Destiny's Dawn Read online

  Destiny’s Dawn

  Book Three of the Blue Hawk Saga by the Award-winning Author of Savage Horizons and Frontier Fires

  F. Rosanne Bittner

  Copyright © 1987 by Rosanne Bittner. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from Don Congdon Associates, Inc; the agency can be reached at [email protected].

  Cover design by Kimberly Killion of The Killion Group.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  This novel is the continuing story of Caleb and Sarah Sax and their children. It covers the years 1845 through 1865. Primary locations are: Bent’s Fort, on the Arkansas River in present-day southeast Colorado; Sonoma, California, north of San Francisco; the central plains of Colorado and Nebraska; and old Fort Laramie in southeast Wyoming, which is where the famed meeting of thousands of Plains Indians took place for the signing of the Treaty of 1851.

  This novel, as with all my stories, contains a considerable amount of historical detail. I do extensive research to ensure dates, locations, and major events in my stories are accurate. However, main characters and basic plots involving those characters are purely fictitious.

  I loved you in spring, when you were young and budding,

  like the blossoms of the apple tree.

  I loved you in summer, when you were full and ripe

  and beautiful,

  like a sweet, pink peach and the sensuous rose.

  I loved you in autumn, when maturity brought a certain

  glow and warmth,

  like a golden leaf and warm cinnamon baking.

  And I love you now, in the cold and barren winter,

  For when your eyes meet mine, I still see spring,

  And the budding blossom that drew me to taste

  its sweet nectar.

  Yes, I love you still, in the winter of our lives.

  —Author

  • Chapter One •

  Caleb Sax rose, blood dripping from his arms and hands. One of his best mares lay at his feet with her new foal beside her, both of them dead. In vain he had reached inside the mother to turn the foal; and he would never forget that feeling of warm life in his hands, followed by cold death.

  As he looked away from the pitiful sight, Caleb saw them, four Cheyenne warriors looking down at him from a rise perhaps fifty yards away. They were mounted on grand, painted horses, watching him quietly. They wore nothing but loincloths and a little paint, two of them with feathers in their hair.

  “You think they mean trouble, Caleb?” Jess Purnell asked the question. Jess was Caleb’s son-in-law. He had come along with Caleb that morning to find the mare, because Caleb suspected there would be trouble with the birth.

  “I don’t know. I’m going to talk to them.” Caleb looked down at the mare and foal again, feeling sick inside. Dancer was his best mare. Why did it seem the sight of the dead horses coupled with the almost ghostly appearance of the Indians on the rise were some kind of omen? He walked off toward the rise and the warriors without looking at Jess, his hands and arms still bloody.

  Jess watched, saying nothing. He moved to his horse and rifle, pulling the weapon from its boot. But he knew he would not need it, as Caleb approached the Indians wearing no weapons. After all, they were his kind—Cheyenne. Caleb’s own mother had been Cheyenne, and his Indian name was Blue Hawk—a name that carried respect and brought stories of the “old days” to the mouths of his tribe. There weren’t many left anymore who remembered when Caleb used to live among them. After his young wife was killed by the Crow, Caleb had left his newborn son with the Cheyenne while he went on a mission of personal revenge, single-handedly attacking and killing over and over until his very name brought fear into the heart of the fiercest Crow warrior.

  But that had been a long time ago, many years before Jess had ever met the man. He watched Caleb move up the hill toward the Indians. Jess could do nothing for now but stand and watch, ready for action if it was necessary.

  As Caleb walked closer to the intruders, he thought how the steamy heat of the evening made them appear almost as a mirage, but they became more distinct as he came within a few feet of them. They looked down at him from horseback, but even though Caleb was on foot, they could see he was a tall and powerful man. He looked as Indian as they, dressed in buckskins, his long, black hair tied into a tail at the base of his neck, a thin white scar running down the left side of his face. That scar was put there by a white man when Caleb was sixteen—the first white man Caleb Sax had ever killed.

  “What do you want?” Caleb asked the Indians in their own tongue.

  “I am Gray Cloud,” one of them, perhaps thirty, answered. He nodded to the two who sat on his left. “These are my friends, Bent Leg and Bear Man.” He turned to an older man on his right. “This is my father, White Horse. We are from the Northern Cheyenne. You are Blue Hawk?”

  Caleb nodded, looking at White Horse. “I remember the name White Horse. But it has been many years since I lived among the Cheyenne. Did I know you then?”

  The older man nodded: “I was young like you. My own father, Sits Too Long, he remembers you best. He still tells stories about Blue Hawk.”

  Caleb felt the faint rush of desire to ride among them again but pushed it away. “I remember Sits Too Long. He must be very old now.”

  White Horse nodded. “Old and dying.”

  “I am sorry to hear that.” Caleb detected a sadness that was more than just mourning the coming death of a loved one. “But surely you have not searched for me just to tell me about Sits Too Long.” The conversation continued in a mixture of the Cheyenne tongue and sign language.

  White Horse nodded. “Three moons ago we came here among our southern relatives. While we were here, we were told that the one called Blue Hawk was again living in Cheyenne country. We were going back north, for out in the villages there is much spotted fever and bad coughing. Many are dying. Most of our own relatives have been lost to death. But I have had a dream, and because of this dream I have come to see Blue Hawk before we go north.”

  Caleb sighed. Eighteen hundred forty-five had been a very bad year for the Cheyenne. Measles and whooping cough were ravaging the Indians, wiping out close to half the Cheyenne south of the Platte River. “I’ve heard about the sickness. It saddens my heart.”

  The Indian nodded. “White man brings it. I am afraid for my son.”

  Caleb nodded. “I understand that kind of fear. I have lost many loved ones, including two sons.” Their eyes held, two men of kindred spirit. “You say you come because of a dream,” Caleb spoke up.

  There was great respect in White Horse’s eyes. “Ai. But I also came just to look upon the one called Blue Hawk again, to help me remember the da
ys when the Cheyenne were strong. Now, because white men come and kill the buffalo and divide up the land and bring disease, our strength is failing. It warms my heart to see the one called Blue Hawk still standing tall and strong in spite of his many years.”

  A faint smile moved over Caleb’s lips. “I have been on this earth fifty winters—fifty hard winters.”

  White Horse nodded, his eyes moving to Caleb’s bloody arms and hands. “The blood on your hands is from the birth of the foal?”

  Caleb nodded. “The mother and foal both died.”

  White Horse met Caleb’s blue eyes. He tried to decide if they were an ordinary blue made bluer by the dark skin and black lashes that surrounded them, or if they truly were a much deeper blue than he’d ever seen in any white man. How odd that this Indian of legend had such blue eyes—the eyes of his French trapper father.

  “You live like a white man, Blue Hawk. But it will not always be so. The blood on your hands tells you this. Living against your spirit has been a struggle. I know this even though I do not know you well. It is in your eyes. You live like other white men, but that life has not been good to you. Your real desire is to live among us.”

  Caleb held his eyes. “I gave up Indian ways a long time ago—for a white woman.”

  A sudden gust of wind made some of White Horse’s hair blow across his face. He shook it back. “I have heard. They say it is a great love you have for this woman. There are one or two who remember when you left the Cheyenne to go and find this woman you once knew as a child in the white man’s world.”

  “I would die for her. And you are right. My heart lies with the Cheyenne. But as long as my woman breathes, I will live in the only way she can survive. But if I asked her, she would come and live with me among the Cheyenne. I won’t ask it of her, because it would surely end her life much sooner. She is not well.”

  White Horse nodded. “I have come to tell you that in my dream you lived among us again. You rode against the white men with us. Your face was painted, and many spoke again with great honor about you as a warrior. You were alone. It is my duty to tell you of this dream, so that when the time for decision comes, you will know what to do, where you belong.”

  Caleb’s chest tightened painfully. He had no doubts about the dreams of an old Indian warrior. He believed in dreams and visions as much as any full-blooded Indian. He knew what the dream meant, and the thought of being without his Sarah brought great pain to his heart.

  “You will come back to us, Blue Hawk,” White Horse continued. “You will die with the Indians among whom you were born. Your spirit will return to the earth. Your tears will mix with the rain; your blood will flow into the earth over which the Cheyenne have ridden since days we can no longer remember; your voice will cry out with the wind. You are still among us, Blue Hawk. You have always been among us. Our hearts are one.”

  The man touched his forehead as a sign of respect, as did Gray Cloud and the other two Indians.

  Caleb stood almost transfixed. Surely the spirit of Maheo had given White Horse his dream and had sent the man to seek out Caleb before going back north. White Horse’s understanding of his own spirit astounded Caleb. He vaguely remembered the man as a youth, but it had been over thirty years since he had lived among the Cheyenne. Surely it was a supernatural experience for the man to know so much about Caleb and his own inner struggles. That could only mean the spirits were calling Caleb—calling him back to where he really belonged. But he couldn’t go. Not yet.

  “Thank you for telling me of your dream. I will pray that the spirits will bless you and keep you and your son from the disease that has killed so many others. May the wind be at your back as you head north.”

  White Horse nodded. “I will see you again, Blue Hawk, when you are again Cheyenne.”

  The man turned his horse and rode off. The others followed, Gray Cloud giving Caleb a lingering look first, as though he looked upon some kind of sacred spirit. Caleb watched them until the horizon suddenly swallowed them and made it seem as though they had never been there at all. He looked down at the dried blood on his hands and arms, then turned around to see the mare and foal still lying dead on the ground, Jess still watching, standing near his horse.

  For some reason Caleb had trouble making his legs move, but he finally managed to descend the small rise and walk back to Jess. His mind whirled with thoughts of Sarah. Was Maheo trying to tell him his days with the woman were numbered? No. Sarah was everything to him—everything.

  “What the hell did they want, Caleb?” Jess asked when he came closer. A chill swept through him when Caleb’s blue eyes met his own. “Jesus, what’s wrong?”

  Caleb thought about explaining, but much as he loved Jess Purnell as a son-in-law, how could he truly explain to Jess what had just happened? This was something much deeper than anything the two had ever discussed. And perhaps there was no explaining it in words after all.

  “It was just someone I used to know when I lived among the Cheyenne,” he finally spoke up, his voice strained. “He’s headed back north—heard I lived around here and wanted to see me again. Now let’s get these horses buried.”

  “That’s it?” Jess saw something more in Caleb’s eyes. “If there’s something wrong, Caleb, tell me.”

  Caleb managed a smile of appreciation for the man’s concern. “That’s all it was—really. I’m just upset to hear that a lot more Cheyenne are dying from measles than I thought.”

  Jess watched him go and get a shovel from the gear on Jess’s horse. He sensed whatever had happened, it was better left alone unless Caleb chose to talk about it. Caleb returned and began digging. “This is a hell of a loss,” he muttered, his eyes tearing. “I loved Dancer.”

  Sarah looked up from the basket into which she had been putting her clothes. The sun was setting fast now and a storm was coming, rolling in from the western mountains. She was glad her wash was dry, but she was worried about Caleb. He and Jess had been gone for hours.

  Wind whipped about her skirt and face as she hurriedly took down the rest of the wash. Sarah never ceased to be amazed at how fast a storm could move in on these plains, or how quickly it would leave again, moving east to vent its fury on others in its path.

  She stooped to pick up the basket and move it farther down the line. At forty-seven Sarah Sax had the appearance of a woman years younger, in spite of the hardships of having lived many years on the open plains of Texas and Colorado. Her reddish-gold hair was still thick but showed a hint of gray and had lost a little of its shine.

  Her fair skin was no longer quite so fair. The prairie sun had seen to that. But it was still smooth, except for tiny age lines about her green eyes, eyes that still sparkled like a young girl’s whenever she looked upon the man she had loved almost her entire life.

  Surely it had started back at Fort Dearborn. Could it be true that place was a growing city called Chicago now? She and Caleb had been through so much since those childhood years when the uncle with whom she had been living brought home the nine-year-old half-breed Indian boy called Blue Hawk. Tom Sax had kept the wounded boy and named him Caleb; Sarah had helped teach him English and white man’s ways. They had become like brother and sister, and then close, loving friends . . . and then lovers—lovers who had been cruelly separated for years until they found each other again later in life. That had been in 1832, thirteen years ago. Thirteen years was all they had really had together—thirteen years when it could have been thirty.

  Now she was plagued more and more with spells of shaking and weakness, as well as bouts with pneumonia. Every time Caleb happened to come upon a doctor traveling through Bent’s Fort, he corralled the physician and brought him to the small Sax ranch a half day’s ride away to get another opinion of his wife’s health. But no doctor could come to any particular conclusion, and all left tonics that were supposed to help a “woman’s ailments” and give her more strength and energy.

  None of them had worked, and from their smell and taste, Caleb guessed
that most contained plain whiskey. Sarah was convinced the source of her problem was drugs forced into her years ago by her first husband, Byron Clawson, the man she was forced to marry after he had accomplished a plot to convince her Caleb Sax was dead. The baby she carried in her belly then, planted there by Caleb in a moment of tender, loving passion, had needed a father.

  Would the horror of those years without Caleb ever leave her? She could only thank God that the son she and Caleb had after they were reunited did not seem affected by her ailments. James, twelve now, didn’t have his father’s Indian looks but his eyes were blue like Caleb’s. The boy’s skin was fair, browned only by the sun, not naturally; and his hair was a sandy color, with a reddish hint to it under the Colorado sun.

  Sarah also had to thank God that she had found her daughter, the baby conceived in that passionate and youthful love affair with Caleb; the baby her husband had stolen away from her and put in an orphanage. Lynda was her name—the name given her by the orphanage. Several years later Lynda had found her mother in St. Louis where she was living, and together they had found Caleb in Texas with his Cheyenne son, Tom Sax.

  Life in Texas had been good at first, until the war for Texas independence. Even though the men had fought in the war, the ensuing methodical extermination and exiling of Texas’s Indians had left the Saxes nearly penniless and without a home, forcing them to flee that new republic and settle in Colorado.

  Now there were just Caleb and Sarah, young James, and Lynda, who was married to Jess and had two sons of her own, and who remained near the parents she had never known until she was sixteen years old.

  Tom, now thirty-three, had left for California, searching for the happiness he had been unable to find since losing his first wife, Bess, to cholera back in Texas.

  Now Sarah could see Caleb and Jess finally returning. No other man sat a horse the way Caleb did. Sarah could see the fringes of his buckskin clothing dance with the rhythm of the horse’s gait, could discern the ease with which he rode the animal. Most of the time he didn’t even use a standard saddle, preferring the flat, stuffed buffalo-hide saddles Indians used, sometimes riding bareback.