Tame the Wild Wind

by Rosanne Bittner

  Faith burst into tears, and her mother put an arm around her shoulder. Gertrude began pacing, looking pensive. “I will try to get a letter to Johnny and explain,” she offered. “Or if Faith wants to write him, you can sneak the letter to me and I will mail it off. I have his address. That’s all I can do.”

  Faith reached out and hugged the woman. “Thank you, Mrs. Sommers,” she wept.

  Gertrude patted her shoulder, sharing an understanding look with Sadie. “I must warn you, Faith, that although my son has a good heart, he has never been very dependable, and he is always changing his mind about what he wants to do.” She pulled away and grasped Faith’s shoulders. “I know you think you love him, but I fear he would not make a good husband. You should take this time while he is gone to think about that, and the fact that you are very young. Perhaps if he truly loves you, he will settle down.” She brushed at tears on Faith’s cheeks. “I can’t think of a sweeter young woman for my son.” She glanced at Sadie again. “I just hope there are no big problems over this when Johnny returns. We both know how stubborn our husbands can be.”

  “Yes, we certainly do,” Sadie said. “Thank you so much for telling us about the letters, Gertrude. You didn’t have to do that.”

  The woman folded her arms again. “Well, I don’t always agree with my husband’s decisions.”

  “Johnny would be a good husband,” Faith insisted. “He loves me, and I love him. We understand each other.” She sniffed, wiping away more tears. “I want to write the letter, Mrs. Sommers. Somehow mother will find a way to get it to you. Thank you for offering to mail it for me.”

  The woman nodded with a sad smile. She remembered what young love was like, remembered how it had felt to love her own young man once, many years ago. She had never forgotten him. Her parents had forbidden them to be together, and one day he had simply gone away and never returned. She never knew why. She had then married Herbert, a young man of her parents’ choosing, but she had never known the passion and happiness she’d known with that first love. It was a secret she’d kept all these years. “God be with you, Faith, and with my Johnny.”

  “Thank you again, Mrs. Sommers.” Faith turned and hugged her mother. “And thank you, too, Mother.”

  “We had better let Gertrude get back to work,” Sadie told her, leading her out a back door. “And you must be careful not to appear too happy and lighthearted in front of your father now about writing to Johnny,” she warned. “Matthew might suspect.”

  “Yes, Mother. Thank you again for helping me find out about the letters.”

  Sadie stopped and faced her daughter. She had told no one how she’d been feeling lately, strange pains that seemed to have no explanation. An odd foreboding had crept into her deepest thoughts of late. “Faith, whatever you do with your life, always remember to believe in God and to pray, but also…enjoy your free spirit, as long as you are living a good and proper life. Do not let others live your life for you, or tell you what you must do, whom you must marry, or that it is wrong to laugh and dance. Happiness is never wrong. Love whomever you wish to love and enjoy life. You are very strong and very beautiful. You can have a wonderful life.”

  Faith wondered at the way the words were spoken, with a sort of finality to them. “You wanted that kind of life, didn’t you, Mother?”

  The woman turned. “What’s past is past, and I made a vow years ago before God. Once a woman makes her choice, she must live with it, Faith. Remember that. Your father is a good man. The times he’s been strict with you, he truly thought it was for your own good. You’re young and on fire for life, so be careful, especially in choosing a husband.”

  “I will, Mother. Right now I just—I’m sure I love Johnny and that he loves me. You’ll understand if we go away and get married, won’t you?”

  Sadie began walking again. “Take one day at a time, Faith. I hope I will have you with me for a while longer.”

  “You will, Mother.”

  Sadie nodded, praying God would watch out for this high-spirited daughter of hers once her mother was gone from this world.

  Tall Bear let out a scream of fiery revenge, charging down the slope to yet another farm, trampling through crops, tearing down a line of clothes, landing a tomahawk into a small chicken house and sending hens and eggs scattering. He tore open a fence and let pigs run loose.

  The Sioux rampage in Minnesota had begun over a simple thing—chicken eggs stolen by a young warrior hot for mischief. It had grown into all-out war, and Tall Bear, his heart still screaming with sorrow, his hatred still bitter in his mouth, needed no prompting to join in the raids against these settlers, even though deep inside a voice continued to tell him it was wrong. Some of these people were just as innocent as Running Fox and Little Otter had been. His father would not want him to do this, but he knew no other way to vent his grief.

  He whirled his horse and rode toward the farmhouse, where a woman knelt over a man, most likely her husband. Tall Bear had shot a farmer at the last spread he and the band of warriors had attacked. He wasn’t sure if he’d killed the man, but his arm still carried a bloody bandage from wrapping a wound where the farmer had shot at him first.

  Someone else had shot this man he saw there. Perhaps he should now kill the woman. Other warriors had killed women, fiercely angry over so much white intrusion into their hunting grounds. This was a good time to get rid of the settlers, when most bluecoat soldiers were off fighting their own war farther south.

  He charged past the woman, letting out a war whoop. He could not bring himself to kill her, in spite of what had happened to Little Otter. He supposed it was the white blood in his veins that stopped him, and that only made him more angry. He rode his horse through flowers, trampling them, then whacked at a brace that held an iron pot of something cooking over an open fire. Just as the contents of the pot spilled across the dirt, he heard the crack of a rifle, and a bullet skimmed across his horse’s neck. The animal reared, but Tall Bear hung on, charging back and forth in front of the house again, yipping and screaming in deeper anger that his horse had been wounded. Someone was still inside the house. That was where the shot had come from. He would find the man and kill him! Maybe he would also take his scalp.

  He charged to the porch, and the woman crawled up the steps, screaming “No! No! No!” Tall Bear knew she thought he would kill her, too, and he enjoyed the terror in her eyes.

  All around him crops and buildings were being destroyed, a barn on fire, some of the warriors riding off with stolen cattle and horses. He leaped from his horse and pulled a pistol from the waistband of his leggings, one he’d stolen from another farmer. The woman stumbled through the doorway and tried to close the door, but Tall Bear slammed his body against it, charging inside. At first he saw only the screaming, cringing woman. Then came the movement to his right. He whirled and shot.

  A little boy! He was perhaps only seven or eight, and he held a big rifle, which went sprawling one way as the child’s body flew backward against a wall. The woman let out a chilling wail and ran to the child, who was bleeding badly at the top left area of his chest. Tall Bear could not move at first. He only stood staring as the woman hunched over the child, pulling him into her arms.

  Tall Bear felt as though all the blood was suddenly draining from his body. Things were quieting outside as the warriors rode on to yet another settlement to wreak more havoc. Tall Bear just stood staring, his pistol in his hand. “I did not know it was a child,” he tried to explain.

  The woman, her dress bloody, her hair hanging in strings and her face dirty and tearstained, looked at him in astonishment. “You…speak English!” Her body jerked in a sob. “Your eyes! You’re not a full-blood Indian. Why are you doing this to your own kind!”

  “Mommy…” the little boy sobbed.

  Tall Bear felt a glimmer of hope. The boy was not dead. He did not answer the woman. He only turned away, hardly feeling his legs as he walked outside, stepping over the body of the dead man, probably the boy’s
father. He climbed onto his horse, a sturdy black gelding with bear claws painted on his rump with white paint. Blood stained the horse’s neck.

  Another horse charged toward him from the burning barn. Its rider was Dark Owl, who let out a delighted war whoop as he approached Tall Bear. The other warriors had ridden off, but Dark Owl was Tall Bear’s good friend. He had stayed behind to be sure he was all right. “I was going into the house to find you!” he shouted in the Sioux tongue. “Who is inside? Did you kill them?”

  “No,” Tall Bear answered. “There is only a woman and little boy inside. I shot the boy by mistake, and I pray he does not die. It is bad luck to kill children.”

  Dark Owl nodded. “Aye. We could take the woman and child prisoner.”

  Tall Bear shook his head. “You go with the others.”

  “You are not coming?” Dark Owl frowned. He suddenly broke into a grin. “I know! You wish to stay here and have your way with the woman!”

  Tall Bear nodded. “Go on with the others.”

  Dark Owl nodded, then let out another war whoop as he rode off.

  So much misunderstanding. So many broken promises. So much hatred and intolerance. Tall Bear felt lost, sick inside. He both loved and hated his Indian self, and loved and hated his white self. He belonged nowhere now. He dismounted again, walked back into the cabin to see the woman frantically wrapping strips of cloth around her son’s shoulder. The boy was lying on a cot and crying with pain. The woman turned, her dark hair hanging in strands around her tearstained face, part of it still caught up in a prim bun on top of her head. “What do you want now!” she screamed at him. “Haven’t you done enough?”

  “Come with me,” he told her. “I will take you and the boy to Fort Snelling. There is a doctor there.”

  “What!” she sneered. “You expect me to believe you won’t take us someplace as captives?”

  “I only want to help the boy. The others have gone. You will come to no harm if you are with me. I promise you that.”

  She sat down on the cot where her son lay and pulled the boy into her arms. “How in God’s name do you expect me to trust you? My husband is lying dead out there. He was a good man. Everything he worked for is destroyed, and now you’ve shot my son. Get out! Just get out!”

  “Let me take you to the fort. Do you not want to get help for your son?”

  “They would arrest and hang you. Why would you risk that?”

  “I will leave you close to the fort and ride away. They would not catch me.”

  She looked him over, and Tall Bear could understand the skepticism in her tired eyes. “Why would you do this?”

  He moved closer, a sneer moving across his lips. “I had a son once. I wanted him to live also, but white buffalo hunters would not give him that chance. They murdered him and my wife, who was with child.”

  He turned and walked out, waited. The woman finally appeared at the doorway, carrying her son. “I have no choice but to go with you. I want my son to live.”

  Tall Bear nodded. “Bring him here.”

  The woman came closer, stepping over the dead man still lying on the steps. “My husband,” she wept. “He has to be buried.”

  “There is no time. The boy could bleed to death.” He mounted his horse in one swift movement. “Give him to me.”

  Reluctantly the woman handed him up. Tall Bear took the child in his right arm, his own bandaged left arm too sore for holding him. Still, he held out that arm for the woman to grab hold, and he helped hoist her onto the horse behind him. With his left hand then he took hold of the reins. “It will be close to dark when we get there.”

  The woman grabbed hold of his waist, and Tall Bear rode off in the direction of the fort. Deep inside he knew he was not just riding away from a burning homestead. He was also riding away from the life he’d known since coming there with his mother after his father was murdered. It was time to move on again, to explore his own soul even deeper. Perhaps he would head farther west, join in Red Cloud’s war. At least there he could fight only soldiers and intruding miners and buffalo hunters. There were not so many settlers farther west. Here in Minnesota there were too many to fight, and many of those were women and children.

  This raiding was not going to stop them. That was a false hope. He looked down at the little boy. He had blond hair, and his fair skin showed freckles. So different he was from Running Fox, yet not so different at all. He would pray to Wakan Tanka that the boy would live.

  Chapter Six

  1863…

  Faith hauled another bushel of corn over to her father’s wagon, setting it beside the wheel and picking up an empty basket. The morning was hot and still, and she swatted at a fly that landed against her cheek. Farther over in the field she could hear her father and brother talking, their conversation muffled by the muggy air and several rows of tall corn.

  It was harvest time, a time she dreaded, especially when the heat of summer hung on into fall as it was doing this year. She was beginning to fear she’d start looking like an old woman long before she really was one, from all this hard, dirty work, too many hours spent in the sun, although she did wear a slat bonnet to protect her face. She dearly hoped that Johnny had something better in mind than farming when they went west.

  She walked back into the deep rows of corn where her father could not see her dallying, and she turned the basket upside down and sat on it, wondering if she was silly to think Johnny was still coming. She’d written him over a year ago, promised to wait for him. Now that promise had more meaning than ever, for she had even less reason to stay in Pennsylvania. For her mother’s sake she might have considered not running off with Johnny, but now her mother was gone. To think of it hurt so bad, she couldn’t eat sometimes. It had been only four months since her slow and painful death, and in the end she had not even recognized her family.

  Oh, the pain of it! Her dear mother’s grave lay behind the house beside the children she had lost. What hurt the most was knowing how unhappy her mother truly had been. She’d been a woman with so much spirit, who wanted to laugh and dance but had never been able to. Faith resented her father more than ever now for not having allowed her mother to be herself.

  That was not going to happen to her. She was determined not to live against her deepest desires the way her mother had. Here she was, picking corn, wearing a plain blue calico dress, her long red hair tied and pinned into a bun under a common slat bonnet. She would not allow this to be all there was in life. Work and prayer meetings.

  The trouble was, she was seventeen now. It was 1863, and Johnny had been gone two years. He had to come home soon. No seventeen-year-old girl should still be unmarried. She should at least be engaged to be married. Most of her friends were already wives or had an understanding with someone, but she had stubbornly refused to see other young men, even though her father now said that she could. In fact, he had been angry with her for turning down one older man, Henry Bartel, who he thought would be an ideal husband because he was settled, a widower with two small children. He was also a farmer and one of the leaders of their Quaker sect.

  Faith cringed at the thought of marrying Bartel. He was at least forty and was a very stern man who seldom smiled. Her father did not seem to care whether or not marrying the man was something she wanted, and she was growing more and more worried he would find a way to force her into marrying him. She suspected he wanted to marry her off before Johnny came home, and she was determined she would run away by herself if she had to in order to avoid such a despicable union.

  She got up and began picking more corn, throwing the ears into the bushel. She missed her mother fiercely, and without her she felt unprotected from her father’s edicts. Her mother had truly understood her, had accepted her passion for life and adventure and happiness. Her only hope now was Johnny. He was her only chance of getting away from there and away from Henry Bartel.

  She caught a movement to her left then, down at the end of the long row. Someone was moving toward her. She
squinted her eyes, realizing it was neither her father nor Benny. Her heart began to leap with joy when she began to realize who it was. Johnny! As he walked closer, he put a finger to his lips, warning her to keep quiet. He began running then, and he swept her into his arms. They both quietly squealed with delight. “Johnny! Johnny!” she whispered. “I was wondering if you would ever really come!”

  “I’m here, all right,” he whispered in reply, glad for the cover of the tall cornstalks. “Just got here this morning. I haven’t even been to see my own folks yet. I was afraid my pa would come running to yours to let him know, and I had to see you first.” He pulled away. “I had to look into your eyes and ask if you still want to go away with me.”

  “Oh, Johnny, you know I do! Did you get my letter last year?”

  “I got it. I’m so mad at my pa for helping your pa keep my letters from you. I didn’t bother writing back because I knew you wouldn’t get the letter, and I was afraid I’d get you in trouble anyway. Then I got wounded and I couldn’t write.”

  “Wounded!” Faith stepped back, looked him over. “Your parents never said a word!”

  “I never told them—didn’t want to worry my ma.” He frowned. “Faith, my ma’s last letter said your ma died a couple months ago. I’m real sorry to hear that.”

  Her eyes teared. “It was a terrible, painful death. The doctor called it cancer, but they don’t know much about it. Oh, Johnny, I missed you even more after she died. Besides you, Mama understood me best.”

  He grasped her hands. “Well, I’m out of the army now for good. I saw and learned so much, Faith. I have so much to tell you. And I got some money when I mustered out, enough to get us on a train out of here. There’s no time now to talk about where we’re going and all that. I just wanted to see you right away and make sure you didn’t go and marry somebody else!”

  Faith looked him over. He looked thinner, but he was as handsome as ever. There was so much to learn about where he’d been, how he’d been wounded, what his plans were for them. Here she was agreeing to go off and marry him, and this was the first time they had even touched or talked for over two years! Little pinpoints of doubt suddenly stabbed at her, but she told herself it was just nervousness from his sudden appearance, the excitement at just the thought of finally being able to leave home.