Savage Courage Page 3
“After that incident at school, I was afraid what else the children might do to me,” she murmured. “I . . . I . . . was afraid to go to school the next day.”
“I didn’t know that,” George said, feeling a sudden sharp pain in his gut to know she had felt such fear. “I’m sorry, Shoshana. I had hoped that it would never come to that.”
“But you surely knew that it would,” Shoshana murmured. “You were raising an Indian child.”
“As I explained before, I saved your life, Shoshana, while others around you were dying,” George said thickly. “I wish I could paint a better picture of that day in your mind, but I can’t. What happened . . . happened. It was the way of the military back then to—”
“Please don’t say any more about it,” Shoshana said, interrupting him. She did know that he had saved her, yet moments before he had done that, he had been killing her people.
And, yes, it was the way of the military to do those things back then; just as now the army was forcing her people off their land and into reservation life.
After finally remembering the truth about everything, Shoshana had begun to question her loyalty to a man who had had a role in the slaying of so many people of her own kind.
That day he had come into her village with gunfire splattering all around Shoshana and her mother, she had thought that she had been the sole survivor. But now? She truly believed that her mother had somehow survived as well.
Had her mother been injured that day, badly enough to have been rendered unconscious, yet alive, after all? Had someone found her and taken her to safety and cared for her wounds? Could she be thinking about Shoshana even now, hungering to have her in her arms as Shoshana now hungered for her true mother’s embrace?
Now, so close to where it had all happened, Shoshana knew she must seek answers to the questions that plagued her.
George saw something in Shoshana’s expression and eyes that troubled him. He rose from the chair and took her hands, urging her to her feet.
He did not want to feel how she tensed as he drew her into his embrace, something that happened often now that they were in the land of her ancestors.
He cursed the day he had decided to come to Arizona. He should have known something like this might happen.
But what had happened to her was so far in the past, he had thought it could not affect the present.
When she gently pushed him away from her, his heart skipped a beat, but he tried to put aside his own pain in order to reason with her.
“Shoshana, your mother couldn’t be alive,” he said thickly. “It is just because you are in your people’s country now that you are dreaming such dreams. You are missing your past, your people, your true mother, that’s all.”
He stepped back from her. He gazed into her eyes. “My darling Shoshana, my only reason for living, I know now that it was a mistake to bring you back to Arizona,” he said thickly. “I wish that I had never accepted this commission from the government to come to Arizona to help find the scalp hunter who is preying on the remaining Apache. There is an evil man who is paying top dollar for scalps, Shoshana. Indian scalps, though he isn’t picky as long as the hair is dark. The scalp hunter takes his grisly trophies to that man. That man pays the scalp hunter well enough to keep the fiend in business, then sells the hair for decoration, and wigs.”
He stepped away from her and went to stand at a window, peering out toward the mountains. “Word is that the scalp hunter, Mountain Jack, is searching now for the most elusive half-breed of all—Chief Storm,” he said, then turned to Shoshana again as she approached him, her eyes wide with horror. “To scalp Chief Storm would win Mountain Jack fame and fortune.”
“Why is this Chief Storm worth so much?” Shoshana asked softly. “Why is he so elusive? Why is he even allowed to roam free when it is a government law that all Apache must live on a reservation?”
“Shoshana, I wish, oh, how I wish, that I hadn’t brought you here,” George said, sighing heavily. He took her by the hand. “Come and sit with me. I will explain as much to you as I can.”
She sat down before the fire again. She watched George go to a trunk, open it, then take a long-stemmed pipe from it. He sat down on the chair opposite her, the pipe on his lap.
“You know the story about this pipe. I’ve told you before about it,” he said. “It is an Indian pipe, one that a chief brought with him to a parley when I was vital and able to lead my unit of cavalry.” He lifted the pipe and held it out before him. “This was given to me by a great Chiricahua leader during the peace talks between the Apache and the whites. This was Chief Geronimo’s pipe.”
He handed her the pipe and watched as she studied it. “This young chief, this Chief Storm, has a reputation of being a great leader in his own way,” he said. “He is kin to Geronimo, a second cousin. It is known that Chief Storm is not a warring chief, but a leader who concentrates only on keeping his people safe. He is a peaceful, noble man, who does no harm to anyone. Because of this, he has been allowed to remain free. And, Shoshana, he is not full blood. He is a half-breed leader.”
“How is it that he is a half-breed yet was chosen as chief for his band of Apache?” Shoshana asked, handing the pipe back to George.
“His mother was white,” George said, laying the pipe aside on a table. “As the story goes, she was taken captive. She married her captor, Chief Two Stones. This white wife bore Chief Two Stones one son, whom they named Storm. Both Storm’s chieftain father and white mother were killed one day in a cavalry attack. It was said that when Storm, a mere child then, arrived at his village and found the slaughter, he became chief even though he was only ten at the time. He led what remained of their clan to safety. They reside there even now, in a stronghold in the mountains, where no one has ever been able to find them.”
He knew better than to tell her the full story . . . that that day was the very day he had lost his leg . . . and that it was Chief Two Stones who had sent the arrow into it.
“Did Chief Storm ever do anything to avenge his parents’ deaths?” Shoshana asked guardedly. She was thinking that if things were not so complicated, she would attempt to avenge her own people’s deaths.
But to do so would mean that she would have to become a person different from who she was. She was a woman of compassion, of decency. Although she knew that George Whaley was guilty of many terrible things, she could not plot against him for the sake of vengeance.
George hoped that Shoshana wouldn’t see the color drain from his face as a result of her question, for he was the man whom Chief Storm must hate with every fiber of his being. He was the one who had taken this young chief’s parents from him. His only hope was that Storm had not been able to discover the names of those who took so much from him that day.
He cleared his throat nervously. He gave Shoshana a guarded look and tried to elude her question by directing her attention back to the scalp hunter. “From what our Apache scout tells us, Chief Storm knows about the scalp hunter being in the area. If Mountain Jack does find the Apache stronghold, he will be stepping into a hornets’ nest, for he will cause this young chief to forget his peaceful heart,” he said tightly.
“Why is the military so adamant about finding Mountain Jack?” Shoshana asked softly. “Why not let the young chief find him? Doesn’t the scalp hunter deserve the wrath of the Apache?”
George cleared his throat nervously. “I would rather not talk any more about this today. Although it is only morning, I am already tired and weary,” he said thickly. He got up and bent over her, running his fingers through her thick black hair. “Daughter, be careful,” he said tightly. “If Mountain Jack caught sight of your hair, he would do everything within his power to have it. It . . . it . . . would bring him top dollar.”
Shoshana paled at those words. She inhaled a nervous breath, for she understood the danger she could be in.
But she wouldn’t let the scalp hunter get in the way of what she had planned.
George t
ook a step away and gazed down at her, his eyes holding hers. “Shoshana, you can’t leave the fort without an escort, and even then, you must keep an eye out for danger. This Mountain Jack has sandy-colored whiskers and rides a horse of pure white,” he said, his voice drawn. “Do you hear me, Shoshana? Do you?”
“Yes, and I am disgusted by it all,” Shoshana said, shivering.
She rose from her chair.
Again she went to the window and gazed out across the land. “I so wish that I knew where my people’s village had been,” she murmured. “I would love to go there.”
She especially wanted to search out Chief Storm to ask if he might be harboring a woman from another band . . . one he might have found fifteen years ago.
Yes, she hoped most of all to find and talk with Chief Storm.
“Daughter, you didn’t answer me,” George said, moving to her side. He took her by the arm and turned her to face him. “You must never leave the fort unescorted, and even then, you should be careful . . . very, very careful.”
“I hear you and I promise that I shall be careful,” Shoshana said, then looked out the window again.
Her breath stopped in her throat when she caught sight of a magnificent golden eagle soaring overhead, its beauty highlighted as the sun’s rays backlit its wings.
She watched the eagle until it flew from sight, then she turned to George. “I do believe in dreams,” she blurted out. “My mother is surely out there somewhere, alive. I know it, for I feel her presence strongly in my heart.”
“Shoshana, I know how badly you want to believe that,” George said, reaching a gentle hand to her cheek. “But it was her spirit that came to you in that dream, nothing more.”
Shoshana said no more about it. She didn’t want to argue with him.
She was almost certain that her mother was alive. And if George Whaley didn’t want to believe her, so be it.
But she would not give up her hope of finding her mother. Not now that she was in her homeland, where she had been a child running free with the wind and holding her mother’s love near to her heart.
“Do not fret so much over me,” Shoshana murmured as she gave him a soft smile. “I am a grown woman. I can make decisions on my own, and you know that I am very capable of taking care of myself. I learned that from living at so many forts.”
She gave him one last smile, then left him alone to his thoughts and worries.
George looked out the window. He couldn’t believe that this fort had no stockade. It was not fortified at all.
It was simply a few adobe houses scattered around a dusty square.
He hadn’t felt safe since his and Shoshana’s arrival there. And now that Shoshana was determined to search for her mother, he felt even more vulnerable for her. He couldn’t trust her restlessness.
As soon as possible, he must take her back to Missouri, where they made their home in a huge mansion on the outskirts of Saint Louis.
Until then, he would assign someone to her.
As long as she was with a soldier, he would feel safe enough to allow her some freedom, but he would warn her again about wandering too far and trusting too much in strangers.
If he lost her, he would be only half alive.
“I must get Shoshana back where she truly belongs,” George whispered heatedly to himself. “Missouri, yes, Missouri. We’ll be there again soon!”
His wooden leg and cane thumping against the oak floor, he went toward the door to go and tell Colonel Hawkins, the commander in charge of this fort, his decision to leave.
Chapter Four
Her glorious fancies come from far,
Beneath the silver evening star.
—James Russell Lowell
Chief Storm stood at the entrance of his tepee, watching with much sadness as the children of his Piñaleno River Band of Apache romped and played.
He understood why they did so without smiles today. The sadness in their eyes was caused by the absence of two of their friends, a brother and sister, who were mauled yesterday by a panther while they were playing outside the village.
“The animal responsible must be found and destroyed,” he whispered to himself as he doubled his hands into tight fists at his sides.
Storm, now twenty-five, a man with a square jaw and keen dark eyes, was justly proud of his impregnable stronghold in the Piñaleno Mountains.
It was concealed in a lofty lookout where he and the warriors of their band could scan the valleys and mesas below.
He knew that all saw him as a very able chieftain, for he had kept his people out of the reservations where many other Apache were now confined.
Storm and his warriors were so elusive, the United States Government had given up on capturing them, or perhaps it was because he was known to be a man of peace that the authorities had chosen not to seek him and his people out.
However it was that Storm had kept his people out of the clutches of the white-eyes, he knew that his duties were centered on only one thing: his people’s safety and freedom.
Because of those duties, Storm had not sought a wife. Besides, he remembered too well the hurt his father had felt at losing not only one wife, but two.
Ho, Chief Storm was protecting himself from such hurts. His sole reason for living was to keep his people safe.
But the young braves who were part of his band had sought out wives from the other Apache peoples before they were forced onto reservations. The children of those warriors were the hope of the Piñaleno River Band.
His thoughts strayed to someone else, causing his eyes to narrow angrily and his jaws to tighten. He vividly remembered the name that his father had spoken before he died. Colonel Whaley!
Because of Storm’s devotion to the safety and happiness of his people, he had long ago set aside his vow of vengeance against Colonel Whaley.
Storm did not see how he could have achieved it, anyhow. As far as he knew, the colonel had left Arizona after having been wounded so severely in his leg.
“I, too, see the sadness in the children’s eyes,” his older sister Dancing Willow said as she stepped up to Storm’s side. She frowned at the lack of merriment in the children’s games today.
She placed a hand on her brother’s arm, causing his eyes to move to her. “You met in council with our warriors, and news was brought to me that you have proposed a plan that I see as unwise,” she murmured. “You should not journey down our mountain alone. You know that I see many truths in my visions and dreams. My dreams have told me that danger awaits you if you leave the safety of our stronghold this time. If something should happen to you, all of our people’s lives will change. Let someone else go. Heed my warning, my brother. This time, stay safely among our people.”
She awaited his reply, afraid that she already knew what it would be. She knew that he had never backed down from anything in his life. He had always faced all danger head on, and always came away from it a victor.
Her brother was known for his wisdom in council, and all who heard him speak knew that his words came from the heart, and that what he said was to be heeded.
She was so proud of her brother, a boy on that day of their parents’ deaths, who quickly stepped into the moccasins of a man. He became chief that day and had never disappointed anyone who followed him.
And he was not only a wise, powerful leader, but also a handsome warrior, with a sculpted face, noble bearing, brilliant black eyes, and smooth copper skin.
He had a large and powerful frame, corded with iron-hard sinews and muscles.
His coal-black hair hung down below the middle of his back in a broad, thick plait, wrapped in panther skin.
Today, like most days, he wore panther-skin leggings and moccasins, and a smoke-tanned buckskin shirt that was decorated with green porcupine quillwork and tassels of horse hair.
While away from the safety of his stronghold he always armed himself well. His weapons of choice were a Sharp’s rifle, a bow and quiver of arrows, and a huge Bowie knife.
His arrows were more than three feet long, the upper part made of cane or rush. A shaft about a foot long made of light, yet hard and seasoned wood, was inserted into this. The point of the arrows was of sharpened stone.
He was able to shoot an arrow five hundred feet with fatal effect.
This younger brother of hers was a man of superior mental qualities. He showed instinct and cunning akin to those of the animals.
He was endowed with great acuteness of perception, and he was witty, quick with a sense of humor, cheerful and companionable.
His code of morals was deep-rooted, and the challenges of his life had made him vigilant, ever on the alert.
“My sister, I understand your concern, but I must go alone,” Storm said, his eyes holding hers. “Too many riders would make a sound like thunder along the ground. Their horses’ hooves would alert the panther that it was being stalked. I have taught my steed to travel lightly, as do I in my moccasins. Do not fret so much, my sister. What must be done must be done, and soon. Once an animal tastes the blood of a human, it hungers for more.”
“My brother, what can I say to make you see the true dangers today?” Dancing Willow said, sighing. “Must I remind you that I am a Seer, and that I know mystic arts, the power of chants, dreams, and potions? My teachers are the sun, moon, and stars. My brother, I listen to the stars at night. I study the curvature of the moon and the sun’s arc across the heavens. They are my mentors. I can predict the death of a man’s relative, the coming of a child. You know that, so often, what I predict comes true.”
She looked past him again, but this time not at the children. Her eyes followed the slow walk of a woman whose aged appearance did not match her years. She was bent and gray, bowed down by a tragedy that had occurred near the same time that their band had been attacked by the pindah-lickoyee.