37

LATE IN THE SUMMER OF 1860, while Big Star’s Cheyennes were camped on the Hotoa, Dane was surprised to receive a short written message from Fort Carrothers. It was brought by a half-blood Arapaho who worked as a stock tender at the Pony Express station. I have been bad hurt in a fall, the message read. I need Young Opothle here, and you also, my good cousin, if you will come. Yr. obedient servant, Jotham Kingsley.

Although the Cheyennes had found several small buffalo herds along the Hotoa, and Dane could have used more hides for winter trading, he decided to go at once to Fort Carrothers, taking his family with him. When he told Big Star of this, the chief said that he would not be bringing the Cheyennes to the Hinta Nagi that winter but would probably join Black Kettle’s people on Sand Creek.

“If I can leave Fort Carrothers before the snows come,” Dane said, “my family and I will come to Sand Creek. Otherwise we’ll spend the winter at the fort.”

“Take good care of my daughter,” Big Star warned him. “She dislikes the noise and restlessness of the Veheos around that trading post.”

Dane was not surprised that Sweet Medicine Woman objected to this early visit to Fort Carrothers, but when she saw how eager her children were to go, she made only mild protests. He invited Rising Fawn to accompany them, but she refused, saying that if Pleasant wanted her as a wife he must abandon his Veheo ways and live with the Cheyennes.

They traveled slowly with two travois, taking routes that kept them away from Bluecoat patrols and white travelers, and as soon as they arrived, Sweet Medicine Woman and the girls began pitching the tipi along the stream behind the trading post.

Dane found Jotham lying in bed with his leg wrapped in strips of canvas. He had broken it while racing one of the mounts that he kept for the Pony Express. The animal had stumbled in an abandoned prairie-dog hole, its full weight falling upon Jotham’s leg. “The outlandishness of it,” Jotham said, “is that Pleasant has ridden that same pony hundreds of miles and never had an accident. I took it out for a mile run and broke a leg.”

Pleasant came in from Fort Laramie the next evening, and Dane was delighted to see how well and contented he looked. “Riding for the Pony Express seems to satisfy you,” Dane said.

“I like the excitement,” Pleasant replied. “But it won’t last much longer.” He pointed to a row of bark-stripped poles with crosspieces, which ran along the opposite side of the trail.

“I hear the Veheos are coming to string wires along those poles,” Dane said. “Bibbs calls them talking wires.”

“Telegraph. The wires are already at Fort Kearney and someday will reach the Western Ocean. When messages can be sent to California by the wires, there will be no more need for the Pony Express.”

Dane shook his head. “I don’t understand how this can be done. The white men have too much magic these days.”

Later that evening Dane was talking with Jotham about the poles and the talking wires. “Yes, the world that you and I grew up in, Dane, is vanishing,” Jotham said. “The life you have chosen to lead with the Cheyennes can’t last much longer.”

“I don’t know. Big Star thinks we should violate the treaty and go back to the Power River country where the Northern Cheyennes still live without hindrance. After all, the American government is not enforcing its side of the treaty.”

Jotham moved uneasily in his bed. Dane noticed that gray hair was beginning to show at his cousin’s temples. They were both growing older, the days flowing by. “You and your Cheyennes can run away for a time,” Jotham said. “But the white world will swallow you in the end. When the buffalo are gone, you will go.”

“I have thought much on these things.”

“And of your family?” Jotham sighed. “Since my accident I’ve thought about Young Opothle and the days to come. You turned him into a wild Indian this summer. I want him to have the learning you gave Pleasant. Meggi also when she is older.”

“In the seminary at Tahlequah?”

“Yes. If they are to survive in the world they must live in, they will need learning. Grandmother Amayi would agree with me, would she not?”

Dane wondered, thinking of his own sons and daughters. In the north they would be happy following Cheyenne ways if white men did not encroach. But how long would they be free of invading forces—the soldiers, the wagon trains, the gold hunters, the settlers, the talking wires?

“I’ve already exchanged letters with Mr. Ebenezer Keys,” Jotham continued. “He invites Young Opothle ‘to come and sip at the sweet waters of knowledge.’ But the boy must be there in September. I was planning to take him with me to Westport for supplies and then go on to the Nation, but this leg…Knowing your dislike for leaving your family, I hesitate to ask this, Dane, but will you take Young Opothle to the Nation?”

When Dane’s sons, Swift Eagle and Little Cloud, learned that their father was taking Young Opothle to school in the Cherokee Nation, both immediately expressed strong desires to go also. They idolized Pleasant and were sure that they could become as dashing as their older half brother if only they could go away to the seminary as he had done. Swift Eagle was sixteen, but Little Cloud was a year younger, and Dane spent several restless nights trying to decide whether he should uproot either of them from their Cheyenne world. At dawn after a sleepless night he decided that together his sons could sustain each other in the Cherokee Nation. Alone, the strangeness of Cherokee ways might overcome Swift Eagle even with Young Opothle nearby. He would take both sons to Tahlequah.

His hardest task was trying to convince Sweet Medicine Woman of the soundness of his decision. At first she thought he was temporarily deranged, that his madness would soon leave him. But when she realized that he was serious, she stormed out at him, shouting that he was trying to make her sons like the Veheos. She did not want her sons to be Veheos. She would not listen when he spoke of his grandmother who believed that when Indians became surrounded by white men they must learn some of their ways in order to survive. It was the first bitter quarrel of their life together.

He doggedly went ahead with his plans. The night before departure the three boys dressed in their white man’s clothing, but Sweet Medicine Woman refused to look at them. To himself Dane admitted that his young sons with their hair cut short and slicked down with water—wearing collars, pantaloons, and stockings—looked unnatural, like false images of themselves. For a moment he felt like tearing the clothing from them.

The next morning Sweet Medicine Woman would not leave her tipi. He had to take her sons to her to say good-bye. Trying not to look at them, she embraced them together, but her words choked in her throat. When they ran outside, Dane reached for her. She drew away, taking Creek Mary’s Danish coin from around her neck and holding it out to him. “Here is the sacred power you gave me,” she said. “I will wear it again when you bring my sons back to me.”