Climb the Wind: A Journey Into Another Past

by Pamela Sargent

  Everyone had died in her dream, but at first, wandering past the torn and ripped tepees, the tools and clothing strewn about the land, she thought that some of her people might have fled into the hills and escaped. Then she saw the bodies, twisted shapes lying by tents and dead fires, some of them with black bloody scalps where their hair had once grown. Her brother was dead, and her cousin Fleet Foot, and her father’s younger brother along with his wife and infant son, and she thought of how her cousin would cry, waking them all in the night, always hungry, always crying for his mother, and she wondered that he had not cried at all while the whites were going about their killing and had not cried even when they were killing him. Soon she stopped counting the bodies.

  All of the horses were gone. She wondered if the Wasichu had stolen them or had only driven them off. She sat down, wrapping herself in a blanket against the cold, and then saw the flap of a ruined tepee move. Someone crawled out of the tent and crept toward her. Old Black Cow, she thought, suddenly disappointed that of all those who were here, only that old woman still lived.

  Black Cow sat next to her and wailed, chanting for the dead until the moon was higher in the sky, then got to her feet. “The camp of Touch-the-Clouds lies west,” the old woman said.

  “We have no horses.”

  “Then we must walk,” Black Cow replied.

  “It is too far to walk.”

  “We cannot stay here, little one. We must try to find other people. We cannot stay alive by ourselves.”

  They took what food and water they could find and began to walk toward the west. By dawn, Black Cow had spied one of their horses in the distance, and so they were able to ride to the camp of Touch-the-Clouds. That was where she first saw Grisha, in the tent of the chief, sitting with Touch-the-Clouds and some of his warriors, his yellow hair falling over his shoulders.

  She had somehow kept herself from screaming at the sight of a Wasichu inside the tent of Touch-the-Clouds, had stilled the spirit within her as Black Cow spoke of what had happened, and when the old woman was finished, she said, “I dreamed it before it happened. I dreamed that the Wasichu came to my father’s camp. The spirits were warning me. I spoke of my dream to my mother, but she would not listen to me.”

  A couple of the men shook their heads, but Touch-the-Clouds said nothing, nor did the yellow-haired Wasichu. That night, another dream came to her, and she saw herself riding far from this land on a roan horse much like the one her father used to ride. A man sat behind her on the horse, but she could not turn around to see who he was.

  In the morning, she found the yellow-haired Wasichu outside the tepee of Touch-the-Clouds. She came up to him, pulled at his sleeve, and said, “I had another dream. Someone is going to take me away from this place.”

  The Wasichu made a sound in his throat. At first she thought that he might not understand her words. Then he said, “You are right, small one.” The Lakota words sounded strange in his mouth, as if he did not quite know how to say them. “Touch-the-Clouds has decided to send you away with me. Are you brave enough for that, to live among the Wasichu?”

  “I do not know.”

  “If you are not, I will send you back here. Touch-the-Clouds will see that you are cared for.”

  “He would see me as a coward if I came back when he thinks I should leave,” she said. “Why does he want to send me away?”

  “I did not understand everything he told me,” the Wasichu replied, “but it has something to do with your dream. You may have a gift for certain visions, for seeing what will come, and Touch-the-Clouds has to know what the Wasichu may bring to his people. You saw that some would break the treaty before they broke it. Touch-the-Clouds thinks that such a gift may be even more useful to his people and yours if you learn the Wasichu ways.”

  She was silent.

  “Not all of the Wasichu are like the ones who killed your father’s band. I am not like them—I am here, and call myself the friend and brother of Touch-the-Clouds.” He paused. “And now your dreams have shown you that you are to come away with me.”

  But I do not want to leave my people, she longed to say, but kept silent. The spirits had already shown her what she would have to do.

  “What are you called?” she asked him.

  He made a sound that sounded like a laugh. “Yellow Hair. What else would your people call me?”

  “What do your own people call you?”

  “Grigory Sergeievich Rubalev.” The sounds were strange, and the name had no meaning. “But that is too much for you to learn all at once. Those close to me call me Grisha.”

  He had taken her away from the camp of Touch-the-Clouds two days later, to a place of many wooden dwellings and what seemed to be a horde of whites. They left that place in a wagon with sides and openings to look out of after Grisha had given her other clothes, a garment with a wide skirt and leather boots that pinched her feet and made it hard for her to walk. They came to a place where there were even more whites, all of them crowded together in their high buildings with narrow dirt-and-stone-covered trails that wound among them, and she wondered how they could all bear to be so crowded together. She had not imagined that there could be so many Wasichu in the world.

  By then, she had learned a few words in the Wasichu tongue, words of greeting and farewell, and how to ask for food or water. Their journey was still not over, even in this place by a great lake that held so many Wasichu. From there, they had climbed into one of many wagons pulled by an iron creature that made her think of a big black buffalo. This buffalo ran along a trail made for it, pulling the wagons and puffing loudly from its efforts as clouds poured from its top, and whenever it stopped, the buffalo still sighed and gasped as if struggling to catch its breath.

  That was, Katia told herself, a long time ago. She waited under the overhang, looking down the tracks as another black iron buffalo moved toward her. She had lived in Grisha’s world for eight years now, and could no longer remember her old name, but had not much wanted to recall it after her old life was over. She might have forgotten her people’s speech by now if Grisha had not continued to use it whenever they spoke alone. The spirits had not spoken to her in all that time, and she often thought that they would never speak to her again, that they had forgotten her long ago.

  Grisha had sent her to a school in New York, and then another in Boston. After the War Between the States was over, he had brought her to Washington; by then, she could read and write and sew and pour tea, as Wasichu women did, and knew how to say the Christian prayers, although she still thought of the Great Spirit and not of Christ whenever she said them.

  She had also learned the truth of what Grisha had often told her:

  “There are two kinds of Wasichu, Katia—those who will accept you and tolerate you as long as you act and think and believe exactly as they do, and then there are those who will hate you no matter what you do.”

  But this was not true of Grisha. He spoke Lakota words to her and told her not to forget them. She discovered that he had brought two Lakota boys and a Cheyenne into the Wasichu world and had sent them West after the war. She did not know what his dealings were with the men who came to his house in Washington, or where he went during his months-long disappearances, but she knew that they had something to do with her people. Sometimes, when he spoke to her in Lakota, more fluently than he had when she had first seen him, he hardly seemed like a Wasichu at all.

  He had sent her to Louisville a month ago with Denis Laforte, telling her that he would come for her soon and travel with her to St. Louis. She did not know what his purpose was, but she had never questioned Grisha about anything he did. A telegraph message from him had reached her five days ago, with information about the train he was to take.

  The train was very late, but she had never known one to be on time. Denis Laforte craned his neck as the train puffed and shrieked and groaned to a stop. He was a tall man with pale brown skin and hair as dark and wooly as a buffalo’s. Denis, a freeman originally from
New Orleans, had been with Grisha for three years now, obeying him as unthinkingly as she did.

  The iron buffalo sighed to a halt. Katia moved toward the Pullman car, searching for Grisha. She might have waited for him at the hotel, and the prolonged waiting at the station had wearied her, but Katia had felt that he would want her to meet him here. He would not have sent a telegraph message to her otherwise, and often she felt that, no matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried not to disappoint him, she could never show him enough gratitude for what he had done. So she had waited, refusing to return to the hotel to rest even when it was clear that the train would be late. Grisha had been kind to her; she owed him everything.

  A foolish thought, she told herself. He would not have schooled her and cared for her simply out of kindness. Grisha’s kindly gestures always had some purpose.

  A woman passed them and glanced from her to Denis with a narrow-eyed expression that told Katia they did not belong there. She had seen the same look at the hotel, among the guests in the lobby and even on the faces of some of the staff. Only Grisha’s money could have bought them even that much forbearance. For days now, she had taken her meals in her room, afraid to leave it for the hotel dining room downstairs.

  Two men left the train, and then she saw Grisha. A dark-haired man followed him out of the car and stood with him, looking awkward and out of place.

  “Katia,” Grisha said, “how kind of you to meet me.” His face was drawn, and the skin under his eyes sagged. She had rarely seen him looking so tired. He gestured at the man next to him. “This is Mr. Lemuel Rowland. He is a friend of Ely Parker’s—of the commissioner of Indian Affairs.”

  Katia nodded at the man, recalling that Ely Parker had occasionally come to Grisha’s house. She had not known that Parker was an Indian until Grisha had told her.

  “Katerina Rubalev,” Grisha continued, waving a hand at Katia.

  The man called Rowland looked puzzled for a moment. “Your wife?” he asked.

  “My ward. And Denis Laforte, my valet.”

  Denis signaled to a porter, then reached down to pick up the bags Rowland had set down on the walkway. “Come with me, sir,” Denis said to Rowland as the porter hefted Grisha’s bags.

  The three men hurried on ahead. Katia felt Grisha’s hand on her arm. “Lemuel Rowland was an officer in the northern armies,” Grisha said in Lakota. His voice was so low that she could barely hear him above the noise of the station. “He also belongs to the same people as does Donehogawa—they are both Seneca.”

  Katia lifted her brows. So he was one like her, another Indian who wandered in the Wasichu world like a ghost.

  “Donehogawa wanted the man to come with me,” Grisha said. “I believe that he thinks this Rowland will be a spy for him.”

  “And will he be?” she asked.

  “I do not know. I have been talking to him. I would like to find out more about what kind of man he is.”

  “He is going to St. Louis?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where are we to go, Grisha?” He had not told her yet, not in his letters, and not before sending her to Louisville.

  “What would you say if I told you that we may go back to the camp of Touch-the-Clouds?”

  She halted, not knowing what to say or how she felt. He stopped next to her. “Do you not want to return to your people?”

  “I have forgotten too much,” she said softly. “I don’t belong here, but I will be out of place there.”

  “I will not leave you there if you do not want to stay. And it will be Touch-the-Clouds who decides your fate. I think that he may decide that you will be more useful among the Wasichu in the end.”

  They resumed their pace, keeping Denis and the man called Rowland in sight. Katia thought of what she had heard from a visitor to Grisha’s house, the night before she had left for Louisville. She had not seen who the visitor was, and had heard him only because the door to Grisha’s study was open.

  “You cannot advise Touch-the-Clouds.” The man was speaking in English, but with an accent she did not recognize. “He allows others to speak to him, but hears only what he likes.”

  “It does not matter.” That was Grisha’s voice. “He wants what we all want.”

  “To defend his people, to protect them, to see that the whites live up to their treaties—I know that he wants all of that. But that isn’t all he wants.”

  “He may have to—” Grisha began, and then the door was closed and she could hear no more.

  “There is something I want you to do for me before we leave here,” Grisha said to her now. “Watch Lemuel Rowland, talk to him when you can and tell me what he says, and tell me what you think of him.”

  “Yes, Grisha.” She had expected him to ask that. In Washington, he had occasionally asked her what she thought of a visitor to his house, what she might have seen that he had not. Sitting silently in a comer, moving only if a guest needed more tea or a stronger drink, she might notice that a man talked too much or too little, or that he seemed uncertain, or that his eyes shifted when he spoke of particular matters. Often she knew right away that a man was not to be trusted, but could not say how she knew that. She did not know whether Grisha ever made use of her observations.

  “And another thing,” he said. “If he asks you how I found you and came to care for you, you may be honest with him. You do not have to dodge his questions—say what you please.”

  He did not have to tell her that. She knew almost nothing of importance to reveal to anyone.

  “Your mother had visions,” a dimly remembered voice whispered. Katia stopped walking, wondering why this voice had come to her now. She put out a hand and felt Grisha take it.

  “Your mother saw visions, and spoke to the spirits.” The voice was Black Cow’s. She had spoken those words to Katia while they were riding to the camp of Touch-the-Clouds.

  “I never heard of her speaking to spirits,” Katia had replied.

  “It was when she was younger, before she became your father’s woman,” Black Cow said. “After that, she became as you knew her. After that, the only visions that mattered for our people were those of Touch-the-Clouds.”

  Katia came to herself, saw the concern in Grisha’s face, then noticed that a few people were staring at them. “I was remembering,” she said. “It is nothing.” But she suddenly knew that the spirits must have carried that memory to her.

  Grisha had their dinner brought to their suite, and Katia saw that Lemuel Rowland was not used to the rich food or to having a waiter hover over him to serve him. When she excused herself to go to her own room, she noted the surprised look in his eyes when Grisha told him that he had secured another room for himself and for Rowland. Clearly Rowland had expected her and her guardian to share the same room. Several of Grisha’s acquaintances had also assumed that she was his woman, but in fact he had never touched her except to take her hand or elbow. Once she had been grateful for that. Now she wondered at his restraint, at his lack of interest in her, and found herself disturbed by his indifference.

  That night, she dreamed, and found herself in the midst of a great camp of tepees. It was time for the Sun Dance, and her people had gathered to renew their ties to the earth. In the center of the camp, she saw Touch-the-Clouds, and another man was with him, dressed in unfamiliar clothing—dark boots, and a long robe that was belted at the waist. He turned, and showed her a broad flat face with narrow dark eyes.

  She walked among the men, the Crow Owners, the Owl Feathers, the Strong Hearts, the Foxes, the Dog Soldiers, the men of the Lakota and the Tsistsista who were gathered together in their warrior societies, and she wondered why she was there, what had brought her here. “My brother is here,” Touch-the-Clouds said, and she knew that he meant the man standing with him. “He has come to us from the lands across the water far to the west. The hoop was broken, and now it will be joined once more. Our brother has come here to lead us into battle. The circle will close at last.”

  Wakin
g, Katia knew that the spirits had spoken to her again, but she did not know what they were trying to tell her. She had once seen a picture of a man who had looked like the one standing with Touch-the-Clouds, a painting in a book of tales about faraway lands, but she recalled no more than that.

  She slept again, but no more dreams came to her. In the morning, she dressed and left her room to find Lemuel Rowland sitting alone at a table set for breakfast.

  He got to his feet as she approached, looking awkward. “Good morning, Miss Rubalev,” he said. He was courteous; she had met some who did not call her by name at all, who treated her as even less than a servant.

  She went to the table and sat down. “Denis Laforte has gone to secure our passage to St. Louis,” he continued. “Mr. Rubalev wants to leave as soon as possible—he has gone to pay our bill and make arrangements.”

  “We are leaving today?” she asked, surprised.

  “Tomorrow or the day after.”

  She poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher, then helped herself to some bread. “Mr. Rubalev has been generous to me,” the man continued, “paying for my travel, putting me up here. I don’t quite know why, unless as a favor to Commissioner Ely Parker. I served with Mr. Parker during the war, in the Union forces.”

  “I have seen Mr. Parker,” she said. “Sometimes he came to see Grisha at his house.”

  “Grisha?”

  “It is what I call Mr. Rubalev.” She took another sip of water. “It is what he asked me to call him.”

  “He’s told me something about himself without actually saying what he does. I suppose that he must be in some kind of business venture.”

  She drank her water, saying nothing.

  “And that he has been successful at it,” Lemuel Rowland went on.

  She said, “If you have any questions, you should ask them of Grisha.”