They reined in their horses at headquarters, and Captain Zimmer spoke with the agent who had come outside to meet the strangers. The agent looked too well-dressed for these parts, and his big belly portrayed a man who ate well. He was a stark contrast to the starved-looking Indians they had seen on the way in, and Irene felt her anger rising. Perhaps the Indians were not getting their proper rations, but this agent most certainly was.
“Yellow Eagle,” the man repeated after the captain’s inquiry. “Yes, he’s here. He’s at the farthest village, up on the Missouri, if he’s not already dead.”
“Dead!” Irene could see the fear and agony in her father’s eyes, and her own heart tightened with dread. “What are you talking about? My son is only thirty-one.”
“Your son?” The man looked him over in astonishment, then moved his eyes to Irene. He frowned slightly. “What’s a fancy woman like you doing here?”
“Yellow Eagle is my twin brother,” Irene answered proudly, suddenly angry at the sight of the man’s big belly. “I’ve come to see him.” It was all so clear to her now, why the Indians had become so belligerent. This man was an example of the government’s lies and broken promises. She imagined herself in moccasins and a tunic, struggling to find ways to boost the spirit of her once-proud husband, who now sat around with nothing to do all day, his children hungry because he could no longer hunt.
“Your brother!” The man looked her over, the respect in his eyes suddenly leaving. “Well, if you had grown up among them, you sure would have been one valuable squaw.”
“Watch your mouth, mister,” Kirk told him. “She’s my daughter, and by God, I’m not too old to answer any insults.”
The man frowned, deciding he’d better not say anything more about the woman. This Kirkland fellow looked as if he’d been a few rounds in his life. He was a big, powerful-looking man, in spite of his age. He sat there in buckskins, well-armed, probably to protect his daughter. “Kirkland,” he said aloud. “There’s a real wealthy family from Denver by that name, isn’t there?”
“One and the same,” Kirkland answered. “Now what’s this about Yellow Eagle dying?”
Respect moved back into the man’s eyes. “Well! I’m honored to meet you, Mr. Kirkland.” He glanced at the daughter once more, wondering how Denver felt about one of their wealthiest citizens being half Indian. He tugged on his vest to put on a better appearance before answering. “Well, sir, I’m sorry to tell you, but Yellow Eagle hurt his foot pretty bad on a plow. We make all the men try to learn a little farming, but they aren’t very willing. The fools would rather be out riding over people’s farms and ranches trying to chase down wild game.” He chuckled, but Kirk just glared at him and his smile faded. “Well, uh, at any rate, Yellow Eagle cut his foot and it got infected. He’s refused to let a white doctor look at it, and now he’s in pretty bad shape. We told him he’d live if he’d let the doctor take the leg off, but he won’t hear of it. He says if he’s supposed to die, he’ll die. Won’t let a white man touch him.”
“Damn,” Kirk swore. “Let’s get over there.” He turned his horse, and Irene followed, her heart aching as much for her father as for Yellow Eagle. So, her brother would die, not in glorious battle, but a slow, miserable death on a squalid reservation. In all his battles with soldiers and settlers, and even surviving Sand Creek, he would still be defeated by the white man in a much more shameful way—a stupid cut from trying to learn how to farm. She had not lived the Indian way, but she sensed a man like Yellow Eagle would much rather have died in battle.
After much searching and questioning, they found Yellow Eagle’s tipi. It had not been easy. No one seemed to trust them, and few were willing to volunteer any information. An old man sat outside the tipi where Yellow Eagle was supposed to be dwelling, and Kirk studied him closely as he dismounted. The old man’s eyes seemed to light up a little, and he spoke a word of greeting in the Cheyenne tongue.
“Fast Runner,” Kirk asked, saying the name in Cheyenne. The old man grinned and nodded, slowly getting to his feet. They studied each other, Kirk realizing this was Gray Bird Woman’s brother. “It’s me, Kirk,” he told the old man. “Yellow Eagle’s father.”
“Kirk,” the man repeated. “It has been many, many years since last I saw you down at old Bent’s Fort.” He spoke in his own tongue.
“Thirty-one winters,” Kirk answered. He turned to Irene, who had come to stand beside him, and Irene saw tears in her father’s eyes. “This is Fast Runner, Irene, your uncle. He is Gray Bird Woman’s brother.” He turned to Fast Runner and explained who Irene was, and the old man’s eyes grew misty. He nodded, reaching out hesitantly to touch her arm.
“Morning Star,” he said in Cheyenne.
Irene asked her father to tell her what he had said, and he explained. “That was your Indian name.”
Irene felt suddenly guilty for having lived such a comfortable life compared to the one she would have lived if her father had not chosen to raise her. Kirk conversed more with Fast Runner, who kept nodding and quickly wiped at a tear that slipped out of his eye.
“He says it’s true that your Indian mother was killed at Sand Creek,” Kirk told Irene then. “As well as Yellow Eagle’s first wife and son. Yellow Eagle remarried, but his second wife died in childbirth. He has another little boy, Jumping Bear. The child is inside the tipi.” He grasped her arms. “Are you sure you are up to this, Irene?”
Her eyes met his. Over the past weeks they had grown much closer again. Irene understood her father had done what he thought was best, except that he had disagreed for years over telling Irene the truth. She knew how insistent Bea could be, realized the torture her father had lived with all these years, never knowing his Indian son. This was a great moment for her father. “I want to see him, Father, and my nephew.”
He turned to Fast Runner, telling the old man to go inside the tipi and tell Yellow Eagle they had come to see him. Kirk paced with worry that Yellow Eagle would refuse, deciding he would go inside anyway if he did. He had not come this far to leave without seeing his first-born son.
Fast Runner finally emerged, smiling sadly and signaling them to come inside. Irene took a deep breath and followed her father, ducking down to clear the tipi entrance. She was surprised at how clean and roomy it was inside, but for the moment she did not take time to study the contents of the dwelling.
A man sat up against a pile of robes and blankets, one of his legs covered with a blanket. He wore a wolfskin jacket, apparently cold in spite of the summer heat, a sign the infection was ravaging his body. His blue eyes moved to Irene’s, eyes she had seen once before, eyes of the man who had killed Hank. She wondered now why she didn’t see the resemblance that day. They were her eyes, Kirk’s eyes.
Yellow Eagle. She could hardly believe she was in the same dwelling with such a notorious man, and that he was her own brother. A little boy sat beside him who looked nearly the same age as little Sharron. Yellow Eagle quietly moved his eyes from Irene to Kirk, watching both of them warily.
Kirk knelt in front of him then. “I am David Kirkland,” he spoke up in English. “I’m your—”
“I know who you are,” Yellow Eagle interrupted in English. His eyes moved to Irene. “I remember her—my sister.” He looked back at Kirk. “I can see by your eyes that you are the white father I have never known.” His features remained rigid as a stone. “Why do you choose to come now, after all these years, now, when I am a dying man?”
Kirk sighed. “It’s a long story, Yellow Eagle. I can only say I’ve always wondered about you, worried about you. If your mother had just let me have you back when you were born, I would have raised you like my own.”
“And now you wish to see your son before he dies a shameful death.” He sat up straighter. “I was not always weak like this! I was a great warrior! I bear the scars of the Sun Dance! I am Cheyenne! I do not recognize my white blood.”
Kirk removed his hat, and Irene kept glancing at the little boy, who stared back at h
er with wide, brown eyes. “I didn’t know you were dying, Yellow Eagle. I’ve told Irene here who she is, that you’re her brother. She wanted to see you again.”
Yellow Eagle glanced at Irene, his eyes moving over her. “Why would you want to see me? I killed your man.”
She was so nervous her legs felt weak. “He wasn’t my man. He was a very good friend.”
He looked away. “I did not know who you were, or I would have spared the man’s life.”
“I believe you,” Irene told him, kneeling down beside her father. “I’ve hated you for seven years, Yellow Eagle, actually longer, because of the terrible things you did to other settlers over the years. But I think I understand more now. I understand why you did some of those things. I wish there was some way to make up for it all, but there isn’t. And I wish we could have been raised together, but we had no control over our different lives. Let us help you now, Yellow Eagle. Father is a wealthy man. He can get you the best doctors—”
“No!” He threw aside the blanket and Irene gasped, feeling ill. Kirk closed his eyes as though in pain. The leg was swollen to twice its size, and was nearly black. An ugly odor drifted into the air. “No doctor can help this,” Yellow Eagle sneered. “And no white man will touch me! No one is going to cut off my leg and send me to the Other World only half a man!” He pulled the blanket back over his leg, and Irene realized the rest of his coloring was more of a sick gray than a healthy brown. His face looked thin, and he seemed to be perspiring. “I wanted to die in battle, but this is how I die—in disgrace!”
“Yellow Eagle, I can help you—”
“I said no,” the man told Kirk. “For many years I have known you were a man with great power among the whites. But I have wanted nothing from your world. It stands for everything that I am against! Now your people have put us on this stinking reservation, and our rations do not come on time. Our braves sit around with nothing to do but drink and be sick! Our women no longer respect their men because they are not allowed to ride free and make war and bring back food and do all the things a man is supposed to do! Our women sell themselves to white men to get the money to buy the whiskey that makes their men sicker and lazier. Our children are taken away from us to school, where their hair is cut off and they are forced to wear white man’s clothes, where they die of broken hearts. I want nothing to do with a world that destroys the earth and the buffalo, a people who steal land from others and then tear it up and destroy the trees and make the water unfit to drink! Compared to the way we once lived, I see nothing better about your world!”
He shivered then, obviously trying not to show his pain. “In two more days I will no longer be on this earth. You can stop worrying about me then, my white father. Worry about yourself, and what you are doing to the earth.”
Kirk sighed deeply. “I’ve never liked some of the things that have gone on myself, Yellow Eagle. But in spite of my wealth, I was not powerful enough to stop it. Some things can’t be stopped—and they can’t be changed. I’ve only come to tell you that I’m sorry I didn’t try to find you sooner. I’ll go to my grave regretting it, son. I just wish I could have kept you with me when I took Irene.”
“I do not. I am glad I was left with the Cheyenne. You think I had a bad life, but I did not. It was good, a life of freedom and hunting and following the seasons. It is those I leave behind for whom my heart carries great sorrow. Life will not be the same for my children and their children.”
He stiffened for a moment, grimacing with pain. He seemed to relax again, then reached over and pulled his little son next to him. “It is for this child that my heart grieves, not my own death. He has nothing to look forward to but the filth and boredom of this reservation. He will never ride free on the plains and learn to be a proud warrior.”
“Yes, he can,” Irene spoke up, surprising them both. “You can let me have him. You saw with your own eyes the golden horses I raise on our ranch in southern Colorado. You prized them so much that you killed for them. I still live on that ranch a good share of the time, Yellow Eagle, and I still raise the golden Palominos. I am getting married soon, and my future husband is a man who loves and honors the land just like you do. If you let me take your son, he will grow up in the sunshine, in the land in which his ancestors were born and lived and hunted. He will ride the golden Palominos and he’ll be free to do whatever he chooses. He’ll never be able to live the life his people once led, but he’ll at least be free, Yellow Eagle. He’ll be able to go where he pleases and hunt all he wants. I would teach him about his people and never let him feel ashamed. Please tell the reservation agent you are giving your son to us. We can give him a good life. I promise he would be free and happy, and he would never be hungry.”
He studied them both, keeping an arm around the boy. His eyes suddenly filled with tears. “Jumping Bear is all I have left,” he said quietly then.
“Which is all the more reason to let me take him, Yellow Eagle,” Irene urged. “I’m his aunt. I have children of my own, who would be his cousins. I want to care for my Indian brother’s son. Here he could die. With me, he’ll live and be happy and free!” She wondered how it had been so easy to make such a decision, how the idea had come to her so quickly. It seemed so logical, so right. She had her own children, and when she married Ramon there would be little Alejandro. What was one more? She suddenly could not bear the thought of going home and leaving little Jumping Bear behind. His only other close relative was Fast Runner, and he was getting too old to be of much use to the little boy.
Yellow Eagle looked down at his little son, touching his hair, taking several minutes to reply. “I do not like the thought of him living in the white man’s world,” he finally said, moving his eyes to meet Irene’s again. “But I see a truth in your eyes that makes me trust you. You have a good heart—our mother’s heart—and you are my sister. We share the same blood, and now you are my son’s closest relative. For this reason alone, and because he can be with his cousins, I will let you take him. But he must always be taught about the Cheyenne.”
“Father will help me. He knows the Cheyenne ways as well as he knows his own people.”
Yellow Eagle breathed deeply. “Do not take him—” his voice choked, “until I am gone.” He trembled and closed his eyes for a moment. “You do not have long…to wait.”
Irene’s eyes teared as she sat down fully near him. “I’m sorry, Yellow Eagle, so sorry for all of it—for what has happened to the Cheyenne and the Sioux and all the rest.”
“You had no part in it. One day my people will be strong again. One day…you will see.” He laid his head back and closed his eyes, pulling the wolfskin jacket closer around himself in spite of the summer heat. “It is the time of the Heat Moon, yet it feels more like the Moon of Strong Cold.”
Kirk hung his head. “My son,” he groaned. He suddenly rose and left the tipi. Irene moved cautiously closer to Yellow Eagle, ignoring the smell of his leg, thinking what a grand, strong, handsome man he once was and still would be if not for the wound. She picked up a blanket that lay nearby and she put it over him, seeing that he was still shivering. Little Jumping Bear watched her, his brown eyes as big as saucers. He seemed to know what was happening, as he scooted against his father’s side and rested his head on the man’s shoulder, patting his chest with a chubby, brown hand. Irene saw in that moment that the Indians were as capable of loving as any whites, that they were not the savage animals she had once believed. They were human. They had fought for what they thought belonged to them, fought for their loved ones, just as any white man would do.
Yellow Eagle opened his eyes a moment, watching her quietly. “Stay,” he said then, surprising her with the statement.
Her throat ached with a need to cry. “I will,” she answered. All the hatred and bitterness toward him for killing Hank left her then.
Irene held a sleeping Jumping Bear on her lap as the Denver-Pacific chugged its way south from Cheyenne. Jumping Bear, whom Irene had already decided to rename
Samuel John, had taken to her as though he understood who she was. He was a quiet boy, who Irene knew for now must be very confused, traveling with strange people on the noisy train.
The whistle blew and the boy jumped, snuggling closer to her breast for protection. He had cried when first boarding, but soon apparently decided that the train was not some monster that was going to eat him alive. Irene patted his bottom, as she leaned back and watched the mountains to the west. She tried to imagine the land so black with buffalo that “a man could almost walk across their backs,” as Kirk had once put it. She suspected it was not such a great exaggeration. She understood so much about herself now, her love of the land, her yearning to ride free across the plains, her appreciation of bright colors and Indian and Mexican designs. She loved Ramon all the more for urging her to do this, for she felt more at peace than she had in years.
Her heart still ached at the memory of Yellow Eagle’s slow, painful death. Near the end she had held his head in her lap, sponging the perspiration from his face, assuring him little Jumping Bear would have a good, happy life, that the boy would be well schooled in the Cheyenne way. She had attended the burial, had watched Yellow Eagle’s body raised to a platform, high enough to keep the wolves away, high enough to send him well on his way to reaching Ekutsihimmiyo, the Hanging Road that leads to a place where the buffalo are plentiful, and where one can be with loved ones who have gone on before.
She pictured Indians riding free now, chasing the buffalo, claiming all this land for themselves. Such a beautiful land it was! It was no wonder they had fought so hard for it. But, as Bea would say, progress cannot be stopped. The Indians were finally outnumbered, and the white man’s appetite for gold and land was insatiable. The Great West offered both. There was no going back and changing any of it.
In the Shadow of the Mountains Page 68
