Sacred Is the Wind (7 page)

Panther Burn nodded and looked past the reverend to Rebecca. “Where will I find the lodge of my uncle, where are the Red Shields?”

“These people live at peace,” Samuel interjected. “They no longer have need of war clans.”

“There is the house of Joshua Beartusk,” Rebecca said, pointing to a cabin on the westernmost perimeter of the village. Its log walls were in desperate need of mud-chinking. “But will you not greet my mother first?” Panther Burn looked aside, sensing another's approach. The woman called Star walked up alongside the pinto stallion. She was of the same height as Rebecca and as lithe-looking as her daughter despite the streaks of silver in her long black hair. Star wore a beaded buckskin dress, worn smooth, soft-looking. A necklace of porcupine quills and blue trading beads circled her throat.

“My mother, this is Panther Burn, the son of Yellow Eagle,” Rebecca said.

“So you are the one,” Star replied. She stared at Panther Burn; a look of apprehension crossed her face. Panther Burn shifted uncomfortably. At last the older woman spoke. “I will tell White Bull, our chief, of your arrival. It is good he should know.” She placed her hand upon his leg and fixed him with her unwavering gaze. “What have you brought, Northerner? Ah, never mind. You cannot know. Full bellies and lovemaking are the only visions of the young.” She chuckled. “Well, Northerner, there will always be a place at our cookfire for you.”

“Ne-a-ese,”
said Panther Burn, at a loss for words.

“No need to thank me,” Star replied, eyes suddenly twinkling, a derisive tone in her voice as she glanced over at Samuel Madison. “It's what any ‘Christian' would do.” She started off through the village in search of Simon White Bull. Several women emerged from their cabins to gather about her to learn what she had learned about the new arrival.

Panther Burn looked at Rebecca a moment more, holding her gaze with his own, then he turned his horse and walked away toward his uncle's cabin.

The door to the cabin swung ajar, pressed by the invisible hand of a summer breeze. A couple of chickens scratched and pecked at the rain-damp earth, clucked suspiciously at Panther Burn as he dismounted and ground-tethered his stallion. The chickens scattered as the brave stepped up to the door, leaned into the shadowy interior.

“Beartusk?” he said in a soft voice. Something stirred in the darkness, trotted toward him. A mongrel dog, its short bristly fur the color of dried corn, stuck its muzzle into the daylight and sniffed Panther Burn's leggings. The man in the doorway reached down and scratched the dog's neck and scarred ears.

“Who have you been fighting today, old dog?” Panther Burn chuckled.

“Who has he mated with today would be the better question,” a voice said from the interior of the cabin. “Who is it? What man comes to my door?”

“The son of Yellow Eagle,” Panther Burn replied. “Have I changed all that much since our people renewed themselves by the banks of the Graybull?”

“No. I have.”

Panther Burn shoved the door farther open until an expanding rectangle of sunlight spread across his uncle's wrinkled features where he sat at a table, dressed in a worn woolen shirt and trousers tucked into battered brown boots. Scraggly gray hair hung to his neck. A clay bottle and two cups rested on the tabletop. He waved in the general direction of the door and then reached down and took up a cup on the second try. His other hand crept across the splintery surface of the table until it discovered a clay bottle, then gingerly he poured the cup full of potent-smelling spirits.

“Uncle, what has happened?” Panther Burn entered the cabin and crossed to the table, tripping, as he walked, over the worn-out shell of a tribal drum. The gut head hung in dry brittle tatters. Panther Burn nudged it aside with his foot and continued to the table. He sat on the three-legged stool opposite Joshua Beartusk. “Uncle … what has become of the Circle?”

“Broken,” Joshua replied, sliding the cup toward his nephew and then filling a second for himself. He smiled, revealing a row of yellow teeth. “Old Warrior!” The dog, lying in the doorway, clambered to its feet and padded over to its master, placing its head in Joshua's lap to be petted and scratched. When Joshua finished, the animal stretched itself out on its side at the old man's feet. “We live as the white man now,” Joshua continued. “We take his Christian names, we raise his chickens, we grow his crops, we fatten ourselves on his tame buffalo, we wear his clothes, live in his houses … and catch his sicknesses. Three years ago, great fever.” His leathery-looking hands patted his face, then cupped the back of his neck. “Terrible hurting, here. Two moons later I was blind. A half man.” Joshua sighed and drank from his gourd cup. Panther Burn took one sniff of the bitter-smelling brew and set it aside. “Still we live in peace,” Joshua added.

A blind peace, maybe, Panther Burn thought to himself.

“Now you must tell me about your father. Does he fare well? And my sister Crescent Moon, how is it with her? You must tell me everything. I am glad you have come.” He reached out and felt for the younger man's hand, took it in his. “A Red Shield cannot have a wife, children, no … you and your parents are all the family I have. It is good not to be alone.”

A Red Shield, this broken blind old man? A feeling of shame swept over Panther Burn for his thoughts. He gripped his uncle's hand tightly and told him of life by Spirit Mountain, of all that had transpired since the two tribes of the same people had joined in celebration, now more than five years ago. He told his uncle of battles and hunts, of horses caught and buffalo chased and how sweet the chokecherries were last year; told him everything except the real reason why Panther Burn had left his father's village and journeyed two months alone to be with Joshua's people.

As evening shadows shrouded the land, turned the tree-tops to black spear points against a blood-red sky, Joshua crawled beneath the blankets, and curling up on his pallet, began to snore. Old Warrior padded over, whined a moment, then settled down to warm himself against the old man's soon sleeping form. Panther Burn stepped out of the cabin, stretched, and walked out from the village, an easy thing to do, as Joshua's cabin was on the edge of the sprawling, orderless arrangement of cabins. He ran through the buffalo grass to the crest of a knoll about a hundred yards from his uncle's cabin. And there, safe from the prying ears of the rest of the village, he began to sing.

In beauty was it begun

In beauty let it be finished
.

The first of stars
,

The last of sun

Come moon-woman, magic woman, lead us to our rest.

By the All-Father was it begun

By the All-Father it will be finished
.

In beauty
.

Though he sang softly, the gentle wind carried his voice to the edge of the village. And there were some who took notice, who paused by their cookfires to listen, to remember. And one in particular, standing in the lee of Joshua's cabin where she had come to bring food to the old blind man and his nephew, Rebecca Blue Thrush listened to the song, her heart inexplicably reaching out to the singer. And she dared to dream.

3

T
he Cheyenne attack had been sudden and merciless, catching the settlers off guard just as the wagon train broke circle along the banks of the Tongue. As arrows filled the air and clouds of black smoke and flame exploded from rifles hidden in the tall yellow grass, Dolph Bragg shoved his two sons out of the back of their prairie schooner and handed his elder boy, Jubal, a revolver and pointed toward the riverbank.

“Run! Care for Tomm … eeee.” Jubal's father stiffened, his expression contorted in agony, then he slumped forward and slid partway from the wagon, his pants leg caught on a rake. Aurelia Bragg was there, coming from around the wagon in time to catch her husband and lower him to the ground as she screamed his name and clawed at the bloodied patch on the back of his coat. Her brown hair, unpinned, streamed in the wind like the tattered canvas covering the wagon, like the flames licking skyward from the surrounding wreckage. Her mad eyes bored into Jubal.

“Run,” she shrieked, echoing her husband. Jubal could only stare at his father. Aurelia Bragg reached out and slapped her son across the face, rocking him back against his brother. Tom, only eight, stared with mute incomprehension. Cries of the wounded and war whoops of the Cheyenne breaking from cover mixed with the brittle exchange of gunfire as an age-old tragedy played out the final minutes of its final act.

“Mama!” Jubal screamed. His face was red from her hand so moist with the blood of his father. Jubal pushed himself off the ground. He didn't want to leave. Not without his mother. Fear had turned his flesh icy cold. He shivered and tried to find the strength to speak, daring another blow to try to change his mother's mind. But his voice was lost in the din. Bullets thwacked into the wagon bed, showering the boys with splinters. Somewhere up ahead a keg of gunpowder, secreted in the flaming wreckage of a covered wagon, exploded, rending red flesh and white into unidentifiable fragments. Tommy Bragg began to cry. Jubal dragged his brother to his feet and wasted precious seconds dusting him off.

“It's all right,” he said.

Twelve years later, Jubal still remembered saying, “It's all right.” Just as he remembered turning back to his mother, only to find her sprawled across his father, part of her skull torn away by a piece of shrapnel as large as a wheel hub from the obliterated wagon. Jubal grabbed his brother by the arm and ran. He ran then with the sounds of slaughter at his heels. He ran and did not stop until he reached the riverbank. A brave struggled up from the water's edge. The two boys barreled full tilt into the warrior and knocked him backward down the bank, the boys came tumbling after. A jumble of arms and legs, a twist of torsos, separating at last. The moment froze as it ever did, for this was the climax of his nightmare … the brave's face streaked with yellow war paint, his war club raised as he emerged, dripping from the shallows, Tommy curled against his older brother, as Jubal, his father's cap-and-ball revolver gripped in both hands, worked the hammer back, the barrel trembling. “Fire … for God's sake, fire!” a voice screamed. Jubal hesitated, staring into the face of the Indian, transfixed, as the savage's face seemed to change, puzzling him. Then, the moment broke. Kill him! Kill him! The brave's shrill war cry hung on the air, he lunged with his knife. The boy squeezed the trigger.

A shot, a flash of gunpowder illuminated the wall nearest the bed. The lead slug blew a foot-long strip of wood away. Jubal screamed, fired again. A water pitcher exploded into a thousand china fragments. The door to the room flew back and Tom in pajamas rushed in from the hallway. Jubal spun toward the light. Marley loomed out of the blackness and knocked Tom to the floor as Jubal realized too late that he was no longer at the scene of the massacre but safe in his own bed at the Hippolyte Hotel in Castle Rock. He squeezed the trigger on his Colt dragoon. The revolver roared a third time and an inquisitive resident of the hotel ducked and retreated down the hall as a chunk of the doorsill turned to sawdust; the bullet ricocheting toward the other bedroom doors that hurriedly slammed shut.

“Colonel!” Marley shouted.

“What the …?” Tom muttered, trying to rise. Marley shoved him back down to the floor.

Perspiration dripped from his jawline, beaded Jubal's forehead, rolled into his eyes, stung there. Jubal did not care. He lowered the gun, his hand trembling until it reached the bedding. Even in the gloom the room began to take on a definition, a caneback rocker, a nightstand, two hurricane lamps at either end of a couch that Marley had been using for a bed. Moonlight pressed against the drapes, seeped in silver slivers where the velvet failed to meet.

“C'mon,” Marley said, lifting Tom by the scruff of his pajamas and propelling him toward the door.

“But my brother … see here … let me go …” Tom tried to protest but Marley's momentum carried them both out of the room. Only then did Big Marley loose his hold. Tom pulled away and tried to head back into the room. Marley grabbed him again and this time did not stop until Tom was safe and secure in his own bedroom.

“Dammit, man, let me be,” Tom shouted, furious at such manhandling. He teetered on the edge of the bed but managed to regain his balance.

“The colonel ain't gonna want to talk to you right now.”

Tom's room was simpler, smaller. Its furnishings consisted of a four-poster bed, a dressing table, two ladder-back chairs near the fireplace, assorted chromolithographs on the walls, two out-of-date calendars, heavy burgundy curtains over the single window, a lopsided nightstand on which a pitcher and washbasin balanced precariously. It was a room to sleep in, nothing more, but comfortable in a rough sort of way. Temporary quarters, not a home.

“How dare you lay a hand on me,” Tom snapped. The veins in his cheeks stood out in stark relief, a map of scarlet beneath his pale flesh. He tried intimidation, but somehow could not bring himself to muster the authority to make the bigger man retreat, something in the way his gaze could only reach Marley's jawline. Failing that, Tom returned to his bed and sat on the edge, his hands folded in his lap. “What the hell happened in there?” he said in a resigned voice. Marley nodded, appearing to approve of the younger man's unspoken surrender. Marley, who seldom slept fully out of uniform, hooked his thumbs in his suspenders, cleared his throat, looked for a place to spit, then swallowed.

“Long as I've known him, and that's been since sixty-two, when he pulled me out from under an overturned caisson and killed the three Johnny Rebs a-fixin' to stick me, long as I been by him, he's had them dreams. Or dream. Always the same one, always bad. About your ma and pa.”

“Oh,” Tom said, nodding. He frowned, then shook his head. “And he wakes up shooting.”