Embrace the Wild Land

by Rosanne Bittner

  Abbie held tightly to little, dark-haired, hazel-eyed Jason as they left, and gave her little Lillian a pat to reassure the child that everything would be all right. Lillian held tightly to her mother’s waist with frail arms. She had always been the sickly child, and the past week had been the first time the little girl had seemed to be free of the cough that had plagued her for months. Her coloring was a flat medium, her hair and eyes a dishwater brown. She was a gentle, unselfish child, always ready to help her mother, a child that brought Abbie comfort with her loyalty, but also the pain only a mother understands at seeing a child almost always sick.

  Wolf’s Blood rode proudly behind his mother. He grinned at Blade victoriously, halting his horse in front of the man for a moment. “You had better eat well tonight, my friend,” he gloated. “I have seen my father fight with the knife. A man’s last meal should be a good one, so fill your belly!”

  “Wolf’s Blood!” Zeke barked.

  The boy laughed lightly and urged his horse forward again. He was the only child who had refused a white name, and his heart carried the eager pride of his full-blooded Cheyenne friends, the young men anxious to prove their own manhood. A large, menacing gray wolf trotted alongside the boy’s mount, its thick fur standing up on its neck, the animal sensing that it was also a part of the family’s protection. The wolf’s saliva flowed heavier, its claws tense, its fierce loyalty to the young man who was its master planting an instinctive readiness in its savage heart to charge and lunge at the throat of any man who dared try to harm a member of the Monroe family.

  Behind Wolf’s Blood rode his sister, number two child, Margaret, her Indian name Moheya (Blue Sky). At twelve, Margaret was a budding beauty, provocatively dark like her brother, with just a little wave to her black hair hinting that she bore white blood. She was followed by another sister, child number three, LeeAnn, whose Indian name was Kse-e (Young Girl). LeeAnn was nine, and her passing drew even more stares and whispers, for she carried the genes of Abbie’s blond mother and sister, both now dead. LeeAnn’s almost white hair and her vivid blue eyes and fair skin kept her from fitting in with the rest of her family, and Zeke watched his blond daughter with a fierce protectiveness. Not only would she be a beautiful woman, but he feared that soldiers or citizens would come along and try to take her from them, refusing to believe she was not a captive.

  Behind LeeAnn rode Jeremy, called Ohkumhkakit, or Little Wolf, by the Cheyenne. The eight-year-old boy was slender and small, bearing little resemblance to his older brother, either in build, coloring or spirit. His eyes were a pale blue, his hair medium brown. Unlike Wolf’s Blood, Jeremy was afraid of weapons and had only learned to ride in order to please his father. He was learning to use a rifle now, but was sure he would never get used to its loud noise. And also unlike Wolf’s Blood, Jeremy liked books and reading.

  Abbie had taught all her children to read and write when they were old enough to learn, for there was no school in the untamed land where they lived. Wolf’s Blood had quickly grown restless and had lost his interest, preferring to be out riding free, feeling the wind in his face, to sitting with the rest of the children for the daily two-hour lessons. Abbie had finally given up, for the boy’s brooding spirit and sulking attitude had only distracted the other children.

  There had been some tense words between Abbie and Zeke over the eldest son, but Zeke understood his first-born’s spirit, which was kin to his own. He remembered the days back in Tennessee when he’d suffered the torture of hard school benches, forcing himself to sit still for fear the teacher would whip him. But his Indian soul had overpowered him many times, and little Zeke Monroe had suffered many whippings before the teacher finally told his white father that the boy’s presence in the classroom would no longer be tolerated. His father and stepmother had been very upset with him, and his father had given him a good thrashing. But Zeke had enjoyed it, for being free of school was worth the price he’d paid. He’d been cast off as an “ignorant savage” who had no respect for “proper whiteman’s ways” and whose heathen soul would surely burn forever in hell. But for Zeke, hell had been the classroom and the stiff white man’s clothing. Heaven was freedom, the feel of the wind on his face, the smell of the earth and the sharing of spirit with the animals. He well understood how Wolf’s Blood was feeling, and he had convinced Abbie to understand and let the boy go.

  But Jeremy was a complete opposite, and his quick learning was almost more than Abbie could keep up with, his appetite for reading was voracious. He was a good boy, but he did not have an Indian’s spirit; and although Abbie knew Zeke loved each of his children with great passion, she knew there might one day be fierce friction between Zeke and his second son.

  Child number five followed Jeremy, a third daughter named Ellen, six years old. Her Indian name was Ishiomiists (Rising Sun), and she was a grand mixture, with skin that soaked up the sun easily, eyes as blue as the sky, and dark hair but not truly black like her sister Margaret’s. Ellen’s nature was quiet and friendly, a calm, dependable child who seemed to accept both her Indian and white blood with equal pride.

  Ellen was the last in the long line of Monroe children, with numbers six and seven riding in front with their mother. Her horse disappeared through the gate, and then the fort came alive. There was suddenly movement everywhere, with officers trying to keep order while men began eagerly betting on the next day’s knife duel, as well as getting bets organized for the horse races, which would take place on the second day. In one corner of the fort a side of beef was being roasted over an open pit, being prepared for that evening’s celebrating. Each Indian tribe there would give a demonstration of one of their dances of celebration to the soldiers, and campfires would burn well into the night. The next day would bring the contests—wrestling, running and shooting, and then, of course, the duel between the one called Blade and the half-breed called Cheyenne Zeke.

  Abbie watched the broad shoulders of her husband’s back, her heart tightening at the thought of the challenge. She had not expected the fight to take place the Indian way, with the left hand tied behind the back and each man taking the end of a leather strap in his teeth, forcing their bodies to stay close together.

  “Zeke?” she spoke up, moving her horse up beside his but staring out ahead rather than looking at him. “You’re wounded, you know. You’ll have to use that right arm.”

  He caught the fear in her voice. “I’m aware of that. If I thought I couldn’t handle it I wouldn’t have made the challenge, Abbie-girl.”

  She turned to meet his eyes, and he saw the misty tears in her own. “I need you,” she said quietly.

  They rode for a few feet saying nothing. “We’re setting up two tipis while we’re here,” he finally spoke up. “One for this brood of ours—and one for you and me. Wolf’s Blood can watch over the others. I want you to myself, Mrs. Monroe. We haven’t had any privacy since we left the ranch to come down here.”

  She smiled a little then and actually blushed. “How can you speak of such things when tomorrow you’ll be risking your life?” she chided.

  His eyes moved over her curved body, longing to strip off the white tunic she wore and feel her bare skin close to his own, hear her whisper his name in the ecstasy they both shared when they were one. “Woman, when you look like you do right now, I can always speak of such things.” He gave her a wink and kicked at his horse, riding out in a circle to signal the rest of the Cheyenne to come in and bring the Appaloosas.

  The one called Cole stood at the gate of the fort, watching the white woman ride toward the Navaho village with her children in tow. He scratched at the pink scar again and felt an urgency in his groin. Somehow he had to get her alone. Surely she would rather be with a white man. Surely she was a captive at one time who had been beaten and humiliated into staying with the Indians. Surely she would never tell her husband if a white man invaded her. Her husband was a savage. The man would beat her and cast her out, and Cole would be ready to make her his own woman.

/>   Three

  Danny Monroe stepped up onto the familiar wooden porch and stomped mud from his feet. Thunder boomed around the old farmhouse, and he noticed when lightning brightened night into day that the house seemed more dilapidated than ever. The porch boards creeked under his weight as he walked to the door and pounded on it. He waited a moment, sure he detected slow footsteps inside and wishing his father would hurry and open the door, for the autumn rain chilled his bones with a cool dampness that came down off the Tennessee mountains.

  The door finally opened, and his heart ached at the look in his father’s mournful eyes.

  “I’m here, Pa.”

  The old man nodded, blinking back tears. Danny quickly stepped inside and closed the door. He embraced his father, noticing how some of the meat on the tall, once-powerful man had seemed to melt away. Hugh Monroe was still tall and broad, but somehow more frail, and he had developed a slight stoop.

  “Thanks for coming, Danny-boy,” the elder Monroe said brokenly. “I’m so lonely.”

  “Soon as I got your letter about Lenny being killed at Wilson’s Creek, I quit the Union, Pa.” He pulled away and blinked back his own tears. “I’ve left Fort Laramie. I’m joining up with the Confederates.”

  Their eyes held, and Hugh Monroe’s saddened more. He patted Danny’s arm. “It’s good your Tennessee blood hasn’t left you, son. But you had a good career out there with the Indians. You’ve been out there a long time, Danny, a long time. That’s your life. And you’ve got Emily, and my little grandaughter—”

  “Emily and Jennifer are safe in St. Louis. They’re living in Emily’s father’s house. It’s a grand house. She’s sharing it with other women whose husbands have gone off to war. They’ll be all right.” He pulled out a wooden chair from the kitchen table and motioned for his father to sit down. “You look tired, Pa.”

  The old man sighed. “I am tired. With Lenny gone, there’s nobody to help with the farm anymore. We were a partnership, you know.” He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes, sinking wearily into the chair. “With his wife and my two little grandchildren gone to live with her mother, and with your brother Lance off to war himself, God knows where, there’s nobody but me to run the place.”

  Danny sat down across the table from the man. He reached out and took his father’s hand. “I’m sorry, Pa,” he replied sincerely, frowning with sympathy.

  Hugh Monroe met his handsome son’s intense blue eyes. Danny’s face was deeply tanned from years of duty in Indian territory, his blond hair bleached even whiter from the Western sun. Dan Monroe looked much younger than his thirty-five years for he was a big, strapping, healthy man, with a quick, bright smile. “You sure Emily and my little Jennifer are safe in St. Louis?” the older man asked. “You should have brought them, son. I haven’t seen them in two years.”

  “Things are too dangerous in Tennessee, and you know it, Pa. And here in the country is where a lot of the fighting will take place; out here there’s no help for them if Union soldiers should come. There’s a lot of unrest in Missouri, that’s sure, what with the Jayhawkers and Border Ruffians going at it all the time. That state’s really torn, but they haven’t officially picked a side, and St. Louis is a big city, not remote and dangerous like the countryside. The house Emily’s father left to her when he died is a fine house, and she has lots of company. She’ll be OK.”

  The old man nodded. He squeezed Danny’s hand and then let go of it, reaching across the table to a half-empty bottle of whiskey. “So you’ve quit after all them years with the army to come over to the graycoats, have you?”

  “Yes, sir. I guess my Tennessee-born pride just kind of boiled over when I got your letter about Lenny. I figured if my brother could die for Tennessee, I guess I ought to be here, too.”

  Hugh Monroe took a swallow of whiskey. Danny noticed how much whiter his hair had become. He was a lonely man. Danny’s mother had died years before, and Danny had served duty in the West for many years. The youngest son, Lance, had been somewhat of a drifter himself, and now had also joined the Confederates. Lenny had been the only son to stay close to his father and help with the farm. Now Lenny was dead. The ugly war between North and South had killed him. Danny took no particular issue on slavery, but did take issue with the fact that the Federal government wanted to tell Tennessee citizens and other citizens of the South what they could and could not do. Southerners didn’t like taking orders from outsiders. Molehills had grown into mountains, and now the country was exploding. Hugh Monroe turned dark eyes to his son and studied him for a long, silent moment.

  “Every time I look at that blond hair and those blue eyes, I think of your ma,” he told Danny. “She sure was pretty.”

  Danny smiled softly. “I remember.”

  The old man smiled and blinked back more tears. “You look so much like her, except for being so big.”

  Danny laughed lightly. “I got that from you. I guess out of all four sons, Zeke and I were the two biggest. I remember—” He stopped short, seeing the terrible pain in his father’s eyes and wondering what had possessed him to mention the oldest son, the half-breed brother who was seldom discussed: the meanest, the most rebellious, the one who had left home over twenty years ago, never to return. Hugh Monroe shifted in his chair and frowned, slowly twisting the whiskey bottle in his gnarled hands.

  “Have you seen him since the last time you was home?” he asked quietly.

  “I haven’t seen him for about four years, Pa. Fact is, he and his wife have never even met Emily, or seen Jennifer. With my duties at Fort Laramie and always running Emily back and forth to St. Louis for one thing and another, there just never seemed to be a good time to travel all that way down to the Arkansas River to Zeke’s ranch. But as far as I know he’s still doing right well. He’s got seven kids, Pa. You have seven more grandchildren by Zeke.”

  The man grunted a sarcastic laugh. “A lot of good it does me. I’ll never see them.”

  Danny sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Pa, you can’t blame him—”

  “Damn him!” the old man blurted out, slamming a fist against the table. “Why doesn’t he come back, at least for a visit! He’s been cleared of all those murder charges! He’s a free man now in Tennessee, and still he stays out there with the damned Indians!”

  “Pa, you don’t understand him. Zeke needs to be out there. He’s so much more Indian than white, Pa. If he came back here, he’d suffocate on civilization. And it isn’t the murder charges that keep him away. It’s the memories, Pa! All the bad memories of finding Ellen raped and murdered and their little son killed by those men. White men, Pa! Friends of Ellen’s who turned on her and tortured her just because she went to bed with a half-breed. A man doesn’t forget those things, Pa. They burn in his gut for all his life! Even though he’s married again and has all those kids, he still remembers. He hates Tennessee!”

  The old man waved him off. “You always did stick up for him. Even after he murdered all those men so ruthlessly and showed his savage Indian blood.”

  “Pa, he can’t be blamed for that! I might have done the same thing if someone did that to my wife and son! Now at last he’s been cleared from the Wanted posters. Be glad for that much. It was a long time ago and it’s over. He’s happy now. He’s got a good woman, a damned good woman. She’s even from Tennessee herself.”

  The man turned hopeful eyes to Danny. “What about her? She’s Tennessee born and bred. Surely she’d like to come back for a while.”

  Danny shook his head sadly. “Not if Zeke doesn’t want to come. Abbie wants only what her husband wants. She knows how painful it would be for him to come back here. If he needs to be with his people, then she’ll put up with the hardships of that life. That’s the kind of woman Abbie is. There aren’t many like her.” He took his father’s hand again. “But she has told Zeke a time or two that he should come and see his blood father, Pa. She’s a good woman. She knows a man ought to have things right with his father. Zeke’s never comin
g back has nothing to do with Abbie.”

  Hugh Monroe nodded and rose, walking to a window and watching raindrops glisten against the glass, lit up by the lantern light. “It’s me, Danny. It isn’t the bad memories that keep him away. It’s me, and that’s the hell of it. He’ll never forgive me for dragging him away from his Cheyenne ma all them years back. He’s hated me since he was four years old. That’s a lot of years of hating.”

  Danny studied the once-powerful man from whom he and Zeke got their commanding physique. “Why’d you do it, Pa?”

  The old man kept watching the raindrops, studying them silently for several quiet seconds. “I missed home,” he replied. “I missed Tennessee. Gentle Woman could never have survived here among white people. It was common, Danny-boy, for a trapper to take a squaw. Not many men like me had feelings for their Indian wives. They were more of a necessity than anything else. When I got hungry for Tennessee, I knew I had to leave her behind. But—” he shook his head and swallowed—“I couldn’t leave my boy behind. I couldn’t leave my son, Danny! I loved him. I wanted him with me. But he never understood that. He thought I just brought him back out of meanness, to prove I’d had a squaw. I don’t know how many times I tried to explain to him that wasn’t so. But he’d look at me with them … dark, accusing eyes, and I knew he never believed me. I … never meant for him to suffer like he did. I never thought … people could be so mean. And I guess I never took notice how bad he was really being treated. Your own ma never loved him, I admit that. He knew it.” The man sighed deeply and sniffed. “When I think on it now, I realize how lonely he must have been.” He wiped at his eyes. “You’re right. I can’t blame him. I can’t blame him for going back there soon as he could handle himself and looking up his ma. He was always mixed up about whether he was white or Indian. I reckon now he’s found his place. I should be glad of that. But I did love him, Danny. Still do and always will. I just …” He sighed again. “I’m not getting any younger, Danny-boy. I’d like to see Zeke once more before I go to my grave.”