Savage Hero

by Cassie Edwards

  She reached over and tousled David’s thick, golden hair. “Yes, it’s because of your daddy,” she murmured. “His death is too fresh in my heart for me not to cry occasionally at the thought of him.”

  “I miss him too,” David said, wiping tears from his own eyes. “Why did it have to happen, Mama? Why do Indians hate us so much?”

  “I’ve thought about that, David, and I think I can see why they would,” Mary Beth said, sighing.

  She looked away from him and swept her eyes over the vastness of the land, on to the mountains, and then closer, to the deer that could be seen browsing in the brush.

  It was a lovely land. The grass was green and thick, fed by the bright streams that came tumbling out of the snow banks of the mountains. There were lush meadows and plentiful game.

  It was a paradise, a paradise that the red men saw as being spoiled by white people.

  “Why would Indians want to kill Papa?” David asked, wiping more tears from his eyes.

  “They see all white people as takers of their land, interfering in their lives,” Mary Beth said.

  She found it strange to be defending the very people who were responsible for her Lloyd lying in a grave.

  Yet she had heard about so many atrocities against the Indians.

  She supposed that even Lloyd had participated in such horrendous action against the Indians, because he was a man who followed orders.

  “But the Indians are murderers, Mama,” David said stiffly. “They murdered all . . . all . . . of the men who fought with Papa and General Custer.”

  “It was a battle and everyone fought for survival, both red-skinned and white, David,” Mary Beth said, her voice breaking. “It just happened that during that battle, the red man was the strongest.”

  “But I thought General Custer was supposed to be the best soldier ever,” David said, gazing intently at his mother. “Papa, too. He was a good soldier.”

  “Even good soldiers die, David,” Mary Beth murmured.

  She looked quickly past David when she caught a movement along the ridge of a hill. But it was gone as quickly as it had come.

  “Mama, what are you looking at?” David asked when he saw her peering past him.

  He turned and flinched when he, too, saw what looked like an Indian that suddenly appeared on the ridge, and then was gone again.

  “Are we going to die today, Mama?” David asked, again gazing at his mother. “Are those Indians going to come and kill us like they killed Papa and General Custer?”

  Mary Beth reached over and gently touched David’s cheek. “No, they’re not,” she said. She tried to sound convincing enough that David would believe her. “That’s why there are so many soldiers with us. They won’t allow anything to happen.”

  “But you saw him too, Mama,” David said. “You saw the Indian. I know you did. I saw fear in your eyes.”

  “Yes, David, from time to time I’ve seen Indians appearing along the ridges, but they disappear as quickly as they appear,” Mary Beth said softly. “I guess they are playing some sort of game.”

  “What sort?” David asked, raising a golden eyebrow.

  Mary Beth returned her hand to the reins and again clung tightly to them. “Cat and mouse,” she said, catching a glimpse of three Indians on the same ridge.

  “Cat and mouse?” David asked.

  “They only want to frighten us, that’s all,” Mary Beth said, hoping it was true. She had seen the soldiers repositioning themselves, bringing themselves more tightly together in one group alongside the wagon train.

  “I wish we were at Fort Henry already. I wish we had already left it and were at the other fort where we will board that boat that’s going to take us home,” David said. “I wish we were already on the boat.” He swallowed back a sob. “I wish we were home, Mama!”

  “Me too, son. But we’re not, so work on your whittling awhile, David,” Mary Beth encouraged.

  She, too, wished that they had reached the Missouri. The sight of the river would give her some confidence they might return to Kentucky alive.

  “Get your mind on something besides Indians. You’ve got a pretty horse started on that big chunk of wood that Colonel Jamieson gave to you.”

  “Papa would like it,” David said. He reached behind himself for the chunk of wood that was already taking the shape of the head of a horse.

  “Yes, Papa would like it,” Mary Beth said.

  She glanced again at the ridge.

  This time she felt faint. There was not one, two, or three Indians, but a whole mass of them.

  From this vantage point she could guess there might be a hundred warriors moving along the ridge, their eyes following the progress of the wagon train.

  Suddenly a bugle blew and soldiers began to shout, ordering everyone to drive their wagons into a wide, protective circle.

  Everything became a frenzy of horses and wagons and screaming women and children as the soldiers leapt from their horses and positioned themselves for firing just as the war whoops rang out and the sound of horses’ hooves upon the land came to Mary Beth’s ears like huge claps of thunder and the Indians came in a mad rush toward the wagon train.

  Terrified, her heart thumping wildly in her chest, Mary Beth struggled to get her horse and wagon into the circle.

  But somehow there was not enough room for her wagon.

  She found herself and David stranded outside the circle, the soldiers oblivious to her plight as they began firing their weapons at the approaching Indians.

  “Mama, I’m afraid!” David cried as he stared at the Indians growing closer and closer. He screamed when some fell from their horses, blood streaming from wounds in their chests.

  “Be brave, David,” Mary Beth cried.

  She scrambled to the back of the wagon and desperately searched for her own rifle. How she wished she had kept it near at hand.

  “Mama!” David screamed again.

  As Mary Beth turned to him, she went cold inside. An Indian was yanking her son from the seat, then before she knew it, riding away with him.

  “Oh, Lord, no!” Mary Beth cried.

  Filled with a deep, cold panic, Mary Beth breathed hard as she grabbed up the rifle she had just uncovered.

  She rushed to the front of the wagon, her eyes on her son as he fought the Indian who held him in his arms as he continued riding away from the fight.

  “David. . . . David . . .” she whispered as she took aim at the Indian’s broad, copper back.

  But before she could fire the rifle, her breath was stolen away as she caught sight of an Indian coming up alongside her wagon. He swept an arm out and grabbed her, causing her to drop her rifle.

  “Help me!” she cried as the Indian slammed her across the horse in front of him, his strong hand holding her there on her belly as he rode away from the wagon train. “Oh, please, someone, help . . . Help!”

  She could hear bullets whizzing past and knew that someone was trying to save her, but to no avail. The Indian rode at a furious pace and soon had her far from the wagons and riding along that same ridge where she had watched the warriors appear and disappear for most of the day.

  She was so terrified, she could scarcely breathe. She was so afraid, she could not even find the strength to fight back.

  She just lay there at the mercy of the scarcely clothed man. His face was streaked with red and black paint, his eyes filled with an anger she could feel deep within her soul.

  She thought of David.

  Some hope came into her heart that she might be reunited with him when she arrived wherever she was being taken, for surely the two who’d abducted them were from the same tribe.

  Unless they were renegades, she thought quickly to herself.

  She had heard that renegades came from all different tribes.

  If David was taken to one renegade’s hideout and she to another, then she might never see her son again.

  “Please take me back!” she screamed. “My son! I must find my son!”r />
  When the Indian spoke back to her, it was in his language, but she did not have to understand the words to know that he was a man who would not listen to reason.

  His words were forceful and angry.

  Tears filled her eyes and her body flinched when in the distance she still heard gunfire, and then a strange, even morbid . . . silence.

  She could only assume who was the victor again.

  The Indians, for they had far outnumbered the soldiers.

  Mary Beth began repeating scripture from her Bible, murmuring a prayer she had been taught as a child . . . one that she had taught her little son.

  “Yea, though I shall walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”

  Chapter Four

  Terminate torment of love unsatisfied,

  The greater torment of love satisfied.

  —Eliot

  Sharp stars burned in the heavens. Coyotes howled in the distance and an owl called from a smooth-skinned aspen tree. Frogs serenaded the night along the creek beds, and the lonesome song of a loon came to Brave Wolf as he continued onward on his mother’s behalf.

  The moon was full, and the night was filled with its milky light, making a path of white along the ground as Brave Wolf and his warriors rode forward on their muscled steeds. Most carried sinew-backed bows of mountain ash, their arrows carried in quivers of otter skin, embroidered in a quill pattern.

  In order to conclude this chore as quickly as possible, he and his men stopped only long enough to take brief rests. They slept for only short periods of time, making no exception whether it was day or night.

  Brave Wolf hated to waste even another minute searching for the brother who had fought alongside Yellow Hair. As a scout for the white cavalrymen, Night Horse must have led the pony soldiers to where his people had their villages, where the women and children awakened every morning with fear in their hearts, knowing that the pony soldiers might come any day and slaughter them.

  Brave Wolf looked from side to side at the expressions on the faces of his men. He saw hate and resentment in their eyes.

  And he understood why they carried these emotions in their hearts. Even though Night Horse was his brother, Brave Wolf now felt nothing but loathing for him.

  He gazed straight ahead past stunted pines and oaks. He wondered, even if Night Horse was found, could he truly go to him as a brother with news of their mother?

  Or would he be more apt to kill Night Horse for betraying their people?

  Each mile they traveled, bringing him closer and closer to Night Horse, the dread of actually finding him grew within Brave Wolf’s heart.

  For he did expect to find his brother up high in the mountains, where a cave was hidden behind a waterfall, a place they had found while exploring one day, oh, so long ago.

  They had claimed it as their own private place, a place they called their own. They had vowed to one another never to tell anyone else about it.

  But now things were different.

  Brave Wolf felt no allegiance now to a brother who had gone against everything Brave Wolf had always stood for.

  He had thought that Night Horse held the same convictions . . . the same honor.

  But he had been proven wrong.

  Now it was time for Brave Wolf to decide how his brother would pay for his crimes against his people.

  “Brave Wolf, how much farther must we go before we give up and return to our people?” Two Tails asked as he brought his horse close. “You do intend to travel only a while longer, do you not? You do not truly plan to find him, do you?”

  Brave Wolf gave his warrior a slow gaze. “Do you truly believe that I am planning to go back on my word to my mother?” he said thickly. “Do you believe that I am playing a game by pretending to search, when all along I do not really intend to find Night Horse?”

  “No, I have never known you to play games, especially with a mother’s emotions, yet this quest is wrong, my chief, oh, so wrong,” Two Tails said dryly. “I had hoped you would have reconsidered by now. You do know that none of us want to see that traitor’s face again, do you not?”

  “Nor do I,” Brave Wolf said. “But I do plan to find him and take him back to our village.”

  “And then what?” Two Tails asked, his gaze intent as he stared into his chief’s midnight-dark eyes.

  “And then fate will have its way,” Brave Wolf said. “That is all I can say now. Let us continue onward. I have a good idea where he is. We shall see if he is there; if he is not, we shall return home. Mother will believe me when I tell her that I went where I thought Night Horse would be.”

  “We will go only there, nowhere else?” Two Tails asked softly.

  “Nowhere else but home,” Brave Wolf said. He reached out a hand to his warrior’s shoulder. “My friend, I understand your feelings. They match my own.”

  “Where does the trail take us?” Two Tails asked as Brave Wolf lowered his hand away from him. “How much farther?”

  “It is not far,” Brave Wolf said, swallowing hard. “It is not far.”

  He gazed ahead, where out there in the darkness his brother was hiding from life itself.

  Each mile that took Brave Wolf closer to that beautiful place where he and his brother had played as children, his heart ached more.

  The ache was for the camaraderie that would never be again with a brother he had adored.

  The ache was for a mother whose shame for her son had to be tearing at her very being!

  The latter made Brave Wolf feel a contempt for Night Horse that was like a sour bitterness in his mouth.

  Chapter Five

  The life of a man is a circle,

  From childhood to childhood

  And so it is in everything

  Where power moves.

  —Black Elk,

  Oglala Sioux Holy Man

  A fire burned low as juices from a rabbit dripped into the flames. Night Horse sat inside a cave beside the fire and smiled when an owl hooted from a tree outside. He remembered a time when he was a small child and sat on his mother’s lap in their lodge, listening to his first owl somewhere outside his family tepee. His mother had told him that owls see all . . . that they are the feathered cat of the night. She had said that the mother owl lived with her brood in a nest full of moon-splashed shadows.

  He had felt safe in his mother’s arms, and he felt safe now in the cave behind the waterfall, hidden by groves of yellow aspen and frosted leafed cottonwood.

  But he knew that down in the dry runs and ravines, he would be easy quarry for those who sought him out.

  He had learned long ago to suffer fear and conquer it, but now there was a strange coldness in the pit of his belly when he thought of what the future might hold for him . . . death at the hands of those who hated him!

  He listened to the peaceful sound of water falling over rocks. He was carried away to another time when his life was uncomplicated, to a time when he loved his older brother more than life itself.

  He had idolized Brave Wolf, for his brother seemed to know everything about everything, especially the goodness of life.

  Night Horse gazed into the flames of the fire as he thought about the times when he and his brother had played in this very place.

  It was their very own.

  They shared it with no one.

  As it was Night Horse’s hideout now.

  He hunted at night, scaring up rabbits and deer from their sleeping places. He killed them silently with arrows.

  So far no one had found him.

  But he knew that if his brother decided to search for him, to make him pay for betraying his people, Brave Wolf could find him.

  “But you will not do this, will you, big brother?” Night Horse whispered.

  He gathered a blanket more securely around his shoulders, thankful that when he had found a horse to steal, it still had its owner’s travel bag on it, in which were supplies that had made Night Horse’s hiding more comfortable.

&nbs
p; Yes, his brother would know where to look for him, but surely he would see no reason to. Brave Wolf had disowned Night Horse when his younger brother joined Custer.

  Although Night Horse knew that Brave Wolf despised him now, because of the love they had shared as children he would surely not send anyone up into these mountains to take him captive, or to kill him.

  “I feel safe enough,” Night Horse said, shivering as the cold air crept beneath his blanket.

  Night Horse had had a lot of time to think about things since he had come to this place of his childhood.

  He ached to see his mother.

  He ached to see Dancing Butterfly, the only woman he had ever, or ever would, love. He knew that she must hate him now and surely would even turn her back to him if he could ever go home again. He would not blame her. It had been he who had left her behind, choosing instead to be a scout for whites. Oh, how foolish he had been. He loved her. He would always love her!

  He had also thought often of his ahte, Chief Sharp Arrow, about what a valiant, courageous leader he had been. His father had died at the hands of Ute renegades four moons ago, leaving the road clear for Brave Wolf to be chief.

  Night Horse was proud of his chieftain brother and missed him with every beat of his heart.

  He now knew that he had been wrong to align himself with whites.

  By having done so he had lost everything that was truly valuable and precious to him . . . his family’s love . . . his people!

  Only now did he realize the greatness of those losses.

  He was so ashamed of what he had done, he felt the bitterness of vomit even now in the depths of his throat.

  He coughed, but not from the bitterness of vomit. It was his lungs. They pained him so.

  He realized that he was not as well as he should be in order to survive the cold nights high in these mountains.

  He heard the screech of a mountain lion and shivered. He knew that he was vulnerable, all alone and without a firearm.

  And he had only a few arrows left of those he had stolen when he had found the horse hobbled as several renegades crouched beside a night fire, laughing and boasting about what they had achieved that day.