Sacred Is the Wind (27 page)

“Come with me,” he repeated. “Uncle Joshua will be there. You always enjoy seeing him. And Hope Moon Basket and her children. The little ones are anxious to show you their newborn colt. It's only a week old. And the men will be wrestling for fifty dollars—Think of it! Fifty dollars cash prize, and you could watch me win.”

“And patch you up afterward,” Rebecca scoffed, and reached up to stroke his cheek. He would always be her baby, her child. Michael took her hand, his strong callused fingers closed around her slim smooth wrist.

“Mother … don't stay here. Laugh with me, live with me. You mourn as if Father was dead.”

She did not surrender to despair and say, “He might well be.” She pulled free of his grasp. “And you laugh as if you had no father at all.” Even as she spoke, she knew the words cut Michael to the quick and she cursed her own thoughtlessness. Rebecca heard him turn and start back to the wagon. She heard the springs creak as he climbed aboard, then the crack of leather as he freed the reins.

“Wait!” Rebecca looked at her son and read his feelings; in this way he was not like Panther Burn, for Michael had never mastered the art of masking his emotions. The hurt was evident in his eyes and Rebecca knew but one salve to heal, to undo the harm her rashly spoken reply had done. “Wait … please. I will go with you.” Michael lifted his eyes to the hills and spied a pair of coyotes loping along the skyline. Beyond, the sun climbed higher to catch the scudding clouds. It wasn't that he did not miss his father. But Michael still had hope, and this hope in its own way eased the ache of separation. Today was going to be a very important day. He felt it in his bones. Maybe some of his mother's medicine had worked off on him. Now if only he could use it to shoe horses or drive the cattle to market or feed them during the bitter winters. He smiled and looked at his mother and held out his hand to her.

In 1884, the government of the United States in its wisdom set aside fifty-eight square miles of land in south-eastern Montana for the Northern Cheyenne to use as their home. A haven in the midst of the nation's westward expansion. In return the Cheyenne nation agreed to live in peace as wards of the government. To a people whose numbers had been ravaged by war, this was the only way to survive. But there were those who dreamed of the past, when the buffalo thundered over the plains and the people of the Morning Star ranged far and wide and free, from the Dakotas to the Rockies. Some said the past was dead. Perhaps so. But not all the warriors were dead, not all were tame. An hour from the ranch, Michael Spirit Wolf guided the buckboard around a grove of aspen and down a sandy bank to ford the pebble-strewn shallows of Lame Deer Creek. Lame Deer Valley opened before them, and the hills seemed to draw aside, revealing a broad green grassy meadow in whose center the tides of civilization had pooled to form the settlement of Lame Deer. Here the Bureau of Indian Affairs chose to build their agency headquarters. Here the Cheyenne families gathered every Friday to receive the rations issued to them from the government. Time passed and many of the Indians moved in from the outlying countryside to form a community around the agency. Camp Merritt was established and garrisoned with a detachment of soldiers out of Fort Keogh, forty miles to the north. The soldiers acted in support of James Broken Knife's Indian police and ensured order on the reservation. The Capuchin fathers had arrived a few years later and built a church in hopes of ministering to the needs of the tribe. Log cabins and hide lodges and whitewashed government housing littered the slopes and spread out along the valley floor. As they approached the settlement, Rebecca remembered her husband's words of long ago when describing her own people. Now his too had lost the Circle.

Gunfire shattered her reverie and Michael nudged her and pointed toward a cluster of horsemen charging out from a throng of people crowded around the red-white-and-blue-festooned Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters. “The race has started,” Michael said, angling the wagon off the wheel-rutted road as the horsemen bore down on them. “Knows His Gun, Black Owl, John Timber, I can't see the others,” he added. He stood up in the wagon, shouted, and waved his hat over his head as the riders swept past. There were fourteen riders in all, mostly Cheyenne with a sprinkling of soldiers and cowpunchers from off the reservation, all riding hard. The course ran the length of the valley from the springs to the south and back to the settlement. The finish line was located directly in front of St. Theresa's Catholic Church, where Father Hillary would proclaim the winner. A cloud of dust billowed back over the wagon and Rebecca closed her eyes against the grit. Michael started the team forward at a brisk trot. His eyes were lit with excitement as he took note of the gaily decorated buildings. Ribbons hung from the flour mill, general store, the agency, even the low stockade around the military camp. Stalls painted red, white, and blue dispensed beer and lemonade, cookies and pies, fry bread and pudding and slabs of barbecued beef to a crowd of Indians and whites gathered to celebrate the Fourth of July. Slabs of beef and whole freshly butchered hogs hung from spits over cookfires ringed with rocks to control the flames. Grease sizzled on the coals and the mouth-watering aroma of ribs and beef steak drifted through the crowd. Michael could not find a free hitching post and so ground-tethered his team and stepped around to help his mother down. And as usual Rebecca did not wait for him but brushed her buckskin dress away from her legs and leaped down of her own accord. She heard someone call to her and thought she spied Hope Moon Basket in the mass of men and women gathered around the cookfires. Then the ever-shifting sea of faces blocked her view. At another stand half a dozen blue-clad soldiers were busy drawing beer from wooden barrels stacked high on the back of a flatbed wagon. Several of the soldiers were tipsy and a number of braves had already passed out in the shade of the nearby aspens. A wooden deck for dancing had been erected alongside the church but the fiddlers would not make their appearance until later in the afternoon. Rebecca noted that several families had come in from the surrounding ranches. The white homesteaders used the general store in Lame Deer as a source of supplies, as it was closer than making the trek to Forsythe, especially in the winter. A shadow fell across Rebecca. James Broken Knife walked up to stand before her. He was dressed in soldier blue and buckskin breeches, the uniform he had worn as a scout for General Crook down on the Rosebud. As a reward for his service, James had been appointed chief of the tribal police without regard to the fact that he wasn't of the Northern Cheyenne. His square solid features drew back in a grin.

“Glad you came in, Rebecca. Come find me when the fiddlers strike up a tune.” He touched the brim of his campaign hat. His hard eyes revealed only contempt. She had spurned him once and run off with Panther Burn. Well … where was her high-and-mighty husband now? Rotting in jail down in Kansas. Rebecca lowered her eyes to the star pinned to his shirt. His name was etched in the center of the polished metal.

“Agent Gude has put the wrong name there,” Rebecca replied, causing James to glance down at the badge. “It should be ‘White Man Runs Him.'” The tribal policeman's countenance darkened and he turned on his heels and retreated back into the crowd. Michael arrived to stand by his mother's side and for a moment the humor left his face as he watched James walk away.

“What did he want?” Michael asked, glowering.

“Nothing. Only to dance.” Rebecca did not want her son at odds with a man like James Broken Knife. He was the law and had the trust of the soldiers, while Michael was a warrior's son, the offspring of the last Cheyenne chief to surrender. She forced herself to smile and defused Michael's anger and tugged at his arm. “Your friend Father Hillary has saved a place for you on the steps of the church. Go to him. I will find Hope Moon Basket and help her with her children. I saw her husband among the riders in the race.”

“I would have a better view of the finish,” Michael agreed, hesitant to abandon his mother. But she gave him a shove.

“And from the porch you will be able to find the prettiest girl to ask to come with you to the dance.”

Michael blushed and grinned despite himself. “But I am leaving the prettiest girl here,” he said. Half a dozen children scurried past, almost knocking mother and son down.

“
Saaa!
You lie no better than your father,” Rebecca said, darting aside as another herd of children rushed by in pursuit of the first, screaming and yelling at one another, chunks of freshly baked sweet-potato pie clutched in their fists.

“Father Hillary might need help calling the race,” Michael conceded, an excuse more for his own benefit. He patted his mother's arm and started off toward the church.

Father Hillary was a broad-shouldered congenial man of forty-seven, whose priestly robes hid a physique better suited to a laborer than a cleric. In truth he performed less of his ministries within the walls of St. Theresa's and more at hard labor among his flock. Before becoming a priest, Lee Hillary had been a carpenter. And so whenever there was a barn-raising or a hog shed to be built or a family needing a new cabin to replace a home lost in a fire, Father Lee Hillary could be found hammer in hand, pitching in to help. The priest, his scalp sunburned beneath his thinning hair, his square-jawed features flush with excitement, waved to Michael and gestured for him to come up on the porch.

“Didn't think you'd make it,” he called as Michael bounded up the last few steps to the church porch. Behind Father Hillary's hulking frame a familiar figure scooted his chair closer to the railing as if to catch a better glimpse of the race. A futile gesture indeed.

“Uncle Joshua,” Michael called out, and after shaking Father Hillary's hand stepped over to embrace his uncle, who pushed him away, embarrassed by such affection. The blind old leather-faced brave had not died during the winter of '66 nor during any of the subsequent winters, although he had declared each to be his last. Father Hillary had hired Joshua to help around the church. The old warrior's favorite duty was ringing the bell rope on ration Fridays and Sunday mornings. Over the years the blind man had memorized his way about the church and its grounds. He slept in a single-room cabin back of the rectory. Too proud to accept Michael's charity, Joshua had refused to live at the ranch, preferring to earn his keep at the church.

“You're late, Michael. The race has already started,” Joshua complained. “Now, stay close. You said you'd tell me who won. I think Sits at Night lied to me the last race and took my money when he should have been paying me. I don't intend to let it happen again. Where is Rebecca? Does she not have a hug for this old one? And I am so close to death. This winter will be my last. The owl has called me by name.” Joshua shook his head in mourning for himself. A cheer rose up from the crowd. “Who won?” Joshua gripped the porch railing. “Will no one tell me? Was it John Timber? I have wagered money on him. Who won?”

“The race has not ended,” Father Hillary answered in a deep soothing tone of voice. He patted the old man's bony shoulder. “The troopers have raised the money pouch to the top of the lodgepole there in the circle where the young men will try their best to reach it. The crowd has cheered them, nothing more.” Father Hillary glanced over at Michael. “And see you take care, Michael, for I have learned James Broken Knife will be among the wrestlers and he has no love for you … I am told.” Father Hillary glanced at Joshua to see that the old man was nodding his agreement.

“He does not frighten me,” Michael said.

“He should,” Joshua replied.

Father Hillary shaded his eyes and stared up toward the northern end of the valley. A column of dust signaled the arrival of oncoming horsemen. “That ought to be Tyrell Gude. He'll be glad to have made it back in time to see the finish of the race.”

“He's been gone?” Michael inquired, looking in the same direction.

“Up to Miles City to welcome the new doctor and escort him down to the ‘Res,' and also the new captain assigned to Camp Merritt. A young fellow just arrived at Fort Keogh but a couple of weeks ago. Captain Henry Morbitzer by name. An ambitious lad, or so I am told.” Father Hillary blessed himself with the sign of the cross. “Saints preserve us from ambitious men.”

“A doctor …” Michael softly said. “Mother isn't going to like that.” The Bureau of Indian Affairs had adopted a policy of subtle suppression when it came to the subject of medicine men and women among the tribes in its care. People like Rebecca Blue Thrush were said to exert undue influence on the reservations. If trouble were ever to arise, it would begin with the medicine makers, the holy ones, keepers of the old ways and living symbols of a vanishing way of life. Michael knew his mother cared for her people. Herbs and prayers had cured many an ill child. Rebecca Blue Thrush had no use for doctors. And neither did her son.

Rebecca managed to spy one of Hope's children and followed the youngster's lead toward a table laden with fry bread and chokecherry pudding and steaming fresh apple and sweet-potato pies. She exchanged greetings and waved hello and at last made her way over to the table where Hope Moon Basket greeted her with a hug and a cry of pleasure. Three boys, twelve, seven, and five, emerged from behind Hope's voluminous cotton dress. Jim, Jason, and Francis Timber considered Rebecca part of the family. In truth, Panther Burn's woman would have it no other way. She loved the boys as if they were her own.

“Did you see John?” Hope asked around a mouthful of fry bread. Time had not dulled her round cheery features, only added fullness to her cheeks and another twenty pounds to her already round frame.

“He nearly ran us down.” Rebecca nodded. She started as a fusillade of firecrackers exploded above the din and in response a soldier cranked off a dozen rounds from the Hotchkiss gun, a hand-crank-operated five-barreled rapid-firing weapon drawn up before the military encampment at the rear of the agency building. Several of the braves over among the aspens loosed wild cries and a few even managed to climb to their feet at the roar of the gun. Rebecca recognized Zachariah Scalpcane standing unsteadily with the others. He raised a brown jug high in the air and tilted it up to his lips. He lowered it after several fiery swallows and his gaze met Rebecca's. Thirty-one years old, wiry, with deep-set eyes, Zachariah had fought his battles in a cause that was lost before it was even started. Panther Burn's surrender six years ago had taken the heart out of him and left him bitter, with an emptiness inside he tried to fill with whiskey. Zachariah had become a warrior without a war. He took a shuffled step forward. His jeans were brown with mud and hung loose around his narrow waist. His denim shirt hung out, unbuttoned, revealing a hollow-looking belly above his belt. He lifted the keg as if toasting Rebecca's health, a pathetic gesture in the light of his own condition. As he turned to rejoin his friends, Rebecca caught a glimpse of the eagle feather braided in Zachariah's unkempt stringy black hair. It was a worn and battered emblem of another, happier time. Still, as long as it remained, perhaps Zachariah Scalpcane was not entirely lost. Rebecca looked past the aspens down the north road as Gude's carriage entered the settlement. A breeze swept the dust away, and Rebecca saw the agent wasn't alone.