Chapter 23
Each star is to me a sealed book,
Some tale of that loved one keeping.
—MRS. CRAWFORD
“Do you think it is truly safe enough now to make camp?” Lauralee asked as Dancing Cloud made her a bed of green boughs, upon which he spread a blanket. She hugged herself, chilled and cramped by the coolness of the night air.
“As long as we do not make a campfire I feel that should a posse be after us, we will be safe enough for you to get some rest,” Dancing Cloud said, drawing her into his embrace. He held her against him, touched to the very core of himself at the lengths she had gone to save him. “We have far to go, o-ge-ye. To survive the journey, you must get adequate rest.”
Lauralee leaned limply against him. The warmth of his body melding into hers through her clothes made her feel better already. She closed her eyes and found herself drifting off. Then Dancing Cloud carried her to the bed of boughs and lay her gently upon it.
Smiling down at her peaceful sweetness, he drew another blanket over her and tucked it lovingly beneath her chin, and then snuggled it closer to her body on all sides.
He ran a hand over one of her cheeks, leaned down and kissed her, then rose slowly to his full height. He stretched his arms and yawned, but fought off sleep. That would be a luxury he must wait for later. He could not be all that certain that Paul Brown could be trusted not to tell about Lauralee helping him escape. And how was Paul going to explain Dancing Cloud’s absence unless he knew well the art of lying?
Because of his mistrust of all Yankees Dancing Cloud grabbed his rifle. He walked determinedly toward a rise in the land a few yards from where Lauralee trustingly slept. From that vantage point he could see for miles where a meadow stretched out before him, a thick forest at his back.
He sat down beside a cedar tree that was warped by the wind of centuries. It was bent and hunched into the shape of a crone, an eerie chanting old woman of the rain, wind, snow, and sun.
Laying his rifle across his lap, Dancing Cloud leaned his back against the bent cedar tree. Reaching inside his fringed jacket pocket he gathered up several juniper berries into the palm of his hand. He had accumulated a good supply of these berries from evergreen shrubs in the forest and had placed them in his pocket.
One by one he chewed on the berries, six to ten each day recommended. The berry was good for digestion. It also warded off sickness and weakness, and kept the mind awake and clear, which was essential now that they were running from the law. He could not see Sheriff Decker allowing him to escape that easily from his jail.
And it was up to Dancing Cloud to make sure that Sheriff Decker never caught up with him and Lauralee. Lauralee would be incarcerated like a common criminal, herself.
Dancing Cloud would never allow that to happen.
Even if he was forced to shoot and kill her Uncle Abner should he be among those who were a part of a posse.
Fighting off sleep as his eyelids grew heavy and his eyes burned, Dancing Cloud gave himself a shake, then looked slowly around him. They had just passed into Indiana a short while ago. It was daylight enough now to enjoy the beauty of the land.
Green. The wide stretch of the green meadow reaching out to the horizon was beautiful and serene.
Green. The symbol of everlasting life.
Dancing Cloud closed his eyes and thought of his home, missing his people and his home in his mountains with every fiber of his being. The sprigs of green, the whir of a rattle, the shush-shush of ankle bells, the lift and stamp of feet....
A sound in the distance drew him from his reverie. His eyes quickly opened and he jumped to his feet. He listened again for the sound that had come to him like muffled, distant thunder.
Clutching the rifle in one hand, he cupped his other hand over his eyes and surveyed the horizon before him. His heartbeat quickened and he went numbly cold inside when he saw several horsemen approaching. They were far enough away so that they looked just like dots on the horizon.
But still they were there and Dancing Cloud did not have to think about who it might be.
He knew.
Sheriff Decker and a posse had managed to find the route of Dancing Cloud and Lauralee’s travel!
Thoughts of Paul Brown came quickly to his mind again. He had surely allowed Dancing Cloud and Lauralee to leave Mattoon so that he could lead the posse to them and take on the appearance of a white man’s “hero.”
But for now he cast all blame aside. He and Lauralee had no time to waste.
He broke into a run down the slight incline. He hoped that neither Sheriff Decker, nor those men who made up the posse, had the ability to sniff out an actual trail made by Dancing Cloud and Laura1ee’s horses.
He hoped that it had only been a good guess that had led them this close.
If it was the latter, Dancing Cloud still felt hopeful that he and Lauralee could elude Sheriff Decker and his men long enough so that they would tire of the search and return to Mattoon empty-handed.
“Lauralee,” Dancing Cloud whispered harshly, bending over to give her a slight shake. “O-ge-ye, wake up. We must leave. I have spied Sheriff Decker in the distance. He brings with him many men.”
The name Sheriff Decker drew Lauralee instantly awake. She rubbed her eyes and jumped to her feet.
Disoriented by having been awakened so suddenly, she moved in one direction, stopped, then moved in another.
Wild-eyed, she gazed up at Dancing Cloud as he came and steadied her by placing a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m frightened,” she cried. “They will surely catch up with us now, Dancing Cloud. What will they do to us?”
Angry over Lauralee having been put in the position to be this afraid, Dancing Cloud’s fingers gripped more tightly to the rifle, so tight that his knuckles were rendered white.
“Always before you have shown such strength and bravery in the face of danger,” he said thickly. “Reach inside yourself and find the same strength now. To escape these men we must keep a level head.”
Lauralee straightened her shoulders. She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said as she looked into Dancing Cloud’s dark, troubled eyes. “I’m all right now. I’ll gather my things. I’ll place them in my buggy. I shall be ready to go in a minute.”
“Now is the time that your buggy must be left behind,” Dancing Cloud said, seeing the shock register in her eyes. “To travel more quickly and to be able to ride to a higher plateau to give us better cover, we both must travel on horseback.”
Lauralee glanced over her shoulder at her buggy. Should she leave it behind she must also leave most of her precious clothes that she had only recently purchased. She could carry only one valise on her horse. And there was only so much room in one embroidered valise. She might not even have time to search through her things for those belongings that meant more to her.
Seeing her disappointment and how troubled she was over what was required of her, Dancing Cloud placed a finger to her chin and turned her face around so that she was looking sadly up at him.
“O-ge-ye, we would have been forced to leave your buggy behind soon, anyhow,” he said softly. “When we neared my mountains, you would have soon seen how impossible it would be to travel up the steep mountainside.”
Her eyes searching his face, Lauralee said nothing for a moment, then nodded. “I understand,” she murmured. Then she sucked in a wild breath. “But there is no extra saddle. I . . . I . . . would be forced to ride bareback. I’m not sure that I can. I will be slipping and sliding all the time. That would make it impossible for a quick flight from the sheriff.”
“You shall ride in my saddle on my horse,” Dancing Cloud said. “I shall ride yours bareback.” He walked away from her in a rush and set his rifle aside only long enough to detach her horse from the buggy.
Lauralee looked into the distance and went limp with fright when she saw that the men were no longer just a dot along the horizon. She could make out their shape. She knew for certain to expect Sheriff Decker and Deputy Dobbs among those making up the posse. More than likely Paul Brown was riding with him. He had probably been the first one to even suggest forming the posse so that he could look big in the eyes of the community if she and Dancing Cloud were brought back to stand trial.
She gasped. She was almost certain that she could make out her Uncle Abner riding tall in a saddle! It made a keen melancholia sweep through her to think that he would go along with such a thing as a posse, when in the end it might mean that she would hang beside Dancing Cloud on a hangman’s noose.
Exhaling a quavering, frightened breath, she ran to her buggy and dumped all of her belongings from her valises. Her fingers trembling, she sorted through it all and finally had one of her valises filled with those things that she felt she would need the most. Especially her toilet articles and dresses and skirts and blouses that would travel easier.
Grabbing up the valise, she ran to Dancing Cloud’s horse. After tying it in with the other things that were secured to the saddlebags, she gazed with a longing at her buggy again, then at the bed that Dancing Cloud had made for her on the ground.
She then swung herself into the saddle just as Dancing Cloud mounted her horse. He edged the horse next to his own, his eyes steady with Lauralee’s. “Keep up with me,” he said flatly. “Never lag behind. We will be riding through the dense forest. You could be lost to me quickly.”
Lauralee looked at the buggy and bed again. “They will for certain know that we were here,” she said worriedly.
“As long as we have a good head start on them, it does not matter that they realize they have come close to catching us.”
“But won’t that make them more determined than ever to keep on coming after us?”
“Yes, that is so. But there is not much we can do about that except put many more miles between us today and keep far enough ahead so that they will soon tire of looking for us.”
“Dancing Cloud, did you get any sleep at all?” Lauralee asked as they nudged their horses and rode away.
“Sleep will come later. During tests of endurance at my village I learned as a child the art of going days and nights without sleep.”
Knowing that she was not as trained in the art of staying awake, or of riding for hours on horseback, or of surviving in the wilderness, Lauralee wasn’t sure if she could withstand all that now faced her before reaching Dancing Cloud’s village.
At least for now, though, she felt that she no longer had to be afraid of Clint McCloud causing her harm. He would not be among those who were after her and Dancing Cloud. He would most definitely steer clear of them. He was, himself, a fugitive from justice!
She leaned low over Dancing Cloud’s horse, wondering where Clint McCloud might be at this moment, where he might have gone to elude the law. . . .
* * *
His shoulders slumped, exhausted from the long ride from Mattoon, Clint McCloud drew a tight rein beside a log cabin. He had built this cabin with his very own hands amid a thick forest in North Carolina to bide his choice of wives, and especially the son who had come from his union with the Cherokee squaw.
Fog laying like a heavy-laden band of steel over the treetops reminded Clint of the Great Smoky Mountains. The mountains were only a half-day’s ride from his cabin, a place that jarred his memory of the war every time he gazed upon the mysterious haze that could lay like puffs of smoke over the mountains for days.
The massacre.
The massacre had been his show of power over the damn redskins.
His wooden leg seeming to be even more heavy than usual, Clint moaned as he lifted it over the saddle.
Finally standing, he swayed and groaned again and held onto the saddle horn to steady himself.
Reeking with perspiration, his dark suit dust-laden, Clint stood there for a moment longer, then secured his horse’s reins to a hitching rail.
He limped slowly around to the front of the cabin. The slow spiral of smoke rising from the chimney indicated that his wife, Soft Wind, was out of bed, preparing herself for her daily chores.
“She always rises with the sun,” he grumbled to himself, recalling the many times that he had grabbed her back down onto the bed with him.
A wicked smile fluttered across his lips at the thought of her silken, copper body next to his. When she had been sixteen he had found her at an orphanage in Kentucky and had taken her away, with promises that if she married him, she would never want for another thing.
Soft Wind had been so grateful to him for having rescued her from a life where she had lacked identity that she had done everything to make him a perfect wife. And she had succeeded. He had been content with her.
Until she was with child. He had silently hoped throughout her pregnancy that the child would reflect his heritage. Not hers.
When their son had been born and every inch of him was Indian, Clint had not been able to openly love the child. Each time he looked at Brian Brave Walker he would be haunted by the Cherokee children whom he and his regiment had so viciously slaughtered that day in the Great Smoky Mountains during the Civil War. Killing had come so easy to him, no matter were they children or adults. He had joined the Union to kill anyone whose beliefs differed from his.
The Smoky Mountain Cherokee were among those who had not seen eye to eye with Clint’s.
He had made them pay for those differences.
Now he was paying for what he had done to those people by not being free to love and embrace his very own son.
His thoughts returned to Mattoon and how ironic it had been that he had come face to face again with another Cherokee of his past.
Dancing Cloud.
Seeing the Cherokee, stalking him just outside Mattoon before Dancing Cloud arrived there with Lauralee, had convinced Clint that he was the Cherokee who filled his very soul with hate; the Cherokee who made his heart cry out for vengeance.
Grumbling to himself, half dragging his wooden leg behind him, Clint shoved the front door open. Upon first glance into the small cabin be found his wife and ten-year-old son cowering against the far wall, their eyes filled with fear at the mere sight of him.
“Is this the kind of reception I can always expect from my wife?” Clint said, glowering at Soft Wind. His eyes softened as he raked his eyes over her. Her sleek, black hair hung long and beautiful across her shoulders and down her back. Her tiny waist and her large bosom were revealed to him and made his heart skip a hungry beat as the buckskin fabric of her dress clung sensually to her curves.
He had missed her.
He never stopped hungering for her.
His gaze shifted to his son. It took him aback somewhat to see the look of defiance in Brian Brave Walker’s eyes. At first glance it had looked as though he was cowering.
In truth, it was his mother who held Brian Brave Walker in place so that he would not be able to display his disobedience to his father openly.
Clint went across the room, past the fancy, overstuffed chairs that he had brought to Soft Wind in an effort to please her after realizing that she not only feared him, but bated him as well. Clint stopped in front of her and gathered a handful of her hair in his fingers and gave it a yank, causing her to cry out with pain and stumble toward him.
“The baby,” he said thinly. “Where’s the baby?”
Soft Wind nodded toward a small cradle in the shadows.
Clint released Soft Wind’s hair and lumbered over to the cradle. Leaning over, he unfolded a blanket from around the small baby, then slung his hands into the air in a fit of fury.
“It’s a girl and her skin is not white!” he shouted. “She is Indian! Just like her brother, she is Indian through and through.”
“Please do not be angry,” Soft Wind sobbed. “She is a beautiful child no matter what color her skin is. Please do not harm her!”
Clint went to Soft Wind and grabbed her by the shoulders. He shook her as he leered down at her. “I told you what I’d do if that brat was Indian!” he shouted. “I’m going to take her away!”
“No!” Soft Wind cried. “Do not take my baby away!”
“Shut up, squaw,” Clint said, giving her another rough shake. He then shoved her down onto the bed and stood with his fists on his hips over her. “She won’t stay another night beneath my roof. Do you hear? I’ll never lay claim to her. Never!”
“Leave my mother alone,” Brian Brave Walker said, taking a bold step toward his father. “I told her she should leave with my baby sister when she had the chance. She should not have to give in to your abuse only because you rescued her so long ago from an orphanage.” Brian Brave Walker thrust his bare chest out proudly above his fringed buckskin breeches. “I told Mother that I could care for her and my baby sister.”
Clint backhanded Brian Brave Walker in the mouth, causing a trickle of blood to spill down his chin. “You shut your mouth, savage brat,” he snarled. “You’d best keep your suggestions to yourself as far as your mother and sister are concerned. You know that I told her if she ever left I’d hunt her down and kill her. I don’t want no other man pawin’ her. She’s mine. All mine. So you see, brat, she ain’t goin’ nowhere. As far as you are concerned, I’d welcome your absence in my home. I ain’t never had no use for you, nor have you for me. There’d be no love lost if you’d just walk away and not set foot on my property again.”
Clint went and stood over Brian Brave Walker, his eyes narrowed. “Go,” he said darkly. “But don’t bring anyone back here thinkin’ you’re going to rescue your mother and sister. I’ll shoot anyone who gets near my property. Even you.”
Soft Wind rose shakily from the bed. Clint saw her and went and held her back as she tried to reach for Brian Brave Walker.
“No!” she cried. “Son, do not listen to him. Do not leave your mother!”
Brian Brave Walker wiped the blood from his mouth on the back of a hand, his eyes wavering into his mother’s. Then he spun around on a moccasined heel and went and stood over the cradle and took a lingering, last look at his sister. He stifled a sob as she gazed up at him with her trusting dark eyes. Never would he see her again!
Turning his eyes away from her he left the cabin in a mad run. He trembled inside as he heard his mother yelling his name over and over again—and then she became quiet.
He closed his eyes and doubled his hands into tight fists at his sides as he envisioned what was now happening to his mother. His father had surely thrown her on the bed and was using her as though she were no better than an animal.
Then his father would take the child away!
“Aieee!” he cried in Cherokee as he broke into a hard run away from the cabin.
Brian Brave Walker had thought of leaving many times. But his concern for his mother had kept him there, with her.
Now it was just too much for him.
He was ten winters of age.
If he was among his true people he would be classified as a brave!
“I must search until I find my mother’s true people,” he whispered. “She has told me often that they are not far away.”
Fearing that Brian Brave Walker would leave her, she had never told him exactly which village she had fled from during the war, having found a refuge in the orphanage when she had been near to starving to death. But he knew that it could not be too far away. He would find it. He would go there.
But how could he tell the elders about his mother?
How could he tell them about his baby sister?
His father’s warnings consumed him. He knew that Clint McCloud would follow through with his threats. He was capable of doing anything. No. Brian Brave Walker could not endanger his mother by telling the truth of her captivity.
Not now, anyhow. But somehow he would find a way to end his father’s tyranny! His mother had to be rescued from a life of cruel treatment wrought upon her by an evil husband.
He ran even harder at the thought of searching the mountains and finally becoming as one with his mother’s people. He would never think again about having blood of that vile, insane white man flowing through his veins. This man had never been a true father.
To Brian Brave Walker, this man was nothing.