Thunder on the Plains (47 page)

He closed his eyes and sighed. “Sunny, I didn't want it to be this way. I did everything I could to stop it. And I never, never wanted to have to tell you. Dammit, Sunny, I truly do admire you. I'm only trying to protect you. Can't you see that?”

She shook her head. “I don't want to hear your excuses, Vince. If you weren't so arrogant and hateful of people you think are beneath you, we might have been able to work this out.”

“It's what
other
people would have thought, not me, Sunny. It isn't just me Colt Travis would have to face and prove himself to. You remember that night he showed up at your dinner? Remember how some of those people looked at him? Surely you knew what they were whispering. Now you know why I was so upset by the way you took his hand and dragged him around. God only knows what some of them were thinking.”

She turned away. “Just please go away before I scream. I can't bear to look at you or hear your voice a moment longer. Get out of my house and find a hotel for the night.” She heard a deep sigh, footsteps. The parlor door slid open and was closed again, and the room was silent, except for the light crackle of a small fire in the hearth. Sunny went to her knees, wondering how such joy and ecstasy could so quickly change to such horror and despair.

“Colt, Colt, Colt!” she wept, bending her head to the floor. How could she live without him now, yet how could she risk losing him to death, or risk him finding out about her mother? Was Vince right about what Colt would think of her? What did she know about men? The only kind of prostitutes a man like Colt might have experience with were the slutty whores of the railroad camp towns. She could never bear to have Colt look at her and see one of them. Neither could she bear to see his free nature and sensitive pride destroyed by her world; or to see him physically destroyed by someone Vince might hire to kill him.

Colt Travis had belonged to her for two magical, wondrous days, and now she must set him free again. She would have to find a way to let him know that her decision was
because
she loved him so. She would have to find a way to convince him she was doing the right thing. He would surely end up hating her, but she could bear his hate and anger more than she could bear the thought of Colt being the one to scorn her and turn her away because of her mother; and she could bear his hate more than the thought of visiting Colt Travis's grave.

She got to her feet, deciding she had to be very strong, stronger than she had ever been in her life, even when facing down Vince or taking on the duties of her inheritance. She should never have invited Colt into her world, should never have allowed their love to blossom, should never have gone out to see him and build his hopes. He was too good and fine a man, proud and sensitive, worth so much more than the men in her world who boasted millions in the bank but were so lacking in matters of the heart. If she put an end to their affair immediately, most of the fine man that he was could be salvaged, and he would not be involved in ugly rumors or in scathing newspaper stories.

She would have to end it quickly. She would wire Blaine to wait for her in Chicago, and she would go there in the morning. She would tell him she wanted the wedding date moved closer, get married before the Indian problem was over and before Colt had a chance to discover what was happening and try to come to her. He would think nothing of not hearing from her for a couple of weeks. By then she would be Mrs. Blaine O'Brien.

She shuddered, grasping at the hot pain in her stomach.

Colt approached the waiting band of Indians. It had taken him two full days to ride out here, and as he came closer to the area of the burial ground he saw a large circle of tipis, recognizing it not as a normal settlement of families with the men perhaps on a buffalo hunt, but rather the kind of village quickly set up by the few women who accompany and care for warriors ready to do battle. As soon as he got close, a line of at least thirty Indians formed. He knew he had been spotted much sooner by scouts, realized they could have already killed him if they chose, which was why he had tied a white shirt on the end of his rifle and held it up as a truce flag before coming any nearer. He could only hope they would honor the sign of peace.

Much as he wanted to, he couldn't think about Sunny now. He had to stay alert, for in spite of once living among these people, they were not the friendly, accommodating Cheyenne he had left six years before. He noticed they had camped just to the east of the burial ground, which he could see in the distance now, looking ghostly and foreboding in a morning mist.

He urged Dancer cautiously closer, eyeing the apparent spokesman for the warriors, who rode out ahead of the others. Colt guessed him to be about his same age, and by the time he got within a few yards of the man, he recognized the face. He halted Dancer. “White Buffalo,” he called out in the Cheyenne tongue. He made the sign for friendship. “If you don't recognize me, you must remember the horse I am riding. It was a gift from you.”

White Buffalo stared at him a moment, then rode closer, his dark eyes losing some of their malice. “Colt Travis, my old friend.”

Neither man smiled a full smile, each suspecting that after this conversation the friendship would be over, neither wanting it to have to be that way.

“Yes, I
am
still your friend, White Buffalo. I looked for you once, but you are not easy to find. I have thought about you often over the years.”

White Buffalo nodded. “And I have thought of you. Come and smoke with me. We will talk.”

“I'm here on behalf of the railroad, White Buffalo.”

The man nodded, a sad look in his eyes. “I thought so.” He turned his horse. “Come.”

Colt followed him into camp, edgy at the looks on the faces of the rest of the warriors, most of them young, and eager for a fight. They reached a tipi with many buffalo painted on it, and White Buffalo indicated Colt should dismount and come inside. Colt obeyed, and a young Indian boy took hold of his horse for him.

“He is my nephew,” White Buffalo told him. “Small Horse is fourteen, and my brother said he could come with us for the fight. I am teaching him the warrior ways. This dwelling belongs to my brother and his wife. I live with them.”

They went inside, and old, familiar memories returned for Colt. He thought how much more he liked something like this than hotel rooms. The memory of Sunny's mansion in Chicago flashed through his mind, how he had felt so suffocated in that huge, high-ceilinged room with a table so long one could hardly see from one end to the other. Yet in this simple tipi he felt free and alive.

White Buffalo offered him a place to sit, and Colt obeyed, careful not to walk between the fire and another person, something that was not done. White Buffalo introduced him to his brother, Two Teeth, and his wife, Blue Bird Woman. “You did not know them when you lived with me and Sits Tall, because at that time they stayed with the Southern Cheyenne on the little bit of land the Great White Father gave us down near old Bent's Fort,” White Buffalo said. “Since then your government has moved the Southern Cheyenne clear back to that hot and worthless place they call Indian Territory. Most of us will not go there. We stay to the north now, join the Sioux.”

White Buffalo's anger and agony were evident in his voice and his eyes. Colt waited quietly while the man lit his prayer pipe, offering it to the sky, the earth, the four directions. He took a puff, then handed it over to Colt. “Do you still carry the pipe that I gave you in friendship?”

Colt nodded. “I've been through a lot since then, but I still have it. I even have those scalps.” He took the pipe, offering it himself to the God of heaven and earth, and to the four directions. He sucked on it a moment, then handed it to Two Teeth, who did the same as the first two men. He handed it to White Buffalo, who smoked it again, then lowered the pipe, watching Colt carefully. “I still carry the watch, but it stopped ticking long ago. Do you think that means something?”

Their eyes held in mutual sorrow. “I hope it doesn't mean the end of our friendship,” Colt told him.

White Buffalo smiled sadly. “Sits Tall was killed at Sand Creek, along with our baby son and my father, Many Beaver, as well as the old medicine man, Dancing Otter and many others that you knew when you lived among us.
Zetapetaz-hetan
, the squaw killer, Chivington, showed us that day how the white man treats even peaceful Indians. So we no longer try to be peaceful. We do what we must do.”

Colt closed his eyes. “I'm sorry, White Buffalo. You know that I understand how it feels to lose a wife and child.” He met White Buffalo's eyes again. “You told me once that time can heal many things.”

“
Ai
. But now
I
better understand your hatred for the Pawnee. Now
my
hatred is also great, not for the Pawnee, but for the
ve-ho-e
. I do not think time will heal these wounds, because the white man keeps opening them again. It is not just because of Sand Creek that my hatred will not go away, but for everything else. They are taking it all away, Colt—the land, the buffalo, our freedom. We can no longer live as we once lived, and some of our people on the reservations die of nothing more than broken hearts. Now comes the railroad, the great iron horse with its belly on fire, its black smoke darkening the sky, its noise chasing away the game. We try to stop it, but we know we cannot.” He looked at Colt pleadingly. “Now all we ask is that it does not go through our sacred burial ground. It would be so easy for the powerful people who build this thing to send it around, far from this place that is beloved to my people. Have you come here to tell me they will think about doing this?”

Colt felt almost sick at being so torn. He removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “I wish they would, White Buffalo, just as much as you do. But in their world their way of thinking tells them that to lay that many extra miles of track would be too costly and take too much extra time. There is only one of them who would agree to go around, but it is a matter of votes of all those in charge. The rest have voted to go through. I am here only to warn you that many soldiers are coming. You have a chance to leave now, White Buffalo, peacefully.”

White Buffalo shook his head. “If I did not fight for this, fight to protect the spirits of the loved ones who have gone before us, I would not be worthy to live. So if I am killed in this fight, it will be a much more honorable death than if I walk away from here and die an old man who remembers he was a coward and did not stand up for his people and their sacred lands.”

Colt nodded. “The last time we parted, we were friends. You said then that it was best that I go while there were still good feelings between us. I wish it were not you here defending this burial ground. It would make it easier for me to do what I have to do.”

White Buffalo handed him the pipe again. “Let us share one more smoke together then. You are still my friend, Colt Travis, but if I see you on the battlefield, I will have to kill you, as you will have to try to do to me.”

A strange ache moved through Colt's shoulders and chest. He puffed the pipe and handed it to Two Teeth, who only sat listening. “I think the railroad is wrong in this, White Buffalo,” he told the man. “I am totally against it. I respect the sacredness of your burial ground. I am only telling you that there are powers at hand here that all the fighting and bloodshed in the world won't stop.”

He thought of Sunny again, how some of the decisions she made could affect hundreds of people, sometimes thousands—a go-ahead on this, a price on that, a bribe here to change a law, one there to take over a company. He told himself to stop thinking of her that way, to stop comparing their lives. His Sunny was the sweet, vulnerable, giving woman whose body he had shared on the prairie under the sun and stars. They had decided they could make their love work, and he was not going to let anything get in the way.

“I'm just trying to spare you, White Buffalo, you and many others. Why don't you let me talk to the railroad people. I'm sure they'd be willing to let you move some of the graves—”

“No! Do not even suggest it! You know the bones of dead ones must never be disturbed, or their spirits will never rest again! If we fight hard enough, the Great White Father will take notice. Maybe
he
will tell the railroad people they cannot do this!”

Colt rubbed his eyes, wishing he could hit something in his frustration. “White Buffalo, the Great White Father
wants
this railroad, as much or more than the people building it! He's not going to do one thing to slow it up. He'll go along with anything they decide to do, and they have already decided to go through.”

White Buffalo stiffened and slowly nodded. “Then you should not be here, my friend. You should be back there with the soldiers who are coming.”

Colt's jaw flexed in a sudden urge to weep. “I'm going to have to try to stay out of this one, White Buffalo. I can't bring myself to fight you. You saved my life once, gave me reason to live again. I'm sorry about all of it, sorry we have to meet like this after all these years. Under other circumstances, I would stay, and we could have a good, long talk.”

“Yes, my friend, I would have liked that.” White Buffalo took the pipe from his brother and raised it. “It is done now. Go back to your white world, Colt Travis. I think perhaps we will not see each other again.”

Colt's misty eyes betrayed his feelings. “In another time, another place, we could have shared so much,” he told the warrior.

White Buffalo looked away from him. “Go,” he said softly.

Colt hesitated a moment longer, then rose and exited the tipi, realizing each extra moment he stayed could mean his life. He climbed onto Dancer, suddenly feeling weary and burdened. Part of him belonged here, maybe not with the Cheyenne, but with the Indian spirit. If not for certain decisions his father had made, he would still be living in Indian Territory among the Cherokee. Now here he was working for the Union Pacific, in love with a beautiful, rich white woman, yet his skin and his spirit were so close to these very people who were struggling to cling to what was left of their once-vast domain. Did he really belong in Sunny Landers's life, or did he belong with the Cherokee? Maybe he belonged with neither.

He headed Dancer slowly through the village, not sure if he would be allowed to leave without an arrow in his back. He hated the thought of what was to come, felt sad that he could not have spent more time with White Buffalo.

He rode a little harder as he got farther away, and it struck him that in a way he was saying a final good-bye to the Indian in him. Maybe it was supposed to be this way, slowly leaving behind the old, learning to change a little, just enough to make things work with Sunny. For ten years life had been leading him toward her, teaching him how to let go of things and move on. He could not imagine life now without her in it, no matter what the cost, and it was difficult to think of anything except seeing her again.

Still, for now he didn't have much choice. Lieutenant Tracer and his men would arrive anytime now to rout out White Buffalo and his people. The thought brought a tight feeling to his gut. He didn't want any part of this if he could possibly stay out of it.

***

The train rumbled through the dark, heading for Chicago. Sunny thought how the mournful sound of its whistle sounded on the night winds, reflecting the black mourning in her heart. Every mile the train covered was another mile farther away from Colt, from the Nebraska plains, from the only real happiness she had known. She had contemplated writing Colt a letter of explanation, something that sounded logical, something that would let him know her decision had nothing to do with how much she loved him; but she was afraid that to write him too soon and let him know what she was doing would bring him running, and she didn't want that to happen. It was best he didn't know at all until it was done and there would be no changing it. Maybe then she would write the letter.

It seemed so cruel to do it this way, knowing he was waiting for her to come back. He would find out through the newspapers or gossip at the work camp. How would he react when he read about the wedding of Sunny Landers and Blaine O'Brien? Each time she thought of it, the horrible black pain engulfed her, and she felt as though someone had died. In a way someone
had
died—a part of herself—the Sunny Landers who belonged to the wild land, and to Colt Travis.

Perhaps she had been a fool after all to think that she could share her life with Colt. If only she had never allowed it all to happen. Before it had been a fantasy she thought could never be real; but the reality had turned out to be so much more glorious and fulfilling than the fantasy. Colt had awakened things in her she did not know existed, but now they must be put to sleep again. Vince had made it all ugly and wrong. Now another man would touch her, but she would never belong to him, never feel the wanton desire and delightful ecstasy she had shared with Colt.

It seemed that someone with her money and power should be so free, free to do as she wished, love whomever she wanted to love. But her wealth had become her prison. The truth about her mother and father was the key that locked the door, and Vincent stood guard. Colt was the one who was free, and he had nothing at all—nothing but his pride, his sureness, his goodness, his love of the land and the animals. He didn't need any more than that.