Sweet Prairie Passion (Savage Destiny)

by Rosanne Bittner

  “Stay calm, Abbie,” she heard Zeke’s gentle voice telling her. That was all she had to still the terrible fear in her heart. Someone had hold of her ankles again, and Olin pulled her arm up. She screamed with pain at the movement, but that was nothing compared to Zeke’s knife cutting into her. Then she screamed again, and didn’t seem to be able to stop. Her screams were more from fear and horror than from pain; for Cheyenne Zeke was adept with a knife, and he worked cleanly and quickly. The real pain came when she was rolled to her side, and Zeke forced a considerable amount of pus and infection from around her breast and under her arm. She screamed so much that it left her weary, but her screams dwindled to sobs as they washed the cuts and Zeke sewed up the wounds.

  Then came the worst part—the pain she would not forget for the rest of her life. Nor would Zeke forget her terrible shriek as he took the red-hot rod and with one quick thrust, using all his strength in order to be quick, forced it through the arrow wound. It was then that Abbie finally passed out.

  Nineteen

  For the next two days Abbie was aware only of pain and darkness. She lay in a delirious fever as horrible visions floated through her mind: LeeAnn’s bloated body with the bullet hole in its forehead; little Jeremy’s ugly, infected arm covered with maggots; her father holding a gun to his head; and Rube Givens’ leering face. All of the visions were blown out of proportion, and the experience was like one long, never-ending nightmare. At times she was aware of voices, but she was unable to speak or respond. Sometimes she recognized Zeke’s voice, urgent, frightened, growling orders; yet she could never really remember actual words—just voices that seemed miles away. Sometimes she heard screams and wondered where they came from, not realizing they came from her own throat.

  The first time her mind truly roused again to reality, she opened her eyes to a dimly lit lantern and sensed that it was dark and cold outside. She was warmly packed in quilts, but her nose was cold, and she lay there looking straight up for a moment, wondering if she was truly still alive. At least, she thought, if she was dead, she was not in hell. It was too cold.

  As her eyes and mind focused, she realized someone was in the wagon with her. She moved her eyes only, afraid to move her head or any other part of her body, and she saw Zeke. He’d kept his promise to be there when she awoke. He looked much the same as he had when he’d sat and prayed for little Mary Hanes. His hair, unbraided, hung long and shining over his shoulders. He sat cross-legged, his eyes closed, his back straight, and his whole body rigid and concentrating. She knew he was praying for her, and she smiled, her eyes tearing. She wondered how he could possibly be warm, for in spite of the cold night he wore only a leather vest, rather than his usual buckskin shirt. But then a man like Zeke was hardened and tough. The scar on his cheek showed whiter than usual in the lamplight, yet the rest of him seemed darker than usual. She studied his handsome, finely carved face, his strong jawline, and high cheekbones. Her eyes took in his broad shoulders, and the lean, hard muscles of his arms. Once again she found it difficult to believe that she had lain beneath the man at whom she was now looking and had given him pleasure. Her memories of him were gentle and sweet; they always would be—except for those horrible moments when he had shoved the awful hot rod through her wound. At that moment she had hated him with a passion. But she had known why he was doing it.

  She tried to swallow, but felt herself choking from the dryness in her mouth and throat. Her slight movement made his eyes instantly open, and he looked at her, surprise and pleasure showing on his face as he realized that she was truly back with the living. She moved her tongue over her lips to try to wet them.

  “I … need … a drink,” she managed to choke out. He said nothing, but very quickly moved to a bucket inside the wagon, dipped a ladle into it, and brought her water. Gently he placed a hand under her neck and held the ladle to her mouth.

  “Try not to move too much, Abbie girl,” he said in a near whisper. “I’ll clean you up if it spills.” He tipped the ladle slightly, and she drank the water eagerly.

  “I… want more,” she said when she was through.

  He put the ladle back. “Let that one settle. See how it sets in your stomach,” he replied. “You lost a hell of a lot of blood. That’s why you’re so thirsty. I’ll give you more after a few minutes.” He came back beside her and, leaning down close, touched her forehead. “How do you feel, Abbie girl? I think your fever is finally down.”

  “I don’t… really know yet,” she answered, looking up into his tired, bloodshot eyes. “I have a feeling you look and feel worse … than me,” she told him, trying to smile.

  He grinned a little. “Could be. You’ve put me through quite a scare the last couple of days. I figured we’d lose you.” He pulled the blankets off her shoulder and arm, making sure nothing had bled any further. “Can you bend your arm at all? Move your hand?”

  She swallowed. “No!” she answered, afraid to try, sure she could not bear any more pain.

  “I’ll help you,” he told her, touching her forearm. She cried out in fear.

  “No! Don’t touch me!” she whimpered. “I don’t want to feel any more pain!”

  His eyes filled with sorrow. “I had to do it, Abbie girl. I’d rather have cut out my own heart, and you know it. Please, try to move your arm—for me. If the infection is mostly gone, it won’t hurt that much, I promise. It won’t be the kind of pain you had before. We have to know, Abbie.”

  She swallowed again. “Let me try it … by myself.”

  He nodded and held his hands out to his sides. “Be my guest. I won’t touch you.”

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly bent her arm, grinning broadly when she realized it didn’t hurt nearly as badly as she had thought it would.

  “Good!” he said, moving closer again. He blinked rapidly, as though to hide tears. “You bent your arm, Abbie! Damn, that’s a good sign. See if you can lift it straight up, honey.”

  She smiled with pride at her minor accomplishment, unbending her arm and keeping it straight beside her. Then she raised it slightly, only about four inches, before it began to pain her enough to frighten her. She put it back down quickly.

  “It … hurts too much … that way,” she answered, her eyes filling with fear.

  “That’s okay, Abigail,” he told her, leaning closer again. “It takes more chest muscles to move it that way, that’s all. They’ve been cut into and they’re just sore.” He stroked her hair. “It will be a long time before you’re completely healed. When we get to Fort Bridger, I want you to remain there for the winter. You’re going no farther. You’ve been through too much, and you need a good, long rest. Enough is enough, Abbie girl. Your body and mind are just about spent, and you’re way too thin. It would be better if you could just stay put awhile, but we’ve got to get to Fort Bridger. We’ve got no choice.”

  “What will happen to me … if you leave me there?”

  “You’ll be watched good, and I’ll take the train on to Oregon—come back in the spring.”

  “For what? To take me on to Oregon?”

  Their eyes held, then he leaned over and pressed his hand gently against her bandaged breast. “Does it hurt bad around here?” he asked, avoiding her question. Abbie decided not to press the subject of what would happen to her in the spring. To think that he might be considering coming back for her permanently was enough hope to go on for the moment, and she needed that hope. “Not like before,” she answered. “It’s … different. It hurts, but it’s not that awful kind of hurt that the very air seemed to bring on before.”

  “Good!” he replied with relief. “Before it was the infection that made the pain so bad. Now you’re just plain sore, from the cutting and stitches and all.” He moved his hand gently over her shoulder, then along her side under her arm. “Better?”

  “Yes.”

  “The only thing I still have to do is take that thread out of you in a few more days. That will sting some and maybe bleed a little.�
��

  She looked down as best she could, and it seemed she was all bandages.

  “Will I … be ugly?” she asked.

  He smiled. “You’ll be pretty as ever.”

  Her face fell. “No I won’t. Besides, it doesn’t matter. Who cares - if no man wants me. There’s … no man I’d want anyway.”

  He sighed, and when she met his eyes, it looked as though he wanted to say something but was keeping it to himself.

  “Don’t talk that way, Abbie girl. You will be just as pretty. I’m good with a knife, remember? I did a right neat job, if I must say so myself.” He kept stroking her hair. “I don’t think the breast is damaged, Abbie. And the scars will fade in time.”

  She blinked back tears. “Will you … stay with me the rest of the night?” she asked. “And would you … sing to me?”

  He grinned. “Sing to you! Now?”

  “Please?”

  He chuckled. “People would think it was mighty strange, me sitting in here singing to you. They’d get to thinking things I don’t want them to think.”

  She sighed. “Why fight it?” she replied. “They all know it anyway, Zeke. Mrs. Hanes guessed. Bobby guessed. Mr. Connely knew. They all know.”

  He turned away, rubbing a hand over his face and looking weary. “Then I’ve done a terrible thing,” he answered. “The sooner I’m out of your life the better.”

  “I don’t think you really want that. And it’s not terrible to love somebody, Zeke. Now, please, sing to me. It would help me go back to sleep. I love the sound of that mandolin, and I’d sure like to hear that song about Tennessee mountain mornings. I want to hear about Tennessee, Zeke.”

  He smiled resignedly. “You’re something. You’ve got more power over me than ten men, Abigail Trent, and I’m a damned fool. When I thought I was losing you to death—” He stopped short, again looking as though there was more he needed to say. “All right,” he went on. “I’ll play and sing for you if it will make you rest better. That’s what’s important.” He reached over and picked up a biscuit. “You eat this while I go get my instrument.”

  She watched his catlike movements as he climbed out of the wagon quietly, and she bit into the biscuit, realizing that she had a true appetite for the first time in weeks. Perhaps the arrow injury had been a godsend, for there was a different look in his eyes. Perhaps nearly losing her to death had made him think about what it would be like to live without her. Now he would have to come back for her at Fort Bridger in the spring. Maybe he would come back before that and spend the winter with her there; then it would be even more difficult for him to leave her.

  When he returned, he gave her another drink of water. He’d put on his buckskin shirt and tied his hair at the back of his neck.

  “Aren’t you cold, Zeke?” she asked. “Don’t you want a jacket or something?”

  He sat down beside her, crossing his legs and setting the mandolin on his lap. “Indians get used to being cold,” he replied. “The winters are mighty long out here, and pretty barren sometimes. I’m all right.” He strummed the mandolin and seemed lost in thought for a moment. “Abbie?” He spoke quietly.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “The Crow …” He met her eyes. “The Indians aren’t all like that, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Even the Crow aren’t all a bad lot. Those back there, they were just determined to get what they were after. The Indians are proud and vengeful, Abigail. They believe in proper justice, and they knew the white men had not dealt Connely the kind of justice he had coming.”

  “I understand Zeke. Like when you avenged your wife’s death.’

  He looked down at his mandolin. “Like that,” he answered. Then he sighed. “Abbie, the Cheyenne, they’re mighty warriors,” he went on, seeming to be trying suddenly to make her understand Indians better. She wondered why it was suddenly so important to him, and her heart pounded with hope. “But they’re also peace-loving, like the Arapaho and the Sioux and the Shoshoni and most others. But they won’t be tread on. They have their pride. But they can be a very gentle, beautiful people if a man doesn’t push them. They’re very spiritual. They have an inner strength and a close contact with the spirit world that most white men will never have.”

  “Zeke, why are you saying these things to me?”

  He met her eyes. “Because their blood runs in my veins, Abbie girl, and because I love them! I love them more than anything I’ve ever loved besides my wife—and you. And anybody that I might … bring into my life, he or she would also have to love them. Are you understanding me?”

  “I … think so,” she answered, afraid to take on the full meaning of the question for fear her heart would be broken again.

  “Could you love them, Abbie? People like the ones who put that arrow in you?”

  She swallowed, realizing there was no lying to Cheyenne Zeke. “I honestly don’t know … right now,” she answered. “The ones like you, I could love. And I remember looking at those beautiful little Indian children, back at Fort Laramie, and I could have scooped them up, took them in, and loved them. I would dearly love to have a child like that, fat and brown and sweet. I guess I love the gentle side of you, Zeke, and their gentle side. But the rest of it—their customs and all, their fierceness and rigid pride, their way of life and its difficulties—I’d be lying to jump up and say for sure I could take it all.”

  “But that’s half of what I am, Abbie. And I see so much ahead for the Indians, but none of it good. If it comes down to choosing, there is only one way I can go. I know the white man, and I know the Indian; and of the two, the Indian is most times the better human being. Things will get a lot worse, Abbie. But I’ll do all in my power to protect and defend my people. They have no one to help them. No one. Some day the government will come through this land like a giant roller; it will crush the Indians right into the earth. And I’ll be crushed right along with them, Abbie girl, as will anybody who stands by my side … and my children, too, most likely.”

  Their eyes held for a long, quiet moment. “I understand, Zeke,” she finally said. He closed his eyes and sighed. She knew the struggle she would be in for if she walked by his side. He wanted her to see and understand it, wanted her to consider whether or not her love for him and her own constitution were strong enough to bear what they would have to face together in life if they were to marry. To him there was no choice but to live among the Cheyenne.

  “I can hear them … screaming … sometimes, Abbie,” he said in a broken voice, his face showing pain and inner struggle. “My people. I see women, children, old people shot to pieces, cut down with no mercy. Sometimes I ride alone, and I hear the rocks talking, telling me someday there will be no more Indians roaming free on the land, no more buffalo, no more wildlife, no more quiet places. And I’m so … torn, Abbie!”

  His voice choked, and her heart bled for him. It was not an easy thing for a man like Zeke to sit there and spill out his feelings; and she knew he did it only because he knew she loved him, because he’d come so close to losing her that perhaps he knew he could not make it alone anymore. Yet he knew it was important that she understand him.

  “I’m torn,” he went on, taking a deep breath, “because … I want to be with you, Abbie. Only I don’t know if I can do both … because I don’t want to take someone I love and put her through what I know is coming. I don’t want to watch … someone I love suffer, because I’ve already been down that road. Living with the whites, my woman would suffer terrible gossip and be shunned, - perhaps even physically abused like my first wife. But living among the Cheyenne could end up badly, too. For there is a rough road ahead for my people.”

  She reached over and touched his arm. “Tell me about your Cheyenne mother, Zeke.”

  He leaned back, his eyes closed. “She is very beautiful—even now. I loved my father until he took me from her. Then I hated him!” His jaw flexed, and he breathed deeply. “He turned out to be like most whites, thinking Indians weren’t w
orth any more than animals. Seven years! Seven years he lived with my Indian mother, and then, when I was only four, he up and sold her like a slave—took me back to Tennessee. The day we left my mother ran after us, crying, begging pa not to take her son from her, but he just kept riding, with me on the horse in front of him, going faster and faster until finally she fell and couldn’t keep up anymore. The Crow man he’d sold her to came and got her and started hitting her.” His voice choked again. “And pa, he just kept riding and left her back there with him. That’s when I first knew I hated the Crow and I hated my pa!

  “Eventually she was recaptured by the Cheyenne during a fight they had with the Crow, and she married a Cheyenne man. But I had no way of knowing it right then. It wasn’t until years later, when I went searching for her, that I found to my great relief she was back with the Cheyenne and had had three more sons.”

  “It must have been wonderful for her,” Abbie said quietly, “to see you again.”

  He nodded. “It was quite a reunion. I love my Cheyenne mother very much, Abbie. She’s my true blood.”

  “What about… Tennessee? I guess it must have been real bad for you.”

  “It’s bad for a half-breed anywhere, Abbie girl. My pa, he loved me just because I was his son. He tried to help—got in a couple of fist fights himself over me. But people continued to shun me, and I continued to get in fights at school until they kicked me out for good. Then, like I told you earlier, they wouldn’t let me come to the church anymore. But it didn’t matter, because I didn’t think much of their religion anyway. I remembered what my mother had taught me about the Cheyenne religion, and that made a lot more sense. My pa, he’d remarried, and his new wife never liked me—liked me even less once she had three sons of her own. It’s kind of ironic: I have three white half brothers and three red. Their ages aren’t even a whole lot different. At any rate, I hated it there—tried to run away once. That’s when I walked the Trail of Tears with the Cherokee. But somehow the soldiers discovered I wasn’t one of them, and they shipped me back. Then I met Ellen.” He sighed and hesitated. “God, I loved her, Abbie!” he whispered. He cleared his throat. “I thought then that I could stay in Tennessee and make it… because I had Ellen. Then the white man showed his stuff real good … and I lost her … and my little son. Then I knew for sure that I belong with the Cheyenne, and so will my children, if I have any more. I came out here and found my mother … and I stayed.”