatives survived the massacre brought onto my people by Clint McCloud and his Yankees. She
escaped. She was found by some Confederate soldiers. She was too much in shock to make any sense when they questioned her. She was placed with other children who had been misplaced during the war and taken to an orphanage in Kentucky.”
“Had I been found by the same men as she, Soft Wind and I could have been raised in the same orphanage,” Lauralee said sullenly. “She perhaps thought that she was one of the lucky ones when Clint McCloud found her there and took her away, to be his wife.”
“Damn the railroads that were built through Cherokee country,” Dancing Cloud said, his teeth clenched. “If not for the railroads, Clint McCloud would never had cause to come to the land he had devastated when he was a Union officer. As it was, he traveled with the railroads, a railroad man even before the war broke out.”
“He had some nerve marrying a Cherokee after having massacred so many during the war,” Lauralee said, her voice filled with venom.
“I am sure Soft Wind was beautiful and entrancing before she married Clint McCloud. He was taken by her innocent loveliness. He was blinded too much by her sheer beauty to even think about her being Indian,” Dancing Cloud said, glancing up at the loft.
“Until Brian Brave Walker was born,” Lauralee hissed. “Then he realized just what it meant to marry someone with a different skin coloring. His wife bore him a son who he could never love because his skin was copper instead of white.”
“I don’t believe it was the color so much as Brian Brave Walker’s physical attributes,” Dancing Cloud mumbled. “Surely if the man had any guilt whatsoever about the havoc he wreaked during the war against the children of our village, seeing Brian Brave Walker could be the same as looking at those children his horse ran down, or his bullets pierced.”
Lauralee looked quickly at Dancing Cloud. “Darling, you have spoken so often of your people as full-blooded Cherokee, and your pride of that,” she said, her voice guarded. “Have you ever stopped to think about the children we might have? They would not be full-bloods. How would you feel about having a son with white skin, instead of copper?”
Dancing Cloud gave her a sudden, stunned look, as if someone had splashed cold water onto his face. Like a thunderbolt inside his mind the remembrance of that day in the spirit world with his father came to him, and what his father had said to him about children. He had forgotten the warning, until now.
He stared at Lauralee a moment longer, then rose quickly from the chair and went and stood at the open door. He clasped his hand so tightly to the door, his knuckles were rendered white.
He thought back to that day with his father in the spirit world. James Talking Bear had reminded him that this woman to whom he had given his heart was white. If she had children born of their union, the child could be white.
Never before had mixed bloods lived among his Wolf Clan of Cherokee. Never before had any of their braves married a white woman.
This was the first for his people.
Only briefly after Dancing Cloud had discovered that he loved Lauralee had he stopped to consider the consequences of marrying her. And all through these weeks of other more pressing issues he had forgot to worry about the skin color of a child born of his and Lauralee’s love.
Lauralee came to him and took his hand. “Dancing Cloud, what is it?” she murmured. “Tell me what’s wrong. You’re frightening me.”
“I want children,” he said, turning slow eyes to her. “But white-skinned?”
She went cold inside. Fear grabbed at her heart. What if he changed his mind about marrying her? What if he sent her away?
Again he turned his eyes from her and peered out the door, at the throng of people who were kneeling around a large outdoor fire not that far from his cabin. They were now quiet, in a soft communion with the Great Spirit. It was as though even they knew that Soft Wind was taking her last breaths.
Dancing Cloud felt suddenly guilty for thinking of what color children he and his woman might bring into the world, when one of his very own people would soon enter the spirit path of the hereafter.
“Darling Cherokee,” Lauralee murmured. “I know you too well to allow what you have said worry me any further. You know, as well as I, that the color of our children will not matter. Even if it means that we will bring the first mixed-blood into your people’s lives, it will be a child who is loved . . . who is revered, because it will be the child born of an intense love, the first child of your people’s chief. ”
She sighed heavily. “I still am not your wife,” she said, feeling selfish to even think about that at this time.
“Soon,” Dancing Cloud said. He took her hands and drew her around to face him. “Soft Wind is dying. When our mourning for her is behind us, we will speak words of togetherness. We will have brought Brian Brave Walker into our circle of life. We will then look toward a future of our very own children, be they white, or copper-skinned.”
“Oh, darling, I knew that you would never allow such a thing as skin coloring or bloodlines stand between our happiness,” Lauralee said, easing into his arms. “And I promise you, Dancing Cloud, that we will have many beau-tifu1 children.”
“There is something more I wish to do,” Dancing Cloud said, gazing down at her.
“Yes? What is it?” Lauralee asked, searching his eyes.
“I have recently learned about an orphanage that lies only a half day’s ride from the base of my mountain,” he said hoarsely.
“Yes, I believe I know the orphanage. It was a topic of conversation many times among those of us who were in the orphanage in Saint Louis. It was built only a few years ago. The orphanage where I was raised donated a good sum of money to get this newest one established. I remember talking among the girls at our orphanage about whether or not those at the new one fared better than we did at ours.”
“There may be small children there from Cherokee villages where there is much starvation among their people because of white people’s interference in their lives. White people who stole their land and their livestock,” he said thickly. “Let us go there soon. Perhaps we might find a child or two to bring back with us to be Brian Brave Walker’s brother or sister?”
Lauralee stared up at him, stunned by his suggestion. She was torn with how she should feel. If he brought more orphaned children to his house to father, would this give him an excuse to ask her not to bear children of their own whose skin might not match his?
“Do you mind, my o-ge-ye, if we go soon and see if there are Cherokee children who need family and loving?” he said, his voice filled with an anxious hope. “While you have sat at Soft Wind’s bedside those long hours I have thought of what a sad life she had. Like you, she witnessed the death of her mother. Not only her mother. Her whole family. She was wrenched from her home and placed in an orphanage. Then she lived a hellish life with Clint McCloud.”
He stopped and nervously cleared his throat. “While you saw to Soft Wind’s needs these past days I have thought hard and long about other Cherokee children whose destiny is colored by sadness because they are in orphanages. An orphanage must be the loneliest of places. But of course you know that it is.”
Feeling selfish and guilty for having thought that Dancing Cloud had motives other than what he said, to bring more children into their home, Lauralee leaned into his embrace. He had not just thought up taking in more orphans after thinking about bringing a mixed-blood child into this world that was born of his and Lauralee’s love. He had been thinking about the orphaned Cherokee children for days!
“My sweet, gentle Cherokee,” she said, tears streaming from her eyes. “Your heart is so big. Your heart is so good. Yes, my beloved, I will go with you to the orphanage. I will take within my arms as many children that will fill them.”
She clung to him. “If you wish, we can even delay our wedding day awhile longer so that we can go and get the children,” she murmured.
“I knew that you would say that,” Dancing Cloud said.
“I only wish that I had known about Soft Wind, where she had b
een taken as a child. She would have been spared that dreadful life with Clint McCloud.”
Lauralee turned and gazed up at the loft, then turned to Dancing Cloud again. “One thing wonderful came from that marriage,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Brian Brave Walker,” Dancing Cloud said thickly.
Lauralee nodded.
A sudden cry of despair wrenched Dancing Cloud and Lauralee apart. They ran toward the ladder that led to the loft, Brian Brave Walker’s hysteria squeezing their insides.
When they reached the loft, Brian Brave Walker was bent over his mother, desperately hugging her.
“You can’t be dead!” he cried. “Tla-no, no! You can’t leave me! Without you I have nothing! You have been my world. I’m sorry I ran away from home. Please forgive me and come back to me now. I will never leave you again!”
Lauralee felt frozen to the floor. Trembling, she placed her hands to her throat. She watched Dancing Cloud go to Brian Brave Walker and clasp his hands to the small brave’s shoulders. With a slight yank he managed to wrench Brian Brave Walker’s grip from his mother.
“Come now, son,” Dancing Cloud said, his voice gentle, but filled with command. “It is time to allow your mother’s spirit to begin its journey on the path to the hereafter. We must help her spirit along by singing songs and praying. Cry, my son. Cry it all out. Then we will go among our people. You will be taught the true ways of mourning that your people, the Cherokee, practice.”
Remembering why his mother had named him “brave,” Brian Brave Walker willed himself to stop crying. He left his mother’s bed, his chin held high, his shoulders squared.
“Show me how it is done,” he said, looking up at Dancing Cloud with his trusting dark eyes. “Show me everything Cherokee. I wish now to be your son. My mother would want it that way.”
Lauralee moved slowly toward Brian Brave Walker. “Child, I also want to help you adjust,” she murmured.
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