Reckless Desire by Madeline Baker

Author:Madeline Baker [Madeline Baker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Butterfly Kisses Press
Published: 2015-09-17T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

January 1, 1900, blew in on the heels of a severe snowstorm that kept us all indoors. Blackie was content to sit on the sofa, his nose buried in his veterinary book. Cloud Walker and Mary sat on the floor in front of a cheery fire, dreaming the dreams that all young lovers dream. I sat at the opposite end of the sofa from Blackie, a pile of mending in my lap. And Shadow paced. He hated being cooped up in the house, and he prowled from room to room like a caged tiger, growling at everyone.

“How do you stand him?” Mary asked, grinning at me as Shadow stomped through the parlor on his way to the kitchen. “Doesn’t he drive you crazy?”

“Sometimes,” I admitted. “But he’s always hated to be shut in, always abhorred small spaces.”

It was shortly after noon when Shadow pulled on a heavy sheepskin jacket and went outside—to check on the stock, he said, but we all knew it was just excuse to get out of the house.

I gazed out the window watching the snow fall. It was beautiful. As far as I could see, the earth was covered with a blanket of white. It was 1900, I thought. Imagine. I picked up a newspaper and thumbed through it. An article by Chauncey Depew, a man who had formerly been a railroad president and was now a junior United States Senator, was quoted as saying, “There is not a man here who does not feel one hundred percent bigger in 1900 than he did in 1896, bigger intellectually, bigger patriotically, bigger in the breast from the fact that he is a citizen of a country that has become a world power for peace, for civilization, and for the expansion of its industries and the products of its labor.”

In the same article, the Reverend Newell D. Hillis, pastor of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church, was quoted as saying, “Laws are becoming more just, rulers humane, music is becoming sweeter and books wiser, homes are happier, and the individual heart becoming at once more just and more gentle.”

I frowned as I read that. There had been cries of outrage when President Roosevelt invited Booker Washington, the country’s most famous Negro, to dine at the White House. Negroes were not allowed to vote. Of course, neither were Indians. I wondered if the Cheyenne cooped up on the reservation would find the laws more just, their homes happier, their rulers more humane. The changing times had done little to ease the misery of life on the reservation. Were we, indeed, more just and more gentle? There were still outlaws roaming the West. Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch were robbing trains. The Apache warrior, Geronimo, was still alive. I smiled as I thought of him. We had lived with Geronimo for a time, Shadow and I. It seemed so long ago that we had lived in an Apache wickiup deep in the wilds of the Sierra Madre mountains. So long ago.

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