Medicine Hair

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Gideon hadn’t tarried long, which made me wonder if he’d said everything he had come to say. Had he really made a fourteen-mile roundabout ride just to give me news of an Asian catastrophe? No, more likely he was leading a routine patrol. I laid such thoughts aside and went to work. After putting the finishing touches to a watering bucket in the forge, I went out to tend the fields.

A little later, I was headed to the house for a glass of milk and a bit of jerky when Todoh set up a yammer. A line of six horsemen rode through his territory directly toward the house, and he didn’t appreciate the intrusion. Still, he had sense enough not to press his objection too strenuously.

From this distance the riders looked to be tribesmen. A lot of fringed buckskin and a feather or two. Coming from the stretch of badlands up on Trickling Water Crick, probably. Their slow pace indicated I had nothing to worry about, but I moseyed over to the porch where my Henry rifle—with fifteen cartridges in the sleeve and one in the breech—was propped beside the cabin door. After taking a sip of water from the earthen jug customarily resting in the shade of the overhang, I leaned against the porch to wait, arms folded over my chest.

A few minutes later, five ponies came into view, making straight for the yard. The sixth rider was likely on the hill to act as lookout. The man in front lifted his arm in the open-handed greeting.

We had exchanged hah-ues before I recognized Crow Hop, Buffalo Leg’s son. I smiled and stepped forward to give him an Indian handshake after he dismounted. A year or two older than my twenty and four, he was taking on some of his father’s heft. A pleasing man of aquiline features, he started making polite talk while I gestured for his companions to take water from the keg. They were all fit men of an age, but for one. He had probably seen his thirtieth summer. His erect carriage and piercing eyes caught my attention. He held his tongue through the getting reacquainted talk. Finally, it was his turn.

“I am Firm Foot,” he said. “I have been to this place before when I was but a boy called New Star. This was back when the whites were fighting the war between themselves and militias ruled the land. The Yanube who lived here did us a great kindness.”

“That would have been my grandfather, Otter.” These men would understand my term of respect.

“Just so. My father is Spotted Panther, and my grandfather was Grass Dancer. Otter sheltered us and gave us provisions as we passed through and came to our aid when the militia caught up with us.”

“That was his nature,” I said. “He helped when he could. Sometimes to his own risk.”

“We heard what they did to him,” Firm Foot said.

I couldn’t help glancing at the cottonwood. “I saw six horses in the distance. Yet there are only five of you.”

Crow Hop motioned with his chin to the hill. “One of us keeps an eye out for a patrol.”

My eyebrows shot up. “You are renegades?”

Firm Foot shook his head. “Nay, not as you mean it. But the army declares any who leave the reservations renegade. When we leave, they call it ‘breaking out’ and figure we’re digging up hatchets to make war. I’m surprised they haven’t put you on an agency.”

“I have too much white blood for them to make the effort,” I said. “Besides, my tiospaye is gone. Murdered over thirty years ago by American soldiers. Dragoons they called themselves back then. I’m a farmer, and that’s what they want us to be, isn’t it?”

Firm Foot looked down his nose. “They’ll not make a dirt scratcher of me. I am a warrior. The militia turned me into one the day they shot down Grass Dancer and my sister on Trickling Water north of here.”

Crow Hop nodded. “The white men are good at turning us into warriors. Not so good at turning us into farmers.”

“I have nothing except coffee and tea and water to drink, but you’re welcome to that. I can probably find enough bread and cheese and jerky for a meal.”

He accepted my offer. Fifteen minutes later, we all gathered on the porch, most of my guests sitting on the planking to eat and sip and converse. After more talk, it became clear they were on the hunt for provisions because allotments at the agency were slow and often short. I offered one of my steers. Even though this was why they had come, they remained seated. Lord, don’t let this turn into one of those long, protracted things where it takes forever before a blood gets around to talking turkey. Nature intervened to speed things along.

One of the younger braves grunted and lifted his chin. Most of us were under the cover of the porch and had to stand in the yard to see he was pointing to a sun enveloped in a wispy purple hue.

“Witchcraft!” someone muttered.

Crow Hop nodded agreement. “A bad omen. Something’s gonna happen.”

I spoke without thinking. “It already has.”

They all turned in my direction. Then Crow Hop walked over and removed the hat from my head. “Tell us what you know about these things, Night Sky Hair.”

Others of the group muttered when they took in the strange peppering of yellow in my black mop. Now that I’d stuck half a foot into the affair, I regretted it. The reservation schools hadn’t been very successful if I understood correctly, so most of these men probably had little formal education.

“I know why the sun is playing tricks on us and the moon is changing and sunsets look like prairie fires.”

“Pho!” Firm Foot exclaimed. “Tell us.”

“Far beyond Turtle Island, so far that it is on the other side of Mother Earth, there is an island the foreigners there call Krakatoa. During the last moon, a volcano on the island blew up. You understand what a volcano is?”

“It’s like the Yellowstone country where hot water shoots into the air and smelly mud comes up out of holes.” This from the young brave who’d spotted the sun changing colors.

“Yes, like that, except it springs from a mountain and is many, many times more powerful. It blew up—what they call an eruption—and threw most of the island into the sea. The explosion spewed a thousand times more dirt into the air than the Yellowstone geysers. And it changed everything.”

“How so?” Crow Hop wanted to know.

“It threw so much ash and pumice and smoke into the air that Father Sky waved it away to keep from choking and sent it all around the earth. And that cloaked the sun and covered the moon and infected the sunsets. We will see these things for a long time.”

“How do you know this?” Firm Foot asked in a rising voice.

“Medicine,” Crow Hop said. “Can’t you see from his hair that he has medicine? My father told me this man’s Spirit Dream foretells great joy and dancing and a bloody slaughter. A battle we will not win.”

“And the murder of a great man,” I said. “One of our own.”

Firm Foot regarded me for a moment before stepping forward to finger my hair. With a somber face, he announced that from this point on, I would be known as Medicine Hair.

“You misunderstand,” I said. “I learned all of this from the whites who have singing wires that circle the world. You know that Mother Earth is round, don’t you? Like a ball.”

Most of them nodded, but some put a lie to the gesture with widened eyes.

Crow Hop and Firm Foot put their heads together for a moment, and then Spotted Panther’s son walked up to face me. “I do not trust anyone who claims to be a medicine man. Better that he should demonstrate it and let me discover him as such. I now understand why my world has changed, and it is you who have given me this knowledge. It is as I said. You are Medicine Hair to me now.”

I did not argue with my friends. After all, their perception of me did not rule my life. I got aboard Arrow to go pick out a steer for them. Otherwise, Todoh would have taken them on when they tried to claim one of his charges. He still put up a fuss when a man dropped a loop over the animal I chose. Then moved by impulsive generosity, I gave over a second steer to them. I had to coax Todoh into jumping up in the saddle and holding him in my arms as they rode away. Else he would have chased after them to reclaim his lost animals.

After the riders passed virtually out of sight, I turned Arrow and pulled to a halt. A man astride a long-maned pinto stood silently twenty yards away. The sixth rider. I’d forgotten him. The hair on my neck rose, and the significance of that imperfect horseshoe track I’d found on the backside of the hill struck me. I eyed my empty saddle holster. My Henry still rested on the porch. I was unarmed but for a knife.

“I see you, War Eagle.” The man’s deep voice still disturbed me in my stones.

“And I see you, Raven Strongbow.” This was the army scout who had denounced Matthew and then disappeared. “We thought you were dead.”

Todoh growled at my tone. I released him, and he went on alert as soon as his paws hit the ground.

“Nay. Not dead.”

“So you ran off.”

He rode closer with a half-smile on his handsome features. He looked little different from the last time I’d seen him four years ago. “It seemed the thing to do when your three messengers came for me,” he said.

“Crow Johnson and the other two scouts?”

“They always followed his lead. They made it plain it was worth my life to remain in the barracks.”

“So you proved you were a coward and ran away.”

His expression did not change at my slur. “So, I was prudent and left. I knew I would see you again one day. Just as I knew Red Star wouldn’t remain faithful. That he’d throw you over for a woman or a boy. Where is he, by the way?”

“I know nothing of Red Star, but Shambling Bear will be home soon. Our bond is strong. We pledged ourselves before a council, so we’re married, Raven. Go away and leave us alone.”

“How often does he desert you to go to his other family?”

My back puckered. I reached for the rifle that wasn’t there.

He noticed and smiled again. “Don’t worry, I wish you no harm. But I still want you, Eagle. I’m haunted by the memory of f*****g you, feeling you respond to me. I…”

I kicked Arrow’s sides and sent him straight at the man. But Raven moved his pony aside, and I rushed past, making straight for the cabin. When I arrived, my Henry was no longer on the porch. He hadn’t stolen it, merely moved it inside the door. His way of letting me know he’d violated my home…just as he’d violated my body four years ago.

I snatched the weapon and rushed to the top of the hill behind the cabin, but he was already out of sight, following the trail laid down by his companions. I collapsed in the dirt and leaned against my rifle as tortured memories swamped me.

Raven had been a new scout at Fort Yanube when I first laid eyes on him. I already loved Matthew, although we were still fumbling our way to a relationship that was strange to both of us. Nonetheless, my interest had quickened when I saw the handsome Cheyenne, and he noticed my attention.

One night, while I was here at Turtle Crick Farm—Matthew had stayed behind at the Mead—Raven came for a visit and remained overnight in the barn loft with me. This was before our cabin was rebuilt after Otter’s and James’s murderers burned it. I woke in the middle of the night with him inside me. Half asleep and believing it was Matthew, I responded. Only belatedly did I remember Matthew was fifty miles distant and jerked away from Raven. He’d declared his love and his determination to win me. I spurned him.

Acting on some dark perversion of that love, he’d tried unsuccessfully to bushwhack Matthew. Then he told the military my lover was Red Star, a follower of Crazy Horse who had escaped from Fort Robinson after his chieftain was killed. Touch the Clouds and Buffalo Leg had used my speckled hair to help Matthew escape the charges. So maybe it did hold some medicine, after all.

When we’d returned from Fort Robinson, free men, we believed Raven was dead. That belief held steady until today. I dreaded telling Matthew of my rapist’s reappearance. Raven Strongbow’s presence had nothing to do with a volcanic eruption on the far side of the world, but it seemed just as cataclysmic to me. Something deep in my heart said I should chase after Raven and shoot him dead.

Instead, I went to the loft and sent a white homing pigeon to the Mead. Pa needed to know Raven lived. Then, still moved by the unexpected sight of the handsome warrior and missing Matthew terribly, I lay back in the hay and m*********d.