Sacred Is the Wind (6 page)

“What is the matter with you,” Faith said angrily, rubbing her bruised shoulder.

“Do you want to see us both captured by such a mad one? Would you be a Ute slave? Hurry, you foolish girl!”

Esther pulled free and pointed back up the trail, her breath rasping.

“Rebecca … Where is Rebecca?” Faith turned, noticed there was no one behind them. And the cries of the savage were stilled as if he no longer pursued. And if he no longer pursued, then he had found what he wanted. Faith, though larger and far stronger than Esther, reached out to clutch her friend's hand.

Water glistened on their smooth naked flesh as they looked in horror at one another, then down the empty, ominously silent path.

Rebecca Blue Thrush crouched in a little over three feet of water, enough to cover her nakedness, yet shallow enough to allow her to fight if need be. Her fingers searched, closed around a smooth, fist-sized stone. Her hair splayed upon the water in shining black strands. Panther Burn cautiously approached, the buckskin dress dangling from the muzzle of his Hawken.

“Come no closer, foolish one. I will strike you down and leave you for the men of my village to have sport with,” Rebecca said, hoping she sounded more formidable than she felt. At least she had bought time for the others and allowed them to escape. Panther Burn drew closer, the water came only to the underbelly of his pinto.

“Is this any way for people of the same blood to greet one another?” Panther Burn chuckled.

“The same blood?” Rebecca warily repeated. She raised the stone, ready to hurl it at him.

“And the same star,” Panther Burn gently added. He guided his horse to one side, and turning toward the girl in the shallows, revealed the Morning Star sewn into his hunting shirt.

Rebecca, realizing he had played a trick, slowly lowered the stone. She grew suddenly aware that the water hid precious little of her nakedness and she attempted to cover herself. Panther Burn tilted his rifle and the buckskin smock slid off the barrel into her anxious grasp. She slid the garment over her head and stood, pulling the dress around her as she rose from the water.

“It was a good game.” Panther Burn sighed. Naked or clothed, he had never seen such a lovely girl. Coppery smooth was her flesh, her hair a dark cape falling to her waist. The All-Father had fashioned her features with delicacy, spacing the slightly slanted brown eyes, touching the lips pink like the first flush of bitterroot in spring. Panther Burn tried to hide his interest behind a gruff exterior, but Rebecca's keen gaze had noticed. And now that she was no longer in fear for her life, she too made a brief assessment. What girl would not be attracted to someone so strong-looking, so confident? Though his own attractive features were marred by a kind of arrogance, his black eyes flecked with gold betrayed a deeper quality of introspection that intrigued her.

“Come, girl, I will take you to your village,” he said, leaning forward to extend his left hand. She noticed the raw-looking scar tissue where his little finger had been. She reached up and took hold of his wrist. He braced himself to swing her up behind him. But Rebecca had other ideas. She lunged to her right. The pinto half-reared, dug its hind legs into the rocky bottom. Panther Burn shouted in protest as the reins slipped from his grasp. Water gushed into his open mouth, cutting off his cry. It was his turn to stagger to his feet. Coughing and squinting through blurred vision, he watched as Rebecca, riding his horse, trotted the animal up out of the pond. Panther Burn grabbed one of his eagle feathers as it drifted on the surface of the pond toward the makeshift dam. He sputtered, stooped to retrieve his rifle, and poured the water out of the barrel.

“
Now
the game is finished,” Rebecca proclaimed. Panther Burn stared at her a moment. He brushed his wet hair back out of his eyes, coughed, and spat another mouthful of water, then stood erect, the water just below his waist. He took a few steps, a few more, until the water was down to his knees. He stared at the sodden eagle feather in one hand, the waterlogged rifle in the other. His shoulders began to shake, he threw back his head and gave a great laugh. And continued laughing as he slogged his way to the bank. Climbing out of the water, he leaned his rifle against a log that had been washed up on the bank during a flash flood.

“
E-pave-e
,” he said, his laughter slowly subsiding. “It is good, warrior woman.”

Rebecca carefully watched him, his reaction completely unexpected. She was surprised to find a warrior so able to laugh at himself. Now she could see through the facade of his attempted arrogance and liked what she found—a pride that might deceive from time to time, but also self-knowledge. She was unaware of the remorse that had kept his very soul in a viselike grip these past weeks. She had no understanding of how good it felt to laugh after hurting inside, after being unrelentingly in pain for almost two months on the trail south from Montana. Panther Burn glanced over his shoulder, surprised to find she had not ridden away when she had the chance. He removed his moccasins, squeezed the water out, and placed them back on his feet.

He started chuckling again, shook his head.

“My friends have probably alerted the village,” Rebecca said.

The brave nodded.

“The men will come,” the young woman continued.

The brave nodded again.

“Well, you had better come along. You may ride with me on my horse.” Panther Burn glanced up sharply this time. “Uh … your horse,” Rebecca corrected. He stood and crossed over to her. “Panther Burn,” she said. He stepped back, startled she should know his name. “I remember now,” she continued. “When your people and mine gathered to renew the medicine hat and the sacred arrows. Many summers ago. Yes, I remember. Your uncle is Joshua Beartusk.”

“It is so,” Panther Burn said. “But he is not called such a strange name … Ja-shwa.”

“He is now. We have all taken Christian names. I am Rebecca Blue Thrush.”

“Ahh … Star's little girl.” The medicine woman was highly regarded among even the Northern Cheyenne.

“Not little anymore,” Rebecca said. Panther Burn looked up at her, appreciating the way her dress clung to the shapely wet form inside. Not little anymore, indeed.

“Christian names?” Panther Burn repeated with uncertainty. “What else has changed since our two peoples joined around a single ceremonial fire?”

“Return with me and find out,” Rebecca said, a challenge in her voice.

“Why not?” Panther Burn shrugged, suppressing his misgivings as he leaped up behind Rebecca. He liked the way she warmed his hands, and warmed to his touch, her body tensing, relaxing, tensing again where he placed his hands on her waist. “After all,” he added, “I have already had my bath.”

More than a dozen riders met them as the pinto trotted clear of the timber. Panther Burn reminded himself that he had forgotten to load his rifle with dry powder. Of course his mind had been occupied by Rebecca's closeness. It took him a moment to realize that these men were Cheyenne at all, for many were dressed as white men, wearing worn denims, faded woolen shirts, worked-in boots. Sweatstained hats shaded their features as the men circled the pinto.

“James … Peter … what are you doing?” Rebecca called to two of the young men who brandished rifles and cast angry looks toward Panther Burn as they blocked the path.

“We rode out to rescue you,” the one called James, a bold-looking young brave, replied as he angled his own skittish mount through the settling dust. “Esther … Faith … all the rest came running into our village, crying out you had been taken and our people were under attack.”

“By one brave … one Cheyenne warrior?” Rebecca asked, laughing.

James Broken Knife looked past the couple on horseback toward the trees as if expecting a ruse. Then he focused his humorless stare once more upon Panther Burn while his companions gathered around, studying this new arrival's more primitive trappings.

“What are you doing here,
hestoo-ve-estane
?”

Panther Burn bridled at being called a stranger. He was of the same people as those around him. Now that they could see he was no enemy, still they were hostile to him.

“He is Panther Burn, nephew to Joshua Beartusk,” Rebecca said, feeling a little angry herself.

“Has he no tongue …” the one called Peter spoke up, looking around to his companions for support, “… that a woman must speak for him?” He was slim, compact, with a vain disregard for the Northerner.

“Perhaps he can only speak with his hands. See, he is dressed like a savage,” another voice spoke up.

“What have you to say for yourself?” James said, balancing his rifle across his lap. He carried a percussion weapon, though not as heavy a caliber as Panther Burn's. The barrel was patched with rust.

The Northern Cheyenne reached around to take the reins out of Rebecca's hands. Holding them tightly in his fist, he glanced at the young braves who surrounded him. There was no paint on their faces, yet they had ridden out to battle. Their horses were unmarked, their weapons a mixture of flintlock and percussion rifles as well as farm implements—crude hoes and rakes. As for the braves themselves, their hair was cropped close in the style of many white men. And they circled him, resentment in their faces, but why? Baiting him with their taunts, why?

“You have called me a stranger. So be it,” Panther Burn replied at last, looking around him, taking them all in with his sweeping appraisal. “For is not a wolf a stranger to a pack of yelping dogs?” He slapped his rifle down across the pinto's rump and the animal burst through the ring of braves and scattered them like leaves in a gusting wind. Before the startled young men could recover, Panther Burn had crossed the meadow, and cresting a narrow ridge, followed the emerald landscape down to the village of the Southern Cheyenne. If the young men who had met him coming up from the Warbonnet had made him feel unwelcome, the sight of the village left him dumbfounded—and truly a stranger. A haphazard arrangement of log cabins with a few tipis scattered among them sprawled across the trampled grasses. The village showed little activity. Quite possibly the girls from the river had yet to spread the alarm to the whole community, or perhaps they had not been believed. Women in gingham and calico dresses, children in ragged denims, old men in buckskins or faded overalls came out of their cabins to watch in curiosity. Rebecca noticed several of her friends, fully clothed now, and she waved to them to show them nothing was the matter. The breeze shifted and Panther Burn wrinkled his nose in distaste at the stench of kept livestock that mingled with wood smoke, tainting the very air. And he took notice that several of the cabins had fenced-in and partitioned pens in which were kept hogs and chickens. Farther beyond the irregular confines of the village he could see a small herd of cattle, the white man's tame buffalo, grazing in the afternoon, lolling in the sun. Other young men rode in or walked over to study the new arrival as Rebecca, enjoying being the center of attention, announced to everyone that Panther Burn had come from his people in the North to be with his uncle, Joshua Beartusk. Panther Burn had no use for such announcements but he was too distraught to protest. More curious young men approached, and none of them looked like Cheyenne warriors. Where were the societies, the Crazy Dogs, the Red Shields and Fox Men? Panther Burn stared at the American flag where it flew from a flagpole rising upward for thirty feet from the approximate center of the camp. Why such a banner and no scalps of their enemies hanging from the pole, and why was such a thing where the ceremonial fire was to be kept burning?

And the circle? The great circle of life that every Cheyenne village and camp became the living symbol of, that every Cheyenne took his strength from, that was the basis for every aspect of life … where was the circle in this jumble of white man's cabins strewn upon the meadow?

Esther and her husband, Samuel, a tall spare-looking white man dressed in a black frock coat and trousers, white collar and black shirt, waited before a cabin door as the two on horseback approached. Samuel held a broad, flat-brimmed black hat in his hands. His blond hair was parted in the middle and cut close to his skull, emphasizing his overlarge ears. Rebecca pointed to the cabin where the couple waited.

“I live there.”

Panther Burn tugged on the reins and warily approached the cabin. Esther gave a cry of relief and ran forward. Rebecca slid down and hurried to embrace her friend. Panther Burn glanced over his shoulder and noticed James Broken Knife and his companions skulking back into the village. A few of the braves paused to inform the curious of Panther Burn's identity.

“Oh, Rebecca, I thought you were behind me,” Esther blurted out. “And when I looked around …” The two friends hugged one another. “I didn't know what to do.”

“It's all right,” Rebecca said soothingly. “You see, it is only a friend from far away. From the Northern village up beyond the Yellowstone.”

Reverend Samuel Madison stepped forward.

“The peace of Christ be with you, brother.” He held his hand up toward Panther Burn, who backed his horse away, keeping a close eye on this strange-looking
ve-ho-e
. “I assure you, I mean no harm,” Samuel said.

“Christian names … white man's lodges,
ve-ho-e-otova-a
, the white man's buffalo, out in the meadow, war ponies used to scar the earth, to plant white man's crops, this is your doing?”

Samuel glanced around at his wife, then back to the brave on horseback. Recalcitrant braves were nothing new to him. Such young men as this, so desperately in need of God's word, had been the reason he had left his well-to-do family and the comfort of his father's house to spread the gospel of the eternal Father.

“My doing and that of my wife. We have a house here and in Castle Rock, although I prefer to be with Esther's people baptizing my Cheyenne brothers and sisters, teaching you to live in the new ways, in peace with the white man.” He reached out and took Esther's hand, smiled at her, his long, bony features brightening, becoming almost handsome.