Winter Rain (42 page)

“Do not tell me, Shell Woman,” he interrupted. “I do not believe it will happen.”

She sensed the raw, open nerve she had dragged a fingernail across and sought to talk of something else. “Where do you go from here?”

“We will move east, then north once more. Back to the Paha Sapa, the black-timbered hills—where we can worship at Bear Butte, praying for strength before the coming of the shortgrass time.”

“Before the coming of another raiding season.”

“Yes.”

How well she knew this cycle of the seasons of war. “From time to time here at this Laramie fort, I see white men coming through, marching north to the black-timbered hills.”

“More soldiers?”

“No. These are not the army. Just white men with their horses and supplies and tools. What do you think they are looking for in that land north of here?”

He shrugged, rustling his one rattail warrior braid. “I do not know what they are looking for, Shell Woman. I only know what the white man will find if he trespasses in those sacred hills. For a long, long time that has been medicine ground to both the Lakota and the Shahiyena. A white man would be very foolish indeed to trespass on that sacred land. If they are stupid enough to come into our hunting and medicine grounds, they will find only death.”

“Perhaps you only fight the inevitable.” And as she said it, Shell Woman was sorry, watching the gray cloud cross the warrior’s face, his brow knitting in a deep furrow as he glared at the dead fire pit.

Then with even, thoughtful words, Porcupine asked, “Do you speak those words as a Shahiyena, a mother to a brave warrior? Or do you say that as the wife of a white man, one who first leads the pony soldiers to attack our villages and the next day buries the body of his son as only a Shahiyena father would do?”

With surprise she looked up, staring evenly at him. “You know what Rising Fire did to protect the body of his son?”

“I saw everything from the hills overlooking the ruin of Tall Bull’s camp, where your husband protected his son’s body from the Shaved-Heads who wanted a brave warrior’s scalp. I followed, to watch him bury Bull in the crevice of a great ledge that faces the rising sun.”

“Above the river that will always flow at his feet.”

“Yes. I am sure he told you that Bull is safe for all time to come.”

She nodded. “He told me. And brought me the pony you gave him as a gift for me.”

Porcupine tilted his head, eyes narrowing as he asked, “A pony I gave him for you?”

The first teasing tickle of confusion arose in her. “You did not have a pony brought to the mother of High-Backed Bull?”

He swallowed and straightened, his mouth a thin, grim line on his otherwise impassive face. “May I see this pony I sent you?”

“If you did not send the gift for my grieving, then why—”

“Will you show me this pony?” he interrupted.

“It has been many winters, Porcupine. The pony—”

“It lives?”

“Yes,” she answered finally.

“Take me to see it. Now,” he directed, standing in the deepening darkness of that cold, shadowy lodge.

Without saying another word. Shell Woman dragged up a blanket and wrapped it about herself, lashing at the waist with a wide belt studded with many brass tacks. The cold shocked her as she stepped from the lodge. How quickly the warmth left the earth when the sky cleared the day following a terrible storm. The snow lay trampled in most every direction she looked, except along the narrow
trail leading down to the riverbank itself. Here only a few feet had troubled the surface of the deep, wind-driven snow. She listened to his deep, rhythmic breathing as he followed her into the bare cottonwoods, down to the small corral where some of the Brule kept their special breeding stock separated from the herds allowed to pasture in the river bottoms.

It was there she had built her own small pen for the three ponies: the young gelding that pulled everything she owned on her travois, the old mare she rode, and the present from Porcupine that autumn day long ago, when she learned she was no more the mother of a warrior son.

The three animals had fared the blizzard well enough. In the beginning hours of the storm, as the wind began to rise with the icy bite of snow in the air, Shell Woman took the ponies cottonwood branches and bark shavings to eat, not knowing how long the sky would remain tormented. Now she was relieved to find them still there, a bit cramped against one side of the pole corral for the tall snowdrift that iced over a good half of their pen.

“It is the gray one?” Porcupine asked.

“No,” and she pointed.

“The red one?”

Shell Woman nodded, watching him approach the pole corral and climb through onto the snow trampled by those unshod hooves. The old mare came up to nuzzle against the warrior. He stroked her long gray muzzle, then sidled around her. The gray gelding bobbed its head, eyes widening as the man approached, but stood its ground, scenting the warrior. He patted its neck, then ran a hand down the length of its spine, crossing behind it for the corner of the corral.

“Yes, I remember this pony,” he told her quietly as he approached the strawberry roan.

“It is a beautiful animal, Porcupine. I thank you for
remembering the mother of High-Backed Bull in such a way. My son would be proud to own such a pony.”

At first the roan wanted to have nothing to do with the warrior, trotting first this way, then that, moving along the short corral fence walls. Finally Porcupine reached inside his woollen capote and took something out. Holding it aloft and speaking soothingly to the pony at the same time, he gradually moved closer and closer.

She could not tell what it was at first, until the warrior finally reached the pony, looped an arm over its short neck, and stroked its mane. Then she recognized what Porcupine held in his hand—the horse medicine. A small skin bundle, trimmed with red wool, two small hawk’s feathers strung from the drawstring at the top.

High-Backed Bull’s horse medicine.

Her hands gripped the top pole of the pen to keep from falling. “Where did you get my son’s horse bundle?”

“From his pony.”

“The pony his father killed at the entrance to Bull’s resting place?”

He nodded, still stroking under the jaw of the pony, then tied the bundle into the roan’s mane before walking back across the trampled snow to stand near her, on the inside of the corral.

“Shell Woman,” he began, laying a hand atop one of hers, “this pony was not mine to give.”

Already her eyes had filled with tears from the cruel slash of the wind as the light died behind the mountains far to the west and twilight failed in this cottonwood grove beside the river. But more than the sting of the wind, she sensed the sting of something else rising within her.

Porcupine continued. “My friend’s father buried his son as only a Shahiyena father could treat his warrior son.”

“You told me. But why did you follow him?”

“I followed, afraid of what a white man might do to the body of my best friend.” He bowed his head. “Soon I
was sorry that I had doubted the father of High-Backed Bull.”

“This is why you took the horse medicine from the pony Rising Fire killed by our son’s resting place?”

“Yes. And I kept it all these years, wanting to bring it to you—but not knowing what to say to you.”

“You have been here many times since my son was killed. And still you did not give it to me—even when Pipe Woman took her things and rode off to the north with you!” The anger and sadness rumbled through her belly.

With a wag of his head Porcupine answered, “Only because I selfishly wanted to keep Bull with me—not wanting to give him back to you. Not just yet. If I kept something special of him—something of his love for ponies and the special way the animals loved him back—then maybe I could in some way keep Bull alive.”

“If you remember him, he will always be alive in your heart.”

“Yes, Shell Woman.” He stared off into the darkening sky to the east. Perhaps conjuring up those places whence the enemy came. “Bull died hating the white man.”

“No, Porcupine. My son died only because he hated the white man in himself.”

He seemed to contemplate on that, then bent and came through the corral poles to stand beside her. “Perhaps you are right. Many times Bull told me he would rather die than father any children who would carry the white man’s blood in his veins. He vowed he would never marry, never have a child of his own. To do so, he said, would be to stop cursing the man who was his father. To have his own child would be to accept his own legacy.”

“Then, tell me—is it true you did not send the pony to me with my husband?”

He shook his head and looked directly at the woman beside the pole corral in the growing darkness.

“No.”

“But it is one of your ponies, is it not?”

“No, Shell Woman. It belonged to High-Backed Bull.”

“I don’t … understand. The one Rising Fire says he killed beside the resting place—”

“Was a favorite of your son’s.”

She gazed at the strawberry roan, its thick winter coat a dark umber against the snowy ground and white-shawled tree branches illuminated with the dim starshine come of a winter evening.

“And this red one … if not yours—why did my husband bring it to the mother of High-Backed Bull?”

“This one,” Porcupine explained softly, “he is the animal Bull always rode into battle against the white man.”

T
O SOME THIS
was the Moon of Popping Trees. To those Lakota and Cheyenne who stalked the northern plains.

But down here in the panhandle country where the southern tribes had for generations followed the migrations of the buffalo, Jonah figured they would call it something on the order of the freeze-up moon. Lord, was it cold. And it didn’t take a farmer to know a brutal winter always made for one miserable summer. Jonah was too frozen, and summer was still too far away for him really to dread July and August on the southern plains, anyway.

Last summer had grown old as the two horsemen marched north from Fort Concho, stopping to ask for any fragment of news at Fort Griffin on the Brazos. The most he could muster of any word was that up at the Fort Sill Agency, where some of the Comanche were watched, might be a place a man could start. Stories always ran free
about the Comanche, stories that the army had more reports of white children among the wild tribes than you could shake a stick at. Stories, that is. Lots of goddamned stories.

Autumn was seeping down the central plains, coming in its relentless crawl to mark the end of another season, working its way across the Arkansas and Cimarron, on over the Canadian and then to the Red River by the time they heaved away from Fort Richardson and headed north to Indian Territory carrying Colonel Ranald Mackenzie’s handwritten pass for Two Sleep.

“It wouldn’t do for an Indian to be caught wandering around off his reservation in this part of the country,” the commanding officer of the Fourth U.S. Cavalry had said to Hook. “A Shoshone at that.”

“But this ain’t Snake country, Colonel.”

Mackenzie’s brow had wrinkled. “To most folks in Texas, Mr. Hook—an Injun is an Injun. And if an Injun isn’t on his reservation … he’s fair game. Take my pass for your friend here, with my hope that it will serve you well. I commend you to your good sense, and may God bless your search. Watch your backtrail.”

The hardwoods had been illuminated with autumn’s fire by the time Jonah and Two Sleep crossed the Red River into Indian Territory. That first night back in that country Jonah spoke of tracking the Mormons into the land of the Creek.

“Sixty-six was it?” Hook asked himself thoughtfully. “Or was it sixty-seven?” He had wagged his head. “The Creeks were a good people—farmers, raised some horses too. I had my cousin at my side. Artus.”

For a long time he was deep in himself, mucking around in the memories of those first bygone days spent searching for family, on the trail of blood kin. Better it was to have blood kin beside you when you set upon that trail.

Cousin Artus, who came home to Missouri from the
war to find his mother already in the grave while he was off fighting Yankees. Soon to put his father in the ground beside her final resting place. When Jonah showed up to discover his family took and his place gone to ruin—why, it became clear neither of them had anything better than to leave behind all their loss and say farewell to that Missouri valley.

Following the recollections of old man Boatwright, the one the Mormons had tortured, Jonah and Artus tramped west into the land of the Creek before Usher’s trail went cold. They moseyed north out of Indian Territory and found work supplying buffalo for the railroad crews laying ties and track along the Smoky Hill in Kansas. When Jonah later went to work as a scout for the army, cousin Artus was left behind to continue working for the westbound railroad.

Jonah had often joked how safe Artus had it—while Jonah seemed to be riding out there on the point, pushing his luck at the head of soldier columns searching for the warrior bands.

Still, it was the railroad and the great smoking horse that drew much of the red fury back then, the way the high points in country like this would draw the most lightning strikes.

There by that fire, his first night back in Indian Territory, shivering from the cold autumn wind gnashing its teeth at his back, Jonah remembered how he first saw the scene of the derailment—how the crumpled cars lay askew on both sides of the twisted track like a child’s toys. At first glimpse from that distance the cars seemed like something he had of a time carved for Jeremiah and little Zeke.

Trying his best to control his panic as he drove his horse into a gallop along the ravaged rail bed, Jonah had eventually stood over the second bloated, burned body, thinking it had to be his cousin. When he had tried to turn the blackened body over, the swollen skin burst with a sickening hiss, releasing a horrid gas that made Jonah
stumble back from the corpse. After losing what breakfast he had left in his belly, Hook had turned back to what remained of his cousin after the warriors got done with the railroad men.