Chapter 37

Tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.

Joshua 3:5

I t was a spring evening at the Santee Normal Training School. LisBeth, along with Jim Callaway and Agnes Bond, had arrived at the mission earlier in the day. As the sun set, Agnes and Charity lighted a lamp and moved into the parlor at the Birds’ Nest, taking with them a laundry basket full of mending. LisBeth sat on the front porch, tapping her toe nervously as she watched Jim ride away. He was headed to tell Soaring Eagle that LisBeth was there. Charity had already told LisBeth that Soaring Eagle and Pastor John Thundercloud had said they would ride up to the church early the morning after the travelers arrived.

As she watched Jim ride away, LisBeth sat down at the edge of the rough-hewn porch. She looked about her at each building of the campus and tried to picture Soaring Eagle participating in the activities there. She thought back to every story her mother had ever told about Soaring Eagle’s boyhood. Finally, LisBeth jumped up and headed down the path that led to the spot where Soaring Eagle had saved Carrie and Rachel Brown from a rattlesnake. Carrie had told her the story, and now, as LisBeth sat alone on the creek bank, she tried to imagine her brother standing just on the other side of the creek. She tried to decide what she would say, but words failed her, so she sat quietly, listening to the sounds of water spilling over the rocks and birds twittering in the low brush.

When an owl hooted, LisBeth got up and made her way back to the Birds’ Nest, where Agnes and Charity sat, still mending. The two looked up when LisBeth joined them, taking up a needle and thread and beginning to sew a button on. The women worked together in silence for several minutes before anyone spoke. Finally, Charity laid aside her mending, took up a book, and began to read aloud. After only a few pages, she laid it aside, picking up her Bible instead. She began reading, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. . . .” When she had finished the psalm, Charity said, “LisBeth, there’s really nothing I can say to help you through tonight and tomorrow. But I’ll be praying for you. Really praying.”

With that, Charity patted LisBeth’s hand, stood up, and said, “Mother, I think we should retire and give LisBeth some time to think.” Agnes laid down her mending and the two women left LisBeth sitting in a chair, watching the shadows from the lighted lamp play on the walls. In only a few moments, she blew out the lamp and retired.

LisBeth tossed and turned and prayed through the long night. She dressed at dawn the next morning and hurried out to the kitchen of the Birds’ Nest. Jim was already there, waiting with a cup of strong coffee in his hand. As LisBeth drank, the cup shook. Jim took the cup from her and set it on the table. He was seated across from her, and he took both her hands in his own. “Soaring Eagle is just as nervous as you are, LisBeth. It’s going to be fine. Let’s pray.”

Jim waited for LisBeth to pray, but she looked up at him with shining eyes and said quietly, “I think God is just going to have to read my heart. I can’t find the words.”

“Then we’ll just open our hearts to him and be quiet before him for a minute.”

Jim prayed, “Lord, LisBeth doesn’t have the words, and neither do I. We’re just going to be quiet here with You for a minute and ask You to go before us and make the way straight.” He waited for a few minutes before squeezing LisBeth’s hands tightly and murmuring, “Amen.”

LisBeth got up shakily and Jim wrapped his arm around her as they walked to the church. Soaring Eagle and John Thundercloud had already arrived, and their hobbled ponies grazed not far away. The two men had lit a lamp, whose light spilled out of the church door and cast a warm glow across the porch.

Taking a deep breath, LisBeth stepped inside.

He was sitting at the front of the church, in the same pew where Carrie Brown had reached out to put her hand in his. He heard LisBeth’s footsteps on the porch. When he heard the footsteps coming up the aisle, he stood up and turned around. He had risen shortly after midnight to prepare for this meeting, and he was dressed in every piece of finery he had saved from the old days. His hair was clean and shining, braided into two thick braids wrapped with red calico and decorated with beads and feathers. Gold rings hung from each pierced ear. The five eagle feathers earned in battle hung down the back of his neck from his scalp lock. A fringed and decorated scalp shirt hung almost to his knees. The heavily beaded moccasins and leggings fashioned by Prairie Flower’s loving hands completed the wardrobe.

He started to walk toward LisBeth, but when he saw her hesitate, he stopped, too, and stood in front of the pulpit in the small church looking at her. John Thundercloud and Jim Callaway stood quietly, not daring to move or speak.

LisBeth looked at her regally adorned brother and was amazed. Taking a deep breath, she stared at Soaring Eagle and realized that she had seen this face all her life, for it was her own face, molded into more masculine features and hardened by outdoor living.

Soaring Eagle looked upon his sister and saw his father’s eyes in the face of a woman. He saw Rides the Wind’s cleft chin—even his hairline. Soaring Eagle’s eyes smiled with recognition.

One would have expected Soaring Eagle or LisBeth to say something that would be forever quoted by their descendants as they retold the story. But Soaring Eagle was content to stand and take in every detail of the face before him without saying a word, and LisBeth was too nervous to remember what she had planned to say. She finally broke the silence with, “I wish Carrie Brown were here, Soaring Eagle. She would know what to say.”

At the mention of Carrie, LisBeth reached into her pocket and withdrew the golden cross. With a trembling hand, she reached out to Soaring Eagle. “She sent this back to you.”

When she opened her hand and Soaring Eagle saw the cross, he slowly reached up to pull the locket from beneath his shirt. As he moved, the thimbles woven into the fringe across the shirt jingled.

He took the locket from around his neck and walked toward LisBeth. “This has traveled a long road of sorrow. I return it to you, my sister, in hopes that now it will make a way of joy between us.”

LisBeth opened her hand and Soaring Eagle took the cross and chain, replacing it with the locket. When he touched LisBeth’s ice-cold hands, he said quietly, “Walks the Fire’s hands were this way when she tended my wounds long ago.” His eyes searched LisBeth’s, and he went on. “When I look into your face, I see the face of our father, Rides the Wind. He would have rejoiced to see you, LisBeth King Baird. I wish that both our father and our mother could be here now to see that God has ended our wandering and brought us together.”

Soaring Eagle had pondered this meeting for a long time. He had prayed for God to show him a way to get across all the barriers between him and his sister. Prayer had reassured him, but he had been given no revelation of what he should say or how he should act in her presence.

However, the God of all grace was there that spring morning in Santee, Nebraska. One testimony to that fact was what Soaring Eagle did after he took the cross and chain from LisBeth’s outstretched hand. John Thundercloud would later testify that any doubt he had of the reality of Soaring Eagle’s being a new creature in Christ was washed away by his next action.

Soaring Eagle, Lakota warrior, raised to show little emotion in the presence of strangers—Soaring Eagle, great hunter, raised to maintain a stoic bearing in every situation, no matter how painful—Soaring Eagle, man of God—knelt before a white woman and with a voice that broke with emotion said softly, “I come to you this day, my sister, with a broken heart, knowing that I have done things that caused you pain. I ask you to understand that these things were done to defend my village. Even so, my heart is heavy knowing that I caused my sister to mourn. We shared the same father on this earth. We both knew the care of the same woman. But greater than these things is this—God is our Father. Please, Tanka —my sister—I ask you to hear what I say and to forgive me.”

LisBeth Baird didn’t have the knowledge of Lakota society to appreciate fully what was happening. Jim explained it to her later. But LisBeth didn’t need knowledge of Lakota society to do the right thing. And she did it.

Kneeling down in front of her brother she reached out to take the cross and chain from his hand. Putting it around his neck she said softly, “Soaring Eagle, my people have done things to cause you much pain. My heart is also heavy. We shared the same father on this earth. We knew the care of the same woman. And, yes, God is our Father. Please, my brother, I ask you to hear me and to forgive us all.”

There was more to be said, but it would have to wait. Neither Soaring Eagle nor LisBeth could manage more words. Dawn sent a faint light streaming in the windows and doorway of the little mission church. It illuminated a scene that neither John Thundercloud nor Jim Callaway would ever forget. Kneeling in the aisle of the little church were a Lakota brave named Soaring Eagle and his sister, LisBeth King Baird—holding hands and weeping.

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
Isaiah 40:31