by Tess LeSue
The cavalry officers and men she traveled with were a civil enough bunch, as rough as you’d expect from soldiers, but they tried their best to behave around her, which was rather endearing. Their captain had taken a shine to Ava and made sure she was well cared for. He had his second lieutenant pitch her tent for her every night and he lent her a bed frame, which could be assembled inside the tent. It even came with a striped mattress.
“I can’t steal someone’s bed,” she’d protested.
“It’s my bed,” Captain Scott had told her gallantly. “And I won’t hear of you refusing it.”
She’d never traveled so well in her life. The smell of wildflowers filled the tent at night, and sometimes she slept with the flaps pulled back so she could see the heavy moon rising over the sea of grasses. By the time they’d reached the plains, it was full summer, and the grasslands were sweet meadows of flowering yarrow and hyssop, windflowers and columbines. The sage smudged the waving grasses with patches of silvery blue, and the air was fragrant with the scent of flowering milkweed.
Ava was cosseted like a princess by the troops. They cooked for her and brought coffee to her tent in the morning. Most of them were sweet boys, barely old enough to shave; the rest were grizzled old soldiers, glad of a woman’s company. None of them stepped so much as a toe out of line. That was mostly because of Captain Scott, who led by impeccable example.
Ava should have enjoyed herself. . . . It was a pleasant adventure, during a mild and sunny summer. But she didn’t. She was still low-spirited and prone to bouts of melancholy. As she lay on her iron camp bed, staring at the milky moon casting its light over the waving grasses, her thoughts drifted inevitably to the summer before. To the Hunt. To him.
Deathrider.
Where was he now? Was he close by or back in California with his whore? Would he be coming to the treaty meeting at Laramie, or had he turned his back on his people?
Just like he’d turned his back on her . . .
That was unfair. He didn’t owe her anything.
It didn’t seem to matter how unfair it was, though, she couldn’t control her feelings, and she felt abandoned. Worse, betrayed. He’d left her, wounded and all alone. Well, not all alone. She’d had Becky and Lord Whatsit, but she’d felt alone. And then she’d almost died, and he hadn’t been there. He hadn’t even said goodbye. . . .
He didn’t owe her anything, she reminded herself tersely, again and again, as she lay there in the milky moonlight on the vast prairie. It wasn’t his fault she’d gone and developed all these silly feelings for him. And they were silly. Great big, wet, girlie feelings that flooded over her at the dumbest times. Like the day they reached the Sierra Nevada and it hit her that she was leaving California behind, and leaving California meant leaving him. She was leaving behind her time with him. It felt like a kind of death. And she’d wept like a baby as they rode through the mountains. Tears that just wouldn’t stop. Captain Scott had been mighty concerned about her, but she’d hinted that it was some kind of woman’s problem, and he’d steered well clear of the topic after that. He had sisters, he told her, as though that meant he could possibly understand.
Everything made her think of Deathrider: rivers, trees, trading posts, sunsets, sunrises, dogs. . . . He was everywhere. Everywhere they rode, she wondered if he’d ridden this way before. Had he camped here where they pitched tent for the night? Had he drunk from this river? Had he bought flour or sugar or tobacco from this trading post? Not tobacco. She’d never seen him chew it or smoke it . . . but what if he’d taken it up since she’d last seen him? That felt even worse, like another small death. Because it was true—he would do things she didn’t know about. Thousands of them. Millions of them. He would travel to places she’d never see, meet people she’d never know, even one day probably fall in love with a woman . . . a woman who wouldn’t be Ava. . . .
Oh, there went the tears again. It was abominable.
And things got only worse when they reached the Great Plains. This was where his people were. She didn’t know exactly where, but somewhere on these plains. Somewhere, over this stretch of hundreds of miles, he had grown up. Or so she’d heard. Some said he’d been adopted, which considering the paleness of his eyes seemed probable. But who knew? She couldn’t rely on anything anymore.
Was this stretch his? Had he bathed in these streams? Had he watched these butterflies flit through the coneflowers and bergamot? Had he lain on his back in the feathery grasses and watched the herds of white clouds cross the pure blue skies? Had he hunted these buffalo? Made adornments from the quills of porcupines just like the ones ambling along through the grass?
She saw him wherever she looked, even though he was nowhere to be seen.
It was a relief to finally get to Fort Laramie in mid-August. This wasn’t a place she could imagine him, although deep in her heart she harbored a desperate hope that he would turn up to the Great Treaty with his people. It wasn’t likely, but she was happy to grasp at straws. It was all she had left.
25
THE HUT SAT low to the ground, a sod affair flanked by wind-blasted trees. The windows had no glass, but there were wooden shutters to keep out the wind and rain, and there was a makeshift chimney. Deathrider paused outside, watching the thin thread of blue smoke curl from the chimney. The sight of smoke from that chimney never ceased to make his heart pound harder, as though she was still alive and waiting inside for him. But of course she wasn’t; it was just Two Bears visiting with his memories.
Deathrider didn’t knock. He simply pushed the door open and stepped through.
His father was sitting in her rocking chair, with her blanket over his shoulders, even though it was midsummer and hot. He was staring into the flames in the fireplace, rocking, his expression contemplative.
“I knew I’d find you here,” Deathrider sighed. He took in the modest one-room hut. It was exactly as Deathrider’s mother had left it, right down to the mug full of flowers in the middle of the table. The wildflowers had dried out years ago, their colors faded, their petals as stiff as straw. Her bed was neatly made in the corner, with her crocheted blanket tucked in at the corners and her patchwork cushion plumped up and ready for her return. Only she’d never return; she’d been dead for years.
In fact, she was buried outside, right under one of the wind-blasted trees. There was a wooden cross with charms hanging from it, marking her last resting place. Now and then Two Bears added another charm to the collection. When the wind blew, you could hear the beads and quills and small bones clicking together. Spirits talking.
Deathrider had walked from the summer camp, bringing Dog with him. It was a long walk, but he enjoyed the solitary time. The camp was busy, and he needed some time alone. He never did well among large groups of people. The old restlessness was rising—worse than ever. He tried to focus on the prairie as he walked and to push the restlessness aside; to enjoy the day for what it was. But he had a lot on his mind. There were big decisions brewing for his people.
The sky was delphinium blue, the sunshine golden on the nodding heads of the meadow flowers. Dog bounded through the grasslands, chasing small animals, as bouncy as a puppy. Deathrider envied him his joy. His spirit was unquiet and his thoughts troubled.
“It’s morbid the way you sit in here in the dark,” he told his father once he’d entered the hut and observed Two Bears for a few moments.
Two Bears gave him a disgruntled look. “Don’t disrespect your elders.”
“It just makes you sad coming here; I don’t know why you do it.”
“No, I’m always sad. This place simply makes my sadness appropriate.”
Deathrider grunted. He pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and dragged it next to the rocking chair. He sat down beside his father and looked around the room. “You’ve been coming here a lot,” he observed. “There’s no dust. You’ve been cleaning.”
“Your mot
her has been coming to me in dreams.”
Deathrider put his head in his hands. “Don’t start this again.”
“She’s worried about you. I come here to keep her company, to put her spirit at ease. It’s the least I can do, since I can’t put her at ease about you.”
“I came home, didn’t I?”
“Did you? Part of you still seems a very long way away.”
Deathrider ignored that. He hadn’t told his father anything about the Hunt or about a certain redhead who had haunted him ever since. His father just liked to guess, in the hope that he’d find something out by accident.
“What’s my mother’s spirit fretting about now?” But Deathrider knew exactly what Two Bears was going to say. The man was stubborn as a buffalo.
“She wants you to get married.”
Deathrider groaned. “She does, does she?”
“Her spirit won’t rest until you are settled.”
“That’s funny because she’s been coming to me in dreams too,” Deathrider said sarcastically, “and she tells me you should get married again. She says if you were busy with a new wife, you’d be less of a pain in the ass to your son.”
The wind rattled the charms outside.
“That’s her,” Two Bears sniffed. “She’s scolding me for your bad manners.”
Deathrider laughed. “You’re impossible.”
Two Bears sighed and drew the blanket tighter around himself, even though it was like a sweat lodge in the hut, with the fire roaring. “I’m getting old,” he said.
“Are you? You managed to bring that buffalo down in the hunt just fine the other day. You look stronger than me.”
“I am stronger than you.” His pride got the best of him there. He frowned as he realized that he’d bragged himself out of his own argument.
“Such an old man,” Deathrider teased.
“I worry about you,” his father said bluntly.
“Well, don’t. I’m here. Like you wanted. But instead of enjoying my return, you’re sitting in here with the spirit of a dead woman, brooding.”
Two Bears shot him a sharp look. “I’m not brooding. I was thinking about Broken Hand’s invitation.”
Deathrider rubbed his face. “That would make me brood. What are you going to do?”
Before the buffalo hunt, the Indian agent they all knew as Broken Hand had come with an invitation for Two Bears and his people. Broken Hand was visiting all the tribes of the plains, and had been at it for months, inviting them to treat with the whites at Fort Laramie.
Broken Hand was a former trapper by the name of Fitzpatrick, a tall, thin white man who’d won his Indian name when he broke his hand fighting the Sihásapa, the Lakota tribe the whites called Blackfeet. The fact that he’d survived with only a broken hand told you he wasn’t someone you wanted to get on the wrong side of.
“The Great Father in Washington sent me,” Broken Hand had told Two Bears and the eight bands of warriors. “He wants peace on the plains.”
Two Bears had remained impassive, but Deathrider knew him well enough to detect the faint amusement. “Peace with whom?”
“He wants peace between whites and Indians, and peace between all of the tribes.” Broken Hand knew them well enough to read their frank disbelief. “I know,” he sighed. “He’s asking the impossible. But it’s not a bad idea . . . in theory.” Broken Hand met Deathrider’s gaze. “Your son will tell you there are more and more wagoners every year, a plague of them. Last year alone they were like locusts. Tens of thousands of them, riding through Lakota territories, risking life and limb.”
“They killed a lot of buffalo,” Two Bears said mildly.
“Yes, they did. And they fouled waterways and spread disease . . . I tell you, Two Bears, it’s in your best interests to meet with the whites and negotiate terms, to stop these wagoners invading your lands.”
Their lands. The Arapaho had only been on these plains since Two Bears’ father had been headman. The Lakota had pushed them out of the Black Hills, and the Cheyenne had pushed them out of the northeastern plains. The Arapaho were currently defending themselves against the Crow, the Ute and the Pawnee. It wasn’t just the whites who invaded their lands; the Arapaho were constantly under pressure. And they in turn pressured the Kiowa and the Comanche. The plains were a seething war zone of nomadic tribes who had mostly been pushed west by the eastern tribes. Which was one reason why the whites wanted a treaty; so long as the tribes were at war, the white wagoners were in constant danger.
“Who has agreed to go to Fort Laramie to meet with the Great Father?” Two Bears asked curiously.
“The Great Father won’t be there himself; he’ll be sending his representative, Colonel Mitchell. He’s the superintendent of Indian Affairs.”
Deathrider saw his father’s disquiet. “You haven’t answered me. Who has agreed to go?”
“The Lakota.”
There were murmurs at that.
“The Lakota are our allies,” Two Bears said approvingly, but he was clearly surprised. “Which of the bands? The Oglála?”
“All of them.”
“Including Red Cloud?” he asked Broken Hand, and there was a further flicker of unease.
“Yes.”
There were more murmurs.
“Is anyone else going?”
The Lakota were the most powerful tribe on the plains, and they were at war with almost everyone. Who would be brave enough to turn up and face the Lakota?
But then again, who would want to leave the treaty to their mercies, without being able to represent their own interests?
“The Crow.”
Everyone hated the Crow.
“The Shoshone, the Rees, the Cheyenne.”
The Arapaho were closely allied to the Cheyenne. But the Lakota hated the Shoshone; the Shoshone hated the Cheyenne; and the Rees hated the Lakota.
Deathrider wondered if Micah would be there with the Shoshone. He hadn’t seen his friend since they’d returned from their ordeal last winter.
“The Pawnee?” Two Bears asked.
“Not the Pawnee,” Broken Hand admitted. “They’re too afraid of the Lakota. But the Assiniboine, the Mandan, the Hidatsa and the Arikara are all possibly coming.”
“Is there room for them all?”
Broken Hand almost smiled at that. “Barely. The plains are straining under the weight of you all.”
“And how is the Great Father planning to prevent bloodshed during this Great Treaty,” Two Bears asked dryly, “with so many blood feuds in one place . . . ?”
“The U.S. government asks that all feuds be suspended while we pass the pipe and work out terms.”
“Terms about what?”
“Borders.” Broken Hand knew them all well enough to register their concern.
Deathrider could read the tension in his father’s shoulders. Borders.
“I think this is an opportunity,” Broken Hand told them quickly before their concern could grow. “A chance for you to take some control. If you don’t, the tide of immigrants is just going to keep pouring through—and you’ll lose everything.”
“The Lakota might have other ideas about that,” Two Bears said dryly.
Broken Hand nodded, looking grim. “But if the Lakota shed white blood, the Great Father will send in the army. And that will lead to nothing good, not for any of you.”
Deathrider remembered his experience with the U.S. Army, and he could well believe it.
The day after Broken Hand left, there was a messenger from the Lakota and, two days after that, a messenger from the Southern Arapaho. It was after all the messengers had left that Two Bears had taken himself off to the hut.
“What are you going to do?” Deathrider pressed his father now, sitting beside him in the hut. “Are we going to Fort Laramie?”
“I don�
�t see that we have much choice,” Two Bears said softly. “Our allies have asked us to go, and we are people who stand by our allies.”
Deathrider nodded.
“We will have never seen so many people in one place,” Two Bears mused. “Broken Hand said everyone is bringing their people. There will be trading and competitions and opportunities to visit old friends.” He gave Deathrider a sideways look. “I imagine among so many people, it won’t be too hard to find you a wife.”
Deathrider groaned. “Don’t you ever give up?”
“I will. Once I have you settled.”
“I’m not sure who’s more frightening. You or the Lakota.”
26
THE BARRACKS AT Fort Laramie were kept with military precision. Things had changed since the last time Ava had been through. Back then Fort Laramie had been lousy with hopeful prospectors and wagoners, and the place had been a loose and dusty makeshift trading post and wagon-repair market. Riding in this time, she found the army had whipped the place into shape. The place had been freshly whitewashed and swept: a monument to the United States government, a showpiece for the Great Treaty. Army engineers had even built a wooden amphitheater with a canvas roof.
How many Indians were they expecting? Ava was shocked to even contemplate the numbers who could fit in that thing. She couldn’t wait to get over there to examine it closely.
She’d go tomorrow. For now she was having a hard time just staying awake. It had been a long journey.
She was given a private room in the colonel’s quarters, along with the honorary guests, including the superintendent of Indian Affairs. Captain Scott and the men were across the beaten-earth parade ground, in the adobe barracks.
“You let me know if any of my men bother you, Miss Archer,” the colonel said gruffly when he’d greeted her out on the parade ground. “We don’t have many women in these parts, and sometimes those boys forget their manners.”
“They’ve been perfect gentlemen so far,” Ava replied politely. She was deathly tired, and she hoped she wouldn’t have to perform for too long. When the colonel told her they were throwing a dinner in her honor, for the officers only, she had a hard time not groaning. The last thing she felt like was sitting at a dinner table with a bunch of shiny-buttoned, mustachioed army men. Still. At least she could learn about the treaty. If there was one thing she’d learned, it was that men talked an awful lot when you got them at a dinner table with a glass of liquor in hand.
