Chapter 16

Love one another: for love is of God.

1 John 4:7

H e decided to go in. John Thundercloud looked up from the text for his sermon in surprise and smiled at him. Two blue eyes peered around the edge of the rough-hewn front pew. Before her mother could stop her, Carrie Brown trotted down the aisle, took Soaring Eagle’s hand, and led him up to the front. Rachel Brown smiled primly and scooted toward the open window, making room for Carrie’s guest.

Soaring Eagle had dressed for the occasion, wrapping his thick braids in strips of colored cloth, pulling on his ceremonial scalp-shirt and beaded leggings, and adorning his scalp lock with the five eagle feathers he had earned in battle. The congregation of Dakota men and women tried not to stare impolitely, but the sight of a wild Sioux in full battle regalia walking calmly down the aisle of their church caused quite a stir.

John Thundercloud nodded to Soaring Eagle and returned to his sermon. He spoke in English. Soaring Eagle was pleased to find that much of what Thundercloud said made sense—linguistically.

Pastor Thundercloud had called his sermon that day “The Dying That Gives Us Life.” Soaring Eagle understood the words. He listened to the pastor read the text from 2 Corinthians.

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.

Soaring Eagle wondered at Thundercloud’s ability to read these words and apply them personally. He thought how good it would be to say those words and mean them. They were the words of a man who had fought a great battle and refused to be defeated. But how could a man who had been taken from his homeland and imprisoned be saying these things? Soaring Eagle grew angry as the pastor talked of loving and forgiving. He decided not to listen any more. But just when he was about to get up and leave in disgust, Carrie Brown’s small white hand found its way into the battle-hardened hand of the Lakota warrior.

Soaring Eagle looked down at Carrie. The child was beaming with satisfaction. He couldn’t help himself. He smiled back.

John Thundercloud gave a sermon that challenged his congregation that day. Soaring Eagle was not ready to hear those words. Still, God used a child to give the sermon that Soaring Eagle needed. It didn’t require words, but it had a title. Carrie put her hand in Soaring Eagle’s and spoke the sermon called “Love.”

On the day that followed Soaring Eagle’s first true attendance at the Santee Church, Rachel Brown stepped out her front door and nearly tripped over a piece of bark holding a huge, fresh trout. The next day, there was a prairie chicken. Mary Riggs reported the arrival of mystery game on her doorstep one morning—as did Martha Red Wing and John Thundercloud’s wife, Gray Dawn.

When Carrie tumbled out the school door for recess that morning, she noticed that Soaring Eagle walked beside James Red Wing as he prodded the mission’s two white oxen to pull the water wagon up a steep incline. The water wagon had made its daily trip to the nearby river, and when it neared the Riggs’s cabin, Soaring Eagle hoisted a barrel out of the back of the wagon and carried it in.

When school was over that day, Carrie skipped to the building site for a workshop that was to open soon. Soaring Eagle was helping James Red Wing skin the bark off a felled log. Every day thereafter, Carrie saw Soaring Eagle helping at chores and taking part in mission life. He was still very quiet, but he worked diligently alongside the other men.

The next Sunday, when Rachel and Carrie Brown entered the tiny church building, Soaring Eagle was already there, sitting on the back pew, waiting for the service to start. Carrie looked slyly out of the corner of her eye at him as they walked past and grinned. Soaring Eagle pretended not to see her. Still, he turned one palm up and clasped his two hands together. Carrie understood. He was thanking her for last Sunday.

After the sermon, Carrie hurried outside to look for Soaring Eagle. “Your friend has gone hunting, Carrie,” James Red Wing said.

Carrie pursed her lips with disappointment. After bolting down her lunch, she ran outside to play, wandering ever closer to the far-off grove of cottonwoods and the sand-bottomed creek where she and her mother had last picnicked. With a careful look about her and under every rocky ledge, she settled onto the bank of the creek and dangled her bare feet in the clear water, singing softly to Ida May, the corncob doll. A shadow fell across the water and, before she had a chance to look up, Soaring Eagle had settled beside her.

“Can I see the pretty ladies in there again?” Carrie pointed to the locket.

Soaring Eagle took off the locket and handed it to her. As she looked at the women, Soaring Eagle pointed to Walks the Fire. “My mother.” Before Carrie could ask the question, Soaring Eagle explained her presence among his tribe, ending with, “she had hair like the setting sun, the color of Red Bird’s hair.”

Carrie smiled with pleasure before asking, “Who is the other one?”

“I think she is my sister. She came after Walks the Fire was taken from my village.” Soaring Eagle changed the subject. He pointed to the horizon and said, “My father hunted buffalo here.”

Carrie looked up at the somber face. Pointing to the scar on his left cheek, she asked about it, and Soaring Eagle told her the story of how he earned his name. Carrie gasped, “You just stepped off a cliff? Just like that?” She pointed to the top of the ravine. Soaring Eagle looked up and shook his head. “No, much higher.”

“I think you must have had an angel watching over you!”

Soaring Eagle frowned. “Angel. What is angel?”

“You know—an angel— with wings! God says we have angels watching us, taking care of us.”

Soaring Eagle laughed. “I do not think your God would have sent angels to help a frightened Lakota boy so many years ago.”

Carrie shook her head. “He would too! He cares about every body. My mama said so.”

Soaring Eagle deferred. “If Good Bird has taught you this, then you must believe it.”

“Did you believe what your mama taught you?”

Soaring Eagle shook his head. “She believed.” The memory of the old Bible folded up carefully in his parfleche rose up to accuse him. “Even though I did not believe, I still remember.”

The afternoon passed with Carrie asking questions and more questions. Each one took Soaring Eagle back to his people—back to his childhood—and back to a time when the Lakota were the hunters, not the hunted.

“Why are you so sad, Mr. Soaring Eagle?”

“I am not sad, Red Bird. The Lakota learn silence to hide from our enemies and to catch the best game. We learn to wait so that we will not rush into battle foolishly.”

“How come you’re so strong?”

“A man among my people must be able to go without food or water for two or three of your days and not complain. He must be able to run a day and a night without rest.”

“That’s how you ran so far to get help when your father was hurt on the cliff!”

“That is how I ran so far.”

“What do those feathers mean?”

“They mean that I have ‘counted coup’ five times on my enemy. In battle, we run to strike the enemy with our hand or with a stick, without killing him. To run at a man who shoots at you with his gun and to strike him with your open hand, that is a brave thing. When my friends saw that I had done this, they said it around the campfire, and I was allowed to wear one eagle feather for each coup.”

“Then you must be real brave!”

Soaring Eagle smiled. “There are many among my people who have more than five eagle feathers, little one. Five is not so many.”

“Would you like to find your sister?”

Soaring Eagle thought for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “My sister would not be pleased to meet her brother.”

“Why not? If I had a brave brother, I’d want to meet him .”

“Because, little one,” Soaring Eagle rose. “I think that I killed her husband.”

Carrie tried to absorb the meaning of the words, but Soaring Eagle gave her no time to ask further questions. “The sun is getting low in the sky. You must return to the Bird’s Nest. Good Bird will think that a bad spirit has come to steal you away.”

Carrie scrambled up the steep side of the ravine. From behind her, an owl hooted. She whirled around at the top of the hill and looked back. The owl hooted again. It was Soaring Eagle.

“Do it again! Do it again!”

Soaring Eagle complied, calling up, “That is Hinkaya. What do you call that bird?”

“Owl,” Carrie answered.

“Owl says that you must hurry home now, little one. I will follow to guard you from the night.”