Should she trust him? Something in his green eyes told her she could. Why else would he ask if he could help? And she so dearly needed that help. She could only pray he wasn’t lying. “I…yes.” She put a hand to her belly. “I’m with child. And I’ve…I’ve been through something terrible. Now I have to dig a grave. I’m afraid such hard work will make me lose my baby.”
His green eyes raked over her, and Faith was suddenly self-conscious of how she must look.
“How did that man die?” he asked. “His body is already many hours dead.”
Faith put a hand to her aching head, tears wanting to come again. There seemed no sense lying to the man. “All right,” she answered. “He is my husband.” She stopped for a moment, an unexpected sob making her shoulders jerk. She threw back her head and breathed deeply to keep from breaking down. “We were…headed for Montana. Our guide was taking us around Powder River country because of”—she met his eyes again—“because of the Sioux making so much trouble up there. Are you Sioux?”
He nodded proudly. “Minniconjou.”
“Aren’t they the ones around—around Minnesota?”
He nodded again. “There was much trouble there. Many of us came here to live among our Oglala brothers because of that trouble.”
She noticed scars on his chest, and long white scars on his forearms. “Were you a part of the awful massacres?”
He turned, shoving his rifle through leather straps tied around his horse’s belly. Faith noticed that besides the deer slung over its back and the parfleche holding supplies that was also tied over the horse’s rump, there was only a blanket on the horse’s back, no saddle.
“I was there,” he answered. “It is not important now.” He faced her again, figuring she would be less afraid of him if he put his rifle away. “What happened to your husband? Where is your guide?”
“He’s dead…I think.”
Tall Bear frowned. “You think?”
She blinked back more tears. “I shot him. Four times. But the gun I used was very small, and he was a big man.” She caught the scent of a strange odor and realized it must be Johnny’s body. Poor Johnny! She had to get him buried. “I never trusted our guide. His name was Cletus Brown.” And so she began to tell the Indian about what had happened in all its horror. When she finished, she met his eyes again. “Yes, I do need help. I have to get my husband buried. It makes me sick to have to leave his body like that.” The tears came then. “I’m so weak and tired, and I’m afraid for my baby. Will you—will you finish digging the grave for me? I can cook something for you. That’s about all I can do to repay you.”
Tall Bear studied the woman before him, so beautiful but so sad. His heart went out to her. Last night must have been terrible for her, seeing her husband shot in cold blood, shooting a man herself. Cletus Brown must have been a man not so different from the buffalo hunters who had shot his wife and son. “I will dig the grave,” he told her.
“Thank you,” she sniffed. “What…what is your name?”
“I am called Tall Bear.”
“I’m Faith. Faith Sommers.”
Tall Bear took the reins of his horse and walked toward the grave site, and Faith followed. She lay the blanket over Johnny’s body while Tall Bear started digging. Faith decided to keep busy or go crazy, so she made a fire from dry grass and kindling and set an iron pot full of water over it. She cut up some potatoes and threw them in, along with some dried peas and salt pork.
Occasionally she glanced at Tall Bear, sorry for his hard work, noticing sweat gleaming on his dark skin. It seemed strange to be looking at a man so nearly naked. Almost his entire buttocks was exposed, and she could not help noticing his powerful, muscled build, though not in the way a woman might admire a man she wanted, for she was too full of grief over Johnny for such thoughts. She only noticed because it would be impossible not to notice. There were not many men built like this one, and his mixed blood made her curious. He did not seem very willing to talk, so she said nothing, letting him concentrate on the digging so she could get the burial over with and put poor Johnny to rest.
She mixed flour, water, and yeast with a little salt and made biscuits, heating them in a Dutch oven over the fire, removing them as soon as they were raised and baked so they wouldn’t burn. She left them in the pan to keep warm.
Finally Tall Bear climbed out of the hole he’d been digging, planting the shovel in a pile of dirt.
“I will bury him now,” he announced. “You will want to speak over his grave. Are you Christian?”
Faith was surprised at the remark, which made her think of her parents, the prayer meetings. “Yes. My family are Quakers. Have you heard of Quakers?”
He scowled. “Some have come to the reservations to tell us everything we do is wrong. They understand nothing of Indian beliefs.” She handed him a towel to wipe sweat from his face. Some of the white paint there smeared when he did so. “I worship Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit,” he continued, “but I believe He is the same as the Christian God. My father was French. He was what is called Catholic.”
“I don’t know much about Catholics,” Faith responded. “But I guess they worship the same God as other Christians.” For the first time Faith noticed a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth.
“He is the same.”
Faith felt suddenly embarrassed, not even sure why, except that this supposed heathen seemed to know more about the Christian religion than she did. “Well, to answer your original question,” she told him, “yes, I do want to speak over Johnny’s grave. After you put him in the grave, perhaps you’d like to go wash in the creek. You must be very hot and tired. I’ll speak over my husband then, and we’ll throw a little dirt in. Then you should eat something. I’ll help you finish filling in the grave after that.” She glanced at the blanket-covered body. “I…I hope you don’t mind if I don’t help you with the body. I don’t think I could stand to touch it now.”
Tall Bear did not relish touching it himself. Touching a dead body could bring bad luck. “I will tie rope around his wrists and drag the body. It is the only way I can get it into the grave.”
Faith shivered. “All right.” She turned away, breaking into sobs as she waited. She could hear the dragging sound, the thud of Johnny’s body landing in the hole. The tears came harder then, and she stayed near the fire. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder, and she started, turning to find Tall Bear right behind her. Clete had said something once about Indians being the “quietest, sneakiest bastards ever born.” Now she understood what he meant, but they were surely not all the devils he’d made them out to be. This one had worked hard digging a grave for her husband out of the kindness of his heart. He could so easily have ridden away and left her there alone…or done something worse.
His face was unpainted now, and she thought what a handsome man he was with those green eyes surrounded by dark brows and lashes and dark skin. But there was also that intimidating look about him, his size, his strength, his long hair. She reminded herself that this was a warrior, a man who had been a part of the Minnesota raids. “I’ll get my Bible,” she said, moving away from him.
She wished her father were there. One thing Matthew Kelley knew how to do well was pray and find just the right Bible passages for special occasions. Now that she had been away from him for several months, she was beginning to appreciate his good points, yet in spite of what she’d been through, she knew in her heart she would not go back to Pennsylvania. Not now. Not after all this. Clete Brown had tried to destroy her and Johnny’s dreams, but he damn well was not going to succeed! Nor would she let this wild land or Indians or anything else defeat her. For Johnny’s sake she would go on from here…somehow…and she would make a decent life for herself.
She went to get her Bible from her trunk. When she returned, Tall Bear stopped shoveling dirt into the grave. She thought she caught a glimpse of true pity in his eyes, and she was surprised that Indians had such feelings. Perhaps it was only the white in hi
m. Then again, Indians were human beings, at least in appearance. Maybe she could learn more about them from this man. After all, if she was going to stay out there, she would need to know something more about them.
He was certainly a mystery, a look of wild savage about him, yet he’d helped her bury her husband and had enough respect for her religion to tell her to get her Bible. He actually knew about Bibles. He had a look of intelligence about him she had not expected to find in an Indian, and again she decided that was because he was half-white.
She realized then she was occupying her mind with wonder about this half-breed because she did not want to face the reality of the moment. Johnny Sommers, her handsome, brash, adventurous husband, whose head had been full of wonderful dreams, was dead and now he was buried. She fought a sudden urge to scream with the pain of it. She remembered wanting to do that when she had heard that first gunshot, when she knew Clete had killed her husband. But she had remained calm, calculating, waiting patiently for Clete to come to her so she could shoot him. She was discovering things about herself, discovering a strength she’d had no idea she possessed, a rather cunning aspect to her nature, an ability to shut off feelings when necessary. Maybe it was this wild country that did that to a person, or maybe it was simply an instinct for survival.
She glanced at Tall Bear again, realizing suddenly how Indians, at times, could seem so cruel and murderous, how they could be a people who seemed to have no feelings. Survival! They wanted the same thing.
She opened the Bible, remembering there was a passage from First Corinthians about death and resurrection. She thumbed through, fighting tears, silently praying that God would help her find the right passage. She scanned through the passages…
“For the trumpet shall sound,” she read, “and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed… O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Her eyes filled with too many tears for her to see well enough to read any other passages, but she knew the twenty-third Psalm by heart, and she began reciting it. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…” The lump in her throat was painful, and she stopped to swallow, shivering in a quick moment of unstoppable tears, then taking a deep breath to go on. She managed the next couple of sentences, then struggled through “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…” Clete Brown. He had been the evil lurking in the shadow of death. “For thou art with me.”
She broke down again, sobbing through the rest of the passage, the words coming out in a kind of squeak between tears. Yes, God was with her. She realized only then that she had learned that much from all the prayer meetings she’d been forced to attend. Perhaps shooting Clete Brown wasn’t such a terrible sin. Maybe God had put that little gun in her hand. And God had surely sent this mysterious half-breed to help her bury Johnny.
“Surely goodness and mercy…shall follow me all the days…of my life…and I will dwell in the house of the Lord…forever.”
She knelt beside the grave, sobbing uncontrollably for several minutes, until finally she felt strong hands on her shoulders. She thought how she should be afraid. She didn’t know this man at all, and he was a Sioux warrior, in spite of his white blood. He was big and strong enough to do what he wanted with her, break her neck when he was finished. Yet she felt no fear.
“Come away now,” he told her. “You must rest. I will finish filling in the grave.”
“Johnny, my poor Johnny,” she wept. “He didn’t…deserve this. He…he had his faults…and sometimes…I hated him for…being so irresponsible…for breaking his promises…but I loved him so…”
“Come. Lie down in the wagon.”
She felt herself being led away from the grave, felt strong hands at her waist as he lifted her into the back of the wagon. She crumpled into a pile of blankets and cried herself to sleep.
Birds sang and sunlight filtered through the back of the wagon when Faith awoke. She sat up, aching all over but feeling more rested. It took a moment to realize that the direction of the sun meant it was morning. Morning! She’d slept the rest of the evening and all night after burying Johnny.
Tall Bear…where was he? He had probably gone his own way, and now she was alone and lost again. An urgent need to relieve herself forced her to climb out of the wagon, and to her surprise Tall Bear was lying on a blanket near the fire. She remembered then, hearing wolves howl through the night, being too tired even to open her eyes to see if they were near, knowing somehow that this Indian man was out there protecting her.
His eyes opened when he realized she was up. He quickly sat up and nodded to her.
“Good morning,” she said. “Thank you for staying here.”
He got to his feet. “I ate some of the stew last night. It is still warm on the fire. You must eat this morning.”
“I will.” She walked toward a clump of rocks. “Please stay there.” Could she trust him? It was silly to wonder about that now. He’d had plenty of chances during the night to take advantage of her weakened state, but he had not. She walked behind the rocks to take care of personal things, and when she returned, he was himself coming from behind a thick cluster of yucca bushes.
She glanced at Johnny’s grave, noticed it was neatly covered now, the dirt mounded evenly, rocks piled on top of it. She looked back at Tall Bear. “Thank you. I feel as though I should pay you somehow.”
He stretched his arms. “No need. I found a small barrel of salt and poured some into the carcass of the deer I killed to help preserve the meat. That is payment enough. I must leave today, take the meat to my village so the women can begin smoking and curing it before it spoils.”
Faith was surprised at the realization that she did not want him to leave. What would she do then? And the mention of a village—women…“Do you have a wife there? She must be worried about you.”
A strange look of bitterness came into his eyes. “I have no wife. She was killed, in much the same way your husband was killed. She was shot by buffalo hunters. As was my little son.”
Her heart went out to him. “That’s terrible! I’m so sorry!”
He put more wood on the fire. “It was in Minnesota.” He met her eyes then. “Now perhaps you understand why I took part in the raids.”
She slowly nodded, understanding even better the human side of this warrior, the reasons why he and his people did the things they did.
“You must wash,” he told her. “In the stream. You will feel better. I will stay here and keep the fire going. When you are through, I will go and wash also. Then you must eat and gather your things. I will show you the way to a place where the white man’s coaches stop for fresh horses and food and rest for the passengers. I rode past it only two days away from here. Perhaps there you can find help.”
Faith felt great relief at the words. He would not leave her alone and lost, after all. “Thank you. I don’t know what to do, what to say. I might have died out here if not for you. I have no idea where I am, where to go. I am deeply grateful for your help, but I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
He shrugged. “You are a woman alone who has done me no harm. Why should I not help you?”
She frowned. “Because you surely hate seeing white people come here.”
“It does not matter so much here. It is in the north, in Sioux hunting grounds, that we do not want whites to come. I know some whites are good. My own father was a good man, as were some of his friends. I do not hate all whites, just those like the men who killed my wife and son. Go and wash now. I will wait here.”
The words were spoken as more of a command than a request, and Faith obeyed, trusting him not to try to take advantage of her while she was bathing. She climbed back into the wagon, dug out some clean clothes, and walked to the stream to wash, noticing that the oxen and horse were still in sight. She
was glad of that.
A stagecoach station. That must be what Tall Bear was talking about, where he was taking her. He would show her the way, and then he would ride out of her life. How strange. She felt oddly disappointed that she would probably never see him again after that, but, then, she had much bigger things to worry about…like what she would do once she reached that stage station…where she would go from there…how she would survive and be able to take care of her baby.
Her baby. She was a woman alone in a strange land and carrying a baby.
Chapter Eleven
Faith guided the oxen through a wide valley and up a rise, following Tall Bear on his spotted horse. For all she knew, he could be taking her to his own camp to sell her to some other brave for some horses, but she did not believe that. How astounding that she was being led to safety by an Indian warrior, the very thing she had feared most in this land.
They traveled from early afternoon until dark, through open, grassy places studded with boulders and smaller rocks, through buttes and mesas, and higher mountains ever to the north, south and west. Tall Bear pointed out a small herd of buffalo. He waited while she stared at the great beasts as they ambled through a ravine below them.
She thought what a wild land this was, wild in beauty, wild in movement, in weather, in dangerous animals…and dangerous men. She had an unreasoning fear that Clete, as good as he was at tracking, might still try to follow her and exact his revenge. She looked back often, glad that Tall Bear was with her. He had spoken little since they’d left, mostly just to explain something she was seeing, telling her the Indian names for certain mountain peaks, pointing out various weeds that could be used for medicinal purposes.
“We will camp here tonight,” he told her upon reaching a clear, grassy area at the base of a red rock mesa. “Tomorrow I will point the way, and you will find the white man’s settlement on your own.”
“Settlement? I thought it was just a stage station.”
Tame the Wild Wind Page 12
