Witch Hunt (24 page)

Embrace your owne fearrs, as you wellcome your owne joys, for bothe are part of being in the humann condition. If you fight them, they gaine powwer. Feare is rooted in the awareness of the selfe as separate from nature and other humann beings. Whereas instinct for survival is pressent in all living creatures, a humann being hass the power to goe beyond. Concentrate your thoughts in the centter of your chest and, in your imagination, picture a warme, golden ball of light. As the sunn in your heart gains strength, your fears will grow less. By doing this you will begin to melte into the worlde, until you are in complete harmmony with it. From that place nothing can truly harme you.

A little farther down on the page was an addendum.

And, in cases of extreme emergency when you are taken unnawares put your hande over your heart, fleshe against fleshe, envisione the golden ball of light, and rub three times from lefte to righte.

The bottom of the page was signed by its author, Bridget Hawthorne, and dated 1753.

Rose, who, like the others, had gone to bed fully dressed, unbuttoned her blouse and slipped her hand inside. She used her strongly developed imagination to visualize the golden ball of light in the area of her heart. As fire was her particular strength, the miniature sun leaped into instant life, and she could feel the warmth spread through her body. She rubbed her chest as Bridget had suggested, and with each stroke her stomach jitters relaxed. A profound sense of wellbeing filled her, and she felt herself to be a perfectly placed thread in the complex tapestry of the universe.

In that moment she realized that the intelligent force in charge of the loom wouldn’t let anything happen to her that wasn’t part of the grand design.

As the eastern sky turned purple with the promise of the sun’s return, Thunder Eagle removed his clothes and put on his magical armor. While he drew the colorful patterns on his face that comprised his war paint, he contemplated the significance of each design; each one had been given him in dreams by his spirit-helpers for protection and to increase his skills as a warrior. He put the feathers that were his badges of honor into his hair. Lastly, he uncovered his shield, the sacred object that embodied his personal power. The symbols drawn on it represented his medicine, the universal forces from which he drew his strength. In the center of the thick, round buffalo-hide shield, was a black eagle. Above the eagle were dark thunderclouds, and beneath it, the ominous funnel cloud that held the tremendous ability to destroy. These powers revealed themselves to him when he had undertaken his first vision quest. And the symbolism had been an accurate representation of his special gifts. The black eagle manifested as his ability to see things in a total way, as if he were truly high above, looking down. The storm clouds represented the intensity of his emotions, which he had learned could be used either constructively or destructively. And the tornado symbolized the magical affinity he had with the wind. The wind was the greatest of all his powers.

Thunder Eagle thought about the battle to come. The murderer of his wife and unborn child, and the other three women, had been punished, and that was good. But was it enough? The white men, in their eagerness for the yellow rock that caused craziness, spread disease and decay among his people, used firewater to steal power from the Cheyenne men, destroyed the buffalo, and slaughtered their women and children for entertainment. When would it stop? In the battle that dawn, many whites would be killed. But it wouldn’t be for entertainment.

As he tied the soft deerskin breechcloth around himself, he grabbed his testicles and held them. They were full of the seeds of past and future generations of Cheyenne. The white man had taken from him the fortunate seed that had taken root and begun to grow. The whites owed him another chance for his seed to find form. He had decided that he would take one of their women as his new wife and plant his future in her.

At dawn, the Cheyenne warriors left their horses in camp with forelegs loosely tied to prevent straying, and crossed the river on foot to infiltrate the sleeping wagon train.

The man who was on guard duty was the first to feel the sharp blade of the Cheyenne knife. With the advantage of surprise, the warriors were able to kill many of the whites in their sleep before another man awakened and sounded an alarm. The white men responded with the force of their rifles, and Thunder Eagle’s friends Walking Coyote and White Lion were the first of the Cheyenne to fall.

Thunder Eagle chose to avenge the death of Walking Coyote, and, taking advantage of the killer’s need to reload his weapon, tackled the tall, thin white man who had been responsible. He knocked the rifle from his hands, and they tumbled to the ground, where they struggled. The older man put up a formidable fight, but Thunder Eagle managed to overpower him and plunge his knife into the enemy’s heart. To capture his spirit and prevent his ghost from pursuing its own vengeance, Thunder Eagle grabbed the graying yellow hair in one hand and cut a circle around it with his bloody knife. Then he yanked it free from his head and stuck it into the belt of his breechcloth.

The high-pitched scream of a woman overrode the other sounds of battle. Thunder Eagle turned to see an ugly white woman with hair the color of fire running toward him, making hysterical noises. She lunged at him, but he rolled to avoid her. She collapsed onto the dead body of the man he had just killed and hugged him, weeping and seemingly trying to urge him back to life. Impatient with her outburst, Thunder Eagle grabbed her hair and pulled her to her feet, then shoved her toward the small group of women and children who were huddling together near a flaming tent.

A young woman with black hair and eyes the color of the sky at midday caught Thunder Eagle’s attention. She was beautiful, for a white woman, and she could bear him children who might also be blessed with such eyes. He decided to take her. He grasped her hand and started to pull her from the arms of the two children who were clinging to her, when the ugly woman with hair the color of fire reached out and touched his arm. An intense heat from her fingertips burned his skin, startling him. He let go of the black-haired woman for a moment then reached for her again. The ugly woman’s hand burned him again. He looked at her, surprised, and she glared back at him with wild ferocity. He had never known anyone before who could wield such power. He studied her more closely. Her appearance was odd, but her courage was great. And her powers seemed extraordinary. He hesitated only a moment before deciding that he’d rather have mighty children than beautiful ones.

Crazy Mule and Sleeping Rabbit came to where Thunder Eagle was standing with the women and children. “All the white men are dead,” Crazy Mule said.

“Have you chosen one?” Sleeping Rabbit asked.

Thunder Eagle nodded. “The ugly one with hair the color of fire.”

“Then I’ll take the dark-haired one,” Crazy Mule said.

“What about the others?” Sleeping Rabbit asked.

“We can give the children to Owl Woman. The older women will do us little good. We might as well kill them.”

“Let me tie this one up first,” Thunder Eagle said, and, ignoring his friends’ bewilderment, threw a rope around the ugly woman so that her arms were tightly secured by her sides. Then he gave the signal for the others to proceed.

As the warriors raised their tomahawks to fell the two old women, one stretched out her arm and pointed at the woman in restraints. She shouted something that caused Thunder Eagle’s prisoner to become silent and hang her head.

Before leading her away, the ugly woman with hair the color of fire made an attempt to grab a small carpetbag that lay on the ground.

Thunder Eagle ignored her effort. “You won’t need any more of the white women’s things.”

She shook her head, her piercing eyes bored into him, and he felt her mind connect with his. Then he understood. It was her medicine bundle. He picked it up and handed it to her.

What would life be like with a woman of power? She would never replace the woman he had loved, but she might prove interesting.

This trip was your idea. You’re as evil as your mother was
. Arabel’s final words haunted Rose more than anything else that had happened. A part of her wondered if Arabel was right. Had Cassie reached through her from beyond the grave in a final effort to destroy the Hawthornes? Had Cassie somehow managed to influence her mind to urge the family to undertake the fatal trip? For the first time in her life, Rose was filled with self-doubt.

Rose and the other prisoners — all young women and children — sat together under the night sky in the Cheyenne home camp. They had been herded up and driven like cattle from the wreckage of their train to this, their new home. They were directed to sit together out in the open, while the hot afternoon sun beat down upon them. The Cheyenne offered them water but no food, and the children grew increasingly restless. Their mothers struggled to keep them quiet and well behaved for fear of angering the Indians. As night fell, the camp became active with preparations for a victory celebration. Now, to the horror of the prisoners, it began. Cheyenne women gathered around a huge bonfire to sing, dance, and display the scalps of the fallen whites on top of long poles.

The prisoners had not spoken much among themselves; all of them had lost husbands or fathers and were still in a state of shock. Rose herself was numb. Caroline, true to her gentle nature, tried to remove the sting of Arabel’s final words.

“She didn’t mean it,” Caroline told Rose. “No one in your family ever thought there was any of your mother’s badness in you. She was just scared. Don’t pay any attention.”

Although it didn’t assuage her guilt, Rose was grateful for Caroline’s support. Caroline, Brady, and Laura were all the family she had left.

Unlike the other prisoners, Rose wasn’t scared; she had found an effective way to deal with fear. She used Bridget Hawthorne’s magical technique to stay calm, while she prepared herself for what would happen next.

Somehow she understood that the Indian who killed her father had claimed her as his own. Was he one of the braves who had lost a wife to the senseless brutality of that man from the earlier wagon train? Would she be his new wife, or, more likely from what she knew of the Indians, would she become his slave? Why had he decided to choose her instead of Caroline, to whom he had obviously been attracted? Was it the power she had exhibited? Was he a man of power himself? He seemed to understand her need for her magical treasures. She had heard tales of Native American shamans, or medicine men. Was he one of them? If so, maybe there was a purpose for her in this camp. Just the night before, she had been filled with the certainty that nothing happened arbitrarily, without design. Maybe the life work of Tyler, Sheila, Giles, Arabel, and Oakes had been completed and the gods had worked through the Cheyenne to free their souls for what was yet to come. Maybe the gods had brought her to this place so she could fulfill her own life work. Maybe it really was all a plan and perhaps this magical man who had claimed her would somehow be the instrument of her personal transformation.