Climb the Wind: A Journey Into Another Past

by Pamela Sargent

  She was living in the Wasichu world now. The white people had driven off the spirits that had once inhabited this land. Those spirits could no longer speak to her or reveal the true world behind this one to her. That had to mean that her visions were false ones, that she was indeed mad.

  She could not remember the journey from St. Joseph to Kansas City, only that the cries of doomed people would come to her suddenly, without warning, drowning out the sound of the train’s wheels against the track. Rowland had called for the conductor once; she had murmured something about a headache. Once she had seen flames leaping from the floors and seats of their car, and had thought that their train was ablaze before seeing that the other passengers still sat calmly in their seats. Often she had to hang on to Rowland’s arm to steady herself while she closed her eyes to her visions.

  “What is wrong?” he had asked her when they were in their hotel room in Kansas City. “Is it a fever?” He put his hand to her forehead.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “You are ill.”

  “I am seeing visions. I can’t be seeing them here, I know that. They can’t be true, not here.”

  He had not asked her anything after that.

  Not long after their arrival, Rowland found them a flat in a house along a quiet street. Sometimes she glimpsed flames above the roofs of houses or the river beyond, or saw blue-coated riders riding below in the streets, but no people rushed out to fight the fires and the riders would vanish as suddenly as they had appeared. At night, she slept without dreaming.

  A day came when Katia awoke and saw no flames and heard no cries of fear. She dressed and went into the sitting room, where Rowland was already awake and drinking coffee. She sat down across from him at the table.

  “You look better,” he said as he poured coffee into a second cup.

  “I feel better.” It was coming back to her now, how he had brought food to her, held her head while she drank water from a glass, and had poured heated water into a basin when she was strong enough to wash herself. He had even emptied the chamber pot under her bed on those mornings when she was too weak to empty it herself.

  “I thought of fetching a doctor,” he said, “but I didn’t know which of them here I could trust, and I suspected your visions were troubling you. No physician would have known how to treat that.” He paused. “Katia, what were you seeing?”

  “More fires. Soldiers riding and shooting at Wasichu.”

  “Wasichu soldiers shooting other whites?” he asked.

  “Yes, and Blue Coats riding with the Lakota, as if—almost as if they were riding off to fight together. None of it made any sense.” She sipped some coffee. “I thought I was going mad.”

  “And now?”

  “They are gone. My visions have left me. I hope that it is for good.” Katia tilted her head, hearing a voice calling out something about a fire, and then realized that she had heard someone outside, in the street. The room was cold; she shivered.

  “How long has it been since we came here?” she asked.

  “Two months,” he said, “nearly three. The Chen brothers are already in St. Joseph—at least they were some time ago. They may be riding back to Lakota territory by now.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Rubalev sent a letter to me. The man he sent it to brought it to me last night. Rubalev went to St. Joseph to meet the Chinese and to see that they get back to the Plains. He has hopes that other men will be with them.”

  “Is that all he said?” Katia asked.

  “Yes.”

  Perhaps Grisha would come here. She might be able to persuade him to take her with him, wherever he was going. Then she thought of how Rowland had taken care of her, and felt shame.

  “Katia,” Rowland continued, “there’s something I must say. I had better say it now, while you look untroubled and I’ve summoned up enough courage to ask this of you.”

  She lifted her head and made herself look at him, knowing what he was about to ask.

  “I want you to be my wife,’’ he said, “and not only in name.”

  She said, “You want me to share your bed.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” He looked away. “I did not mean only that, Katia. I was thinking of marrying you. I can find someone to marry us here, and maybe that would make it easier for you if I came to you, if we—” He straightened. “I am not much used to expressing feelings of love for a woman.”

  His admission of that, and his awkwardness, touched her. Katia thought of the indifference of Touch-the-Clouds, and of Grisha’s coldness, and wished that she had more feeling for Rowland.

  “I must think about it,” she said. “I do not know how to answer you now.”

  His face brightened with hope. He was happy, she saw, because she had not refused him outright. Surely he knew that, if she had nowhere else to go, she would have to accept him in the end. She suddenly felt sorry for him, and also pitied herself for being unable to love him.

  Rubalev arrived in Kansas City without warning. Lemuel caught a glimpse of him outside a hotel as he climbed into a carriage. Two days passed without a word from the man, and Lemuel decided not to seek him out. Rubalev would find him.

  Three days after he had seen Rubalev, the Alaskan came to his flat. Katia was better by then, able to brew some coffee and to serve it with some cold meat and bread baked in their small wood stove.

  “You are looking well, Rowland,” Rubalev said as he poured himself coffee, “but Katia has grown too thin.”

  “I was ill this winter,” Katia said, keeping her head bowed.

  “It was nothing serious, I hope.”

  She looked up. For a moment, Lemuel glimpsed longing in her dark eyes, and then she looked away. She had still not given him an answer to his proposal of marriage. That she might still care deeply for the man who had been her guardian did not surprise him.

  “I was troubled by nightmares for a while,” Katia said. “They kept me from sleeping, and I grew much weaker, but that has passed. Now I hardly dream at all.”

  “The Chen brothers rode back to the Plains with Denis Laforte,” Rubalev said, “and they have found ten more Chinese men to aid them in their work. Now I must procure supplies for them, and men to haul them whose silence can be bought. And what have you learned during your sojourn here?”

  “Probably little that you couldn’t find out for yourself,” Lemuel replied. “Vice President Henry Wilson is ailing, and hasn’t been seen presiding over the Senate recently.”

  Rubalev shrugged. “The fate of a vice president will make no difference to us.”

  “Union troops are occupying Florida and part of Alabama.”

  “I know that as well, and also that Canada made forays against Detroit and Maine.”

  “The British forces were repelled by the Army,” Lemuel said.

  “For now.”

  “There were two newspaper reports that the long- missing George Armstrong Custer was spotted this winter on the Plains, in a Sioux camp. It’s said that some of his men were seen with him, and that they have decided to remain there for now, living among the Indians and seeing that treaties are kept. His wife Elizabeth is stoutly denying such rumors, claiming that her husband has been slandered as a deserter. I don’t suppose you would know anything about that.”

  Rubalev showed his teeth. Lemuel had suspected a possible origin for the reports ever since reading them. From a distance, and even at closer range, the blond Alaskan, in a blue officer’s coat or buckskin jacket, might be mistaken for Custer. One of the few adventurous reporters out on the Plains, looking for a story among the Indians, might have embellished such a report.

  “Let his wife say what she likes,” Rubalev murmured. “She can hardly admit that he might again have found the charms of Monahseetah, Young Spring Grass, more to his liking than her own.”

  “No one will believe that for long,” Lemuel said, “especially since there’s been no word from anyone traveling with the Seventh.”

 
“It does not matter if they stop believing it later,” Rubalev said, “as long as it is believed for now.” He took a bite of the meat and bread, then drained his coffee.

  Lemuel was about to mention what Jeremiah Clarke had told him about General Crook, but hesitated. It was possible Rubalev knew about Crook’s new posting, although it was unlike him not to have mentioned that by now, since it was the sort of information the man would have easily shared with him.

  Rubalev’s eyes narrowed as he gazed across the table. “Where did you go before you came here?” Lemuel asked.

  “I returned to St. Joseph from the West, by train. I spent some time among the Mormons in their clean and most attractive but exceedingly dull city. The Prophet Brigham Young is somewhat apprehensive about the Union, given his recent confrontation with the governor Washington tried to impose on Utah. We may win ourselves an ally there, or at least keep the Mormons from becoming our enemy. They believe that the Lakota might be a Lost Tribe of Israel. I assured the Prophet that his missionaries might even be welcomed by Touch-the-Clouds in time.”

  Lemuel kept his face still, trying to imagine Rubalev in the New Zion of the Mormons, passing himself off as a sober and respectable sympathizer. “In what capacity,” he asked, “did you offer your assurances to Young?”

  “As a representative of the Lakota—an ambassador, you might say, a mediator between Touch-the-Clouds and any of the chiefs among the Wasichu. Touch-the-Clouds will need other such ambassadors.”

  “I know that,” Lemuel said.

  “You do not seem to have been doing very much in Kansas City,” Rubalev said. “Perhaps it was useless for you to have come here.”

  “I would have been more useless poking around and arousing suspicion. There are many in Missouri who would support the recent rebellions in the South, if they thought they might be successful. This is a state where many still have divided loyalties.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “I think Katia would be safer away from here.”

  She was looking at Rubalev. Her face was impassive, but he saw the hope in her eyes.

  “Exactly how much use do you think you can be somewhere else?” Rubalev asked.

  “I was speaking of Katia, not myself.” He would settle this matter of Katia one way or another. If she chose to leave with Rubalev, he would not stop her.

  “She cannot come with me.” Rubalev kept his gaze on Lemuel. “I will be traveling quite a bit. It would be very hard on her. You also forget that Touch-the-Clouds allowed her to leave with you. Had he wanted me to have her, he would have arranged for that.”

  The man was talking about her as though she were a horse to be traded, but that was probably how both he and Touch-the-Clouds regarded her. Lemuel glanced at the woman briefly; her face was as expressionless as before.

  “I can endure hardship,’’ Katia said suddenly, “as you should know by now, Grisha.” She glanced at Lemuel. “And I do not worry about my safety. I am content to remain with you.” He saw that she was saying that out of pride, and both pitied and respected her for it.

  Her former guardian looked away from her. “Do you have any messages for Touch-the-Clouds and the other chiefs, Rowland?” Rubalev raised his brows and smiled. “I mean of course information other than the unimportant intelligence you have already gathered.”

  “Are you returning to Lakota territory?”

  Rubalev’s eyes shifted. “No, but I can get a message to Touch-the-Clouds.”

  “Then you should tell him, if he doesn’t already know, that General George Crook is commander of the Department of the Platte—has been since this winter, in fact.”

  Rubalev was very still, but his eyes shifted again, and Lemuel was sure that he had surprised him with the news.

  “My guess is that he’ll be looking for Custer and the Seventh before long, if he hasn’t sent out scouts already,” Lemuel continued. “He might risk violating the treaty to do that. It wouldn’t take him long to find out what happened, and then he will have an excuse to attack the Lakota.”

  “For Crook to find out anything,” Rubalev murmured, “someone will have to talk. The warriors who fought the Seventh know enough not to say anything to strangers.”

  “Men can grow careless. A scout can find something that was overlooked. And Crook knows that he will need some Indians on his side in order to fight Indians. There are probably still a few Arikara and Crow who may prefer to join the Gray Wolf’s forces as scouts if they think he has a chance of defeating the Lakota in battle.”

  “That is so,” Rubalev said, frowning with annoyance at having to admit it. “Crook is not the impetuous fool that Custer was.”

  “I would have left Katia here and ridden to Touch-the-Clouds myself to tell him this,’’ Lemuel said, “but it was clear that Crook wouldn’t fight this winter. The men under his command suffer from a lack of morale. They have a government they distrust and a chance of being sent to fight other battles in the northeast or the south. Crook won’t fight this spring or summer, not without enough men and with orders to keep the peace. But if he can find an excuse to fight, to break the treaty, be sure that Sherman and Sheridan will be happy to let him take it.”

  Rubalev scowled.

  “But I can try to prevent that,” Lemuel finished.

  “How?” Rubalev asked.

  Lemuel had been considering what he was about to say ever since hearing about Crook’s new command. “I’ll go to Omaha,” he said. “I can get a letter of introduction from Jeremiah Clarke. When General Crook learns of my past service with Grant and my time among the Lakota, I think he will see me.”

  “And what can you do even if he does agree to see you?” Rubalev asked.

  Lemuel rested his arms on the table. “Volunteer my services as a scout, of course.”

  Rubalev gazed at him in silence for a while, then smiled. “You shame me, Rowland. I should have thought of this myself.”

  FIFTEEN

  “I have no doubt that you could be of service to the army, Rowland,’’ the general said, “but at present, I will not send any scouts into the lands the Sioux are claiming as their territory.”

  Lemuel sat in front of George Crook, in a high-backed wooden chair on the other side of the general’s desk. During the course of their conversation, General Crook had insisted on referring to the Lakota territory as “what is now the Sioux reservation,” or “the territory the Sioux are claiming as their own,” as though the treaty now in effect were only a temporary one and the territory would eventually become the system of agencies and allotted lands the white man had intended it to be, as though the Lakota would eventually be forced from their hunting grounds in the Wyoming and Montana territories and confined at last in the small space of a Dakota reservation.

  Yet Crook did not strike him as a man itching for a war on the Plains. The general had spoken briefly of his campaign against the Modoc people in California and his battles with the Apache almost as though he was sorry to have had to fight such worthy opponents. His pale eyes had grown warmer as he mentioned the red men and the two Modoc women who had served him as scouts in California, who had come to believe that their people were doomed to defeat and that their only proper course of action was to serve the white chief in the blue coat and thus end the fighting quickly. Crook had praised the Apache for their tactics and for their ability to strike suddenly in small bands and then quickly vanish into their barren desert lands.

  “I cannot violate the treaty at the moment without risking a court-martial,” Crook continued, and there was a hint of weariness in his voice. His thick curly forked blond beard and closely clipped short blond hair were sprinkled with gray; it would not be many more years before the name the Apache had given him, the Gray Wolf, fit him.

  “Ordering scouts into Sioux territory might be a treaty violation,” Lemuel said, “but scouts without a direct order from you would be another matter. The Sioux will allow others to enter their lands as friends. They would not have to know
that they were scouts reporting to you.”

  Crook’s mouth twitched. “Ely Parker’s letter tells me that you were educated as an engineer, but you now sound more like a practicing member of the bar.” His gaze grew more distant. “Without the service of my scouts in the Southwest, my scalp most likely would have decorated an Apache lodge by now. Without my Indian scouts in particular, I could not have learned enough to know how to fight their red brothers. And I couldn’t fight the Apache easily now even if they broke their treaties, because not a single one would dare to be my scout against his own people.”

  The general did not have to explain why. The story had spread northward to the Lakota encampments. The Chiricahua Apache chief Cochise had been the first to reach an agreement, and then, after a prolonged search and a battle with Crook’s soldiers, the Tonto Apaches and their chief Delshay had won what they demanded, the pieces of paper that would allow them to move around their lands as the white men did. It was widely believed among the Lakota that Three Star Crook and his Blue Coats might have defeated the Apache and forced them onto reservations if, for mysterious reasons, Three Star had not suddenly decided to sue for peace.

  To Lemuel, the reasons for giving the Apache what they wanted were no longer so mysterious. The growing rebellions in the former Confederacy provided enough reason for coming to terms with the Apache. Better to have the Texans worry about guarding themselves against Apache raids from the west than to have them tempted to become part of a wider revolt against the Union. That the Apache had so far refrained from any raids against Texas had not made settlers near their territory less fearful of their former red foes. In any event, Texans were increasingly distrustful of the Mexicans to their south, and also of the Kiowa who roamed the southern plains with their cattle herds whenever they were not hunting what buffalo were left in their lands. There were also the Comanche and Quanah Parker, their feared leader, to worry about. None of those people, whose war chiefs had smoked pipes of peace with the Lakota, were likely to attack their former enemies without provocation, as long as the treaties were kept. The precarious peace would hold as long as the possibility of war in the east, north, or south threatened.