Fireblossom (28 page)

Or did it?

"How terrible," Maddie was saying sympathetically. "Still, it hardly seems fair to blame the white people for that, since the Indians killed every one of Custer's men in return!"

"I'm afraid it's not that simple."

The Indians who led the way on horseback had followed the upper curve of the ridge and now began to descend, heading down into the valley that emerged in front of the shielding cottonwood trees. As the mules clambered in the ponies' wake, Maddie gasped and pointed at the spectacle that lay below.

There, nestled against the glimmering trees and a curled ribbon of azure water, was the Indian village. Splendidly picturesque, like the paintings by Philadelphia artist George Caitlin that had fascinated Maddie as a child, the tableau before them held her spellbound. Dozens of tipis fashioned of buffalo hide and topped with graceful fans of willow poles, huddled in the carnation pink depths of twilight. Figures with black hair and tan garments moved about, and a herd of hundreds of ponies raised soft clouds of dust as they grazed in the shadow of Bear Butte.

"It's amazing," Maddie murmured, and felt Fox's answering smile. "I feel as if I've dropped into one of the stories I used to read in
Harper's Weekly.
I never dreamed..."

Fox thought of many responses to make, but none seemed sufficient. At length, as they drew nearer, he queried, "You're not frightened anymore?"

A few older children were frolicking in the stream, and their giggles joined with the clear, musical sound of adult laughter. Maddie saw some men playing a game with stones while a group of women gathered wildflowers and wove them into one another's braids.

"Frightened?" she echoed. "Of what?"

Kills Hungry Bear, Striped Owl, and their escort of five rode ahead into the village. Moments later, the laughter stopped. People began to point up the hillside at their clumsy mules and wagon with Watson bringing up the rear. Kills Hungry Bear spoke animatedly to a group that formed rapidly. The men surrounding him appeared to be important, and Maddie wondered if Crazy Horse was among them. What if he proclaimed that she and Fox must die to pay for the sins of their race?

Fragrant wisps of woodsmoke rose out of the tops of the tipis, which Maddie noticed were of varying sizes and generally larger than she had imagined. A great deal about the village was different from what she had imagined. Although the people had fallen silent as they watched the white intruders, moments before they had acted like human beings with minds, wits, and skills as well developed as anyone else's. These Indians appeared charmingly civilized. Who could say that this simpler style of living was less enlightened than the rowdy mayhem of white settlements like Deadwood? Maddie sighed, contemplating the seemingly endless series of paradoxes.

"Don't worry," Fox said. "They're more frightened of you than you are of them."

They had come to a stop a few dozen yards away from the group of conferring men. Fox reached over and absently squeezed Maddie's hand, and for an instant her world was condensed to his power to move her and the force of her feelings for him.

The sound of whispering roused her. The young women who had been picking wildflowers stood quite near to the wagon, frozen with fright and curiosity. When Maddie looked at them, they gazed back with dark eyes alight with pride.

Kills Hungry Bear returned to the wagon in the company of another, older man with an aquiline nose and penetrating eyes. Fox translated for Maddie as he was introduced as He Dog, a comrade of Crazy Horse's since childhood. It seemed that Crazy Horse himself was not in the village, but He Dog and the other men who formed the core of the last resistance against white efforts to manipulate the Indians in the Dakota Territory had agreed to allow Fox and Maddie to come into their village.

"I thank you for your efforts on our behalf," Fox said, with a relieved smile.

Kills Hungry Bear replied, "We need the rifles and ammunition you have brought to us, and some of the other men remember you when you lived among us on the plains. We do not trust as readily as we did then, but all agree that you earned the regard of the Lakota people for many seasons. This means more than promises on a piece of paper."

He Dog nodded once, then spoke. "I, too, remember you, Fox-With-Blue-Eyes. I knew your father. He was there during my first real buffalo hunt when I was a boy. The land was black with buffalo and the ground shook under my horse. Your father urged me on when he sensed that I was frightened. His kindness stayed in my mind." A bittersweet note crept into He Dog's voice as he stared into the distance, back into the past. "Those times have gone with the buffalo. The whites have done us much harm, but I have not forgotten that there are real human beings among you."

Fox couldn't speak for a moment as he imagined his father, whom he had loved so fiercely, hunting buffalo among the Lakota people. Even when Fox had first visited here, before Custer's expedition discovered gold in the Black Hills, the halcyon days of buffalo herds a million-strong and limitless freedom for the Indians were over. Zachary Matthews had been fortunate to dwell among the Lakota people when he had.

With quiet dignity, the village welcomed Fox and Maddie into its midst. Kills Hungry Bear did not ask why Maddie was with Fox, or if they were married, and she didn't argue when he gave them his tipi to share. Secretly she was immensely happy for the opportunity to spend more time alone with Fox.

She ducked down to enter, Fox followed her, and the flap dropped behind them. Surprised, Maddie stared at Fox with wide green eyes. "Is he leaving us now for the whole night? What about Sun Smile? When will we be able to ask about my sister?" She had already begun to wonder if Sun Smile had been one of the women who had gazed at her with such eloquence upon their arrival.

"There's a certain amount of... etiquette, for lack of a better word, that must be observed," Fox replied. "After we rest a bit and settle in, I'll visit with Kills Hungry Bear for a while. With luck, the opportunity will arise for me to mention Sun Smile."

A little furrow appeared in Maddie's brow. "Why can't you simply
create
an opportunity?"

"The Lakota people don't admire our tendency to just blurt out whatever question is on our mind. They prefer to be patient and allow life to reveal itself to them when the time is right." Seeing her frustration, he murmured, "I'll learn what I can."

Maddie nodded, accepting that as the best he could offer, and turned her attention to their quarters. The tipi was thoroughly alien, yet surprisingly comfortable. Its compact frame consisted of a dozen willow poles over which were stretched soft buffalo hides neatly stitched together. In the middle at the top was a smoke flap; directly under, on the ground, were the remains of a fire. The rest of the floor was covered with grass and wildflowers, over which were spread rawhide rugs with the hair side turned up. Maddie reached for a velvety buckskin pillow, squeezed it, and asked, "What do they stuff them with?"

Fox grinned. "Cottonwood floss."

"How lovely!" Her face glowed with wonder.

He pointed out other features of the home. Although at least two beds were customary, to accommodate a family, Kills Hungry Bear had only one. Roomy and inviting, it consisted of a mass of buffalo skins and pillows. Against the back wall was a painstakingly decorated hide that depicted the history of Kills Hungry Bear's family.

"That can be removed from the wall and worn as a robe for important ceremonies," Fox explained. "Those bags hold all of his, and his family's, worldly goods. Do you see how they're decorated? Kills Hungry Bear's wife spent many hours mixing berries and earth to make paints, then she made each one into a work of art." He leaned over to pick up one of the handy rawhide bags and showed Maddie the added decorations of colored porcupine quills.

She fingered them in amazement, then peeked inside the bag's opening. "What sorts of things does an Indian own?"

Her curiosity was so artless that he succumbed. "I'll take Kills Hungry Bear's belongings to him when I go, but perhaps first we might look at one or two. Don't tell him, though!"

"How would I do that?" she countered, with a wide smile.

Fox's brow curved upward. "I am grateful for the language barrier. It's the only hope I have of censoring you in front of our hosts." He looked into the bag then and drew out a soft leather case. "This was made to hold a comb." Out of it he pulled a long, painted object that bore only a passing resemblance to the imported silver-plated comb Maddie owned.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, reaching out to touch it while making a face.

"It's a porcupine tail," Fox explained, straight-faced. "Clearly these people are clinging to their old ways, because a comb would be easy enough to trade for." Then he produced a smaller painted bag and opened it. "This is the art kit, you might say. Here are the brushes, and the turtlebacks they use for paint pots." When he held one out, Maddie touched it and smiled slowly. "In the other bags are clothing and moccasins. Over there is Kills Hungry Bear's own supply of food, and his utensils. It doesn't look like he has much, and I would expect him to have more beds, a bigger tipi, and more painted decorations. It's almost as if he doesn't have a family."

"Does he have a wife?"

"I'm certain he had just married when I left his tribe three years ago. Little Dove was her name, I think." Pensive, Fox gazed at the tipi walls, where the usual array of long, carved pipes hung in fringed cases, along with a bow and arrows in a quiver, and a bag that held Kills Hungry Bear's war bonnet looped over the tripod above the bed. It was all normal enough, but there were no feminine touches. "Well, I suppose I should take these things to him and see what he's prepared to tell me."

Maddie watched as he gathered up Kills Hungry Bear's painted bags and felt a tremor of anxiety. She was quite hungry, too, and warm.

Throwing back the door flap, Fox scrambled into the violet-hued evening air and reached back inside to collect Kills Hungry Bear's belongings. Then, as if seeing into Maddie's mind, he said, "I can open other flaps around the tipi if you're hot. It's common practice during the summer. You'll be much more comfortable if you don't mind a few curious looks from your new neighbors."

"Not just yet, I don't think," she said doubtfully. "But perhaps I'll keep this flap open."

"It's a sign of welcome for guests," he warned.

"Oh, Fox, I can't keep track of all these new rules!" Maddie gave an exasperated sigh. "I'll just take my chances with the guests, as long as they are friendly... and you bring me something to eat right now!"

After he'd fetched their own sack of food from the wagon, Maddie chewed vigorously on a strip of jerky and watched him go off into the village in search of his old friend. Consumed by curiosity and a nagging flutter of trepidation, she continued to gaze outside, but stayed well back in the shadows. Children and dogs continued to scamper through the village. One man passed, laughing, with his son riding on his back. Families were beginning to gather inside their tipis, lowering the side flaps since the night promised to be cooler.

Maddie's heartbeat quieted as she absorbed the sense of peace and harmony that prevailed. No one was going to leap on her and scalp her if she let down her guard. Edging nearer the opening of her tipi, she leaned forward to get a better look. The stream purled in the distance and the shiny leaves of the cottonwoods gleamed silver in the light of the rising moon. A young woman led her pony back from the stream. As she neared Kills Hungry Bear's tipi, Maddie swallowed a gasp. What could be the matter with this girl? She was filthy, streaked with some sort of brownish grayish mess; her dress was ragged and dirty, her hair uncombed and apparently unwashed, and she chanted to herself as if she were mad.

Maddie drew back as the woman passed, uncertain whether or not she might be dangerous. Actually the girl was quite lovely, Maddie noticed, under the dirt that caked her skin and hair and the ragged buckskin garments. Her form was lithe and gracefully curved. Her features were almost classically delicate, unlike the broader faces of most of the other Lakota women. How tragic it would be if someone so young and lovely had descended into madness!

Then, as if feeling Madeleine's stare, the girl turned slowly and gazed into the tipi's opening. To Maddie's further consternation, the haunted eyes that met hers were dove gray, thickly lashed, and eerily familiar.

Chapter 17

August 6-7, 1876

After Fox took Kills Hungry Bear his belongings and the young man had handed them into the tipi where he would sleep during the white visitors' sojourn in the village, the two friends went off to unload the rifles and supplies from the wagon. Exclamations of surprise and pleasure were heard as He Dog and some of the other Lakota men joined in. They built a bonfire nearby so that they could see the crates as they were opened. Everyone was shocked by the quantity and quality of the gifts Fox had brought from Deadwood.

"You have been very generous," He Dog said as he inspected bags of sugar and coffee. "Our supply of food is small. Buffalo are scarce and, of course, we do not take rations from the agency. However, we have a priceless commodity that is not available at the agency: freedom." His nostrils flared as he spoke the word. "Your people think that the land belongs to them or to us, when in truth it is no man's to buy or sell. The land and the sky and all that lies between belong to
Wakan Tanka,
the Grandfather of us all! Your people do not listen to simple truths. They take what they want if it is not given freely! Your people—"