Ride the Free Wind

by Rosanne Bittner

  Both men sat silently for a moment, while the senator rubbed his chin in thought and Mack puffed the thin cigar again. “What do you think, Jonathan?” the senator finally spoke up. “How else can I help?”

  Mack leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his black hair shining with the perfumed oil he used to slick it back immaculately. “You’ve already answered that for yourself, sir. Get started with the news. Start dropping hints about Indian trouble. Suggest that Congress begin right now doing something about it. Stay ahead of the game. Push for some kind of decision as to just where the American Indian stands in all this settling of the West. They aren’t considered citizens, you know, so they have no rights. Begin suggesting right now that they ought to be put into special places—reservations of sorts—places where they can be watched and controlled. Point out that they should be made civilized, to live like the white man, to farm and such. That would keep them from wandering all over the place hunting buffalo. Educate them, but be careful not to educate them too much. Send missionaries out there to Christianize them. That would get rid of that murderous spirit they have. In short, do everything you can to wipe out their old ways, Senator. To wipe out their old ways is to wipe out the Indian.”

  The senator nodded. “You have a good point there. Wipe them out by taking away their means of survival—the hunt, the buffalo, that sort of thing. Take away their religion and their land. Keep them begging. Maybe we can get rid of them without firing a shot. Maybe disease and starvation will do the job for us.”

  “Now you’re beginning to understand,” Mack replied in a slow, sure tone. “But go slowly and carefully, Senator. I doubt it will be done without gunfire, so we must at all costs make certain the public looks upon the Indians as the cruel and violent ones and the white settlers as the poor, innocent victims. We must never allow the story to turn the other way.” He sighed and relit his cigar, which had gone out while he talked. “Time will take care of a lot of it,” he went on. “The more the West is settled, the harder it will be for them. As you implied, they’ll lose game and hunting privileges. They’ll begin to starve. And their low tolerance for white man’s diseases will take care of more of them in the future.”

  The senator smiled. “You’re a good man, Jonathan. You’ve got a head on those shoulders.”

  Mack stood up. “That’s what you pay me for, sir.”

  The senator rose also. “How about lunch? I’m ready for a good beef steak. You ready to eat?”

  “Sounds good to me. By the way, sir, how’s the wife?”

  The senator’s eyes darkened somewhat. “Susan is fine,” he answered rather coldly.

  “You got yourself a young one there, Senator.”

  The senator pulled out his watch and looked at it again. “Money can get a man a lot of things,” he replied. He put on a grin. “By the way, she’s going to have a baby in just a few months.”

  “Well, congratulations, sir,” Mack told him, putting out his hand again. The senator shook it quickly and walked to the door, grabbing his hat.

  “I’ll tell you what’s even better than a young wife, Jonathan, if you can keep a secret.” He hesitated and gave Mack a sidelong look that told the man he expected his words to be confidential.

  “And what might that be?” Mack asked with a knowing grin.

  Garvey leaned closer. “Having another young lady on the side,” he replied. “One who will do anything—and I mean anything—for money.”

  Mack raised his eyebrows. “And may I ask who this very greedy and willing lady is?”

  “You may.” The senator lowered his voice. “Her name is Anna Gale.”

  Mack pondered the name. “Anna Gale. Not the young singer over at Hillary’s Saloon?”

  “The same.” The senator’s lips curled in a wicked grin. “Quite a young lady, that one. We’re thinking about getting her into the business of prostitution. She’s an orphan—learned her trade in the streets for survival. She’s quite beautiful, too. Young and very good, and I don’t mean just at singing.” He gave Mack a warning look. “I trust your lips are sealed.”

  Mack nodded. “Nothing goes beyond these walls.”

  The senator studied the man’s eyes. No, Jonathan Mack would not betray him. He was too greedy to risk falling out of the senator’s employ.

  “We have a lot of things to talk about, Jonathan,” Garvey stated. “Let’s go discuss business over lunch.”

  Mack nodded, and they left the high-ceilinged room that smelled of oak and leather and wealth. As they walked, Mack pondered the other ways he could get rich when he went West to take care of the senator’s business. War meant guns—and two factions that would need them. Working both sides of the issue just might make a man quite wealthy, if he was clever enough. And Jonathan Mack was a clever man.

  “Your father and I go soon,” Gentle Woman told her son. “Your father must teach Little Rock about the hunt. It is Little Rock’s first time chasing real buffalo.”

  Red Eagle swallowed a piece of deer meat. “Yes. You should go. My brothers and I will wait here with the rest of the clan until the runners tell us where the tribe will meet for the hunt.”

  As was the Cheyenne custom, Red Eagle’s father, Deer Slayer, would teach Red Eagle’s cousin, Little Rock, the ways of the warrior, just as Red Eagle and his brothers, Swift Arrow and Black Elk, had been taught by their father’s brother, Dog Man. Dog Man was Little Rock’s father, and a brother to Deer Slayer.

  Gentle Woman stopped her quilling and looked at Red Eagle, eighteen summers old now, a fine son with handsome features and a skill with weapons. But she was a little worried about the way he liked the white man’s whiskey. The boy felt her watching him and met her eyes.

  “I did not drink the firewater today,” he told her, reading her thoughts. She smiled softly and sighed.

  “That is good,” she answered. She reached over and stirred the coals of the fire. “Do you think he will come this spring?” she asked.

  Red Eagle swallowed one more piece of meat. “I think he will. Zeke always shows up in the spring. He will come, Mother. We will wait here for him.”

  Her eyes teared. “There was a time when I thought I would never see my half-blood son again.”

  “That is in the past. He was taken from you as a little boy, and he returned a man. Maheo brought him back to you.”

  She returned to her quilling, working the painted quills across the front of a leather vest. “I know I should not worry. There is no finer warrior, even though white blood runs in his veins.”

  “He is not like a white man. He is not even like the Voxpas we have known. That kind—they smell white and are weak!” He made a spitting gesture. “Zeke is not like that.”

  “Your half brother lives in a tortured world, my son. Always he will be torn. I am happy that you and your brothers accept him as a Cheyenne.”

  “He is Nis’is.”

  “Ai. You are of the same blood.”

  Red Eagle chewed the meat from the bone until the bone was clean, then threw the bone to a dog that lay in the shadows.

  “The chiefs will tell us to meet farther to the rising sun, I think,” he told his mother. “Maybe at the Smoky Hill River. The whites have caused us much trouble in finding the buffalo. First they chase the buffalo to the Rockies. Now there are many more whites on this side of the mountains, and the buffalo run back the other way. They are caught between. Soon there will not be a place for the buffalo to go.”

  The woman nodded. “Ai. And soon there will not be a place for the Indian to go. I fear for the Cheyenne. Game is getting scarce, and the white man brings the terrible sickness.”

  Red Eagle grunted disgustedly. “Because of them my brother has lost his wife and child. Swift Arrow will not easily forget that it was the white man’s disease that murdered my sister-in-law and my nephew. Nor will I soon forget!”

  “You must be careful,” Gentle Woman warned. “Young blood and hot tempers bring trouble to all of the People.”
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  “There are some things a man must do,” he shot back, suddenly rising. “It is not right that these pale faces can come into our land and claim it is theirs. It is not theirs!”

  “It is no one’s,” his mother reminded him. “It belongs to the spirits.”

  Red Eagle smiled sarcastically. “And do you think the white man understands that?”

  She dropped her eyes, and Red Eagle thought to himself how lovely his mother still was, with only a little gray in her still-lustrous hair. “No,” she answered. “But we must think and be cautious in the ways we respond to the white man. You wait until Zeke comes. Talk to him. He understands the white man. He will come soon. You will see. He always comes before we leave for the hunt.”

  Red Eagle sighed. “You and father go tomorrow to Little Rock’s clan. Others will go tomorrow also, and it is a long journey to the north before you will reach them. Swift Arrow, Black Elk and I and some of the others will wait here. We will meet you soon.”

  She nodded. “Ai. But promise me you will be careful, my son. You will not bother the whites?”

  He snickered. “We will not bother them.” He kicked at a little stone. “I go now. I want to ride. I need to ride and feel the wind in my face. It is a good feeling.”

  She smiled softly. “Yes. A man needs to feel the wind in his face. You are restless tonight, my son.”

  “I am anxious to go on the hunt.”

  “Perhaps it is because there you will see the Arapaho girl?”

  He glanced at her in surprise and was suddenly embarrassed. “You know?”

  She laughed lightly. “How could I not know? Mothers always know these things.”

  He grinned and looked away.

  “She is lovely,” Gentle Woman told him.

  “Ai.”

  “You should find a white-tailed deer and kill it, my son. Keep the tail and it will bring you luck with women.”

  He shrugged. “I go now.”

  He ducked out of the tipi and Gentle Woman’s heart swelled with pride. She had borne fine sons, good sons, three of them full-bloods and Zeke, the half-blood. Even though he had a Cheyenne name, Lone Eagle, it was not often used, for Zeke cherished the name he’d earned through his vision. He had fasted and suffered to get the vision. Now he used the name only when he participated in tribal ceremonies. But his brother, Swift Arrow, often referred to his half-blood brother by his Cheyenne name, as did many of the elders.

  Gentle Woman reached over and put another stick of wood on the fire to keep the meat warm for her husband, Deer Slayer. She watched the little flames and remembered the terrible pain in her heart the day Zeke’s white father had dragged him away from her, after selling her to the cruel Crow buck. Never would she forget that day, nor the day when her Zeke found her again after searching for many months. He was twenty-one summers old by then, a grown man. And he had suffered much because of his mixed blood. The story he had told her about his young wife and son being murdered by white men had made her weep.

  Now his place was with his mother’s people, who understood and accepted him. He could not go back to that place called Tennessee, for he had killed the men who had tortured his wife and child. It was good that he had killed them—fitting—the proper thing to do in his revenge. But the white men did not understand. They would hang her son if he went back. That was why she worried now. Perhaps someone had taken him back to that place where his white father lived. Perhaps they had hung him after all. She always worried when he was gone for so long. She had not seen him for over a year. He had not come back for the hunt after taking his horses to the big city called Independence to trade. Deer Slayer had told her he was probably acting as scout again for a wagon train, as he had done before. But there were many dangers in this land. Many dangers.

  She sighed and returned to her quilling again, her fingers bleeding from the sharp porcupine quills. Yet she knew her sore fingers would be worth it. The vest was for Zeke, if he came back. She wanted to give her half-breed son a gift, for it had been many, many months since she had seen him. And as always, she wanted to assure him that at least the Indian half of his family loved him.

  Col. Stephen Watts Kearny walked up and down the lines of volunteers, men who had offered their services in the taking over of Mexican Territory. The news of President Polk’s decision to declare war on Mexico had traveled quickly, and men were pouring into Fort Leavenworth to volunteer for the great “adventure.”

  The colonel’s boots squished in the Kansas mud that had been created by the spring rains. He silently studied the motley group of would-be soldiers. There were no Unionized states in the western territories yet, except for Texas; therefore, there was no official draft in the Western lands. It was a place ideally suited for men who were running from the law in the East, for those who wished to avoid the regular army and its strict disciplines and for men who had no morals and wanted total freedom. That was why many of these men had come west in the first place, and these were the sorts of men Colonel Kearny would have to work with: whiskey traders, trappers and hunters, panhandlers, fortune seekers. And those who volunteered to join in a war were usually the worst of all; losers who had failed at everything else and were ready to try something different. Joining the army to kill Mexicans would be an easy way to be paid for adventure and to receive free meals to boot.

  But at least for the most part these men were experienced at living in the Western lands. They were rugged, unkempt characters who found it easy to live with the elements and cared little about bathing or eating on fancy plates. There would be little bathing, and certainly no fancy plates on this mission. The Western Army needed men to whom the ground was their bed and the stars their roof. Men like these would do little complaining, but making them obey orders would be difficult; for they were an independent lot and accustomed to making their own rules.

  “Gentlemen,” Kearny spoke up. “First I wish to thank you for volunteering to help in the fight against Mexico.”

  “Them oily-skinned bastards will soon find out who’s best!” one of them blurted out. Kearny shot the man a scowling look, and a blond-haired middle-aged man standing next to the man who spoke nudged the first man and told him to shut up. The blond-haired man appeared much cleaner than the others and seemed a little more intelligent, too.

  “All of you just shut up and listen to the colonel,” he warned the others. “If you’re gonna be in this army you’ve got to do like he says and not talk unless you’re asked to.”

  The colonel smiled. “Thank you, sir.” He stepped closer. “And what is your name?”

  “Ward, sir. Casey Ward.”

  The colonel looked him over, happy to see that even though Ward wore the buckskins so common to this land, his were at least clean.

  “Well, Ward, these men seem to listen to you. As of this moment, you are in charge of this particular group.”

  Ward grinned. “Thank you, sir.”

  Kearny smiled tolerantly, almost laughing to himself at how he was forced to pick his officers from men such as these. He wondered to himself if America could truly win this war, in spite of Gen. Zachary Taylor’s impressive victories along the Rio Grande.

  The war had already begun well before it was formally announced in Washington, and many of those volunteering were arriving because of the exciting news of Taylor’s victories at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, not because they knew the President had made the word war official. The fact remained that this was a ragtag bunch of men with no training, and they would be going into hostile lands that were rugged and unbearably hot and full of snakes.

  “I shall continue, gentlemen,” he went on. “I want you all to understand what you have volunteered for. And anyone who wishes to change his mind may do so without retaliation by this army and without ridicule.” He continued to parade in front of the men. Colonel Kearny commanded attention just by his disciplined appearance; his neat, blue uniform decorated with many badges and stars, and his pleasing but stern visage, with its ki
nd but determined brown eyes and prominent, straight nose. He was a man with twenty-seven years of experience in the service of his country, and was now in command of the Western forces. He was a stern officer, but a fair man.

  “Volunteers who are now assembling at New Orleans will also be taking part in this great plan of ours,” he continued. “In one month we will be leaving this fort and will take the Santa Fe Trail all the way to the city of Santa Fe, which we will secure before going on to California.”

  “California!” someone mumbled in surprise.

  “Yes, California,” Kearny answered him. “General Taylor will continue to secure the Rio Grande area, and we will march onward to claim other disputed territory. We have already proven our power to the Mexicans by taking over Texas. Next we’ll go to New Mexico Territory and California.”

  The men grinned and nodded.

  “Just remember that this will not be an easy journey, gentlemen. The Western lands are hot and cruel, with little water that is drinkable, thorny plants that tear at your clothes, and a sun that scorches the skin. We will be traveling in the hottest season. The snakes and the wolves will follow us. But I know that all of you are experienced in such things. You will do just fine.”

  “What about Indians, sir?” One of them spoke up. “Are we allowed to shoot them that gives us trouble?”

  Kearny scowled again. “You will shoot no one without orders. I don’t expect a lot of trouble from the Indians.”

  “Well, sir, excuse me, but … uh … we do. They’ve already been raidin’ some of the supply trains between here and Santa Fe, takin’ food, guns, whatever. Some of them Comanches is bein’ paid by the Mexicans to make trouble.”

  “They won’t bother an army the size of which I will be taking to California,” Kearny replied. “My job is the Mexicans, not the Indians.”

  Casey Ward cleared his throat and spoke up. “Colonel Kearny.”

  “Yes, Mr. Ward?”

  “Well, sir, part of the reason some of us joined up was to get some experience so maybe we could step in and maybe be officers in the army that will be set up to fight Indians. We were hoping after this campaign that you’d put in a good word for us.”