PART ONE

Our First Teacher is

Our Own Heart

Chapter 1

Always the Land

Camp Robinson, Nebraska, September, 1878

Squaw! Squaw!

Black braids flying, Song ran as fast as she could to get away from the jeering taunts of the boys chasing her.

Her moccasined feet flew past the parade ground where officers were inspecting Company C of the Third Cavalry, the polished brass insignias on their full-dress uniforms glistening in the mid-day sunlight and reflecting off the scrupulously polished rifles and carbines of the mounted troopers. Heart racing, she bolted past the wood-framed guardhouse and the board-and-batten walls of the cavalry barracks and ducked into a narrow alley behind the frame-covered adobe adjutant’s office, only to trip as she ran, landing face down in a mud puddle. Pushing herself to her feet, she whirled around to the chilling sight of the boys rounding the corner of the building and surging toward her.

We’ll make you sorry you ever came here.

Go back to the rez where you belong, half-breed.

Rooted to her spot, with trembling fingers Song grasped the fringed hem of her deer-skin dress, yanked it up past her knee, and drew a skinning knife from the rawhide sheath strapped to her thigh. She stood there, frozen, face bloodless and chest heaving, a white-knuckled grip on the bone handle of the knife.

Suddenly, from somewhere behind her, a hard palm on her shoulder shoved her aside. A gasp whooshed out of her and she tumbled sideways. Regaining her footing, she watched wide-eyed as two figures rushed past her and pounced upon her pursuers.

Sounds of the scuffle filled the alley. She danced around the brawling bodies, jumping out of the way to avoid thrashing arms and legs, and cringing at their grunts and the thud of fists striking flesh.

In moments it was over. The boys who threatened her scrambled to their feet and ran away.

One of the boys who thwarted the attack stepped forward. Tall and broad-shouldered, sunlight glanced off strong brows and spiky black lashes and sparkled in eyes as blue as a summer sky. His face was lean and impossibly handsome, like the archangel the chaplain spoke of in his opening sermon before the start of class.

He gave her a cursory up-and-down glance. She must be one of the new Indian kids in school, he said to his companion. She can’t go back to class all muddy. My father wouldn’t like having an Indian in our house. Why don’t you take her to your house so she can get cleaned up? The chaplain likes his students to be neat and clean. He mimicked the chaplain’s proselytizing tone. One must always speak the truth, be honest, punctual, kind, and clean. Remember children, cleanliness is next to Godliness.

The other boy brushed off his pants and studied the girl. With her gaze lowered, she seemed harmless enough, although the streaks of mud on her face made her look like she was painted for war. It was no secret his friend’s father hated Indians, and the chaplain, who taught school in addition to his pastoral duties, thought of his students as his little flock and would not abide a dirty lamb. Heaving an involuntary sigh, he said, Okay, let’s go. Refusing to meet his gaze, she made no move to follow him. Don’t just stand there, he complained. Come on.

Song glanced back at the tall, handsome youth, but he had already walked off. Tucking the skinning knife back in its sheath, she tagged along behind the other one.

My name’s Will McIntyre, he said over his shoulder as he hurried across the parade ground. My father is Adjutant here.

Running to keep up with his long strides, she asked in a breathless voice, Who is that other boy?

He answered without glancing back. Trent Fontenelle. His father is Captain of Company C, Third Cavalry.

And those other ones?

The Fremont brothers. Don’t pay any attention to them. They like to stir up trouble. But today they got more than they bargained for when you pulled a knife on them. Would you really have used it?

I do not know, she replied. I have never been chased by boys.

Don’t Sioux boys chase girls?

A Lakota boy might throw a plum pit at a girl to get her attention, but he would never chase her and call her names.

He led her to a house at the west end of officers’ row. Constructed of pine logs cut from the nearby Pine Ridge escarpment, it wasn’t the largest house—that one was occupied by the post commander—but it was domestic in appearance with a wide shaded veranda and gabled roof.

When he opened the gate to a picket-fenced yard, a large hound bounded toward them.

Don’t be afraid, Will said. It’s my dog, Hal. He likes everyone.

I am not afraid. I have a dog. He is part wolf. He does not have a name. I call him yellow dog. He does not like everyone.

I’ll have to remember never to get on his bad side, Will mumbled as he climbed the two log steps to the wide-planked veranda.

Inside, he led the way through a dining room where ten people could be seated at the knotted pine table, past a library whose shelves were lined with books, and a living room fragrant with cedar and spruce, to a staircase at the rear of the house.

At the top of the stairs he gestured to a closed door. This my room. You can wash up in here. He opened the door and stepped aside for her to enter.

He waited impatiently in the hallway. The hour-long recess was almost over, and he was anxious to get back. Classes were held in the back room of the commissary, with younger children sitting in front and older children in back, girls on one side and boys on the other side. In class today, and even when he saw the Freemont boys about to attack her, he never got a good look at the girl.

The door to his room opened and the floorboards creaked when she stepped out into the hallway. Will’s impatience vanished and he stiffened with sudden awareness. Washed clean of mud, she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. She smelled of the outdoors, fresh and clean, with the sweet fragrance of sage emanating from her brown skin. Her hair, hanging in two long braids over her shoulders to her waist, was as black and shiny as a raven’s wing. But his attention was captured by her eyes. Wide-set, they were as green as new grass in spring. He had seen eyes like hers before, but at this dumbstruck moment he could not remember where or when. He caught himself thinking that in a few years such a pretty face would flourish into the kind of beauty that stole men’s hearts.

She gave him a shy smile. "Wophila thanka."

I—I’m s—sorry, he said, stumbling over his words. I don’t speak Sioux. I mean Lakota.

It means many thanks.

She turned away and hurried down the stairs, her moccasins brushing the wide planks of the treads with scarcely a sound. As swift as a pronghorn, she was out the front door.

Hey, wait. He caught up with her at the gate. I’ll walk you back to school.

I must see to my pony for the ride home.

Didn’t you come over here from the nearby Lakota camp? he asked, referring to the Lakota who pitched their lodges close to the garrison and relied on government subsidies.

We do not live on the handouts of the whites, she said. My home is on Cottonwood Creek.

Where’s that?

It comes off the running-water. What you call the Niobrara.

She was a puzzle to him. She had a proficiency in English rare for a Lakota youngster, and her shyness might have been mistaken for a docile manner if not for the knife strapped to her thigh and the hint of wildness he saw in her eyes.

What’s your name?

Sunlight glanced off the top of her head and her braids swung with the rhythm of her gait as she skipped away. Makes the Song, she called out. But my family calls me Song.

He knew now where he’d seen eyes like hers before. With sudden clarity he recalled the woman who visited several months ago when his father was garrisoned at Fort Ellis. She had red hair and green eyes and she spoke about her daughter who would be going to school at Camp Robinson, a daughter whose name was Makes the Song. That night he overheard his parents talking when they thought he was asleep. His mother asked his father if he was still in love with the woman with the green eyes, and his father assured her he was not.

Was it true? Had his father once been in love with Song’s mother? He had no idea what it meant to be in love, but judging from the inflection of his parents’ voices he suspected it was not to be taken lightly. From what he observed, being in love seemed like a whole lot of trouble for a man who found himself wrapped so tight around a woman’s little finger that it was a wonder he could draw breath.

He supposed one day he would fall in love, but who would he fall in love with? Camp Robinson was not teeming with eligible girls. There was Florence Harrison, the commissary sergeant’s daughter, who was pretty but ill-tempered. And Josie Babcock, daughter of Captain Babcock of Company G, Ninth Infantry, who screamed bloody murder if an ant so much as crossed her path.

He tossed the thought aside. What was he thinking? At nearly fifteen, love and marriage were a long way off. Besides, what woman would want the kind of life he envisioned for himself? Regimental blue wasn’t for him. He would leave the military life to Trent Fontenelle who, in two years, would be attending West Point, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather to become a career officer.

Will wanted to work the land. There was plenty of it since the Great Sioux Reservation, created by the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868, had been whittled down from its original one hundred and thirty-four million acres to less than fifteen million acres, leaving more land for white settlement. In school he learned about something called the Homestead Act which enabled a settler to claim a quarter section of land as long as he built a house and lived on the land for five years. He’d have to wait until he was twenty-one to put in his application, but he had already begun to plan, forming a mental list of things he would need, like seeds, equipment, animal feed, and credit. Few trees grew on the open plains, and with the absence of buffalo and no chips to fuel his fires, he’d have to find a spot near a river or a stream with a ready supply of firewood. He’d heard about prairie fires burning faster than any horse could run, and the heat and cold and wind and rain and dust, but none of it deterred him from pursuing his dream.

Only one thing stood in his way—Indians. With the discovery of gold in the Black Hills in seventy-four, a rush of gold-seekers and a relentless tide of white immigrants flooded the territory, touching off hostilities with the tribes. He hoped by the time he realized his dream the Indian situation would have eased. Indian children were being rounded up and sent to a training school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with an aim toward removing them from their native culture and refashioning them into farmers, so it was possible, although it was hard for him to imagine that the same people who wiped out Custer’s Seventh Cavalry two years ago could ever become farmers.

It was on his mind later that evening when he approached his father after dinner.

Pa, why are the Indians fighting so hard?

Josh McIntyre sat in his favorite chair, a caned rocker, reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by the light of a kerosene lamp. He looked up from his book and answered honestly. It’s the land, son. Always the land. Most white settlers believe the Indians to be a barrier to U.S. expansion and push them off their lands. They view the land as a commodity to be bought and sold for profit and exploited for gold. But to the Indians the land is more than the ground beneath their feet. It can’t be bought or sold because it does not belong to them. They belong to the land, to their mother Earth. The land is central to their spiritual and physical sense of identity. It is to be honored for its many gifts and respected for the wisdom it imparts.

I love the land, too. That’s why I want to farm. If they love the land so much, why is it so hard for them to become farmers?

It’s hard to cultivate crops in a semi-arid region like Dakota Territory, Josh said. And it’s hard for them to give up the wild, free life.

Will shook his head. I don’t understand it. Why can’t we all live in peace?

As former commander of the Eleventh Ohio Cavalry along the North Platte, Josh had seen his share of warfare culminating in the fight on Little Blue River in which he received the wound that resulted in a permanent limp and a desk job. He knew peace would never be possible until the tribes were subdued.

Shifting the subject, he asked, What was the commotion I heard in the alley this afternoon?

Me and Trent saw the Freemont boys about to attack one of the Indian girls during recess. I’m sorry, Pa. I know you told me not to get in any fights, but it was her first day of school, and I couldn’t let them hurt her.

Unlike Mark Twain’s fun-loving, mischievous schoolboy, Will was a thoughtful, serious boy, unsuited for the regimentation and warfare synonymous with military life. He was also not the type to let an injustice go unanswered. It’s all right, son, Josh said. You did the right thing.

I also brought her here so she could wash up. I didn’t think you’d mind. Trent didn’t want to take her to his house. You know how his pa is.

Yes, I do, Josh said with a sour note. What he did not say was that if it were up to men like Captain Fontenelle, the western frontier would be wiped clean of all Indians.

During his whole military life, Josh had been up against men like Fontenelle with their outsized egos and unforgiving dispositions. At one time, he’d been summoned to Washington and relieved of his command of the Eleventh due to his sympathetic treatment of the Sioux, and although he was reinstated to his command, he never lost his distaste for going against them in battle. These days, instead of being in the saddle fighting Indians, he’d been appointed as post adjutant by the senior ranking officer, first at Fort Ellis in Montana Territory and now here in northwestern Nebraska at Camp Robinson. With the sergeant major, a senior noncommissioned officer, as his assistant, he executed the details of post operation. At least he wasn’t out there killing or getting killed.

Is the girl you helped one of the Lakota children in your class? Josh asked.

Yes. Her name is Makes the Song. Recalling the conversation he’d overheard several months ago between his parents, Will watched his father for any reaction.

Josh shut the book and placed it in his lap. It would be best if you stay away from her. He was spared any further explanation when his wife came into the room.

Is there anything you would like, dear? Ellen McIntyre asked her husband.

A cup of tea would be nice.

I’ll brew some.

She went to the kitchen and returned a while later with a tray which she placed on the rosewood tea table she brought with her from St. Louis and which traveled with them from post to post.

Is there anything else, dear?

He smiled at her. The pleasure of your company.

At the sound of the Tattoo bugle call signaling all lights in the barracks to be extinguished, she turned to her son, reminding him, School starts at nine o’clock sharp.

Don’t worry, ma. I’ll be up by Mess Call. Come on, Hal.

The hound dozing before the fire got up, stretched, and followed the boy from the room.

When they were alone, she removed the cover from the tea pot and poured the fresh brewed tea into two porcelain cups. Lifting the hinged lid on a twin-handled sugar pot, she selected two cubes, dropped them in her husband’s cup, and handed it to him.

"What are you reading, dear?’ she asked as she sipped her tea.

A novel by Mr. Mark Twain about a boy growing up along the Mississippi.

Our boy is growing up, she mused. How old is the boy in the book?

About the same age as Will.

They must have a lot in common.

I’m not so sure, Josh muttered. The boy in the story is bored with school and runs away to seek adventure.

I see what you mean. Will loves school, and it seems the only adventure he seeks is in new ways to grow crops.

The boy in the story also falls in love with one of the local girls.

Oh, my. She lowered the cup to its porcelain saucer. You don’t suppose Will would…That’s ridiculous. He’s so young.

Of course, he is, he assured her.

But Josh wasn’t so sure. He saw the expression on Will’s face when he talked about saving Song from the Freemont brothers. Yes, Will was young, but it did not mean he could not fall head over heels in love, and oftentimes, no matter how young or old a man was, his first love was the truest. Josh thought about his own first love, Katie McCabe, Song’s mother. It was a long time ago, but when he saw her at Fort Ellis last November, he had to admit he’d felt a familiar tug at the corner of his heart.

He forced the memory from his mind and turned his attention to the matter at hand. Was Will smitten with Song? He hoped not. Not because love was fraught with heartache, which it often was, but because of the volatile Indian situation. He glanced at the book in his lap. Injun Joe was a dishonest and wicked character who killed with no discernible reason except for pure evil pleasure. Much to Josh’s dismay, many whites viewed the Indians in a similar light, and particularly the Sioux for their warlike nature.

Song’s father came to mind. Stories about the infamous Oglala abounded. In sixty-six Black Moon helped lead Captain William Fetterman of the Eighteenth Infantry into a fatal ambush at Fort Phil Kearny, and there was little doubt he rode with Crazy Horse to annihilate Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at the Little Bighorn. And there was Josh’s own experience with the war leader when the two men fought in hand-to-hand combat during the battle on Box Elder Creek. With such a ferocious war record against the Army, Black Moon would not look kindly on a white boy coveting his daughter, much less the son of a Long Knife, and even less so if he was the son of the Long Knife whose life he spared on Box Elder Creek. All things considered, it would be best if Will stayed away from Black Moon’s daughter.

Upstairs in his room, Will caught the faint lingering trace of sage in the air. As he undressed for bed, his thoughts strayed to the girl.

Unlike dutiful wives like his mother who followed their husbands to frontier posts, he could not imagine a girl like Song organizing dances or fishing excursions as an Amy wife, nor wearing a gingham dress and a sunbonnet and canning the crop for winter use as the wife of a farmer. Beneath her shy smile he sensed a willful and defiant nature. It could not be easy for a young girl of Indian-white parentage when those two worlds were in conflict and the rapid ways in which her world was changing. Crazy Horse was gone, Sitting Bull had fled to Canada, most of the Lakota bands were on agencies or reservations, and Geronimo of the Chiricahua Apache, having escaped the San Carlos Reservation where he’d been imprisoned, was hiding out in the mountains of Mexico.

Will recalled what his father said about the land. He and Song shared a love of the land, but was it enough upon which to build a friendship? And what about this other feeling which would not go away?

When those green eyes were focused on him, he experienced a strange tingling sensation in the pit of his belly which he could not define. He couldn’t ask his father about a feeling he himself didn’t understand, not after his father’s thin-veiled warning to stay away from Song. Trent was two years older. Maybe he would know. But then he recalled the hint of eagerness he heard in Song’s voice when she asked about Trent. All the girls liked Trent. Even the laundresses on Soapsuds Row were attracted to his good looks. Much to Will’s dismay, it seemed Song was no exception.

Chapter 2

An Improbable Friendship

Camp Robinson was situated in a valley along the north bank of the White River among the rolling hills and meandering streams of the Pine Ridge country. Named after Lieutenant Levi Robinson who was killed on wood train duty, it provided protection to nearby Red Cloud Agency and to civilians passing through Lakota territory on their way to the gold fields in the Black Hills. With its barracks, stables, quartermaster and commissary storehouses, offices, guardhouse, laundress quarters, workshop, blacksmith, hospital, butcher shop, saddler shop, and post trader, it was like a small town in the middle of nowhere.

On this day in late October, the post buzzed with activity. After a breakfast of beef, bread, and potato hash, washed down with tin cups of strong, black coffee, the officers and enlisted men left their separate mess halls. Infantrymen practiced shooting at targets at the rear of the garrison, artillerymen performed gun drills, cavalrymen raced up and down the flats, charging imaginary enemies, and the sound of hammers and saws echoed from across the parade ground where carpenters were at work in their quarters.

Will sat on a hillside overlooking the camp within a thin grove of leafless oak. A stone’s throw away his horse browsed on a clump of short grass, pausing to lift its head and glance toward the distant bark of a coyote. The vast untouched panorama spread out below beckoned to Will. There was a wildness in the landscape, as if anything could happen at any moment, tempered by an inexplicable beauty that stole his breath away. It reminded him of a certain Indian girl whose loveliness masked an untamed heart.

In the weeks following the scuffle with the Freemont boys, he’d been keeping a surreptitious eye on her, not because he was afraid the brothers would harass her again, but because he was mesmerized by her. Whenever the