Meet the New Dawn (34 page)

Wolf’s Blood put a hand on his father’s arm. “And if they choose to fight?”

Zeke put a hand over his son’s. “If they fight, I will fight with them, Wolf’s Blood. Don’t try to help me. Promise me you’ll do nothing to help me or to go against the soldiers.”

The boy swallowed. “I promise, my father.”

Zeke patted his hand. “It’s bad this time, Wolf’s Blood. As bad as it’s ever been. How I’m managing to ride I don’t even know myself. But I’ll not go on like this. The day is soon coming when I’ll never get out of bed again. I won’t let that day get here. Every bone and joint in my body screams to be put out of its misery. Understand me, Wolf’s Blood. Help me die honorably.”

The boy suddenly embraced him in the darkness. “I love you, Father. I will help you. But if you die, part of me also dies.”

“It is always so when a loved one dies. But there are other loved ones left behind who need us. My Abbie needs you, Wolf’s Blood. You know what to do after I am gone. Go to Dan. He’ll help you get permission.”

“I will go to him,” Wolf’s Blood promised. They embraced tightly. The son was to take his father to a very high place in the mountains, where he would build a platform for his final resting place—close to the heavens, where eagles fly.

Zeke left him then, walking painfully slow. Wolf’s Blood watched him. Yes, it was a good time. The man he watched now was not the man he had always known, tall and strong and nimble, quick and graceful. The disease raged within him, claiming him slowly and painfully.

The Cheyenne arrived at Fort Robinson, having already been disarmed as they had suspected would be done, but carrying several weapons on their person in the form of jewelry or hidden in clothing. If not for the sadness of the occasion and their starving, frozen bodies, the hidden weapons would have been laughable, a fine joke on the soldiers. But the Cheyenne had no laughter left in them. They were taken to a log barracks built to hold seventy-five men; but all one hundred fifty Indians were crowded into it. The soldiers at Fort Robinson, under Major Caleb Carlton, were friendly toward them, giving them blankets and food and medicine. But Carlton could make no promises about letting them go farther north and join Red Cloud. They were told the soldiers must wait for orders from Washington.

The waiting became difficult, stretching through November, December. The Cheyenne became impatient, and Zeke became almost immobile. He stayed in the log shelter with them, insisting he could help them more, perhaps convince them still to return south and give up their pleadings to go to Red Cloud. But Wolf’s Blood knew he only wanted to be near the People, his first love after all.

Wolf’s Blood waited with a heavy heart. He asked the soldiers to try to get word to Dan Monroe, his uncle, who had also been moved farther north and was not at Fort Robinson any longer. If only Dan could come and be here with Zeke. The soldiers said they would send word, but Dan was off on patrol scouting for whiskey and gunrunners on the Red Cloud reservation, and would be difficult to locate.

The Cheyenne were given permission to do a little hunting near the fort—a few men at a time—while they waited. But game was scarce, and their hearts were not in it. Once tipis surrounded Fort Robinson. Now the land was barren—of buffalo and Indian alike.

Then Major Carlton left, and things changed. An ominous mood hung over the fort, brought on by the new commander, Captain Henry W. Wessells, a man who cared little for Indians and was nervous and anxious to please Washington. The man constantly watched the Cheyenne, often paying unannounced visits to the log barracks where they were kept, his eyes darting around suspiciously. Finally Red Cloud himself was brought to the fort to talk to the Cheyenne. His words brought great sadness to their hearts, for he could offer no help. He would gladly welcome them to the Sioux villages, but the all-powerful Father in Washington would not allow it. The white people were so numerous that they “filled the whole earth,” and the Indian could no longer fight against what the white man told them to do.

Zeke listened with great sadness to the poignant conversation between the Sioux leader and the hopeful Cheyenne. The once-proud and fierce warrior Red Cloud, who had led the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne in victory over the Powder River country just ten years earlier, was now a sad and broken man. It was rumored he was a prisoner on his own reservation. He warned the Cheyenne they must be very careful and do everything the white soldiers told them to do or it would be bad for them. The Sioux leader’s words broke Zeke’s heart, for the man’s pride and power were gone. The soldiers, the miners, the men in power in Washington, the settlers, the railroads, the buffalo hunters—all had worked together to break the Indian’s back, to bring the red men of the plains to their knees.

Zeke turned away, unable to even watch Red Cloud, fighting an urge to cry out and charge forward and kill every soldier he could find. But his ravaged body would not even allow him to do that. He rested his hand on the infamous knife, the knife he had wielded against his enemies with such force and skill over the years, often fighting several men at once. It would forever rest in its sheath now, its blade tasting blood no more. Watching Red Cloud was his answer—the finality he needed. They were broken, and his sorrow over that loss was unbearable. He would not live to watch the final remnants be swept up and thrown out like so much trash.

Red Cloud had done all he could do for them. He was taken away, and Dull Knife approached Captain Wessells again with a final plea, telling him that if they were not allowed to go north and join the Sioux, the Cheyenne would butcher one another with their own knives before going back south.

Chapter Twenty

It was early in January in 1879 when the orders finally came from Washington. The Indians must go back south, and immediately. Zeke could barely believe the words, nor could Wolf’s Blood. It was the dead of winter. To send the pitiful bunch of Cheyenne back south on a two-to three-month march would be the same as lining them up before a firing squad. Several days after the order was issued, when Wolf’s Blood was allowed into the barracks to ask his father what to do, he found Zeke lying in a corner on a blanket, unable to rise.

“Father!” the boy groaned.

Zeke looked at him with bloodshot eyes. “I am … only saving my strength, son, for my last … battle.”

“Father, the soldiers want to send them back—in the dead of winter!”

Zeke took his hand, and Wolf’s Blood noticed with great sorrow that his father’s hands were so gnarled they looked deformed, the joints swollen to ugly proportions.

“They will not … go back,” he told his son quietly. “Dull Knife … has told them so. They will die first. And so … will I, Wolf’s Blood. I will not go back to … your mother … and have her see me this way. She must remember the Zeke she knew … not this one. I want you to remember that Zeke also. Go now. Go back with the soldiers, and remember … to stay on their side … no matter what happens. Promise me, Wolf’s Blood.”

Tears were suddenly visible in the boy’s eyes, spilling down
his cheeks. “What … shall I do, Father?” he asked in a strained voice. “I am Indian, too.”

“You will go home … and you will let life take its course, Wolf’s Blood. You will go to Sonora … and your children … and your mother. And you will make me proud. Go now. And remember your promise … about taking me to the mountains.”

The boy sniffed. “I … have tried to find your brother Dan. They say he is coming soon. He is coming from Fort Keogh. He has sent word … that it is impossible to bring Swift Arrow … for he lives alone in the hills and refuses to come to the Red Cloud reservation. They have … given up trying to find him. Dan is not even at the reservation. Fort Keogh is much farther north, in Montana. I fear he will not get here in time, my father.”

Zeke closed his eyes. “It doesn’t matter any more, Wolf’s Blood. Go now. Please go.”

The young man cried openly then, unable to stop himself. He bent low and hugged his father. “I love you,” he sobbed at the man’s ear.

“And I love you, my son,” Zeke replied, stroking the boy’s hair. “You have been … an honorable son … and I have loved you as my own life. You are my life … and Abbie’s. Our seed created the best of both our worlds. I will be with you always, Wolf’s Blood, for my blood runs in your veins.”

The boy pulled away, choking in a sob, gently touching his father’s forehead. “God be with you,” he whispered. He rose and ran out of the barracks. He kept running, out into the darkness, where he fell to the ground and wept. There would be no sleep for him that night.

At Dull Knife’s refusal to return south, the soldiers came to the barracks the next day and put chains and iron bars over the doors. A constant guard was put around the building. There would be no more food and no more warmth, for no fuel would be provided for the heating stove. Day moved into night, and it was bitterly cold. Women and children shivered, but they helped the men begin to silently put together the many pieces of guns they had managed to hide from the soldiers. One woman helped Zeke rise. He drew on that special inner strength that
his Indian blood gave him, determined he would help these Cheyenne escape and hoping to die in the attempt. The woman rubbed his hands for him, blowing on them to bring warmth. The Indians worked silently and diligently, with only the bright winter moon for light. This would be their last great battle.

Men painted their faces, while women piled anything they could get their hands on under the windows through which they would all make their escape. And in the darkness, they made their move.

Windows were suddenly battered outward, sashes and all. Warriors and women began pouring out, quickly killing or injuring the guards with the guns they had put back together. There was almost instant gunfire from all directions, as soldiers came dashing out of their barracks, leaping onto horses in only their underwear and riding after fleeing Indians.

From somewhere deep inside his soul, Zeke Monroe pulled on incredible strength, leaping through a window with the agility of the others. He would not die crawling on his hands and knees! Zeke let out a war whoop as a soldier headed for him, and he pulled the knife, letting out a blood-curdling scream as he rammed it into the man’s heart and ripped downward. He knelt down to take the man’s scalp, and that was when he felt the jolt in his back. There was no pain, but he knew.

He turned to see a soldier standing behind him, the man’s rifle still smoking. He actually smiled. “It is a good time to die!” he shouted at the soldier, who frowned in confusion, remembering that this man was supposed to be an Army scout. Zeke started to rise, in spite of a gaping hole in the middle of his back; the frightened soldier backed up and fired again, the bullet ripping into Zeke’s chest. Zeke fell backward then, the infamous knife still gripped in his hand. He felt the life seeping out of him, but he refused to let go of the knife. He heard someone shouting in the distance.

“I am a scout!” he heard someone say. “Don’t shoot! He is my father. I only wish to help him!”

Wolf’s Blood! He must hang on, just one more second. He must see his son’s face once more. Then the boy was there,
kneeling close, groaning the word
father
in Cheyenne. Zeke smiled for him, reaching up and touching his hair.

“Nohahan,”
he whispered lovingly.

All around them soldiers rode out after fleeing Indians, cutting down nearly half of the Cheyenne warriors. Women and children scattered, but the soldiers found them, killing many of them before they could surrender. One of those killed was Dull Knife’s own daughter. Only thirty-two Cheyenne would truly escape to freedom, while a handful hid in the rocks only a few miles from the fort, among them Dull Knife himself, his wife, and surviving son.

None of it mattered now to Wolf’s Blood, as he sat holding his father’s head in his lap, talking lovingly to the man until suddenly Zeke’s hand relaxed and the knife fell from it.

At home on the Arkansas River Abigail Trent Monroe suddenly sat up, wide awake. Someone had called her, she was certain. In her confusion she reached out for Zeke, then remembered he was not there. But surely it had been his voice.…

Her heart pounded. She got out of bed, pulling a robe around her. The fire had dwindled and the house was cold from a bitter January night. She had worried so much over how her husband must be suffering in the bitter cold. But now she was made colder by the dread that enveloped her. She hurried to the window and looked out at a full moon. A cloud suddenly swept across it, blotting it out, and the wind blew across the plains with an eerie wail, like women crying.

“Zeke,” she whispered. Outside a wolf howled, then another and another, as though the entire ranch was surrounded by them.

For days the soldiers trailed the thirty-two Cheyenne who had managed to get free of the fort and were headed north. The strays were finally surrounded and trapped at Hat Creek Bluffs in a deep buffalo wallow. The soldiers charged the wallow, firing into it, retreating, charging again and firing again, until at last no Indians fired back. Only nine Cheyenne survived, mostly women and children. Dull Knife managed to make his
way to Pine Ridge, where he and his family were made prisoners on Red Cloud’s reservation.

In the meantime Little Wolf had spent the winter with his own followers living in pits dug into the side of a riverbank. When the weather warmed, they headed for the Tongue River. A lieutenant found them and agreed to talk, convincing Little Wolf finally to surrender, promising he and his people would not be shot. Little Wolf had no choice, his people too weak to fight any longer. They were taken to Fort Keogh, where many of the young men became scouts, just to have something to do, and where many more fell to whiskey and ruin.

After many months, permission was finally granted for the prisoners who had been taken back to Fort Robinson to be united with their Sioux friends on the Red Cloud Agency at Pine Ridge, where they joined Dull Knife. Later Little Wolf’s people were given a reservation near Fort Keogh, and Dull Knife and his people were transferred there so that all the Northern Cheyenne who had fled the southern reservation could be together.

Thus the Cheyenne—or what was left of them—would be forever separated; the Southern Cheyenne in Oklahoma, the Northern Cheyenne in Montana, never again to reunite, never again to fight.

A weary Dan Monroe had reached Fort Robinson a week too late, discovering the disaster that had taken place there, and learning that his beloved half brother had been killed. By then Wolf’s Blood had left with his father’s frozen body wrapped onto a travois, setting out on a journey to the mountains, where he would bury his father alone.

In January, just two days after Zeke’s death, Ellen gave birth to a tiny daughter, naming her Lillian Rose after Ellen’s dead sister. The weather was too bad for traveling, and it was not until mid-February, when there was a several-day thaw, that Hal and Ellen could bring their new baby to meet her grandmother. But the meeting was a mixture of joy and sorrow, for Hal had been brought a message from Fort Lyon.

Abbie greeted them warmly, but she was thin, her eyes circled. She had told no one about the night she had awakened, thinking Zeke had called to her. Hal and Ellen let her hold her
granddaughter for a while. Abbie had always loved babies, ever mourning not being able to have any more after Jason. At twenty-eight she had already had seven children, all by the seed of Zeke Monroe. Finally Ellen took the baby from her arms, and Hal stepped over and put a hand on Abbie’s shoulder.

“Abbie, we … we got a message from Fort Lyon a few days ago,” he told his mother-in-law. Ellen sat down with the baby, burying her face in the infant’s neck, unable to look at her mother. Abbie sat rigid, her heart aching so fiercely she wondered if she were dying herself. She looked up at Hal.

“Zeke?”

He frowned and sighed. “There was a damned blood bath up at Fort Robinson. The goddamned government came through with orders that they all be sent back south, in the dead of winter. Dull Knife refused. I guess they’d taken guns apart and hid them, and when they were told they couldn’t go south they put them back together in secret and made a break for it. I … I don’t know the details of Zeke’s involvement in the whole thing, but he … he was shot, Abbie, by soldiers.”

She felt only numbness, as though all her blood had left her body. She could not even cry, nor was she surprised. She rose from the chair, walking to a window while the others watched, not sure what they expected of her. Margaret held her chin proudly, facing Hal.

“Mother and I know the details without having to be told. My father fought with them. He helped them escape. He would have had it no other way.” Her voice choked on the last words and she ran outside.

Jason pressed his lips together, not wanting to cry in front of the others. He felt suddenly empty and alone. Abbie turned to Hal. “Tell me, Hal. Was it on the ninth of January?”

He frowned. “How did you know?”

She closed her eyes, putting a hand to her chest. “I marked it … on my calendar. He called to me.”

Ellen broke into heavy sobbing, and Morgan went out to find Margaret. Jason wept quietly at the table, busily wiping at tears that came too fast for him to hide. Sonora stared wide-eyed at Hal. “What about my husband?” she whispered, so panicked
that her voice would not come.

“Wolf’s Blood is all right. He’ll be a while yet, Sonora. He’s taken his father to the mountains to bury him high—on a platform. It was Zeke’s wish.”

The girl covered her face and wept. Abbie watched them all, and for some strange reason her tears would not come. She knew that the real problem was that she did not dare break down. She was not ready. She could not face the reality of this—not yet. She must be strong for the children, until they were strong again. For the day would come when she could accept this truth, and on that day she would need them more than she had ever needed them.

“Why do you weep?” she said to Ellen and Jason, holding her chin proudly. “Your father died the way he wanted to die—fighting like a true Cheyenne warrior. That was what he was at heart, you know. He died proud and fighting, not a crippled, groaning man in a bed he could not get out of. Now we must all be strong. This is Zeke Monroe’s ranch, and we will keep it going just like he did. We will continue to raise fine horses, and we will all make him proud of the family of his seed.”

She walked to the bedroom, and Ellen wiped at her eyes, looking at her husband. “This isn’t right, Hal,” she whispered. “Why isn’t she crying? Why isn’t she upset?”

He stared at the bedroom doorway for a moment, then turned to her. “I don’t like it. She’s refusing to let it settle, Ellen. I’m going to go talk to Margaret and Morgan about this.”

He walked out, and in the bedroom Abbie went to the window and looked out at a bright blue sky and over a snowy ridge where she had so often watched Zeke approach on horseback. She could see him now, just as vividly as if he really were there. She smiled. Perhaps it was all a mistake after all. Perhaps he had only been wounded, and that was why she felt him calling to her. After all, he had always come back to her. She would not give up or give in—not yet. She would wait—for Wolf’s Blood.

It was April when Little Zeke came running to the house to
get his grandmother. “Someone is coming!” the boy told her. “Mother says she thinks it is Wolf’s Blood!”

Abbie stared at the doorway. She had slept little over these weeks, trying to convince herself that her invincible husband would be all right after all. She had sat up praying night after night, fighting the torture of reality, telling herself there was a great possibility her Zeke would fool them all and come riding in on his grand Appaloosa, sweeping her up into his arms and taking her to their secret lovenest.