Proud Wolf's Woman (5 page)

Mahoohe grinned. “Then it is a good thing we are at peace with the Kiowa now.”

Neeheeowee nodded. “Yes, it is a good thing.”

“Come, then, my good brother-in-law. Let me take you to my lodge. We have camped close to the trading fair.”

Neeheeowee looked back upon his wealth of eight ponies before, with a turn of his head, he nodded his assent to his friend.

Both men clicked their own separate mounts forward, Neeheeowee’s gray mustang surefooted over the rough terrain.

It was only then, once under way, that Neeheeowee surveyed the land around him as though he, himself, were an eagle.

He drew a deep breath. These were the lands of his southern, Cheyenne kin, the lands patrolled by the Cheyenne, the Kiowa, the Comanche. This land he loved; this land where dry, arid heat absorbed moisture and rain as though the earth itself were a hungry beast.

It was here where Grandmother Earth ravaged the landscape; here that Neeheeowee beheld the jutting cliffs set against the horizon in hues of brown, orange, and gray; here where the barren streams spouted red soil instead of water. He gazed around him at the brown-and-red earth with sprinkles of green, where hidden dangers lurked unknown in the dark recesses of the rocks.

These plains were his home; the sky his tepee, the ground his sleeping robe. And if the life he had made for himself out here was sometimes lonely, so be it. In truth, Neeheeowee preferred it this way, had lived this way since the death of his wife and unborn child.

“How long do you plan to stay with us?”

Neeheeowee shot a glance toward his friend. “I will stay long enough to trade and then, though I am grateful for your hospitality, I will be gone. Once I have the weapons I need, I will have other matters to attend to.”

Mahoohe nodded. “That is as I had expected. I hope, though, that you will stay a while longer, perhaps relax with us.”

Neeheeowee raised his chin, a movement calculated to cover up the feeling of vulnerability that had quickly come upon him. He said, “I cannot stay long.”

“I know.”

Neeheeowee nodded, needing to explain no more. His brother-in-law understood. At least, a little.

“You will go and seek out the Pawnee?”

“Haahe,
yes,” Neeheeowee said. “When I at last own the superior weapon, when I at last can make the enemy cower, I will finally put an end to the torture that my wife’s spirit must endure. Only then can she walk the spirit path to the hereafter. And this, you must know, I will do. I will free her spirit. These eight ponies that you see here? They represent all my hard efforts this past year. I have known that if I could train these ponies, I would be in a better position to trade for the white man’s fire-sticks. And now that we are at peace with the Kiowa, I can obtain all I desire. Plus I can trade also for supplies.”

“We will give you all that you need in supplies.”

Neeheeowee lifted his chin. He did not intend to take anything from his southern kin, except what good manners dictate that he accept. But he couldn’t tell Mahoohe that. His friend would take it as an insult. And so, although Neeheeowee murmured a polite acceptance, he knew he would not infringe much on his friend’s hospitality.

Hadn’t he taken enough from them already? Wasn’t their sister’s life enough?

Their sister.

His responsibility.

His wife.

Neeheeowee frowned. Twenty seasons of the moon; five winters. All of it wasted; all of it spent in learning who had done it, who had killed those he’d loved. Which Pawnee? Who personally? Each and every one of them, for there had been several who had done it.

Though, in truth, only one had “turned the knife.” Only one had raped his wife; only one had cut open her belly to slaughter the babe inside, while the mother had still lived.

Neeheeowee narrowed his eyes, his only show of emotion.

Only one would know a slow death.

Neeheeowee suppressed the shudder of reaction that always came with these thoughts and set his gaze, once more, to the fore, his lips set, his chin tilted forward.

As soon as he had these weapons…

A pony whinnied and Neeheeowee looked back with a quick reflex, but seeing nothing more than the horses nipping at one another, he turned his gaze again before him.

Such fine animals. At one time, he might have felt proud of the feat he had performed this past year in catching these ponies, but he would not allow himself to feel that emotion, not now. He did what he did in the service of another. Such things were expected of him. There was no glory in it.

He grimaced, thinking over these years—years of patience for him, years spent in search, years filled with the need to fulfill justice. Because as long as those few Pawnee lived, as long as those warriors still walked the earth, still remained free to rape and murder again, the spirits of his wife and unborn child would not rest, could not rest. Both were trapped in this world, forced to roam uselessly until the moment of full justice. A moment Neeheeowee must make happen, would make happen.

Nothing else mattered to him. Nothing.

He inhaled a sharp breath, and the tall Cheyenne warrior, who had only reached twenty-eight winters, sat up straighter in his seat as he drove his mount over the summit of the butte.

He stared out again at the land around him, at the valleys and the eroded, jutting cliffs. Mystic beauty abounded here, beauty which had become lost to Neeheeowee over these past five years.

All he saw instead was the endless space, all he felt was the waning warmth of the setting sun upon his naked back. And all he knew were the terrible nightmares of his own thoughts. They never abated. Not ever.

Neeheeowee urged his mount into a walk along the butte, the eight ponies trailing behind him, the reds and pinks of the sky giving in to those of lavender and deep gold.

Another might have at least noted its beauty. Another might have at least paused to look with appreciation. Another might also have left off his mission long ago.

Not Neeheeowee.

The Cimarron River Valley

Near Black Mesa, Oklahoma

Neeheeowee and Mahoohe joined the Cheyenne/Kiowa trading fair long before the women had finished cooking their morning meals. Naked children stirred, scurrying about the camp while Neeheeowee breathed in the familiar smells of camp life, of horseflesh, of rawhide and smoke, of hundreds of different people. Even the wind carried the aroma of meat roasting or stewing and of something new: coffee, that white man’s drink that Neeheeowee had never tasted.

The sun felt warm on the top of Neeheeowee’s head, the ground hard, the short grass dry beneath his moccasins as he led his ponies through the camp. The sky overhead gleamed a light blue in the cloudless, morning sky, while the air cushioned the happy singing of the birds.

Mahoohe had gone on toward his lodge in the temporary camp while Neeheeowee lingered on the outskirts. He glanced up once, then away, impervious to the sounds, the smells, the happiness that burst all around him as people who had not seen one another throughout the winter months became reacquainted. There was laughter, the happy sounds of gossip, the screaming of the children and the ever-present sound of drums as young men in the camp practiced their dance steps and songs.

Neeheeowee gazed around him at the gay evidence of life all around him. He started forward, across camp, his lips set into a grim frown.

He had no patience for this, any of this. He was here for one purpose, one reason only, and all else paled before it.

He looked away.

It was warm this day, the dry air promising an even hotter afternoon. But Neeheeowee didn’t care. He would not conduct his trade in the heat of the afternoon. He would wait to finish his business in the cooler part of the day, in the evening. In truth, it would bode better for him that way. While others relaxed around the fire, listening to stories and relating their coups, Neeheeowee would negotiate, bargain. He would not relax; he never did, not anymore, not in these last five years.

His lifestyle demanded this vigilance anyway, it being necessary to remain on guard constantly when tracking, when traveling over the plains. But Neeheeowee carried it further; for him, this wariness was no momentary way of life. On the plains, in camp, in the company of others, he remained on the alert. Always.

“A-doguonko do-peya kuyo!”

Neeheeowee heard the harsh carping of a woman’s voice and turned away, not interested. He had learned long ago to keep his own counsel when in camp, even when it appeared one should intervene. No one appreciated an interloper. Not even Neeheeowee.

“A-doguonko do-peya kuyo!”

He wasn’t sure what made him turn toward the sound. Something. He didn’t really care what occurred there. In truth, he shouldn’t have stopped; he should have gone on.

But he didn’t. As though fate suddenly intervened, he turned.

“A-doguonko do-peya kuyo!”

He didn’t know what he’d expected to see. Certainly all looked normal.

Nothing unusual there: Just a bad-tempered Kiowa wife harping at…what? Who? A sister? Not possible. Indian women treated their sisters with more respect.

Who, then?

A captive?

Haahe.
Yes, it must be.

Neeheeowee shrugged, his long hair responding to the movement, the black strands of it falling back, over his shoulders. It was nothing to him how a Kiowa wife treated her captive. And though Neeheeowee rebelled at the idea of captivity or slavery, which went against the morality of his own tribe, he would do nothing here. The Kiowa tribes and the Cheyenne had only last year settled their differences. And with the peace between the tribes so new, Neeheeowee knew he would do nothing to break that truce, certainly not over something as insignificant as an inquiry about a captive.

Why didn’t he turn away, then? He should have.

But he didn’t.

He looked, trying to translate the Kiowa woman’s words to himself: Idler? Coward? Something about an idler here at home?

He stared at the slave. Why did she appear familiar?

He glanced at her more closely. She was white, he could see that in her hair color, in the long, dark brown curls that could not be tamed, despite weather, wind, and uncleanliness. White? That should not make her familiar, and yet…

He knew few white people, keeping away from them instinctively. But there were a handful he had met once, long ago at a fort a little farther north and east from this place. A few men, a few women; one he had…

Neeheeowee narrowed his eyes and stared.

Hova’ahane.
No. It could not be.

He studied the captive; her clothes were of white origin, though so dirty and tattered he could not make out their color. The woman sat on the ground next to the Kiowa lodge, her knees to the side, her head down. His glance roved over her, from the torn dress she wore to the very tips of her feet, the bottom flesh there red where the soles of her shoes had torn. Both the white man’s
mo’keha,
shoes, and the woman, herself, were caked in dirt and mud.

Eaaa! Why did he look? Unable to help himself, his glance roamed back to the woman’s face, hidden from him by the curtain of her hair, hair that gleamed dark, with reddish highlights only where a deterrent ray of sun struck it.

He had once known someone with that color of hair, someone…

He thrust his chin forward and turned his back. It was nothing to do with him.

“A-doguonko do-peya kuyo!”

He tried to translate the Kiowa words again; an idler here at home?

He stopped.

He didn’t want to, he didn’t intend it, but it happened anyway: He veered about.

The Kiowa woman grabbed a stick, hitting the captive, once, twice, again and again. But the slave did nothing; no flinch, no reaction, not even a look at her master.

Was the captive brave? Or was she simply degraded, her spirit broken?

The Kiowa woman raised her arm again and an anger coursed through Neeheeowee that he could little explain. He should do nothing—it had nothing to do with him. Again, Neeheeowee spun back around to go.

But not fast enough.

Suddenly the white slave girl screamed, jumping up and running as far as the noose around her neck would allow, behind the Kiowa lodge, and Neeheeowee, watching, stood still, his legs, his whole body suddenly wooden. A hundred thoughts might have gone through his mind—a similar number of mental images, as memory intruded upon his life.

He knew her. He stood, there in the middle of camp, eight horses patiently waiting behind him, little able to comprehend it.

Another man might have felt the warmth of remembrance. Another man might have, at least, felt inclined to smile.

But this was Neeheeowee; not his brothers, not his kin, nor his enemy. Neeheeowee.

He felt nothing.

And when he turned away from the path he had been taking, to march toward the Kiowa lodge, he told himself over and over that he felt nothing. But he lied and he knew it.

Neeheeowee had never been angrier.

Julia didn’t see the man stalking toward her until he was almost upon her, and then she cringed.

What did he want from her? Hadn’t fate already dealt her too cruel a hand? What must she endure now?

Not even looking up, she sank to her knees on the ground, before the man, before anyone who would look, too distraught even to send a prayer to the God she felt certain had deserted her. She closed her eyes.

Perhaps when she opened them, he would be gone—he alone, not her circumstances. She didn’t even dare to hope the latter: not anymore. She was beyond believing this all a nightmare, a mere dream to disappear upon awakening.

Hadn’t she wished it so these past few weeks? Hadn’t she prayed? To no avail?

She heard the muted sounds of the leather fringes of the man’s leggings smacking against the ground as the man stopped in front of her. She smelled the clean smell of buckskin, felt a finger under her chin, lifting her face upward, curiously sending a shiver over her skin. But she would not, herself, look up; she kept her eyes firmly closed.