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Chapter 1
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas
But a dream of thee.
—John Donne
St. Louis, 1820
The cottonwoods whispered in the gentle breeze as the sun filtered through their large, fluttering leaves, onto a fresh mound of dirt. The heart-wrenching military funeral for his father now over, Samuel White Fire Dowling stood over the fresh grave in his stark, jet black suit. Behind him he could hear people talking in polite, soft mumbles as they left for their horses and buggies.
But in his mind, White Fire was hearing way more than that: the kind voice of his father who had taught him the morals by which White Fire now led his life.
Morals, he thought bitterly as his thoughts strayed to his mother.
His hands circled into tight fists at his sides when he thought of how she had betrayed his father. Just prior to his death, his mother had informed his father that she wanted a divorce . . . that she had found someone else she wished to marry.
“Samuel, everyone is gone.”
His mother’s soft and tiny voice drew White Fire quickly out of his angry reverie. He turned on his heel and gave her a cold gaze.
“Samuel, son,” Jania May murmured.
She reached a hand out for him and flinched when he stepped quickly away from her.
She slowly dropped her hand to her side. “Samuel,” she said, her voice breaking, “please do not hate me. If I had known your father was going to die in such a way so soon after I told him of my wishes to marry someone else, I would never have told him.”
White Fire cringed at how she kept calling him “Samuel.” He stood there for a moment, unresponsive, thinking about how he had not yet told her that from now on he was going to use his Indian name, White Fire, to totally distance himself from this life, which had only brought him pain, silent suffering, and degradation.
He was ashamed that he hadn’t gone by his Indian name sooner, yet his reasons not to were valid. It was enough that his skin color, his Indian looks, had been the cause of him being labeled a ’breed. Using the name White Fire while in school would have only increased the whites’ taunts, which he would never forget until the day he died.
“You telling Father about the divorce, about falling in love with another man in such a cold, callous way, is surely what caused his mind to be elsewhere, to be off guard and not realize that he was being stalked by gunmen,” White Fire suddenly blurted out, his words bitter as sour grapes as they crossed his tight lips.
He glared at his mother. Then just as quickly his eyes wavered when he saw, as he had always seen when he had looked at her, just how beautiful she was. Born Pretty Cloud into the Miami Indian tribe, his mother’s dark, slightly slanted eyes, her smooth, copper skin, and luscious body, and her long, black hair worn to her waist, could intrigue any man. She looked so sweet and innocent. But looks were deceiving.
As were the black veil which hung down over her lovely, copper face, and the black mourning dress she wore today.
All those things were deceitful . . . a mockery to the man who lay cold in his grave.
“Mother, just go away,” White Fire said, swa
llowing hard as he turned his back on her.
He still could not believe that she could be such a fickle person.
Yet when he thought of all the social functions that she had managed at their large, two-story mansion, which sat high on a cliff overlooking the Mississippi River, downstream from the hustle and bustle of the St. Louis waterfront, and how she had playfully flirted with the men in attendance, he knew that she surely had been that way since she had discovered how to use her charm on men.
“Son, I beg you, please do not hate me,” Jania May said, her voice breaking. “I am sorry for everything. Everything.”
White Fire would not allow her hurt, her apologies to sway him. He turned again and glared at her. “Mother, I doubt I have ever truly known you,” he said thickly. “I am certain that even when you were called Pretty Cloud by your people, when you lived with them, you practiced the same sort of deceit that you are so skilled at today.”
“Samuel, I have done many things in my life that I am ashamed of, but have I not been a good mother to you?” she asked. “Have I not protected you, heart and soul, when you were taunted as being a half-breed?”
“You did not have to speak up in my behalf when I was able to do it, myself,” White Fire mumbled. “I am proud of my Indian heritage. That is why I have chosen now to be called White Fire by my friends and associates, instead of Samuel.”
“Yes, I, personally, gave you that name, as well as Samuel, when you were born,” Jania May answered. “White Fire was my father’s name.”
Her eyes dwelled on her son’s handsomeness. He was a young man of nineteen, whose skin was the color of copper, whose hair was coal black and hung down to his waist, and whose eyes were as black as midnight.
There was a reason why he showed none of his father’s traits. But he would never learn the secret that she had kept from him through the long years since his birth. That, above all else, would infuriate him even more against her. He would hate her forever for such deceit.
Jania May swallowed hard and pleaded with her eyes as she continued to speak. “White Fire,” she said, “I went through so much after . . . after . . . the attack on our Miami village those many years ago.
“Most of my Miami people were killed. I . . . I . . . managed to wander off.” She cast her eyes downward. “If not for Samuel, your father, I would have died.”
“I am certain these past days, before he died, he was regretting the very day he set his eyes on you that first time,” White Fire said, starting to walk away, stopping only when she reached out and grabbed his hand.
“But he did take me in,” she said, her eyes still pleading with White Fire. “He did marry me. Then you were born to us, ah, such a blessing.”
“Yes, Father and I were close,” he said, looking away from her. He looked toward the tall bluffs that rose up from the mighty Mississippi on the opposite shore and to where the Jefferson Barracks, a military establishment stood. “I just wish I had been with him when the . . . the . . . outlaws chose him to gun down in St. Louis.”
Frustrated, he raked his long, lean fingers through his thick, black hair. He gave his mother a look of deep hurt and sadness. “Mother, Father was a military officer who never received even as much as a scratch during his tour of duty,”’ he said thickly, “only to then be gunned down by outlaws on the streets. This, only a few days after you told him you were leaving him for another man. After he married you and gave you a wonderful life. What of any of that is fair?”
“Samuel,” Jania May said, a sob lodging in her throat as he turned and stamped away from her. “Samuel! Samuel! White Fire, please stop! Don’t leave!”
“Don’t pretend you are truly worried about me, Mother,” White Fire sarcastically threw at her over his shoulder. “My leaving gives you all the freedom you need to play house with your new husband. Keith Krantz? Isn’t that his name? A stockbroker who is going to move you into a house even more grand than the one Father had built for you.”
“Please don’t go to the Minnesota Territory!” she cried, running after him. “Samuel, I may never see you again!”
“As though you care,” White Fire said bitterly.
He truly knew that she cared, but it was hard to think anything positive about her at the moment. In truth, he would never stop blaming her for his father’s death. Had his father been more alert, White Fire knew that he would have realized that he was being trailed by men who meant to rob, then kill him.
White Fire had longed for adventure these past years, anyhow, and now he was going to follow his hunger into the Minnesota Territory. He was already packed to leave. His heart throbbed excitedly at the thought of riding his sorrel horse into unknown territory.
He was not going to accept any of his mother’s inherited money. To pay his own expenses, he was going to use his own meager inheritance. Then when that was gone, he was going to trap and trade his way north.
His throat constricted and he doubled his fists at his sides to think about how much his father had trusted his mother by leaving almost everything to her. He had not had the chance to change his will before he died. He had not had a clear enough mind to think of doing it after being stunned to the very core of his being by the discovery of his wife’s infidelity.
