Sioux Slave (22 page)

The big scout paused. “What do you suppose happened to everyone?”

“We never did find out, although there was a lot of publicity over it. Those sixteen wagons had been parked there so long, the canvas had rotted off the frames. The metal on the wheels was rusted away. We couldn't even figure out how long they'd been there; maybe a couple of years, maybe twenty.”

“Isn't that kind of far off any known trail?” The scout smoked and thought about it. “Not much water up that way. Maybe when they realized they were hopelessly lost, they tried to abandon the wagons, walk out.”

“Poor devils, who knows?” The officer leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. “That's why I'm so intrigued by this trader's story of a white Sioux.”

Terry's dark eyes must have mirrored the fact that he didn't see any connection at all.

“Don't you see?” The officer clapped his pink hands together triumphantly. “Think what a news story this would make if this man was a lost white child who came from that wagon train and had been raised all these years as a Sioux.”

Terry couldn't hold back a grin as he blew smoke toward the ceiling. “Lieutenant, that's the wildest story I've ever heard.”

“Why? It happened with that little Cynthia Ann Parker in Texas. When they found her a couple of years ago, she was just like a savage herself: had to be forced to return to civilization.”

Terry shook his head. “Lieutenant, I've got two brothers riding as scouts with other outfits. Between the three of us, we're all over the frontier. If there was a white Sioux warrior out there all these years, one of us would know about it by now.”

“Oh, yes,” the officer leaned back in his chair. “One of them rides with Frank North's Pawnee Scouts, doesn't he?”

Terry nodded. “The youngest, Asataka.”

The pink-faced officer looked impressed. “Asataka. Is that the one everyone calls Johnny Ace?

“Yes.” Terry tossed his cigarette into the spittoon. “Our father was killed by a Cheyenne Dog Soldier named Iron Knife; but he had killed Iron Knife's father years before.”

“I've heard of Iron Knife, too,” the officer frowned. “Is it true what they say about those Dog Soldiers? I heard in a fight, they tie themselves to a stake driven in the ground so they either have to win or die on that spot.”

Terry nodded. “It's true. The Sioux have the same sort of thing, the red sash of the Strong Heart warrior society. One of them's a tough Hunkpapas named Sitting Bull. There's two Oglalas, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse that you'll be hearing more of before these Indian wars end.”

The Lieutenant snorted with laughter. “Really, Terry, you can't be serious! They're just primitive savages. What can the Cheyenne and Sioux do against the mighty United States army?”

Terry paused in the doorway. “Lieutenant, a smart man who wants to stay alive knows his enemy, respects his ability. There'll come a day you'll remember my words.”

He turned and strode out of the office.

The big Pawnee hadn't even waited to be dismissed. Lieutenant Jackson sniffed in disgust at this breaking of rules as he went to the door and watched the wide-shouldered Pawnee swagger away.

Getting all alarmed over nothing. Those primitive savages had better not stand in the way of civilization. With a smug, self-satisfied smile, he picked up his pen off the floor and returned to his report. By the book. That's how things were supposed to be done. If it were up to him, he wouldn't even hire those uppity Indian scouts.

Too bad that trader had died. Not that the dead man appeared to be anyone of consequence. There'd probably be no big fuss raised over him. But whatever he knew had died with him.

The white Sioux. Lieutenant Jackson leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. The idea intrigued him. Certainly he'd been looking for a way to get a little attention the last few months. He wanted a promotion and a ticket out of this godforsaken spot. If he found this white warrior who'd been raised by Indians, he'd be the darling of the newspapers. At least it was worth a try.

Some of the forts were beginning to close now that the war was over and the “Galvanized Yankees” were being mustered out. Colonel Dimon was being transferred from Fort Rice, and that was one of those hellholes that would probably be closed in a few months, but there were others across the frontier.

After a moment's thought, he reached for a new pen and dipped it in the inkwell. He'd send a message to the other forts on the frontier, asking them to be on the lookout for a white warrior riding with the Sioux. If this yellow-haired savage really existed, Jackson intended to track him down and capture him. Maybe an ambitious lieutenant could earn himself some captain's bars and a comfortable post back East!

Kimi and Hinzi returned to the Lakota camp with the war party. The old chiefs frowned as the men gathered to tell what had happened.

One of them shook his head, staring into the council fire. “That one who might have escaped will go to the soldiers if he lives. Or the bluecoats might find the bodies and begin to hunt us like rabbits. They are looking for any excuse to attack us.”

Hinzi nodded. “This is true. From my time at Fort Rice, I can tell you the whites lust after your whole land because they think the area is full of gold. They will push the Army to move or destroy the tribes.”

One Eye smoked the pipe and passed it on. “Perhaps we should move our camp.”

Gopher accepted the pipe, took a puff. “We cannot avoid the whites by continually moving. Sooner or later, they will have us cornered and there will be no place to go.”

The old man sighed. “We will fight only when we have to, knowing that in the long run, we cannot win; we can only buy a little time for ourselves. So we will pack the camp now and move deeper into the hills.”

And so it was done.

Kimi breathed a sigh of relief as they traveled deeper into the wild country away from the forts. “Perhaps,” she said to Hinzi as she set up her tipi and helped her mother with hers, “perhaps now we can be left alone and be happy.”

Wagnuka looked frail and ill. “We are running on borrowed time, daughter, all of us. No matter how hard we fight, sooner or later the
wasicu
will wash us away like a river sweeping along the brown sand. I do not expect to live long enough to see it, but you will, Kimimila.”

Kimi frowned. “You have a long time to live yet, Mother, and now we will have plenty to eat and you will be well-cared for with Hinzi as your son-in-law.”

“No.” The old woman shook her head. “I have not felt well for many moons, but I hid it from you, knowing there was no one else to look after you.”

“Hinzi will look after me.” Kimi said confidently as they built a camp fire.”

“I truly hope so.” Wagnuka looked at her. “Remember his own civilization calls to his heart. Someday he may return to his other life.”

“In that case, he will take me with him.” She reached for a kettle.

“Will he?” Her mother gave her a piercing look. “And if he does, will you fit in? Will you be happy among the rich white people he comes from?”

“Anywhere Hinzi is, there I will go and be happy,” Kimi answered, but she felt slightly troubled. She fingered the medicine charm on the thong around her neck. Would her white love be ashamed of her when he saw how poorly she fitted in among his friends? She would not borrow trouble by thinking about it.

 

 

The weeks that followed were like a dream to her, the summer warm and bittersweet. Always Kimi would remember that time, how she and Hinzi rode through the prairies and lazed about beside small creeks. There was plenty of game and the living was easy. In the heat of the afternoon they made love and slept until dusk. In the evening they gathered around the council fires and listened to the ancient tales of the Sioux.

Hinzi was soon accepted better than Kimi could ever have hoped for. He learned to speak Lakota more fluently, learned to handle a bow and lance as well as any warrior, and rode in the front of war parties against the enemy tribes.

Army patrols were seen more often and there was no way of knowing what was happening among the whites as the summer deepened. Some of the camps of the Seven Council Fires clashed with the soldiers periodically, but this band went out of their way to avoid trouble. In the month whites call July, Sitting Bull and some of his followers attacked Fort Rice, with mixed results, or so the messages carried by the criers between the Sioux camps said. This only brought more soldiers into the Dakotas.

When this word came, Hinzi's face grew sad, and he seemed to brood. “Perhaps I bring trouble to your people,” he said, staring into their tipi fire late at night. “Perhaps the soldiers are looking for me.”

Kimi put her arms around his neck and hugged him to her. “No, it is the gold and land they want. No doubt they have thought you dead a long time now.”

He patted her arm absently. “It bothers me that my family may be grieving for me, sad because they, too, think me dead.”

It was the first time he had mentioned his white life in a long time. “Do you miss your other life?” she blurted without thinking and then was sorry she did so, knowing she might not want to know the answer.

“Not like I thought I would. Sometimes my other life seems only a distant dream like a spirit vision.”

She thought about her own vague spirit dreams. Sometimes a memory stirred, but even as her mind grabbed for it, like smoke it drifted away and was lost.

“Kimi, I know in my heart the Sioux's days are numbered. They cannot live this way forever. Sooner or later, the army will gather them all up and put them on reservations. Then your people will be neither wild or free.”

Your
people. He did not say
our
people. She leaned against his shoulder and stared into the fire. “We will fight. The men of the Seven Council Fires are brave.”

“Yes.” Hinzi nodded. “But in the end, it will do no good.”

“If we fight, will you fight with us?”

“Against my own people? I don't know. I don't seem to know where my heart lies anymore.”

For a long time he said nothing else, and Kimi waited, wondering if he were thinking about the elegant beauty and whether she was still waiting for him back in civilization. Maybe if Kimi delayed him long enough here, she could give him a son and the other woman would look far less desirable to him. Absently Kimi picked up a stick with her left hand and drew a butterfly in the dirt as she hummed her spirit song.

“You never have told me how you knew that song.”

She paused. “What song?”

He put his arm around her shoulders. “Never mind, little butterfly.” He kissed her very gently. “I suppose your past doesn't matter any more–least of all to you.”

She snuggled against him, feeling safe and loved. “Nothing in my life seemed to matter until I met you, Hinzi.” She wondered if he felt the same, but he didn't say anything, only began to make love to her with a slow sweetness that tantalized the senses and made her dizzy with feeling for him.

 

 

Late in the summer, old Wagnuka's health grew worse and she took to her blankets, hardly venturing out at all. Kimi sat by her mother's bed near the fire of the tipi, gently wiping her fevered brow.

“My daughter, I will be gone before the first frost comes.” Her voice was almost a whisper.

“Don't be foolish.” Kimi struggled to keep her voice from breaking. “You seem to be a little better. Besides, what would I do without you?”

“I used to worry about what would happen to you, Kimi, after Otter and I were gone.” She put a frail hand on Kimi's arm. “Now I do not worry. I think the white warrior will look after you. I would speak with him.”

Kimi hesitated. It was taboo for a son-in-law to speak to his wife's mother.

“I am dying,” Wagnuka said. “There is something I need to tell him.”

Kimi tried to speak. Her throat seemed to choke up and she could not swallow. Her eyes blinded by hot, stinging tears. All she could do was nod as she went outside to find Hinzi. “My mother would speak with you.”

She saw the somber expression of his handsome face. “She is worse?”

Kimi nodded. He put his arm around her and they both stooped to reenter the tipi.

“Mother,” Kimi said softly, “Hinzi has come as you asked.”

The old woman's eyes flickered open and she smiled. “It is good that a woman have a man,” she whispered. “I have missed mine a long time now. Perhaps tonight I will ride the Spirit Road to the stars and see him again.”

Hinzi patted her hand. “You will live a long time yet; live to see grandchildren playing around your tipi.”

“I wish I could,” she whispered, “but I have been sick a long time. Perhaps I only hung on all this time waiting for someone who would take care of my butterfly.”

Hinzi assured her. “I will take care of her, Wagnuka, you know that.”

“I release you from your promise,” she whispered.

“What promise?” Kimi asked.

Hinzi hesitated as if loathe to tell.

Wagnuka said, “I made him promise he wouldn't take you away to the white civilization as long as I lived. Maybe it was selfish on my part.”

Kimi felt her heart lurch. Was that what had been keeping Hinzi here? Now at the first chance he got, would he return to civilization and take her with him? She wanted to stay with the Sioux; they were the only family she had ever known. She would do whatever was best for Hinzi, even if it meant letting him leave her behind. True love sacrifices all with no thought of self.

 

 

Old Wagnuka died that night. They dressed her in her finest things, placed her on a platform up in the hills and killed a good pony beneath the burial scaffold so she might ride to join her husband. When Kimi tried to cut her arm and legs with a knife to show her grief, Hinzi stopped her. Nor would he let her sit alone out there, keening and grieving. He picked her up and carried her, sobbing, back to their tipi.

“She would not want this, Kimi,” he said softly.

“I know; but it's the way of my people. She was all I had in this world.”

“No, sweet butterfly, you have me and I will take care of you.” He held her while she wept against his chest. She felt safe in his powerful arms, and finally she snuggled down against him and slept, too weary and grieved to think of anything but the comfort of his heart beating against her.

 

 

The summer passed and her grief lessened because it is the way of things for death to follow life and she knew Wagnuka was part of that cycle. As the Moon of the Changing Seasons that
wasicu
call October loomed on the horizon, Kimi began to hope for a child.

Hinzi stopped repairing a bow and frowned when she mentioned it. “I am not sure this is the time to have a child, Kimi. Besides to me, you are not much more than a child yourself. I should be ashamed to use you like a woman.”

“I have a woman's body and desires,” she argued.

“Don't I know that?” He pulled her to him, kissed her deeply. “Sometimes I forget that I was ever an arrogant, rich
wasicu
named Rand Erikson.”

“I want a child,” she repeated. “When your strong son sucks my milk, you will be proud and never again think of going away.”

He shook his head and frowned. “The reports we hear from the other Council Fires is bad; there is more trouble with the whites invading the land.”

“Always people have had to face this,” Kimi said, kissing him. “There is never a good time to bring a child into the world.”

He didn't answer, and Kimi wondered if he were beginning to regret taking her as his woman or if he hungered for a return to the life he had known. She was afraid to ask. Kimi loved him–but she was not sure he truly loved her. If not, she didn't want to know.

 

 

Gradually, as the leaves turned gold and red, she stopped grieving for her mother. Hinzi himself seemed happy. In the crisp, cool dawns, they made love, then went for long rides, galloping their horses across the prairie. At night, they feasted on fat buffalo and deer and gathered around the big campfire to dance to the drums and hear the old legends.

Hinzi grew more skilled with a bow and lance. In the weeks that passed, he became known as a great hunter and a killer of their enemies when he went out with war parties against the Crow and 'Ree. There was talk that next year he might take part in the sacred Sun Dance that only the bravest of the warriors experienced, or be invited to join the Akicita warriors' society.

The happiness seemed too good to last, and Kimi sometimes lay awake at night after Hinzi slept beside her, thanking Wakan Tanka for her good fortune. This love, this happiness seemed almost too precious, too fragile, so she savored every minute of it.

It ended sooner than she expected.

 

 

One crisp autumn day, Kimi, Hinzi, little Saved By the Wolf and some other children were out picking nuts when Kimi spotted distant riders and pointed. “Look, Hinzi, it might be enemies.”

He frowned. “Maybe they haven't seen us. Children, get to your horses.”

The children obeyed, looking nervous.

Saved By the Wolf said, “They are dressed in blue. Are they soldiers?”