Read A Whisper In The Wind Online
Authors: Madeline Baker
She was a married woman. The thought made her smile as she tidied up their lodge, her hands lingering on Michael’s wedding clothes. She had not thought it would make a difference, but it did. She was his wife now, and though nothing had really changed between them, everything was different. She belonged to him now, in a way she hadn’t before. In the white world, a woman was considered her husband’s property. His word was law. A man could beat his wife, abuse her, neglect her, and no one would dare question his right to do so. A woman did not own property. She could not vote. Her children belonged to her husband. Any money she might earn or inherit was controlled by him. It was different with the Cheyenne. The women discussed matters freely with their husbands, arguing, persuading, and cajoling until they got their own way about tribal affairs. There had been women chiefs, and women shamans, and women who had gone to war. If a couple divorced, the children went with the mother.
She did her best to adapt to the ways of the Cheyenne, knowing she could never go back to her own people now, but the loss of her friends at Camp Robinson seemed a small price to pay for the joy of being Michael’s wife. Her only regret was that her father would never know or understand how she felt, would never know how happy she was.
She felt more at home when she joined Hemene and Sunflower Woman at the river that morning. They had accepted her before, but she was one of them now, a wife.
“So, E-layna, what did you do last night?” Sunflower Woman asked innocently, and then burst into gales of girlish laughter as Elayna’s cheeks turned bright pink. “Did you tame the wild Wolf?”
“Behave yourself,” Hemene chided, her eyes twinkling with merriment. “Can you not see our new wife is weary?”
“She will be weary for many mornings to come,” Sunflower Woman predicted.
Hemene shrugged. “Perhaps not. Perhaps it will not take long for Ho-nehe’s seed to sprout in her belly.”
“Perhaps,” Sunflower Woman agreed. She smiled as she placed her hands on her own swollen belly. “Perhaps E-layna is with child even now.”
Elayna placed her hands over her stomach. It had not occurred to her she might get pregnant, but it was a very real possibility. And a welcome one.
In the afternoon some of the men gathered together to test their skill with bow and arrow. Targets were placed in trees and there was furious betting and boasting before the contests began. Michael was one of the contestants, as were Yellow Spotted Wolf, Mo’ohta-vo’nehe, and a half-dozen other warriors.
Elayna stood behind Michael, her heart welling with pride for the man who was her husband. No other warrior was as handsome, as tall, as wonderful.
Watching him, she noticed anew how much he looked like Yellow Spotted Wolf. Many of their mannerisms were the same. At one point she saw Mo’ohta-vo’nehe staring at the two of them, his eyes narrowed, his brow furrowed. Mo’ohta-vo’nehe was a remarkable man, she thought, to have taken Michael into his affection so readily. But there was no doubt that Michael was related to the family. Only a blind man could fail to see the resemblance between Michael, Yellow Spotted Wolf, and Mo’ohta-vo’nehe himself.
Her musings were interrupted as the contests began. It was soon evident to Elayna that, as good as Michael was with a bow, he was no match for Yellow Spotted Wolf, and neither was anyone else. Time after time, Yellow Spotted Wolf’s arrows hit the target, and Elayna became aware that a number of young maidens had joined the spectators, their dark eyes filled with admiration as they watched Yellow Spotted Wolf win one round after another. She let her gaze wander over the girls, and wondered which one would win Yellow Spotted Wolf’s heart.
Michael grinned knowingly as Pretty Flower batted her eyes at Yellow Spotted Wolf.
You’re wasting your time,
he thought, and turned his gaze to the young woman standing quietly at his great-grandfather’s side.
Blue Fawn was a tall, slender girl with large dark eyes and a sensuous mouth. She spoke to Yellow Spotted Wolf, her eyes aglow with admiration, and Yellow Spotted Wolf puffed out his chest with pride.
Pretty Flower grimaced and quit the field, and Michael laughed out loud, wishing he could hear what Blue Fawn was saying to make Yellow Spotted Wolf swell up like a turkey gobbler. He saw Yellow Spotted Wolf take Blue Fawn’s hand and give it a quick squeeze. Blue Fawn blushed prettily, and then Yellow Spotted Wolf turned away to accept a challenge from Soaring Eagle, and the brief interlude was over.
Michael watched Blue Fawn gaze longingly at Yellow Spotted Wolf, her heart in her eyes. It was Blue Fawn who would win his great-grandfather’s heart. They would be married in 1879, and they would have five sons, though only one would live to manhood. And yet, in spite of everything, their marriage would be a good one.
He turned to smile at Elayna, and in his heart he wondered if his own marriage would survive the days to come, if their love was strong enough to overcome the aftermath of the Custer battle, the hardships that would follow.
“Elayna,” he murmured, brushing a wisp of hair from her brow.
“Zemehoesz.”
“Zemehoesz,”
she repeated. “What does it mean?”
“The beloved one.”
Her heart swelled until she thought it might burst, and she forgot all about Yellow Spotted Wolf and who his future wife might be as she followed Michael into their lodge and secured the flap.
The future would take care of itself. For now, she wanted only Michael’s arms around her, his lips crushing hers, his voice whispering her name.
The days were cold and the nights longer as October gave way to
Hik’omini,
the Month of the Freezing Moon.
Michael and Elayna spent much of their time inside their lodge as snow covered the plains with a thick blanket of white. The autumn leaves were gone and the trees stood barren on the hills, their skeletal arms fringed with icicles.
On mild days they ventured outside. The Cheyenne were active, even in the winter, weather permitting. The men went hunting, and sometimes to war. Winter was considered a favorable time to steal horses from the Crow and the Pawnee.
The women often cleared a space among the trees and hung robes or lodgeskins to serve as windbreaks. They would then build a fire and spend a pleasant afternoon sewing or mending. Elayna was included in these gatherings and learned how to do the fancy beading that made Cheyenne moccasins a thing of beauty. She had grown accustomed to wearing doeskin tunics and fur-lined moccasins, and except for the color of her hair, she looked like the other Indian women as she walked through the snowbound camp bundled in a heavy robe.
Winter was also a time for fun. Men and boys made sleds from buffalo ribs lashed together with rawhide and raced down the icy slopes. The rib sleds could fly down a hill faster than a horse could run. Very small children slid down small hills on pieces of rawhide. Mothers encouraged this, for not only did it provide their children with hours of fun, but it was also a convenient, labor-saving means of wearing the hair off a buffalo hide they wished to use for moccasins.
But the best days for Michael and Elayna were those they spent alone in their lodge. Michael accepted each new day as a gift from God, another twenty-four hours to spend with Elayna, another day with his great-grandfather, with Mo’ohta-vo’nehe and Hemene and Badger. He had a strong premonition that his time with the People was growing short. He had learned their ways, discovered his true heritage, and had a genuine love for the Cheyenne, and for the land they fought for.
He made Yellow Spotted Wolf promise to return Elayna to Camp Robinson if anything happened to him, to tell her who he was and where he had gone.
Yellow Spotted Wolf agreed, his expression skeptical. Try as he might, he could not believe that Michael Wolf was from the future, or that the things he had spoken of would come to pass.
But then, in December, Yellow Spotted Wolf began to believe.
A month earlier, Michael had told him that the Grandfather in Washington would soon send word to the Cheyenne and the Lakota, informing them that they would be considered hostiles if they did not report to the nearest reservation by January 31st. Because of the severe weather, such a thing would be impossible.
And now word had come from the Secretary of the Interior, ordering all Indians to report to the nearest Agency by the end of January.
The chiefs of the Cheyenne shook their heads as they discussed the secretary’s ultimatum. There was no way they could comply even if they were so inclined. The snow was deep, the trails impassable for travois ponies.
It was going to be war, Yellow Spotted Wolf mused. Just as Michael had predicted.
In the days that followed, Mo’ohta-vo’nehe and the other chiefs met together often, and eventually it was decided that the tribe would join forces with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse as soon as possible. There was strength in numbers, Mo’ohta-vo’nehe declared, and if the
vehoe
wanted war, then war it would be!
Michael made a concentrated effort not to dwell on what spring would bring. Instead, he spent all his time with the two people he loved most in all the world, Elayna and Yellow Spotted Wolf.
He found himself staring at Elayna, committing her face to memory, the color of her hair and eyes, the shape of her mouth, wanting to imprint her image so deeply upon his mind that it would last forever, for he could not shake the feeling that his time was growing short. He memorized the sound of her voice whispering his name, the merry sound of her laughter. He told her often that he loved her, would always love her.
During the long winter evenings the people often gathered in small groups to listen to the old ones tell of days gone by. Sitting snug in one of the lodges, with Elayna by his side, he gained a deeper appreciation for his people, a true understanding of his great-grandfather’s beliefs.
“It is better to live in a lodge than a square house,” proclaimed Red-Furred Bear one wintry evening. “Our lodges are warm in winter, cool in summer, easy to move. The
vehoe’s
house is like a cage, trapping him within its walls, shutting out the sun. The Great Spirit knew that man and animal need to move that they might always have fresh water and grass.”
“Ai!”
Buffalo Calf Horn agreed. “The Cheyenne live within a circle. The Power of the World is a circle, and everything tries to be round. The sky is round, birds make their nests in circles, for their religion is like ours. The sun is a circle, and so is the moon. The four quarters of the earth nourish the great circle. The East provides peace and light, the South gives warmth, the West gives rain, and the North sends the cold and the wind for strength and endurance.”
“Ai!”
said Red-Furred Bear. “The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood. I was cared for by my mother when I was young, and now that I am old, my children care for me.”
The elderly men and women in the lodge nodded in agreement.
“Even the earth mothers us,” remarked an aged woman with long gray braids and twinkling black eyes. “In the spring I sit on the new grass in my bare feet and I feel her power seep into my soul.”
Buffalo Calf Horn grinned, revealing a mouth full of yellow teeth. “The earth is a part of us, and when we die, our flesh and blood nourish the earth for the next generation, and that, too, is a circle.”
The soft voices of the ancient ones wrapped themselves around Michael. He listened to the old tales, handed down father to son for generations.
“Listen, and I will tell how the land of our People was discovered,” Mo’ohta-vo’nehe said, and a hush fell over the tipi. “Long ago a certain man took flight on the back of an eagle. The great bird carried him across a wide body of blue water. The flight took several days, and when the eagle landed, the man was in a place of snow-capped mountains and flat, rolling plains. Everything the man needed could be found in this place.”
Red-Furred Bear cleared his throat. “I will tie another tale to the last,” he said, and told of a long journey from a land of many islands, and how the people crossed a large body of frozen water. Part of the People were left on the other side.
“And they are still there,” Red-Furred Bear said, and sitting back, he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Tell us another,” Hemene coaxed.
Red-Furred Bear smiled. “Once, long ago, there was a great famine in the land of the People. Two brave young men decided to go in search of the underground hiding place of the buffalo to find meat to feed the People. They painted their bodies before they left on their journey, and begged the Great Spirit to bless them on their way.
“One day, after they had been gone a long time, they plunged into a great waterfall, which they believed led to the hiding place of the buffalo. They found an old woman there who took pity on them and gave them corn and buffalo meat to sustain them on their long journey home.”
Later, walking hand in hand with Elayna toward their lodge, Michael felt a new sense of belonging, of being a part of the earth. He gazed up at the sky, and the moon smiled down at him.
“Circles,” Michael mused aloud. “The earth, the sun, the moon…”
“And my love for you,” Elayna murmured. “A circle with no beginning and no end.”
There was a constant stream of news in the days that followed. Runners and scouts on weary horses fought their way through the cold and the snow to carry word from tribe to tribe. And that word was
war.
In February, Sitting Bull was officially declared a hostile and was to be warred upon. General George Crook was ordered to go out and bring in Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and the others.
In March, word came that Crook had left Fort Fetterman. His head scout was Frank Grouard, a man who had been captured years earlier by the Hunkpapas and adopted by Sitting Bull. But he had returned to the whites, and now he was riding with “Three Stars” against his old friend.
Another runner brought the news that one of Crook’s columns under General James Reynolds had attacked a Cheyenne village on the Little Powder River. The survivors had made their way to Sitting Bull’s camp on the Powder River some sixty miles away.
Sitting Bull had been enraged when he heard about the battle. He was a man who wanted only peace. He had stayed away from the whites, asking only to be left alone. Now they were forcing him to fight.
“We are an island of Indians in a lake of whites,” the runner said, relating Sitting Bull’s words. “We must stand together, or they will rub us out separately. Those soldiers have come shooting; they want war. We will give it to them.”
A short time later another runner came from Sitting Bull. He carried a message that was being repeated in Indian villages all across the Plains: “It is war!” the Hunkpapa medicine man had decreed. “Come to my camp at the Big Bend of the Rosebud.”
War.
The word reached not only the hostile Indians, but those on the reservations as well.
War.
The very word excited the young men. They were tired of days with nothing to do, nothing to eat. Red Cloud, an influential Oglala war chief, tried to keep his young men on the reservation, but he was an Agency Indian and his words weighed nothing compared to the war cry of Sitting Bull. Even his own son, Jack Red Cloud, went to join Sitting Bull.
Michael heard the stories, listened to the runners, listened to the words of Sitting Bull, and he knew that it was the beginning of the end.
The Cheyenne were moving again. The chiefs had heard the war cry of Sitting Bull and the cry could not be ignored.
Michael heard numerous complaints from the warriors as they rode toward Sitting Bull’s camp on the banks of the Rosebud. The whites were entering the Indians’ land in ever-increasing numbers, polluting the rivers and streams, littering the plains with tin cans and bottles, raping the earth for gold.
As the Cheyenne traveled across the flowering prairie, Michael tried not to think about the future. He tried to enjoy the beauty of the greening grass and trees, to find pleasure in the wildflowers that bloomed on the verdant hillsides, to savor the sweet scent of newness that was in the air as the earth renewed itself. The sky overhead was vast, blue, limitless, reminding him of the Pacific Ocean and California.
Had he ever really lived there, had a life there? What was he doing here, following a path that would inevitably lead to the Little Bighorn and a showdown with Custer and the Seventh Cavalry? Did he have the guts to become a part of the most famous Indian battle of them all?
He had a sense of being caught up in a whirlpool from which there was no escape. He knew what was coming, and knew it could not be changed.
What will be, will be,
Sitting Bull had said, and Michael feared that it was true. He would fight beside Mo’ohta-vo’nehe and Yellow Spotted Wolf, and he would live or he would die…
Michael chuckled softly. Maybe that was why he had been sent back in time, he mused—to spill his blood along the banks of the Greasy Grass.
He shook the morbid thought from his mind as Yellow Spotted Wolf rode up beside him.
“Will there be a battle at the Rosebud?” his great-grandfather asked.
“Yes,” Michael answered, surprised by the question.
“Will we win?”
Michael nodded, wondering what lay behind Yellow Spotted Wolf’s remarks. His great-grandfather never spoke of the future, or of Michael’s knowledge of it.
“It is good to fight,” Yellow Spotted Wolf declared enthusiastically. “Good for a warrior to test his courage.”
“Is it?”
“Ai!
This will be your first big battle,” Yellow Spotted Wolf mused. “I have ridden against the Crow and the Pawnee, but never against the
vehoe.”
He raised his lance over his head and shook it. “I am eager to dip my lance in the blood of the white man, to decorate my coup stick with yellow hair.”
Michael shook his head. He did not understand his great-grandfather’s eagerness to fight, yet all the young men felt the same. They were eager for a fight, eager to drive the whites from the Black Hills, to reclaim the Land of the Spotted Eagle for the red man.
He was thinking of that later that evening as the Indians made camp.
His gaze wandered over the peaceful camp. Men and women were going about their evening chores, laughing and visiting, looking after their children, caring for the elderly. It was a hard life, Michael thought, and yet it was not without its rewards. The Indians were close to the earth, close to their gods, to each other. They had a oneness with nature that the white man would never have, an understanding of the earth and the elements, a kinship with all living creatures.
He gazed at the vast rolling prairie, at the clear sky, and he wished that somehow history could be rewritten, that the victory at the Little Bighorn would send all the whites back across the Missouri, leaving the Indians forever in peace, to live the life they were meant to live. But it would never be. The whites were too powerful, too well armed, too greedy. They wanted the Black Hills and the wealth it contained, and he knew they would not rest until it was theirs, no matter what the cost.