The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series) (18 page)

      
Elk Bull examined one of the weapons after handing the other to Stalking Owl. “This is a fine weapon. We have heard Long Hair's pony soldiers have brought many fine guns, even the big earth gougers, with them.”

      
“They also bring men who plan the route for their wooden rails,” Chase replied. ‘The railroad is more dangerous than cannons.”

      
“The iron horse comes through the hunting grounds of the Lakota and Cheyenne?”

      
“While I was a prisoner I saw some maps. The day after tomorrow they will ride through a narrow pass leading to the rocky hills river, the one the whites call Belle Fourche. If Long Hair's soldiers do not remain with the lieutenant who captured me, it would be easy to ambush them and take many more of these fine guns.”

      
Elk Bull studied Chase in the flickering firelight. “We would need more warriors. I will send a rider to our village.”

      
“Here is what I think we should do,” Chase said after a warrior had been dispatched with word about the iron horse surveyors trespassing onto their lands. He began to sketch a map in the dust with a broken twig.

      
“You would let this half-blood lead us? How do we know he will not take us all into a trap where the Long Hair's soldiers can shoot us down like dogs?” Pony Whipper asked angrily.

      
Elk Bull raised his eyes to Pony Whipper and replied simply, “Because Stands Tall has vouched for his nephew. And with my own eyes, I saw Chase the Wind struck down as he aided our retreat.”

      
Shamed and furious, Pony Whipper subsided with a harsh glare at Chase. Feeling the Crazy Dog's burning eyes piercing his back, Chase continued to sketch out a plan for an ambush. As he did so, an idea took root in his mind. He decided to discuss it with Stands Tall when his uncle arrived.

* * * *

      
The raid on Lieutenant Phillips’s company was a great success. The soldiers were taken completely by surprise as they rode through the narrow neck of the ravine. The warriors split into two groups, one attacking frontally to draw fire and attention while the rest made a lightning foray from the rear, seizing several horses laden with guns and ammunition. Then the whole war party vanished back into the hills with their booty.

      
Several days later, Chase stood before the council of chiefs. “The key to holding the whites at bay is modern rifles and enough ammunition to enable our warriors to practice,” Chase explained. He felt the dampness on his palms as all eyes in the august assembly studied him. Stands Tall had arranged for him to speak before the great council composed of chiefs from most of the Northern Cheyenne bands, now gathered together for the summer hunt in the Tongue River country. Among them were Little Wolf and Morning Star, who was known as Dull Knife among the Lakota, two of the greatest of Cheyenne leaders. Would they trust a man whose blood was half-white, who had lived half his life with the enemy? He forced the doubts from his mind and concentrated on explaining his plans.

      
“You all know I have lived in one of the White Eyes’ great cities far to the east, by the great waters of the Atlantic: I learned their ways but I am Cheyenne, the son of Vanishing Grass, the son of Freedom Woman. It was my mother who sent me back to the People. She bid me use what I have learned from our enemies to aid you in preserving our land, our heritage, our lives.”

      
“I believe your heart speaks truly,” Lame White Man, a Cheyenne from the South who had joined the Northern bands, replied with grave courtesy. “But how can you help the Cheyenne? Lean Bear, a great chief, journeyed all the way to the great waters in the east that you speak of, to this place they call Washington. He brought back a piece of paper signed by the White Father, Lincoln himself. He was carrying it the day the pony soldiers shot him down and trampled him. They did not want to read the message of peace.”

      
Unable to conceal his bitterness, Chase replied, “I would go among the white men as one of them not to beg for peace, but to read their newspapers bragging of when they will attack us, listen to their soldiers' drunken talk about battle plans, watch their merchants load up wagons and mules with guns and gold to buy guns. I would bring this information back to my people—just as I brought word of the soldiers crossing the rocky hills river. They mean to destroy us, but we will learn where their weapons are and we will raid swiftly, using their own weapons against them, then return to the safety of the hills.”

      
“My brother's son has spoken from his heart. He speaks wisdom. What do you say to this?” Stands Tall asked the others as Chase sat down for them to deliberate.

      
Even as he spoke, Chase had known that any victories against the whites would not be enough to save the Cheyenne. The red man could never hope to turn back the tide of whites pouring across the High Plains in search of gold and farm lands.
But we can make them pay for destroying us...pay dearly.

      
That was all that he could ask. Freedom Woman’s dying hopes that he could save the Cheyenne were as doomed as she herself had been. At least now he understood his mission in life. For a fleeting moment a small heart-shaped face with soft gold eyes and a stubborn chin, surrounded by a mass of bronze hair, flashed through his mind.

      
Stevie.
Scarcely a night went by that he did not dream of her. Cursing silently, he suppressed the painful image and focused on the discussion among the tribal leaders.

      
“You are young and unproven in battle before this raid, yet what you say has merit,” one chief said. With the hint of a smile, he added, “We would be fools to let pass the opportunity to use the White Eyes’ ways against the White Eyes.”

      
Stout Lance, father of Pony Whipper, stood up angrily. “This half-blood belongs to no warrior society. He bears no marks of honor from the sacred Medicine Lodge. By his own admission he has spent half his life with the enemy. How can we trust such a one?”

      
“My nephew has fought for our people not only at rocky hills river but at the distant Washita.”

      
As the debate raged on around him, Chase sat silently, waiting to see what they would decide. Such deliberations often went on for hours, each warrior having the right to speak his piece in front of the assembly. He understood their doubts. He was an outsider, a man caught between two worlds, trying desperately to belong to the only one in which he saw honor—even if it was doomed to destruction. Perhaps this was especially true because it, like him, was fated for death.

      
Finally when a lull in the speeches came, he stood up again, having made up his mind that it was time to do what he and his uncle had spoken of on numerous occasions. “You are right to question my youth, my inexperience, my white blood. I am too old to join a warrior society, but I will undergo the ultimate test—the sacred Sun Dance that all may know I am a true son of the People.”

* * * *

      
Sweat drenched his entire body...or perhaps it was blood, he could not tell.
Focus on the sky, not the pain. Search for the vision. It will come.
Stands Tall’s words echoed in his mind as he felt the agonizing pull of the rawhide tongs tied through his pectoral muscles. He danced slowly around the circle, all the while straining steadily at the tongs which were attached by a long rope to the tall lodge pole set up in the flat open plain where their summer camp had been made.

      
Chase was one of half a dozen warriors pledged to this dance. None of the men looked at the others, each intent on his own inner struggle and purification, the intense concentration that would bring a vision to guide his destiny and bring him peace. Two men had already fallen, their flesh tearing free from the bindings. An elder male member of each man's family, who had also undergone the Sun Dance, carried them away to have their wounds tended.

      
Stands Tall waited patiently as Chase the Wind endured. It was a sign of great bravery to last long at the ordeal, but Chase was not thinking of courage or honor or even his beloved uncle. He summoned every fiber of his being to the vision quest, forcing aside the engulfing terror that his white blood—cursed Remington blood—would deny him a vision.

      
Images floated behind his eyes of faraway places, long-ago times, of his father Vanishing Grass teaching him to shoot a bow, of his mother Freedom Woman singing to him as she prepared an evening meal. Black terrible images came, too, of Jeremiah and Burke, of his mother screaming and tearing at herself in madness. But more frequently than any of those, the one face which haunted his fevered brain was Stevie's.

      
Stevie, who as a skinny freckle-faced girl with wispy sun-bleached hair, followed him in worshipful adoration when they were children. Then as a beautiful woman, her eyes radiant with love, her heavy bronze hair spilling around that unforgettable face, she looked up at him from the feather mattress in his bedroom at the country house.

      
He could smell the apple blossom scent of her through the blood and the dust, feel the soft creaminess of her flesh over the merciless scorch of the sun, hear the lilting ripple of her laughter instead of the steady thrum of the drums.

      
She is your destiny
.

      
No! She was a white woman, forever lost to him, thousands of miles away. He had forsworn his love for her. Chase shook his head, tugging at the bindings. An agonizing shock wave of pain shot across his chest, causing him to break stride with the steady beat of the drums. Just as he began to stumble, the vision came, stark as a flash of lightning.

      
Wolves! One iron gray, sleek and fat, faced another that was pure white. The white wolf's fur blazed like sunlight on new snow, dazzling in its brilliance. An aura of power surrounded it as it fixed cold eyes on its foe, stalking the gray wolf, which snarled with feral viciousness. The combatants circled, circled. Then both leaped at once, crashing into each other with incredible impact.

      
They tore at one another's heavy pelts, slashing and ripping until both were covered with blood. Suddenly a woman's scream shattered the sound of their labored breathing. Stevie's face, pale and distraught with terror, was imposed above this fight to the death, both over it and yet a part of it, more than an observer. Then the white wolf lunged one final time and brought the gray down, breaking his neck and tearing open his throat. The scene blurred into another in which the white wolf bounded slowly away while the woman followed him, crying his name, Chase...Chase...Chase.

      
“Chase the Wind, it is over.” Stands Tail's voice broke into his trance.

      
Chase could still hear the echo of Stevie' s voice calling him as his uncle spoke. He blinked his eyes, dazed, and opened them to see the deserted circle. Stands Tall’s face was wreathed with pride as he spoke.

      
“You were the last to fall. And your eyes have seen a vision. I can tell, but we will not speak of it now,” he said as he took Chase's arm and helped him stand. “You will be a great warrior, a leader of our people.”

      
Red Bead tended his wounds, placing a healing poultice of red dock root over the bloody lacerations on his chest, then he drifted into a troubled sleep.

      
After several days of feverish delirium, Chase awakened. He found himself surprisingly refreshed and rested, prepared to assume the role he had described in front of the council. Yet in spite of his certainty that he could move among the whites, spying on them and using the information to aid his people, he still felt Stephanie Summerfield’ presence.

      
“I shall be called the White Wolf,” Chase said to Stands Tall.

      
“This was your vision. It is good. Do you wish to speak of it now?”

      
After a moment's hesitation he replied, “Yes.” The older man nodded and Chase described the vision with the two wolves but he did not mention Stevie’ s mysterious and troubling presence. Nor did he speculate about what the gray wolf might symbolize—Burke Remington, a man he hated above all other enemies. When he had finished he looked at Stands Tall.

      
Although his uncle's expression revealed little, he was thoughtful. “There is a mystery here. Often the Powers do not give a man understanding all at once. Perhaps you are destined to destroy this man...or he you.”

      
“In the vision, it was the white wolf who vanquished the gray.”

      
Stands Tall nodded gravely. “Perhaps, but hatred seeps into the soul and destroys all who nurture it. Be careful, my son, if ever again you meet this man who is the gray wolf.”

      
“I will, Uncle. Believe me, I will.”

* * * *

      
Chase began to implement his plan to infiltrate the white world as soon as the debilitating effects of his ordeal were over. Drifting into a frontier outpost dressed in greasy buckskins with his hair hanging loose around his shoulders, he spent the last of his money to buy enough cheap white man's clothing, tack and trinkets to enable him to pose as a half-breed drifter who traded with various tribes in the Yellowstone country. He did not ride Thunderbolt when he went among the whites, for such a splendid animal would cause suspicions and draw trouble. His plan was to remain invisible, a contemptuous outcast living on the periphery of white society, a man no one paid any heed to, a man others spoke freely in front of, a man who listened, observed, read and analyzed.