Agnes and the Renegade (Men of Defiance) (19 page)

When Mrs. Burkholder joined them, she’d changed from her traveling ensemble to another lavender outfit—this one of cool muslin with collar and cuffs of lace. Her graying hair was impeccably pinned. She looked as fresh as any proper lady visiting for tea.
 

They all stood to greet her. “Mrs. Burkholder, this is my father, Sid Taggert,” Logan said.

Sid took her hand and offered an elegant half-bow over it. “Mrs. Burkholder. I’m happy we can meet finally.”

“How do you do?”

Sarah gestured toward the sofa. “You must be parched and famished after your journey. I have cold lemonade, iced tea, and sandwiches. If you prefer hot tea, I’d be happy to have some made.”

“Not at all. The lemonade would be wonderful.” She took the glass goblet that Sarah handed her. “An iced beverage. Such a refreshing surprise for these wild lands.”

“We have an ice house,” Sarah explained. “Every winter we store ice cut from a nearby lake. We’re running low now that it’s so late in the season, but this seemed a good opportunity to splurge.” Sarah served everyone a beverage, then offered the tray of tea sandwiches to their guest.
 

They made small talk for a few minutes while they enjoyed the refreshments. After a while, Mrs. Burkholder set her dishes down on the side table, then focused on Logan. “Would you please tell me about the man you feel may be my grandson?”

Logan gazed at the older woman, measuring her. “I will tell you about my friend, but as yet I cannot be certain he is your grandson. Perhaps you could give us some background for your interest, first?”

Mrs. Burkholder sent a look at the three Taggerts. Her lips were pursed, her chin high. “My husband, God rest his soul, and I had four children. Our daughter, Lucy, was the next to the eldest. One summer, nearly forty years ago now, it was time for a shipment of goods to be delivered.” She paused as the impact of that fact filtered through her own mind. “It was our custom to accompany different our supply trains to various forts and trading posts. Relations with the aborigines along those routes were fairly calm, usually pleasant, often lucrative. Lucy was nine years old that summer. Her brothers were eleven, seven, and three. My husband felt it was important that our children learn the business early so that it would be deeply integrated with their lives.
 

“Anyway, that summer, I was not able to accompany them on their supply run because of my youngest’s health—he had scarlet fever. They were traveling into settled lands in Iowa. I had no cause to be worried about them.”

Sarah closed her eyes. She knew what was coming. She’d lived it herself. Strange how the room grew cold. She folded her arms tightly about herself. Logan was watching her with concerned eyes.
 

“Well, they weren’t safe. They were set upon by a Sioux war party. My oldest son was killed and scalped. My husband and middle son were shot with multiple arrows. Even with several wounds, my husband managed to fight them off, protecting our children.” Mrs. Burkholder paused. “Those murdering heathens left them to die. They took my daughter and most of the goods my husband was transporting.” She retrieved a lace handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.
 

“Eventually, my husband and son were discovered by a nearby farmer. They were taken in by him and nursed back to health. They were weeks late getting home. I knew—I just knew—something terrible had happened.” Her face hardened as she collected her composure. “Our youngest succumbed to the fever while they were gone.”
 

She pulled a golden locket out of her pocket. For a minute, she was lost in time and memories. “My daughter had desperately wanted to go with her father and brothers on that trip, but she also worried about being away from me. I gave her this locket to comfort her on the journey.” She opened it, then handed it to Sarah. “My mother gave it to me. It contains miniature portraits of my mother and me when I was a young girl.

“Over the years, my husband and I never stopped looking for Lucy, our only surviving child. There were sightings reported, here and there, now and then—a little blond girl among a band of Natives. Those reports took weeks coming to us, and by the time we could follow up on them, the heathens had moved to new locations. One of the last reports came to me a few years ago. My husband and I had offered a reward for any information leading to her recovery. A man recently out of the Army came forward with a report that my grandson had moved to the Great Sioux Reservation.”
 

She paused, looking around at them. “It was from that man I learned Lucy had passed away years earlier. That news drained my husband’s last will to live. He died only a few months later. But I was not ready to give up. My daughter had had a son. My grandson. I determined then that I would find him and bring him home.”

Sid, who’d sat unmoving through Mrs. Burkholder’s lengthy tale, blew a loud breath of air, then got up and went to a sideboard where a decanter of brandy sat on a tray with glasses. He poured himself a glass, swallowed it fast, then poured another before he turned and faced the room.
 

“Mrs. Burkholder, may I offer you a glass? Or perhaps you’d prefer a cordial?”

“Brandy will be fine.”

Sarah could not find any words, either as a hostess or as a survivor of Indian depredations herself.
 

“Logan, would you like a glass?” Sid asked.

He was watching her and did not look away. “No thanks, Dad.” He crossed the room and held a hand out to her. “Sarah, I think I heard White Bird call for you. Why don’t you go see what she needs?”

Sarah took hold of his warm hand and let him draw her to her feet. She looked at Mrs. Burkholder, but words still failed her. All she could do was nod at her, hand Logan the locket, then take herself from the room before her self-control dissolved.

Logan watched Sarah leave. He knew that White Bird was listening from inside the dining room and didn’t need Sarah at all, but his wife had desperately needed a bit of space to breathe. There was nothing he was going to say to Mrs. Burkholder that he hadn’t already said to his foster daughter when she’d asked him about her family history.
 

He gazed down at the little oval windows and the tiny faces that looked back at him. He didn’t recognize the young Mrs. Burkholder on the right half of the locket. But her mother was the spitting image of the adult Lucy he had known. He closed the locket. Any doubts he had that Chayton was this woman’s grandson vanished.

“Logan may have informed you of the similar experiences that have touched our lives,” Sid said, breaking the silence. “No one who settles these lands has done so unscathed. The Sioux took my wife while she was carrying my son. Like you, I spent years searching for them only to learn that my wife died shortly after giving birth. Many more years passed before I learned my boy had been traded to the Shoshone as an infant, that I’d wasted years looking for him among the wrong people. The Shoshone were not allies of the Sioux. It never occurred to me to look for him in their villages.” He looked at Logan, letting him take up the conversation.

“Sarah herself was a captive. She’s still recovering from that experience. I don’t think one ever recovers from the things she went through.” Logan leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees as he looked at Mrs. Burkholder. “I don’t know if what I am about to say will help or not. I met your daughter. She was known as ‘Spotted Horse Woman.’ She was a much-beloved member of the tribe. She maintained her language by acting as a translator for the tribe and speaking with any English-speaking visitors they had. She taught her children to speak English.”

“Children? I have more grandchildren?”

“I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “None living other than Chayton. In every way that mattered, Lucy was fully Lakota. But when I met her, you couldn’t mistake her coloring for anything but a white woman. I asked her once if she remembered her first family. She had only very vague memories of her time with you. She’d been told her family had died in a terrible event that led to her being rescued by the Lakota. It wasn’t something she questioned or was curious about. She loved her husband. Loved her children.”

“So that’s why she never tried to find us.” Mrs. Burkholder was quiet for a time. “What became of her? And her children? Do you know?”

Logan sighed. There was no good side to the story. “After the ’68 treaty at Fort Laramie, some of the Lakota began to camp in areas designated for that purpose. They’d been decimated by the years of war on their people and lands. They were starving and broken. She and her husband were in such a camp when soldiers attacked it. It was a massacre. She was killed outright, but her husband lingered for days before passing. At that point, her children were grown, but Chayton’s sister, who was also in that camp, died with them. One of Chayton’s brothers died as a child. His other brother died in a different battle a few years ago.”

“Where is my grandson now?”

Logan exchanged a look with Sid. “He’s nearby.”

“Does he know I’ve come for him?”

“No. And, if I may offer a word of advice, don’t tell him that. He’s an adult. A Lakota warrior. He won’t do anything a white person tells him. He not only lost his parents to white men, he lost his first wife and son to a raid by a group of white men seeking bounties from Indian scalps.”

Mrs. Burkholder closed her eyes. “So much death.” Then, as a thought struck her, she flashed a glance at Logan. “
First
wife?”

Logan had to fight the urge to smile. The woman was a generation older than his father, but still sharp as a whip. “I believe he may have married again.”

“No!” Mrs. Burkholder banged her cane on the wood floor. “No. That is not acceptable. I need him separated from his Indian life. I have plans for him that don’t include any heathen wife of his. I’m an old woman, Mr. Taggert. I don’t have time or patience for such shenanigans. He must leave his former life behind.”

Logan’s temper heated up. “You cannot separate a man from his soul and expect him to survive. Tread lightly. If you want any type of future with him, you’d best find a way to take him as he is—married or not, wild or not. The Lakota people were his life.” He and Mrs. Burkholder exchanged heated glares. “You opened an artery in him when you forced him from the reservation. He is only now regaining a will to live.” Breaking eye contact with her, he barked an order, summoning Chayton’s daughter.

“Yes, Logan-
p'apá
?” she asked as she came from the dining room.

Logan lifted his hand and beckoned her near. Though he tried to calm himself, she read the emotion on his face and looked from him to Mrs. Burkholder with some trepidation. “I would like you to meet your great-grandmother.”

White Bird faced Mrs. Burkholder and gave a quick curtsey. “It’s nice to meet you,
kȟúŋši
.”

Mrs. Burkholder’s face was pale. She looked at Logan. “What does ‘khoonshi’ mean?”

“It is a Lakota title of respect for a paternal grandmother.”

“You will speak only in English to me, girl.”
 

White Bird did not blink, did not acknowledge that command. Logan silently commended her courage and resistance. He and Sarah had spent the last few years reinforcing how important it would be for her to maintain her knowledge of and pride in her native culture. They often spoke in a mixture of English and Lakota among the three of them, selecting the word that best fit the situation. English was sorely lacking in rich words that blended emotional and physical realities.

“Come closer. I’m old and I cannot see you so far away.”

White Bird moved around the coffee table to stand before her great-grandmother. Mrs. Burkholder put a pair of spectacles on, then opened her locket and compared the faces inside it to that of her great-granddaughter. “You don’t resemble my daughter.”

“How do you have my grandmother’s locket?”

“You remember this?”

“Of course. It was part of her medicine. She kept it with her always.”

Mrs. Burkholder looked to Logan for a translation. “The Lakota keep a small pouch of little items that impart a spiritual meaning to them. It provides them with guidance, wisdom, protection. Lucy kept your locket in her medicine pouch.”

“Did she tell you who these people were?” Mrs. Burkholder asked White Bird.

“Her mother—you—and her grandmother.”

“So, she never forgot us.”

“We are
Lakȟóta
. We never forget family.”

“She remembered us, but never tried to find us.”

“We believed her white family was dead.”

Mrs. Burkholder frowned. “It is a shame that you have such strong ethnic features. And brown skin.”

“My father says I have the beauty of a running brook, as my mother did. She was called Laughs-Like-Water. Perhaps such beauty is not seen by white eyes?”

Her great-grandmother drew herself up, catching the insult. “Do you challenge me, girl?”

“I cannot answer that question for you, Grandmother.”

Mrs. Burkholder’s eyes narrowed.
 

Logan called White Bird over to him. “Why don’t you go see if you can help Maria with supper?”

“Yes, Logan-
p'apá
.” She turned back to her great-grandmother and did another brief curtsey. “It was nice meeting you. I hope your visit is a pleasant one, Grandmother.”

They watched her leave the room. “You’ve done a good job with her. For all of her impertinence, she is rather civilized. Tell me, is she very much like my grandson?”

Logan smiled. “There are many ways to describe Chayton. ‘Civilized’ is not one of them.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The fire sent an orange glow over the painted walls arching above the cove where they nestled. Aggie lay close to Chayton, between the blankets he’d set out on the wide, sandy bank. Her head was on his shoulder. His head rested on their clothes—which they had not worn the entire day, yet again. Her fingers were threaded through his, their joined hands resting on her ribs.
 

She closed her eyes and listened to the falling water and the snap and crackle of the fire.