He felt a lump in his throat. He’d been a part of something his parents hated. No. He could not go back. But maybe they wouldn’t care. Maybe they would be so glad to see him that it wouldn’t matter. But he couldn’t take the risk of their chastisement—nor the risk of his friends and new family finding out he was part Indian.
The train rumbled by familiar places. He was too far north to see the house and outbuildings. Perhaps it was just as well. Seeing this much brought more sentiment than he cared to feel. He pressed his lips tightly together as his car lurched and swayed past a herd of beautiful Appaloosas, running free, manes and tails flying in the wind. He stared at them. They were beautiful—perfect—the only kind of horses his father would raise. He watched them for as long as he could before the train rounded a hill and the animals disappeared behind it.
“Good-bye, Father,” he whispered. A tear slipped down his cheek, and he quickly wiped it away.
Chapter Eighteen
Charles Garvey stood studying his two-month-old son, Matthew Winston, born in June of 1878. He did not like what he saw lying in the crib, for the child was dark, its skin reddish and it’s thick shock of hair straight and black. He toyed with the tiny fist. His son was healthy and strong, something any man should be glad about. But Charles Garvey did not care for people who were too dark. How could his fair wife have had such a child?
He could not stop the unnatural resentment he was feeling for his own son. He had wanted a son—someone to take over the Garvey wealth—someone he could train to be powerful and respected, as he and his own father had been. But this was not the son he had expected, and a suspicion was boiling inside of him that surely his wife had been laying with some other man. After all, she never seemed receptive to her own husband in bed. Perhaps she had found that gentle swooning man she had always seemed to want her husband to be. His own mother had been untrue to his father. Perhaps his wife had been untrue to him.
He didn’t want to believe it. LeeAnn was such a meek and proper woman, and he had always thought her true to him, in spite of her coldness in bed and the times he had had to hurt her to make her submit to him. After all, she was his wife, and a man had a right to use his wife however he wished.
She came into the nursery then, rushing to the crib as though she thought her husband might harm her son. “Is something wrong, Charles?” she asked, checking the sleeping child over.
He studied her, watching her eyes when they met his. “I’m not sure yet,” he answered. His own eyes hardened. “Perhaps you can tell me why my son is so dark.”
He saw fear in her eyes, and she looked back at the baby. “He’s just a baby. You can’t tell how a child will look when he is this young. Some children are born with dark hair that turns lighter. And sometimes light hair turns darker. What does it matter? He’s your son, and he’s healthy and strong. You should be glad of that.”
“Is he my son?”
She frowned, meeting his eyes again. “Of course he is.”
His eyes scanned her, studying the gentle curves beneath the silk robe she wore. “I am fully aware you don’t care for some of my bedroom tactics, my dear. Why, I can’t imagine. The whores like it, why shouldn’t you?”
She blinked. “I am not a whore, Charles. I cannot accept fully the way you treat me as a wife. But neither have I been untrue to you. Surely you must realize that if I have trouble enjoying sex, I am certainly not the type to go running to some other man to find it.” She turned back to the baby. “Frankly, I think I could go the rest of my life without it, unless you want more children.”
He grasped her arm then, squeezing it painfully. “No woman goes without it. If you can say that then it only means you’ve found it someplace else and think you can fool me into believing you don’t want it at all, so that I’ll stay out of your bed while you share it with someone else!”
She tried to wrench herself away. “You’re crazy!” she hissed.
He jerked her close, pressing her tight against him, while holding her hair in a painful grip. “Am I? My mother tried the same thing with my father! She didn’t want sex anymore either, but she was spreading her legs for someone else just the same! He told me about her! Told me to never trust any woman! My father never lied to me about anything.” He kissed her savagely and her heart pounded with dread. Since the baby was born and before, she’d been able to use that excuse to keep him out of her bed. But she was healed now, and he well knew it.
She turned her face sideways, grimacing at his painful grip and the dread of what he intended to do. “Charles, I’ve never been untrue to you!” she pleaded.
“That baby isn’t mine!” he growled. “I’ll give him a few months to start looking like he ought to look. But if he doesn’t, you’ll never convince me it’s mine! What did you do—lay with some nigger? An Indian, maybe? God knows there aren’t any around here, but if there were you’d find one just to spite me!”
She pushed at him, starting to cry. “Charles, you’re inventing things in your mind. He’s yours! He’s our baby! Ours!”
He pushed her away then, backhanding her hard and causing her to fall to the floor. He yanked her up before she could get up herself. “Maybe you’re telling the truth!” he growled. “I will decide eventually. In the meantime, I will show you who you belong to, LeeAnn Garvey!”
He began dragging her out of the nursery, and the baby started crying from all the shouting. She protested that she should tend to her child.
“Let the bastard cry!” he shouted, shoving her into their own bedroom and slamming the door.
LeeAnn dragged her sore body out of bed, stumbling to the bathroom, where she drew some hot water. She stared at herself in the mirror, her face badly bruised. She would have to come up with excuses for the next week as to why she could not attend planned social functions. She had had to do so before, feigning sickness. She wondered how many of their friends suspected the truth.
She studied her face, the blond hair and blue eyes. She tried to see something of her father there. She looked no more like she belonged to Zeke Monroe than her own son looked like he belonged to her.
She blinked back tears. Her greatest fear had been realized. She had given birth to a child who would look predominantly Indian. She knew the day would come when she could no longer deny her own heritage, and she wondered if her husband would only banish her, or perhaps kill her. Maybe he would kill them both. She felt a cunning defense rising in her blood. Perhaps it was a trace of her Indian senses. She only knew that she would never let Charles Garvey hurt her son. He was hers, and she had never loved anyone more than she loved her son. For now she would simply be careful, and she would never allow Charles to be alone with the baby. She had to think. What should she do? Where could she go? She was too proud and stubborn to ask her father for help now. He had helped her once—risked his life to save her from the Comanches. And for that she had virtually ignored him all these years, turned her back on her heritage and acted ashamed of her own father. How could she go crawling to him now begging for help? After all, she had knowingly married an Indian hater. What bigger hurt could she have brought to her father?
She bathed, glad her husband was gone from the house. The nurse would watch over little Matthew. She would sit in the hot water for hours if she wanted. Then she would have to face the servants again. They all knew what a maniac Charles Garvey was and of the bitter bedroom problems they had, no doubt hearing the beatings and the harsh words, fully aware that the mistress of the house was literally raped periodically.
She sighed, her eyes filling with tears. She had married a crazy man, and he was getting crazier every year. She understood some of the roots of his problem, and if he would just talk to her, if she could just reason with him, if he had one ounce of goodness and mercy in him, she could still love him. But he would not let her love him, nor was he capable of loving someone back. She could see now that he had married her simply to have a pretty wife on his arm. How often he went to the whores she didn’t k
now—and didn’t care. It was just as well, for her sake.
She finished her bath and spent the rest of the day sitting beside her son. It suddenly didn’t matter anymore that he looked Indian. He was beautiful and healthy, and a good baby. He was her son, and that was all that LeeAnn cared about. And she would make sure no harm came to him, even if she eventually had to leave Charles Garvey. To do so would be a social disgrace to both of them, but her son’s welfare was most important.
She heard her husband come home then, and her chest tightened again. How she dreaded hearing him come through the door! She quickly left the nursery, not wanting him to find her there, afraid he would start an argument all over again about the child. She rushed out of the room and to the head of the grand red-carpeted stairway of their mansion. He stood at the foot of the stairs and glanced up at her, studying the bruised face and the hurt in her blue eyes.
“I’m sorry, LeeAnn. I’m just … a very jealous man.”
She frowned. Every time she was ready to hate him again, he softened. She wondered how much longer she could put up with his dual personality. Something was very wrong with this man and she didn’t know how to help him.
“Did you cancel our engagements for the week?” she asked quietly.
He nodded, coming up the stairs. “Are you all right? Shall I get a doctor?”
Her eyes were cold as ice. “You never got one before. Why should you do so now? I’m just fine.” She moved past him and down the stairs to the kitchen, and he quickly followed. Somewhere down deep inside he truly did love and desire her. Why did he always end up being cruel to her? If not for the damned baby! Why did the child have to be born so dark? He stood and watched her pour herself some tea.
“I’ve started a new series of articles about the Indians,” he told her, trying to start up a conversation.
She met his eyes. “Have you? What blood-curdling tales do you have to tell about them now?”
He clenched his fists, forcing himself not to get angry again. “Well, now that they are thoroughly whipped, all I can tell my readers is that the agents on the reservations are discovering just what filthy, lice-ridden people they really are. Their habits are deplorable, so I’m told. I think the general public should know that, so that the sympathy that damned Joshua Lewis has aroused will be banished.”
She held his eyes squarely. “Perhaps Joshua Lewis is telling the truth, and not the sources you have. Did you ever think of that?”
His eyes flashed and she didn’t even care. She wasn’t afraid of him anymore, and somehow he sensed it. It threw off his thinking, and she realized that if she were bold and strong with him, it just might actually keep him from beating her. It confused him. He was accustomed to a cringing milksop for a wife. She felt an inner pride building. Was it the same pride her father carried? The same stubbornness of her mother’s nature? The same bravery they both carried? Was she more Indian than she realized?
“I … my sources are very good,” he told her. He sighed and turned away. “I am going to my study. I have a court case to work on for tomorrow.”
He walked out without another word, and she smiled. She wondered about this young man called Joshua Lewis, who at twenty-four was already making a name for himself as a journalist. She would like to meet him some day.
The Northern Cheyenne who were now in Oklahoma soon decided they did not want to be there. They longed for the Black Hills, the thick pines and the rushing waters of what they considered their home. In their new and barren reservation, the summer heat was unbearable, and mosquitoes plagued them mercilessly. They choked on dust and the water was stagnant. The government did not issue enough food to go around, and whatever was given out was bad. The flour was nearly black, and almost useless for cooking. The beef was either tough or rotten, usually both. The Indian was accustomed to buffalo meat, a much leaner and more nutritious meat. Their systems could not tolerate the bad meat issued to them, nor was there enough; often the adults did not eat at all, giving what little they had to their children.
It was not long before malaria raged through the reservation, pulling down women, children, and warriors in its ugly death. Their bodies shook with chills, then burned with hot fevers; their bones ached as they wasted away in pain until the life went out of them.
The white doctor was soon out of quinine, which sometimes helped the sick ones, and he locked his office and left. There was nothing more he could do.
The Northern Cheyenne fell into despair. They had understood, incorrectly, that they were to come south just to see if they would like it there, and that they were free to go back north if they did not. They soon discovered that was a lie, that they were expected to stay in the hot, dusty southern reservation—forever. A keen desire began to build in their hearts to return home—to the Black Hills, to their Sioux friends.
During the winter of 1877-78, their agent finally granted permission for some of the Northern Cheyenne to be given rifles so they could hunt buffalo, but that venture proved to only feed their desires to return home, for all the hunters found were piles of bones scattered over the southern plains, left there by white buffalo hunters. The buffalo were gone. Gone. The hunters ended up killing coyotes for food, and by the spring of 1878 they had even eaten all their dogs. They even considered eating their horses, but this was unacceptable to an Indian; and besides, the horses might be needed—for an escape to the North.
The reservation agent pleaded with Washington for more rations, but Washington was turning a cold shoulder on the original Americans. Let them suffer and die. Everyone would be better off. As spring warmed the land, mosquitoes again swarmed, and the malaria returned to take still more lives, so that it seemed that ultimately every last Cheyenne would die. Then came measles, wiping out many of the precious children, their only hope for the future. Little Wolf and Dull Knife, now old men, decided they must do something. Their first effort was to plead once more with the agent for something to be done to save the children.
The two old chiefs explained that they wished to return to their home in the northern mountains, declaring that they would not stay south another winter, perhaps not even another month. Their wish was, of course, denied. In August those choosing to go north, under Wild Hog, Tangle Hair, Little Wolf, and Dull Knife broke away from those not choosing to go home; the renegades held councils, preparing to escape Oklahoma forever.
Zeke coaxed the young mare out of the corral. He had spent several days gently taming her until he could ride her. He did not agree with the way white men broke horses, considering it stupid and cruel, let alone the fact that sometimes the horse hurt itself. The beautiful Appaloosa pranced gingerly, stepping sideways, still not totally convinced she should allow this, yet trusting her master and wanting now to please him. At his gentle Cheyenne command she calmed down. He had been careful to use the proper bit so as not to harm her tender mouth, and for now he rode her bareback.
Abbie and Ellen watched from the fence. It was good to see Zeke mount up with little pain. The past winter had been the worst ever. The arthritis had gone to his hips, and most men would have been unable to even get up out of bed in his condition. But Zeke Monroe was a stubborn man, and he had refused to stay in bed. There had been days when he could not ride at all, and Abbie knew by his eyes what he was thinking. He had always said he would ride to his dying day—that the disease would not bring him to that point. Her chest ached so badly she wondered sometimes where her next breath would come from, and her nights were sleepless. She knew that he had already made up his mind he would not go through another winter like the last one, no matter how good he felt the next summer.
Zeke Monroe had become a quiet, determined man. He did not become angry and ornery as he had the last time the disease got bad. He had simply resigned himself to what must be, and although they did not discuss it, Abigail Monroe knew her husband well—too well. His determination to die honorably had become a silent topic. She was trying to be strong, trying to think about life without him, bu
t it was impossible. She wondered sometimes what kept her going, for she had become thin and tired over the winter, and her chest hurt constantly. She could not eat or sleep. She was losing him! Losing him! Her life; her love; her whole reason for existing.
He rode the mare in circles for a while, then kicked the animal’s sides and took off for a hard ride. Abbie watched after him, swallowing back tears, wondering if she had ever in her whole life cried as much or as easily as she had the past few months.
Ellen put a hand on her shoulder. “Mother, you don’t look well,” she told her. “You’re too thin and you have circles under your eyes. Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong? I think you need to see a doctor.”
Abbie faced the girl. They had been apart all winter because of the snows that separated the two ranches. But in the summer Hal Daniels often brought his wife to her parents’ ranch, for Ellen missed them dearly. Now she had come with the wonderful news that she was three months pregnant. The baby was due in January.
Abbie forced a smile, climbing down from the fence and helping Ellen off. “You shouldn’t be climbing around on fences, Ellen,” she chastised the girl. “You’re pregnant now and must be more careful.”
“Oh, Mother, I’ve been climbing around fences since I was old enough to walk.” She put her arm around her mother’s shoulders. “And stop avoiding the subject. What is wrong with you?”
Abbie sighed and faced the girl, then could not stop the tears. She suddenly hugged Ellen tightly, crying for several minutes first, unable to speak at all.
“I’m sorry, Ellen,” she finally managed to say, pulling away and wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. She held the soggy handkerchief in her fist, watching the horizon where Zeke had ridden. “Your father … was very bad this past winter,” she told the girl. “Very bad.”
Meet the New Dawn Page 31