The other young gunman hesitated, and Zach cocked his gun.
“Do it,” Bert demanded.
“Put it on the table and step away from it,” Zach clarified.
When Paddie O’Hallohan stepped through the front door carrying the sawed-off shotgun he kept behind the bar, Bart complied. He laid his gun on the table and raised his hands.
Zach reached out and relieved the man called Bert of his own hardware. “Now I’d like you two to get on your horses and start ridin’ out of town. And I don’t want to see either of you around here again.”
“You know who you’re talkin’ to, old man?” Bart asked, one eye on Paddie, who hovered behind him.
“Yeah. I’m talkin’ to a coward that has to hold a gun to a woman’s head to get what he wants. That don’t make you much of a man in my book.” Zach prodded the man forward. Rosa, her arm around Chin for support as much as for comfort, followed Zach into the dining room. She couldn’t hold back a smile when she saw Paddie in the doorway, the sunlight shining off his bald pate.
“You’ll be sorry, old man,” Bert warned.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Zach mumbled.
“You can’t keep our guns,” Bart protested as Paddie moved aside to let them through the doorway.
“You write to me from wherever you end up and I’ll mail ‘em to ya.”
The back door slammed and Rosa jumped. Slick Knox walked into the dining room, a gun in each hand. “You got troubles, Miss Rosa?” he wanted to know.
Rosa had never seen the usually jovial gambler so serious. His lips were set beneath his waxed mustache, his brows drawn together. Suddenly the unusually silent gambler was a man she would not want to cross.
“The
signori
Zach and Paddie came to help. I thank you, Signor Slick, for your help, too.”
Slick moved past her and stepped out onto the walk with the others. Within moments the two strangers were out of sight.
The shaken farmer sat back down, and Rosa released Chin long enough to apologize to the Shaws.
“It weren’t your fault, Miss Rosa. Don’t you pay it no mind.” Although his hand was still shaking, the man reached for his fork and proceeded to finish his meal. His wife sniffed loudly, blew her nose into the napkin, and stared at her plate.
Within moments, Zach, Paddie, and Slick returned.
“You all right now, Miz Rosie?” Zach wanted to know; his grizzled hair was wild beneath his slouching hat, his brow knit in a frown.
She smiled tremulously at each of them in turn. Paddie mopped his head with a handkerchief, his ruddy cheeks aflame. Slick looked as unruffled as ever as he casually shoved his guns into the waistband of his gaily striped pants.
Rosa felt her eyes mist with tears.
“Such good friends,” she whispered. “I thank you all.” She straightened the front of her apron and blinked back tears. “Now sit.” Businesslike, she pulled out a chair with a flourish. “Sit. Eat.
Mangia.
Today everyone at Rosa’s eats free!”
On a wind-beaten bluff, lying in a pit covered with brush and leaves, Kase awoke and stared out of the narrow opening at the panoramic landscape that stretched toward the horizon. The morning sun was about to rise, to break through the clouds and melt away the shroud of tenacious fog that clung to the streams and riverbeds in the flatlands below. He crawled out of the pit and began the ritual prayer to Anpo Wichpi, the morning star, by standing in turn beside each of four sapling poles thrust into the earth at the directional points, north, south, east, and west. Decorative colored rags fluttered from each pole, their incessant rustling the only sound in the silence of dawn. The sacred pipe,
cannunpa wakan,
he kept with him every moment, just as Running Elk had directed. The colorfully decorated pipe had been filled with
cansasa,
a native tobacco made of redwood, and then sealed with tallow. It would protect him from evil as long as he held it.
Once his prayers were over, he returned to the pit, his energy all but depleted after three days of fasting. As he sat in the brisk morning air waiting for the vision Running Elk had assured him would come, he wondered what in the hell he was doing. The shaman had taken him to the sacred hill, instructed him in the digging of the pit, and said he would return in four days. During that time Kase was to stay in the pit and listen carefully to the birds and animals that would bring him messages.
The morning lengthened and the shadows shortened as the sun reached the midday sky. Kase decided he had no business sitting nearly naked in the middle of nowhere waiting for something that he only half believed would happen. For all he knew, the shaman’s work was merely hocus-pocus. Caleb had taught him the rudimentary facts of Sioux religion and lore, but aside from having interesting discussions, they had never practiced any of the rituals. Now, instead of feeling enthusiasm for what the shaman predicted would happen to him, Kase only experienced doubt.
He did not belong here; that much had been evident from the beginning. Conditioned to ride for miles, not walk, he was exhausted after an hour of the slow, easy jog Running Elk had suggested he maintain as he accompanied the shaman, who rode on horseback, to the bluff. His feet, encased in low-cut moccasins, ached where they had become bruised. There was something to be said for a good pair of boots, especially when a man faced a long walk over rocky terrain. He was bone-tired, his calves and thigh muscles ached from the strain of overuse, and he was filthy with dust. No, he thought with a wry smile and a shake of his head, he did not belong here.
If the old man had not seemed so certain that a vision quest was the Only way to settle his unanswered questions, Kase would have ended the farce after thirty minutes of running and returned to the settlement near the agency. But Running Elk’s eyes had held such promise, his softly spoken instructions had been so firm with belief, that Kase agreed to try. The old man was certain a vision would come after he had fasted, prayed, waited in the pit, and opened his spirit to the knowledge that would surely come to him.
But so far he had heard nothing.
I’m too old for this. Youths go on vision quests. This, he decided, is a waste of time.
Cramped from sitting cross-legged, Kase stretched his legs out before him, lifted his face toward the sun, and sighed. Tomorrow, when Running Elk returned, he would tell the shaman that the quest had been a failure. He had wasted enough time and felt an overwhelming urge to return to Busted Heel. He told himself it was because Zach needed to be relieved of his voluntary job as marshal, but he knew that was a lie. He thought of Rose Audi more with every passing day.
As the sun hovered above him, he tried to forget the hunger gnawing at his innards and wrestled with the question of Rose’s place in his life. He picked up a small stone near his thigh and tossed it out over the precipice. At first she had infuriated him with her stubborn refusal to leave Busted Heel. But it was evident she wasn’t going anywhere. Even he had to admit he admired her tenacity. She had managed to turn the dreary store her husband left behind into a growing business and at the same time befriended everyone she met. What would happen to those ties if he followed his own heart and asked her to share his future? Would people think less of her for loving a half-breed?
There were so many things in his heart he had never revealed to her—things she had tried to get him to speak of—and upon his return to town he intended to tell her about his past as well as the place she now held in his heart. He had never cared for a woman before the way he cared for Rose. With a shrug he admitted to himself that what he felt could very well be love. But if he loved her, should he subject her to the prejudice she would surely face if she shared his love and his life? He knew without a doubt that if any woman could face the challenge, it was Rose.
Quiet hours passed and the shadows began to lengthen as he wrestled with his thoughts. Kase heard a ground squirrel scuffling through the nearby brush in search of food for winter storage. It turned bright brown eyes his way and paused long enough to watch him for a moment before it hurried on without a word. He shook his head, closed his eyes, and let the last warm rays of the sun drive away the autumn chill. Was he losing his mind? He was actually listening for talking animals.
Before it became dark, he lay down again and covered himself with the thick buffalo robe the old man had given him. He found his body slowing down, conserving movement now that it found itself in a state of semistarvation. Kase stared into the darkness and welcomed the night; Running Elk would return at dawn.
Sleep finally came and then, uncertain of how much time had elapsed, a slight sound brought him upright and alert. Suddenly wary, he was startled by the sight of an old man he had never seen before sitting near the pit.
Silver moonlight highlighted the man’s wrinkled features. He wore his hair long, parted in the middle, and plaited into two braids that hung over his shoulders. The braids swayed slightly with his every breath. He was large and, unlike Running Elk, still well built and obviously well fed. He was Sioux, of that Kase was certain, for his coloring was as dark a bronze as any of the men he had met at Pine Ridge, and like many of them, he appeared to be tall. The man sat cross-legged, unafraid, waiting for Kase to speak.
There was something vaguely and oddly familiar about the man. Startled by the direction his thoughts had suddenly taken, Kase became wary and asked his strange visitor outright, “Are you Red Dog?”
The old man shook his head, and a crooked smile teased his full lips.
“No,” he said softly. “I am not Red Dog. I am not your father.”
“Who, then, are you?” Kase said, continuing in the language of the Sioux.
“Someone you should know well.”
“I’ve never seen you before.” Kase shook his head and stared into the man’s clear eyes. In the darkness, he could not make out their color, but he could feel a sense of overwhelming tranquillity and love that emanated from them. “How did you get here?”
“I have come the same way as you.”
“Why are you here?” He knew he should be uneasy, knew he should look for any companions the man might have, but for some inexplicable reason, Kase knew the old man meant him no harm.
“I have come to help you find the answers you seek.”
“How? Did you know Red Dog?”
“No.”
“Are you a friend of Caleb Storm?”
“No.”
“Then how—”
“I know you. That is all you need to know. It is enough. Close your eyes, Kase Storm, and see what I already know.”
Kase did as the old man bade and closed his eyes. Imagesbegan to take shape in his mind’s eye, scenes of times long past. He saw the old soddie where he had lived with his mother, watched himself as a small boy with raven-black hair and shining eyes as he climbed up on her lap and let her rock him to sleep. He could feel her love as she kissed the crown of his head and snuggled him close to her. The familiar loving sound of his mother singing an old Dutch lullaby seemed to float on the very air about him.
“I see myself as a child,” he whispered to the old man.
“Now see what you have forgotten.”
Kase studied the tranquil scene in the vision and watched his mother look up. At that very instant he could feel the love she felt for him reflected in her eyes. She had loved him above all else. Unconditionally. How he had been conceived mattered not one whit to her.
Scenes from the past began to flood upon him faster and faster. He saw himself—still a child—leading his grandfather by the hand around the yard outside their soddie. Opa laughed gaily at his antics and stooped to ruffle his hair. Caleb entered the dream scene and laughed, lifting Kase high in the air, tossing him about as he always had when he was a boy. Then Kase had suddenly grown a few years older and was seated in the kitchen of the Boston mansion with his Aunt Ruth, Caleb’s stepmother. The scene was reminiscent of the quiet times and talks the two of them often shared. His sister, Annika, danced into his thoughts and began to follow a slightly older version of himself. He saw her clearly, as he never had before, with hero worship and love reflected in her eyes.
It went on and on. He saw himself in many stages of growth throughout his life, saw those around him, both at home and in Busted Heel, people who had been his teachers and his friends—and always he saw their innermost feelings reflected in their eyes. He saw none of the prejudice or injustice he had suffered as he returned through time to his school years. Instead he was shown memories of the teachers who had not let his mixed blood matter to them. One such man, Professor Daniel Exeter, he had long ago forgotten. The man had seen the potential in him and had worked with him long hours after class. He saw that his former employer, Franklin Rigby, had valued him for his own expertise and had not hired him because of Caleb’s influence. Kase realized for the first time that if he had not let his defensive anger cloud his thinking he might have seen many things clearly.
He was shown scenes of his early years with Zach Elliot; the man had tutored him the way he would have taught his own son. And last he had a glimpse of Rose as she had appeared the night of Quentin’s party, waiting for him to come to her, asking him to unburden his heart.
When the visions faded, he found himself alone with the old man, overwhelmed by the sense of peace and well-being brought on by all he had seen.
“What have you learned, now that you have seen your world through eyes of love and not anger?” The old man spoke softly, leading him like a child through his thoughts.
Frowning, Kase tried to put his feelings into words. “More important than seeing myself, I have seen the way others see me.” He shrugged. “I have seen that it does not matter who or what my father was. My mother loved me without regret, as did all of my family.”
“And the fear you have of your father’s blood? The anger and hatred you have for those who mistreated you?”
“I am still uncertain. How do I know I will not become like him? How do I know I am not capable of the same crimes?”
“You are your own man, Kase Storm. Your life is your own. Go from mis place and begin to look at the world through eyes of love, as you have just done. Let go of your hate. Be your own shaman and walk without fear.”