Climb the Wind: A Journey Into Another Past

by Pamela Sargent

  Perhaps her husband did not want her here and would not welcome her. He wondered what Touch-the-Clouds could do with her. Divorce her? Give her to someone else? Force her to leave his camp once more? He could probably do any of those things.

  White Eagle emerged from the tepee, followed by another man, clothed in a simple robe and with only one feather in his hair. “Welcome,” White Eagle said in English.

  “Welcome,” the other man with him said as he straightened.

  Lemuel gazed at the second man’s face. For a moment, he could not speak. He knew this face. This was the face he had seen in his dream, the dream that had told him to come here.

  The man stared back at him and said in English, “You have seen me before. That is what your eyes say.”

  “Yes, I have seen you before,” Lemuel replied.

  “Lordy,” Virgil muttered behind him.

  “I had a dream before I rode here,” Lemuel went on. “I was on a plain, riding, and I saw a circle of warriors. One of them said to me, ‘The circle has closed.’ The man who said those words had your face.”

  The man continued to stare at him. Perhaps he had not understood all of his words. “You are the chief I came here to see,” Lemuel said in halting Lakota, “the one called Touch-the-Clouds in my tongue.”

  “The Yellow Hair Rubalev sent you. He thinks you might be of use.” The chief gestured at Virgil. “Who is this man?”

  “My friend,” Lemuel said.

  “That is good. You are friends. We will see if you are my friends.” Touch-the-Clouds gazed indifferently at Katia; she lowered her eyes. “And my wife is with me. I am pleased to see her again.” His voice was flat. Lemuel knew then that he would take her back, and felt a pang, but also knew that Touch-the-Clouds was saying that he was pleased only out of courtesy. He was looking at her as though she was less to him than one of his horses, which was perhaps understandable. Maybe he would keep her only until Rubalev came here again.

  Denis murmured a few words in Lakota, and then Touch-the-Clouds beckoned to Lemuel with one arm. “You will come inside, you and the Buffalo Man Laforte and your friend. Yellow Hair Rubalev has told me about you. He says that you are one who can build a wall and say where tunnels can be dug and tell in what places an Iron Horse trail can be made.”

  “An engineer,” Denis Laforte said.

  “Yes, that is what it is,’’ Touch-the-Clouds said, “an engineer. I have some now. I need more of them—these men who build.”

  Lemuel tried not to let the surprise show in his face. “I have some now,” this chief had said. What would he be doing with engineers? He wondered what other surprises the man had in store, and felt more adrift from his own world than ever.

  TEN

  White Eagle looked up as the Flowers of Fire blossomed in the clear blue sky overhead. A few moments later, he heard the sound of thunder, and grinned. Watching the arrow-rockets arch toward the sky and then burst forth with their fire and thunder always gave him pleasure.

  Five years ago, he had come here with his father and his comrade Swift Horse to become one of those who guarded Paha Sapa, the Center of the World. The Flaming Trees and Flowers of Fire had terrified him; his frightened horse had neighed and reared, thrown him to the ground, and then galloped away in panic. Now White Eagle loved to gaze at the arrow-rockets streaking across the sky and opening into blazing blossoms.

  These devices, the ones that bloomed in the sky and made showers of colorful sparks, were the harmless arrow-rockets. Glorious Spirit and his brother Victorious Spirit also made other arrow-rockets, ones launched from pony drags carrying the long flared nests they called Herd of a Hundred Buffaloes Running Together or Eagles in Search of Martens. Those arrow-rockets could make craters in the ground and even shatter rocks. White Eagle smiled when he thought of what they might do to the enemies of the Lakotas. He imagined them arching into the sky and then falling toward one of the forts of the blue-coated Horse Soldiers.

  Glorious Spirit and Victorious Spirit could make strong war medicine with their arrow-rockets. White Eagle knew that when Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had first learned of the fire-flowers that were beginning to bloom above Paha Sapa, they had grown angry at such stories. To shoot arrow-rockets at the heavens from this sacred place, to disturb the peace of the warriors who came here to seek their visions, would enrage the spirits. There might even have been a war over the matter if Touch-the-Clouds had not brought the other chiefs here to see the strong medicine of the arrow-rockets for themselves. If the Wasichu would not leave them their lands and keep the peace, the fiery arrows would bloom against the walls of their forts and more whistling and shrieking arrows would fall upon the wagons that followed their Iron Horse.

  What Touch-the-Clouds had left unsaid was that if Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and their warriors chose to fight him, the rocket-arrows might be aimed at their camps. White Eagle, were he a chief, could not have brought himself to use such arrows against others of the Lakota, and especially such respected men, but Touch-the-Clouds was not like other chiefs. He had seen the arrows in one of his visions, flaming arrows that shot across the sky and made thunder. Touch-the-Clouds had known long before meeting Glorious Spirit and Victorious Spirit that he would find men who could make such weapons.

  To the south loomed the high sharp peaks of the Black Hills, darkened by the ponderosa pines that covered their slopes. In the north, the land sloped more gently. Glorious Spirit and Victorious Spirit made their camp in the circle of tepees to the east of the sacred places, in the hilly pastureland.

  Sacrilege, many had called it, to make rocket-arrows so near the Paha Sapa, to mark this land with the making of such alien things. White Eagle suspected that his father Soaring Eagle still had many questions and doubts about what went on here. But when it was time for the Sun Dance and for warriors to go into the Hills to seek visions, this camp was moved, all signs of it erased, and the men who lived here did what they could to protect and guard from view those areas in the Hills where caves had been dug and the land was scarred. It was better if most of the Lakota never saw what had been done in those places.

  Better also, White Eagle told himself, to make sure that no Wasichu ever had a chance to learn of the existence of this camp, and of the places in the Hills where others dug for the yellow nuggets they traded for what they might need. The Lakota and their Cheyenne brothers had kept the white men from finding out what was here so far; at least two parties of soldiers and surveyors lay under the land bordering the Black Hills. But White Eagle wondered if they could continue to keep the Wasichu out if they ever found out about the gold. The yellow metal was a substance that maddened the Wasichu, that always brought them to come in great numbers with their tents and tools and wagons to dig at the ground.

  White Eagle hoped that his people never fell victim to such madness, but already a few men had tried to sneak away with nuggets or bags of gold dust. No one ever found out what the thieves wanted with the gold, whether they planned to trade it for firewater at one of the Wasichu agencies, or simply wanted to keep the shiny pieces of Paha Sapa for their medicine bundles, but it did not matter. To use the yellow metal for anything other than the defense of their land was an evil Touch-the-Clouds would not allow. The few who had tried to leave with bits of the metal now lay under the ground with the Wasichu.

  Someday, White Eagle knew, a Wasichu, a trapper, or even a warrior who still thought of the Lakota as his enemy would discover that there was gold here and carry that news back to the Blue Coats or to others of the Wasichu. After that, White Eagle was certain that the Lakota and the Cheyenne would have to fight to keep their lands. Some men doubted that, believing the Wasichu would keep their promises, especially if a battle for the Black Hills threatened to be long and bloody. But White Eagle thought that only merciless actions and a series of victories would have a chance of keeping the whites away. In that, he was in agreement with Touch-the-Clouds.

  Glorious Spirit and Victorious Spirit, with the ai
d of a few of the men, were readying a portable quiver of rockets. The two brothers wore long dusters, taken from the bodies of two dead Wasichu, over their long woolen shirts and baggy leggings; each had a long thin black braid down his back. Even after almost seven years of living among the Lakota, the two brothers remained poor riders. No one had to worry that Glorious Spirit and Victorious Spirit might try to get away with stolen gold. They would never be able to ride far and fast enough to escape.

  Victorious Spirit made a sign with one hand. The man holding the quiver, who still wore the worn blue coat of a Buffalo Soldier, was about to loose the first of the hand-held rocket-arrows. White Eagle leaned forward on his horse to watch, then saw a distant speck on the hilly green horizon.

  He let out a whoop and waved an arm at Victorious Spirit. “I see a rider,” White Eagle called out, shouting the words in English, the only tongue he and the two brothers had in common. “Two riders,” he added as the tiny, faraway forms became more distinct. There were two men, leading three more horses with packs.

  The dark-skinned man with the quiver hurried toward the nearest tepee; Victorious Spirit threw a hide over the basket from which the Flowers of Fire had been launched. The two approaching riders were almost certainly friendly. White Eagle doubted that any enemy scouts could have ridden this far without being seen, but even friends could pose a danger. Even their Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa allies to the south knew little of this place except that it was a place of strong medicine and powerful spirits.

  The encampment, in only a few moments, had taken on the appearance of an ordinary circle of tepees. Not quite ordinary, White Eagle reminded himself, since there were no women here most of the time. Glorious Spirit and Victorious Spirit did not seem to feel any shame when doing the women’s work of preparing food or putting up a tent. White Eagle tried to do as little women’s work as possible out here.

  He now saw who the riders were. Even at this distance, he recognized the long yellow hair of Rubalev that flowed from under his hat over his shoulders. The second man’s black hair was now almost long enough for a braid. That man was Poyeshao, the Orphan. Yellow Hair Rubalev had found out somehow that the Orphan was the man’s childhood name, given up after he had begun living in the world of the Wasichu. Poyeshao was in fact an orphan, having been adopted by a Wasichu family after losing his own parents. The white people had given him the name of Rowland, but White Eagle still thought of him as the Orphan.

  And, he admitted to himself, the man, even after a year and a half among them, seemed as solitary and strange as he had when White Eagle had first led him to the camp of Touch-the-Clouds. The Orphan came from a people who called themselves the Keepers of the Western Door and who were one of six nations known as the People of the Long House; so he had told them. They made their camps in the northeast, among forests, where deer, beaver, waterfowl, and other game could be found, but they lived also as tillers of soil. The Orphan had admitted that his Long House People had dug at the ground and raised crops even before the Wasichu came. Perhaps they were not Wasichu, but they were also not anything like the Lakota. What kind of Lakota would choose to till the ground? The Orphan Rowland might call himself a brother, but he seemed apart from everyone around him.

  Perhaps it was all the time he had lived among the Wasichu that made him that way. He was like the second wife of Touch-the-Clouds, who was always watching the other women as they went about their tasks, as if she were still a girl learning how to do a woman’s work and unsure of her skill.

  Touch-the-Clouds needed something from this man; that much was clear. Whether he trusted him or not did not matter. If Poyeshao tried to leave this place after seeing what was here, he would end up with the others under the ground. As White Eagle rode back to the encampment, he wondered why Yellow Hair Rubalev was bringing the Orphan here now.

  Rubalev reined in his horse and took a deep breath. “A good day,” he said expansively.

  They had been lucky, Lemuel thought. Each day of the ride had been warm but not hot, breezy but without the strong winds that so often swept the Plains. The land around the Black Hills yielded plenty of grass for their horses. In the distance, he glimpsed a small circle of tepees. Rubalev had not told him very much about their destination, only that he would see some of the weapons the Lakota might have to use in any future battles with the white men. But Lemuel had now lived among the Lakota long enough to know that they were not depending solely on their bows and rifles and whatever weapons they could steal.

  They had a base somewhere, maybe more than one. Somewhere, perhaps in northern California or near it, weapons were being made for them, purchased with the gold of which the Sioux seemed to have an unlimited supply.

  “You will find this place interesting,” Rubalev said. He had said almost nothing about their destination so far, mentioning only that Touch-the-Clouds wanted him to see it. He had not even mentioned how long they would be here, but Lemuel knew that the Sioux and Cheyenne would soon be gathering here for the Sun Dance. He might be invited to join them for the ceremony this year. Lemuel had witnessed one Sun Dance, and only briefly, and the mutilations he had seen made him hope that the Lakota would not show him that much esteem.

  It was easier to think kindly of the Sioux at a distance. Once he had dismissed that notion; now he saw its truth. Perhaps Rubalev found it easier to be their friend because he spent so much time away from them.

  That was what it came down to, now that he had lived longer among the Lakota, learned more of their customs, even attained proficiency in their language, thanks largely to the efforts of Katia and the persistence of Touch-the-Clouds. He could not be like them, not on the inside. He and his own people had grown too far away from what they once had been, and he had lived too long among whites. Underneath the daily doings of these people was a complicated web of rituals and ceremonies, of warrior societies and taboos, of lengthy speeches and councils, and of gestures that could inadvertently offend someone. He could feel sympathy for the Lakota and want to see justice for them, but part of him, in keeping with their white enemies, still thought of them as mysterious, alien, beings unlike himself.

  “It is good to be here again,” Rubalev continued. “Things have grown hard in the cities. It would not surprise me to learn that there had been more riots by now.” The blond man looked happy at the thought. The recent financial panic Rubalev had told Lemuel about, the tarring of so many politicians with scandal, the shakiness of President Colfax’s hold on power—all of it made the Sioux safer. Lemuel wondered if Rubalev still burned with his longing for revenge against the people who had destroyed his home, still dreamed of the rise of his American khan, or had simply been plotting and planning for so long that his schemes had become an unbreakable habit.

  Rubalev had been in Touch-the-Cloud’s camp for only a few days before deciding to come to the Black Hills with Lemuel. Touch-the-Clouds had intended to send Lemuel with Swift Horse, but Rubalev had asked to ride out with him, and the chief had agreed. Rubalev might have wanted the chance to talk to someone who could understand the implications of what he had to say about recent events.

  There had been much to tell. The collapse of the powerful bank of Jay Cooke and Company, the exposure of the fact that stock in Crédit Mobilier had in effect been given to President Colfax and much of the Congress in an effort to ensure that they supported the interests of the railroads, and the ensuing bankruptcies and scandals, had all shaken the United States. People outside Washington were now afflicted with bankrupt railroads, lost jobs, labor unrest, and financial panic. Plans for surveying along the planned route of the Northern Pacific Railroad, yet another threat to the Lakota lands in the north, had come to a halt, and workers were refusing to work on the other railroads to the south.

  Donehogawa, according to Rubalev, had weathered the financial storm. He had said no more than that, but Lemuel suspected that Donehogawa still did what he could to lend aid to Rubalev.

  “There were rumors when I left,’’
Rubalev continued, “that the South was growing discontented again. President Colfax was perhaps too willing to give in to those around him who wanted a firmer hand there.” Another piece of good luck for the Lakota, Lemuel thought. More soldiers would be needed in the South to dampen any rebellion; fewer would be sent west to fight Indians.

  The East, and his life there, seemed far away and insubstantial, a hazily recalled dream. He had come to understand Katia’s anger and her feelings of displacement. She had come back to a husband who was indifferent to her; she seemed incapable of giving him a child. Her main use had been to teach Lemuel more Lakota and to instruct the first wife and the sons of Touch-the-Clouds in English, since the chief seemed to think that they should also learn the Wasichu tongue. Perhaps she would ask Rubalev to take her back with him when he left these lands again. However unhappy she had been in that world, she was clearly unhappy here.

  There was nothing that he could do for her. Lemuel reminded himself of that fact often, and avoided her as much as possible, knowing that otherwise he might be tempted to offer her more comfort than he should. He had welcomed the chance to get away from her.

  Something was different about the small encampment they were approaching. The tepees disappeared behind one hill, then reappeared as Lemuel, leading one of the pack horses by the reins, followed Rubalev along one stream and up the slope of a hill. He was closer before he realized what was different. There were no women tanning hides on frames outside the tepees, or sending their children to the stream to fetch water.

  “Not many ride to this place,” Rubalev said, “and Touch-the-Clouds makes certain that those he sends here are trusted. If they prove to be treacherous in the end—” He turned his head toward Lemuel and smiled. “I do not think he has to worry about you. If you try to leave this place, you will not get far. I would go after you myself if you did, and bring your scalp to Touch-the-Clouds, and then beg his forgiveness for ever bringing you to his camp.”