Read A Whisper In The Wind Online
Authors: Madeline Baker
Michael reined his horse toward home. He had gone riding along the river, needing time to be alone, time to think.
Tomorrow was his wedding day, and he supposed he had a bad case of premarital jitters. He had never seriously contemplated marriage before and he wondered if he was ready for it now. He thought briefly of Melinda, the only woman he’d ever been serious about, and wondered what she was doing and if she ever thought of him anymore. He wondered who had taken over his job at Walsh Cadillac, and what the new cars looked like, but somehow those things didn’t really matter now. His life in L.A. and the people he had known there all seemed like a distant dream. This was his reality now, the endless plains, the distant mountains, the close bond he shared with Yellow Spotted Wolf, the mystery that was Winter Song…
Winter Song. She was so beautiful, so fragile. He could not believe his good fortune in winning her hand. Even now he was hard-pressed to believe she would be his, afraid she would disappear in the mists of time.
He felt a sudden chill, as if the sun had gone cold. Filled with a sudden anxiety, he urged his horse into a lope.
Too late,
the wind seemed to say.
Too late.
He reined his horse to a walk as he reached a sharp bend in the river. He was almost home.
Rounding the bend, he saw three women struggling with three men. At first he thought the couples were wrestling in good fun, but then he heard the frightened cries of the women, noticed the roached scalplocks of the men.
Pawnee!
Raising his lance overhead, Michael raced across the river. Fear clawed at his heart, fear that he was indeed too late, and that he didn’t have the courage to fight, to take a life.
By the time he reached the opposite shore, two of the women had managed to free themselves from the enemy and were running back to the village. The third had collapsed. She lay still, one arm above her head. A thin trickle of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were dark and lifeless.
It was Winter Song.
He gazed at her broken body for what seemed an eternity and as he did so, he felt the last vestiges of civilization break and fall away.
Reining his horse in a tight, rearing turn, he charged the three retreating warriors, killing the first with a well-aimed thrust of his lance.
The other two warriors vaulted onto their horses and galloped for home with Michael in pursuit.
She was dead.
The thought pounded in his brain, relentlessly repeating itself. He glanced at the blood dripping from the tip of his lance and knew he would not rest until the other two lay dead at his feet. He would take their scalps and dip his hands in their blood…
The land dropped and he lost sight of his prey. With a wild cry he urged his horse onward, and only when he started down the brush-covered slope did he realize he’d ridden into a trap.
The Pawnee on his left fired at him point-blank, and Michael felt the heat of the bullet sear his flesh as it tore into his right side. He reeled backward, his hand grabbing for his horse’s mane, and as he did so, the second Pawnee warrior struck him across the back of the head with the butt of his rifle.
Bright lights flashed before Michael’s eyes and he kicked his horse into a lope, the instinct for survival stronger than the agony in his bullet-torn flesh. He could hear the Pawnee yelling as they chased him and he knew certain death awaited him if he surrendered to the darkness that hovered all around him.
Elayna O’Brien swallowed the vomit rising in her
throat as her father cut through the bone of the young soldier’s left leg, severing it just below the knee. It was so sad, Elayna mused, so very sad. And so hard to watch, to know that Kelly North would be crippled for the rest of his life.
She mopped the sweat from her father’s brow, quickly handed him the instruments and sutures needed to complete the operation, and all the while her heart ached for Kelly North, and for the pain and anger and frustration that awaited him when he regained consciousness.
Robert O’Brien sighed as he removed his surgical mask and gloves and stepped away from the bloody operating table. “It’ll be touch and go for a while,” O’Brien remarked, “but I think he’ll make it.”
Elayne nodded as she gazed at Private North’s pale face. “But will he want to?”
Her father shrugged. “I saved his life. The rest is up to him.”
Elayna was still thinking of Kelly North when she left the infirmary an hour later. Kelly was a likable young man, energetic and athletic. What would he do now?
She felt a renewed hatred for the Indians, who were forever on the prowl, attacking innocent settlers, massacring whole families, burning homesteads. Kelly North would still have two good legs if it weren’t for a band of marauding Cheyenne who had attacked a peaceful Army supply train the day before.
She brushed a stray wisp of hair from her forehead as she thought of all the fine young men she had known who had been killed, the agony the wounded had suffered, the tears that had been shed by grieving families.
And yet, for all the danger of life in the West, she loved it. The glowing sunsets, the peaceful dawns, the vast, rolling plains, the sense of wonder and awe that engulfed her whenever she looked at the distant mountains.
She sighed as her thoughts returned to Kelly North and the grim surgery she had witnessed. She’d never planned to be a nurse, but it seemed she was becoming one just the same. Her mother had always assisted at the hospital, and when she passed away, it had seemed natural for Elayna to take her mother’s place. Her initial squeamishness at the sight of blood and broken bones had soon passed, and in a short time she was helping her father stitch knife wounds, treat burns and snake bites, set broken bones, remove bullets and arrowheads from torn flesh. But watching as a man’s leg was amputated was a new experience and one she hoped never to have again.
She was crossing the parade ground when she saw Lieutenant Lance Smythe walking toward her. He was a tall, handsome young man, with hair as yellow as an Iowa cornfield and eyes as blue as the sky overhead.
Elayna smiled a welcome as he closed the distance between them. She expected to marry Lance before the next year was out. Lance was the kind of man every woman dreamed of, dependable, loyal, honest, unfailingly kind, and if she sometimes wished he were more exciting, more unpredictable, well, she would learn to live with it, for his virtues far outweighed such questionable lacks.
“Bad time in surgery?” Lance asked as he fell into step beside her.
Elayna nodded. “Father had to amputate Kelly’s leg just below the knee.”
Lance swore softly. “Poor kid. I wonder what he’ll do now. The Army was his whole life.”
Elayna shook her head. “I don’t know. Does he have any family?”
“A sister, I think. Down south someplace. Georgia, maybe, or South Carolina.”
Lance took Elayna’s hand and gave it a squeeze. She was a kindhearted young woman and he loved her for that as much as for the beauty of her face and form. He placed a quick kiss on the top of her head. Her hair was a deep dark red, soft and thick, always tempting his touch. Her eyes were dark brown, like a handful of freshly turned earth, filled now with compassion for young North.
“Try not to think of Kelly for a while,” Lance said. “He’s young. He’ll get by.”
“How?” Elayna demanded. “His life is ruined, and all because of those damned savages! I hate them! Why don’t they leave us alone? The West is big enough for all of us.”
Lance grinned, amused by her temper and the unladylike profanity that occasionally slipped into her speech when she was angry.
“Why don’t they leave us alone?” Elayna asked again. “We’re not hurting them.”
“I’ve no love for the Indians, Elayna, you know that. But this time they do have a legitimate grievance. We’re trespassing on land our government promised them under treaty, and we’ll continue to trespass so long as it’s profitable.”
“Profitable!” Elayna exclaimed. “All the gold and grazing land in the territory won’t help Kelly get his leg back, or compensate him for its loss.
“Damned savages,” she murmured. “I hope I never see another Indian again.”
He was lost in a land of gray shadows. Rough hands took hold of him. He knew somehow that they were the enemy and he tried to fight them, but his arms and legs refused to do his bidding and he felt himself being lifted, carried.
The pain was more than he could bear, and he reached out for the welcome darkness that hovered all around him, melting into the blackness until he was lost in oblivion…
“A vision,”
Yellow Spotted Wolf said, his aged voice filled with conviction.
“A man needs a vision to guide him through life…”
“What was meant to be, will be,”
Sitting Bull declared.
“You cannot change the future…”
He swam through the darkness, and other voices reached his ears.
“Stupid savage, looks like he rode into that ravine on purpose…”
“Sioux, maybe, or Cheyenne…”
“Bad hurt. Probably won’t make it to the fort…”
White voices. He surrendered to the darkness again, letting the blackness enfold him like loving arms, protecting him from hurt and harm…
He was walking through a field of white flowers. The sky was white, the earth was white, and he was alone. And then he saw a woman walking toward him, her arms outstretched.
A white woman with dark red hair and earth-brown eyes. And a familiar voice whispered in the back of his mind.
She is waiting,
the voice said.
Waiting for you.
Elayna O’Brien was breathing heavily when she awoke. A fine layer of perspiration dampened her forehead, her hands felt cold. Her mouth was dry.
She’d had it again, the same dream that had haunted her sleep for the last four nights.
Rising, she lit the candle on the table beside her bed, then went to stand at the window, looking out.
The night was dark and quiet. A pale yellow moon hung low in an indigo sky, lazily playing hide and seek with a handful of wispy, silver-tipped clouds.
Opening the window, she drew in a deep breath. The dream was always the same. A man came to her, bleeding and unconscious. A tall man, with dark hair and tawny skin. A forbidden man.
Elayna let out a long sigh. Her mother had been blessed with “the sight”, or cursed, depending on how one viewed the gift. Mary Kathleen O’Brien had passed a portion of her gift to her daughter. Mary Kathleen had welcomed her talent for seeing into the future; her daughter did not.
She had not told anyone about her dream, not her father, not Lance, not even her best friend, Nancy Avery. She wished suddenly that her mother were still alive. Mary Kathleen would know what to make of the dream, if it signified a specific person or event or was merely a recurring dream of no importance at all.
Elayna shivered. She never saw the face of the man who invaded her dreams, yet she knew she would recognize him, and that he would change her life forever.
So
much for a dream of no importance,
she thought ruefully.
Shaking the phantom from her mind, she closed the window, blew out the candle, and climbed into bed, drawing the covers up to her chin.
It was just a dream. Nothing more.
“Just a dream,” she murmured as she closed her eyes.
The notes of a bugle calling reveille made her frown and she flopped over on her stomach and pulled the covers over her head.
“No,” she thought petulantly. “Not yet.”
She heard her father’s bedroom door open, heard his footsteps in the hall. He would be wanting breakfast soon, she thought, and wished someone else would go into the cold kitchen and light the fire and start the coffee.
Rising, she threw off her long white nightgown, washed quickly in the water she had drawn the night before, then dressed in the navy blue skirt and short-sleeved shirtwaist she wore when she helped her father in the camp infirmary.
But there were no patients in the infirmary today, and after sick call she would have the whole day to do with as she pleased. She might lay out a pattern for a new dress, she mused, or spend a quiet hour browsing through the latest mail order catalog, or catch up on the mending she had been neglecting for the past two weeks.
Humming softly, she made her bed, then went into the small sunlit kitchen to prepare breakfast.
She had just mixed the batter for flapjacks when there was a hurried knock at the back door and Private Anthony Jamison rushed into the room.
“Good morning, Tony,” Elayna said, smiling at the young man. “Would you like some coffee?”
“No, thank you, Miss O’Brien. Your father sent me. Said for you to get over to the hospital right away.”
“What’s wrong?”
Jamison shrugged. “Lieutenant Smythe’s patrol rode in a few minutes ago. Got a wounded Injun with ‘em. He looks about dead, but you know your father. He’s determined to save him.”
A cold chill passed down Elayna’s spine as she removed her apron and tossed it over the back of a chair.
“Help yourself to coffee, Tony,” she said, and hurried out the door.
A few minutes later she donned a clean white apron and slipped a net over her long red hair before stepping into the back room where her father performed surgery. There was a man on the operating table, a long lean man with straight black hair and dark skin.
A forbidden man. An Indian.
A quick mental image of young Kelly North lying on the same table flashed through Elayna’s mind, and her stomach churned as she recalled the horror of watching her father amputate Kelly’s leg below the knee, her hatred for all Indians growing stronger and deeper with each cut of the saw.
The Indian was unconscious. A sheet covered him from just below his waist to his knees. There was dried blood matted in his hair and across his chest, numerous lacerations on his arms and legs, and a wound that she quickly recognized as a bullet hole in his right side.
“He’ll need stitches,” her father said as he probed the wound in the back of the man’s head. “He’s got a deep gash here. When I get it closed up, we’ll dig the slug out of his side.”
Elayna nodded. Quickly, efficiently, she gathered the instruments her father would need, then began to wash the blood from the patient’s wounds while her father washed his hands and slipped on a clean surgical gown.
“What happened to him?” Elayna asked as she began to disinfect the cuts on the man’s right leg.
“I don’t know. Lance’s patrol found him lying unconscious in a ravine. Most of the men wanted to leave him there to die, but Lance thought the Indian might be able to give us some information on Sitting Bull’s whereabouts.”
Elayna nodded, her gaze on the man’s face. It was a strong face, a handsome face, familiar somehow.
“What are his chances?” she asked, not certain she wanted the Indian to survive.
Robert O’Brien shook his head as he began to swab the man’s right side with carbolic acid. “Not good. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
Elayna nodded, her heart thudding in her breast as her father began to stitch the man’s wounds: twelve in the back of his head, twenty-eight in his side.
When her father was finished, Elayna wrapped a loose bandage around the Indian’s head, another around his lean torso, then she covered him with a lightweight gray wool blanket and placed a pillow beneath his head.
“Well, we’ve done all we can,” her father said as he washed the blood from his hands. “Let’s go have breakfast.”
Elayna sat at the wounded man’s side, unable to take her eyes from his face. She was certain now. This was the man who had haunted her dreams and troubled her waking moments for almost a week. Though she had never seen his face in her dreams, she had recognized him instantly. Recognized him and been afraid.
Indian.
Earlier in the day they had moved him out of the operating room to a cot in the infirmary. During sick call, several of the men had made caustic remarks about having a “damned redskin” in the place.
“We’re supposed to be killing the bastards,” one of the old-timers had complained. “Not makin’ ‘em better.”
Elayna had silently concurred, but her father had ordered the men to keep their opinions to themselves.
The post commander, Major Cathcart, had looked in on the wounded man shortly after noon, declaring that the Indian would have to be moved to the guardhouse as soon as possible. Until then, the major had insisted on cuffing the Indian’s left leg to the cot’s iron frame.
It was a decision that pleased Elayna. She would nurse him, but she did not want to have to worry about him getting out of bed and coming after her. She knew what Indians did to white women. She had seen the results more than once.
The man stirred restlessly on the bed, tossing the covers aside, mumbling incoherently. His fever was mounting, and she dipped a clean cloth into the basin of cool water in her lap and began sponging his face and chest, his arms and legs.
His eyelids fluttered open as the cool water touched his skin, and Elayna quickly dissolved one of her father’s medicinal powders in a glass of water and held it to his lips. He drained the glass, and then his eyes closed and he was asleep.
An hour passed, and Elayna continued to sponge the man’s face and torso. He muttered words occasionally, words she did not understand.
Once he wept softly, and she heard him murmur, “Grandfather, I’m sorry,” over and over again.
She had never considered the fact that Indians had families, that they were capable of feeling sorrow or regret. It made him seem less savage, more human, and she hardened her heart, refusing to feel sorry for him. He was still an Indian. Nothing could change that.
At dusk she went home to prepare her father’s dinner, and when she returned to the infirmary, the Indian’s fever was worse. Removing the blanket that covered him, she replaced it with several large towels soaked in cool water. She tried not to notice his nakedness, but he was beautifully proportioned and she could not help but admire the lean length of him, the broad shoulders and well-muscled torso, his flat belly and muscular thighs.
Abruptly she drew her gaze away, her cheeks flaming. He was an Indian, and she was admiring him as if he were a work of art.
Each time he awoke she offered him water to drink, and then she offered him some broth she had made.
Her father stopped by once and prescribed some strong medicine to combat the fever, but he didn’t sound hopeful.
“I’m afraid the major will have to find another source of information,” Robert O’Brien remarked as he checked the patient’s pulse and temperature. “I don’t think this one’s going to make it.”