by Anita Mills
She closed her eyes and listened, full of ideas about how she could help the Cheyenne, wishing Edward would listen to her. Suddenly the flute playing stopped, and a shadow blocked the sun from her eyes. When she opened them, Wild Horse was leaning over her resting on his elbows…so close! She started to sit up, but he pressed her shoulder back against the blanket.
“You know that we are falling too deep, Maggie.”
She swallowed back a sudden lump in her throat. “We’re just friends.”
“Are we?” He touched her hair, and she shivered. “This cannot last, but there is one more thing I will teach you before I go away.”
A tear slipped down one side of her face. “I don’t want you to go away.”
He put a finger to her lips. “I want you to come to the agency, even though your husband forbids it. When he goes again, follow him. My people will welcome you. I have told them how good you are. Your husband will be surprised at how open they are to you. He will see that you have been right, that you must make friends first. Will you come?”
She sniffled. “If that’s what you want.”
He leaned down and licked the tear from her cheek, and she gasped at the literal pain of want that ripped through her. “Wild Horse,” she whispered, thinking how good he smelled, like fresh air and the earth. His face was close, and she could not quell the surging desires he stirred in her. She raised up and met his lips in a hungry kiss, wishing Edward would let her kiss him this way.
Wild Horse drew in his breath when she bit lightly at his lower lip. Margaret was not even sure why she had done it, surprised at the lustful feelings he stirred in her. He pulled away, a grin on his face. “What is this you do with your mouth?”
She smiled. “I kissed you! Don’t your people kiss?”
He frowned, touching his lips. “No.” He smiled again. “But it is a nice thing, this kissing.” Suddenly his smile faded, and look of wild desire came into his eyes. He quickly sat up. “It is not time yet,” he said softly.
Time for what? she wanted to ask, but she already knew the answer. There would never be a right time, for it was forbidden. I love you, Wild Horse! She could not say it, for saying it would only make it hurt all the more when she finally had to admit nothing could be done about that love. He had added that word “yet.” Did he mean something should be done about this? How could it, when she belonged to another man, and he belonged to another world?
He got up and picked up his flute. “Come to reservation,” he repeated.
“I will.”
He looked down at her like a conquering warrior, and she knew that if he were to kiss her again, she would be lost in him completely. He turned and quietly left, and every bone, every part of her flesh ached for her forbidden Cheyenne lover. That was how she thought of him, although he had not touched her that way…yet.
She closed her eyes and crumpled into the blanket weeping, begging God’s forgiveness and guidance, for she was fast losing control of all her emotions. Her world had been turned upside down by a man who was supposed to be less intelligent, less educated, less civilized…but she didn’t think any of those things about him. To her he had become superior. It was as though he held some special power over her so that when she was with him, she could not think straight.
“I can’t come here anymore,” she told herself. “I simply can’t. It will destroy my marriage, my self-respect.” She got up and wiped at her eyes, picked up the blanket, and hurried away. She decided she would go to the reservation the next time Edward went, and not to the pond. She would never go back to the pond!
Chapter Five
Edward preached about Jesus to three old men and two middle-aged women, who all spoke and understood just enough English to have some conception of what he was telling them, but who also looked at him with rather blank faces. He knew he was fast losing their attention, and he lost it completely when a commotion stirred to his right and a little behind him. He turned to see several Cheyenne gathered around something or someone. They were mostly women and children, but there were also a few men there. They were all carrying on in their own tongue, the women apparently very excited about something. There was some laughter as they passed something around among them, and the few people who had been listening to him got up and abruptly walked away to join in the excitement.
Disgusted, Edward closed his Bible and donned his hat. He marched over to the babbling group of Indians, hoping to get all their attention away from whatever was so interesting. He was beginning to wonder why he bothered to come here. Maybe Maggie was right. Maybe they should go to some white settlement where there were good, Christian people hungry to hear God’s word. Besides, his wife had been so changed since coming here that he hardly knew her. He thought that perhaps if he got her away from here, where she would be around women more like herself, he might get the old Maggie back. The only other women here were the major’s wife, who was cold and not much of a visitor, and the new lieutenant’s wife. He was glad the lieutenant had a little girl Evy could play with, but the lieutenant’s wife also did not intend to stay long. Evy would again need other children with whom to play, and Maggie certainly needed the company of other Christian white women.
He quietly moved into the crowd of Indians to see what had gotten their attention, and there spread out on the grass he recognized one of Maggie’s prettiest quilts, a colorful star pattern that the Indian women were ogling as though it were gold. Displaying it was his own wife! While several of the women eyed the quilt, Maggie was handing out pieces of ribbon in many colors, as well as buttons and some cloth. “Who among you speaks English?” she asked with a smile.
“Maggie! What in God’s name are you doing here!”
Margaret lost her smile as her husband pushed his way through to stand in front of her. Before she could answer, he noticed Evy playing in the distance with some Indian children. Because the weather had grown hotter again, the Indian children ran naked, including the little boys! Evy herself wore a dress, but her feet were bare.
“I am trying to win these people’s friendship,” Margaret answered.
He met her eyes, his own showing rage. “How did you get here!”
“I walked. It’s a nice day.”
“The agency is a whole mile from the fort! You walked here alone, with our daughter, exposing yourself and her to the dangers of savages?”
Margaret faced him, unflinching. “I simply took a walk on a beautiful day to come here and make some friends, which will ultimately help you in your work, Edward. I felt no risk and no fear. Perhaps if you would stop thinking of these people as savages, you would see them for who they really are—lost souls, a lonely, displaced people. They have a wonderful sense of humor and dignity. I have brought them gifts. I want to show them I care and that I trust them enough to let my child play with their children! Now stand aside. I want to give my quilt to someone. Do you know if any of these people here speaks English?”
Edward stared in disbelief.
“I speak some white man tongue,” an old woman told her. She was skinny and almost toothless, and her thinning, gray hair was tied in two tails at either shoulder. In spite of her age and size, she was obviously strong, as she marched up to Margaret and literally pushed Edward aside. “Who gets pretty blanket?”
Margaret smiled. “Who among you is most recently married? She will need a warm blanket this winter for her and her husband.”
Edward reddened, but the Indians laughed when the old woman interpreted Margaret’s statement. A shy young woman who looked to Margaret as though she could not be more than fifteen, stepped forward. She was chubby, and her face showed marks from either measles or smallpox, but she was still pretty.
“This is Summer Storm,” the old woman told Margaret. “She took a husband only five suns ago.”
Margaret picked up the quilt and handed it out to the girl. “Then please accept this from me and my husband as a wedding present.”
The old lady told the girl what Margar
et said, and Summer Storm’s eyes widened with delight. She took the quilt with a wide smile. Ha-ho, she told Margaret in a quiet voice.
“She says thank you,” the old woman told Margaret.
Several women who had been given ribbons and buttons also thanked Margaret. One stood holding a rolling pin. She touched it as though it were a most wonderful thing, then said something to Margaret. The old woman interpreted for her. “She says she will use the wooden instrument you gave her to crush corn for flour and berries for juice and to use in making pemmican.”
“What is pemmican?” Margaret asked.
“It is a special food we make from meat and berries and fat. They are dried and crushed together and cut into strips. It lasts long time. Our warriors carry pemmican when out on hunt or in battle.” The words were spoken as though the woman still expected life to be that way for her people again.
“I see,” Margaret told her.
“Margaret!” Edward interrupted. “How dare you tell that girl we’ve given her a wedding gift! Don’t you realize none of these people gets married the Christian way? That girl is living in sin, and you have encouraged it!”
Margaret held her chin high. “Most of these people marry for the same reasons we do—for love, and to have children. The women remain chaste until they take a husband, and they do not cheat on their husbands. Where is the difference, Edward? They have their ways of marrying, with a special ceremony and all, just like we do. Who is to say our own people are any more married than theirs, just because we marry in a church and have a piece of paper that supposedly makes it legitimate? In fact, I don’t doubt there is more love in some of the marriages among the Cheyenne than there is in some of our own marriages!”
Edward paled. Was she referring to their marriage? Had his wife lost her mind? “How do you know anything about the feelings of the Cheyenne or their marriage ceremonies?”
She turned away, thinking, Because I am in love with one. Because I have been meeting with the notorious Wild Horse, and he has taught me many things. Poor Edward would probably have a heart attack if she told him the truth. “I studied about them before we came here. I wanted to know.”
Edward put his hands on his hips. “I am very disappointed in you, Margaret.”
She finally met his eyes again. “Did you ever stop to wonder if sometimes maybe I am disappointed in you?” She turned to the old woman. “Tell the women that they may keep their presents only if they listen to my husband talk to them for a few minutes. Tell them he and I truly care about them and wish to share our God with them. We understand they have a God, and he is called Maheo. Tell them we believe Maheo is the same as our God.”
The old woman smiled and called out to some of those who had started to leave. She told them what Margaret said, and most of them wandered back. In spite of the heat, Summer Storm had the lovely quilt wrapped around her shoulders. A few of them had some words for Margaret, and the old woman turned to her. “They say they will listen, only if you stay. They do not much like your husband, but because he has such a good and kind woman, they say he must be a good man, too. They will listen about his God. I will tell them what he says.”
“Promise to tell them true,” Margaret said to the old woman. “We have to trust you to say exactly what my husband says.”
The woman nodded. “I will do this.” She looked at Edward and smiled, and Edward turned to Margaret with confusion in his eyes. She realized he didn’t know whether to be angry or grateful.
“Please get Evy away from those naked boys,” he told her quietly.
Margaret stood her ground. “Evy is just fine. She is a child, Edward. She does not see their nakedness. What better way to learn about such things than through innocent eyes, through joyfulness and playing? There isn’t one sinful or evil thought among those children. All you have to concern yourself with is preaching God’s word to these people who have promised to listen. Tell them you are grateful for their attention. Tell them you know about their prophet, Sweet Medicine. Tell them you believe he is the same as our Christ.”
“What?”
“Just do it, Edward. I will explain later. If you tell them that, they will listen to you, because you will be relating to something they know about and believe in. There is no sin in that, Edward. God will understand why you compared Jesus to Sweet Medicine.”
Edward blinked, looking down at his Bible. Margaret put her hand over his. “Do it, Edward. You came here to preach to them. I have found a way to make them listen, at least for today.”
Edward turned to them and opened his Bible. He began hesitantly, his astonishment at his wife’s behavior making it difficult for him to concentrate.
Margaret glanced over to where Evy was playing. She had taken off her dress and underclothes and was running naked with the rest of the children, her long, blond hair dancing in the wind. She grabbed a little Indian girl’s hand and they began picking wildflowers together.
“So, tell us, Maggie, some of the men here told my husband you walked off to the Indian agency alone, you and Evy. Why in the world did you do a thing like that? And why didn’t you just go with Edward?”
The pointed questions came from Gloria Doleman. The woman served Margaret a glass of lemonade. She had invited Margaret and Lieutenant Hart’s wife, Josie, to the major’s quarters to visit, and Evy played with Rose in the courtyard in front of the building.
Margaret thanked Gloria for the lemonade. She relaxed into the wicker chair on the front porch of the building, the overhanging roof protecting all three women from the hot sun. “Edward has never allowed me to go with him to the reservation,” she answered Gloria. She sipped some of the lemonade, hating talking with someone like Gloria about what she had done. The woman could never understand it in a hundred years.
“Then why did you go?” Gloria persisted. “Surely you know you did a very dangerous thing, Maggie.”
“Yes. I would never dream of going there alone,” Josie Hart put in. “Let alone subject Rose to those savages. God only knows what you and Evy could pick up there; lice, for one thing.”
“The Cheyenne are very clean,” Margaret answered. “I was not afraid. People only fear what they don’t understand, and I have studied the Cheyenne enough not to be afraid of them. Actually, it was quite a nice experience.” She met Gloria’s discerning green eyes. “I went without Edward’s permission because I wanted to prove to him that I could help him in his work. I think I proved my point.”
Gloria’s eyes narrowed. “And how is that, dear?”
Margaret tried to appear unaffected by that gaze, but she felt as though Gloria Doleman could see right through her. Maybe it was her own guilty conscience over meeting Wild Horse at the pond so many times that made her imagine everyone else knew what was going on. “I took gifts,” she replied. “They were very receptive to that. I found an old woman who speaks English, and I had her tell the others I understood about their God and their prophet, Sweet Medicine. I compared Sweet Medicine to our Christ, and they seemed to understand then what my husband had been trying to tell them.”
Edward had been very quiet in the two days since she went to the reservation. His feelings were hurt to realize his wife had been able to reach the Indians when he had not; yet Margaret knew that deep inside he was grateful for giving him a way to approach the Cheyenne. He didn’t quite know what to make of her, and she didn’t know what to make of herself. She felt removed from her body. The person others saw was the same Margaret Gibbons she had always been, but the Margaret on the inside was confused, feeling a new power, new desires.
“And how is it you know so much about the Cheyenne religion?” Gloria pressed. “You learned all of that in books?”
Margaret felt the unwanted flush come into her cheeks. “Yes.” No. I learned it from a man, a spiritual and very handsome man who makes me feel like a beautiful, wanted woman just by the way he looks at me.
“Quite a wonder,” Gloria answered. “One would think you have been talking with
one of those Cheyenne. I doubt there are many books that go very deeply into the religion of the Plains Indians. What is this book that you read, Maggie?”
“What?” Margaret had been hardly aware the woman was speaking. Her thoughts had drifted to a dark vision hovering over her…to a quiet pond…
“I said, what is this book you read in which you learned so much about the Cheyenne?”
“And why would you care?” Josie added.
Margaret watched Evy and Rose play, unable at the moment to meet either woman’s eyes. “I have forgotten the name of it. I borrowed it from a library in Massachusetts before we left to come here. I took a lot of notes,” she answered, hoping God would not strike her down for the partial lie. She had taken notes, but they were straight from Wild Horse’s mouth. She finally looked at Josie Hart. “I care because Edward cares. I care because he came here to bring God’s word to the Cheyenne, and I wanted to find a way to help him do that.”
Evy and Rose came up on the porch then. “Wild Horse says we used to be tadpoles,” Rose told her mother.
“Wild Horse?” Josie frowned. “Rose, wherever did you get such an idea, and why would you make up such a story? You have never seen that bad Indian called Wild Horse.”
“Evy has. She said he helped her get tadpoles one day at a pond, and he told her they were baby frogs, and we used to be babies like that.”
Josie looked in dismay at Margaret. “Margaret, where does your daughter come up with such stories?”
Margaret felt the heat in her face, but she managed a look of deep concern. “I can’t imagine. I’ll have a talk with her. She has had this idea lately that she knows Wild Horse. I suppose it’s because there has been so much talk about him.”
“I suppose,” Gloria put in, her eyes drilling into Margaret. “Such an imagination.”
Margaret finished her lemonade. “I really must get home. Edward will be coming back soon, and I have to start supper.”
