The Savage Heart (20 page)

“You're cousins, of course. Are you Sioux, then?” Stanley asked politely.

“We're not cousins,” Matt returned. “That was a fiction to keep people from asking too many questions. Actually, Stanley, Tess is my wife.”

“Yes, I am,” she replied. She and Matt gazed at each other with such love that Stanley was faintly embarrassed.

“Only among the Sioux, though,” Tess added.

“Only until I can find a minister to perform a ceremony that's legal in Chicago,” Matt told her with a chuckle. “Stanley can give you away. Would you like that?”

Stanley gasped. “You would…honor me in such a way? Oh, sir!”

Matt clapped him on the shoulder affectionately. “You're a fine young man, Stanley, and I'm going to give you a lot more work in the future. You've proved yourself to me in every necessary way. You're a credit to my agency.”

Stanley beamed. “Thank you, sir!”

“Thank you, Stanley.”

The young man, red-faced with pleasure, beat a hasty retreat to his own office. Tess went with Matt into his. He closed the door behind them and leaned back against it to study her.

“I gather your answer is yes?” He nodded at the paper she still held in her hand. “Yes!”

He moved toward her, glancing at the photograph. “It's rather flattering, isn't it?”

“You're very handsome,” she replied softly. “And I love you with or without long hair.”

He grinned. “I'm glad.”

She held the paper up. “Why?”

“You taught me the futility of running from the past,” he said simply. “You never run from anything, Tess, and I never used to. But I'd let myself become demoralized by what happened at Wounded Knee. When I finally turned around and looked into my darkness, all I saw there were shadows without substance.” He drew her close. “Our children will be unique,” he murmured, bending to her surprised mouth. “And I want a lot of them….”

She didn't say another word. Her lips parted under his hard mouth, and she clung to him with every ounce of her strength. They would be beautiful children, she thought, and she would be grateful every day of her life that she had helped Matt make his peace with the past.

Snowflakes struck the windowpanes, and the wind was howling. Tess seemed to hear sound from far away; the rhythm of drumbeats and the sizzling of campfires. A noble people were rising up from the ashes of their ancient civilization. Their voices called across the years, across the miles, and breathed beauty into the faraway future.

One day, she thought, the Oglala would once again be a proud nation, a nation of educated men and women who would challenge prejudice and demand their rightful place in the world. Women would do that, as well. The outcome was as inevitable as life itself, as certain as the happiness she would share with her own Raven Following. And the two of them would be vanguards in the fight to make those dreams come true. Her heart was full of love, of hope.

Chicago
Late Autumn, 1938

Tess squeezed her husband's hand, and he shot her a grin. They were watching their daughter, their second born, being sworn in as the first woman to hold public office in the state of Illinois. Her brother, a famous trial lawyer who fought for the rights of all minorities and especially of the Sioux people, stood at her side. His dark good looks drew as many admiring glances from the women present as his sister's beauty drew from the men. The weather was blustery, promising yet another cold, snowy winter, and the windows rattled. It sounded like sweet music to Tess.

How her savage heart had gentled, Tess thought, remembering the wedding and the joining with this man
at her side that had produced these wonderful and accomplished children. She and Matt had married during Christmas week in a lovely ceremony that led to a gloriously happy marriage. Of course, Matt was obliged to bail Tess out of jail from time to time—until the early 1920s. There was a great drop in the frequency of those trips to police stations in 1920 when the amendment to the Constitution giving the vote to women passed both houses of Congress. They stopped altogether in 1924 after the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, giving citizenship and the right to vote to all native Americans born within the territorial limits of the U.S. She glanced across the room, where the now very upright citizen Jim Kilgallen, whom no one for twenty-five years had dared call Diamond Jim, sat with his beloved wife, Nan. Nan's sister, Edith, represented by Jared Dunn, had been acquitted of murder and had received a suspended sentence for manslaughter all those long years ago, and lived far away now, in the South.

Sighing, Tess thought about how Matt had once worried so obsessively about having children who would have to bridge two worlds. Through the passing years, all those doubts of his had vanished.

“And you thought our children would end up as victims,” she chided him in a near whisper as their tall, slender daughter placed her hand on the Bible in preparation for taking her oath of office.

Matt, his hair laced with silver, as was Tess's now, held her hand warmly in his and chuckled softly. “While you
never had a single doubt about their potential.” He pressed her fingers closer to his and looked lovingly into her age-lined green eyes. “Tell me now, before we take her and our son and his companion to dinner, do you regret any part of our lives together?”

She frowned thoughtfully, and mischief flared briefly in the pale eyes that met his dark ones. “Well, maybe just one thing.”

“What?”

She leaned close and pulled his head down so that she could whisper in his ear without fear of being overheard. “I regret that we can't go back and do it all over again!”

The glorious light in his eyes was eclipsed only by the wonder in his achingly tender kiss. And if people stared at the elderly couple kissing so devotedly in the audience in front of God, a handful of reporters and half of the Chicago political machine, they didn't mind at all. Neither did their daughter, who chuckled unashamedly as she shook hands with the governor and stepped down from the stage to join them. As for their son, he raised an amused eyebrow and shared a secret smile as he walked over to join the pretty girl in the front row.

“I thought you said both your parents were Sioux,” the girl remarked.

He glanced at them, love shining in his eyes. “They are.”

“But your mother's complexion is so fair and—”

“It isn't her complexion that makes her a Sioux. It's her heart.”

He would have expounded on that theme, but Tess waved to him, standing in the circle of Matt's strong arm. She was laughing like a young girl in the throes of her first love. And in her heart, she was.

Matt drew her closer. For an instant he imagined that he heard the thud of the hooves of fast ponies racing free across the plains, and the throb of the drums around the campfire, and the melancholy falsetto of the singers. The old days were gone forever. Men could fly without wings, and motion pictures were rewriting the history of the struggle over possession of western lands. But when Matt closed his eyes, he could hear the wind whisper to him, of brave deeds and harmony and boundless freedom. His children would never know those things. But he and Tess had lived the old ways.

“What are you thinking?” Tess asked softly.

He opened his eyes and looked down at her. “I was remembering the sound of old voices raised in prayer songs.”

She moved closer and laid her cheek against his jacket. “One day,” she whispered, “the old voices will sing to us again, and we'll ride our ponies across the plains.”

He kissed her forehead with tender lips and drew her even closer. “Together.”

She smiled. “Of course, together. God would never divide a soul. And ours is a shared soul.”

He laid his cheek against her silver hair. He couldn't find
the words to tell her how strongly he shared that feeling. But he didn't have to; she already knew.

Above Tess's head, their son and daughter were grinning wickedly. Matt didn't move a muscle. He just winked.