Sacred Is the Wind (31 page)

“We notice what we are,” Michael whispered, “and break free.”

16

“T
hree weeks,” said Rebecca Blue Thrush. She slammed a blue metal coffeepot down on the kitchen table for emphasis. Michael scooted back in his chair to keep from being splashed by the scalding-hot liquid. “Three weeks that you ignore your work. The barn roof leaks. The cow may calf any day. And still you disgrace me by leaving for Lame Deer to see the half-breed doctor.”

Michael slid over to his plate once more. He rested his forearms on the table, sighed, and shook his head. “I promised Father Hillary I would help him build benches today for the church. He has worked with me often enough.”

“White man's church. White man's God. Once I too followed the way of Jay-ho-vah. Reverend Sam Madison spoke of how we were all brothers, that with the God of the white man we could live in peace.” Rebecca brought an iron skillet over to the table and ladled out half a dozen rashers of thick-sliced bacon for her son. “Peace,” she contemptuously repeated. She placed the sizzling strips of meat atop a two-inch-thick slab of fry bread in the center of Michael's plate and then returned the skillet to the stove. She reached up and opened a shuttered window. A cataract of brilliant gold flooded the kitchen, bathing the Cheyenne woman in its iridescent stream. She lifted her hands to the source of such brilliance and offered silent thanks to the All-Father for the beauty of the morning, for the glory of life. Michael watched. His thoughts were on beauty too, for he had never seen his mother more lovely, with her long hair so black and lustrous in the shimmering light. Dressed in a buckskin smock and calf-high moccasins, in her simplicity she seemed endowed with a grandeur no queen could match. And he knew then why his father had loved her so much, and why he always returned after all the battles, after the long lonely hunts. He always returned.

“I have more memories of you waiting for Father to come back …”

“It has ever been so. Panther Burn is a warrior. And I am a warrior's woman.” She turned from the window, and forsaking the golden raiment of the sun, resumed a mortal mantle, the garb her longing heart demanded she wear.

“Mother?”

She ignored her son and left the kitchen for the room they used as a parlor. Michael, his appetite gone, shoved the plate of food away and rose from the table. He walked to the doorway and looked in at Rebecca, who stood facing his books.

“Oh, all right. I am going to Lame Deer for more than Father Hillary. I want to see her. Is that so terrible? Have you forgotten the way a heart can sing just by being near one who …” Michael shook his head. He was no poet. His education had been a solitary struggle as he worked his way through the books Tyrell Gude had given him, that and the frequently interrupted lessons when Corinthia Gude had been alive. She had taught him to read. But the thirst for knowledge, the yearning to broaden the scope of his experience, was beyond any teacher's power to instill. It could only have come from the All-Father.

Rebecca knew this also. But she found it difficult to accept. For it meant that her son, like all the other Northern Cheyenne, no longer walked in the way of the Circle. He was lost.

“Nothing I can say will touch your heart … will make you hear me.”

“Everything you say,” Michael replied, “touches me. I am your son.”

“Are you? Then do not see this doctor woman again.” Rebecca turned and fixed him with her unwavering stare. Michael met her gaze. His eyes were wide, unflinching, and touched with a sorrow, as though he knew he would betray her despite his intentions.

“Saaaaa-vaaaaa,”
Rebecca hissed. She stalked from the room, out onto the porch, down the steps. She walked hard and fast, leaving the house behind her, leaving her ungrateful son. The ground rose gradually, became steeper, required more exertion. She never slowed but left a plume of dust in her wake. And when she gained the top of the hill, only then did she stop, to turn her face to the morning sky where the sun hung like the eye of God, impossible to behold. Yet it mellowed as the minutes passed, and through heaven's ancient alchemy, this amber star bathed Rebecca's face and turned her tears to precious jewels ….

Behind the woman on the hill, to the west, a line of thunderheads crept across the Absarokas, the vanguard of a coming storm.

A gust of wind swept into the room, scattering a mound of twigs and frightening off a fieldmouse that scampered across the hardwood floor to cringe behind the iron stove against the north wall. James Broken Knife looked up from his desk where he had been sleeping, bent double, his head upon a short stack of requisition forms he had to complete before morning. A rumble of distant thunder, then a vicious explosion reverberated among the nearby hills. The flame in the oil lamp flickered as if startled. The man in the doorway paled for a second but held himself in check. It was the door opening, not the storm that had roused Sergeant Broken Knife from his slumber. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes, angry at the intruder for having disturbed him and caught him dozing. The man wore a brown wide-brimmed hat and long rain-shiny brown slicker that hid most of his physique. But James sensed an aura of authority about the man. He was a tall, reed-thin individual with his face all but obscured by the upturned collar of his slicker. His hat was pulled low as if to further disguise his identity. The stranger took in the office at a glance. In truth, there wasn't much to see. It was a spacious room, built to accommodate James and his two subordinates, Ezra Yellowhand and Julius Bear, both of whom were home with their families. Behind James's desk a door stood ajar and two cells were faintly visible in the lamplight. A couple of crudely built chairs, a cot that served as a couch when needed, and a square heavy-looking table were set around an iron stove. On the wall behind James, just off to his right, hung a map of the reservation. The map and a risqué sketch of a Barbary Coast prostitute, whose faded likeness had been snipped from a police gazette, were the room's only wall decorations unless one counted the rifle rack on the wall off to the left.

“You have print on your face,” the man in the doorway observed. Rain spilled past his boots as the wind continued to gust through the doorway. The tribal policeman placed a knife on the papers before him, to keep the requisition orders from blowing away, then started to make a rude retort, when he noticed the stranger's pale white hands as the man in the doorway stripped off his gloves. The sergeant assumed an attitude of deference out of habit. It was the only way to deal with whites. He never knew what official from Washington might be passing through. Agent Gude had a number of friends in President Harrison's administration, at least that was what everyone said. James bit his tongue, swallowed his pride, and wiped the ink off his cheek. Blue eyes bore into him from under the water-soaked brim of the stranger's hat.

“I want to see the doctor. Which building?”

“You hurt?” James asked.

“Which building?” the stranger repeated. Water dripped from his brown slicker and formed a puddle on the floor that the wind slowly worked into the room.

“White-painted house down the street,” James said. Something about the stranger … “But she probably ain't in. I heard one of the men at Camp Merritt broke his leg. And she's gone to set it. Some say the boy broke it on purpose just so he could meet her.” James waved a hand toward the coffeepot resting on one of the burners of the stove. “You can wait here. Coffee's hot.”

“Not now,” said the stranger.

“Well”—James shrugged—“suit yourself. If you need me, I am Sergeant—”

“James Broken Knife,” the stranger finished in a weary voice. He stepped back out in the lurid glare of the storm. Rain beat down the brim of his hat and battered his long-limbed frame. But in the frantic light, a horse and buggy waited only a few yards from the headquarters door. A sudden shift in the wind's direction sucked the air from the room and slammed the front door shut. James felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck. Who was this late-night visitor? And how did he know James? The tribal policeman stood and stepped around his desk and walked over to the cabinet beneath the gun rack where he kept a jug of home-brewed whiskey bought from the cook at Camp Merritt and a couple of stoneware cups for when he had company. Tonight he ignored the cups and lifted the jug to his lips and downed a burning bellyful of courage.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the shuttered windows of the church and rattling the glass windowpanes. Father Hillary jumped and blessed himself.
Here I am a man of God and still afraid of the thunder
, he chided himself. But then he had never heard thunder so loud, so awesome as here in Lame Deer Valley. It sounded as if the soldiers at Camp Merritt had placed cannon on either side of the church and were busily firing round after round into the night. Father Hillary continued on down the aisle between the sections of pews until he reached the front door of the church, where he checked the bolt. It shamed him to lock the door but he knew no other way of keeping the local troublemakers and drunks from vandalizing St. Theresa's. Twice he had confronted the likes of Zachariah Scalpcane and his cronies and ordered them from the premises with threats of passing their names to the soldiers. He did not want to make trouble for them. In fact he pitied Zachariah for his brokenness, a man in the prime of his days but so lost. Father Hillary was loath to add to the man's misery. Neither was he going to let some rowdy burn St. Theresa's to the ground. Oh, what was built by man could be rebuilt by man right enough, but an act of destruction would return martial law to the reservation and bring a resumption of the heavy-handed military policies of bygone years. The tribal police force, for all its faults, was at least a body of Cheyenne enforcing the reservation laws to other Cheyenne. Whereas men like Captain Henry Morbitzer were just itching to play more than a supportive role to James Broken Knife and his men. Standing in the background was no place to win glory. Glory. Father Hillary hated the word. It had caused too much suffering throughout history. It was the drug of heroes and fools. The priest checked the bolt and stood to one side to peer out the window at the street. In a shimmer of light he glimpsed Kate making her way along the rain-spattered boardwalk spanning the churned mud of the street. The folds of her dress lifted as the wind tore at her slicker and lifted the yellow cloth. She stumbled in a puddle. A faintly voiced curse carried on the wind. The priest smiled, not blaming her, and continued to watch as she regained her balance and pressed on to her house. The woman was plucky. She was a survivor, all right. At first, Father Hillary had given her a couple of days at best, but she had fooled him. She not only had lasted into her third week but gave him the impression of having far more strength, maturity, and determination than her youthful beauty indicated.

“Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong,” the priest muttered aloud. Seeing her safely home, Hillary abandoned his vigil and retraced his steps down the aisle and out back of the altar to the two-room apartment at the rear of the church that served as the rectory. A bedroom and kitchen were enough for the Capuchin priest. An oil lamp burned in the kitchen and there by the wooden stove sat Joshua Beartusk and Michael. The old man, in his rocker, creaked back and forth as he waited for his nephew to play. Michael sat on a three-legged stool across from his uncle: a checkerboard on an overturned barrel rested between them. Joshua turned in the direction of the priest, hearing the man's boots scrape on the wood floor.

“I'll check the front door,” Joshua said, starting to rise.

“I already did.”

“That's my job.” Joshua sank back into the rocker.

“I didn't want to interrupt your game.” The priest crossed over to the stove, and wrapping a cloth around his hand, poured himself a cup of coffee from the blue metal pot. He winced at a particularly nasty thunderclap.

“Your move,” Michael said. The old man reached out and walked his fingers across the checkers on the board. Father Hillary had notched the tops of the red checkers with his pocketknife so Joshua could tell them from the black. Tonight the notched red ones were his. “Your move,” Michael repeated, hoping to goad his uncle into a mistake.

“No, yours.” Father Hillary said. “I saw Kate on her way home. Looks like she's finished setting that trooper's broken leg over at Camp Merritt.” He noticed Michael brighten up considerably. The young brave glanced down at the checkerboard. He was losing by a piece. But then, his mind wasn't on the game. “I'll take over,” the priest said.

“Well … I suppose it is getting late. And the rain will hound me all the way home as it is.”

“Go on. Go on with you. If you're too moon-eyed to keep your uncle company,” Joshua complained. “When I was young …”

“You got moon-eyed too.” Father Hillary chuckled, sliding into Michael's seat. Michael Spirit Wolf looked away, embarrassed.

“All the same, I am his uncle. And he won't have me around much longer. This winter'll be my last. The Great Snow Spirit will carry me to the All-Father. And then who will my nephew go to for wisdom and counsel? These are bad days, when the young do not heed the old.” Joshua wagged his head and stroked his bony chin and addressed his new opponent. “Mind you, we start where we left off and you are one behind. So you owe me two bits. And it's my move.”

Father Hillary gave Michael a blank look. Michael shrugged, feigned innocence, and pulling on his coat, started out the back door. “Two bits for each piece?” the priest asked, in the tone of a man who has just stepped into a bad arrangement. After a couple of years of playing, Joshua, despite his blindness, had gotten quite good. Too good.

“There,” Joshua exclaimed, and began jumping one of his red pieces over three black.

“Hey!” Father Hillary whirled about. Too late. Michael had vanished into the storm. The back door slammed shut.