Chapter 2

“Five Horses what is wrong?” asked a worried White Eagle as he knelt beside his wife. He and Red Bear had returned from their hunt later than anticipated and expected to find Five Horses waiting for them. Growing concerned as more time passed he questioned others in the Kiowa village but no one knew her whereabouts. White Eagle’s sister-in-law, Black Water Woman, remembered that Five Horses had mentioned she intended to pick berries that afternoon. White Eagle had easily found the tracks that led him to his wife.

Still lying on the ground in a state of exhaustion, not quite asleep but not fully awake, Five Horses was startled by his voice and the touch of his hand as he brushed her hair away from her face. Five Horses sat up quickly and pushed herself back against the trunk of the tree, a look of pure fear in her eyes. Realizing the figure before her was her husband and not the white man she leaned forward into his embrace, collapsing in his arms.

White Eagle saw the bruises and cuts on her face and body and instinctively knew. “Who did this to you, Five Horses?” he softly asked.

Barely trusting herself to speak the words Five Horses whispered to her husband “a white man.”

Fury began to build in White Eagle at the thought of another man, a white man, touching his wife. Releasing their embrace he looked at her swollen face, touched the dried blood from the knife wound. “Where is he?” he asked
trying to control the anger in his voice.

“I do not know. He is gone,” replied Five Horses, her voice quivering as tears began to fall anew. “I am sorry, my husband. I am so ashamed.”

White Eagle looked intently into the tear filled eyes of his wife, his hands cupping her face. “You have no need to be ashamed, Five Horses. It is the man who has shame”.

Delaying his desire to follow the tracks of the white man and exact a swift justice, White Eagle picked up his fragile wife and carried her abused body to his horse. Lifting her carefully across the horse’s back he then mounted behind her. Wrapping his arms around her protectively White Eagle took his wife home, the rising moon illuminating their path.

Five Horses closed her eyes and listened to the chant of Cloud Walker. The pungent odor of burning herbs filled the teepee of White Eagle and Five Horses as the old, white haired medicine man implored the spirits to heal the woman’s body and cleanse her spirit.

Black Water Woman helped Cloud Walker clean the wound on Five Horses’ face and applied a salve of herbs to the bruises and abrasions that had been inflicted upon her. Exhausted from her ordeal, Five Horses simply wanted them to leave her alone.

Holding his wife tenderly, her back resting against his chest, White Eagle patiently waited for Five Horses to speak. Black Water Woman had taken Red Bear to her own family’s teepee for the night, allowing his parents the opportunity to speak privately.

Beginning to relax in the security of her husband’s strong arms around her, Five Horses gazed into the flames of the fire before them. The night air retained the heat of the day and the fire was not needed for warmth but the darkness of their teepee had frightened Five Horses prompting White Eagle to build a small fire in an attempt to calm her fears.

Drawing a deep breath, Five Horses broke the silence and began to tell White Eagle of her ordeal. She described the man as well as she could but the memories were painful. White Eagle remained quiet, but his back stiffened, the anger in him continuing to escalate as Five Horses told him how the man had bound her hands and forced the gag in her mouth. Reaching for her bruised hands he held them tenderly tracing the marks made by the rawhide with his fingertips.

Five Horses paused remembering the savage way the man had taken her, remembering the pain and humiliation. White Eagle sensed her discomfort, his embrace telling her that no words were necessary.

A feeling of pride in his spirited wife overcame White Eagle as Five Horses described spitting in the man’s face. However, he soon realized the cut on her own face was the man’s retribution.

Five Horses tried to explain the call of the water to White Eagle but her memories were clouded and it seemed so strange. How could she make him understand when she didn’t herself? It pained White Eagle greatly to hear
these words, to know that Five Horses had considered taking her own life. He vowed silently to find the man responsible and make him pay for the pain inflicted upon her.

When her story was finished, Five Horses turned to look at the face of her husband. Her voice quivering with emotion she spoke. “I am sorry that I have brought shame to our family, White Eagle. You must be displeased with
me. I will hide myself away so you won’t be embarrassed,” she offered casting her eyes downward and bowing her head.

White Eagle shook his head “no” but before he could speak, Five Horses continued. “I want you to take another wife. Gray Owl is a widow now. She would make a fine…”. White Eagle gently raised Five Horse’s downcast head
and placed his finger over her lips to silence her.

“Why do you speak these things? I love you, Five Horses. I will always love you. You are my life,” he implored to her. “I want no other woman, only you. Please listen to me. You have no reason to be ashamed, Five Horses. You did nothing wrong. I will hear no more of such talk.”

White Eagle’s words of reassurance began to take hold as they talked throughout the dark hours. Five Horses began to believe that she was not responsible for what happened to her. She had done nothing wrong. True, she had ventured too far by herself from the safety of the village, but that did not give the man the right to touch her.

Raising her hand to brush away a stray tear from her cheek, Five Horses touched the wound on her face and realized it would leave a permanent reminder of her attacker. Looking deeply into her husband’s eyes she questioned, “When you look at me you will see…”

“The face of a beautiful, strong woman,” he finished her sentence tenderly taking her small hand in his.

Relieved of her fears by White Eagle’s expressions of love Five Horses allowed herself to rest cradled in the arms of her husband. Gazing down at his sleeping wife, placing a kiss on her bruised face, White Eagle shuddered as he realized how close he had come to losing her. “I will find the white man who did these things and bring him here, Five Horses. You will watch him die.”

White Eagle emerged from their teepee into the quiet of the slumbering Kiowa village. Gazing upon the eastern horizon he watched as the night and the morning battled for possession of the sky. White Eagle sighed heavily. He was worried about his wife. In time her body would heal but would the memories ever fade? His thoughts centered on anther concern that they had not yet discussed. Had the white man’s seed been planted in his wife’s womb? White Eagle knew there were ways to rid a woman of an unwanted child. He would discuss this with Cloud Walker.

White Eagle turned at the sound of approaching footsteps to see his brother, Stone Eyes and nephew, Two Elks, emerging from the darkness leading three indian ponies.

Two Elks was a strong, handsome young warrior of sixteen summers. He had spent a good deal of time with his aunt, Five Horses, several years prior after his mother, Black Water Woman, grew ill after a difficult childbirth and was unable to care for her family. Two Elks was very fond of Five Horses and the thought of her attack was deeply disturbing to him.

Black Water Woman approached the three men offering small bowls of different colored paint. Silently they applied the dye to their bodies readying themselves for revenge.

Red Bear crawled through the opening of his uncle’s teepee to stand beside his father, wiping the remnants of sleep from his eyes. “I should go with you, Father.”

“No,” White Eagle answered shaking his head. Placing his hands upon the boy’s shoulders he spoke softly to his son. “Your mother sleeps now. She will need someone with her when she wakes. Take care of her for me, Red Bear, until I return.”

White Eagle drew his son into an embrace as Red Bear nodded his head in affirmation of his father’s request. “Be careful, Father. The white man is evil.”

“Let us go, my brother,” requested Stone Eyes as he and Two Elks effortlessly mounted their ponies. “He will be easy to find. White men leave many tracks.”

White Eagle nodded in agreement as he mounted his horse in one swift, fluid motion. The anger he had held at bay throughout the night now burning like hot embers in his heart. “Yes, tracking the white man is no more difficult than tracking a child,” he stated with disgust, his anger beginning to overflow. “And when we find him, I will tear open his chest and rip out his heart while it still beats.”

Five Horses awakened with her body stiff and sore, the events of the previous day creeping back into her thoughts. She stood in the center of her home, her arms defensively folded across her chest, her hands moving nervously up and down her arms. Empowered by the reassurance of White Eagle’s love, she drew a deep breath. “No. He took my body. I will not let him take my spirit, too.”

Drawing herself to full stature and squaring her shoulders, Five Horses stepped into the bustling Kiowa village. The women of the village were busy with the responsibilities of their households. Some tended the large cooking pots while others wove reed baskets or worked on animal hides. As they began to notice Five Horses’ presence the women paused in their various duties to cast a glance in her direction. Some looked at her with sympathetic eyes while others studied her and then quickly looked away once she noticed their eyes upon her.

Five Horses found Red Bear working on the hide of the deer his father had killed the day before. She half-heartedly began to help her son as fragments of conversation began to float across the Kiowa village.

“…should have known better...”
“…shouldn’t have been there...”
“…asking for trouble...”

Red Bear, hearing the words and noticing the stares of the women, acted protectively of his mother taking his father’s request quite seriously. Five Horses smiled softly at her son. He was becoming a young man, no longer her little boy. Her thoughts drifted as images of Red Bear as a young child danced through her memory. Memories of happier times.

White Eagle had been gone only a short time, but she longed for his return. Five Horses knew he would return with the man and although she wanted him to be punished for his actions against her, the thought of seeing him again sent chills up and down her spine. More than anything, she just wanted her family together and safe. White Eagle had promised that there would be happy times again. Watching Red Bear growing into a man before her eyes, she almost believed him.

Red Bear saw the three horses approaching the village as night began to fall and breathed a sigh of relief that his father was returning. As they drew closer, he began walking to the edge of the village to meet White Eagle but quickened his pace to a trot and then a run as he realized something was not right.

Stone Eyes, his back hunched forward and his head held low, lead the two other horses carrying the bodies of White Eagle and Two Elks. Red Bear’s cry of grief carried across the valley on the warm evening breeze alerting
the village of the tragedy.

The three men had easily found the tracks of the white man and followed them for the better part of the day to a large grove of trees growing in an area of rolling hills the Kiowa called The Land of Open Sky. A river cut its way through the hills on the far side of the grove.

White Eagle dismounted outside the trees and followed the tracks on foot until he saw the man removing the dead body of a raccoon that had the misfortune of stepping into a trap. The white man, whistling a tune, was oblivious to the Kiowa war chief observing him from no more than 20 yards away as he went to work on the raccoon.

“Ignorant white man,” White Eagle thought to himself as he returned to Stone Eyes and Two Elks.

It would have been easy to drop him where he stood but White Eagle wanted to inflict as much pain and fear on the man as possible. His plan was to converge upon the man from the three open directions of the grove, forcing him toward the river. With war cries filling the air and three Kiowa warriors bearing down upon him, the man would understand how it felt to fear for your life. Once captured, he would be returned to the village and be put to death in a manner befitting his crime.

White Eagle and Two Elks kicked their horses into a gallop to take their positions on the far side of the trees. With emotion rather than good judgment directing his actions, White Eagle, with his nephew close behind, charged over the crest of a hill into the direct view of a small hunting party of young Lakota Sioux. Mistaking the aggression of the approaching Kiowa for hostility toward them, the Lakota opened fire killing White Eagle and Two Elks.

The Lakota, fearing an attack from the Kiowa, quickly left the area leaving the bodies of the fallen warriors in the tall prairie grass. Hearing the shots, Stone Eyes abandoned pursuit of the white man to discover the dead bodies of his brother and son. His own grief now weighing on him more heavily than the need to avenge the attack of his brother’s wife, Stone Eyes began the slow ride home, the fate of the white man all but forgotten.

Five Horses ran toward the sound of her son’s cry, panic and disbelief gripping her heart as she saw the bodies of White Eagle and Two Elks lifted from the horses and placed upon the ground.

“NO!” she screamed, falling to her knees beside the blood covered body of her husband. Crying out to the spirits she pleaded, “Why have you taken him from me!”

The grief of losing her only son to great to bear, Black Water Woman turned from Two Elks’ limp body to face Five Horses. “This is because of you!” she accused fiercely.

Red Bear moved close to his mother and knelt beside her, his eyes remaining on his father’s body. Five Horses desperately reached for him, holding him close to her with one arm, cradling the lifeless form of White Eagle in the
other. Red Bear moved his eyes from his father to Five Horses’ tear stained face as his own began to fall and listened to the sound of her heart breaking.