She shook her head. “No, only bored.” She smoothed down her skirt. “Hiding can be quite tedious.”
“We’re not going to hide from Frank Grouard any more.”
Her eyes widened.
“Trying to keep ourselves hidden will only make him more suspicious of us if he does find out we’re here. He may already know I’m in Omaha. He’s a scout for Crook. I found that out today while listening to a couple of cavalrymen at a saloon. He might know that I went to see the general.”
Katia shook her head. “But—”
“If he came here to spy for the Lakota, we have nothing to fear, and if he came here to work against them, I had better find that out. We don’t know what he might have told General Crook already.”
She gazed at him in silence. “What are you going to do?”
“Escort you downstairs and order some supper.” He smiled, trying to conceal his worry from her.
There had been little contact between Lemuel and Grouard among the Lakota. They had spoken to each other only a couple of times in the camp of Touch-the-Clouds. Lemuel went to the stable where he was keeping the horses he had bought for himself and Katia and rode toward the stockade that surrounded the headquarters of the Department of the Platte.
Frank Grouard was loitering outside the corral with two other men, both with long black hair and hats adorned with eagle feathers. Lemuel slowed his horse, thinking for a moment that Grouard might not recognize him as he rode by, and then the half-breed beckoned to him.
“You,” Grouard shouted, “I know you. What is it they called you?”
Lemuel dismounted. “Poyeshao,” he replied, and then in Lakota, “the Orphan from the East.”
“Hah.” Grouard bared his white teeth in an attempt at a smile. “An old comrade,” he said to the other two men. Their eyes narrowed as they stared coldly at Lemuel. “A blood brother of the great chief Touch-the-Clouds, so they say.”
“You are mistaken there,” Lemuel said. “We swore no such oath.”
“Then Tatanka Wotanka—Sitting Bull—paid me more respect than did your Lakota comrade to you.” Grouard turned toward his companions and jerked his head; the two men left them.
“Now I can ask you,” Grouard said in a low voice, “what you are doing here.”
“I came to offer myself to Three Star Crook as a scout,” Lemuel said.
“Had he taken you on as one, I would know,” Grouard said, “so he must have sent you away.”
“He did. There is a chance he may need me to scout for him later.” Lemuel kept his eyes on Grouard. The man had told Rubalev that he was not an Indian half-breed as most of the Lakota thought, that he had been born in the South Seas, a story Lemuel doubted.
“Who sent you here?” Grouard asked. “Yellow Hair Rubalev? Touch-the-Clouds?”
“No one sent me.” Lemuel led his horse to a hitching post. “I left with Graceful Swan, the second wife of Touch-the-Clouds. He didn’t try to stop her from leaving him, but we could not have lived easily in his camp after that.”
Grouard laughed. “I heard about that. I forget who told the story to me. If it had been any man but Touch-the-Clouds, many would have mocked him for giving away a wife so easily, but since she gave him no sons and went around seeking visions like a man, perhaps he thinks he is well rid of her. And of course no one will dare to mock Touch-the-Clouds, even in a whisper.’’ Grouard laughed again. “No, he may be sitting with his braves now, mocking you for accepting her.”
Lemuel tensed with anger. Grouard’s smile grew broader. His anger faded; it did not matter what he said, what he thought, about Katia. Better for Grouard to think that Lemuel’s ties of friendship with the Lakota were broken.
“Maybe you should not be so quick to scout for Three Star,” Grouard said. “If you were caught by the Lakota—”
“My fate would not be any worse than yours at their hands.”
Grouard’s black eyes shifted. “You must need money.” Lemuel did not deny it. “Three Star would not pay you much, but even army pay is better than nothing. I will see what I can do. Come back here tomorrow or the day after.”
“Thanks,” Lemuel said.
“Do not be too quick to thank me, Orphan.” Grouard turned and strode away from him.
Lemuel spent the rest of the day with some of Crook’s scouts and drivers, saying as little as possible, letting them assume that he was another one like Grouard, who was thinking that it might be to his advantage to change sides. He rode back to the stable at dusk and walked to his hotel brooding about what Grouard might already have revealed to Crook. Maybe he had not given away as much as Lemuel feared. Grouard might be waiting to see what Crook would do, what intentions he had, before committing himself completely. A man who had changed sides once might change sides again.
Inside the hotel, two men were drinking at the bar in the downstairs saloon; a couple sat at one table eating their supper. At another table, near the stairs, Katia sat with Frank Grouard.
Lemuel walked toward them slowly. Grouard had a bottle and a glass in front of him. Katia’s face was impassive, but her right hand trembled slightly as she rested it on the table next to her own empty glass. Grouard leaned back in his chair and smiled briefly.
“What are you doing here?” Lemuel said as he sat down across from them.
Grouard shrugged. “I saw Graceful Swan when I was riding past here this evening, and decided to call on her.”
Lemuel glanced at Katia. She might have been outside for only a moment, taking a walk, escaping the confines of their room for a little while.
“I was most surprised to see Sitting Bull’s old comrade here,” Katia murmured, surprising him with the calmness of her speech. “I knew that you would be back soon, so I invited Mr. Grouard to sit with me here while waiting for you. I was certain that you would have much to talk about.”
Grouard kept his eyes on Katia. “We do. It is between us. So you may leave us now.”
She got to her feet and came around the table. Grouard watched her as she went toward the stairway. “She was never like the other squaws,” Grouard said under his breath, “but I did not think she could be so—” He motioned with one hand. “She could make some money here. There are houses that would have her.”
Lemuel forced himself to ignore that slight to her honor. “What do you have to say to me?” he asked.
“We are here for the same thing, are we not?” Grouard poured himself a glass of whiskey, drank it down, then rested his arms on the tabletop. “The Lakota will hunt this summer. They will not think of war. They will not be thinking of the Wasichu. But Three Star Crook will be thinking of them, and of what will happen later. The Lakota will not stay at peace—they will begin to think of counting coup again.”
It was what Crook had said to him, that the Lakota were warriors. Another war would come; all that he could hope to do was to postpone it until the Lakota and their allies were prepared to fight it.
“I have my honor,” Grouard continued, “and so I do not look at you and say, ‘Here is another one who has turned against his old friends.’ Instead I say, ‘Here is another man who knows that the only way he can help his red brothers is to go to Three Star.’ This is the time for Three Star to be given what we know, and then he will wait until those on the Plains fall out among themselves again. That will be the time to strike.”
Grouard poured himself another drink, then pushed the bottle across the table. Lemuel poured some of the whiskey in Katia’s unused glass and lifted it to his lips, feigning a sip.
“I wonder which old enemy the Lakota will turn against first,” Grouard said, “the Crow or the Arikara. Or maybe it will be the other way around, and the Crow will break the peace first.”
Lemuel did not have to listen to any more. He could imagine what Grouard was thinking: If the Lakota and their allies fell out, there would be more red men willing to scout for the Blue Coats. By exploiting the divisions among the red men of the Plains, Crook would have the adv
antage. If Grouard helped the general win his victory, he could hope for a claim of his own in the Black Hills, and perhaps a lucrative post at one of the agencies where the Indians, once they were confined to reservations, would be forced to trade for whatever goods they needed. And Grouard would tell himself that he would do whatever he could to help his defeated Lakota friends.
“Sitting Bull should have been the chief of all the Lakota,” Grouard said. “He would have been if not for Touch-the-Clouds.’’ Lemuel could imagine Sitting Bull harboring such thoughts, even saying them aloud to Grouard. Sitting Bull had hoped only that his people be left alone with their hunting grounds and their buffalo, to live as they had; he had not wanted to fight them as had Touch-the-Clouds, with rocket-arrows and Rubalev’s network of spies and traders and gold taken from their sacred Black Hills. But Sitting Bull would not turn against a chief to whom he had pledged himself—at least, Lemuel told himself, not until that chief had shown himself unworthy of his trust. Grouard might be hoping to bring about such a breach.
“And some say that Crazy Horse is a greater chief than either of them,” Lemuel said.
“Hah.” Grouard ran his hands through his thick black hair. “Yes, you were wise to leave Touch-the-Clouds when you did.” He grinned. “I have not told Three Star most of what I know. I wanted to find out what he knew first, what kind of man he was.”
You wanted to be sure you had picked the right side, Lemuel thought, in case you decided to change sides again. You wanted to be sure that, when you revealed what you know, you got the most possible profit for it.
“Too bad I didn’t know that when I went to see Crook,” Lemuel said. “I might have had a handsome price for what I could have told him and then there would have been less information for you to sell him.”
Grouard laughed. Lemuel did not know if the other man was beginning to trust him more, or if he was simply playing along, but it did not matter. Grouard was a threat to him and to the Lakota.
“Have another drink,” he said to Grouard, pouring from the bottle into the other man’s glass and then topping off his own. Grouard gulped his drink down; Lemuel forced himself to swallow some of the whiskey and felt it burn his throat.
“There is something you should know,’’ Lemuel continued in a softer voice.
Grouard lifted his thick brows.
“I can’t tell you about it here.”
Grouard looked around the room. “There is no one here to listen to us.”
“Even so—” Lemuel looked toward the men at the bar. “It might be better to speak of this somewhere else. We are not the only two former friends of the Lakota chiefs who are here in Omaha. Yellow Hair Rubalev has arrived here, too, and he’s keeping himself well hidden. If I hadn’t accidentally seen him—”
Grouard had tensed at the name. Now he looked both angry and frightened. Good, Lemuel thought; now he could be sure that Rubalev had not sent the other man here.
“That man—” Grouard’s eyes shifted. “What can he want?”
“Once Touch-the-Clouds listened more to his counsel. Maybe Rubalev is also thinking of changing sides.” Lemuel stood up, feeling his stomach knotting; he did not want to think of what he would have to do.
Grouard shook himself. “He might change sides. I do not know what he wants, what he is trying to do. Where did you see him?”
Lemuel jerked his head toward the doorway, then stood up. Grouard came around the table; Lemuel saw that the other man was unsteady on his feet. There were only three men at the bar, along with the barkeep, and they were talking in low voices among themselves.
They went outside. It had grown dark; a carriage rattled past them. The street was quiet enough for Lemuel to hear a train whistle from the station at the other end of town.
“Where did you see him?” Grouard asked again.
“Slipping into a rooming house by the kitchen door,” Lemuel improvised.
“A rooming house. Doesn’t sound like Yellow Hair.”
Lemuel had known that a moment after telling the lie. “No, it doesn’t, which makes me even more suspicious. The place isn’t far from here.”
“You want to go there?” Grouard’s face was hidden in the darkness. “I do not want to know why he might be here. I am thinking now that maybe I should not have come to Omaha.”
Perhaps he could be persuaded to leave. Lemuel would be rid of any danger Grouard might pose. That faint hope quickly faded. Grouard might be fearful for a while, but he might have second thoughts about leaving Omaha once he was sober. He would also have a chance to find out that Lemuel had lied to him.
Lemuel moved along the wooden sidewalk. Grouard stayed at his side. “Maybe he is only on his way to another city,” Grouard muttered.
“Possibly. But don’t you think we’d better find that out?”
“Yes.” Grouard sounded even more drunk. “Maybe you are right. But—”
“We’ll go through here.” Lemuel led him toward an alley between the hotel and a general store. “A shorter way to get there, and it’s better than taking a chance on having him see us coming to the front of the house.”
They entered the darkened alley. There were a few old barrels behind the store, where something could stay hidden for a while. The two had reached the middle of the alleyway when Grouard suddenly halted.
“Eh,” the half-breed said, his voice filled with suspicion, “maybe you—”
Lemuel had his Colt out by then. He brought it down on the back of Grouard’s head and heard the other man grunt. Grouard was still on his feet. Lemuel hit him again and heard him fall forward. He bent over the prone man and struck a third time, and then heard a rustling sound behind him.
Someone had followed him into the alley. He clenched his teeth and spun around quickly, his gun still in his hand, to face a shadowed figure.
“Lemuel.” That was Katia’s voice.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered.
“I saw you leave with him. I was watching from our room. I had the door open just a little and I saw you walk out with him. I didn’t like it.”
He leaned over Grouard. The man was still. “He is still breathing,” Katia said. “Hit him again.”
He hesitated.
“It’s why you came out here with him, isn’t it?” she said. “To be rid of him.”
He had killed before, during the war. He had done it without thinking. Death had been all around him and he had thought himself hardened to it. He was still at war, and Grouard was an enemy.
Katia grabbed his gun by the cylinder, twisting it out of his hand. She crouched down and then swung at the back of Grouard’s head. Lemuel heard the sound of bone cracking. She hit the half-breed two more times on the back of his head, then stood up.
“We can’t leave him here,” she said softly.
“I know where we can hide him,” he said numbly.
“Be careful. There is blood—you don’t want it showing on your clothing.”
He knelt and slipped an arm around Grouard’s chest. The man did not seem to be breathing now. He began to drag him toward the barrels, with Katia holding the man up from the other side. They stretched the body out against a back wall and pulled the barrels in front of it.
It might be a day or two, perhaps longer, before Grouard’s body was found. Lemuel did not think the man would have told others where he was going and why, but could not be certain of that.
He might be at war, but this felt like murder.
“Come on,” Katia said. “We must go back to our room.”
Lemuel could not sleep. Katia lay beside him, breathing evenly, but somehow he sensed that she was feigning sleep. He had wanted to leave this place immediately, find somewhere else to stay, even while knowing that this might endanger him even more. The body might be found quickly. The men at the bar might recall seeing him leave with Grouard. If he fled, the army might be after him if General Crook’s suspicions were aroused.
“We’ll have to stay here for a few mo
re days,” he had told Katia, and she had nodded, agreeing silently with him.
In the morning, he and Katia went downstairs and sat at a table, ordering breakfast as they usually did. He kept expecting someone to run into the hotel shouting that a body had been found. They finished their food and went back to their room. Katia moved around the room restlessly or sat in a chair, staring silently out the window. He thought of how she had followed him, of how she had hit Grouard with the butt of his Colt.
In late afternoon, shouts from the hallway and the saloon downstairs told him that Grouard’s body had been found. There would be a knock on his door soon. He would open it to see a marshal, or perhaps an army officer.
The voices soon faded. The hotel was suddenly so quiet that it seemed empty, as if everyone in it had decamped to other lodgings.
“Katia,” he said at last. His voice sounded strange to him in the silence. “We’ll have to go downstairs and have some supper.”
She did not reply.
“I’ve been thinking,’’ he went on. “If nothing happens, if everything goes as it should—” He paused. “Crook may take me on as a scout after all. I’ll have to see what I can do to find out what kind of campaign he might plan. You would be safer away from here.”
She looked toward him, but remained silent.
“I think that you should go to New York. I shall write to Ely Parker and ask him to take you in until I can join you there.”
“Very well,” she said softly.
He stood up and held out his arm to her. She rose and walked over to him. “You could not have killed him without me,” she whispered. “You would have stood there, shocked at yourself for doing what you did, and he would have come to his senses, and you would have been caught.”
“I know.”
They left the room. Downstairs, the saloon had grown noisier; a group of men hurried in to join others at the bar. “Just heard it from a reporter for the Republican,” one man in the group called out. “Crook’s been ordered to Missouri. Fighting’s broken out on the border with Arkansas.”
Climb the Wind: A Journey Into Another Past Page 29
