“I wonder what has happened in his past that makes him hate white people so quickly and easily?” Lauralee said, walking beside Dancing Cloud back to their horses. “His hate seems to run way deeper than anyone else I have ever known.”
She stopped and paused, then looked quickly up at Dancing Cloud. “Except for the hate I feel for a man, I should say, I have never witnessed such total hate,” she said, her voice drawn. “Clint McCloud. The Yankee with the red hair and blue eyes.”
“And wooden leg,” Dancing Cloud said, proud to be the one who caused the man such discomfort for the rest of his life.
“Yes, and wooden leg.” Lauralee nodded.
She shoved the rock aside that had kept the horse’s reins in place. She waited for Dancing Cloud to get secure in his saddle with Brian Brave Walker on his lap, then handed his reins to him.
Watching the child, to see if he was still asleep, Lauralee swung herself into her saddle.
They resumed their journey up the mountainside. Brian Brave Walker awakened for a while, then would drift off to sleep again.
“Once we get him to my cabin he can eat proper foods that will make his strength return,” Dancing Cloud said, gazing over at Lauralee.
“It must be done slowly, though. He apparently has been without solid food for quite a while now. He has to adjust to it gradually or his body will continue to rebel against it.”
Dancing Cloud nodded. “You bring your teachings of the white man’s hospital to my mountains?” he said, smiling over at her. “That is good. Like your father you will share with the Wolf Clan Cherokee.”
“I only hope that your people will accept me as they did my father,” Lauralee said warily. “You see, Dancing Cloud, I am arriving to your village in a much different capacity than my father. I will remain among your people as one with them. My father came to your people, brought them supplies, smoked their peace pipe and shared talk and knowledge with them, then he left. He returned to his own life, leaving your people to live theirs apart from his.”
“The difference also is that you are coming to my village as my future wife,” Dancing Cloud quickly interjected. “Who dares question that since I am their chief, their spokesperson?”
Lauralee smiled, yet did not share his confidence.
She looked straight ahead again, her spine stiff, her heart pounding when the first signs of the village came in sight as the ground leveled off into a wide valley beyond.
As they came closer to the village, Lauralee was stunned to see that it was so nearly like the smaller white communities in their manner of living, that a stranger could rarely distinguish an Indian’s cabin or little cove farm from that of a white man. The cabins were made of logs and roofed with the bark of chestnut trees. Each cabin had its own garden, corn, and various other vegetables maturing in them.
She looked past the village at the many orchards, manure evenly spread around the fruit trees. She could tell by the trunk and leaves of the trees that during the harvest season the Cherokee had an abundance of apples, peaches, and plums.
She looked elsewhere. Although there were some cows grazing in small plots behind the cabins, it seemed that pork was highly esteemed by the Cherokee. A considerable amount of hogs were fenced in beside the cabins, as well as some that ran wild and untended throughout the village.
As they came closer to the village and Lauralee could see some of the people outside their lodges doing various chores, she could tell that the primitive costumes had most certainly been long obsolete. Just like Dancing Cloud had told her, she saw that his people’s dress was like that of the white people, except that for the most part moccasins took the place of shoes.
And noticeably also were the men who still wore buckskins along with those who wore the breeches and shirts of the white man.
Her gaze was drawn to women sitting outside their cabins at spinning wheels and looms. It was obvious they manufactured their own clothes.
Dancing Cloud was observing, himself, things of his people and village. The Great Spirit had given them the land. And what a beautiful land it was. The sky was dark blue, the trees casting shadows. The arched backs of the hills beyond served as a sturdy backdrop for the thriving village.
He saw that the horses and ponies of his people were tethered in their usual places. Many dugout canoes, hollowed out of poplar logs with ax and fire, were beached along the banks of the river. Toddlers were busy at games that he had once played. Some women were fleshing yesterday’s kill for tonight’s dinner. Fresh meat hung from drying rocks, blood red; white sheets of buck fat were spread out to dry beneath the hot rays of the sun.
Dancing Cloud’s gaze stopped on one woman in particular. Susan Sweet Bird, his father’s sister. She was sitting solemnly outside his father’s lodge on a buffalo robe. She stared blindly ahead as she poked a steel needle into a newly cured skin.
Dancing Cloud could see her frustration as she continued to jab at the buffalo skin with her needle, her eyesight not there to assist in this chore that she was determined to do for herself.
Blind since birth, she had learned well to live with her affliction. Her senses guided her into her every movement.
And for the most part she functioned as well as one whose eyes were bright and alive.
But today it seemed that something was keeping her from her skills of sewing. He did not have to be told what. She was still mourning the death of her beloved chieftain brother.
And she surely wondered when her nephew was going to return to assume the duties of chief.
Suddenly Susan Sweet Bird jerked her sightless eyes in Dancing Cloud’s direction. She stiffened and leaned her ear toward the sound of the approaching horses. She dropped her sewing and pushed herself up from the buffalo robe. Her hands groping before her, she came toward Dancing Cloud, a soft smile quavering on her lips.
“Dancing Cloud?” she shouted. She broke into a run. “It is you, isn’t it, Dancing Cloud? You have come home to us.”
Her reaction to the sounds that she had heard at the far edge of the village caused everyone else to respond and see what had caused Susan Sweet Bird’s sudden anxiousness. Gasps wafted through the crowd when they caught their first sight of Dancing Cloud.
Then everyone broke into a run. Two women went to Susan Sweet Bird and gently led her onward toward her nephew.
“It is Dancing Cloud,” they told Susan Sweet Bird. “He is home.”
Susan Sweet Bird listened again, her senses telling her that three horses were arriving instead of one. “Who is with my nephew?” she asked the women.
“A white woman and it seems that Chief Dancing Cloud carries a child in his arms,” one of them replied.
“A white woman and a . . . baby . . . child?” Susan Sweet Bird said, her voice drawn. “Does it appear to be a child that could belong to my nephew . . . and . . . the white woman?”
“The child appears to be nine or ten winters of age,” one of them told her back.
Susan Sweet Bird sucked in a breath of relief. “That is good,” she murmured. “I did not think my nephew would have brought home a white wife and child.”
“The child is not white from what I can tell from this distance,” one of the other women said, stretching her neck to get a better look as Dancing Cloud still approached on his horse. “It is a young man and he is as copper-skinned as you and I.”
“Truly?” Susan Sweet Bird said, then frowned. “Then who is the woman?”
There was a strained silence. Susan Sweet Bird stopped when she realized that the horses were near enough for her to wait for Dancing Cloud to dismount and come to her.
When strong arms suddenly enveloped her, she clung to Dancing Cloud and sobbed out his father’s name. “I-go-no-tli, is gone. My brother is gone.”
“Ii, yes, my e-do-da is gone from this earth,” Dancing Cloud said, caressing her back through her buckskin dress. “But never gone from the a-qua-do-no-do, heart. His spirit is here even now as my arms and voice give you comfort. I
n part, I am my e-do-da, father.”
Susan Sweet Bird leaned away from him and placed her hands on each side of his face. “You speak and act as if you knew of your father’s passing before I told you,” she said softly. “How is it that you knew? We sent no messenger to tell you. Saint Louis is far from our mountains. We knew you would return soon to us to hear of your father’s passing.”
“In a vision I saw my father in the spirit world,” Dancing Cloud began explaining, drawing a quiet gasp deeply from within Susan Sweet Bird’s soul.
Touched deeply by Dancing Cloud’s gentleness with his aunt, Lauralee placed a hand over her mouth and stifled a sob. Time and time again she realized just how lucky she was to be loved by this man!
Chapter 27
The night bird song and the stars above,
Told many a touching story.
—MRS. CRAWFORD
Two weeks had passed. Lauralee had tried to accept Dancing Cloud’s absence as he mourned his father’s death. The time of mourning with his people had passed. He now mourned alone somewhere in the mountains, the Great Spirit his only companion.
Lauralee had also tried to accept that Brian Brave Walker had not grown close to her. Although she had nursed him back to health, he still wouldn’t talk to her.
Susan Sweet Bird had her mourning behind her and had been assigned to keep Lauralee company in Dancing Cloud’s absence.
In turn, Brian Brave Walker had chosen Susan Sweet Bird with whom to ally himself while Dancing Cloud was elsewhere.
Each day, Lauralee had sat back and achingly watched Brian Brave Walker and Susan Sweet Bird laugh and talk beside the fire in Dancing Cloud’s cabin.
Yet there was one thing that she was at least thankful for. Susan Sweet Bird had grown close to her. She treated Lauralee like a daughter.
But Lauralee had to wonder if that was because Susan Sweet Bird could not see the color of her skin.
If she could, would that make a difference? Lauralee wondered.
She paused from her sewing to gaze once again at Susan Sweet Bird. Dancing Cloud’s aunt was telling Brian Brave Walker a story as they sat close to each other on the floor on a buffalo robe in front of the fireplace.
Her gaze moving slowly over Susan Sweet Bird, Lauralee admired her. She was a stately woman. Her face was long and narrow, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and slanting from her lips revealing that she was no longer young. Contrasting vividly against her copper face, her hair, from which she had clipped only the very tips during her mourning, was as white as snow.
Lauralee could tell that Susan Sweet Bird always took much pains with her hair. As today, it was combed smooth and close, then folded into a club at the back of the head. It was tied very tight with a piece of dried eel skin, which was said to make the hair grow long. She wore the traditional dress of fringed buckskin and an ancient collar of wampum, which were beads cut out of clam shells.
Still being left out of the conversation, Lauralee sighed heavily, her shoulders bending and giving in to her feelings. She had finally stopped trying to get Brian Brave Walker to include her in his conversations.
Even when Susan Sweet Bird tried to draw her into the happy times, Lauralee shook her head and resumed her sewing, for she could see in the boy’s eyes that he did not wish for her to.
As now. Lauralee tried to position herself more comfortably in the overstuffed chair as she pushed her needle through the deer leather, to make her moccasins more beautiful. Susan Sweet Bird had taught her how to make the moccasins. Lauralee had cut them from newly cured deer leather with a hook knife. When finished, she had soaked the moccasins in water, and while wet, she had put them on her feet.
As instructed by Susan Sweet Bird, Lauralee had walked the moccasins dry until they fitted her, soft and giving and light as air. She smiled at her accomplishment.
She paused again from her sewing and looked around the cabin. She had wanted to feel a part of Dancing Cloud’s life. She had wanted to be able to look at his cabin and everything in it and feel all warm inside by knowing that she shared it with him.
But because he had been in mourning these past two weeks and had not shared anything at all with her, she felt nothing but a keen loneliness.
She glanced over at Brian Brave Walker again. She had hoped that his presence would help lift her loneliness. But his ignoring her had made her feel even more alone, more sad.
She had hoped for more here, in Dancing Cloud’s world.
Lauralee turned her eyes from the boy. Her gaze took in everything around her. The cabin was brightened inside by rugs woven from hemp, then painted in gay colors with bird, animal, and flower motifs. There were buffalo hide chests and cane seats and baskets of every size and shape in the room.
She looked up at the small loft overhead. It had originally been built for storage, but had only recently been renovated to be used as Lauralee’s and Dancing Cloud’s private bedroom. Dancing Cloud had carried his bedstead to the loft along with blankets, warm animal pelts, and quilts, and a feather mattress in which she had sank deeply the first night she had slept on it.
One of Dancing Cloud’s friends had brought a bed to the cabin for Brian Brave Walker as a special gift for the young brave. It had been placed along a far wall beneath the loft. Comfortable blankets and pelts were spread atop it.
Her gaze shifted. On the end wall of the cabin opposite the wall where Brian Brave Walker’s bed sat, a massive stone fireplace was set into a wall of sweet smelling logs, firelight gilding all within.
The furniture in the room was simple and handmade except for the one overstuffed chair on which Lauralee sat this early afternoon. Dancing Cloud had told her that this had been bought for his mother long ago. Now that his mother and father had passed on to the other side, the chair was now Lauralee’s.
She moved her eyes more quickly over the rest of the belongings. An iron pot hung over the fire, in which bubbled a rabbit stew that she had prepared early in the morning.
A small wooden table and three chairs sat near one wall, where near it hung shelves that held a bake kettle, coffeepot and mill, a few cups, knives and spoons.
The door of the Cherokee log cabin was always open except at night and on colder days of winter. There were no windows, the open door furnishing the only means by which light was admitted to the interior.
Kerosene lamps sat on the kitchen table and on a small table beside the overstuffed chair. They emitted soft, warm light throughout the cabin.
Lauralee had learned that the Cherokee people were remarkably self-sufficient. What little they needed from the outside world, they traded for at the nearby trading post on the Soho River. The medicinal herbs found in the mountains, along with the ginseng and honey they gathered, were in demand at the trading post, allowing them to purchase what they needed.
Everything else, they grew themselves in the fields and orchards surrounding the village. And, of course, the woods and rivers provided meat and fish. While the men hunted, the women prepared beans or corn and baked bread. Susan Sweet Bird had told Lauralee that a favorite autumn dish was chestnut bread.
Lauralee was suddenly drawn from her reverie as Dancing Cloud came into the cabin, his chest wet from a swim in the river, his wet buckskin breeches hugging his legs like a second skin.
He slung his sleek, wet hair back from his shoulders as he knelt onto a knee before Lauralee. He took her hands within his, his dark eyes smiling into hers.
“It is over,” he said thickly. “My outward mourning is now behind me. Inside I shall forever mourn the parting of both my mother and father. But I am relieved of my burden of mourning on this earth now when I know that my father’s spirit path has led him at long last to join my mother, forever. Their spirits at this moment are standing hand in hand smiling down at us, my o-ge-ye. Let us now move forward with our own lives.”
So relieved, so jubilant, over knowing that finally she was going to be able to be with Dancing Cloud, Lauralee wrenched her hands from his an
d drifted into his arms.
“I have missed you so,” she murmured, oblivious of eyes on her as Brian Brave Walker glared at her. “Please tell me I was not selfish, darling, for wanting so badly to be with you. I . . . I . . . have been so lonely these past two weeks.”
“It is not selfishness that causes such despair inside your heart,” Dancing Cloud said, hugging her to him. “You were thrust into a different world so quickly and I was not there to help you in your adjustment. I wish it could have been different.”
He looked over her shoulder at Brian Brave Walker. His insides recoiled to see such a loathing in the young brave’s eyes as he gazed at Lauralee. Dancing Cloud realized now that the young brave had not adjusted well, either.
Dancing Cloud knew that he had a double duty now to make things right for his woman who he wished soon to make his wife, and for this boy he wished to make his son.
He wanted them to be family.
Yet he knew that he must first search and delve into this child’s background to see where he had come from, and from whose lives. He had only speculation to go on. He had to believe that he had been orphaned recently by some tragic incident. Surely the boy had blocked it out of his memory. Why else would he not talk about it?
But realizing that Lauralee should be his prime concern at this moment, he held her away from him and wiped tears from her eyes with the flesh of his thumbs. “Shall we walk and talk?” he said, glad to see the suggestion bring a smile on her lovely face.
“Ii, yes, let’s,” Lauralee said, rising and taking his hand, to leave.
A sudden commotion outside the cabin drew them apart. Dancing Cloud went to the door and stepped outside. Lauralee’s heart beat loudly as she listened to the muted conversation. She crept closer to the door to try and listen better.
She jumped with alarm when Dancing Cloud came back in the cabin in haste. Her insides cried out, “No!” when he gave her an apologetic look as he gazed down at her. She knew without him even telling her that he had to leave again!
Wild Abandon Page 26
