Full Circle Read online

  Full Circle

  Table of Contents

  Full Circle

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Introduction

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  More from Rosanne Bittner

  Connect with Diversion Books

  Full Circle

  Rosanne Bittner

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1994 by Rosanne Bittner

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition May 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-284-0

  More from Rosanne Bittner

  Until Tomorrow

  The Bride Series

  Tennessee Bride

  Texas Bride

  Oregon Bride

  Dedicated to a people whose whispers can still be heard on the wind, whose moccasined footsteps now lie beneath p​ave­ment, whose spirit still lives in Grandmother Earth and in the animals … crying to be free again.

  Author’s Note

  As with all my books, the historical background and locations in this story are based on true events; however, the characters are fictitious, except for Agent James McLaughlin, who plays a minor role in my story. I based Mr. McLaughlin’s personal situation and how he might have reacted to incidents in my story on information about his history that is a matter of public record.

  Inspiration for the heroine of Full Circle came from two real-life women who dedicated their lives to helping Native Americans. One was Alice Fletcher, called “The Measuring Woman” by the Nez Perce. The other was Mary Clementine Collins, missionary to the Sioux and highly respected by them. Mary was called Wenonah, meaning “Princess.” I have used this detail for my own heroine, Evelyn Gibbons; however, it must be noted that Evelyn’s personal story is entirely fictitious and not at all related to either of the women mentioned here. It was only their hard work and dedication to helping Native Americans that inspired me.

  Many of my readers, when they are finished with my books, are convinced that the characters really lived. Who is to say there were not people just like Evelyn Gibbons… and Black Hawk… whose lives might have taken the same pathways.

  Once our flesh and blood were a part of the earth;

  Our spirits were joined with the animals

  And with the air we breathe.

  Life was one great circle, birth, life, death…

  Life again, through our children,

  And through our children’s children.

  They carried on … the flesh, the blood, the spirit,

  The way of the People.

  Then came the white man,

  And the circle was broken,

  The earth tom, the air tainted.

  Our children were taken from us to learn a new way.

  The spirit left us, but we will find it again.

  We will relearn the old ways,

  We will feel Grandmother Earth and the animal spirits

  Live in us again.

  We will teach the children about the Circle of Life,

  And it will be whole again.

  It will be so.

  Hechetu alo. It is good.

  Introduction

  June 1892

  “You’ve lost your mind!”

  Evelyn Gibbons turned away from her fiancé, wondering if perhaps he was right; but the dream would not leave her. She knew that until this moment she had only been living the life that was expected of her, not the one she really wanted. Her back to Steven, she smiled when she realized she had her mother’s independent spirit to be herself and not live as others dictated.

  “If I don’t do this, Steven, I’ll never be happy.”

  “And what about us?”

  She lost her smile, turning back around to study the man she had promised to marry. Steven was as ordinary as could be, son of a Wisconsin dairy farmer, a good man, hard-working. He had brown hair, brown eyes, was rather short but had a sturdy build and was pleasantly handsome… and he was a quiet, gentle man. He would make a good husband for any woman satisfied with living on a farm the rest of her life.

  “I’m sorry, Steven. When we met last year, I had finished college and got my teaching job here in Waupun. I met you and fell in love, and I thought marrying you was all I wanted in life. I thought I was ready for marriage and children and settling, but I wasn’t having the dreams then, or feeling this restlessness. You remember I told you the same thing happened to my mother when I was very small, and she and my father had some problems, mainly because she had married him because everyone expected her to. She had never been free to live her life a different way if that was what she wanted.”

  “She was the wife of a preacher! How could they have had problems?”

  The memory was so clear. Evelyn could still see the Cheyenne Indian called Wild Horse talking with her mother at the pond, their secret meeting place. She was only four then, and her family lived in Oklahoma near a reservation where her father had preached to the Cheyenne for eight years before moving back here to Wisconsin.

  The memory of Wild Horse had never left her. At her mother’s deathbed just six months ago, she admitted to Evelyn that she had loved the dashingly handsome, dangerous Indian man. The things he had taught both Evelyn and her mother were still with her.

  “Being the wife of a preacher doesn’t guarantee a blissful marriage, Steven,” she answered. “All that matters is passion—utter devotion. How much money a man has, what he does for a living, his station in life, none of those things really matter if the passion isn’t there.” How clear were her mother’s dying words, the same words she repeated to Steven now. Be sure, Evy, Margaret Gibbons had warned her. Be sure. Follow your heart, your dreams. Don’t ever do something because it is expected of you. “Steven, isn’t it better to be sure than to marry and end up in a loveless match that makes both of us unhappy?”

  “Are you saying you don’t love me then?”

  She saw the hurt in his eyes. “I do love you, but I am realizing that maybe I don’t love you enough, and that maybe that fact will only make me more restless and unhappy living on your farm, where I couldn’t experience new things, challenge my teaching abilities.”

  “And you think that going to live and teach among a sorry, drunken, broken tribe of Sioux on a remote reservation that probably has no modern facilities is going to be
a challenge to your teaching abilities?” He sniffed and shook his head. “The only challenge will be how to manage to take a bath, how to keep yourself from being violated by some drunken Indian. Those people don’t want our help, Evy. They don’t want to learn our ways. They aren’t even intelligent enough to learn!”

  Not intelligent? Wild Horse had mastered the English language easily, and he’d had a wisdom that far surpassed that of any white person she had ever known when it came to common sense and exploring one’s spiritual path. It was Wild Horse who had taught her and her mother, rather than the other way around. She saw a side to Steven Hart she knew she could not tolerate. Ignorance of the beauty of another race. She had not noticed any of that until she had mentioned wanting to delay their wedding so she could go and teach at the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota.

  “They are very intelligent, Steven, in ways you could never imagine. Your attitude only shows me I’ve made the right decision. Why is it so wrong for a woman to want to stretch her wings and experience more of life? Why is it so wrong for her to have dreams and goals beyond milking cows and baking bread and birthing babies?”

  Steven met her eyes, so blue. When he’d first met Evelyn Gibbons at a dance, he had been instantly consumed with the desire to have her for himself. He studied her blond hair, hair that, when worn loose, hung in thick waves nearly to her waist… hair he had imagined seeing spread out on a pillow beside him. She was twenty years old and a beauty, a graceful young woman with an exquisite face and a body that would turn any man’s head. She was a virtuous young woman with a tender heart, but as he came to know her better, he had begun to see a side to her that was difficult for him to tolerate in a woman, an independence that just wasn’t natural. His own mother had been content to live on the farm and raise ten children, for heaven’s sake.

  But Evy was certainly nothing like his mother. Much as he loved and desired her, he realized more and more she was probably right about one thing: looks, station in life… none of those things mattered in the end. A man had to ask himself if a woman was truly going to make him happy. Maybe Evy couldn’t do that after all. If they married, and she grew miserable with the life she led, then he would be miserable, too.

  He blinked back tears and turned away. “What a waste,” he muttered.

  Evelyn felt a lump forming in her throat. “It is never a waste to go out and explore, Steven, to be sure what you are doing is right, to know your own heart. Our spirit paths are not the same. You are content to have a farm and a wife and a lot of children and never leave Wisconsin. There is nothing wrong in that. I’m just not sure it’s what I want for myself, and I feel this dream I have been having is some kind of message.”

  He turned to face her, quickly wiping at one tear that managed to slip out of his eye. “I really love you, Evy.” He sniffed and forced a grin. “But I’m not so sure I could put up with you.” He waved his arm and walked past her. “All this talk about spirit paths and dreams and feeling a calling to go teach a bunch of drunken heathens.” He threw back his head. “Go ahead, if that’s what you need to do. But I won’t wait for you. There probably wouldn’t be much sense in that. I can name two girls right now who would like to marry me. And you know who they are.”

  Evelyn felt a tinge of jealousy, but it was mixed with relief to know that already he was thinking about going on with his life and finding a woman better suited for him. She knew he was talking about Kathleen Hage and Jessica Wilson, both young women who always flirted with Steven at socials. She couldn’t blame Steven for wanting to marry and have children. After all, he was twenty-seven years old and came from a big family.

  “You do what you need to do, Steven. My mother told me once to follow my heart. I care very much for you, and I want you to be happy. I thought at first we could find that happiness together, but now I just don’t think we can. It’s better this way.” Evelyn looked around the parlor of the pleasant farm home Steven had built with his own hands on a piece of land his father had sold to him. Maybe she was crazy. A woman could have a pleasant, sedate life here, but a restlessness inside told her she could not settle for that. She had driven herself here from town in a buggy, a very long drive, and one Steven didn’t feel she should have made alone. But then, you aren’t like other women, he had said. You fear nothing.

  Except perhaps not being free, she thought.

  “What does your father think of all this?” Steven asked.

  She smiled rather sadly. “After living with my mother all those years, he’s not surprised. He knows I’m just like her. And he certainly understands about a person feeling a calling to do something God wants them to do.”

  “Is that how you think of it? God is calling you to do this?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just old memories from when I was little. It just seems to me that when a person has the same dream every few nights for weeks, it has to mean something.” She turned away, the dream always vivid in her mind—a warrior on a spotted horse, both he and the horse painted. Whether the colors were his prayer colors or war colors she had no idea. Sometimes she thought the man in the dream was Wild Horse’s spirit come to visit her, trying to tell her something. “There is something the man in the dream wants from me,” she said aloud, “but I don’t know what it is.”

  “You never had the dreams until your mother died. They probably have something to do with losing her and will go away after awhile. You’re just upset over your loss, Evy. You and your mother were very close. I think it’s foolish of you to put more meaning into those dreams than there really is.”

  She faced him again. “I think there is something to them. The vision is so real, Steven, and then when the missionary from the Standing Rock Reservation visited my father’s church, talking about how badly teachers were needed because most of the Sioux wouldn’t let their children go to white man’s schools off the reservation, it was like an answer. I can’t ignore the compelling need to go there. I’m so terribly sorry it hurts you, but this kind of hurt isn’t near as damaging as the kind we might both suffer if we marry for the wrong reasons.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “When do you leave?”

  “In three days. I’ll be traveling with the missionary, Janine Phillips. We’re going to Milwaukee first to meet a preacher and his wife who are being sponsored by Mission Services. We’ll need to get written approval for me to go with them to the reservation to teach, but there should be no problem, with my father being a preacher, let alone the fact that I have a teaching degree from Ripon College.” She swallowed, sometimes as surprised herself that she was doing this as some others were. “From Milwaukee we go to Chicago and then take a train into Nebraska to Fort Kearny, where someone will be waiting for Janine with a wagon and horses. They’ll take us to the reservation.” She blinked back tears. “I’ll write you, Steven, and if I think I want to come back after a year or two, I’ll let you know. I might even come back sooner than that for all I know. Either way, if you’re married to someone else, I’ll understand.”

  He reached out and touched her cheek. “God knows you’d have no trouble finding someone else. You’re a beautiful woman, Evy, and I’ll miss you dearly. I know this is important to you, I just don’t fully understand it, and I still think it’s wrong. I’ll worry about you.”

  “The Indians are nothing like you imagine, Steven. I told you about Wild Horse. I have nothing but fond memories of him, and because of the impression he left on me, I have studied Sioux and Cheyenne customs and languages for years. It surely was all leading to something. I can’t ignore any of this, and I can’t ignore my promise to Wild Horse that I would never forget him. This is something I can do in his memory, even though he was Cheyenne and not Sioux. Both tribes were very close.”

  “And both were at the Little Big Horn, where a lot of soldiers died.”

  “That was a long time ago. Everything is so changed for them now. They have nothing left; in some cases, not even their di
gnity. I feel there is something I need to do, have to do.” She looked down at her hand and removed her engagement ring, handing it out to him. “You will always be dear to me, Steven. I wish you the best in life.”

  He sighed, taking the ring hesitantly, holding her gaze. “And I for you. I just don’t see how you’ll get the best going where you’re going. Be careful, Evy.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I’ll drive you back myself. It’s getting late, and I don’t want you on the road alone after dark. I’ll go check on your father’s horse, make sure he’s cooled down enough to make the trip back.”

  She nodded, and he closed his fist around the ring and turned away. “God be with you, Evy.” He left the room, and Evelyn closed her eyes. She could see the vision again. In the dream the warrior would come so close. He would reach out, as though to grab her and whisk her up onto his horse. But just before he could grasp her hand, he would disappear, and she would wake up in a cold sweat.

  Was it Wild Horse riding toward her, calling for help? Or was it someone else? She could not help feeling that somehow, if she went to the Standing Rock Reservation, she might find the answer. She was giving up a comfortable life, a good job, marriage… leaving her father. But none of those things mattered. She had to go.

  One

  Seth Bridges tipped a bottle of fine bourbon and swallowed, allowing himself a moment to savor the satisfaction of letting it slip and burn over his tongue and throat and into his stomach. He grinned through yellowed teeth, then smacked his thin lips. “Good stuff, boys. You tell whoever pays you to bring this stuff in that my own payment for helpin’ you find a way past the soldiers is very acceptable.”

  Luke Smith laughed lightly, scratching at his dark, unkempt beard. “It’s the ones like you, who help us get through, that get the good stuff. The bottom of that there wagon is stuffed with cheap, rot-gut whiskey—good enough for the Indians, but not for a white man who knows his liquor.”