Climb the Highest Mountain (13 page)

Zeke frowned at her remark about the women having no choice. Was that how she had felt all these years? Was she wishing to be back East? He was again overwhelmed with guilt about her own ruthless treatment many months ago. Had that made her finally wish she had never agreed to stay in Colorado with a half-breed Indian?

“Right now I make no promises, Mother,” Wolf’s Blood told her sadly.

She pressed her lips tightly together and said nothing more, but simply turned and walked briskly into her own bedroom. Wolf’s Blood turned to his father, a helpless look on his face.

“Don’t worry about it, son. I’ll talk to her. You get some rest.” He rose and walked around the table. Their
eyes held for a moment, and then they embraced. “You can understand how she feels, son.”

The boy nodded and pulled away. His watery eyes met his father’s. “I cannot help how I feel, Father. Surely she knows I would not bring harm to women and children if I can help it. I remember the day she was taken from here, how I felt trying to keep those men from touching my mother. She sacrificed herself that day so they would not harm her children. She let them take her, knowing what they would do to her. My mother is the finest woman I know. I do not like making her unhappy, but she never seems to be able to accept that I am a man. An Indian woman would never talk to her son in such a way, and when she scolds me it makes me angry and makes me say things I do not mean.”

Zeke smiled sadly. “She does have a way of saying her piece. In this case she has damned good reason to say it, after what she’s been through.” He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You should weigh it heavily in your mind, Wolf’s Blood. And when you ride with the Sioux and the northern Cheyenne, don’t be afraid to do what you know is right in your heart. Get your vengeance in the right way. That’s all she’s telling you.”

The boy nodded. “I am going out to the stables, Father. I want to … want to see all the horses once more, walk through the buildings. I will probably sleep out there tonight. Then if you and mother have words about me, I won’t hear them.” He swallowed. “I will miss the ranch, Father, the horses, my brothers and sisters, most of all you and Mother. Perhaps I will even come back someday. I cannot say now.”

Zeke took his hand from the boy’s shoulder and nodded. “I know.” He sighed. “Give our love to Swift
Arrow. And if you make it back down here, try to get him to come with you. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen my brother. Too long.”

“I will tell him.” The boy picked up his heavy buckskin jacket lined with sheep’s wool and put it on. “I will go out now. I must get some things ready for my trip.”

He stood there awkwardly for a moment, not knowing what else to say. How many ways did a son tell his father he loved him? How many ways were there to say good-bye. He turned away and went through the door, and Zeke looked at the doorway to the bedroom where his wife was. There were times when he didn’t know what to do with Abbie’s stubborn streak, and this was one of them. His big frame ambled through the curtained doorway and he walked through to see her already in her flannel gown, sitting up and reading her Bible by the dim lamplight. She looked up at him, her eyes unreadable.

“The boy only answered you that way because you made him feel like a child,” he told her. “You have to let go of him, Abbie.”

She closed her Bible and looked away. “That’s the hardest thing for a mother to do,” she answered quietly. “I guess what makes me angry with him is that he never allowed me the privilege of babying him and cuddling him, even when he was small. He’s run wild ever since he was able to stand up and walk.”

“I suppose much of that is my fault,” Zeke answered, coming around to the other side of the bed. “And I don’t doubt you blame me for it.”

She watched him lovingly. “Oh, Zeke, that isn’t so. I love the People, and when he was little we lived among them. I wanted to let him be Cheyenne because it seemed he was born to it from the first day he breathed
life. We both let him be what came naturally. But now it’s suddenly difficult for me to accept it.”

He pulled off his shirt. “They’ll all be different, Abbie, and once they’re grown we have to let go of them and let them be what they will. There’ll be no stopping them, and if and when they go away, it’s better they at least leave on good terms and know that they are loved simply for what they are.” He turned to face her, an alarming agony in his eyes. “You told him those women aren’t out here by choice, that they’re here because their men want to be here. Is that how you’ve felt all these years? I’d take you back East in a minute, Abbie, if that is what you want, in spite of how much I would hate it. I’d do it and I’d be able to handle it. I never meant to make you feel forced to stay here. You know how guilty I’ve felt all these years for marrying you and subjecting you to life in a wild land. But I’ve loved you for understanding why I needed to be out here with my people. Now I don’t know what’s going to happen to them. They might be shipped hundreds of miles from here. It’s all different, and if you want to go home to Tennessee before you’re old, I’ll take you.”

Her eyes teared and she reached out and touched his face. “When I married you, Zeke, I was already out here, you were already out here. I knew you belonged here and I married you anyway. When I spoke of those other women, I only meant their husbands married them first and then came west, giving them no choice. I had plenty of choices before I married you, and you did your best to discourage me. I married you because I wanted the scout Cheyenne Zeke for my own, and I knew that no matter where we lived I could be happy as long as I was with Zeke. Don’t put more into my words than what was there, Zeke. All these years
you’ve carried an unnecessary burden of guilt for marrying me. I wanted to be Zeke Monroe’s woman no matter what I had to do to make that happen. My happiness depends on your happiness, and you’d never be happy back in Tennessee. That’s gone now. I deserted that life years ago. Sometimes I wonder if I ever really lived there. It’s as though that Abbie never even existed.” She leaned back on her pillow and watched him. “And you know how I love the People, know it hurts my heart to see what is happening. I want very much to stay here, to do what I can to help them whatever that might be. Don’t let any of this come between us, Zeke. I’ve seen a strange resignation in you ever since Sand Creek and it frightens me.”

He sighed and leaned over her. “I just… sometimes I can’t get over the guilt of being responsible for your hardships.”

“Do you call lying beneath the man I love a hardship? Is living in this cozy cabin with seven healthy, lovely children a hardship? The only real hardship in life, Zeke, is to not be loved, to have no one who cares. I have eight wonderful people who care, and it’s the same for you.” She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry for getting so upset. I guess it was just my roundabout way of trying to get Wolf’s Blood to stay, my way of covering the hurt of his leaving. I wanted him to hurt too, and that’s no way for a mother to be. I don’t know what got into me. Perhaps I should go out and talk to him.”

“No. You gave him food for thought. Let him weigh it in his mind. He should. You can talk to him in the morning.” He leaned down and kissed her tenderly. “Thank you, Abbie, just for being my Abbie girl.”

She reached around his neck and he pulled her close, pulling the covers over them against the cold. “Try to sleep,” he told her, holding her firmly and caressing her
hair. “We have to be strong in the morning. Our son is truly leaving us for the first time.”

He lay his head on the pillow beside her, and then she felt him tremble slightly. He made an odd choking sound. “My God, Abbie, I’ll miss him so much!” he groaned.

Chapter Eight

Abbie dropped the still warm biscuits into a small burlap bag and turned to put it into her son’s parfleche, along with the potatoes and carrots she had already put inside, and the leather pouch of pemmican and some jerked meat. It was only five o’clock in the morning and the house was quiet as she prepared food for her wayward son. There was a light tapping at the door, and she went to open it, letting in Wolf’s Blood. He stood there in his grandest Indian regalia, buckskins and winter moccasins. Beads and ornaments were tied into his long, black hair. The sight of him quickened Abbie’s heart, for at that very moment he looked as striking as his father had the first day she’d set eyes on him.

Their eyes held briefly and then she stepped aside, closing the door after he came inside. She folded her arms and looked him up and down, her son, as tall and broad as his own father, and as handsome. “My, you look grand,” she told him with a soft smile.

He frowned and studied her. She was supposed to be angry with him. “I do?”

She walked to his parfleche. “You make me long for my younger days. You’re a replica of young Zeke
Monroe, you know. I made you some fresh biscuits, Wolf’s Blood. I hope you appreciate it. I was up at three-thirty kneading the dough and getting it ready. And I packed you some pemmican and some jerked meat and a few raw vegetables. I’ll get Zeke up. He wants to pick out a couple of the better Appaloosas for you take along as a gift for Swift Arrow.”

He watched her finish filling the parfleche. “You are not angry with me?”

She stopped and met his eyes. “You’re my son. I’ll not have you go away with hard feelings. What if you never came back?” She blinked back tears and glanced at the parfleche she had beaded for him herself. “Besides, I only said those things because I was desperate to find a way to make you stay. Still, I gave you some things to think about, and when the time comes I’m sure you’ll do the right thing, just as Zeke always does. You are your father’s son, which means you are a good boy … man, I should say.” She met his eyes again. “I will trust in that, Wolf’s Blood. You’re a fine young man, a fine young Indian man. I understand you and I love you, and I want you to take my love with you when you go, not my anger.” She wiped her hands on her apron almost nervously. “I only ask … I know you aren’t one to express affection … but I’ll not let you leave without… without holding you once in my arms.” She looked at him again. “Do you think you can satisfy this white woman’s needs just once before you run away?”

He stepped around the table, putting his hands on her shoulders. “I am not running away, Mother. I am trying to know myself.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “Come back, Wolf’s Blood, if not for my sake then for your father’s. He needs you, in more ways than you know. A little bit of him will die when you leave.”

Their eyes held and then he embraced her and she cried quietly against his chest. “I will come back, Mother. I don’t know when, but I will come back. It is the same for me. I love my father. But I must go away for a while. I must learn to be strong without him.”

She clung to him tightly, wondering if she herself was strong enough to survive without Zeke. She had been able to do so several times when he’d been forced to be away, but she’d known he would come back to her. What if he didn’t? What would she do if Zeke Monroe no longer breathed life?

“Don’t stay away forever,” she whispered to her son, a note of urgency in her voice. “When your father is gone and you are here, it’s as though he’s here too. You’re so much like him, Wolf’s Blood.” She leaned back and looked up at him, her arms still about his waist and tears on her cheeks. “Every time I look at you, I remember that awful day when Dancing Moon came after me with a knife and you tried to defend me with your lance. You were so small, but you were already a warrior in your heart. I guess I knew then that you would one day ride with Swift Arrow and the others.”

He smiled down at her. “You saved my life that day, Mother. That wicked woman was going to kill me after she took that lance away from me. If you had not killed her yourself, I would be dead. You are a warrior woman and you do not even know it.”

“That was necessary,” she said, sobering. “I would kill for any of my children, and I would die for them if necessary … so would your father.”

He kissed her forehead. “And I would kill for you and father both,” he replied.

Zeke came through the bedroom door then, wearing only his buckskin pants and still shirtless. He stopped and eyed his son and wife. “You two are on
speaking terms I see,” he stated.

Wolf’s Blood turned and walked to the man, his arm around his mother’s waist. Zeke gave his son a hard, long look. It was as though he were looking at himself twenty years earlier. “You look damned good, Wolf’s Blood. You’ll make a good impression when you ride into the Sioux camps. And when they see how well you can use the knife and lance, they’ll welcome you readily enough.”

“I will never use the knife as well as my father,” the boy answered. “Many people speak of Cheyenne Zeke and his big knife. And there are many other ways I will not be as good as my father,” he added. “I can only try.”

He put out his hand and Zeke grasped it, holding tightly to the boy’s wrist. Then Wolf’s Blood let go of his mother and the two men embraced. “Goddamn, I’ll miss you Wolf’s Blood,” Zeke said quietly to the boy. “But you aren’t a little boy anymore and I can’t hold on to you forever. Go your own way, son. But come back to us now and then.” He thought about another day, that day long ago when he had left his own home back in Tennessee. He didn’t care to think about how many years ago that had been.

Wolf’s Blood pulled away then and nodded. “I will come back.” He put on a smile and fought an urge to cry. “Mother said you wanted me to take two horses to Swift Arrow.”

Zeke nodded. “Let me get a shirt on and a jacket. We’ll go pick them out.” He went back into the bedroom and Abbie got busy with breakfast as the rest of the children began to sleepily descend from the loft. From then on everything was rush and bedlam—breakfast and packing and tears and good-byes. Margaret cried the most. She was the closest to her brother and had always looked to him for protection whenever Zeke was gone. She and Wolf’s Blood had
the keenest memories of their early life among the Cheyenne, before Zeke and Abbie were settled on the ranch, when the Cheyenne had roamed freely, when life was happier, and when they sometimes went with the Cheyenne on the summer hunts. That was over now. There had been the Laramie Treaty of 1851, then the Treaty of Fort Wise in 1861. Each had given the Cheyenne less and less room to move around. Now a treaty that would take them out of Colorado altogether was in the making, and Sand Creek had shown them what would happen to those who did not obey. But there were a few, like Wolf’s Blood, who would hang on to the bitter end.

Too soon, Wolf’s Blood was standing beside his mount. Again he went around the circle of his family, beginning with his Uncle Lance and then the smallest child, Jason. He embraced Margaret longer than the others, telling her to be a proud Cheyenne. Then came the hardest part, saying good-bye one last time to his mother and father. He hugged Abbie for a long time, having to practically force her to let go of him finally. His father he did not embrace. It would be too difficult. They grasped hands and said everything with their eyes, unable to speak. Wolf’s Blood turned then and mounted his horse with ease, taking two ropes in hand to lead the extra horses. Wolf had been prancing nervously in circles. He sensed a new adventure coming and was happy to be off, running across the land with his master. This would be much better than sitting inside a house. This was freedom, excitement!

Wolf’s Blood scanned the whole brood with tear-filled eyes. “I love you all,” he told them. Then he looked at his father and mother. “Not a night will go by that you are not in my thoughts and prayers. Both of you have taught me strength and independence. If I can be nearly as wise, as strong, and as skilled as you, I shall
be satisfied. Perhaps one day I can learn to love in the way that you love one another. If I do, I will be a lucky man.” He held his father’s eyes.
“Nemehotatse.”

“Nemehotatse, Nahahan,”
Zeke replied. He crossed his arms in front of him, his right wrist across his heart, his left wrist atop the right wrist. He pushed against his chest, giving the Cheyenne hand sign for love.

Wolf’s Blood turned his horse then.
“Hai! Hai!”
he shouted, kicking the animal’s sides and taking off at a gallop. If it was to be done, it must be done quickly.

Zeke stepped away from the others, watching the boy slowly disappear over a distant hill. A soft morning wind blew his long black hair about his face and shoulders. When he’d been young and free and wild, he had ridden with the Cheyenne, raided enemy camps, gone on the buffalo hunts, and shared warm tipi fires in the winters. Now his Cheyenne mother and stepfather were dead, as were two of his Cheyenne brothers. Perhaps some day the entire race would be gone. If Wolf’s Blood could ride relatively free for the few years left to the Indian, then he would let the boy go. He heard a war whoop in the distance and grinned, but his jaw quickly flexed in buried sorrow. Abbie watched him, this man who was as elusive as the wind at times, whose son was just the same. She stepped closer and he turned and embraced her.

“Let’s walk for a while, Abbie girl,” he told her softly.

Several days later the letter came from Bonnie Lewis. “Dan is back at Fort Laramie!” Abbie told Zeke as she scanned the letter. “He’s doing all right, and Bonnie is there teaching again.” She read further and her face clouded. “Bonnie’s husband was killed by
Indians, Zeke, while she was back East. That’s terrible! Poor Bonnie!”

She was standing outside beside her husband, who had been cutting wood while she read the letter. Zeke slammed an ax into a log and came to stand beside her. “Rodney Lewis is dead?”

She looked up at him. Both of them knew Bonnie Lewis had secretly loved Zeke for years, ever since he’d rescued her from outlaws who dealt in the buying and selling of white women. Zeke had risked his life to save Bonnie; then he had returned her to her missionary father in Santa Fe. In doing so, he had made an impression on Bonnie Lewis that she had never forgotten. She had never known a man like Zeke Monroe in her sheltered, timid life, and his brawny power and brave skills had overwhelmed her. But there had been nothing between them; Zeke Monroe already had been married to Abbie. It was a one-sided love that could not be requited, and Bonnie Lewis had gone on to marry her preacher husband, a marriage planned for years. She found some consolation later when Zeke and Abbie brought their crippled nephew to her and asked if she would care for the boy.

“Joshua is doing well,” Abbie went on, returning to the letter. She sighed deeply. “I’m glad now that she has the boy, Zeke. She would be so lonely without him.” Her eyes sought his and they shared a look of understanding.

“I’m glad, too,” Zeke told her. “It’s too bad about her husband. I don’t think they had much of a marriage, but he was a dedicated man who stuck to his beliefs. Apparently he died for them. I just hope Bonnie stays close to the fort. These are bad times, Abbie. You have to be careful too. Some of the Cheyenne you once called friend may not consider you a friend any longer.
I hate to say it, but the anger and hatred is so deep that you shouldn’t be too ready to trust the younger ones who don’t know you.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “It breaks my heart to think of it, but you’re probably right.” She scanned the letter again. “Oh, Zeke, Emily is in St. Louis again and won’t come west. Poor Dan. I thought they had straightened all that out.”

Zeke’s face darkened. “I ought to go to St. Louis and kick her ass all the way to Fort Laramie!” he mumbled, going back to retrieve his ax. “I risked my life and you went through hell while I was off in that damned war, just to find Dan … and why? Because she came sobbing to us about how much she loved him and how worried she was about him. Then she pulls that trick again, staying in St. Louis. She’s spoiled!”

“Zeke, don’t talk that way about your brother’s wife. Besides, once you knew about Dan you’d have gone to find him without Emily asking you to do so.”

He chopped at more wood. “Well, the fact remains I wouldn’t have known about it if she hadn’t come crying to us. I don’t know how she can treat Dan that way. He’s a good man, a dedicated husband and soldier, and he’s crazy about her. Why, I’ll never know, but he is. It’s mean of her to stay in St. Louis. He needs her now more than ever.” He chopped angrily then, slicing off a piece of fresh cottonwood. “If I were Dan I’d go to St. Louis and drag her back by the hair of the head!”

He slammed the ax down again, and Abbie watched with a smile on her face and a pleasant stirring deep inside. “You would, would you?”

He stopped and looked over at her, then flashed his handsome grin. “I would.” His eyes moved over her body that was shrouded by a heavy animal-skin jacket. “No woman of mine would get away with that. Fact is,
I’d never have married such a creature in the first place. Trouble is, I got a woman that’s almost more than I can handle. You go killing any more big bucks and you’ll make me look bad.”

She laughed lightly and watched the ax come down hard, noted the strength of the powerful arms that held it. “That will be the day, my husband.” She returned to the letter. “Bonnie and Dan want us to write back. They heard about Sand Creek and are worried about us. I’ll go start a letter right now and you can ride with Jeremy to Fort Lyon and find someone to take it north.”

“Be sure to tell them about Wolf’s Blood. Tell Dan to see what he can find out about the boy, whether he got there all right and all. Tell him to have his scouts keep an eye out and give Dan word whenever they see Wolf’s Blood so he can let us know how the boy is.”

Abbie’s smile faded and their eyes held. “I’ll tell him.”

He nodded and frowned. “You know, it’s too bad Dan is married to that slip of a woman. If he were free, he’d be smart to go after Bonnie. She’ll be needing a husband now. They’d be good together. If that brother of mine had had any sense, he’d have married a woman like her in the first place.”