Ride the Free Wind

by Rosanne Bittner

  Kearny frowned. “What are you talking about, Ward?”

  The man fumbled with his hat nervously. “Well, sir, Agent Fitzpatrick, Broken Hand Fitzpatrick, he’s been talkin’ about how we need a better army out west here—one that can handle the Indians. He figures the men best at that would be men like us; we’ve been livin’ among the redskins for quite some time now. We just figured we could get in on the ground floor and—”

  “Fitzpatrick is not a regular soldier, Mr. Ward,” Kearny interrupted irritably. “He is a scout turned agent. He knows nothing about soldiering. And Washington is not extremely interested in the Indians at the moment. One war at a time, Mr. Ward.”

  The man swallowed. “Yes, sir. We just thought—”

  “Let Congress do the thinking, Mr. Ward. If an army is needed out here for Indians, one will be established. And it will be made up of regulars. I am aware of Fitzpatrick’s feelings, but many of us feel his worries about the Indians are exaggerated. It is hardly conceivable that a few uncivilized red men can even consider going against the United States Army. In fact, for your information, there is much talk about making a treaty with the Indians, one grand treaty that would take in most all of the tribes and would set aside quite a large piece of land for them. That should keep them quiet. For the moment, my orders are to take New Mexico and California, and we shall do it.” He nodded to Ward. “You, young man, will exercise these men regularly and get in some target practice.” He scanned the entire group of straggly haired, mostly bearded men. “More guns and ammunition are on the way from the East, gentlemen. We should be well supplied. Be here at this same time next week and I’ll let you know of any news I have learned between now and then.” He started to turn. “Oh, and I would suggest you get your hair cut, at least to your neckline. A shave wouldn’t hurt either, but I won’t insist on it.” He turned and walked to his quarters, shaking his head at the task before him. Some were too young, much too young. He didn’t like to see young men die. And the others, the older ones, they would be difficult to command. This was not going to be an easy expedition.

  Jonathan Mack made ready to depart, his dapper gray suit hanging neatly in the corner of Anna Gale’s room. The seventeen-year-old orphan girl who sang in Hillary’s Saloon was as good in bed as the senator had said she would be. He glanced over again at her willowy, young body as she lay stretched out naked on her bed, watching him dress.

  “You are worth every cent I pay you, my dear,” he told her. “Too bad I have to go to Santa Fe for the senator. I shall miss you.”

  She sat up and shrugged, shaking out her long, dark, tangled hair, then lighting one of his thin cigars and smoking it herself. “I’ll miss you, too,” she lied. “I should say, I’ll miss your money.”

  Mack laughed. “I’ll bet you will! But you’ll find others glad to pay for a roll in bed with you. You are delicious, my pet.”

  He did not catch her look of disgust. An orphaned girl in the city soon learned there was only one way to earn her keep. She had always been told that to be an orphan, especially one abandoned as a baby, was a shameful thing, and that there was no future for orphaned children. That had proven true. The only jobs available were those requiring hard labor in factories that dealt in cheap child labor, eighteen-hour days and whippings for falling asleep on the job. She had discovered she could make a lot more money and live a lot more comfortably by singing in saloons and sleeping with men.

  A man who was a foreman at one of the factories where she had formerly worked had taught her on one cruel night what little girls were made for; and other than her horror and disgust, she had learned one thing from that night. Men liked doing these things, so perhaps she could get money by doing them.

  Until now the way she made her living meant nothing to her but a few moments of naughty pleasure and a lot of money. Of course, some nights were not as enjoyable as others. The nights Jonathan Mack came to see her provided no pleasure. He was a small man, in every way, and he disgusted her. But he paid well, so she pretended he excited her.

  “You coming back?” she asked him.

  “Oh, I suppose. I have a lot of business to take care of for the senator.”

  She took a long drag on the cigar and laid back again, bending one knee and flagrantly exposing herself. He stared at her as he finished dressing.

  “Santa Fe,” she said rather wistfully. “Maybe some day I’ll go out there. Sounds exciting.”

  “It’s a dangerous land, Anna. A cruel land for one who isn’t prepared.”

  She just grinned. “I wouldn’t be afraid. Maybe some wild Indian would grab me and rape me.” She laughed aloud. “Imagine that! Anna Gale—raped!” She laughed again, reaching over and setting the cigar in an ashtray. “By golly, I just might go,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m going to think about that.”

  Mack pulled on his shoes. “I would wait until this thing with Mexico is over.”

  She glanced at him. “Why do you care?”

  He snickered. “I don’t—not about you, anyway. I just care that the senator likes you and he’d be upset if you left him just now.”

  She sneered. “Yeah. That young wife of his has an awful lot of headaches lately. I don’t think the senator does much for her in bed.” She laughed hard again. “Fact is, he doesn’t do much for me in bed either. It’s like having a two-ton elephant sweating over you.”

  Jonathan Mack laughed with her and came to sit down on the bed beside her, grasping a full, firm breast in his hand and studying the pink nipple. “I’m not like a two-ton elephant, am I?” he asked. She looked down at his small, white hand.

  “No,” she replied, deciding she’d best not elaborate.

  He moved his hand over her body, touching her in places that had become familiar to him, his face flushed again. “I think I just might truly miss you, Anna,” he told her. “Not many girls are as good as you.”

  She smiled. “That’s why I charge so much.”

  He bent down and kissed her breast, then moved up and kissed her lips bruisingly. She was glad when he stopped, for his mouth tasted of cigar smoke. He sighed and rose from the bed.

  “Take care, Anna dear. And … be good.”

  They both laughed at the remark, and he pulled on his suitcoat. He walked out without another word.

  “Good-bye, little creep!” she sneered under her breath as she watched him go down the back stairway. Another man coming up the stairs passed Mack. He was the owner of the saloon, come for his pay for room and board. He would get it, the usual way. Anna snickered to herself, wondering what the man would do if he knew his own fat wife had also been up the stairs to see Anna Gale.

  At his own apartment, Mack hurriedly finished his packing. Santa Fe would mean wealth to him in more ways than one. The senator had told him about the guns that would be shipped to Santa Fe, to replenish Colonel Kearny’s troops before they moved on to California. The guns would arrive at that city sometime in August.

  Mack had been to see the man whose responsibility it was to order and ship the rifles. A little extra money had convinced that man to list in his book a shipment of one thousand rifles. But two thousand would be shipped. Mack would pay for the second thousand himself, and they would go out by a separate shipment, in wagons marked PIANO PARTS. They were destined for a special meeting place south of Santa Fe, where they would be sold at a very high price in gold to the Mexicans. Who cared that some of the rifles might fall into the hands of Comanches or Apaches paid by the Mexicans to help in the war by raiding Santa Fe supply wagons? That was not Jonathan Mack’s concern. He would be living comfortably in Santa Fe, conducting the senator’s legal business. No one would suspect he had made the arrangement. The man he had paid to secretly manufacture and ship the other thousand guns could be trusted, for he was greedy. That was the best kind of man to deal with if one wanted secrecy.

  It was all working out very well. Jonathan Mack would get rich off the senator and live royally in Santa Fe while making a second fortune i
n smuggled rifles. It was a good plan.

  “Manifest Destiny,” he mumbled to himself. He liked that phrase. New York Editor John O’Sullivan had first coined the phrase when he declared in his writings that the West must not be ignored, for in those untamed lands lay unimaginable beauty and untold wealth. And O’Sullivan had also declared it Divine Providence that was the destiny of America to claim and hold all lands between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and to open those lands to the multiplying millions of citizens who bulged at the seams of the East.

  Yes, it was America’s destiny, and many men would get rich from the fruits of that destiny. Jonathan Mack planned to be one of them. He closed his suitcase and lay down on his bed, falling asleep to the busy sounds of carriages and city life after dark. He would be leaving very early in the morning.

  Out in Utah Territory, where the land was still mostly untouched by the impending surge of new settlement, Cheyenne Zeke and his new young wife slept. There were no sounds of carriages and people. There was only the dead silence of the mountains, and the occasional yip and howl of a coyote. And as Mack lay worrying about ways to become richer, Abigail Trent Monroe lay worrying about being accepted by her husband’s people—the Cheyenne. There would be no riches for Abbie. But then she was already wealthy. She had Zeke.

  Three

  Abbie was not surprised when trouble came, for it had followed her all the way from Tennessee; and seldom did Cheyenne Zeke venture anywhere without finding it close at hand. They were only two days from where Zeke figured they would come upon his people’s camp when he suddenly halted his Appaloosa and dismounted, studying the ground intently, bending down to look closer, and then looking out across the horizon.

  “What is it, Zeke?” Abbie asked him.

  “Crow,” was his only reply. His face was both worried and puzzled. Abbie shuddered, memories still fresh in her mind of the awful pain of the Crow arrow she’d taken the summer before when the wagon train had been attacked. She remembered the Crow faces, painted a hideous black with white around the eyes, and she knew they sometimes stole women for slavery or trade. “Got to be careful,” Zeke finally spoke up, scanning the horizon full circle. “I don’t like surprises.”

  Abbie already knew Zeke’s fighting skill, but one man could take on only so many others and still win the battle. If they did not stay alert, Abigail could become a Crow buck’s woman at any time, perhaps later to be sold to a Blackfoot or a Ute or maybe to the Mexicans. She pulled her own Spencer from its resting place on her saddle. Abbie knew how to use a rifle. She had already killed two men with it.

  Zeke remounted his horse in one quick movement. “We’d best stay in the trees,” he told her. “These tracks tell me it hasn’t been long since they were here. My guess is they’re far enough ahead that they don’t know we’re here, but we can’t take chances. From now on keep your voice low and do everything I tell you.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she replied quietly. “I’m with you.”

  He shot her a glance that showed the worry in his eyes. “I’m only one man.”

  “That’s all it took to rescue me a few months back, as I recall.”

  “I had the upper hand then. I surprised them.”

  “You always have the upper hand, and you know it. The only one who can outsmart Cheyenne Zeke is God himself.”

  He snickered. “You young girls fantasize too much,” he replied. She smiled and felt the pleasant warmth in her groin again.

  “I haven’t had one fantasy about you yet that didn’t turn out to be true,” she told him. He just grinned and shook his head, riding forward beneath the green pine trees.

  The fire they made that night was a very small one, built in a shrouded crevice where it would be difficult to spot the flames from any direction. It was just for a little warmth against the cold, mountain air. Zeke would not let Abbie cook, for fear the smell of food would wander on the wind and be caught in the nostrils of some alert Crow buck.

  “I thought the Crow and the Cheyenne made up,” Abbie told him as they sat close together near the flames chewing on jerky.

  Zeke laughed lightly. “You make it sound like young lovers. But if you want to use the phrase, they did ‘make up,’ so to speak. But there’re always some young bucks looking for a fight so they can show their stuff, Abbie. Young Indian men like to do battle. It’s in their blood, the need to show their strength and their courage to the women, to steal horses from an enemy tribe and ride into camp with the stolen horses, sitting proud and straight, and to be praised for their bravery and cleverness. It’s the way they are, Abbie girl, proud and free and always ready to show their fighting skills. I expect this is a small party of young ones down here away from their own country, looking to show the Cheyenne that the Crow are better than they are. But you don’t find better fighters than the Cheyenne. The only good thing about knowing there’s some Crow sneaking around these parts is that it must mean my people aren’t far away, else them Crow wouldn’t be skulking around like they are. If that’s the reason, then it means my people haven’t broke spring camp yet to rendezvous for the buffalo hunt.”

  He stopped to take a swallow of water from his canteen.

  “I expect the Council Chiefs have sent out runners by now to tell us where the tribe will meet for the hunt,” he went on. “If Crow are close by, it could mean trouble for a small camp. I’m hoping that tomorrow we’ll reach the Cheyenne in time to warn them. I have plans to circle in another direction tomorrow and reach my people before the Crow do.”

  Abbie sighed. “I don’t understand why they have to fight at all.”

  Zeke pulled her closer. “It’s inborn, Abbie. Indians have been fighting each other for hundreds of years. It’s the law of survival, fighting over hunting grounds, places where the water is best, women, whatever. Indian ways are so different, I expect most whites will never really understand them—that gut need to show courage and manhood. It involves the Indian’s very attitude toward life and death. I hope someday you’ll understand how the Indian thinks, his religion and beliefs. It’s a beautiful, spiritual thing when you get to know it, Abbie girl. The Indian has a closeness with nature and all living things that most white men have never experienced and never will. Doing battle is just kind of an ongoing part of life and death and religion and visions and all of it.” He let go of her and moved out from under the blanket, walking over to his Appaloosa.

  “It’s so … barbaric!” Abbie replied, staring at the flames of the little fire.

  “Perhaps.” He stood near his horse, looking out at the darkness. “To someone like you it would be.” She did not see his eyes peering into the surrounding shadows or his hand tightening on the Spencer carbine he’d carried with him when he’d walked to the horse. “But it’s no more barbaric than the way the whites treated the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears. Not near as barbaric. The Indian most always fights for a reason, kills his enemy for a reason, even if it’s just for the sake of vengeance or to steal something they need. But there was no reason to push the Cherokees out of Georgia and Tennessee. They were civilized, Abbie; had their own settlement, log homes, even had their own newspaper, printed in English and Cherokee. They were independent and educated, bothering nobody, doing their best to live like the white man and stay out of trouble. But the whites wanted the land where they lived, so they got rid of them—stole everything they’d worked for and sent them on a long walk of disease and starvation and death.”

  He walked slowly back to her, trying to act as though nothing was wrong.

  “Some day all Indians will have to stop their fighting and work together for survival against the white man. I feel it in my bones, Abbie.

  “The same thing that happened in Georgia and Tennessee and everyplace else back East will happen right here in Utah Territory, the Black Hills, all across this country, until there’s no place left for the Indian to go.”

  “Oh, Zeke, I hope you’re wrong.”

  “So do I. But I don’t think so. For no
w, you shouldn’t worry too much about the tribal wars when you’re with the Cheyenne. They’re peaceable enough, except for an occasional uproar with the Pawnee. That’s one enemy they’ll probably never make peace with. And they’ll put up one hell of a fight if somebody brings trouble to them. There’s nothing more dangerous than a vengeful Cheyenne warrior.”

  She smiled with pride. “That’s already obvious from the times I’ve seen you fight,” she answered him.

  “Well, Abbie girl, I expect you’re about to see it again.”

  “What?” She quickly turned her head to look up at him.

  “Turn back around and don’t move a muscle,” he told her calmly. “Whatever happens, sit like you don’t know there’s anything amiss. I just want whoever is out there watching us right now to think I’m going into the bushes just to relieve myself and you are calmly waiting for me by the fire.”

  Her heart pounded and her face drained of color. She continued to stare at him, starting to rise.

  “Damn it, Abbie, do like I say!” he ordered, trying not to show his anger so that the conversation appeared normal. “Look back at the fire and pretend there’s nothing wrong. Hold out your hands like you’re warming them.”

  She blinked back tears and swallowed, afraid for herself and for Zeke. It was obvious now that someone or something was close by. She couldn’t imagine how Zeke knew, but she did know he would die protecting her if he had to. She looked back at the fire.

  “I’m gonna walk away from the light for a minute, Abbie. You trust me, don’t you?”

  “You know I do!” she squeaked.

  “Then whatever happens, even if a Crow buck comes screaming out at you, you stay right there, understand? If you go for a weapon, he’ll kill you. But he won’t get a chance to touch you, Abbie. I promise you that.”