Thunder on the Plains (14 page)

Pawnee arrow? The horror returned then as Colt began to remember. Pawnee! They had attacked his home, raped and tortured and scalped LeeAnn, killed his baby son! The memory moved over him like a herd of buffalo, beating, pounding, torturing. He gasped in a sob. “Let me die,” he groaned.

The old man applied something cool to his forehead. “We are a people who know grief,” he said soothingly. “Time heals many things. For now your sorrow makes you say foolish things, but you are young. You will live, and there will be other loved ones in your life.”

“Never.” Colt could not stop the tears that ran from his eyes across his cheeks, some trickling into his ears. LeeAnn. Ethan. It was true. This was not some awful nightmare, but reality. Why had he let himself think that the happiness he had found could last? A man had to be a fool to take such things for granted. The worst part was that it was his fault. He should never have left them. They died alone. Alone! Lee Ann had probably screamed his name, hoping he would come and help her. But he had been off enjoying a good hunt. He put a hand to his face, his body shuddering in sobs.

The woman returned, two other men with her. “
Saaa
,” the woman said softly, “what is this?” She wet a rag and applied it to his forehead. “You will heal, friend, in body and in spirit.”

“Will he live?” The question came from one of the men.

“I think so,” the old medicine man answered. “But his grief is very strong.”

“I know a way to make him
want
to live,” came another man's voice, this one a little younger.

Colt sensed a change of positions. Someone different had crouched beside him. “Open your eyes,” the man told him.

Colt swallowed back an urge to vomit. The woman had moved around to his other side, the old medicine man moving away slightly. The woman continued to bathe his face, washing away his tears. Colt opened his eyes to see a handsome young Indian he guessed was about his same age.

“Who are you?” the young man asked. “We can see you have Indian blood. What kind of Indian are you?”

Colt swallowed again. “Cherokee,” he answered. “My father…was white.”

The young Indian sniffed. “Just as we thought. A half-blood.” He looked back at a more middle-aged man who was crouched on his knees near Colt's feet. Colt thought he recognized him, but couldn't remember from where. “Three winters ago, in the time when summer is coming, did you not give rifles and food to the Cheyenne?” the younger Indian asked.

Colt strained to remember. It was so hard to think when he was so sick with grief. Three years ago. The only time he had handed rifles over to Indians was when a small party of Cheyenne had stopped what was left of the Landers party after the buffalo stampede. Why did that seem more like twenty years ago? It was the first time he had thought about Sunny Landers since marrying LeeAnn, and somehow the thought comforted him. “I…remember,” he answered. “Yes, I was scouting…for a man heading…for Fort Laramie.”

The young man looked over at the Indian sitting at Colt's feet. “So, it
is
the same man!” He looked back at Colt. “I am called White Buffalo. My father, Many Beaver, and I were with the warriors you helped that day.” He pointed to the middle-aged man. “That is Many Beaver. He is the one you spoke with. Do you remember?”

So, Colt thought, that was why the man looked familiar. “Yes,” he answered.

“Because you helped us, we are helping you,” White Buffalo told him. “The woman who cares for you is my wife, Sits Tall. The medicine man is Dancing Otter. For many sunrises he has cared for you. He cut the Pawnee arrow out of your side and has put the magic herbs and medicines on your wound to bring out the infection. Many times we thought you would die, but you are a strong man. What are you called?”

Colt shivered, struggling against a new surge of tears that threatened to overwhelm and consume him. “Colt…Travis,” he answered.

“You are a brave man, Colt Travis. We found six dead Pawnee when we found you. We buried your woman and child the white man's way, but we did not bury the Pawnee. Let the buzzards take care of them!” White Buffalo turned and spit in a sign of his hatred and disrespect for his longtime Cheyenne enemy.

Colt closed his eyes. “LeeAnn,” he groaned. “It's…true? My wife…my baby boy…”

“
Ai.
We grieve with you, Colt Travis, but there is one way a man can help the pain in his heart.”

Colt opened his eyes again, looking first at Many Beaver, who nodded. “You know what you must do,” the man told Colt. “The Pawnee also attacked our village. We, too, have lost loved ones. Soon we will be joined by many more of our People. We will make sacrifices and fast and pray. We will make much magic so that we are very strong. Then we will go after the Pawnee when the snows are deep. That is when they will least expect us. Their blood will stain the snow! Many will die!”

Colt looked at White Buffalo, who grinned. “
You
will
not
die, Colt Travis, because if you live, you can ride with us against the Pawnee. Is that not a much more pleasant thought than dying?”

The image of killing Pawnee brought a surge of new life into Colt's veins. “Yes,” he answered. Was it his Indian blood that made him understand the glory and satisfaction of vengeance? Part of him wanted to die, to be with LeeAnn and Ethan. But a stronger part of him wanted to live, not just to taste Pawnee blood, but also because his death would only mean another Pawnee victory. “You would…let me ride with you?”

“If you are strong enough,” White Buffalo answered. “Every extra man who hates the Pawnee means another Pawnee death!”

Colt looked at Sits Tall, in his agony and sorrow seeing only LeeAnn's face smiling down at him. “I will be strong enough,” he answered. He looked over at Dancing Otter. “Help me,” he told the old man. “I'll do whatever you tell me to do. I want to live long enough to ride with your warriors against the Pawnee.”

The old man nodded, and Many Beaver raised a fist. “So, the half-blood will become a full-blood for a while, yes?” He looked over at his son, and both men laughed.

Colt looked at White Buffalo, wondering what kind of a man his little Ethan might have become. He would never know now. “
Ai
,” he answered. “I will be an Indian, long enough to drink Pawnee blood.”

White Buffalo gave out a shrill cry, throwing back his head.

“For now you must rest,” Sits Tall told Colt, pressing the cloth to his head again.

He closed his eyes. Yes, he would rest so that he would heal. He could think of no better way to deal with his grief than to kill and kill and kill, until he was so weary that he could no longer raise his arm. If he was lucky, after he had felt enough warm Pawnee blood on his hands, some warrior's arrow would end his own life so he could find peace with LeeAnn and Ethan.

***

Sunny took the message from the courier, opening the note that a fellow campaign worker had sent to her from Republican headquarters. “Lincoln won,” it read. Her heart raced with a mixture of joy and sorrow. This was what her father had worked so hard for, but now he might not even live to see Lincoln's inauguration. Several southern states were close to secession, and the close of 1860 brought with it dark clouds over a divided country, and closer to home, the very real possibility of Bo Landers's death.

She thanked the messenger, turning and lifting her skirt to go up the stairs to her father's room. She prayed that this news would revive him, that by some miracle he would heal and be whole again, the big, strapping man he had always been, not the shell of a man who lay in his bed in his second-story room.

She was only eighteen, but today she felt old and weary from the strain of having to watch her father slowly die. She could hardly believe that a man could fail so quickly, especially someone as hardy as Bo Landers had always been. She kept waiting for him to get better, but she knew now that that was not going to happen. She had not wanted him to do so much traveling to campaign for Lincoln, but he had insisted, and two weeks before, it had caught up with him. He had collapsed while giving a talk in Indiana, and he had been brought back home on his own train. The doctor said that his heart was slowly failing him, and that there was nothing he could do. It seemed strange to have so much money, to have the best doctors at one's beck and call, and still not be able to stop the ugly hand of death.

Sunny suspected that the only reason her father had lived this long was to know for certain whether Lincoln had won the election. It had become an obsession with him, just like his dream of a transcontinental railroad. He expected her to finish that dream for him. He had told her so more than once, had trained her well, taught her everything he knew. She was acquainted with all the important people who could help her make the dream a reality; but the thought of going on without him, of taking on such a tremendous responsibility without her father's strength and know-how, weighed heavily on her.

She never dreamed it would happen this way. Men like Bo Landers didn't die. He was supposed to wait until she was much older, wait until she was married so that she had a husband and family to fall back on. If only she had not been born so late in his life. Now he sometimes mumbled about going to be with her mother. “The love of his life” he had called her so many times. Sunny wished with all her heart she could have known her, wished her mother were here with her now; but the woman would forever be no more to her than a painting that hung over the fireplace in the parlor, a painting that Vince had grumbled several times didn't belong there, even though Bo kept a painting of Vince and Stuart's mother in the dining room.

Sunny wondered how her brothers had treated her mother when Bo married her. She was sure they were as mean to the poor young woman as they had been to her. She thought how her mother had been only her age when she married Bo Landers, but at the moment Sunny could not picture herself married. If her father died, marriage would be an even greater impossibility. She would have far too many responsibilities to think of taking on a husband and having a family.

She dreaded the smell of death when she walked into the room, but it was always there. A nurse sat beside Bo, and Vi turned from a stand where she had been pouring a glass of water. She set the glass down and rushed over to Sunny, taking her arm.

“I told you to take the day shopping or something,” the woman told her. “I'll watch him today.”

Sunny was grateful for the genuine concern in her sister-in-law's dark eyes. Vince and Eve seldom had a kind word about Vi, both insisting Stuart had made a grave mistake marrying the plain, plump young woman whose family was not part of the Landers circle of friends. Eve was sure Vi had married Stuart for his money, but Sunny didn't believe it. She was simply a good-hearted woman who loved Stuart in spite of all his shortcomings.

“I was thinking of going out, but I got this message,” she told Vi. “I have to tell Father. Lincoln has won.”

Vi saw the mixture of triumph and sorrow in Sunny's eyes. “Yes, you should tell him right away.” She walked with Sunny to the bed. As always, Bo's eyes lit up when he saw his daughter.

“Sunny! Is there any news yet?”

She smiled for him. “Yes.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Lincoln won.”

He broke into a smile, and Sunny thought how thin his face looked. “I knew it,” he said. He closed his eyes for a moment, his breathing labored. “Thank God.” He reached for her hand, enfolding it in his own. “You know what to do, Sunny. You're my only hope. You know that, don't you?”

She tried not to let her tears and terror show. “Yes, Father, I know what to do.”

“You're by God a Landers from the inside out.” His eyes teared slightly. “Don't let them take it away from you, Sunny. You're a fighter, and you know what needs to be done. You can't do it if Vince takes away some of your inheritance. That money and what you will own means power, Sunny, power to get done whatever you want to get done! Build my railroad, Sunny. Promise me you'll do it.”

She could hardly bear to look at him this way, her own father, thin, failing, giving up. “I need
you
, Father. You've got to get well and help me.”

“I want to, Sunny. I want that more than anything.” How weak his voice was, compared to the old, booming Bo Landers. “But there are some things money and power can't buy, and health's one of them. I'm just sorry I was already getting old when you were born.” He squeezed her hand lightly. “Sunny, my precious, beautiful Sunny. Oh, how I hate leaving you. I'm so sorry I've placed such a burden on you, but I wouldn't do it if I didn't think you were capable.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. “Don't leave me, Daddy,” she said, feeling at that moment like a little girl again.

“Oh, no, girl, I'll never leave you. I might not be here in body, but I'll by God be with you in spirit. When you need strength, when you need to give somebody what-for and make yourself heard, you just think of me. I'll be standing right behind you. And when you get that railroad built, I'll be right there at the celebrations, watching them drive that last spike. You can do it, Sunny. There is no doubt whatsoever in my heart.”

She leaned down, resting her head against his shoulder, and he touched her face, stroking her hair back from her forehead. “My little ray of sunshine,” he mumbled. “Don't let them take it away from you. You fight for what's yours.”

She could not stop the tears. How was she going to go on without her pillar of strength, the only person in her life who loved her totally and unconditionally? She would gladly give up Lincoln's victory, her wealth, everything…if it meant Bo Landers would live.

Colt could hear the cries again, smell the blood, feel it on his hands. The dream became a mixture of memories and horror. He was lying flat on the ground, and hundreds of Pawnee warriors were riding down on him. The hooves of their horses made his body tumble, and after rolling over several times he thought he heard LeeAnn screaming his name. He got to his feet, searching through the hundreds of Pawnee, who kept shooting arrows at him, but he kept walking, searching. He stumbled over something, looking down to see a baby, bloody but smiling at him. He reached down to pick it up, holding it close in his arms.

LeeAnn called his name again, and he looked to see her approaching. The Pawnee were gone. LeeAnn's image kept flashing back and forth from a bloody, naked woman he could not recognize, to his beautiful wife, smiling and reaching out for him. When she came close he could smell the lilac in her hair.

“We're home, Colt,” she told him, reaching for the baby. He handed it over to her, and the child was no longer bloody. “See? We're all right,” LeeAnn said. “And so are you. Go back to the living, Colt.”

She turned away with the baby, and Colt reached out for her; but suddenly a painted Pawnee warrior jumped up in his face and screamed, slashing at him with a huge knife. Colt started to cry out, in reality letting out a groan and jerking awake. He sat up quickly, his body bathed in sweat. His breathing came in near gasps for a moment as he struggled to get his bearings. He looked around the tipi, which was dimly lit by the fading coals of an earlier fire.

He was alive. He touched his face, wiping sweat from himself, throwing off his heavy covers of buffalo robes, not even realizing at first how cold it was inside the tipi, for outside the January winds howled across the northern Kansas plains so fiercely that the tipi skins billowed in and out. He had seen enough of these well-constructed dwellings to know it would not blow apart, but it was getting a mighty test tonight.

“You have had a bad dream.”

Colt looked over at White Buffalo, who had risen up on one elbow, looking across the glowing coals at him. Sits Tall stirred slightly, snuggling closer against her husband. The sight made Colt's insides ache for LeeAnn. He nodded in reply to White Buffalo's statement.

“It is common to have such dreams after losing loved ones or after making war,” White Buffalo told him. “Do you want to talk?”

Finally the cold air made Colt shiver, and he pulled a robe back over himself. Because of the severe cold, he was fully dressed under the covers. He lay back down. “I saw her this time…my wife,” he said quietly. “She took our son from me and told me that they were home now, that they were all right. She told me to go back to the living.”

White Buffalo moved out from under his robes, making sure his wife was well covered. He reached over to a backrest, where another robe lay, and put it around his shoulders, coming to sit cross-legged near the dwindling fire. He reached to his right, where some buffalo chips were stacked, and added some to the fire. A few flames flickered upward.

“You drew much Pawnee blood, and you needed that,” he told Colt. “Now it is done. You carry the scar of a Pawnee knife across your forehead, a sign that you sought vengeance for what was done to your family. You even took three Pawnee scalps. It was good that you could do these things, but, my friend, at heart you are a white man. It is the white man's world in which you were raised, and it is the white man's world to which you must return. I think maybe that is what your woman was telling you—to go back to where you belong.”

Colt sat up straighter, listening to the moaning wind outside and thinking how it resembled the way he felt. “I have nothing there anymore.”

White Buffalo poked at the fire with a stick. “As my father would say, you are still very young. You have much life ahead of you. You will find a reason to live again.”

Colt looked across the fire at him, thinking how White Buffalo and Many Beaver had become the best friends he had had since Slim was killed. “I don't know if I ever want to leave.”

“When you think about it more, you will know it is the right thing to do. I will not like saying good-bye to you, Colt Travis; but you do not really belong here, not forever. You must go back to the world that is familiar to you, and I must go on struggling to save what land is left to us. I am not such a fool as to think I can keep this life until I am old man. Already your white brothers are filling up the land, killing our game, bringing their diseases. Your white man's government makes promises and breaks them again, sends its soldiers to hunt us down when we have done nothing wrong. You should leave us while I still think of you as my good friend, and before soldiers or others come who will force you to choose. It is then I might come to hate you, and I do not want to hate you.”

His eyes held Colt's gaze, and Colt felt the painful loneliness again squeezing at his heart. Where would he go? Who was there left in his life that mattered? Still, he knew White Buffalo was right. This was not a world in which he could forever remain. He turned and grasped his parfleche, pulling it to his lap and opening it. He reached inside, taking out a gold-plated chain watch that had been his father's. White Buffalo had seen it before, and had admired it greatly. Colt handed it across the fire. “Here.”

White Buffalo frowned, reaching out to take the watch. “I can listen to the little sound it makes again?”

“You can keep it. Do you remember what I showed you, how to wind it?”

White Buffalo nodded, surprise in his eyes. “You wish to give it to me? A gift?”

Colt nodded. “A gift.” White Buffalo looked at the watch almost reverently. “It's a thank-you gift, White Buffalo. You and your people saved my life, helped me find a reason to want to live again. Thank you for letting me join you on the Pawnee raids, for letting me taste my share of Pawnee blood.”

White Buffalo closed the watch into his fist. “This is a fine gift, Colt. It was your father's. It is not an easy thing for you to give away.”

“You've been good to me, fed me, gave me shelter, friendship.”

White Buffalo rose, walking to a looped string of rawhide that hung from a tipi pole and to which his painted prayer pipe was attached. He untied the pipe, turning then and walking back to the fire, handing it to Colt. “We do not accept a gift without giving one in return. This is my gift to you.”

Colt took the pipe, holding it carefully, recognizing the friendship such a gift represented. “I accept your gift with great honor. I will always treasure it.”

“You will leave us, then?”

Their eyes held in mutual friendship and feelings of sorrow. “I think I must,” Colt answered. “But I will wait until the spring.”

White Buffalo nodded. “It is the right thing to do. I will not forget you, Colt Travis.”

Colt's throat suddenly ached. “And I will not forget you, White Buffalo.” He thought he detected tears in White Buffalo's eyes. “Life is just a series of good-byes, isn't it? People move in and out of our lives, they go on to new places, sometimes they die.” He sighed. “Seems like somebody wants me always to be alone.”

White Buffalo shook his head. “It will not always be so. We have the company of our memories, and someday another will come into your life to help you forget your woman.”

Colt shook his head. “Maybe to love in a different way. But I will never forget. Nor will I forget that it was partly my fault.”

“It is easy to blame oneself. But you should not. My father says all things happen for a purpose, that some people are just gifts that are with us for a while until we grow in a new way and are ready for new things. There is another purpose for your life, Colt.”

Colt smiled sadly, watching the small fire for a moment. “I can't imagine right now what it would be, my friend, but I hope you're right. I hope you're right.”

***

In spite of the heavy fur coat and hat and muff Sunny wore, the cold January wind bit at her mercilessly, only emphasizing the loneliness and horror of the moment. She stared at the deep hole into which her father would soon be lowered, almost oblivious to the hundreds of people, including congressmen and businessmen from Washington and New York, who had come to pay their last respects to Bo Landers.

Sunny was not even sure how she had gotten to the burial site. The entire funeral service was just a blurred memory. She remembered only grabbing hold of her father and pleading with him to come back to life.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the Methodist minister said.

Not
Bo
Landers
, she thought.
Men
like
that
don't die. They don't turn to dust. It isn't possible!

She heard nothing of the final eulogy. She heard only a booming voice, a little girl's laughter. She felt herself being bounced on her father's knee, smelled his cigar smoke. She saw ledgers, saw her father's hefty finger pointing out figures and explaining to her everything about Landers Enterprises, explaining that someday it would all be hers. That was to be seen, for the will was still to be read. Oh, how she dreaded it, dreaded what Vince would say and do.

She looked across the grave at Vince, saw the tears in his eyes and the resolute tenseness of his tightly clenched jaw. He was not about to cry over a father he felt had somehow cheated him. Sometimes she felt sorry for Vince, who somehow had come to think his father didn't love him and who had struck back in vicious ways, done things he must have regretted. Was he wishing his father were alive again so he could apologize and tell him he loved him? Was he wishing he had visited his father more often before he died?

Eve stood beside him, not a tear in her eyes. She was a cold woman from a cold family that fed on money and attention. Eve was an only child who had had anything she wanted all her life. Now she would want Vince's fair share of Landers Enterprises, and she would most certainly force Vince to do what was necessary to get it.

She felt Vi's arm wrap around her then, giving her a tender hug. How could she have gotten through this without Vi's companionship, her help in caring for her father? Stuart stood next to Vi, weeping openly. In spite of his own differences with his father, Stuart seemed genuinely grief-stricken. Sunny was glad that he and Bo had become a little closer before Bo's death.

For the moment none of that mattered. The fact remained that Bo Landers
was
dead, and it all seemed like a bad dream. Sunny wondered if her near collapse during the funeral had sapped all her energy and bled her of all her tears, for now there were none to shed. There was only a kind of numbness.

“These things always hit harder after a few days or weeks have gone by,” she remembered someone saying. Was it the doctor, or Vi? “You've got to share your feelings, Sunny, turn to others, let us help you.”

Sunny wondered if anyone truly understood her grief and need. All her life the center of her world, the person in whom she confided, the person she spent most of her time with, was her father. She had a few girlfriends, and they were spoiled and giddy. None of them would ever have to shoulder the responsibilities that were soon to be given to her. How could she share that with them? Mae was good to her, sympathetic, but she came from a world that didn't understand the kind of life she would lead now.

Vi kept an arm around her. At least Vi understood a little of what she was feeling. Vi had married into this world of wealth and power and responsibility. “It's time to go, Sunny,” Vi was telling her.

Sunny blinked and looked at her. “But I…I didn't hear what the preacher said,” she objected. “It can't be over yet. Make him say it again! It's too soon! And too cold! They can't put Daddy in the ground when it's this cold! He'll get the chills!”

She felt more people gathering around her, grasping her arms, making her leave. She began screaming at them that she had a right to stay, that they should put plenty of blankets over her father to keep him warm. Finally, she called to her “Daddy” to make them stop pulling at her. She screamed for him, felt herself being dragged into a coach.

Moments earlier she had thought she had cried as much as anyone could, but now the tears came again, in sobs so bitter and deep that they made everything hurt. Vi's arms came around her again, trying to soothe and comfort. She heard Stuart telling her everything would be all right. “I'll help you, Sunny. No matter what happens with the will, you aren't in this alone. I'll cooperate however I can.”

He didn't even realize her devastation was over the personal loss of part of herself. She couldn't care less if she was left with one penny. Her father was gone, and nothing mattered anymore.

“Think of something that makes you feel at peace,” Vi was telling her. “Of Christ, or wildflowers, the mountains. You've talked so much about the mountains, Sunny. Think of the land out west, how quiet it was, how much you loved it.”

Sunny struggled through her sobs to remember the serenity of another time, another place, saw herself riding over the rolling hills. But that was another Sunny, one who supposed her father would live forever and who had given no thought to what she would do when he was gone. It wasn't fair that people had to die, not fair to the deceased, and not fair to the loved ones left behind to struggle on alone. She clung to Vi, wondering how long it would be before the ache of it left her. Maybe it never would.

***

Activity at Fort Kearny was high, soldiers everywhere, one regiment riding out just as Colt was riding in. Several emigrants were camped about the fort, but Colt knew it was too early in the spring for many to have made it this far yet on their journey west.

Colt trotted his prize Appaloosa gelding, called Dancer, toward a small log structure that carried a sign reading
Pony Express
. The horse was a gift from White Buffalo, and the sight of the soldiers leaving brought memories of his good friend, as well as worry. He called out to a soldier passing nearby, slowing Dancer. “Where are those soldiers going?” he asked. “There isn't some new campaign being waged against the Indians, is there?”