Sweet Savage Surrender (42 page)

Chapter Forty-Four

Skyraven's eyes opened wide as the small band of soldiers rode through the double gates of
Fort
Lyon
.  The sight of the cannon just inside the gates
made her flesh crawl with memories
of the
carnage to her people.
She gripped the saddle horn, feeling an  all consuming urge to flee but the soldier behind her held onto her like a great big bear, making escape impossible. 
H
iding her trepidation
,
she held her head high
,
determined that that the whites  assembled to witness the return of the soldiers would see that t
he Indians were not cowards. 

"Here they come....."   Excitement swept through the fort at their approach.  News of their  arrival had been sent on before them by
messenger
who had come with a small band led by Lieutenant Colonel Henry Sedgwick. The
whole
situation just got more interesting all the time, it was whispered
.  Skyraven felt the heat of quite a few eyes pointed he
r
way.

“Look, there’s one of those savages now. Must be a prisoner,” one white woman shrilled.

A prisoner. Yes,
Skyraven thought,
that was just what she was
. Remembering Lone Wolf’s words to her about his stay at the fort, she wondered if she, too, would be put in a cage.

“Where’s colonel
Chivington
?” came a voice from the gathered crowd.  The question seemed to intrigue everyone. It was asked over and over as if the man was a hero.

             
"He's out chasing some more Indians with a goodly portion of the "third"," a voice answered.  "Then he's gonna return
to
Denver
City
by another route along with two regiments of his one-hundred-day volunteers.”"

The procession of soldiers
passed by
a long row of stone buildings.
Skyraven’s eyes caught sight of a tall , slim, fashionably dressed woman standing on a wood-planked walkway in front of the open door
of one of the structures.  Perhaps she noticed her because the woman took a step in Skyraven's direction, staring at her all the while
,
though in a much friendlier manner than the others. 
The woman was dressed in a
shiny dress the color of a squirrel's fur,  with a high
collar, a bodice that buttoned down the front, and undersleeves all of white lace. The flounces on the skirt and sleeves were edged in black lace. Her small, white
cap-like
bonn
et sat high upon her head and was trimmed with yellow roses and tied with a wide yellow ribbon in a bow beneath her chin. Her dark-brown hair was parted in the middle and coiled around each ear in the manner
Skyraven
had seen the white women do their tresses.

“
Goodness above, who is that young woman with them?" the woman was asking in a voice that  held a tone of gentleness.  "What a
re they going to do with her?"

"One of the women of the Indian camp.  A survivor.  One of the soldiers says she's got white blood," someone in the cr
owd answered.  "A half-breed."

"The poor little thing..."  
The
woman wore a
deep-brown shawl which she pulled up around her shoulders
as she tried to get a closer look at Skyraven.  "She
must be frightened to death."

Skyraven was entranced by the sound of her low melodious voice, the tone of compassion
, and she suddenly took
an interest in the woman
. Her dress billowed out, for beneath was a hoop skirt, but skyraven did not know about such things and thought the woman had a very oddly formed body, m
uch like a tepee.
Skyraven cou
ld see white shoes with
inch
-
high heel
s
peeking out from below her skirt.   How on earth would the lady manage to walk in shoes with a high heel like that?
  
She had never seen clothes like these before
, not even on the few white women she had seen
.   She thought the Arapaho mode of dress was much prettier and would be much more comfortable. So thinking, she rubbed both  hands down the full length of her doe skin dress to remove some of the dust
so that the woman could see the embroidery emblazoned there
.  How proud she was that she had done the quill work herself.

The lieutenant who had been leading the group gave the
order to halt  and dismount. While the other soldiers scrambled off in every direction, he handed the reins of his horse over to a stable boy and hastened toward the
fashionably
dressed lady.
“Is your husband here?” he asked, seeming to be bothered by something.

"He'll be here in just a moment.  He wanted to greet you boys when you came back." 
  Once again the woman looked in Skyraven's direction
.  "Why is she here?"

"We were told not to take prisoners
,
but a couple of the boys just took it into their heads to claim her."  He toyed nervously with his hat as he spoke as if not wanting to spe
ak with her about the matter.  “
That's what I want to talk to your husband
about.  What to do with her."

"Can
't she go back to her people?"

"No, ma'am, she can't.
They're....they're all dead."

The woman put a gloved hand to her mouth.  "Oh, dear!"
             

As if to reassure her that she hadn't ought to worry
,
the blue coat who had taken a fancy to Skyraven slid off his horse and walked towards
the lady.  "She'll be just fine
.  Just fine.  I'm gonna take he back to
Boulder
with me to be my woman.  The colonel said we could lay claim to any property we wanted and so I have."  He g
rinned.  "Yes indeedy I have."

The woman drew herself up to her full height, showing her indignity.  "You most certainly will not take her with you.  Your property indeed!  I'll see what my husband has to
say about that!”

Skyraven was uneasy about all the attention she was getting.  But the fact that she hadn't been tied up or led to any of the buildings to be put in a
white
man's
prison made
him
breath easier.
To her way of thinking, the fact that they were not confining her made it obvious that she was not a prisoner. She did not know where she was supposed to go, but at least it appeared that she’d at least be able to walk about freely.
Finding a water barrel
,
she just sat there
looking around at her new surroundings. Everywhere there were blue-coated soldiers but few women and children. One
little girl
clung to her mother’s skirts as they walked past the wagon, another shrieked and looked at Skyraven as if she thought she would eat her alive.

What had this white mother told her child about
Ind
ia
n women to frighten her so” Skyraven wondered.

Several young soldiers walked past the wagon and eyed her up and down, then slapped each other on the back and guffawed. Once or twice they glanced back at her over their shoulders. One of the men turned around as if he was going to come back and grab her but continued on his way. It was just a gesture to amuse his companions.

Skyraven trembled her indignity.  White men were all wolves!  Resentment bubbled in her like a pot over a fire.
She hadn’t forgotten what white soldiers such as these had done to her village. And now to act as if she were something for their merriment
furth
er incensed her. She didn’t need their amorous glances, nor did she welcome them. She wouldn’t spit on any one of them. No,
nev
er again would she be taken in by a white man’s sweet talk!

Oh, John Hanlen
, her heart cried. 
How could you have betrayed me so
.  How often she had thought about this very fort, hoped to one day see it because he lived within.  Now such thoughts were painful reminders. 

Skyraven tried to push away the thoughts that troubled her, the visions of what she had seen in her village and yet they tormented her.  She wanted to put her hands to her ears to block out the sound of the screams and yet perhaps she would hear them in her mind even then.  She was so immersed in her own thoughts that she had forgotten
completely
about the woman until
she saw
a blue coat all decked out in fancy trim
walk over to the wagon where Skyraven sat all alone.

"Oh, look at the poor little thing, Henry.  How
forlorn she looks. Living with those savages must have been quite a trial.”

Skyraven bristled at the woman’s words. Her people were not savages, it was the
whites
who were. Yesterday and today they had proved it. Loving with her people had been joyful. Whereas being among the whites was already proving to be a trial.

The blue-coated man standing next to Skyraven eyed the Indian girl with disdain.
"Poor little thing my eye, Gwen Ella. 
She is an Indian.

The woman clucked her tongue in frustration. “If what I heard is correct, she is only half Indian. The other half is white. Blood just like ours flows in her veins, Henry, and she is one of god’s creatures.”

“And a fearsome one at that,” Henry Sedwick retorted. “If what those two volunteers from
Boulder
told me is correct, she put up quite a fight when they first came across her.” He put his arm protectively around his wife’s shoulders. “Remember, she is a
hostile
.” Henry Sedgwick appeased his wife because of her Quaker upbringing. “She is a squaw. An
Ind
ia
n. Probably a lie about her being white and all.”

"I don't
think so
, Henry.
” The woman put her index finger beneath
Skyraven’s
chin and tipped up her face for a better look. “
Look at that pale olive skin and those enormous blue eyes.  She is part white alright.  I can train her to be a good Christian woman.  I just know I can.  I feel it here."  Gwen Ella placed her hand over her heart.

He grunted. “You’d feel it there, all right, if she ever got a knife in her hand. Bloodthirsty, every last one of them.”

A low keening issued from Skyraven’s throat at his words, a mourning for her people.
While the woman and blue-coat talked, she closed her eyes and grieved for her loved ones.

Henry Sedgwick knew very well that the
Ind
ia
n maiden was not hostile and that the attack upon her village was without reason, yet he said not a word to his wife about what had been done.

“Bloodthirsty?” Gwen Ella Sedgwick shook her head. “I don’t think so,
dear
. I don’t think she would harm me at all. There is something gentle about her. Something noble.”

“Noble?” He threw back his head and laughed.

“Oh please, Henry. Can’t I at least take the chance. Can’t I have her? I could use her as a maid and….”

“No! I don’t want some
Ind
ia
n hanging around and getting in the
way.” In
truth he didn’t want a reminder of his part in the killings. “We had to punish her villagers. She might take revenge.”

“I don’t think she would. Please give her to me.”

Sedgwick looked at his wife, then at the
Ind
ia
n girl, and then at his wife again. Would he dare? Chivington would have a fit if he heard, and yet it appeared the colonel would be out of the way for a while. Perhaps he
could
give it a try, and then when Gwen Ella saw how unmanageable and unsuitable the girl would be, she would stop nagging him.

“All right!” His wife had just recently come from
Missouri
to live at the fort. Perhaps if she did have some help, it would make the
fort
se
em more like home. She had told him she felt harried with problems because she had no place to put her belongings and that she had not been able to find a decent maid to come with her. If the
Ind
ia
n girl worked out, fine; if not , he’d send her to live with the half-breed Bent at the trading post.

Skyraven just sat there
as the two of them discussed her future.  
She was tired, both physically and mentally. At the moment she didn’t really care what happened to her. The world as she knew it had died when the soldiers had killed her people.