Indian Summer by Rosanne Bittner

Author:Rosanne Bittner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626818651
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2015-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

For another two weeks Margaret lay beside her stiff and silent husband at night, dreaming about another man, and every chance she got she met Wild Horse at the pond. It was he who taught her about freedom and spiritualism and how to feel close to nature and to God. Sometimes he brought a flute and played for her. Evy had made a new friend at the fort, Rose Hart, a girl two years older who was the daughter of a new lieutenant who had been assigned to the fort and had brought his family. Margaret welcomed the chance to send Evy someplace else to play so that she could be alone with Wild Horse, all the while realizing what a dangerous thing she was doing—more dangerous for her own heart than for any other reason. She told herself that meeting him and learning the Cheyenne customs and beliefs was important to understanding his people, and that was partly true. But she knew the real reason she kept going back to the pond.

She loved Wild Horse. It was a different kind of love than what she felt for Edward. She could and would never tell Wild Horse how she felt, although she suspected he knew. In fact, she was sure she saw love in his own dark eyes, but neither of them spoke of such things. They talked only about their different cultures, and sometimes she just lay back on the blanket and let the summer breeze flow over her while he played the flute for her—haunting, touching music that floated across the pond and into the trees and made her feel so serene, so close to God, so free. Sinful as it was, she could not bring herself to stop meeting him, nor was she quite sure it was truly wrong. Sometimes she still brought Evy, who seemed to adore Wild Horse. She was more open and happy around him than she was around her own father.

She knew through Wild Horse that his people did have a wonderful sense of humor, a special joy about them in spite of their suffering. She wrote down everything he told her in a notebook she kept hidden from Edward. Wild Horse talked about life on the open plains, about how a Cheyenne man sought his vision, about the Sundance ritual. Now she knew how he had gotten the scars at his breasts. He had also told her about Sand Creek, his words bitter, finally trailing off into a quiet sob. Yes, the Cheyenne loved and grieved like anyone else. How sad that most of her own people thought of them more like animals, just because they lived differently.

She was taking terrible chances, yet could not bring herself to put an end to the meetings. She wondered at her own boldness of taking her heart into dangerous territory, where it could be shattered at any time. Nothing could ever come of her feelings for Wild Horse, and she knew that soon it would have to end, for he must go away, or die fighting the soldiers that might come for him.

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