Meet the New Dawn (2 page)

“But you and Wolf’s Blood are just alike.”

Zeke threw down the cigarette stub onto the dirt floor of the barn and stepped on it firmly. “In most ways. But even Wolf’s Blood and I have our differences. Go on now.”

The boy nodded, tears in his eyes, then turned and ran out. Zeke watched after him. Why should he tell Jeremy the real reason he would like him to stay? He might need him more than ever in a few years, maybe sooner. And if he went away now, maybe he would never see his son again. Jeremy didn’t know about the pain he suffered. No one knew, not even Abbie. It had irritated him endlessly through the past winter, attacking his back and joints relentlessly. It had been difficult to mask it, but he had done so. At first he attributed it to a long, hard life and old wounds. But now he suspected it was more than that. With the coming of spring and warmer weather, the pain had lessened again, but he knew deep inside it would return every winter to claim him more fiercely each time, and that some day it would render him helpless, perhaps kill him. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him so, but he’d see one in Julesberg anyway, if he could get away with it without Abbie knowing. Maybe a doctor could at least give him something for the pain. Outwardly he was still healthy, strong, and sure, as he forced himself to work at the same rigorous pace he had always followed. His body was rock-hard and muscular, and he was glad that so far he’d been able to keep the pain a secret from Abbie, who had suffered enough over the years. He did not intend to burden her with this unless it was absolutely necessary. And why should he use it as a tool to keep his excited young son from going after his own dreams?

“I’ll tell you who you’re really in the same spirit with,” Morgan spoke up to Zeke, interrupting the man’s thoughts.

Zeke looked over at the man and picked up his shovel again. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“Kehilan,”
his son-in-law answered. The spirited stallion’s name was Cheyenne, meaning
Drinker of the Wind.
The horse whinnied outside, prancing around the corral restlessly. “You and that horse are one and the same—both wild and restless as the wind. That’s why you’re the only one who can ride him. You understand each other.”

Zeke grinned and scooped up more feed. “Maybe so,
Morgan.” He walked to another trough, his heart heavy with the thought of Jeremy leaving. If only Wolf’s Blood would come home. He was sure even the pain that plagued his body would be better if he had his eldest son with him. Having the boy gone was like having a piece of his heart removed. But at least he had his Abbie, the ranch was doing well, and their first grandchild would be born, in the
Moon When the Wolves Run Together.

“That’s the last of the special feed,” he told Morgan. “It’s been sitting a while and I wanted to use it up. There’s some beautiful spring grass out there. This will be a good year for grazing. All we need is a little rain now and then.”

Abbie folded the handmade quilt and carefully laid it across the foot of the bed. Then she walked around it, running her hand along the smooth finish of the brass bars at the foot and head of the grand bed that nearly filled the small bedroom of the cabin. It was the most beautiful thing her husband had ever bought her. He had picked it up at Fort Lyon, where settlers who had decided to go on to California had traded it for supplies. The bed had been a sweet gift of luxury for his white woman, in appreciation for the twenty-four years she had loved him, had stuck by him through hardships the average woman could never bear. In addition to the common tragedies of living in a lawless, untamed land, Abigail Monroe had accepted the difficulties that come to a white woman willing to proudly marry a half-breed. For a good share of those years she had put up with the “Indian” side of her man—the side that sometimes took him into another world she could not fully share. In their first years they had actually lived in a tipi, sometimes among the Cheyenne. She had been accepted as one of them and had learned to love them as her family, for she had lost all those dear to her on her journey west with her father when only fifteen. Zeke Monroe had been the scout for that fateful journey, and she knew the moment she set eyes on him who she wanted to share her life with.

She smiled at the thought of it. She had never minded the bed of robes they shared most of their married life, nor those
first few years living among the Cheyenne. But Zeke knew a white woman could not wander the plains forever. A white woman should settle in one place. And so he had abandoned his Indian ways for her and settled into ranching. But a part of him remained Indian: his fighting spirit; his need to sometimes ride off alone and free; his religion; the way he dressed. But the way of life his People had once known was ending, and a little bit of Zeke was dying with them. It could not be helped. He had seen most of the Cheyenne close to him die—his mother, stepfather, and two brothers. The only Indian brother left was Swift Arrow, who lived among the Sioux in the North and with whom their oldest son now also lived. If only Wolf’s Blood would come home, she knew how it would gladden her husband’s heart, especially now that Jeremy would be leaving them at Julesberg.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, glancing at the bed of robes that was still kept, now in the corner of the room. There had been mornings when she would awaken to find Zeke sleeping there rather than in the brass bed, for the white man’s bed was too soft for his hard-muscled body. Still, when they first retired at night, it was always together in the brass bed, for she could not go to sleep without the closeness of her man. Their marriage still enjoyed the same sweet passions they had delighted in when first they fell in love so many years ago. Being one with his woman was important to Zeke Monroe, a source of strength for him. It was the same for Abbie. What woman would mind giving pleasure to a man like Zeke or receiving the pleasures he gave her in return?

The results of their great passion had been seven children, all different, some very Indian, others showing no Indian likeness or spirit. There were six now, little Lillian having died four years ago at the age of eight. The loss still tore at Abbie’s heart in the night. Not many women ever fully recovered from the death of a child. Her heart was made heavier by the fact that soon there would only be two children under their own roof. Wolf’s Blood, the wild, oldest son, made war in the North. Margaret was married, although she and Morgan at least lived in a cabin nearby. LeeAnn and Jeremy were leaving. That left only Ellen, fifteen, and Jason, eleven. It was difficult
to accept the fact that any of them were old enough to leave the nest, and she dreaded the day when Jason, her “baby,” would also go. But the boy loved the ranch, loved helping with the horses. Perhaps Jason would stay around. She prayed that he would. Ellen, of course, would one day marry. And when a woman married, she had to go with her man, just as Abbie had done. She had come to this land from Tennessee, and had never seen Tennessee again.

She called out to LeeAnn, who was in the outer room clearing the table. The girl came through the door. Although a beautiful young woman, Abbie saw only a blond-haired little girl. She rose and went to a small trunk that sat against the wall. “Come here, LeeAnn.”

The girl came closer and knelt down in front of the trunk beside her mother. Abbie slowly opened the trunk, and a slightly musty smell emerged. She rummaged amid the special things inside: her own father’s old fiddle; marbles that had belonged to her little brother, who had died on the trip west. They all had died on that trip—her father, brother, and sister. Her mother was already dead, back in Tennessee, and Abbie had been left alone. But Zeke had been there. Her Zeke. She held up a leather belt with eagle feathers on it.

“This was a gift from an old Cheyenne priest, LeeAnn, in honor of the fact that I had killed three Crow Indians with my own gun—not all at the same time of course!” She laughed lightly. “I killed one when your father’s life was threatened while he was rescuing me from outlaws when we first met, and I killed one when the wagon train was being attacked and one when your father and I were being chased by renegades the day we rode into Zeke’s Cheyenne village for the first time.” She sighed. “What a long time ago it all was. I once cut a bullet out of Zeke, LeeAnn. And he saved my life once when he had to cut an arrow out of me and burn out the infection.” She met her daughter’s eyes. “Have I told you all these things before?”

The girl smiled patiently. “Yes. But you’ve never shown me everything in the trunk, Mother.”

Abbie proceeded to rummage through old souvenirs: a blanket and knife from Runs Slowly, father of a little Indian girl Abbie had saved from drowning; a bow and two arrows
from Falling Rock, a good friend, who had also given her the gifts for saving the little girl; a jeweled music box Zeke had bought for her in Santa Fe; her father’s fiddle; her brother’s marbles; some jewelry that had been her mother’s. LeeAnn watched her, studying her mother’s well-preserved, dark beauty. The long, thick reddish-brown hair was scooped away from her lovely face and gathered into a comb at the crown of her head, the back of it hanging long and loose. Whenever she spoke of her early days with Zeke Monroe, Abigail’s face had a way of glowing—lighting up like the young girl that she was when she met LeeAnn’s father. She pulled out a leather pouch then, carefully opening it and taking out five turquoise stones, round and smooth, of various sizes.

“I don’t think I ever showed you these,” she said, a near whisper to her voice. “They’re crying stones. Zeke gave them to me.”

LeeAnn touched the stones held out in the palm of her mother’s hand. “Crying stones?”

“When a little girl on the wagon train was bit by a rattler, Zeke buried her in mud, then sat with the child all night, singing Indian chants and praying for her. He gave her these, and told her that when she felt like crying, she should cling tightly to them and the stones would cry for her. She did what he told her, but she couldn’t hold the stones because she was buried. So Zeke laid them in front of her and told her to concentrate very hard on the stones. Soon they began to sweat, and the moisture on them was salty.”

LeeAnn stared at the stones, hardly able to believe the story. But her mother never lied to her.

“I’m sure part of his intention was just to take the little girl’s mind off her pain and fear,” Abbie went on. “But the fact remains that the stones did seem to be crying for her. Everyone was astonished. But I wasn’t really very surprised. Zeke has a great inner strength, LeeAnn. It comes from that spirit world he can draw on, a world his Indian side knows. These stones are a part of that great spirit. That special inner strength he has, has given him the courage and fortitude to overcome many obstacles that could have meant death for him. That’s why he carries many scars, but no wound has killed him. And you
know yourself, from the night he saved you from the Comancheros, what a skilled and brave man he is.”

The girl’s eyes teared. “Why are you telling me all this now, Mother?”

Abbie closed her hand around the stones. “Because I know that when you leave us at Julesberg and go east, it will be a long, long time before you come back again—perhaps so long that one of us will be gone when you return.”

“Mother, don’t talk that way!”

“I feel I must,” Abbie told her, taking her hand. “I don’t mean to frighten you or spoil the wonderful things ahead of you, LeeAnn. But part of the reason I am reminding you of the kind of man your father is, is because I don’t want you to be ashamed that he is part Indian, or that you yourself carry Indian blood. I know that you will deny that blood, and it breaks your father’s heart—and mine. Sometimes I wrap my hand around these stones, hoping they will take some of the tears from my heart. But it doesn’t always work. I have too many tears for the stones to take.”

“Mother, stop it!” the girl whispered, turning her eyes away.

Abbie squeezed her hand. “LeeAnn, my love and prayers will go with you. And I want you to find all the things you think you want. But I will tell you now that no matter how much you might turn away from your heritage, it will always be there. Your father and I will always love you and you will always have a home here, if you ever want to come back. We both understand why you have to go—the fear you still carry and the memories of those terrible weeks with the Comancheros. If your father and I could die a hundred times over to change the past for you, we would do it. But there is another reason you must go, and that is simply that you do not seem to fit in out here—at least you think you don’t. But you do. You are a Monroe, LeeAnn, no matter how hard you might try to ignore that fact. And part of you is Cheyenne. They are our friends, our family, even though so much has changed and some of them make war now. They’re desperate, hurting.”

“I know that,” the girl said quietly, picking up the leather belt with the eagle feathers on it. “But I can’t go running to some reservation to volunteer my services, Mother. It simply
isn’t in me. Nor is it in me to stay here and marry some … ranch hand.”

Abbie swallowed back an urge to scold the girl. She reminded her so much of her own sister, after whom LeeAnn was named. She, too, had been blond and pretty, and she, too, had considered herself worthy of better things than their father could offer them and had searched for a man of wealth and prominence. But that search had led to a violent death for her sister. Abbie could only pray that her daughter would not be so terribly duped because of her ignorance of the outside world. And she could not be angry with the girl for wanting something different, for LeeAnn Monroe had experienced a traumatic and frightening event at the tender age of thirteen, and it had left its mark.

“I’m not asking you to do anything that is against your nature or your desires, LeeAnn,” Abbie replied. “I am only asking you to always remember your father and how he risked his life for you. And to remember your heritage. Blood cannot be denied, LeeAnn. Always remember that we love you just as you are. So should anyone else who comes into your life. Don’t go off and pretend you are something other than LeeAnn Monroe.”