Climb the Highest Mountain (12 page)

Several days passed, during which time Zeke threw himself into his work with more fervor than usual. He seemed to be trying to take out his need for vengeance through his work. At night he was too tired and still too
full of the recent tragedy to make love. He simply held Abbie, and he seemed to have an urgent need to do so, as though each time might be the last time he held her. He spoke little and slept restlessly, and Abbie often awoke in the night to see him standing at the window. Sometimes he had even gone outside. She knew that the wild side of him wanted to ride north with his son and make war. When Wolf’s Blood left, which he still swore to do, it would be very hard on Zeke Monroe.

It was a full week after his return when Abbie noticed some spark to the quiet, withdrawn man who had returned from Sand Creek. The children were sleeping in the loft while January winds howled outside when Zeke sat down at the edge of their bed of robes. That was the kind of bed Zeke had preferred early in their marriage, and they had never purchased a conventional one. He pulled off his buckskin shirt, and in the dim lamplight she studied the broad shoulders of his muscular back. His black hair hung long and straight, and he removed his headband. He sat there for a moment saying nothing; then he turned and looked at her, studying her lovely face, the dark brown hair spread out on the pillow beneath her head.

“Margaret said that Englishman was here while I was gone,” he stated with a frown. “What the hell did he want?”

She watched his dark eyes, wanting to smile at the hint of jealousy in them, but he was too serious for her to make light of anything.

“He wanted to look at some horses. I told him to come back when you were here.”

“After you served him tea and talked awhile,” he answered, standing up and removing his pants.

Abbie sat up straighter. “Zeke Monroe! So far the man hasn’t done a thing against us, and he seems to
want very much to be on friendly terms. Neither one of us likes the fact that he is here, but he is, and we have enemies enough without creating more deliberately. I may have become more suspicious and careful of people since I’ve lived out here, but I refuse to totally forget the art of being neighborly. I’m no different now than I was nineteen years ago when I offered you that cup of coffee when you came to offer your services as a scout for our wagon train!”

“Yeah?” He got into bed and sat beside her. “Well, look where that led!” he reminded her.

As he met her eyes, she smiled softly, reaching out and tracing her fingers over his chest. “Yes. Look where that led.”

He grabbed her hand, then broke into the wonderful, handsome grin she had not seen since his return. She reached up and touched his face. “Zeke, there are so many terrible things going on around us, and our son might go away. We’ve been through so much. Don’t let a silly thing like Sir Tynes get in the way. I love you, Zeke Monroe. And I’ve missed you so—need you so.”

He grasped her wrist and moved his lips to kiss the palm of her hand. “I guess I just look at someone like the Englishman and then I think about all we’ve been through, Abbie—all that is to come—and I see what life might have been like for you if not for me.”

She leaned closer and kissed the scarred cheek. “Zeke,” she spoke in a near whisper. “Without you there would have been no life for me, and you well know it. With you I can bear anything that happens. Without you I am nothing. And you can’t tell me it isn’t the same for you.”

He studied the honest, soft brown eyes of his Abbie girl. Her eyes had never changed over the years. They were still the eyes of the young girl who had been so in
love with him nineteen years ago. Abigail Monroe would not be untrue to her man or even think of doing so. But then maybe she didn’t know what was best for her. Surely it wasn’t a half-wild, half-breed Indian who was followed by trouble wherever he went. Yet their marriage had been good, their love rock strong. Maybe he loved her too much.

He leaned down and kissed her neck, unbuttoning the front of her gown as he did so. “It’s the same for me,” he said softly. “And I need you, Abbie.”

His lips found the soft fullness of her breasts, and he began to move more quickly, hungry for her now, hoping to forget Sand Creek and his other problems for the moment and just enjoy being one with his woman. He pulled her gown over her shoulders and down over her arms, his lips moving over her breasts, her stomach, and down over her body as the gown came off. He threw it aside and removed his loin cloth and pulled her close, enjoying the feel of her softness against his body. It had been so long since they had done this. He wondered why he had allowed so many things to get in the way, for he found his strength and peace with this woman who loved him just the way he was.

Their bodies seemed to melt together naturally, in tune to one another’s needs, and the excitement never really changed for them. His lips searched her mouth, and she gloried at how gentle he could be with her as his hands massaged and explored, for she had seen the vicious side of Zeke Monroe, knew what he could do to his enemies. But this was not that man. That man had never been in her bed. She knew a side of him that few others could imagine existed.

“Abbie, my Abbie,” he whispered, his lips moving to her breasts again, tasting their sweet fruit, drawing out
her passion. She touched his hair, breathing deeply, allowing herself to enjoy the moment, never knowing what tomorrow might bring. He moved between her legs so that she could not close them, but she didn’t want to. Even that first time he’d taken her, despite being frightened and unsure and hardly more than a child, she had wanted him this way. She had always wanted him, always would.

“Don’t let anything change between us, Zeke,” she whispered. “Don’t let anything ever change between us. You’re my Zeke.” She gasped as he quickly entered her then, arching up to him in great waves of love and relief, turning her face and smothering her whimpers of ecstasy in the pillow as her body pulsed in the sweet explosion he forced from her by bringing her such intense pleasure. His powerful shoulders hovered over her while he whispered gentle words of love in the Cheyenne tongue and filled her with his power and masculinity, bringing out all that was womanly about her. In this act they drew strength from one another, shared joy and sorrow, gave and received pleasure. Over and over he pushed himself into the silken softness that welcomed him. She could no longer give him children, but he was glad she’d had the operation that had put an end to her child bearing. To have another baby would have endangered her life, and the seven they had were almost more than they could handle. It was nice to be able to simply enjoy Abbie as a woman, to ravage her, devour her, take his pleasure with her whenever he needed without the worry of pregnancy.

He shuddered and grasped her hair tightly in his hands, then as his life poured into her, he relaxed and pulled her close, kissing her eyes and staying inside of her. He wanted more of her before they slept. That
night they would both forget the hardships of living in this land. There would only be Zeke and Abbie. There was no Sand Creek. There was no rebellious son … and there was no Sir Edwin S. Tynes.

The children sat around the table listening in awe as they always did when their father played his mandolin. The music was enchanting and magical, made more so by the fact that Zeke did not play the instrument for them very often. He had taught himself to play the instrument early in life, in the lonely moments when he’d retreated to the swamps behind his father’s house to get away from taunting whites and a chiding stepmother who’d never failed to remind him that he did not belong in her house. Actually, he had decided she was right. He belonged in the mountains, in the out-of-doors, with the animals and the earth. It was there in the swamps that he’d begun to toy with the mandolin. His father, who had gotten it from a friend, had given the mandolin to him in the hope of interesting Zeke in something, anything, for as a boy he was restless and inattentive in school, wanting only to get back outside, never fitting in with anyone.

Alone, the young Zeke had taught himself to play, and he’d made up his own mountain songs, which he occasionally sang now to his family and Abbie. Mostly he played and sang for Abbie, for when he did he was all Tennessee man again. He knew he took her to her own childhood home through his songs.

Wolf’s Blood watched, feeling less a part of the family than ever as his sisters and brothers listened attentively, Jeremy holding a book in his lap. He waited until Zeke finished and told the children it was time for bed before making his announcement.

“I am leaving tomorrow, Father, to go north,” he spoke up. “I am well enough now.”

The room quieted, and Zeke set the mandolin down, leaning its long neck against the table. Abbie saw the determined look on her son’s face and knew she could not hold him there any longer. A wave of despair engulfed her and she looked away. “Get to bed, children,” she told the others.

“But we won’t see Wolf’s Blood again!” Margaret lamented.

“Yes, you will,” Abbie replied, looking at Wolf’s Blood almost chidingly. “I am sure he will be kind enough to stay around long enough in the morning to see all of you one last time.”

Their eyes held. “I will not leave without saying good-bye,” he assured his mother. He saw the hurt in her eyes and it pained him, but he refused to let it make him stay.

Abbie rose and herded the children to the loft while Zeke sat watching his son. “You’ll have to be very careful, son. You’ll be traveling alone.”

“That will make it easier for me to hide, and I will do some traveling at night. I know what to watch for, Father.”

“Send a runner down and let us know if you arrive safely,” Zeke said.

The boy nodded and swallowed. “I will… miss you, Father. But I have thought about it… for a long time. I must do this.”

Zeke’s heart hurt so badly that he put a hand to his chest. “I know.”

Abbie came back to the table and sat down, looking almost angry as she crossed her arms in front of her. “I suppose you’ve heard the rumors that white women are being raped and murdered, that some have been taken
captive by the Sioux for ransom,” she said briskly to her son. “Do you intend to take part in such doings … to commit depredations against women who are no different from your own mother and sisters?”

The boy frowned, confused by her sudden anger and chastisement. “I do not believe I would,” he answered.

“You might have to,” Abbie answered, while Zeke watched curiously, allowing her to get her feelings out, whatever they might be. “If you are riding with a raiding party and they attack innocent women and children and slaughter them or rape them or make slaves of them, do you intend to put up your hand and tell them to stop? They would slay you right along with the whites!”

“I will do whatever I must do!” the boy answered angrily. “I cannot say yet what I will do, except that I have vengeance in my heart that will not let me sleep. I will ride with the Sioux and I will fight, because I am a Cheyenne!” He rose and pulled his knife, stabbing it into the wooden table so that it stuck there. “Cheyenne! Do you understand that, Mother? I am not white, not one bit of me!”

Abbie rose also, her eyes on fire. “You came from my womb!” she said, her voice rising. “A part of you is white whether you like it or not! I understand your need for revenge, Wolf’s Blood. Your father has the same need and has killed many men because of it. When those men murdered his wife back in Tennessee, he went after them and got every one of them. But he didn’t go around raping white women just because his own wife had been raped! Nor does he do so today, in spite of what happened to me! He kills either in self-defense, or he kills men who do him wrong! But he does not kill innocent people!”

“That is different!” Wolf’s Blood hissed, trying not to yell at his mother. “Everything is different now! How can we go against the soldiers who attacked us at Sand Creek? How are we to know who they were? How can we ever find them again? We cannot fight man to man anymore! It is impossible! We must keep the white men out of our land, and we do not have the numbers or the weapons to attack their soldiers and towns and ever hope to win! The only thing left to do is attack the settlements—to try to scare them out! There is no other way for us! How much are the Cheyenne or the Sioux or any of us supposed to take? We tried peace, Mother, and you know it! But treaty after treaty has been broken. The white man does not want peace! He wants our land and he wants the Indian dead! He rapes and murders our women and children, raids and plunders our camps. Why is that any different from Indians raiding settlements?”

“The men who raided at Sand Creek were soldiers, not settlers! They were one hundred-day volunteers,” Abbie shot back. “Rabble! They were not innocent farmers, women and children.”

The boy’s eyes glittered with desperate anger. He did not like arguing with his mother. He worshiped her. But there was a stubborn and, worst of all, a sensible side to her that frustrated him. “That is the white woman in you, Mother,” he told her in a quieter voice. “That is the part of you that will never understand what I am talking about. Those innocent settlers are killing off the Indian just as surely as the soldiers do. They just do it in a different way. They take our land, our game, our freedom. They want us dead, just as surely as the soldiers do. And they use the soldiers to do their dirty job for them so they can feel clean and innocent! But they are not innocent! They go where they have no
right to go! Father understands what I am saying, and if he were free, he would go north with me and fight with Red Cloud and Swift Arrow!”

Abbie blinked and looked suddenly beaten. She swallowed, her lip quivering. “Promise me you will not harm white women and children. Surely I bred that much civility in you! When you ride down on white women and children, think of your own mother and sisters. Ride against the soldiers, Wolf’s Blood, if you must do so, and against the supply trains and miners. Cut the telegraph lines and root out the buffalo hunters. But don’t make me envision my son hurting children and innocent women. Do you think those women and children are out here by choice? They are here because that is where their men have taken them. They had no choice! If they could have chosen, they would have stayed in the East, away from this lawless land! The government, the men in power, and perhaps some of the settlers want the Indian wiped out, Wolf’s Blood, not little children and gentle housewives!”