by Anita Mills
“We need to try again for a child,” he told her.
That was how he always approached her—never “Maggie, I love you. Maggie, I want you, I need you.” Margaret knew that sometimes he really did want her out of pure physical need, but he always used the excuse that it was time to try to get her pregnant again. Didn’t he understand how deeply she ached to hear the right words? To have him pull off her gown and rub his naked skin against her own? To kiss her deeply, to touch her in secret places?
No. There was just this. She must obey by opening her legs so that he could quickly invade her. She must not arch up to him or make any noises that might suggest she enjoyed this. Edward, too, remained silent. While he took her, Margaret was astonished to realize she was imagining someone else doing this to her. His skin was dark, his brawny chest hovering over her. His hair hung over his shoulders and brushed against her own naked breasts. The thought brought such a surge of passion that she almost cried out his name, but she could only imagine Wild Horse invading her this way.
Edward finished with her quickly and rolled off of her, getting up to go into the curtained-off washroom near the bedroom. Margaret felt him get back into bed then. “I will pray that this time the seed will take and that you will keep this one,” he told her. “You can go and wash now.”
Margaret silently got up to go to the washroom, stifling a need to burst into tears.
Chapter Four
Margaret lifted her skirt and walked through the underbrush to the pond. It had stormed last night, and today was cooler but humid. She had promised Evy she could look for frogs and tadpoles, but that was only an excuse to come here, and she came against her better judgment. Why didn’t she just continue to stay away? Why was it so important to know if Wild Horse had gone away again? If he had, she had missed her chance to learn what she could from him about the Cheyenne way, and maybe that was a big mistake. Maybe God had sent him to her after all.
And maybe that was all just her own manner of reasoning, so that she did not feel guilty about coming here. It was much too dangerous for her heart and her sense of moral values to be here, hoping to find an Indian man for whom she had lusted while her own husband made love to her; yet here she was, looking around, hoping. Evy ran to the edge of the pond with a little strainer and a bucket.
Margaret stood silent, watching the reeds, the underbrush, the bushes and trees. It would be just like Wild Horse to be here without her even knowing it—watching her. What did he think about her? Did he want her as a woman? She was sure she had seen it in those dark eyes.
“So, you finally chose to return.”
The voice came from behind her and she gasped and turned. Because of the cool day, he was fully dressed today, and he looked magnificent in fringed, deerskin pants and shirt. The shirt was unlaced at the neck, and his chest sported a beautiful turquoise stone that hung around his neck on a piece of rawhide. Another necklace was tied around his throat, and she noticed his neck had healed nicely. His hair hung long and loose, except that some of it was tied at the side of his head with a beautiful, round, beaded hairpiece held in place by what looked like a piece of bone.
“I wasn’t sure you would come,” she told him.
Yes, you were, he wanted to answer. But that would embarrass her, and she might run off. “Why did you not come the last time?”
She swallowed. Because of what you do to my heart, Wild Horse, and my common sense. “I was afraid if I came too often, I would be found out, and then you might be caught.”
He smiled and nodded, and Margaret suspected he did not believe her. Damn him! His eyes seemed to drill right through to her heart. She looked away. “You look better, and your voice sounds stronger.”
“I am healing.”
She felt him walk up close behind her. “Major Doleman thinks you’re dead, or at least he probably hopes you are,” she told him. “The cattlemen reported hanging you, but they couldn’t find your body, so he isn’t quite sure what to think.”
“The captain is a fool. But I suppose he is sure to discover I am alive. I cannot stay here for much longer.”
But I don’t want you to go, Wild Horse. “You’re right.”
“So…why did you come?”
She shrugged, watching Evy chase after tadpoles. “Be careful, Evy. Don’t fall in!” How could she answer him? With the truth? No, she must never shame herself that way. “I just wondered if you were all right, if you were even still around.”
“Wild Horse!” Evy noticed him then and came running, carrying her bucket, which looked much too big in her small hand. “Look what I have!”
Wild Horse walked past her to greet the child. He knelt down and looked into the bucket, dipping his hand inside to scoop up a few tadpoles. “Ah, you have found beginning of new life,” he told her.
Evy frowned. “Huh?”
He held out his palm, in which two tadpoles wiggled and squirmed. “Some day they will be frogs and toads.” He put them back into the bucket of water. “You were once a tadpole. Did you know that? The Great Spirit gave you life, and now here you are, much prettier than any frog!”
Margaret thought to object. Edward would be outraged if he knew an Indian man was telling Evy such a story.
Evy giggled. “I’m going to find some more babies!” she exclaimed, running back to the pond.
Wild Horse rose and watched after her, then turned to meet Margaret’s eyes. “When Indian children reach seven or eight summers, they know all about life, how it is made, how it grows. They have seen their parents mate, watched their mothers give birth. They know beauty of life. Children mean everything to my people. They mean continuation of our blood, our race.”
She folded her arms and walked closer to him. “Tell me more, Wild Horse, about this being you call Maheo, about your beliefs.”
He spread his powerful arms. “Great Spirit is in all of us, Maggie, not just in heavens looking down on us and judging us, as your husband preaches. He is in us, and in earth, trees, sky, water, animals—everything. We call our God Maheo. You call yours Jehova.”
Her eyebrows arched in surprise.
He looked proudly down his handsome nose at her. “You think I know nothing about your God, but I know much, and I believe your Jesus is same as our prophet, who is called Sweet Medicine. Sweet Medicine appeared to my people many, many winters ago, and taught them right way to live. He also told them to beware of men with pale skin and hairy faces who would one day come to destroy us.”
He held her gaze with his own dark eyes, and she felt lost in him as he spoke. “Unlike you, we do not believe our God sits in judgment and punishes us. He is inside of us. He speaks to us through spirits that are in everything. There is Heammawihio, Wise One Above, and Ahktunowihio, God Who Lives Under Ground. Every living thing contains a spirit, and that is why, when we kill an animal for food, we thank its spirit for offering its body to give us strength and nourishment. It is through these many spirits that we find our visions. Like your Jesus, Cheyenne men fast and make blood offerings in order to have a vision and find our special spirit path. My guiding spirit is a great, white, wild horse. Spirit of that horse dwells within me, and that is why I must be free.”
“Mommy, I caught a frog!” Evy exclaimed. She held the green, squirming creature up, then screamed and dropped it when it began wildly flailing its legs. She laughed and went running after it, and Wild Horse joined in the laughter. Margaret watched him, thinking again how handsome he was when he smiled. Why had she never pictured Indians laughing before she met Wild Horse?
“I want to meet again, Wild Horse, so that I can write these things down. I wish I had brought a tablet and pen today. I could never properly spell the names of some of these spirits of yours, but I will do my best.”
They walked together to the edge of the pond, and Margaret opened the blanket she had brought along. They both sat down to watch Evy. Margaret wished Edward would sit like this with someone like Wild Horse and just listen. It would help him so much in
reaching these people to understand their own perception of God.
“What do you believe about life after death, Wild Horse?”
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “When our bodies are dead on this earth, our spirits continue. Our spirit follows the hanging road made of stars up to a new land, where grass is always green, and there are still many buffalo…and no white men. Those who go before us are happy there, always warm, bellies always full, free to ride and hunt at will. They play games and live in fine lodges, and children are happy. I will be glad to go there. We always bury a man or woman’s most precious belongings with them when their bodies are dead, things their spirit can use in hereafter—clothing and weapons for hunting.”
He turned to meet her eyes. “All nature is sacred, Maggie. That is why we cannot understand why white man wants to put his sharp plow into Grandmother Earth, tearing at her. Earth is sacred. White man cuts down trees that he does not even need for fire, just so he can clear land. Spirit in tree cries out every time man puts his ax to its soul. At one time, earth, sky creatures, animals, buffalo—they all gave my people everything they needed for survival, and nothing was wasted. White man wastes everything. He skins sacred buffalo just for hide, leaving all good meat and other parts to rot in sun. My people use every part of buffalo. They burn only old, rotten wood from trees already fallen, trees that have given up themselves to us. Even the smallest rock is not moved by my people without great care.”
He raised up on one elbow, realizing that she seemed intently interested. This was a rare white woman. She cared. She wanted to learn. “We do not try to say how our God thinks and feels. We do not fear our God. We live in Him and through Him. We do not concern ourselves with how this world began. It is not necessary for us to understand these things. We accept our world as it is, thank the spirits for gifts they give us. We do not try to rule our world or animals or try to change things as white man does. Life is simply a circle, Maggie. It is formed by union of man and woman; it is born, it lives, it dies and goes back to spirit form. Before it dies, it creates more life, and on and on. This earth is here for us to use while we are upon it, and we do not try to understand how it got here, how we got here. We are here, we live, we love, we laugh…and we cry. Life is life. White man tries to make it so confusing, when it does not have to be. Life is simply to be enjoyed. Man should embrace all spirits around him and in him. He should be happy in today, like a little child, like your Evy, taking pleasure simply in catching little frogs.”
Margaret felt mesmerized. She saw this man in a new light, and to her amazement, she understood exactly what he was trying to tell her. Life did not have to be the somber burden men like Edward seemed to think it should be. Life was joy, and it was not wrong or sinful to be full of that joy, to embrace life and love, to want to let one’s spirit soar. How she wished she could share all of this with Edward, but he would never understand.
“Wild Horse, look!” Evy came back to them with even more tadpoles in her bucket.
Wild Horse grinned. “You should thank their spirits for allowing you to catch them. It has been a good game, but before you go, you should put them back in water so they can be free again.”
“But I want to keep them!”
Wild Horse touched her arm. “It is not right, little one. You would not want to be put in cage, would you, where you can never run free and see your mother and father, eat what you want, go where you please? Things that cannot be free soon die. You do not want them to die before they have a chance to become frogs, do you?”
Evy puckered her lips. “No. I’ll put them back, but first I want to sit and watch them a little while.”
Wild Horse nodded. “That is fine.” He turned to Margaret. “Can you understand that is how it is for my people? Being on reservation makes them feel like they are in a prison. Many die just from a broken heart, because they cannot go home to land farther north from which they come. They cannot go to the cool mountains. They cannot ride and hunt freely. This is why many turn to firewater. It helps them forget, soothes their sad spirits.”
Margaret’s eyes misted. “I think I do understand, Wild Horse. I wish I could change it all for you, but it’s never going to be the same again. Surely you know that.”
She was astonished to see his own eyes tear, and he turned away. “I do know it.” He sighed and rose. “I must go now. I will come again, but not for much longer. Soon I must go away.”
Margaret got to her feet, her throat feeling tight. How she hated the thought of him going, but it would be such a waste if he got caught and sent to a horrible prison in Florida. “I understand that, too,” she told him. “Don’t let them catch you, Wild Horse. A man like you would be better off dead than—”
She could not finish. He met her eyes, and she knew he had been thinking that very thing. For several long seconds she could not bring herself to look away from him. There was so much in that look, so many unspoken words. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, Wild Horse.”
His eyes moved over her almost lovingly. “The spirit of the horse will decide what happens to me. Either I will leave and be able to live free, or I will die. There are no other choices. I can see that you understand.”
And if I did not belong to someone else, I think I would go with you, she thought. “I understand. How soon will you go?” She felt drawn to him, unlike anything she had ever experienced.
“I should already have gone. I stayed because of you. If telling you about my people and how we believe can somehow help them, then I will stay until you understand all of it.” Finally he turned away from her. “Come here again when your husband is gone. Bring your paper and pen so you can put what I tell you onto paper. I cannot read white man’s writing, but I trust you to say it right.” He looked around, again the wild animal being cautious. “I go now.”
He walked off into the stand of trees, and Margaret watched after him until she could no longer see him. “God, protect him,” she whispered.
For another two weeks Margaret lay beside her stiff and silent husband at night, dreaming about another man, and every chance she got she met Wild Horse at the pond. It was he who taught her about freedom and spiritualism and how to feel close to nature and to God. Sometimes he brought a flute and played for her. Evy had made a new friend at the fort, Rose Hart, a girl two years older who was the daughter of a new lieutenant who had been assigned to the fort and had brought his family. Margaret welcomed the chance to send Evy someplace else to play so that she could be alone with Wild Horse, all the while realizing what a dangerous thing she was doing—more dangerous for her own heart than for any other reason. She told herself that meeting him and learning the Cheyenne customs and beliefs was important to understanding his people, and that was partly true. But she knew the real reason she kept going back to the pond.
She loved Wild Horse. It was a different kind of love than what she felt for Edward. She could and would never tell Wild Horse how she felt, although she suspected he knew. In fact, she was sure she saw love in his own dark eyes, but neither of them spoke of such things. They talked only about their different cultures, and sometimes she just lay back on the blanket and let the summer breeze flow over her while he played the flute for her—haunting, touching music that floated across the pond and into the trees and made her feel so serene, so close to God, so free. Sinful as it was, she could not bring herself to stop meeting him, nor was she quite sure it was truly wrong. Sometimes she still brought Evy, who seemed to adore Wild Horse. She was more open and happy around him than she was around her own father.
She knew through Wild Horse that his people did have a wonderful sense of humor, a special joy about them in spite of their suffering. She wrote down everything he told her in a notebook she kept hidden from Edward. Wild Horse talked about life on the open plains, about how a Cheyenne man sought his vision, about the Sundance ritual. Now she knew how he had gotten the scars at his breasts. He had also told her about Sand Creek, his words bitter, finally
trailing off into a quiet sob. Yes, the Cheyenne loved and grieved like anyone else. How sad that most of her own people thought of them more like animals, just because they lived differently.
She was taking terrible chances, yet could not bring herself to put an end to the meetings. She wondered at her own boldness of taking her heart into dangerous territory, where it could be shattered at any time. Nothing could ever come of her feelings for Wild Horse, and she knew that soon it would have to end, for he must go away, or die fighting the soldiers that might come for him. She also realized she had to think about Evy, the shame on the family if anyone ever knew about what she was doing. Yet every chance she got, she came back, and Wild Horse was always there waiting for her.
Part of her fought madly against forbidden emotions, and another part of her yearned to break free and be wild and wanton, to be held by those strong arms, to know the ecstasy of making love for the sheer pleasure of it. When she said her prayers at night and asked for forgiveness of her sins, the magnitude of what she was doing would nearly overwhelm her, and she wondered if she would burn in hell for it. Yet she could not help feeling sometimes as though there was not one thing wrong in any of it…as though God had led her into this strange new world for a purpose.
They grew closer, happy in each other’s company. Again she met him. How many times was this? Ten? Eleven? She had left Evy behind this time to play with Rose. It was a lovely day—warm, but not too hot. She lay back on the blanket and let Wild Horse play the flute for her again. The music made her feel so serene. Apparently no one at the fort could hear, or else they thought the music was coming from the agency.
