Indian Affairs (historical romance)

by Parris Afton Bonds

  He glanced at Tony. “And you, my friend?”

  Tony looked down at his moccasins, then up at him again. “I think you know already what to do.”

  Mud Woman returned shyly to show off their daughter. Peg appropriately cooed over the gurgling baby.

  Looking on, Bear Heart knew what he had to do.

  * * * * *

  “Let the water flow?” Cloud Eagle asked in astonishment.

  Three days after Peg and Tony visited Bear Heart, they trekked with him up to Blue Lake to counsel with Cloud Eagle. The four now sat on the smoothly honed plank floor in the center of the Forest Service’s log cabin. They spoke mostly in English. Cloud Eagle’s six lieutenants were conspicuously absent. Sunlight filtered through the trees and sawdust-speckled glass windows.

  “Why?”

  “To win,” Bear Heart said gravely, “we must not make our Hispanic and white neighbors lose. They have been loyal friends. We do not need more enemies.”

  “I will not leave here.”

  “We don’t ask that,” Peg said. “We only ask that you release the water to the ditches.”

  “Then we will have given away . . . that for which we can negotiate.”

  “We don’t negotiate,” Bear Heart said.

  Cloud Eagle stared at him in disbelief. “You counsel fighting? Fighting the United States?”

  “No. I counsel the force of Truth.”

  “What is this you speak of?”

  “Better to please soul than government.” Bear Heart glanced at Peg. “We have right to resist an unjust law, this is so?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Thoreau and Gandhi say so.”

  Cloud Eagle peered quizzically at him. “Your words war with each other, Bear Heart. How?”

  “This is our land. What for we have fifty-year-use permit? My thoughts tell me . . . live here. With our families. In peace. For as much time as it takes to get this paper, this title, to our sacred lake.”

  “What if troops order you off at gun point?” Peg asked.

  He brought forth the very newspapers she had left days before. “We get out message out that we are staying. We do this through this, the Mind Reader.”

  * * * * *

  As he predicted, several forest rangers, escorted by two New Mexico policemen showed up the next day but quickly left at the sight of a local Taos photographer Peg had hired to hang out.

  Within two weeks, the fight for Blue Lake grew to national proportions. Support came from other Indian tribes, churches, schools, civic organizations, thousands of individuals across the country . . . and from Alessandra.

  * * * * *

  “Hello, Man,” she said softly.

  He was stunned. She had come.

  Behind her, Tony and Peg and Jeremy, who had ridden with Alessandra up to the ranger cabin, remained mounted. Jeremy’s face lit up. “Hi, Man!”

  So the boy had returned. Good. He would find answers here to balance what he had learned in Washington. Perhaps he could take the good from both. Bear Heart glanced back to Alessandra. She was thin and pale. And he loved her.

  “I came as soon as the news began appearing in the Washington papers,” she said. She looked past him to Mud Woman and their daughter she carried. “Hello, Mud Woman. Is this your new daughter? May I see her?”

  Bear Heart scrutinized his wife’s face for any hostility toward the white woman, but, as always, Mud Woman’s expression was perfectly calm. She pulled back the blanket to reveal the sleeping infant to Alessandra.

  “Oh, how beautiful she is! What is her name?”

  Mud Woman blushed with pleasure. “Maria Isabel,” she replied, giving only their daughter’s Spanish name they had selected for the papers and the priest. Her real name, her Indian name, was yet to be given. This was to be chosen at the summer solstice ceremonies.

  The longing in Alessandra’s eyes as she gazed down at his daughter tugged at his heart. How very much he had wanted to fulfill her desire for another baby. Their baby. Waiting patiently for an explanation for her visit, he invited her and the others inside.

  The cabin door remained open, as male members of his tribe came and went, bearing supplies. They prepared, should the wait be a long one. The women cared for their children, shucked brightly colored corn or made loaves of bread for surplus use. In all, twenty-three people lived in the Forest Service log cabin. Men, women, and children who had moved to their shrine land to make a statement.

  He sought out a less busy corner, and the six of them settled cross-legged onto its rough-hewn wooden planks. The pleasant scent of freshly-shaved pine pervaded the cabin.

  “How long do you think you’ll have to hold up here?” Alessandra asked. Smudges beneath her eyes told him she had not been sleeping well. He noted she still wore the bracelet he had fashioned for her.

  “Until we get title to our land.”

  In an intimate moment of lapse, she put out her fingers to make a point, touched his blanket where it draped across his wrist, then quickly withdrew her hand. “That’s not what you want.”

  He had to smile at the intensity in her voice and the absurdity of her statement. “No?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I checked with the BIA real property office. Man, if your tribe acquires title to your land, you quite probably will have to pay taxes on it. I’m willing to bet your tribe lacks the resources to do so. Then you would legally lose the land in our court system.”

  He felt totally lost in trying to work with the white man’s complex systems of rules. “What for then — ”

  “This is what we do,” she interrupted him. Her expression earnest, she leaned forward. “We persuade your Tribe to seek a trust patent rather than a fee-simple title. In effect, we would force Congress to recognize the Tribe’s special right to the area.”

  Not understanding some of the words she used, he only asked, “We?”

  Her gaze locked with his. “I’m in this battle, too, remember?” She rushed on before he could stop her. “Who better? I know the legalities of the Tribe’s title quest inside and out. I can negotiate with whatever piece of shit they send down here. And you can bet it won’t be long before some posturing government grunt turns up. The American politicians can’t afford to let this get out of hand. Not after what happened at Wounded Knee.”

  “Wounded Knee?”

  She pushed back a mass of crazily curling hair that had fallen across her face and smiled sardonically. “The government’s pay back for Custer’s Last Stand. U. S. soldiers massacred unarmed Indians at a town called Wounded Knee some thirty years ago.”

  Appalled, he said nothing at first. In the silence, his gaze roamed the faces of the others — Tony, Peg, and Jeremy and lastly Mud Woman and his sleeping daughter. “Too much danger. I can’t let all of you stay here.”

  “These are my people also,” Tony said gravely.

  “If this does not work . . .” Bear Heart paused, searching for the right English words so that the others would understand as well, “. . . you, Peg, Jeremy, and Alessandra . . . you, my friends, must tell our story to others.”

  Peg squeezed Tony’s hand and said solemnly, “I think we’ve all learned the power of the press.”

  Bear Heart glanced at Tony. After a long moment, Tony nodded. “If you feel this must be so.”

  Finally, Bear Heart’s gaze found Alessandra’s. Both concern and resolution glowed in the depths of her eyes. “All right, Jeremy is going back with them,” she said firmly, “but I’m staying. You need me.”

  So little, so frail, so determined.

  She gave Jeremy a long embrace. When she pulled away from her son, he smiled. The boy was almost as tall as his mother now. With a similar strength. She held his shoulders and, with a bright smile, said, “Mind Peg and Tony and do your homework, kiddo.”

  His long-lashed eyes and the quivering lip he bit to control betrayed his boyish fear. “When are you coming home, Mom?”

  She swallowed and brushed a swath of curling black hair back from his e
yes. “Very soon.”

  Peg’s plastered smile reminded him of the chiffonetas. She stepped up next to hug her. “Don’t take chances, Alessandra.”

  Tony cast him a look that said everything that needed to be acknowledged, and then the three were mounting up.

  Alessandra blew Jeremy a kiss, “I love you, son. Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  Later that night, as Bear Heart made the last rounds of the cabin, he found Alessandra around back, leaning against a nearby fir. She was smoking a cigarette. When she saw him, she straightened, dropped the cigarette on the ground and rubbed it out with the toe of her Russian boot.

  “You caught me. Don’t tell Peg, or she’ll throw a hissy fit.”

  He came no closer than a couple of feet, but his nostrils could detect her tantalizing scent wafting just below the harsh odor of the cigarette smoke. Her own individual scent, so subtle with the fragrance of field lavender.

  “Do you ever feel like my world has gone crazy, Man? All this hate and cruelty and killing lust.”

  Recognizing she used these words to create a fence, he spoke as directly and simply as he could. “I think some of these white men, they lost their souls and must find them again.”

  “Yes, perhaps you’re right.”

  “You are sure you want to do this thing? To stay?”

  “Yes.” She looked away, up at the Old Woman Moon, a bare sliver peeking through the canopy of firs. He suspected she did not want to see him, to see inside his heart. “I think that we come into this life, Man, not to wander aimlessly, but with a purpose. Maybe several. And I know that my purpose . . . here and now . . . is to be with you. To see this through.”

  * * * * *

  Federal troopers moved in more quickly than Bear Heart had anticipated. By noon of the next day, they encircled the clearing where the cabin stood. Cloud Eagle’s lookouts alerted the cabin’s occupants when the troopers appeared on the trail below. They had several hours to barricade the cabin against the outside world.

  “They won’t do anything,” Alessandra told him and Cloud Eagle. “They’re sent to intimidate us. Whoever’s heading up that military delegation will soon make known their demands.”

  She was right. With twenty-four pairs of eyes watching from the cabin, a soldier bearing a small white flag, and a civilian detached themselves from the troopers stationed behind the circling trees and approached.

  The soldier’s holster was empty, and neither he nor the civilian in the Mexican sombrero and union overalls carried any weapons. Reluctantly, Bear Heart agreed to Alessandra’s accompanying him and Cloud Eagle outside to meet with these two representatives of the white man’s government.

  As they drew nearer to the two men, he heard Alessandra’s in-taking hiss. “Ed Potts!”

  Astonishment crossed the soldier’s mustached face, clearly brought on by the sight of a white woman accompanying the Indians. He saluted. “Lieutenant Rheingold.” Instantly, he removed his peaked hat, tucked it beneath his arm, and snapped smartly to attention. “Ma’am.”

  “My name is Alessandra O’Quinn.”

  Potts didn’t remove his sombrero with its turned-up brim. His beard-bordered lips curled. “Oh, I know sure ’nough who you are. A troublemaker . . . and an Indian-lovin’ cunt.”

  On Bear Heart’s left, Cloud Eagle stiffened. Neither understood the final word the man had used, but both understood the nastiness in its damning tone.

  “Potts!” the soldier said, “that’s enough!” He glanced at Alessandra. “My apologies, ma’am, for my guide’s behavior.”

  She inclined her head. “To finish the introduction, I’m Virginia’s Under Secretary of State and the wife of Senator Brendon O’Quinn. I’m here to help in the Taos Tribe’s quest for title to their shrineland. And your purpose for being here illegally, Lt. Rheingold?”

  “Why . . . I’m . . . I’m here on official business, Mrs. O’Quinn. By order of the Secretary of War.” He unbuttoned the flap of his tan military jacket and drew forth a folded piece of paper.

  Alessandra scanned the sheet then turned to Cloud Eagle and him. “The lieutenant here has been ordered to escort us from the premises of the Forest Service Headquarters immediately.”

  Bear Heart affected surprised. “We thought this our land.”

  “My soldiers are waiting, ma’am.”

  “Then they’ll have to wait, lieutenant. And wait. Because the Taos Indians are not moving off their shrineland until they are given trust to its entire 50,000 acres.”

  The soldier looked uncomfortable. “Ma’am, I have orders to forcibly remove the Indians if I have to.”

  “Lieutenant, there are more than twenty people inside. Men, women, and children, all without weapons. Tell your commander that if we have to wait too long, if the children have to go without food,” she held up the folded sheet of military instructions between two fingers, “we will make sure the national press hears about this armed threat of innocent people.”

  The lieutenant’s mustache dipped lower with the tightening of his mouth. “I’ll be back.”

  “Remove ’em, Lieutenant?” Potts challenged. “Hell, I’ll save you the trouble. I’m for killing the stinking cockroaches. Every last one of them. It’d save time and money.”

  * * * * *

  Thirty-six hours passed. The soldiers still ringed the clearing. Bear Heart moved among the families clustered in the cabin. Calf Man and his wife and daughter . . . Cloud Eagle, his mother, wife, and three children . . . Grandfather Turtle with his granddaughter, her husband, and their twin boys . . . and on past the others, all preparing to bed down for the night.

  Whispering. Smothered giggles. A soft lullaby. The sweet scent of burning piñon, something he had poignantly discovered could only be found in the Southwest. The popping and crackling in the stone fireplace. Its flames’ light dancing over shadowy, sleeping lumps. All these people dear to him. All these people depending on him for a right solution.

  Tired, he rubbed his eyes and tried to focus. He had to believe love triumphed over hate, that life defeated death.

  * * * * *

  As promised, the lieutenant returned. But ahead of him came photographers, newspapermen, and more troops to keep order. With the privy so close to the line of troopers, everyone in the cabin had been forced to use an as yet roofless, storage lean-to just outside the rear door for relieving themselves. Everyone including Alessandra. Whenever she used the converted bathroom facilities, cameras flashed.

  On one such trip, she discovered some damn fool was taking moving pictures of her from across the clearing.

  Just as she whirled to go back inside, a voice nearby called out, “Mrs. O’Quinn?! It’s me, Ned. Ned McCafferty.” The young reporter stepped from concealment behind the outhouse. “Will you talk to me, Mrs. O’Quinn? Please?”

  Relieved that the reporter was young Ned, she nodded and waited.

  Eagerly, he loped the intervening distance to her. His wide grin still reminded her of Jeremy’s. “Don’t suppose you could help me out and give me a scoop again?” He yanked a pencil tucked behind his ear and fished out a notepad from his shirt pocket. “Just some background details even. That guy on the Santa Fe New Mexican — ” he pointed his pencil tip to the man with the camera, “ — he’s beating my stories bloody with his damned moving pictures.”

  She paused, considering the big favor she did owe him . . . even though she had said they were even. But will Man agree to what I want? After his experiences in Washington . . . she shrugged. “Come on in, Ned.”

  “You mean it?! The Indians would let me go inside?”

  For more than an hour, Man and Grandfather Turtle sat and talked with Ned, answering his questions.

  “We no have gold temples in our Blue Lake,” Grandfather Turtle told the wide-eyed young man, “but we have our outdoor temple, where lives the Great Spirit we pray to, the living trees and the beautiful flowers and beautiful rocks and the lake itself. We have this proof of sacred
things we deeply love, deeply believe.”

  * * * * *

  Alessandra’s heart pounded as she watched from the window. Under the security of a white flag, her husband and the odious Albert Fall approached the cabin in the company of Lt. Rheingold. She knew then, the tribe’s cause was lost. Brendon came from a strain of warriors who never gave up. Whatever it took, he would win. And most of all, his manhood demanded he win her back.

  “I’m going out,” she told Man and Cloud Eagle.

  The two cast concerned glances at one another. Then, “I go with you,” Man said.

  “No.” She touched his arm and at once quickly withdrew her fingers. The warmth of his skin, his protective mass of body, his determined expression and tender gaze . . . they made her feel complacent, and this she couldn’t be. She couldn’t assume just because one loves that everything always works out for the best. “No, I must go alone, Man.”

  The pine needles crunched beneath her feet as she made the long walk to meet Brendon and Fall midway between the cabin and the encamped troopers and media. They came together where the sun shafted through the overhanging bower to dapple a magical ring of light on the fallen pinecones.

  “Hello, Brendon,” she said coolly.”

  His eyes, dark with their own suffering, ran over her with distress, as if anxious to assure himself she was all right. “You’re looking well, uhh . . . very good.”

  She couldn’t say the same for him. In fact, his suit looked quite rumpled, as did his hair. The black fedora in his hands had been crushed. She struggled against the net of charm he could still cast, fought against the girlish first love she would always bear him, and felt for the first time pity. He was such a gifted man. A gifted man who had never given his gifts away. “Thank you, Brendon. I’m sorry you came all this way . . . sorry we are meeting again under such unpleasant circumstances.”

  She glanced over the lieutenant’s shoulder to Fall. Fat and full of himself. “To what do I owe this charming visit from such a highly placed government official?”