Wild Abandon

by Cassie Edwards

  Dancing Cloud knelt on one knee and examined Boyd’s wound again. “This should be seen to soon,” he said. He looked slowly around at his dead brethren, and at those who were wounded. He felt helpless since he had no way to gather herbs to doctor his friends. Nor was there a white man’s hospital nearby. And all medical supplies had long been used up.

  “There is no bullet lodged in my flesh. I’ll be fine,” Boyd said, groaning as Dancing Cloud helped him up from the ground. “And you?”

  Dancing Cloud’s eyes met with Boyd’s. He became humble again in the presence of this man whose heart was big. “Because of you I am alive,” he said thickly. “I owe you a debt that I may never be able to repay.”

  Boyd nodded and smiled. He held his shoulder as he began walking toward his men. “We’d best see what we can do to get everyone back on their feet who can stand. Their loved ones are waiting on them,” he said. “Thank God we at least got this far without being totally wiped out by bushwhackers.”

  Dancing Cloud watched Boyd move through the wounded, and dead. He vowed to himself to find a way to repay this man for his kind ways.

  Some way.

  Some time.

  Some how.

  He would find a way to repay this man for saving his life.

  He turned and looked into the rolling, thickening fog. Beyond that wall of gray, high up in the Great Smoky Mountains, his people waited.

  * * *

  His head bobbing, occasionally drifting off to sleep in the saddle, his shoulder now numb from the loss of blood, Boyd was only scarcely able to recognize his way back to his plantation. He had parted ways with his regiment and was on his way home.

  The rain had stopped and the sun was out, revealing to him that the land was scorched as far as his eyes could see.

  Not only did he witness the charred remains of all of the farmhouses that had stood in the way of the Yankee soldiers, he saw way too many bodies of innocent people, children and grown-ups alike, to stop and bury them.

  And he didn’t even have the strength to see to the Christian burial for those unfortunate people. He scarcely could stay in the saddle now from lack of sleep, food, and medical attention.

  Yet he kept on going, the fears mounting inside him now over what he was going to find when he reached his home. He doubted there would be any home left to recognize.

  He choked back a sob and wiped tears from his eyes.

  Nor did he now expect to find his daughter and wife alive. It was foolish, he condemned himself, ever to have left them.

  But he hadn’t left them totally alone. There had been his slaves, among them a big, muscular black whose devotion to Carolyn and Lauralee was beyond that which was expected of him. He would have killed anyone who came near them.

  “Jeremiah, oh, God, Jeremiah, I hope you were enough for their protection,” Boyd said, his throat growing drier as he got closer and closer to his home.

  One turn in the road and he saw the devastation . . . the ruins . . . the charred wastes of what had been his house, outbuildings, and gardens.

  There was nothing left to recognize.

  “Carolyn?” he said, his voice choked and drawn. “Lauralee?”

  There were no voices to answer him.

  Then he saw the remains of a man. It did not take much thought to realize who this was. He recognized the silver bracelet on the man’s wrist. He had bought this for Jeremiah as a thank you for being so dependable.

  Jeremiah was dead. Then what of his wife and daughter?

  He hung his head and retched....

  * * *

  After he had left the regiment behind, Dancing Cloud had stopped long enough to shed the clothes of a soldier, down to just a pair of breeches. He was bare-chested and he wore no shoes, feeling and tasting freedom for the first time since he had gone to fight for the South.

  Determinedly, anxiously, Dancing Cloud continued to work his way up the mountainside on his roan. He felt elated to be back to this region of luxuriant flora, with its great red-spruce forest, its clear air, its breathtaking sights.

  He looked over his shoulder at his Cherokee friends, some wounded, some not. They moved as anxiously as Dancing Cloud, thinking of families and friends.

  He turned his eyes back to the narrow path. There was almost impenetrable thicket and tangled undergrowth on the slopes and ridges, with an exceptional variety of flowering shrubs, mosses, and lichens, and a lavish display of purple-pink blossomed rhododendrons and azaleas.

  Among the rushing streams that spiraled down from the summits and ridges of the mountain, were such trees as hemlocks, silver bell, black cherry, buckeye, yellow birch and tulip.

  Every now and then he would get a glimpse of a black bear, or a browsing white-tailed deer. He enjoyed seeing the foxes as they lurked around beneath the trees, sniffing out a ruffed grouse, or turkey.

  And above him, many colorful songbirds flitted about, as though welcoming him and his returning warriors.

  The farther he rode up the mountainside, the hazier it got, the very reason the mountains had been given the name—the Great Smoky Mountains.

  His heart beat like a drum within his chest. He again softly prayed that he would find his family as he had left them a year ago.

  Dancing Cloud sank his bare heels into the flanks of his horse and he sent his steed in a faster trot, having now found the path that led to his village that lay in a sheltered cove and valley only a short distance away.

  As he got closer and could see through the break of trees ahead, the sight that he had prayed would not be, was. Only a portion of the log homes of his village remained.

  Dancing Cloud emitted a loud groan when his weary eyes discovered that his father’s larger cabin no longer stood near the center of the village.

  But he was relieved to see the Wolf Clan Town House still standing. Within its walls burned the sacred fire of the Wolf Clan of Cherokee. It had been kept burning while so much had gone wrong for his people.

  As Dancing Cloud grew closer, he saw so much more that made his heart ache. His father was standing at the edge of the village, a blanket draped over his shoulders. He looked as though ravaged with time, himself. He leaned heavily against a long, wooden staff, his eyes appearing empty.

  His father did not even seem to notice that Dancing Cloud was approaching. There was no joy in seeing his son, only a remorse that seemed to lay heavy in the air, reaching Dancing Cloud as though he had just entered a thick thunder cloud, all black and dreary.

  Dancing Cloud drew his steed to a halt and slid out of the saddle. His heart pounded as he ran to his father and embraced him. He grew cold inside when his father did not seem to have the ability to respond.

  “E-do-do, Father, it is I, Dancing Cloud,” his son said as he took a shaky step back from his father. “I have returned from the war.”

  He looked past his father and searched with eager eyes for the rest of his family. When he saw none except his aunt, Susan Sweet Bird, he placed his hands at his father’s lean, slumped shoulders.

  “E-tsi? I-go-nv-tli? I-gi-do?” Dancing Cloud said, his voice breaking. “Mother? Brothers? Baby sister? Where are they, Father?”

  His father’s dark, haunting eyes became level with Dancing Cloud’s, proof that his son’s words had finally penetrated that blank wall that had seemed to have enveloped him.

  “Dead,” his father said, his voice vacant of emotion. “Dancing Cloud, Yankees came. They took. They burned. They killed.”

  Despair swam through Dancing Cloud. He swallowed back the urge to retch. He shook his head in an effort to clear it of the thoughts that were spinning there.

  “They were deserters? Bushwhackers?” he finally managed to say.

  “No, my son,” James Talking Bear said bitterly, the name James having been given to him by Boyd Johnston. “It was a full regiment of soldiers.”

  “Soldiers?” Dancing Cloud said, stunned. “They came and . . . and . . . ?”

  “They came and took my heart wit
h them when they left,” his father said mournfully.

  “Confederate or Union?” Dancing Cloud said, his insides stiffening.

  “Bluecoats,” James Talking Bear said, nodding. “The one with hair the color of the sun and eyes the color of the sky. He led the bluecoats into the slaughter of our people. When he left, he laughed.”

  Dancing Cloud’s heart seemed to turn to ice at the description of the soldier. It was surely the very same man who had led the ambush on Dancing Cloud’s regiment a few days ago.

  Now he wished that his aim had been more accurate.

  In the back!

  He should have shot the heartless Yankee in the back instead of the leg.

  Silently Dancing Cloud once again vowed to find Clint McCloud one day and make many wrongs right.

  But not now.

  Perhaps not for many winters.

  For now he was needed to help put his father’s life back together again, as well as his own, and the people who depended on his chieftain father’s leadership.

  Dancing Cloud placed a comforting arm around his father’s shoulder. “Come,” he said thickly. “Your eldest son did not die at the hand of the ha-ma-ma—enemy Union soldiers. He has come home, to mend things for you, and our people.”

  “Your father’s insides are dead,” James Talking Bear said, his voice breaking. “How can that ever be mended?”

  “With much tsi-ge-yu-i, love, Father,” Dancing Cloud said, drawing him closer to his side. His fingers tightened against his father’s shoulder. “I am here. And I have much love to give you, Father. Much tsi-ge-yu-i love.”

  When his father looked over at him, tears misting his usually bright and brilliant dark eyes, Dancing Cloud felt as though his very insides were being torn from inside him. His father had always prided himself in his nerves of steel and his ability to withstand all sadness and challenges. In one instant, in one heartbeat, that had all changed, and because of that, Dancing Cloud was suddenly a changed man, himself. He now knew a bitterness within him never known before.

  Vengeance.

  One day he would avenge this that had been done to his family.

  Suddenly flashing before his mind’s eye were the faces of his mother, sister, and brothers. He was glad that he was able to see them as smiling, for any more sadness today would perhaps be too much for him to bear.

  Chapter 2

  My life closed twice before its close;

  It yet remains to see

  If immortality unveil

  A third event to me.

  —EMILY DICKINSON

  St. Louis, Missouri—1880.

  It was a sweltering day in late July. Sweat pearled along Lauralee Johnston’s brow as she entered the veterans hospital, the humidity causing her long and flowing coppery-red hair to kink up into tight ringlets. Although she was not a registered nurse, she helped out at the hospital as often as she was needed.

  Soon to turn twenty, she would be expected to leave the orphanage where she had lived since she was five to seek her own way in the world; to seek her own destiny.

  But Lauralee had found some comfort and a safe haven within its walls. It had helped alleviate the pain of the past that had left deep scars caused by the Civil War.

  Lauralee would never forget her mother dying so violently during the war. She would never overcome her loneliness and despair of being abandoned outside her burned-out house until a priest had come along and had taken her to his parish at the St. Louis Children’s Home.

  There Father Samuel had given her shelter from the rest of the damnable Civil War, a war that had snatched everything from her.

  Her mother.

  Her father.

  No one could bring her mother back to her. She had been dead since the bluecoat Yankees had arrived at her house. They not only looted it, they killed her mother.

  The only hope that she had lived with all of these fifteen years was that her father would find her and take her into the safe cocoon of his arms.

  Yet she had decided long ago that he had surely died during the war.

  But even though she had been only a child when she had last seen him, his memory still lay soft and sweet in her mind.

  She remembered that day he had left for the war. He stood tall, wearing boots shiny black and a handsome gray uniform, with two revolvers slung in leather holsters at his waist.

  He had not yet reached the age of fifty, but still had beautiful, long gray hair. His violet eyes had been hypnotizing as he had laughed and played with her.

  His laughter lingered now, like a warm dance within her heart.

  But Lauralee’s ache of missing him made all of these memories hard to bear sometimes. She had only herself. She had to keep telling herself that.

  And she would fend well for herself once she left the orphanage. She would become a nurse in a grand hospital. She would care for the afflicted, hoping that, in turn, might help slowly mend the hurts that she still carried around with her since the evil, blue-eyed, red-haired Yankee had .. .

  She shook her head to keep the worst of her memories from surfacing. She hastened down the long, narrow corridor of the hospital, the skirt of her plain cotton dress sweeping her ankles. Each day she was anxious to come and spend time with the veterans of the Civil War, hoping that she might find someone who might have known her father.

  Even now as she slowed her pace and started looking into the rooms as she passed them, she studied the faces of those who had only recently been brought there.

  Of course she knew that it was foolish to believe that she might one day see his face among the ailing men. It was an impossible dream, a true fantasy, to believe that she might ever see her father again in any capacity.

  She did not wish to see him ill. But if he could only be alive and slightly ill, enough to bring him to this very hospital so that she could get the opportunity to tell him that she was his daughter, that would be the same as entering the portals of heaven!

  “Good morning to you, Lauralee,” a priest said as he walked past her in his long and flowing black robe. “How are you faring on this fine day?”

  “It’s just a mite too hot for me,” Lauralee said across her shoulder as the priest walked on past her. The sight of a priest always saddened her now, for Father Samuel had passed away a year ago. Their bond had become tightly entwined.

  And now, as before, she was alone again.

  “The humidity will pass,” Father Edwards said back to her over his shoulder. “Just keep that pretty smile and pretend a soft summer rain is falling on your sweet face.”

  Lauralee laughed softly, then went to a desk and leaned over the shoulder of a nurse. “Are there many new patients today, Dorothy?” Lauralee asked, trying to read the names of those Dorothy had entered into a ledger.

  “A few,” Dorothy said, then closed the journal and looked up at Lauralee. “Dear, there’s a man in room fourteen. He was just brought in moments ago. I haven’t had time to check my charts yet for a name. He has pneumonia. He may not even last a week. Two, if he’s lucky. Why not go and see if you can cheer him up? I’ll be in shortly to check on him.”

  “You don’t know anything about him?” Lauralee said, forking an eyebrow. “His name? Where he’s from?”

  “Dear, I’ve been quite busy this morning, so, no, I haven’t taken time yet to see about the man,” Dorothy said, heaving an irritated sigh. “I can’t be expected to know everything about every patient the minute they are brought to my end of the floor. Now can I?”

  “No, I guess not,” Lauralee murmured. She gazed down at Dorothy. This woman was not only lax with her nursing duties, but also herself. She was dowdy. Her white dress showed signs of having not been washed in days. Her stringy blond hair was drooping over her shoulders. Her skin was blemished with scars left by pimples.

  There was even a slight aroma of perspiration as Dorothy moved her arms about as she stacked ledgers on the top of a wooden filing cabinet.

  Lauralee, however, took pride in hers
elf. She always smelled sweet from a recent bath. Her freshly washed hair sparkled and shone, and her cheeks were rosy and dimpled.

  She brushed her hands down her perfectly ironed dress, proud that she made a good appearance whenever she visited the ailing men. She smiled to herself while thinking about how she always drew a compliment or two from them as she entered their rooms.

  Lauralee recalled how her mother had looked to her when she was five, and now she saw how much she resembled her whenever she looked into a mirror at herself. She carried that knowledge around with her with much pride and tenderness. She had loved her mother so much. She had never heard as sweet a voice since, nor had seen such a lovely, warm smile.

  Not wanting to get into it with Dorothy, always having found it hard to tolerate her neglect of everything, Lauralee walked away. She hurried to the room where the new patient lay with pneumonia, his days on this earth now numbered.

  Her heartbeat always raced when she was to become acquainted with a new patient who might have fought side by side with her father. She always said a prayer to herself that this might be the day she would hear what she wanted to hear. That her father was, indeed, still alive.

  The door to room fourteen was ajar and Lauralee could hear the labored, hard breathing. This was the breathing of someone whose each and every breath carried with it an intense pain. It was at this stage that many of them prayed for a swift end. Life no longer held within its arms anything warm or beautiful for them.

  Lauralee tiptoed into the room. She stopped and peered through the gloom. The shades were drawn at the windows. A candle’s glow on the bed stand was the only light by which to see.

  The smell that met Lauralee was strongly medicinal. The sight of the thin, ill man covered by soft blankets was sad. Lauralee was saddened at the thought of him dying soon.

  Except for her deep emotions and feelings for people, Lauralee had always felt that she could be a good nurse. When she realized that someone was gravely ill, she became overcome with pity and remorse for them.

  Realizing that he was asleep, she moved softly and quietly. She stood over the bed and sucked in a breath of despair when she saw how gaunt this man’s face was, and how bony his hands were as they rested above the blankets. His hair was all but gone, yet still showed signs of once having been gray.