His Dakota Captive

by Jenna Kernan

  “This man is white and so the whites will come.”

  “We left him alive and took no trophies.”

  “That was wise.”

  His friend lifted his tobacco pouch. Sky frowned as he saw the poorly embroidered deerskin sheath. Some of the trade beads had fallen off or sagged on loose threads. It seemed odd that a head man, who should have items of the highest quality, would keep something so awkwardly fashioned.

  Eagle Dancer noted Sky staring and handed over the pouch.

  “A gift from my wife, the first piece she ever made for me.”

  Sky Fox held it like the precious object it appeared to be. “She showed great promise.”

  “I built this house for her, a white man’s house, so when she comes back, she will feel at home.”

  Sky frowned, not knowing what to say to this, but Eagle Dancer was no longer looking at him. Instead, he stared toward the ceiling. His face had a faraway expression that faded as he reclaimed the plump little bag. Then he sighed and quickly filled his pipe, lighting it with a splinter of firewood. He inhaled deeply as the scent of sweet tobacco rose about them. Instead of savoring the smoke, Eagle Dancer began a deep wet cough. Sky got him some water and that seemed to help. The head man offered his pipe to Sky and they smoked a while.

  After a comfortable silence, Eagle Dancer glanced at Sky. “Do you still walk the Red Road, then?”

  “My heart is always Lakota.”

  “I am happy and sad that we are still your people. I had hoped you would find your place with them.” He motioned toward the door, indicating the world beyond.

  They were silent, Sky Fox thinking back to the last time he saw Eagle Dancer. “I carry that day like a stone in my heart.”

  His friend studied him for a time. Sky waited for him to cast judgment.

  “It is good you do not forget. Perhaps saving this boy will help you walk in balance.” Eagle Dancer motioned to his nephew.

  “I can never repay this debt.”

  Eagle Dancer did not try to dismiss his opinion, but merely accepted it with a nod. “You feel you must do more and you must do what you must do. So I will tell you that Joy Cat still lives but his eyes are full of clouds now. And your friend’s sisters, Forever Flower and Pretty Wren, both lost their husbands in a battle before the Greasy Grass Fight. Maybe you could marry them.”

  Sky Fox was so stunned, he let the tip of the pipe sag and only just kept it from touching the earth. Certainly he was wealthy enough to keep two wives. Some Sioux warriors had as many as four, but he knew Joy Cat hated him and so he doubted the man would agree. “Would they accept me?”

  “I don’t know. Many things have changed since those days. The sisters fight a lot now. If they were gone, Joy Cat might marry again. He is a respected head man and we have many widows. Perhaps you can capture a piece of this life with them. But you cannot stay here with them. I am sorry, my brother, but the white men will not see you as one of us.”

  Sky knew that the treaty allowed only full-blooded Lakota to live on the reservation and Sky Fox did not have even a drop of Indian blood. It was a failing that had always pushed him to be better, faster and braver than his comrades. He had wanted to prove worthy. His eagerness caused him to take the shot that day, to be first to place his arrow in the deer that was not a deer. His head sank as he thought of his friend bleeding in the cottonwood thicket.

  “They are good women, strong and pretty.”

  “Then why have you not taken one?” asked Sky.

  They were from the Bitterroot tribe and so Eagle Dancer could marry either or both.

  “My heart is not free.”

  Sky Fox felt a stab of guilt at that. He hesitated.

  “Is yours, brother?” asked Eagle Dancer.

  “My heart is only broken. I fear it would be a lonely life for a woman.”

  “You have lost your place in this world. Perhaps you should take them both and begin a new life from the old.”

  Sky swallowed hard as he thought of accepting such a responsibility. Would Sacred Cloud want him to marry his widowed sisters? Had his friend lived, he would provide for them. Sky felt the mantle of duty fall heavy on his shoulders.

  “Ask her father. If this is his wish, I will marry either or both.”

  Eagle Dancer smiled and Sky Fox realized he had spoken in haste. He had lived too long with whites and forgotten to consider his words before uttering them. Eagle Dancer still did not know the rest of the burden he carried.

  Sky Fox cleared his throat. “There is something more I must say, brother. Then if you still think I should wed the sisters, I will do so. But before you put this question to Joy Cat, I would tell you of my return to the whites.”

  Eagle Dancer nodded and sat back to listen, putting the pipe carefully aside on the forked wooden holder.

  “After you set my feet on the road to the fort, they brought me to their head man and he asked me about other white captives. It was the first thing my new people wanted.” He lowered his head in shame.

  Eagle Dancer did not ask, but waited, silently.

  “I betrayed you, my brother.”

  Eagle Dancer lifted a brow. It was so different than the way of whites, quick to question, quick to blame, quick to fight. His people were slow to anger, slow to fight. They knew the power of words and so they treated them with great care.

  “They showed me a photograph of Sunshine.”

  The muscles in Eagle Dancer’s jaw ticked. Sky hoped he would fly at him, strike him, kill him for what he had done. But Eagle Dancer showed the control of the seasoned leader he had become.

  “Why did you do this thing?” he asked in a level voice. Only his eyes showed the agony this news brought him.

  Why indeed? Stupidity, arrogance. “We were strong then. I knew the army would not venture off the narrow wagon roads to follow us so far north. They always turned back and even if they did not, I knew our braves would defeat them, for we were many. I never considered…” His words fell off. How could he finish?

  Eagle Dancer completed his thought. “That her father and mother would come along and steal her?” His friend gazed off to someplace far away and spoke as if to himself.

  “Yes.”

  “That my own mother would betray her only son?”

  Sky’s eyes widened. This he did not know and had no response to such a confession. He lowered his head.

  “You carry heavy burdens,” said Eagle Dancer.

  “As do you.”

  His friend nodded at this.

  Sky Fox stood. “I will leave now.”

  Eagle Dancer extended an open hand. “You will spend the night.”

  It was a courtesy he did not deserve. It shamed him. He sank back in his seat.

  “I have tried many times to die with honor. I do not know why I still live.”

  Eagle Dancer waited until Sky met his steady gaze. “I think it is because you walk for two now. If that is so, then you must honor him and lead a worthy life.”

  The men stared at the dying fire.

  “I was with your father when he fell at the Greasy Grass Fight.”

  Sky’s eyes pinned Eagle Dancer. He had heard that his father had fallen at the battle of Little Big Horn, but that was all.

  “He fought well and died well.”

  Sky longed to ask the details but then hesitated. Perhaps it was best to remember him as he had been. “Thank you for telling me this.”

  “He spoke of you often, worried about you in the world of the Wasicu, just as I have worried over Sunshine. I wonder if she is happy back in that world where she was born.” When his friend spoke again, his voice had the faraway quality of wistfulness. “The markings my mother gave her always made my wife sad. But I thought they were beautiful. For a long time after she left, I hoped those marks would bring her back to me. Each morning, when I pray at dawn, I watch the sky turn red and remember the color of her hair. I would give what is left of this useless life just to see her once more.”

&nbs
p; From behind him, his nephew stirred, crawling out of his bedding and joining them at the fire.

  No Moccasins’s eyes were wide as if he had been startled awake.

  Eagle Dancer quirked a brow. “You have heard all?”

  No Moccasins stared. “What color was her hair?”

  Eagle Dancer lowered his head and sat in silence, so Sky Fox answered.

  “It was red-gold, long and wavy.”

  No Moccasins ran his hand over his chin. “She bears the mark of the Sweetwater?”

  Eagle Dancer now pinned his nephew with a look of intent interest.

  “I have seen her. She’s at the school.”

  Eagle Dancer grabbed his nephew’s shoulders and stared in astonishment. Then he released No Moccasins and held three fingers beneath his lip and dragged them down his chin. “Like this?”

  “Yes.”

  Eagle Dancer’s face lit with joy as he turned to Sky Fox. “My wife has come back to me.”

  Sky sank to the backrest as if someone had struck him in the stomach. Why would Lucie West return to the Sacred Black Hills?

  Eagle Dancer clasped Sky’s shoulder. “She is here!” He stood now as if ready to run all the way to the school. Then he looked back at Sky. “I am forbidden to leave the reservation. You must go after her.”

  Sky gaped, but no words came from his mouth as he rose to face his mentor.

  “Please, brother, you must tell her that I still wait, that I have kept my heart only for her.”

  Sky Fox hated to point out the obvious. “But, my friend, she ran. Why would you want a woman who does not want you?”

  “She did not run. She was captured, taken where I could not find her. She is searching, too. Don’t you see?”

  “Perhaps it is not even Sunshine.”

  “She is the only white woman who bears the mark of Sweetwater. She is here and you are here, just like the time when she was stolen. The hoop has come full circle.”

  Sky pointed out the other possibilities. “She may be married again or be a mother.”

  Eagle Dancer shook his head in denial. “No.”

  “What if she will not come willingly?” asked Sky, dreading the answer.

  Eagle Dancer’s face grew solemn, but he would not hear the possibility of doubt. “She will come.”

  “You cannot force her to stay.”

  Eagle Dancer shook his head. “I will keep her only with the power of my love. It is all the tethers I will need. Go, brother, and bring her back to me.”

  Chapter Two

  The next morning No Moccasins met the older boys at the river. How he envied them. He wished he was fourteen so he would not have to return to the blackrobes’ school.

  The older boys would not normally have shown him any interest, but today they called him over. Their leader used to be called Arrives Late, but he had gone on his vision quest and now had his adult name. No Moccasins wondered how any of them would earn their feathers in a world with no more battles to fight and no more buffalo to hunt.

  He knew Red Lightning had seen Sky Fox as he left his uncle’s lodge early this morning.

  “Why does your uncle allow an enemy into his lodge, Pollywog?” asked Red Lightning, using the nickname No Moccasins hated.

  “He is not an enemy.”

  Running Horse made a scoffing sound. But No Moccasins continued.

  “He is the son of Ten Horses.”

  Running Horse’s eyes widened. “I have heard of that one. He killed Joy Cat’s son. Joy Cat has only daughters now, very pretty daughters.”

  No Moccasins did not want the boys to get talking about girls again. He could not understand their endless interest in them, but it seemed to be all they spoke of. Plus he needed their help to find the wounded man.

  “He is called Sky Fox and shot the man who captured me.”

  That got their attention. Both boys now stared at him with such surprised expressions they reminded him of burrowing owls.

  “He was…” No Moccasins stammered and then re covered. “He was beating me and Sky Fox shot him.” He expanded his chest. “Then I tried to shoot, too.”

  The boys began to laugh.

  “I thought he was serious,” said Red Lightning.

  “What did you shoot him with?” asked Running Horse.

  “I took his pistol.”

  The laughter stopped.

  “Where is this pistol?” asked Running Horse.

  “Sky Fox made me leave it behind.”

  The older boys exchanged a look fraught with meaning.

  No Moccasins sensed they were going to leave him here. “I’ll lead you.”

  They were silent for a moment, as if trying to think of a way to do this without him.

  “We could follow the buzzards,” suggested Running Horse.

  “He’s not dead,” said No Moccasins.

  Red Lightning narrowed his eyes. “We’ll take him.”

  Lucie West eyed the unusual man tying his horse at the hitching post before the blacksmith’s shop. His bearing struck her first because it seemed familiar in its supple grace. He did not stand or move like a soldier as he flipped the stirrup over the saddle and loosened the girth. She ran the length of him trying to understand why the sight of this stranger should stop her in her tracks. He was taller than most and broad…what?

  Where was his hat? No white man rode in or out without one. Yet, here he stood bare-headed. His shaggy, shoulder-length hair was streaked with gold, bleached by the sun. His face was deeply tanned, but his light hair marked him as white. Perhaps he was one of the many born of both races.

  His bare forearm flexed as he untied his saddlebags and effortlessly flipped the heavy sacks over one wide shoulder. Her gaze caressed his back and powerful legs, the menacing gun belt at his hip and then halted abruptly at his high moccasins. She recognized the style instantly, having once labored to make similar ones, but never with such skill. Was that why she felt the vague sense of familiarity?

  They could be a war trophy or trade goods, she told herself. Her objection did not sooth her growing anxiety.

  Mrs. Fetterer, who was also a matron at the Sage River School for Indians, noticed Lucie had stopped and followed the direction of her gaze. The woman stood stiff as a starched collar and wide as the paddlewheelers on the Missouri River. Her frizzy hair was tamed in a conservative knot which made her head seem tiny by comparison.

  “Ah,” she said. “The horse trader. I see he sold the lot.”

  Lucie kept her eyes on the man. He straightened, his body now tense as if recognizing someone watched him. He turned in a slow circle until he found her and froze with one hand on the saddle pommel. He stared at her with piercing blue eyes, the color of the clear summer sky. Men often stared at her now, but this stare was different. Her breath caught at the connection and then she broke free, looking at the ground that separated them.

  The tingling awareness lifted gooseflesh on her skin as she recognized that he was now studying her.

  Mrs. Fetterer clasped Lucie’s arm and set them in motion.

  “Look at the way he gawks at you. No manners at all and wild as the horses he chases.” She steered them across the yard. Lucie put one foot before the other, resisting the urge to turn tail and run, which she would most certainly have done if her companion were not compelling her forward. Something about this man screamed a warning. The last time she felt this breathless with uncertainty she had been hiding from the attacking Sioux.

  Mrs. Fetterer whispered as they passed the hitching posts before the blacksmiths. “He is a most dreadful man. My husband tells me that he barely utters a word to him, but will jabber in that gibberish to any Indian who wanders in.”

  Lucie’s step faltered. If he spoke Sioux, it was a reasonable assumption that he understood the meaning of the marks on her chin.

  “Is he an Indian trader?”

  She swore she could feel the man’s eyes still boring into her back.

  “I doubt he could receive the proper pe
rmits. And the Indians are forbidden to buy his horses. I can’t see why anyone would want one of those dreadful spotted ponies. If you ask me the cavalry was right to shoot the creatures along with the buffalo. It’s the only way to keep the Indians from their mischief.”

  They reached the trading post and Lucie opened the door, holding it for the older woman and taking the opportunity to glance back.

  The man now stood behind his horse, still staring fixedly at her. She hurried after Mrs. Fetterer. Once inside, she moved to the window to keep track of him as he removed his saddle and entered the smithy’s shop.

  Mrs. Fetterer strolled along the tables, placing a can of peaches in her basket. “Of course, my Oscar believes the man runs guns to the savages.”

  “Who’s that now?” asked Mr. Bloom, the weathered trader that the Bureau of Indian Affairs did sanction. Lucie had to wonder at their choice, for he seemed to spend most of his time drinking half of each bottle of whiskey he purchased and then making up the difference with tea. As a result his eyes were watery and his nose had a fine collection of burst blood vessels making the protuberance swollen and crimson in color.

  “That horse trader is back. What’s his name again?” asked Mrs. Fetterer.

  “Oh, you talking about Skylar Fox? I heard he shot a man in Texas and is wanted for hanging.” Bloom moved to the window beside Lucie. “He sell that string of ponies?”

  “It seems that he has,” said Mrs. Fetterer. “Do you have any good soap, Mr. Bloom? My skin is so fine, it requires quality.”

  “Right here.” He lifted a box from behind his counter. “You got to admire a man that can catch them ponies solo. Wish I knew how he does it. Even the stallions. It just don’t make no sense.”

  “I hope he catches each and every last one of them.”

  “Say what you like about them ponies. They’re fast and they don’t need no grain.”

  “Exactly why we should be rid of them. What about talc powder, Mr. Bloom?”

  “None expected.”

  “Gracious. I’ll have to write my sister again.” She chose a bar of soap from the crate and lowered it into her basket. “Do you know what the man did when my husband offered to geld his stallions? Well, he laughed, as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.”