Savage Hero Read online

She also saw how her words had brought trouble into those eyes.

  She had two sons. She realized that one was good, and one bad.

  One had chosen the good road of life, the other wandered far from it.

  It was for the son who had gone astray that she was so concerned today, a son whom she had not seen for too many moons.

  “Ina, my mother, you know that I always try to do all that you ask of me, but this?” Brave Wolf responded, his voice drawn.

  He lifted a piece of wood and placed it with the other burning logs in the fire pit, watching as the flames caught hold.

  “Micinksi, I understand your hesitation, but remember that we are not talking about just any warrior who chose to ally himself with whites,” Pure Heart said, her voice breaking. “Son, this is your brother. This is Night Horse, the brother who was born only one winter after you took your own first breaths of life. Think of the good times you had with your brother, how you each defended the other when anyone offered too many challenges for only one young brave to deal with. Brave Wolf, it was you who protected your brother that time when you were hunting and a bear threatened Night Horse. You even now carry that bear’s claw in your medicine bundle. Do you not realize the meaning of that? It is a reminder, always, of a brother who loved a brother.”

  “I did love him with all my heart, Ina, but he went away from us and chose to be someone I no longer know,” Brave Wolf said thickly.

  In frustration, he wove his powerful fingers through his long black hair, which hung loose and flowing to his waist.

  He brushed a strand back from his face, then sighed heavily and nodded. “But, hecitu-yelo, yes, I do understand your enduring love for your youngest. I also see that he has brought sadness into eyes that were at one time always filled with sunshine and laughter.”

  He leaned forward, his eyes now peering intently into hers. “Ina, he does not deserve such love and devotion,” he said tightly. “He deserves no loyalty from me.”

  “But, Brave Wolf, he is still my son, just as you are my son,” she said, then swallowed back a sob. “He . . . is . . . your brother. He is and he always will be. Brothers, no matter what shame one might have brought into a family, are . . . still . . . brothers.”

  Brave Wolf sighed heavily, lowered his eyes, then rose to his feet and walked around the fire to sit down beside his mother.

  He drew her into his arms. “Does this truly mean so much to you?” he asked, as she clung to him and he slowly caressed her back through the soft blanket. “Is it this important to you?”

  “I would not ask it of you if it were not,” she said, this time unable to hold back the tears. She sobbed and clung, then inched away from Brave Wolf so that she could again peer deeply into his midnight-dark eyes. “As long as Night Horse holds breath within his lungs, he is my son and he is your brother. How can you not want to know whether he is alive or dead? He was not found among the dead on the battlefield where yellow-haired Custer died.”

  She swallowed hard, then said, “As far as we know, Night Horse did not die,” she said softly. She reached a hand to Brave Wolf’s cheek. “When we received word of this battle, and that it was over, a battle where none of our own Whistling Water Clan fought, I sent you to look for Night Horse. You did not find him among the dead, and we both know that he was one of Yellow Hair’s favored scouts and would have gone into battle with him. He was so enthralled by the evil white leader, he would have died alongside Yellow Hair.”

  “Night Horse is probably alive and well and planning to join another group of white pony soldiers riding against his own people,” Brave Wolf said, his voice a low growl. “When he chose the life of a scout, he ceased to be my brother.”

  “But by blood, he is and he always will be,” Pure Heart said, lowering her hand away from his face. She wiped tears from her eyes with hands so bony, Brave Wolf shivered and knew that she was surely not long for this earth.

  He made himself look away from her hands. Such reminders of his mother’s condition caused great pain inside his heart.

  “You know that when Night Horse left our village to ally himself with the cavalry, I did not ever want to see him again, whether or not he was my brother by blood,” he said.

  He gazed deep into his mother’s eyes and took her hands in his. “Yet still I went to claim his body for your sake, for proper burial. I did not find him anywhere among the dead on the battlefield,” he said. “I cannot help concluding that Night Horse did not die, but instead had sneaked away like a coward, who must now be hiding. That was many sleeps ago, Mother. If he wanted to be with his people again, with you, he would have found his way home by now.”

  “He might be terribly injured and . . . and . . . slowly dying,” Pure Heart said, her voice catching. Tears streamed from her old and faded eyes. “Does it truly matter who he was with when it happened? The fact that he might be dying should be all that matters. He should be with family for his last moments on this earth.”

  “Ina, what he did with his life goes against everything Ahte ever taught his two sons,” Brave Wolf replied. “You know that I walk in my father’s shadow and, like him, I am known as a peace chief who deals wisely with the United States Government. I have tried to win every advantage for our people, whereas my brother joined the whites and worked against our people for what he could gain personally. My father, your chieftain husband, represented our tribe at the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. What would he have thought of a son who plotted and planned with whites to try to wipe from the face of the earth red men and women . . . even innocent children.”

  He framed her face between his hands. “Remembering this, can you still want to see and hold your youngest son in your arms again?” he asked, searching her eyes. “Ina, he should be as dead in your heart as he is in mine.”

  “I am so proud of everything that my husband did, and of what you are doing for our people,” Pure Heart said softly. “So is your father proud as he gazes down at you from the stars in the sky where he now makes his home.”

  She lowered her eyes, then again looked into Brave Wolf’s. “Although I am not as proud of Night Horse as I am of you, nothing can take away the fact that I gave birth to him and that I shall love him, no matter what he has done, until the last breath leaves his lungs . . . or mine,” she murmured. “Knowing this, will you not do as I ask? Will you not at least go and search for him one more time? If you do, and you cannot find him, then I shall never ask such a thing of you again. I shall know that you at least made an attempt to bring him home to me so that I can make some sort of peace with him.”

  “You know that the search could carry me across a vast area, and even then I might not find him,” Brave Wolf said. “The search will take me from our people for many sunrises and sunsets. Knowing that, and also knowing that it is my place to stay with our people, to keep ugliness from our village, you still wish for me to go? If I choose others to go on the search, would that satisfy you?”

  “I trust our warriors when a request is made of them that does not go against everything they believe in, but now? When I ask something they will frown upon . . . to search for someone who has betrayed the Crow . . . I cannot wholly trust that they would bring him home alive to me.”

  Brave Wolf was disturbed to hear that his mother did not fully trust those who were under Brave Wolf’s command, but he could not dispute her words.

  He was beginning to see that he had no choice but to do this for his mother. He saw how distraught she was, and had been since she had become aware of Night Horse’s disappearance. He feared her anxiety might hurry along her death. He would do anything to keep her with him longer on this earth.

  If he had to come face to face with Night Horse again, so be it.

  “Yes, Mother, I hear you well and I feel your pain when you speak of your youngest son, so I will do as you ask of me,” Brave Wolf said tightly. “If I find Night Horse, I will bring him home to you. If I do not find my brother, you must realize that it is time to put aside your grie
ving and work at becoming stronger.”

  Pure Heart smiled through her tears. She placed a gentle hand on Brave Wolf’s cheek. “You just called Night Horse your brother,” she murmured. “That must mean that inside your heart, you do still see him as such.”

  “Although I do not wish to claim him as blood kin, he is my brother, for did we not come from the same womb and seed?” Brave Wolf said, then drew her gently into his arms. “Mother, I love you so much. Please rest while I am gone. I shall search until I feel it is time to return home. You must accept Night Horse’s fate then. Will you?”

  “Yes, I will openly accept it, but inside my heart, if Night Horse is not with you, I will be crying,” Pure Heart murmured. “Go now, son. Prepare those warriors who will ride with you, and those who will remain home to provide protection to those who need it in your absence. I will pray for your return, as well as for your brother’s and those who ride with you.”

  He hugged her tenderly, kissed her softly on the cheek, then left her lodge.

  Reluctantly he brought his warriors into the council house and told them his plan, that they would search for Night Horse, and if they found him, would bring him home.

  Hardly any of his warriors wanted to accompany Brave Wolf on this particular mission, even if it was their chief asking them, and even if it was his mother who needed this son at her side during her illness.

  As they saw it, Night Horse was no longer one of them. He was a disgrace, someone who deserved not even one more thought.

  Brave Wolf had said that he understood their feelings, for they matched his own, but it was a mother’s plea that had reached inside his heart.

  After he had asked them to think of her, his warriors finally agreed to go with him.

  Not long before, Brave Wolf had captured a prized dark sorrel from those he had seen picketed close to an enemy camp. He rode that horse now through Crow country, his warriors dutifully accompanying him.

  They carried a varied assortment of weapons, some even carrying rifles. Some time ago, his people had believed that those whose skin was white were people of magic. When they had arrived in this land, they had carried “firesticks” that barked like thunder. At first, the Crow had truly thought the “firesticks” made lightning, capable of killing them from afar.

  But the Crow no longer feared this fiery weapon. Sun Father watched over them and Mother Earth guided them as the warriors rode proudly across lush meadows and wooded hills that abounded with game.

  The Crow saw their country as a gift to them from the First Maker, who created the world. Their land had snowy mountains and sunny plains, different climates and good things for every season.

  When the summer heat scorched the prairies, the Crow could draw up under the mountains where the air was sweet and cool, the grass fresh, and where the bright streams tumbled out of the snow banks.

  There with his powerful bow made of mountain-sheep horn and covered with the skin of a rattlesnake, Brave Wolf had proudly hunted the elk, the deer, and the antelope.

  There one could always see plenty of white bears and mountain sheep.

  There, a warrior could find many places to hide. But Brave Wolf knew of one special place. It was where he was leading his men.

  He was almost certain that his brother would be hiding there.

  Chapter Three

  Dull sublunary lovers’ love

  (whose soul is sense) cannot admit

  absence, because it doth remove

  those things which elemented it.

  —John Donne

  A procession of wagons, accompanied by a contingent of cavalry, rolled through tall, waving grass and sage meadows. Soldiers rode at the front, the sides, and at the rear, their eyes constantly sweeping the land as they watched for Indians.

  Mary Beth Wilson, twenty-three, and her son David, five, rode in one of the wagons. As she held the reins, Mary Beth’s long auburn hair blew back from her oval face in the gentle breeze. The bonnet she had worn only moments ago was now in the back of the wagon. Since the air was so sweet and warm on this mid-September day, she wanted to revel in it.

  She wore a pretty lace-trimmed cotton dress, the design of flowers against a backdrop of white almost as delicate as the woman who wore it. Mary Beth was tiny, yet she was strong inside and out. She had learned strength as a child, living on a farm in Kentucky where she worked alongside her parents raising crops that kept them fed throughout the long winter months.

  She worked even harder now at her own farm, since her husband was no longer there to see to the chores. She had not hired helping hands because she saw that as a waste of money. She loved the outdoors enough to do everything herself.

  And her garden was not all that big. It was only large enough to keep her and David in food.

  Her son was old enough now to help till the beans and to plant rows of corn, and then harvest everything alongside his mother.

  But that garden and her home were far removed from her now. She was in a distant land, her fingers aching from holding the reins so tightly in her fear of the unknown.

  She had not wanted to be the last wagon of the train that was carrying the wives and children of the men who had died in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. They were traveling to a different fort, a safer one farther from hostile activity.

  No one had imagined that the Indians had such strength and determination, or that there were so many who were willing to put their lives at stake by fighting the cavalry. Mary Beth had put her faith in General Custer, who had been so victorious in his battles with the Indians.

  But she had been proved wrong. They all had been.

  Custer had died alongside his men that day beneath the bright sun when Indians not only outnumbered the white pony soldiers, but also outwitted them.

  Yes, it had been three months since the battle, and Mary Beth had been living a life of dread at Fort Kitt where her husband had been stationed.

  Since the massacre on that damnable battlefield, the widows and children had stayed at Fort Kitt while they waited for the colonel in command there to say that he thought it was safe enough to travel to another fort. From that point, the widows could continue onward, returning to their homes far from Montana and its dangers.

  Tears fell from Mary Beth’s violet eyes as she fought off the remembrance of the moment when word had reached her that her husband, Major Lloyd Wilson, had died alongside Custer.

  She and her son had only been at the fort for one day before he died.

  The reason Mary Beth had traveled west made her heart ache even more. She had come from her home in Kentucky to tell Lloyd that she wanted a divorce. She had felt that she could not import such news by way of an impersonal letter or wire.

  Her reason for wanting the divorce was not because she had found another man. It was just that she had never truly loved Lloyd. She had married him because she was lonely after her parents died at the hands of highway robbers, and because she had known him since childhood.

  She had been married to him for six years, but no matter how hard she had tried to love Lloyd the way a woman should love a man, she just never got those special feelings that she had heard women speak of.

  She had cared for Lloyd, but only in a sisterly, perhaps even motherly, way.

  While he had been away from her and his son, she had had more time to think about things and had finally concluded that it was time to make a break. By doing so, Lloyd could eventually find true love, as could she.

  But now?

  All that Mary Beth felt was guilt.

  She had told Lloyd her decision just before he’d left to fight alongside Custer in the battle that would claim not only Custer’s life, but also Lloyd’s.

  She could not get past the feeling that she had sent her husband to his death. Surely he had been too distracted by her revelation to fight or even protect himself.

  She was tormented by the knowledge that Lloyd had not been part of General Custer’s usual troops. Because of Custer’s plans
to hurry along his campaign against the Indians, he had needed additional soldiers. He had gone to Fort Kitt and asked for volunteers.

  Because Lloyd had heard so much about Custer’s illustrious reputation as a leader, he had deemed it an honor to be a part of any battle that would be led by the general. He had been the very first man at Fort Kitt to step forth and sign up with General Custer.

  That decision had made her husband a marked man even before she gave him her news about the divorce . . . news that she now knew had torn his world apart.

  Mary Beth and her son David had attended Lloyd’s funeral three months ago. Although she hated leaving his grave behind, knowing that she would never see it again, she could hardly wait to reach the fort that stood on the banks of the Missouri River. From there she would travel by river-boat to her farm in Kentucky.

  She would be so glad to be away from this place where death might be lurking around every bend or behind every tree.

  Ah, fate. Who could ever know what fate had in store?

  Home.

  Oh, Lord, she could hardly wait to get back home to her own little world!

  She wished that she had never left Kentucky. Now she understood what the word “loneliness” truly meant, for she had never felt so empty or so alone.

  Knowing that she would never hear Lloyd’s laughter again, or be able to look into his beautiful blue eyes, filled her with a despair she had never thought possible.

  “Lloyd. . . . Lloyd . . .” she whispered as hot tears rolled across her lips.

  “Mama, what did you just say?” David asked, drawing Mary Beth’s eyes quickly to him. “Mama, you have tears in your eyes again. Is it because of Papa? Is it?”

  She almost choked on a sob when she turned to look at her son. He had Lloyd’s blue eyes, the same golden hair, the same long, straight nose.

  And she could already see that David’s shoulders were going to be as wide and powerful as his father’s.

  Yes, her David was Lloyd all over again, and at least in him, she would have her husband with her forever.