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“It seems like an animated conversation,” she whispered to herself, becoming even more wary.
Knowing that Pure Blossom should have had her fill from this breast, she lifted her to rest against her bosom and began softly patting her back, glad when the child gave out a healthy burp. Then she placed Pure Blossom’s tiny lips to her other breast.
Leonida’s eyes widened when Sage came back into the hogan, the children no longer with him.
“The young braves are all right,” Sage said, seeing her anxious look as she looked past him. “They are playing with the others.”
“Who came to the stronghold?” Leonida asked.
“Scouts,” Sage said, his eyes troubled. “They brought news of Kit Carson, and news that I do not know to trust.”
“What sort of news?” Leonida said, glancing down when she no longer felt her daughter’s lips moving on her breast and discovering that she was asleep. She slipped Pure Blossom away from the breast, and Sage took her and placed her on a deep pile of blankets in her crib, covering her then with a soft doeskin pelt.
“And what about Kit Carson?” Leonida prodded, pulling her blouse back up in place and retying the drawstring.
“After leaving Fort Defiance, Kit became Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Colorado Territory,” Sage said, settling down on the blanket beside Leonida. He stared blankly into the flames of the fire. “He was not there long.”
“Oh? He was assigned elsewhere?” Leonida asked, noticing some sort of book slipped into the waistband of Sage’s dark breeches. She was puzzled, having never seen Sage with any books before, and wondering where he might have gotten it.
“Kit Carson was assigned to the Land of the Dead, it seems,” Sage mumbled. He looked slowly over at Leonida. “The great pathfinder is dead.”
“How terrible,” she murmured, torn with conflicting feelings about his death. She was both sorrowful that such a man as he was gone and worried that because of his death, Sage and his people would no longer have a protector.
Sage slipped the small book out from the waist of his breeches and gave it to Leonida. “This is a gift from Kit Carson to you,” he said.
Wide-eyed, Leonida accepted the booklet, stunned that Kit would think enough of her to remember her in such away. Yet in the short time she had known him, he had learned of her love of reading and storytelling. As she read the title of the book, she realized that she was not the only one who loved to tell a story. This book was Kit Carson’s memoir, titled Dear Old Kit, published in 1856.
“What a wonderful thing to have,” she murmured, thumbing through it. “From what I know about Kit, he knew not how to read or write. He must have dictated this to someone.”
She closed it and held it to her chest. “This is such a treasure, darling,” she said, sighing. “One day soon let me read it to you?”
“That would please me,” Sage said, then frowned nervously. “But that reading cannot be done soon. I have other plans that must be carried out, although I somewhat fear them.”
Leonida scooted closer to Sage. She took his hand in hers. “Darling, you’re frightening me,” she murmured. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”
Sage placed a gentle hand on her cheek, then took both of her hands in his. “I did not mean to worry you,” he said. “And so much of the news that has been brought to me should make me rejoice. But I can never trust the word of the white man.”
He paused, then continued, Ulysses S. Grant is now the white father in Washington, and he has decided he will no longer negotiate with any Indian tribe. He plans to send them all to reservations, where he promises they will be cared for by the government. But I do not trust his promises. This chief fears it is more likely that Grant hopes to tame us, to take away the beliefs and traditions that make us who we are, to destroy our freedom, yet . . .”
Sage paused again. He eased his hands from Leonida’s and rose to his feet, slowly pacing back and forth.
Fearing what else Sage had to say, Leonida rose quickly to her feet and put a hand on her husband’s arm, stopping
him. She gazed up into his midnight dark eyes. “Yet what?” she said, her voice stiff.
Sage lifted a hand to her hair and wove his fingers through her shoulder-length tresses, looking down at her with heavy lids. “Yet my scouts have brought news to me about our people, the Navaho who had been imprisoned in New Mexico,” he said thickly. “The United States government has signed a treaty with them, allowing their return to their homeland, yet cleverly assigning them a huge area of our homeland which no one else really wants. It is my duty to go and see if this is true. If it is, I must invite my people to come to our new stronghold, where no one wants for anything. They do not have to accept the poor land they have been assigned. We can share equally with those who wish to accompany me and my warriors back here.”
Fear suddenly grabbed at Leonida’s heart. Now she knew why Sage had hesitated at being glad over this news. “This could be a trick to draw you from the stronghold,” she said, her voice breaking. She moved onto her knees before Sage, imploring him with anxious, fearful eyes. “Darling, Kit Carson is dead. Without him, can you truly trust to return to Fort Defiance? Perhaps what was told your scouts is all made up, to lure you from your stronghold.”
“I have thought of that and, yes, I do fear it,” Sage said, taking her hands and holding them to his chest. “But when my scouts were discovered hiding near the fort and invited inside, with promises that they would not be incarcerated, and were given this information, it did seem real enough.” He glanced down at Kit Carson’s book, then up into Leonida’s eyes again. “And there is the book. Kit had left it there for you, should the soldiers ever see you again. They were considerate enough to send it with the scouts to give to you. Does not that seem a sincere gesture?”
Leonida gazed down at the book, then back up at Sage. “It would seem so,” she murmured. “Yet it could be a part of the trick, darling. Please don’t go. Why risk everything for those people who turned their backs on you? Why?”
“Because they have been forced to live a life of degradation long enough,” Sage mumbled. “This land they have been assigned to may not be fertile enough to raise crops. They might starve.”
He shook his head slowly back and forth. “Yet I still cannot understand why the white leader would imprison one Indian and let the other go, except perhaps to see them die slowly because they do not have enough food due to the land being too poor to raise it.”
He frowned down at Leonida. “That has to be the answer,” he growled. “So you see, my wife? I must go and do what I can to help my people. It is time for me to forget the past and their lack of faith in their leader. It is time to give them a new purpose in life and cause to see how wrong they were ever to walk away from what I had promised had they stayed.”
