Cheyenne Captive (46 page)

His eyes went to Texanna who stood looking up at him.

Falling Star frowned. “There is no reason to be on guard. No one, not even the Pawnee, would attack in terrible weather such as this.”

“That is the reason to be on guard,” his father admonished as he patted the stallion’s neck. “The Pawnee sometimes strike when it is least expected. I leave you to guard your mother.”

He would never forget the way his father had looked down at Texanna, the way she had looked back up at him. Iron Knife remembered now that she smiled like Mother Earth, glowing with good health and love as she regarded the man.

Iron Knife winced at the memory as he trudged on through the snow.

If only
. . . No, it wasn’t good to have regrets, to think what might have been differently. His grieving father had said it was not the boy’s fault, there was nothing he and the other few guards could have done when the Pawnee rode unexpectedly through the camp in a surprise raid. War Bonnet said over and over that he held his son blameless. But it didn’t ease Falling Star’s burden of guilt and pain as the two sat beside Texanna’s buffalo robe bed and watched her die.

If only
... he thought again.
If only more warriors had been left behind to protect the village, if only those who were there had had more notice that a Pawnee raiding party was on its way . . . If only the hunting party had returned an hour sooner ...

But by then it was too late for blame, too late for regrets, too late for anything except to sit by Texanna’s bed, each of them holding one of her pale hands as she slowly bled to death. The medicine man shook his head and indicated he had done all he knew how to do. Then he left the tepee and went out in the howling storm, leaving the two males to hold vigil over their dying woman.

Her son clasped her hand and watched her shallow breathing that couldn’t be heard over the blizzard outside. “It is my fault, Father,” he muttered. “You gave me the responsibility. I should have watched after her better—”

“No, my son,” War Bonnet said heavily. “It is my fault.”

The boy looked at his father’s grief-stricken face and thought he had never seen him look so old although the man had only a gray hair or two in his ebony braids.

War Bonnet clasped her other hand and looked down at her pale face. “I should have sent someone else to lead the hunt so

I would have been here when the Pawnee dogs rode through . . .”

His voice trailed off and there was no sound save the crackle of the small fire and the wind crying outside. It cried like a small, lost child and Falling Star thought of the new baby brother, the one who would never grow up to love or fight or be a great chief. It had been born too soon and the small one had given only one small cry like the whimpering wind before it gasped feebly and died.

His father shifted positions, running a finger tenderly across Texanna’s cheek.

“Was it Bear’s Eyes who led the Pawnee carrion?”

“I think so,” the boy answered. “They came in so fast. We had no warning before they were attacking and everyone was running—”

War Bonnet gritted his teeth. “Promise me that neither of us will rest until we hunt this cunning coyote down and kill him. First he steals the Sacred Arrows and we have had little but bad luck since. Now he has cost me the life of my new son, and more than that, I am going to lose my whole world . . .”

His voice was a ragged sob as he stroked Texanna’s pale cheek and Falling Star was suddenly very much afraid. Never had he seen tears in the great chiefs eyes before. He had not known War Bonnet could cry. To see the great man crumble like an ordinary mortal was to feel the earth give way beneath his feet.

The boy felt compelled to tell the story again as if to relive his own guilt, as if retelling it would change the outcome.

“She ran, Father.” He nodded toward the slim form between them. “The Pawnee rode through the camp, killing and setting fire to tepees. She grabbed up a lost small child and ran with it toward the woods. The Pawnee Lance Knife brave never touched her, but his horse trampled her and she fell. The fall brought on the babe too soon . . .”

They both looked toward the tiny form wrapped in soft deerskin, awaiting the end of the blizzard, awaiting the end of his mother’s life so they might bury them together.

Such a few, brief months his parents had had together
. Even now, he could remember that glorious summer and fall, the two of them running across the prairie together. He could close his eyes and see his stern, laconic father laughing like a child as he swung Texanna up in his big arms and carried her off to a secluded nook. He only watched from afar when his father took his mother in his arms thus, knowing that they were sharing something secret and wonderful that he could not be a part of.

But the summer and the fall were gone and they were left with the cold, tragic events of February. Now the boy looked over at War Bonnet and saw crooked trails down the dark, stoic face. Then his own vision blurred and he realized his own eyes were not dry.

His father’s finger caressed her pale face. “Texanna,” he whispered. “Texanna, Golden One . . .”

At the sound of her name, the bright blue eyes flickered open and she looked first to Falling Star.

“Son?” Her eyes were puzzled. “I—I don’t remember what happened—?”

“The baby,” he blurted without thinking and his father looked across her small form and gave him a warning shake of the head.

“Oh, yes, the baby.” Texanna smiled faintly. “In the spring, we must go down to Texas and get her. Promise me, my love?”

The boy watched the man struggle with his emotions as they both realized she was lost in another time, another place.

“I—I promise, Golden One,” War Bonnet managed to say—and maybe only the son saw the hard mouth tremble. “As soon as the weather warms and you are well, we’ll all ride down to Texas.”

His voice choked off and Falling Star squeezed his mother’s hand once and stood up, moved away. Whatever few minutes she had left belonged to War Bonnet, the great chief who had loved her from the first moment he saw her.

Texanna’s lovely face was so very pale, her eyes such a bright blue. Her long hair spread around her like a red-gold halo, reflecting the firelight.

The boy thought of the fine mare War Bonnet had given her years before. It was a strawberry sorrel just the color of Texanna’s hair. She still rode it, he thought, but she never would again. He moved to sit in the shadows at the back of the tepee, listening to the wind whimper and whine outside, listening to his mother’s shallow breathing.

For a long moment, the only sound was the crackle of the small fire and the scent of pine needles as the yellow flames devoured the wood. He tasted salt in his mouth as he watched his parents and knew he would never forget the bitter taste of grief.

Texanna stirred faintly and the man took both her hands in his, gripping them like he could keep her from slipping away from life, and his face was a mask of agony.

Texanna stirred again. “Texas ...” she whispered. “Do you remember Texas?”

“How could I ever forget?” War Bonnet murmured so softly Falling Star hardly heard him. He knew suddenly his parents were retreating into a very private world of memories where he might not intrude.
The world of memory is full of love
and one need not deal with pain, or death, or regret.

A tear ran down the man’s stoic face and he wiped his face against his shoulder quickly rather than turn loose of the woman’s hands.

“Yes, I remember Texas,” he whispered. “I was leading a war party to steal horses from the Comanche before we made peace with them. We rode across north Texas, returning with many ponies. Then just at dawn I reined up on a small rise and looked down to see a wagon train circled below.”

Texanna nodded ever so slightly. “The wagon master had died,” she remembered. “We had just buried him and were getting ready to move on....”

War Bonnet nodded as he seemed to join her in her world of memory. “At first, I intended to kill all the whites as they had done my family. But then from the rise I saw a young girl walking across the circle of wagons and the rising sun reflected off the red-gold of the girl’s hair....”

Texanna laughed faintly. “You told me later you had never seen hair that color before and you thought I was the reincarnation of Ehyophstah, the Golden-Haired Woman of the Cheyenne holy legends, the one who brought the buffalo to the Tsistsistas.”

“When I saw you from that hill, my heart turned over and I knew you would be my woman, no matter what the cost.”

“The war party outnumbered the settlers,” she remembered faintly, “and could have overrun them and killed them all....”

War Bonnet squeezed her hand and nodded. “I sent them a message: ‘Send out the Golden One and I will let the rest of you live.’”

“Your message caused a big fuss,” she whispered. “Some wanted to fight, some wanted to draw straws to see which blonde they sent. Jake Dallinger even wanted to send out my younger sister, Carolina.”

The man reached out to stroke her hair. “They could not have fooled me. I had already vowed not to leave that place till I claimed you as my own.”

Her eyes flickered open and she smiled up at him, a special smile as though the man who looked down at her was all the world she ever had or wanted.

“I decided to take matters into my own hands,” she whispered. “And while the wagon train argued over what to do, I started walking across the prairie, giving myself up to you to save the others....”

“Oh, my beautiful, brave Texanna!” War Bonnet’s voice was ragged as he bent to kiss her lips. “Always,” he said, “always I will remember how you looked walking across the prairie toward the war party.”

“I was so frightened.” Her voice grew faint. “I remember it seemed such a long way to where you sat your paint stallion, how forbidding and grim you looked to me....”

“The bluebonnets were in bloom.” He smiled down at her. “I always think of you when the bluebonnets bloom because of Texas, because of the color of your eyes....”

His voice trailed off as if the image were more than he could bear. Texanna, lost in her memories, didn’t seem to notice as her breathing grew more shallow.

“Yes, I remember the bluebonnets....” She barely nodded. “The flat prairie was covered with them and as the breeze blew, the flowers moved like an endless blue sea.”

“And there were dragonflies,” he reminded her. “And I thought it a lucky sign that dragonflies rose up around you as you walked through the bluebonnets since the dragonfly is my spirit animal.”

“Dragonflies—” she gasped. “Their gauzy wings were green and gold and reflected sunlight so they seemed magic....”

“Oh, Texanna!” he said and his voice broke, “my girl of the bluebonnet eyes! If I had only let you go with the wagon train that day, you might have lived to an old age among the whites—”

“I have no regrets, my love; none at all ...” Her voice was only the faintest whisper. “I would do it all over again because our brief time together was worth the price . . . Look after our son . . . Ne-mehotatse ... I love you....”

The man bent over her, weeping openly now. “Texanna, don’t leave me, Texanna . . .”

But she was already gone. It was almost as if the great god Heammawihio leaned over from the heavens and blew out a weak, flickering flame.

Texanna, the Golden One, the girl with the bluebonnet eyes, had left this life behind. For a long moment, Falling Star stared in horror, unable to believe it. Always, her calm serene presence had been the sun of his existence and now the sun was eclipsed, leaving the two men in a blackness of grief.

In a daze, the son watched the great chief gather the slim body into his arms as if he might breathe life back into her. And the wind howling outside the tepee drowned out their cries of sorrow.

The two gashed themselves and cut their hair in grief. Texanna’s body was dressed in finest deerskin with the baby in her arms and placed out on the lonely prairie up on a burial platform. And the last thing they did before they rode away was kill her strawberry mare beneath the scaffold.

“Ohohyaa,
hear me, Great Spirit,” War Bonnet intoned to the sky, ”Let my Golden One ride her favorite pony up the Hanging Road to the Sky until that day soon when I join her and we ride together through fields of bluebonnets that bloom forever....”

Iron Knife swallowed hard, retreating from the memory as he led the struggling horse through the snow. He looked back at the grieving woman on the horse he led. She had just buried a child and would live through it, somehow. He had buried both father and mother and now he had lost Summer Sky. But he would survive, the tribe needed him. All he had left of his love was Summer’s delicate little mare that staggered under her load of children. She was all that was left of his memories and if she fell and could not get up, he was not sure he could go on and leave her for the hungry coyotes.

Finally they were at the winter camp and it was warm and safe in the tepees of their friends. Those already there welcomed the newcomers and fed the starved horses and took them into little groves out of the wind.

Iron Knife went to see his friend at Bent’s Fort, Kit Carson, to ask anxiously about how to get to Boston. Carson was visiting from his job as Indian agent to the Utes and Apache in New Mexico.

But his friend shook his head in sympathy and told him the distance could never be ridden on a horse. Besides, if the woman had loved him, why had she gone away?

Reluctantly Iron Knife accepted the logic of this and spent a long, lonely winter staring into the fire, remembering laughing pale eyes and hair the color of the sun.

The hunting was good in that country and all waxed full and happy as they visited with their friends and the Bents who had married into the Cheyenne. A number of girls tried to get his attention, hoping in vain he might offer ponies to their fathers. He did not even seem to see them.

So the long winter passed slowly for him, and now wildflowers pushed through the melting snow. As the area became less frozen, greedy whites looking for the yellow metal swarmed through the area and the soldiers looked the other way at these trespassers.