The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series) (37 page)

      
“While I was in Fort Laramie I learned Custer's old friend Zachariah Chandler is the new interior secretary. You know what that means for the treaty lands guaranteed us on the High Plains. Grant will let Sheridan unleash Crook and Custer on us come spring. What do you expect us to do, Stevie? Throw down our weapons, trudge onto those reservations and wait to die?”

      
She knew all he said was true. In her years on military posts she'd seen the brutal and even illegal way the army often handled the “bloodthirsty savages.” In her months with the Cheyenne she'd come to see them as human beings, with a society that was compassionate and good, possessing laws and morals more uniformly obeyed than any white civilization's. Rubbing her temples, she shook her head, confused and torn, not knowing any answer. “I don't want these people to die but I can't stop what's happening and neither can you. I can't help it that I'm white...and neither can you!” She turned and ran through the blinding brightness of the snow, leaving him alone to ponder her enigmatic words.

      
The next morning Chase, mounted on Thunderbolt, rode out at daybreak with his warriors all barbarously painted for war. No one knew when they would return. It was rumored they were after a supply train bound for the Black Hills gold camps.

      
Stephanie worked inside the warm lodge she shared with Red Bead. “I would tell you a story,” the old woman said, never breaking her steady rhythm, pounding a smooth rock to crush dried medicinal herbs.

      
Stephanie nodded, expecting to hear some tale about Sweet Medicine, the great Cheyenne prophet who had given them their laws and customs. She continued her struggle to master the intricacies of beadwork on the dress she was making.

      
“Did you ever meet the mother of the White Wolf in your city?”

      
The question startled her and she stabbed the needle into her finger. Sucking on it, she shook her head. “No. Anthea Remington was...very ill after she returned to Boston.”

      
“Here she was called Freedom Woman.” Red Bead smiled, something she rarely did. “She came as a captive, like you, taken by my nephew, Vanishing Grass, from a wagon train bound for Oregon. She had a white husband but he was killed during the raid. I do not think he was kind to her.”

      
Stephanie felt her heart begin skipping beats. Why was the old woman telling her this? Was it true? She laid down her dress and waited politely in the Cheyenne manner for Red Bead to continue her tale as she wished.

      
“Vanishing Grass fell in love with her, for she was courageous and very beautiful with hair yellow as the summer sun at noon. She had married the white man only to escape her family. She came to approve our ways and was adopted into the tribe. Anthea Remington chose the name Freedom Woman, saying at last she had a life where she was free—a true home here in our land. That was when my nephew offered to take her to his blankets as wife. She saw it as an honor for she knew he could have taken her as a slave. She came to love him very much and she bore him a son.”

      
“Chase,” Stephanie said softly.

      
“He was called Chase the Wind then, a boy who was always getting into trouble...like Smooth Stone. They were happy until the Long Knives came riding into our winter camp when he was six years old. We did not know to hide in the mountains then as we do now. We were camped by what the white men now call the Republican River. The buffalo ran as a solid black wall for miles then, but the soldiers would not let us hunt. They said we must come to their fort and let the White Father in Washington feed us. When our leaders refused to move, they burned our lodges and killed our warriors. Vanishing Grass died valiantly and Stands Tall was gravely injured. We were forced to march many miles in the cold. There was little food. When her son grew ill, Freedom Woman revealed to the soldiers at the fort that she was white.”

      
“To save him.”

      
Red Bead nodded. “We never saw them again until he returned as a youth of fourteen summers. He had left his mother in your city and fled in search of us. His heart was troubled but he never spoke of it. Or of her. He became a brave warrior in the seasons he spent with Black Kettle's band, for that was where we fled when Stands Tall led us from Fort Riley to the Arkansas River country.”

      
“And they recaptured him when Custer attacked at Washita.”

      
‘They carried him away in chains, screaming that he would die a Cheyenne rather than live with his white family ever again. The soldiers did not listen.”

      
“He agreed to live with the Remingtons because of his mother.” Red Bead grunted in acknowledgment and Stephanie was not certain if the old woman already knew this or merely surmised it. “He attended a great school and learned many good things about his mother's people.”

      
“He learned about you,” Red Bead said shrewdly.

      
Stephanie felt her cheeks heat. “We had been friends as children. Our families pledged us to marry, but then his mother died...”

      
The old woman could sense the bleakness in her voice. “And he left you to return here.”

      
“To become a famous warrior among the Cheyenne.”

      
“You think so? It is true the name of the White Wolf is spoken around the campfires of our people, even among our cousins the Lakota and Arapaho. But many do not trust his white blood. You have seen it with Pony Whipper and some of his Crazy Dogs. But in the high councils when all the great chiefs gather for the summer hunts, he is allowed to speak and they listen...yet they do not always heed, even though he has undergone the great vision quest of the Sun Dance.”

      
Stephanie shuddered, remembering the deep scars on his chest, hardly able to imagine what drove these people to seek out such pain. But she could imagine what caused Chase to do it. “He underwent the test to prove he belonged, didn't he?”

      
“For one so young, you are wise...at times.” Another fleeting smile touched Red Bead's lips.

* * * *

      
At last the Department of the Platte had recognized his accomplishments enough to give him his captaincy, even if he did have to nearly die to get it. Hugh Phillips leaned back in the rickety chair behind his cluttered desk. He was the newly appointed commandant of Fort Steele.

      
Although he despised this harsh primitive land where the whites lived little better than the savages, here lay his opportunity to seize glory. While George Custer played at being a Wall Street tycoon back East, General Terry considered other officers to lead the campaigns in the Department of Dakota. Phillips would not let slip his golden opportunity here in Wyoming. Before he was done cutting a swathe through the high plains tribes, old Phil Sheridan himself would sit up and take notice.

      
But right now he had to prepare for the Washington bigwig who was coming through on an inspection tour. It would never hurt to have the ear of a United States senator with direct access to President Grant. He yelled for his sergeant to come in and straighten up. As he stood up, a dull ache gripped his abdomen for a moment, a grim reminder of his encounter with that breed who had nearly gutted him back at Laramie.

      
What the hell had brought that thrice-cursed breed to attempt to assassinate him after so long? He rubbed the scar on his cheek, remembering that day when the bastard had escaped. “This time you weren't so lucky, I bet,” he muttered to himself as he walked out the door. He'd put a bullet in the savage's chest, so he couldn't have gotten far. However, they'd never found his body or recovered his horse. But everyone had written him off after the knife wound and he had recovered. What if the breed was equally lucky?

      
The disturbing thought, one which had plagued him all during the past months of his recuperation, was put behind when he heard the whistle of a locomotive. The four-ten train had arrived. He checked his uniform with its new captain's bars once again in the mirror, slicking back his hair, then placing his hat on his head. He was ready to meet the senator from Massachusetts.

      
Burke Remington stepped off the train onto the wooden platform of the tiny Union Pacific railroad depot alongside the fort. The vast open sweep of grassland plains was filled with sagebrush and saltweed bushes.
Desolate
, he thought to himself, like all this endless godforsaken country. But the monotony was broken by tall stands of cottonwoods and willows along the banks of the North Platte, their branches leafless and stark against a leaden sky. The only hint of green was a small smattering of fir and pines dotting the riverbanks and growing here and there around the meager frame buildings comprising the fort and the town beside it.

      
A contingent of officers stood on the opposite end of the platform. The tall, hard looking captain must be Phillips, the new post commander. Putting on his best politician's smile, Burke waited for him to approach, his hand outstretched in greeting. He and the young captain had a great deal to discuss.

      
Once the formalities were taken care of and his entourage offered serviceable quarters in which to freshen up, Remington asked to see Phillips in his office.

      
Closing the door on his sergeant, Hugh studied the barrel-chested man with the iron gray hair and cold blue eyes. He had an aristocrat's face, handsome and utterly ruthless. Idly the officer wondered if Stephanie's ill-fated half-breed lover had resembled his uncle. Not likely. “You had something urgent you wanted to discuss privately before the tour of our facilities, Senator?” he asked, offering Remington a seat.

      
The big man sat down on the old monstrosity of a horsehair sofa and leaned back. In his expensive custom-tailored gray wool suit, he looked as out of place on the rough frontier outpost as a thoroughbred on an alkali flat. Burke extracted an expensive Cuban cigar from a gold case and offered one to Hugh, who accepted the unheard of luxury with a thin smile.
Damned rich bastard throwing his weight around.
He lit the senator's cigar, then his own and waited patiently as Remington blew out a cloud of fragrant smoke. His calm facade was shattered when Burke spoke.

      
“I assume you still want to kill that renegade raider White Wolf. I have some information that will help you.”

      
Phillips leaned across his desk. “I’ve chased him from the Dakotas to the Arkansas River. What could you possibly know about a renegade horse Indian?”

      
“He's my nephew,” Burke said in a cold clipped voice.

Chapter Seventeen

      
It was the month of the Freezing Moon and time for the marriage of Kit Fox and Blue Eagle. Stephanie had observed Granite Arm and the other women of the family constructing a small lodge situated near that of the bride's family. All the requisite gifts of horses, robes, jewelry and other items had been exchanged for the bride price. As soon as Blue Eagle returned from the raid, they would be wed.

      
Kit Fox's love was one of the White Wolf's warriors. They left shortly after Stephanie's last disturbing confrontation with Chase. She overheard whispers among the women that the raiders were going to attack an army supply train bound for Fort Fetterman from the railhead to the south and were expected to burn out a number of relay stations in route as well as destroy telegraph lines, a continual harassment which greatly slowed army pursuit of fleeing Indians.

      
Stephanie's Cheyenne had become fluent enough to understand the crier as his voice sounded across the camp late one afternoon. The raiders had returned. Putting down the adz with which she was scraping a deer hide, she followed the excited crowd gathering in the center of the village to watch the victorious warriors parade in triumph. Her steps were leaden with dread. She was drawn against her will to the sounds of jubilation echoing across the valley, not wishing to participate, yet powerless to stop herself from hungering to see that he was alive and unharmed—just to gaze upon him once more.

      
He rode at the head of the procession with his war lance held upright, bedecked with eagle feathers. His body was shielded against the fierce winter winds by a rich robe of wolf skins thrown carelessly across his shoulders. He sat on his big dun like a conqueror returning in triumph, back ramrod straight, head arrogantly high. His face was painted with jagged vermilion and white lines, giving it a hard alien appearance, like a drama mask...symbolizing what? His red and white halves brought together in this barbaric ritual?

      
He looked savage and deadly and foreign—and yet she felt a flame lick deep inside her belly as her breath expelled a small puff of white in the frozen air. She trembled, unable to tear her eyes away from his fearful beauty, drawn irresistibly to move closer. Only by sheer force of will did she halt at the edge of the crowd.

      
No one in the chaotic camp saw the lone Aricara scout concealed in a dense snow-laden copse of cedars high on the farthest ridge near the hidden entrance to the valley. Bloody Hand was one of the most skilled scouts ever employed by the army, but he could not credit his tracking skills for locating the winter camp of this small band of Cheyenne.

      
He had crossed paths with the returning warriors by accident and knew by their war paint and loot that they had just completed a raid. Although he did not know who they were, he thought it prudent to follow them to their village and report the location of another band of renegades to Captain Ansil at Fort Fetterman. They were well concealed in this valley. No army scouts would ever have found the camp by searching. Now all he had to do was get out of the Big Horns alive so he could lead the army back.