No Other Man (6 page)

Whom he might have
killed . . .

She handed him the brandy the doctor had ordered. She stared
straight into his eyes as she did so. She didn't allow his fingers to touch
hers as she gave him the snifter. She hoped that God would forgive her for
praying that he would be a cripple even when this life ended and he rotted in
hell.

She hoped as well that God would forgive her since it had
occurred to her to poison him when he had first fallen. It was Skylar who had
made her see that they could not. Not out of fear for the law or any hangman.
But for their own souls. "No, my God, we can't; don't you see, we can't
become what he is, we can't; we need to beat him in life, don't you see?"

The doctor had turned to the table, sorting through towels
and liniments. "We shall begin here momentarily!" he said with forced
cheerfulness.

The senator kept smiling as his fingers curled around the
snifter.

"What a good girl you are, Sabrina!" he mocked.
"Such a comfort to me in my distress!"

"I hope you die!" she said in a calm, even whisper.

"But I won't," he promised her softly. "I'll
live a long life. And I'll see to it that I carry out all the responsibilities
I have regarding you, my dear. I'll care for you, I swear it. I do so enjoy
caring for you!"

"You'll never even be able to attempt to touch me again,
you bastard!"

"God takes care of the deserving."

"Yes, he does."

The senator started to laugh. The doctor turned. "Sabrina!
Ah, doctor! She is, indeed, the delight of my discomfort." The doctor
turned back to his work. The senator leaned toward Sabrina. She backed away a
step. His face lost the convivial smile that had fooled so many. His eyes
burned. "Now as to the other one ... well, she will have her comeuppance.
You think you're so clever; you little fools think that you're free. .. well,
you're not.
She's dead!
That's what she is. No matter that you were there with your
sweet, glib explanation of events ..."

Sabrina took another step away from him. "I'll leave you
to your patient, and your work, Doctor," she said. She stared at the
senator a moment longer, lowering her voice. "You'll never find her!"
she promised very softly.

She turned and exited the room.

The senator watched her go, anger darkening his face. Then he
started to laugh. And he looked down at his blanketed knees and then at his
feet.

God bless America. Oh, Lord, yes. God bless America.

His toes were twitching. Twitching. Moving. Within a little
more time, days ... weeks ...

He'd be walking again. But no one would know. No one. In
fact,
she
just might be the first to share
the joy of his recovery.

When she tried to run.

And he ran right after her.

The fire flickered warmly against Hawk's
face. Ghosts of the past still seemed to dance within it, playing upon his
memory.

When his father came for his mother, Flying Sparrow took on
the Christian name of Kathryn. She was still very young herself, and very
beautiful. Many warriors had wanted her over the years, but she had chosen to
remain with her father, and as a boy, Hawk realized that she had waited. That
she had believed in her heart that her courageous white warrior would return
for her. She had lived for that day, and for her son.

She had been Thunder Hawk's support in all things. He loved
her. She was leaving. He was old enough to make choices for himself, yet...

The white man had given him a Christian name as well. 1 le
was to be called Andrew David Douglas. The white man didn't try to influence
him. He came to him and told him that he would love him always and welcome him
always, just as he had made his place with the Sioux and knew that he could
come to them.

Thunder Hawk was still not sure about the white man. But
Mile-High-Man had reminded him that he must learn to listen to many languages.
The message in his vision quest must be obeyed.

Both his grandfather and his mother begged him to give David
Douglas a chance.

He sat with his grandfather one day, still torn and demanding
to know why he should do so.

"David Douglas is a chief in his land. A lord, they call
him. He is honored in Scotland, as his father before him."

"We are nowhere near Scotland. We have Americans
encroaching on us always!"

His grandfather smiled, nodding his wise old head. "He
came here like a warrior in his way, to make his own mark. Perhaps because the
nomad's blood was in his veins. Because he had read of wide open prairies, of
endless vistas, of tall grasses that stretched forever. He read about people
who were different. He came here to explore, and we seized him but did not kill
him. Even faced with certain death, he was a friend who wanted to know us,
rather than hate us. He sought knowledge, wisdom, those qualities we seek ourselves.
He needed to learn our religion, our way."

"He left us."

"His father and brother died; his white wife was very
sick. He loved both wives and did his duty to the woman he had taken first.
When he could have lived a life of greatest comfort, he returned here. His
place is in another land. His heart is here. Now he has arranged it that others
care for the title and property that will go to his older son by the white way,
yet he has come here with that son as well to live near the rivers where we
place our villages. He knows your world. He learned it with his blood. He was
our captive first, then our relative." He took a very deep breath, looking
at Hawk. "One day, a tide of white men will come. I saw it many years ago,
in my own vision."

"The tide already comes!"

His grandfather raised a hand in acknowledgment. "You
have yet to see the wave! There will be blood before then. We will fill the
prairie with our blood, nurture it, give to it. But we cannot stem the flow of
white men. Therefore, some of us must befriend them. Some must fight, and some
must die, and some must live. Else we have died and bled for nothing. Do you
understand?"

"I understand I should fight!"

"The hardest fights are often those we wage within ourselves.
Tell me, Thunder Hawk, when a Sioux brave has two ponies and his neighbor has
none, what must the brave do?"

Thunder Hawk frowned. "Give his neighbor his second
pony. We must always look after one another; we must always be generous. We are
taught this from birth—"

"Then you must be generous with this man who is your
lather. You will always be Sioux. You will also always be white. You cannot be
selfish with yourself. You must share your love with your mother, with your
people—and with your white father."

His grandfather's words had heavily influenced him as had his
vision and the words of the holy man.

But in the end, the main reason he had gone to live with Lord
David Douglas was because he learned that Flying Sparrow—Kathryn—was ill. She
lost weight daily; she could not sew the buffalo hides into a tipi, a garment,
or a
inirfleche
in which to carry things. She
couldn't live where i lie smoke sometimes wafted back into the tipi in winter.
Where there might be raids by whites or Crows or other enemies, where she might
have to run in the cold and the snow. She needed the care that Andrew Douglas
longed to give her. Hawk could begrudge David much, but he couldn't deny that
the white man loved his mother. That love was apparent in every move that the
man made.

So he came to discover just what the white blood in him
meant.

Life was different. So different.

He found himself in a huge house with many
rooms. He learned to sit on chairs rather than on the floor.

He met his white brother.

His brother was named David, like their father. He spent only
part of his time in the United States, in the fine house Lord Douglas built
near the Black Hills, because he was being groomed to become the next Lord
Douglas, and he was being sent to school in England.

But no matter how hard Hawk tried to dislike his older
brother, he could not do so. The younger David was too much like the older
David, interested in everything and everyone around him, intrigued by different
cultures rather than repulsed by them. He listened avidly to Hawk's boastful
stories about counting coup and the Sioux ways of courage. He was eager to
ride with Hawk when he went to visit his Sioux relations. He had a smile that
could draw anger from the soul, melting it away.

As they grew older, they grew closer. When Kathryn died soon
after Hawk's seventeenth birthday, his brother mourned with him, kneeling by
her coffin throughout the night. For once, Hawk was glad to be part white, glad
to have a reason to allow the tears to slide down his face.

His brother shed silent tears along with him.

In the years to come, they argued about the American
Revolution and the War of 1812. They discussed American politics and British.
David went to Oxford.

And ironically, Hawk was sent to West Point. Appointments
were not easily acquired. But as a younger son of a British peer, David Douglas
had spent a great deal of time in the employ of the United States Army. Hawk
was half British and half American Indian, a most unusual candidate for the
military academy, but one of David's very good friends, an aide-de-camp to none
other than General Win- field Scott, saw to the appointment. David was greatly
pleased by the honor for his son. Hawk, who had yet to realize that he loved
his father, was anxious to please him. Also, for the benefit of his Sioux
chief, he was determined to learn everything he could about the workings of the

American
army. Another factor influenced him. By this time, admittedly, he had gradually
become just as white as he was Indian.

Neither he nor his father realized at the time why the
appointment had come so easily.

The United States government had nothing against Indians
battling Indians. Army patrols often used Crow scouts against the Sioux.
"Civilized" Cherokees and Creeks had been used against the Seminoles
in the Florida wars.

Such tactics could work both ways.

Hawk found himself at West Point. He was a natural student,
and the world was opened to him in many ways.

At first, he was taunted for being Indian. Because of that,
he went about scoring some of the best grades in his class and excelling in
marksmanship, swordsmanship, and strategy. He made a number of very good
friends. Just as he had learned to be a Sioux youth, he discovered the pranks
that could be played by young white men. He went to dances, attended balls and
luncheons. He engaged in his first affairs, all conducted with the proper
chivalry of a future officer. He studied white women even as he studied the
great military leaders of the past. In the end he knew every campaign Napoleon
had ever undertaken and how and why he'd met with his greatest defeat at
Waterloo, the movements of Alexander the Great, and how Jackson had gone about
winning the Battle of New Orleans. He also knew that white women could be very
different from their Indian counterparts. Many were eager for possessions— they
were not at all familiar with sharing. They were often determined at all costs
to appear prim and innocent and beyond reproach, yet beneath such appearances,
they could be complete mistresses of sensuality. Those young ladies who were
most fervently—if secretively!—warned about his red blood were often the most
eager to know him. Very early on he began to respond to such curiosity with a
cool and courteous contempt. He was both careful and discreet himself, not averse
to the charms of an entertaining widow, but always aware of his father's pride
in him, and deter- mined tie would disgrace neither his father nor his Indian
heritage by bringing disgrace down upon himself.

He graduated with honors and couldn't wait to see David to
taunl him with the fact.

He took his first trip to his father's estates in Scotland
not a month after his graduation. He hadn't known until he arrived there just
how dearly he had missed his brother, or even the strength of the bond between
them. For the first time in his life he had really understood his father's
family and his brother's place in a totally different society. He had been
steeped in ancient traditions, ridden the vast boundaries of the Douglas
lands, discovered that he belonged in a proud and ancient castle as well as in
a tipi. "Learn to love it well, baby brother," David had told him
gravely one day. "This is yours," Hawk had returned. "Your
world."

"One day, you may be called upon to protect this world
in the name of our family."

Hawk had told him, "I will be chief; you will be
lord."

"Always, we will be brothers."

In America, the land was breaking apart. Lincoln had been
elected president; South Carolina had seceded from the Union. Shots had been
fired.

The war was begun over states' rights, but one of the rights
the South sought was the right to keep slaves. Hawk had spent enough time among
the great Northern political homes to learn American politics, and despite his
concern for his own people and the never-ending battles on the plains, he felt
that he had to fight a different war. In his heart, he knew that slavery was
wrong.

There were Union troops in the West—fighting Indians. He
didn't want to fight Indians. The Crow were his natural enemies, but only when
he was fighting them as a Sioux. He didn't want to fight Indians as a white.

But he belonged in the war. He and his brother returned to
America. David accepted an invitation from the Federal troops to train men, in
order to remain close to his brother.

Hawk was one of the best horsemen to ever graduate from West
Point. Numerous wealthy acquaintances asked him to take on command of militia
companies with a higher rank than he might receive from the regular army. As a
West Point graduate, he had earned a commission as a second lieutenant, but
despite his youth, he was offered command of a cavalry company as a full
lieutenant in the regular army. He accepted the commission, and he fought
through all the long and arduous stages of the war along the eastern front.
After four years of war, he had gained the rank of colonel and been brevated as
a brigadier general. With the war over, many of the volunteer officers were
desperate for regular army commissions. Hawk no longer wanted his.