Sacred Is the Wind (4 page)

Book One

1

A
thousand miles wasn't enough. Fifty-two days on horseback, riding south, always south, leaving Montana and Wyoming territory behind, crossing into Colorado, avoiding the occasional ranch house or scrub farm, avoiding all men, red or white, for fifty-two days. March into April, always on the move. Now with May—
vehpotseese
, the Leaf-Moon—but three days off, still that from which he fled rode with him, the guilt, the weary hurt. Wasn't it enough that he had left Spirit Mountain and his people (his no longer) behind? What did the ghosts of Little Coyote and High Walker require … death for death? Running did not undo what had been done. Panther Burn could not bring back the dead, nor would he end his own life. And yet in a way he had, cutting himself off from his parents, his village, to journey south. Leaving had salvaged what remained of his honor. There were things worse than exile.

Gray rain fell in slanted sheets from the sky the color of gunpowder. Soaked to the skin, Panther Burn lowered his head to the elements, allowing the pinto its head. Water matted the brave's black hair, streamed down his face and neck. He tugged his blanket over his head; though the material was too drenched to provide warmth it at least buffered his features from the stinging downpour. Today, tomorrow, or the next day, he was bound to reach the Warbonnet and then it would be a simple matter to follow the creek upstream or down until he cut sign and reached the village of the Southern Cheyenne and the hearth of Beartusk. Panther Burn had not seen his uncle for almost three years and yet he knew he would be welcome at his campfire.

Thunder rumbled overhead, shook the muddy ground, caused all the world to tremble. The pinto shied. The Northern Cheyenne's fingers instinctively tightened on the reins as he spoke harshly to the animal. The pinto under control again, Panther Burn adjusted the blanket over his shoulder and head. Balancing his rifle scabbard across his lap, he rubbed water from his eyes, squinted, trying to see through the fading daylight, hoping to spot a tree, a large rock, any type of outcropping. But here on the broad rolling valley floor, cover was scarce. He should have remained in the foothills and waited out the storm. Ruefully he remembered how he had watched it build in the west, great battlements of clouds piling one atop the other, blotting the sun, looming darker, ever darker. But patience was something he hadn't packed in his war kit, and wagering he might win his race across the wide treeless valley and reach the low hills and timber to the south, he'd broken camp and headed out. A fool's escapade, and one currently teaching him a bitter lesson. But the hills and forest line couldn't be much farther ahead. His stomach growled. The brave tried to will his hunger away. For two days now he had seen not the slightest trace of game save for a couple of jackrabbits that had dodged his arrows with ease. Relying on the Hawken had spoiled his talent with the bow, he bitterly noted. The rifle, a fine weapon for deer and buffalo, was much too large a bore for rabbit. So the brave went hungry. He rode on, bowed forward, enduring, with as little conscious effort as possible.

Come all this way to drown, he thought to himself. And started to laugh. And then he stopped as the pinto halted in its tracks. Panther Burn glanced up in alarm and saw a dark expanse directly ahead; in the grim light, through the slanting rain, the blackness loomed wide and tall, gradually gaining definition as the downpour lessened in its fury. The shape took on edges, a roof, became the opening of a barn, its doors open.

“Well, don't just stand there, Injun, come in out of the rain,” a voice issued from inside.

Panther Burn paused, suddenly grown cautious, his right hand slipping inside the buckskin scabbard covering his rifle.

“You understand me?”

“I understand,” Panther Burn replied to the shadow before him.

“Then suit yourself, hoss. But I'm closin' up.”

One of the broad panel doors began to swing shut. Panther Burn nudged the pinto with his heels and the animal trotted in out of the slashing wind-whipped dusk. The cessation of rain hammering at him was a relief and the Cheyenne sighed as he jumped down from the pinto to the straw-littered floor, swaying once and steadying himself against his horse.

Panther Burn allowed his eyes to adjust to the gloomy interior. The pinto waited patiently as if being out of the storm was enough reward. The Cheyenne's grip remained firm on the Hawken in its beaded buckskin covering. Saddles, bridles, stalls, thick pine beams, mud-chinked timber walls all took on definition in the feeble light. The owner of the barn drew closer.

“Heard your horse there a-plodding through the mud. I'm a keen listener. Always been. Eyes ain't worth much, no sir. They git any dimmer, this ol' hoss will have to seek tamer pasture.” As the barn took on definition, so did the man within. A hard-bitten old-timer, back bowed, thinning gray hair, broad-shouldered and long of arm, clad in a plaid shirt and worn woolen trousers tucked into black boots. He stretched out a leathery hand to the rain-soaked Cheyenne. Water dripped from Panther Burn's fringed buckskins. The eagle feathers woven in his braid were sodden. He brushed the black hair out of his eyes. His coal-black eyes were alert, suspicious, his entire frame hungry yet wiry and poised. His gaze lowered to the Colt dragoon thrust in the old man's waistband.

“My name's Wister … Jed Wister. I could've started the ball when you were sittin' out there in the rain.” The old man patted the revolver. “But … I got no quarrel with any man, be he red or white, black or yellow … long as he comes in peace a man's welcome at Foot o' the Mountains. That's what I call my place here.” The old man noted the Indian's newly healed left hand where Panther Burn had cauterized the stump of his severed finger and covered it with a healing poultice of elk mint, whiteweed, and tallow, wrapping it in buckskin until the wound had ceased draining. The old man knew the purpose of such a self-mutilation but did not inquire. He ended his speech and turned his back on the brave and started down the straw-littered aisle that separated the two rows of stalls.

“There's coffee and hot grub at the house,” Wister muttered as he neared the rear of the barn. He doubled over, and lifted a trapdoor. “Got me a tunnel here so we don't even need to get wet. Dug it myself, which is why I don't walk so straight-up, erect-like no more.” His pocked features managed a grin, and frankness, too, that Panther Burn found to be an unusual quality in a
ve-ho-e
, a white man. “Bed here or follow me to the house, whatever you've a mind to.” Wister took a lamp from a nearby timber support, knocking a bridle to the floor in the process. He muttered something about useless old-timers, and returning the gear, struck a match on his belt buckle and lit a little coal-oil lantern. The glare colored the homely set of his wrinkled face a sickly yellow. He started down.

“Wister,” the Cheyenne said, stomach betraying him with an audible growl, “I will camp at your fire. I am called Panther Burn.”

The old man chuckled and waved him over. “You speak pretty good English. Understand it good, too?”

“White missionaries, traders, soldiers at Fort Bozeman, I learned from all,” Panther Burn flatly explained.

Wister nodded. “You'll do, lad. Find a stall for your horse and come on.”

Foot o' the Mountains was a long, low-ceilinged house lost in the shadowy base of a massive chunk of granite that rose out of the valley floor. Climbing out of the tunnel that connected the main house to the barn, Panther Burn entered the cluttered main room where Jed Wister served up his grub and tended to the thirsty requests of his customers behind a bar built of sturdy timbers with the bark still on, rough-hewn like the men who visited Foot o' the Mountains. Oil lamps dangled from the ceiling on short stubby chains. Barrels of flour, grain, dried apples, and salt pork were stacked along the far wall. Tables and ladder-back chairs built by the same hand that had felled wood to build the house were set about the room with little regard to pattern. Pipe and cigar smoke coiled and swirled like serpent-wraiths about the foot-thick beams overhead. The room smelled of beans and bacon, of wet clothes and rye whiskey, of tobacco and sweat; it smelled of burning pine timbers and worn leather, of fur pelts, gunpowder, coal oil, and coffee. Three men clustered around one table closest to the fireplace. In the darkest corner of the room, barely discernible in the glow of his pipe, another figure sat with his back to the supply barrels. Panther Burn could not tell much about the man in shadow but the other three were dressed in uniforms like those he had seen worn by the cavalry troopers at Fort Buchanan in the Dakotas; short-waisted blue coats trimmed with brass buttons, brass buckles on black belts, breeches dyed a lighter shade of blue than the coats and tucked into calf-high black boots patched with dried mud. One of the men wore a campaign hat with one side of the brim pinned up to hold a scarlet plume that jutted back at a rakish angle.

His two companions sported short-brimmed caps and red bandannas around their throats. The uniforms had been stripped of any identifying insignia.

“Help yourself to grub. It's hanging over the fire,” Wister said, rummaging behind the bar and placing a tin cup of strong black coffee on the countertop alongside the Cheyenne. The rain outside hammered down in increasing cadence. A bucket in the center of the room slowly filled, drip by drip, as water worked its way through a broken shingle. “Been meaning to fix that,” Wister noted, staring at the bucket. “But then I been meaning to visit Paree, France, someday too. Reckon I'll get around to both in good time. And if I don't, well …” He did not bother to finish, before altering the course of his conversation. “Lessee, uh, that's Colonel Jubal Bragg and his younger brother Tom, and that house on legs there is Big Marley.”

Panther Burn took the cup without reacting to the old man's attempt at conversation, his eyes never leaving the three “soldiers” gathered at the table as he crossed to the fireplace and sat on the stone hearth before the flames. He grabbed up a tin plate, and swinging the pot out from over the flames, ladled out enough beans and pork to feed a couple of hungry men. He shoved the cook pot over the coals and hung the ladle back on its hook. He tore a loaf of fresh bread in half, grabbed up a spoon, and started to eat, all the while remaining conscious of the three men in uniform. One of the three, the youngest and from his facial appearance related to the man in the plumed hat, slid back in his chair, and standing, crossed to the bar.

Tom Bragg was slight of build, clean-shaven; his cheeks were thin-skinned, tiny red veins showed at his cheekbones. His eyes were a soft brown, gentle like a woman's and sharply contrasting with the contemptuous set of his arched eyebrows and thin-lipped smile. He moved with a kind of cockiness that reminded Panther Burn of Knows His Gun. A second chair slid back and the one called Marley joined his friend at the bar. Looming over his younger companion, Marley was thick-shouldered, thick-necked, with legs like oak beams. When he turned, leaning back with his elbows on the bar, he revealed features as brutish as the young man's were cultured, almost feminine. Big Marley had been in more than one fight in his time: his bald head, cheeks, and jaw were thick with scar tissue and a nasty scar ran across the bridge of his flattened nose. The third man, Colonel Jubal Bragg, remained seated. He was as slight of build as his brother. His brown hair hung to his neck in carefully trimmed curls. The crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes, the hard set of his features, gave him a lean and dangerous look. Unlike his younger brother, the colonel sported neatly trimmed sideburns that framed his face. He sat stiffly, properly erect like a king holding court. Panther Burn sensed the presence of
masanee
, the crazy spirit, behind the man's cool, intelligent disdain so evident in his patrician features. Panther Burn did not like looking at the man with the plumed hat and so the Cheyenne lowered his gaze to the Hawken rifle balanced across his right leg, then to his plate of bread, beans, and salt pork. He almost gagged on his first sip of coffee but the hot bitter liquid warmed him to the bone, and the food, though a far cry from antelope steaks and pemmican, subdued the gnawing hunger in his belly.

“I say, Wister,” the man in the plumed hat at last spoke up, his tone that of a man forced to endure the indignities of Wister's humble dwelling. “As colonel of the territory militia, entrusted with the protection of the settlers from Denver to Castle Rock and as far north as the Graybull, I find myself perplexed by your behavior. Letting one of the very savages whose depredations I and my brother Tom here and Sergeant Marley have been sent to protect you against … letting this … buck within your very walls smacks of extremely poor judgment, and I am kind in my phrasing, sir.”

“Beggin' your pardon, Colonel Bragg, but I didn't ask for any part of your help,” Wister replied. “May be some scared folks over in Castle Rock. But not me. I been on good terms with Injun folk 'ceptin' maybe the Ute, which a blind man could see this lad ain't.”

Tom Bragg tilted his head and threw a shot of Wister's rye down his throat, gasping at the liquid fire. “Red meat looks alike and smells alike to me.” He flashed a grin at Big Marley, and pushed away from the bar. He hooked his thumb in his army-issue gunbelt, his left hand closed around the wire-wrapped hilt of the saber slung at his side. Jubal tugged at his sideburns as he assessed the situation. He glanced over at his brother, admiring Tom's bravado if not his discretion. On the murder of their parents by the Cheyenne, Tom, six years younger than his brother, had been sent to Philadelphia to be raised by grandparents, while Jubal, at fourteen, had hired himself out to a freighter in St. Louis. He had grown to manhood in the West and was no stranger to violence.

“Lookee here, Tom … uh …” Wister stammered, trying to intercede. “The rule here at Foot o' the Mountains is any man is welcome. And no trouble. This here's neutral ground.”