Tales of Western Romance (24 page)

* * * * *

Blue Hawk woke with the dawn. Rising, he
stretched the kinks out of his back and shoulders, then stirred the
ashes and put the coffee pot in the center of the coals to heat.
Breakfast was a couple of his mother’s cinnamon rolls and a cup of
coffee.

After pouring the dregs from the coffee pot
into the firepit, he kicked dirt over the smoldering coals, then
saddled the mare. Rolling his blankets into a tight cylinder, he
tied it behind the cantle.

He took a last look around his camp to make
sure he hadn’t left anything behind then swung into the saddle and
clucked to the mare. He rode until he came to a narrow, winding
stream. Dismounting, he dropped to his hands and knees and filled
his canteen, then let the mare drink.

In the saddle once again, he urged the mare
into an easy lope. She was one of his father’s best horses, with a
soft mouth and a smooth, effortless gait. Putting everything else
from his mind, Blue Hawk gave himself over to the sheer pleasure of
riding across the greening prairie.

He camped in a shallow draw that night and
rose with the sun, eager to be on his way.

The reservation lay just ahead. He would be
there by tomorrow morning.

He recalled the last time he had been to the
reservation. He had gone with his father and Blackie last year,
just before winter. They had taken a small herd of cattle to help
see the Cheyenne through the winter. Life was hard on the
reservation. Jobs were scarce. Some of the families raised cattle
and had suffered huge losses when the bottom fell out of the cattle
market last year.

Blue Hawk always felt a sense of hopelessness
and despair when he visited the reservation, along with a faint
sense of impotent anger against the whites who had sent his people
to live there in the first place. Back in the old day, Indian
children had been sent away to boarding school in an attempt to
“civilize” them. Their hair had been cut short. They had been
forbidden to speak their native tongue, or practice their
religion.

Before the Cheyenne had been forced to
surrender, they had fought against great odds to preserve their
freedom. Chief Black Kettle and his people had been attacked by
whites along Sand Creek even though they were camped beneath an
American flag and a white banner. Three-fourths of those killed
that wintry November day had been women and children. Four years
later, General George Armstrong Custer had attacked a camp of
peaceful Cheyenne along the Washita River. Chief Black Kettle had
been killed in the battle, along with forty other men, women, and
children.

In 1875, General George Crook had attacked a
camp of Sioux and Cheyenne. In June of 1876, the Cheyenne and
Lakota, united under Crazy Horse, met Crook again on the banks of
the Rosebud. This time, the Indians were victorious though Crook
would claim the victory. A week later, the Sioux, the Arapaho, and
the Cheyenne joined forces in what would later be known as the
Battle of the Little Big Horn. The battle was a major victory for
the Cheyenne and their allies, but also a turning point in their
history.

The whites, angered by Custer’s death, had
been quick to retaliate. Colonel Ranald Mackenzie had launched a
surprise attack against a Cheyenne camp and had sent nearly a
thousand Cheyenne into harsh winter weather without food or
shelter. In order to survive, the People had surrendered and been
sent into exile in Oklahoma.

In 1878, the Cheyenne fled the reservation in
Oklahoma. The Army pursued them. Little Wolf’s band headed west and
made it into Montana in April of 1879. Dull Knife’s people had to
surrender and they were confined at Fort Robinson. After days
without food or water, the People broke out of prison. Many were
killed during the escape, but death was preferable to another day
of captivity.

The People had made it back to Montana, but
they still lived in poverty.

Blue Hawk loosed a heavy sigh. His father had
fought in some of those battles. The People had been warned of the
changes that were coming. Blue Hawk recalled that his father had
often told him and his brothers and sister stories of Sweet
Medicine, the prophet. Sweet Medicine had predicted the coming of
the white man and predicted that his coming would bring many
changes to the Cheyenne and their way of life. He had told of the
coming of the horse, which would be a great blessing to the People;
he had prophesied that the buffalo would disappear and be replaced
by the white man’s cattle. Sweet Medicine had gone on to predict
that the whites would cause the Cheyenne to lose their old ways and
to behave in strange and peculiar ways. Sweet Medicine had indeed
been a prophet, Blue Hawk thought, for all his predictions had come
true.

Daniel arched his back and stretched his
shoulders. Lost in thought, he rode steadily onward until the sun
began to slip behind the horizon in a riotous blaze of reds and
yellows.

He was about to find a place to camp for the
night when he saw someone coming toward him. Blue Hawk shivered.
With the blood-red sun setting behind the rider, the horseman
seemed to be riding out of the sun itself.

Eyes narrowed, Blue Hawk reined his horse to
a halt, and waited.

As the rider drew nearer, Blue Hawk saw that
it was a man mounted on a black and white horse. Details gradually
became clearer. Long gray braids and dark skin identified the rider
as an Indian. The cut of his moccasins showed he was Cheyenne.

A soft grunt of surprise rose in Blue Hawk’s
throat when Fox Hunter drew rein before him.

“
Pave-eseeva,
” the old warrior
said by way of greeting. Good day.

Blue Hawk nodded. “
Pave-eseeva,
tsehe-mesemestovestse
.” Good day, grandfather.

“
How is your family?”

“
They are well. My father sends his
respects.”

Fox Hunter nodded, his rheumy old eyes
narrowing as his gaze moved over Blue Hawk.

Blue Hawk shifted in his saddle. Why had Fox
Hunter ridden all this way to meet him?

Fox Hunter’s gaze rested on Blue Hawk’s face
for several moments and then he grunted softly. “Let us go,” he
said, and turned his horse to the south, away from the
reservation.

Confused but curious, Blue Hawk followed the
old warrior. Fox Hunter was a man well known among the People and
their allies. He had fought alongside Crazy Horse at the Greasy
Grass.

They rode for perhaps an hour and then Fox
Hunter drew rein at the summit of a high hill. “We will rest
here.”

They spent the next half hour setting up the
camp. Blue Hawk dug a firepit and gathered wood for the fire.

“
Did you bring meat?” Fox Hunter asked,
coming up behind him.

Blue Hawk shook his head. “No. I guess you
didn’t bring anything, either.”

“
Only this.” The old man thrust a bow
and a quiver of arrows into Blue Hawk’s hand.

Blue Hawk glanced from the bow to the old
warrior. “I hope you’re not too hungry. I haven’t hunted with a bow
since I was twelve.”

“
We will eat whatever you bring
in.”

“
And if I don’t find
anything?”

Fox Hunter shrugged. “Then we will go
hungry.”

They wouldn’t go hungry, Blue Hawk thought.
He still had some canned goods and beef jerky in his
saddlebags.

Shouldering the bow and quiver, he walked
down the hill through the tall grass. If he was lucky, he might
flush a rabbit or two. If he was really lucky, he might bring down
a deer.

It was quiet, there in the tall grass. The
wind whispered through the leaves on the trees and soughed over the
grasses. He glanced up at an eagle soaring high overhead. Another
predator on the hunt, he mused.

Remembering his father’s teachings from long
ago, Blue Hawk slowed his steps, carefully placing one foot in
front of the other, his bow at the ready.

Without warning, a rabbit exploded from the
cover of a bush. Excitement thrummed through Blue Hawk as he
sighted down the shaft and let it fly. The arrow struck the rabbit
and it went tumbling head over heels.

Feeling a sense of exhilaration, Blue Hawk
retrieved the rabbit, remembering the thrill of his first hunt, his
first kill.

Half an hour later, he flushed another rabbit
and then made his way back to the campsite. He grinned when he saw
that Fox Hunter had already laid a fire and had a spit waiting.

Fox Hunter offered Blue Hawk a knife and he
quickly skinned and spitted the rabbits.

“
How did you know I’d be successful?”
Blue Hawk asked.

“
The spirits told me.”

The two men ate in companionable silence, and
then Fox Hunter lit his pipe. He offered it reverently to the four
directions before taking a puff, and then he offered the pipe to
Blue Hawk, who puffed it four times and returned it to the medicine
man.

They smoked in silence until the tobacco was
gone, and then Fox Hunter wrapped his pipe in a piece of hide and
put it away.

“
Two Hawk’s Flying tells me you are not
happy with the path you are walking.”

The old man’s words caught Blue Hawk off
guard. Usually, the People eased into a subject. “I wouldn’t say
that, exactly.”

“
What would you say,
exactly?”

Blue Hawk shrugged. “I was hoping to spend
some time on the reservation, to get a feel for what it was like in
the old days.”

Fox Hunter snorted. “Do you see buffalo on
the reservation? No! Do you see pride on the faces of our young
men? No! Do our people live in the old way? No! There is no hope on
the reservation, no joy in living. There is only despair. Our young
men drink the white man’s firewater to forget what they have lost.
Some of our old ones look back, to the past. Others wait only for
death.”

“
But I thought…did you ride out to meet
me to tell me I wasn’t welcome there?”

“
No.” The old man gazed into the
darkness, his head turning this way and that, as if he feared they
were being watched. “For some, it is given to travel back through
the mists of time.”

Blue Hawk’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure what
you mean.”

“
There is a path between the past and
the present, between what was and what is. Some know the
way.”

“
Do you?”

“
I know where the journey begins. I
have not found the path.”

“
Has anyone?”

Fox Hunter nodded soberly. “There are stories
of those who have found their way into the past.”

“
The Cheyenne are good at telling
stories,” Blue Hawk replied skeptically. “We have stories for life
and death, for creation and power.”

“
Otaha
! These journeys into the
past are not fables for children,” Fox Hunter said
sharply.

“
And if one finds his way into the
past, how does he find his way back home?”

“
The Great Spirit will tell you when it
is time to return. If you do not heed the call, the way will be
closed to you forever.”

Blue Hawk stared at the old man. He was
talking about time travel. Such a thing was impossible. Wasn’t it?
Blue Hawk frowned. Not long ago, he would have thought many of the
things he took for granted today were impossible—things like
automobiles, telephones, and electricity. But time travel…that was
nothing more than fantasy. Men wrote stories about it, argued about
whether or not it might be possible, but it was nothing more than
conjecture.
Wasn’t it?

Fox Hunter returned Blue Hawk’s stare,
unblinking.

“
Do you know of anyone who had traveled
into the past and returned?”

The old man nodded.

Blue Hawk cleared his throat. “What do I have
to do?”

“
You must believe, in here,” Fox Hunter
said, tapping his chest. “If you do not believe, if you do not want
it badly enough, believe in it strongly enough, it will not
happen.”

“
I want it.”

Fox Hunter nodded. “Tomorrow, we will have a
sweat. You must empty your heart and your mind of all but that
which you most desire. And then, if
Heammawihio
feels that
you are worthy, He will show you the path.”

* * * * *

In the morning, Blue Hawk helped Fox Hunter
construct a brush hut, which would serve as the sweat lodge. At Fox
Hunter’s bidding, Daniel gathered several armfuls of wood, which he
stacked near the back of the lodge. He watched, silent, as Fox
Hunter built a rectangular-shaped fire pit, then dropped in an
armful of wood and lit a fire. Next, he dropped several large
stones in the pit to heat. When that was done, Fox Hunter filled a
large wooden bowl with fresh water and placed it beside the
pit.

Ordinarily,
there would have been an old buffalo skull propped up against a
pile of stones or a mound of earth outside the sweat lodge, but
they would have to forego that today. Under normal circumstances,
the stones would have been heated outside the lodge and a woman
would have passed them inside. But, since there were just the two
of them, adjustments had to be made.

When all was in readiness, Blue Hawk started
to enter the hut, only to be stayed by Fox Hunter’s hand on his
shoulder.

“
Otaha
! Listen! If you find the
path to the past, you must tread carefully. You must not take a
life, or save a life that is meant to be lost. To do so could
change not only the past, but the future as well.”

Blue Hawk frowned. He hadn’t thought of
that.

“
There is no way to tell how far back
you might go, or who you might meet while you are there. You must
tell no one who you are, or where you have come from.”