Frontier Lady (Lone Star Legacy Book #1)

by Judith Pella

  Broken Wing read her fear and reluctance. He spoke to her with patience, as if to a child. “You may sit, Wind Rider. I will not touch your cord until you are willing.”

  Gray Antelope had done her best to instruct Deborah in the intimate customs of the tribe. She had even given Deborah her own cord to wear, a kind of chastity belt worn by all Cheyenne women, similar to the breechcloth worn by the men. However, where the male article was a sign of manhood, its removal signifying the loss of one’s virility, the female’s stood for purity. A woman’s cord was considered inviolable; for a man to violate it, it often meant he risked a death sentence. A husband, too, was expected to respect his wife’s cord.

  Deborah wondered if her reluctance had less to do with fear than it did with simply desiring to test her new husband. She had believed that in deciding to marry him she had also decided to trust him, yet now she realized how much more was involved. Would she ever be able to completely erase the deep injuries of the past?

  But, whatever her reasons, Deborah could not so easily shed her fears.

  “Sit,” Broken Wing said again, softly, gently.

  She hesitated only another moment. After all, to do otherwise would have seemed like a slap in the face of the man she claimed to love.

  “You are trembling,” said Broken Wing, and pulled the other buffalo robe up around Deborah’s shoulders. Then he continued talking. “I have often wanted to ask you, Wind Rider, about the white man’s world, but you had so much to learn of the Cheyenne way that I did not find time. Have you ever been to a big white man’s village? Some of our chiefs have been to the village of your Great White Chief, but they could not find enough words to describe it to us. Have you been there? What is it like?”

  Deborah could hardly believe her bridegroom could be interested in Washington, D.C., at a time like this, but she grasped eagerly at the offered reprieve and launched into a detailed speech, worthy of any tour guide, describing the city she had visited many times before the war. Before she realized it, she began to tell him about how the government operated, about the war, and about her home in Virginia, and her family. He asked many questions, her answers leading them even further afield to a discussion of the world in general. Nearly two hours passed in this manner.

  Deborah’s shivering eased, although she didn’t know if it was because of the robe or from something within herself. When the conversation waned a bit, Broken Wing reclined on the hide bed; and Deborah tensed again. Almost babbling, she barraged him with a stream of trivial questions, which he answered patiently, unhurriedly. At one point, she was talking again, telling him something about the President she had forgotten to mention before. After ten minutes of this dissertation, she heard a quiet purring sound beside her. Broken Wing had fallen asleep.

  For a brief moment she felt only mortification. He would hate and scorn her now for treating him thus on their wedding night. He would believe her dishonest and selfish. Why hadn’t she at least explained the reason for her reluctance? But how? Ladies did not speak of the kinds of things that had hurt her in her marriage to Leonard, not even Cheyenne ladies. Moreover, a simple, honest man like Broken Wing doubtless would never have been able to fathom what she was talking about.

  Instead, she had treated this man she loved cruelly and faithlessly, no better than Leonard had treated her. Then Deborah gazed at Broken Wing’s sleeping face. There was no tension in it, no pent-up resentments. He seemed content. She suddenly believed that this man would indeed wait until she was willing; he loved her too much to do anything else.

  And what of the love she claimed to have for him? Was it really love she felt if it was not coupled with trust?

  Was it too late? Could he ever forgive her?

  Studying his face once more, she knew that to believe otherwise of him would be her greatest disservice to him. She reached toward him to brush aside a strand of his long black hair that had fallen across his face. He sighed and stirred, but did not wake. Deborah found she was disappointed at this, but she still seemed to lack the courage to wake him outright.

  In that moment, it occurred to her that lovemaking had nothing to do with the commitment she had made and was even then making to Broken Wing; her “savage” Indian husband had understood that subtle fact all along.

  At last content, Deborah stretched out on the soft robe beside her sleeping husband, pulling the second robe over them both. For the first time, perhaps in her life, Deborah knew the peace of true love.

  Broken Wing stirred again and rolled over on his side, facing her. He gave her a groggy, half-awake smile.

  “You no longer tremble,” he said.

  “No.”

  “And you are no longer afraid?”

  She gave a slight smile and shook her head.

  “That is good.” But he made no move toward her; in fact, he laid his head back as if he would sleep again.

  Deborah reached beneath the buffalo robe and, loosening her cord, moved close to him. Broken Wing then took her in his tender embrace, full of love, full of honor.

  Part 4

  Wind Rider

  34

  If the following months were of blissful joy for Deborah, they proved to be filled with fomenting turmoil for the tribe in general.

  The Smoky Hill region continued to smolder with tension. A party of some forty Dog Soldiers, led by Bull Bear, attacked a stage station at Chalk Bluffs, killing two station keepers. The Dog Men denied the attack and were defended even by Black Kettle, who laid the blame on the Sioux. But the whites were not appeased, and the Cheyenne were soon the first to be blamed for all ensuing depravations in the area. Though Bull Bear was innocent in the Chalk Bluffs incident, he was certainly involved in other attacks.

  Fortunately for Deborah, before the worst of the trouble erupted, Black Kettle’s band had moved south of the Arkansas River to camp on the Cimarron River. But unsettling news of violence and misunderstanding still reached them, casting a shadow over Deborah’s new and happy little home.

  One of the most volatile incidents occurred in the fall of 1866 after Major General Winfield Scott Hancock arrived to take command of the Military Department of Missouri. A Civil War hero with presidential ambitions, he determined to grab the glory and promotions to be obtained in the Indian wars. With the newly reorganized Seventh Cavalry under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, Hancock launched an unrelenting campaign against the unruly Indians of western Kansas, with decided emphasis on the Cheyenne. The Fetterman Massacre of eighty soldiers that December by a Cheyenne and Sioux war party in Wyoming Territory only aggravated white hostility.

  Hancock called the Cheyenne chiefs in for a council and assaulted them with threats, warning that the bluecoat chiefs commanded more soldiers than the Indians could even imagine.

  Stands-in-the-River, who had attended with the chiefs, reported the dismaying proceedings to Deborah and Broken Wing with bitter contempt.

  “The white man chief, this Hancock, wanted only to frighten us! He cares nothing for peace. He spoke with double words, not from his heart—” Stands-in-the-River thumped his chest as if to verify that he, at least, knew what it meant to speak from one’s heart. “These were his false words: ‘I’ll help the cooperative Indians who want peace, but any rebellious, bad chiefs, I’ll crush.’ Ha! We will see who crushes who!”

  Then Stands-in-the-River went on to describe how Hancock had shocked and truly frightened the chiefs by telling them he intended to take his troops on an inspection of the Cheyenne villages. The memory of the betrayal at Sand Creek, when the Cheyenne were invited to make camp by the creek only to be attacked by the army, was still too raw for the chiefs to accept the presence of the bluecoats in their villages.

  “But when Hancock arrived the next day with his troops,” said Stands-in-the-River smugly, “he was met by a wall of three hundred warriors, ready for war. Only Major Wynkoop was able to keep disaster from falling on the bluecoats. He convinced the Indians to retreat, which we did rel
uctantly. Then the chiefs agreed to another council with Hancock.” This last comment Stands-the-River said with some disdain, as if he would have surely done differently.

  What followed caused horror and indignation even in Deborah, and this was multiplied many times in the Cheyenne listeners. While the chiefs met with the general that night in one of the villages, the rest of the villagers, fearing a repeat of Sand Creek, fled, leaving their lodges standing empty. Whatever Hancock’s true designs, he did not like being outwitted by the Indians, and he dispatched Custer and his Seventh Cavalry in pursuit of the escaping Indians. But Custer, inexperienced in Indian tactics, managed to lose the Cheyenne, several hundred in number. Empty-handed and humiliated, Custer returned to his commander some days later. Stands-in-the-River gave a rare chuckle as he recounted this part of the story, but his expression returned to stone as he concluded.

  “To revenge his shame, Hancock ordered the empty Indian village burned, destroying hundreds of valuable hides and possessions, making many Cheyenne homeless and destitute. They were caught in a snowstorm without homes or warm robes. We will see what happens the next time the whites call a council!”

  Deborah and Broken Wing cast apprehensive frowns at each other. As much as they both desired peace, they had to empathize with Stands-in-the-River, for it could have just as easily been their village to burn, their loved ones made homeless through such a mindless act of vengeance.

  It had been a particularly severe and long winter. In many places on the prairie, snow would still fall as late as April. Deliveries of the government annuity supplies had been irregular, if they came at all. The government blamed this on Indian hostility; the Indians took it as just another governmental breach of faith. Whatever the reason, the Cheyenne, especially those more disposed toward peace, knew that further disturbances could only heap more doom upon them—thus their chagrin when they learned that a party of Dog Soldiers had taken some white captives. Black Kettle, as he had been known to do in the past, used his own wealth to buy three of the captives, which he returned to Fort Dodge.

  One captive, a woman, came too late to be part of this arrangement. Instead, she was sold to young Walking Wolf, the brave who had wished to court Deborah and who was so enamored with her fair white complexion. Since his rebuff by Deborah, he had married a Cheyenne girl, but he was still anxious to have his own white woman. He often looked enviously upon Broken Wing and had even on several occasions offered to buy Deborah from him, to which Broken Wing would only reply with a chuckle and a shake of the head. No warrior on earth had enough horses to equal the value of his beloved Wind Rider.

  The moment the captive woman arrived in camp, she was a source of anxiety. Every day she cried in the most pitiful manner, which disintegrated into mournful sobs at night. The squaws in camp felt sorry for her, but when they tried to comfort her, she just wailed all the more. Once Deborah even risked her anonymity by trying to speak with the woman. But much to her dismay, the woman responded by shrinking back in horror, obviously seeing in Deborah the realization of her worst nightmares—being forced to become an Indian’s wife. Deborah could say nothing to allay her fears and distress, and finally gave up.

  After four days of this, the Cheyenne women began to prevail upon their husbands to talk Walking Wolf into taking the woman back to her people. Broken Wing, Crooked Eye, Stands-in-the-River, Red Feather, Yellow Shirt, and two or three others who had tepees near Walking Wolf and thus were most affected by the white woman’s grief, all confronted Walking Wolf with the problem.

  “I paid many horses for the woman,” protested Walking Wolf.

  “We all have agreed to make up the loss,” said Crooked Eye, who as the elder of the group was made the spokesman. In reality, he had not exactly agreed to part with his horses; his wife had pledged hers. Such was the case with several others of the committee also.

  “It is too dangerous to have her in camp,” said Stands-in-the-River.

  “Broken Wing’s woman is white,” said Walking Wolf with a trace of bitterness.

  “She is here willingly,” countered Stands-in-the-River.

  Walking Wolf knew his argument had been feeble, but he still thought it terribly unfair that he could not find a willing white woman. He shrugged and added somewhat lamely, “Who is to say it will not be just as dangerous to take her to the white man fort?”

  “The other captives were returned safely,” said Broken Wing.

  Walking Wolf was silent several moments while he pondered his alternatives. In the end, however, he realized he had none except to return his prize or bring trouble upon the camp. He comforted himself with the thought that he, too, had begun to weary of the woman’s carrying on and would be happy to have peace return to his own lodge.

  “I will do as you ask,” he finally replied. “But I will do it when the Indian agent comes to camp. I will not risk taking her to the white man’s fort.”

  “But who can say when the agent will come?” said Broken Wing.

  “And if we try to send him a message to come,” added Red Feather, “it could take many moons. The woman is miserable, and it gives our women misery to see her. My wife keeps thinking how she would feel if she were taken from her lodge.”

  The situation seemed to be at a stalemate, with Walking Wolf refusing to risk going to the fort. Then Broken Wing came up with a solution.

  “I will go with you,” he said. “And we will carry a white flag so no harm will come to us.”

  But Yellow Shirt, a younger warrior and cousin of Broken Wing, and the only member of the party who was not married, interceded.

  “Broken Wing, you are just married; it is not right for you to take such a risk. I have no wife; I will go.”

  Broken Wing protested—it was his idea, after all. “I hunt, I raid; this is no greater risk than that.”

  “I wish to see the fort,” said Yellow Shirt. “Let me go.”

  “This is no war party,” warned Broken Wing.

  “I know. I will carry the flag.”

  In spite of his misgivings over sending the unwilling Walking Wolf and the cocky, over-zealous Yellow Shirt, Broken Wing agreed. The next morning the two warriors, with the white woman between them, rode away from camp, a large white flag flying from Yellow Shirt’s lance.

  The camp settled back into a peaceful lull. But it was a deceptive peace, the kind that precedes a wild prairie tornado.

  35

  Two and a half days after the three riders left camp, a lone rider returned. It was neither Walking Wolf nor Yellow Shirt, but rather an Arapahoe named Tall Tree. Across his saddle he carried a tattered and dirty white flag wrapped around the broken fragments of Yellow Shirt’s best lance. Tall Tree told the crowd that gathered around him a grim tale.

  He had been on his way to trade at the white man’s fort when he came through a wooded area and saw the bodies hanging from a tree. He immediately identified them as Cheyenne, and on closer inspection found that he recognized one of the men as a worthy warrior he had hunted with many times.

  Broken Wing, standing with the listeners, now stepped forward and asked tensely, “What was his name?”

  The Arapahoe also knew Broken Wing and replied with sympathy. “It was your kinsman, Yellow Shirt.” There could be no doubt that the other warrior was Walking Wolf.

  Broken Wing and Stands-in-the-River exchanged looks of grief. Yellow Shirt was not only a relative, but was also a close friend with whom they had grown up, and hunted, and gone to battle. Stands-in-the-River let out an angry curse, his eyes flaming with immediate fury.

  Broken Wing’s sorrow was mingled also with guilt. It should have been his lance that had been shattered, and his neck broken by the white man’s rope; and although Tall Tree had not yet finished his story, there could be no doubt who had caused the deaths of the two Cheyenne. Perhaps it was this sense of guilt that ignited the sudden rush of anger that mingled with all his other raging emotions at that moment.

  Whatever the cause, it surprised him, fo
r he had always thought himself above the rash outbursts of the militant warriors. But his blood was liberally infused with the ancient passions of his tribe. In spite of his guilt, reason told him he had no more caused the deaths of these men than had Black Kettle himself. Yet the same seething desire to retaliate that he had felt after Sand Creek assailed him again. But now he had more reason than ever to quell those passions.

  Tall Tree continued. “I cut the warriors down and laid them under a tree and covered them with my best hide that I was taking to trade. I knew they would not mind lying on the ground where the wolves and coyotes and eagles could eat their flesh and thus scatter them all over the beautiful, wide prairie.

  “I was afraid to go to the fort after what I had just seen, but Broken Wing and Stands-in-the-River, I knew you would want to know what had happened and how it came to be that your brother met with such a bad end. So, I went to the fort and there I saw some white man soldiers drinking whiskey in the trading post, and they were bragging about how they had strung up two kidnapping Indians. I listened and realized that the two Cheyenne had a white woman with them—”

  Red Feather quickly informed the Arapahoe, “They were returning her to the fort because she did not want to stay here.”

  “It is what the soldiers said the Cheyenne claimed, but they did not believe the Cheyenne.” He spoke this as if it were too incredible to believe anyone would doubt the word of an Indian. “They said they would make sure the thieving Indians got their punishment.”

  When Tall Tree stopped his recital, the small crowd erupted into a chorus of angry exclamations. Silence fell over them like a black shroud when Walking Wolf’s wife, Buffalo Calf, approached. One of the village children had run to tell her the terrible news. As she came, she was shocked and stricken, looking all the more pitiful because she was pregnant with their first child.

  Deborah, Gray Antelope, and some of the other women tried to comfort her, but her sorrow was inconsolable. Deborah was reminded of the tears of the white woman whom the Indians had been trying to help. It was all so senseless, so unfair. Walking Wolf and Yellow Shirt, good men trying honestly to right a wrong, had been caught in the middle of a war of hate and misunderstanding. Had the soldiers acted without official sanction? If so, would they be punished for their crime? She doubted it, if they had been free enough to boast publicly about their deed. Most likely the bigot, Hancock, and his henchman, Custer, would give the bluecoats a promotion for their actions!