Heart of the Sandhills Read online

  HEART OF THE SANDHILLS

  Dakota Moons, Book 3

  STEPHANIE GRACE WHITSON

  Published by eChristian, Inc.

  Escondido, California

  Robert Thomas Whitson, 1946–2001

  Walk Slowly

  If you should go before me, dear, walk slowly

  Down the ways of death, well-worn and wide,

  For I would want to overtake you quickly

  And seek the journey’s ending by your side.

  I would be so forlorn not to descry you

  Down some shining highroad when I came;

  Walk slowly, dear, and often look behind you

  And pause to hear if someone calls your name.

  —by Adelaide Love

  Contents

  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

  Epilogue 1877

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Books by Stephanie Grace Whitson

  Copyright

  One

  But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

  —Matthew 6:33–34 (NKJV)

  She found him leaning on the corral fence, one foot on the bottom rung, his elbows resting on the top. Instead of tugging playfully on the long braid that hung down his back, as was her habit, she lifted his arm and slipped beneath it, nestling against him and murmuring, “Stop worrying, Daniel. They are coming to see you—not the things you own.”

  Daniel Two Stars tightened his arm around his wife. Pulling her against him, he nuzzled the top of her head with his chin. Then, he changed the subject. “I was remembering that night at the old mission. The moon was so bright it cast shadows on the ground—just like tonight.”

  Gen sighed and crossed her arms atop his, stroking the back of his hands. “The first time we kissed,” she offered. “And, I think, probably the first time I let myself think I might like you more than a little.”

  Daniel tightened the pressure around her momentarily and then bent down to kiss her cheek. “You liked me long before that little kiss on Miss Jane’s front porch,” he teased. “You used to look for excuses to walk by the mission sawmill when I was working.”

  “I did not!” she protested. “It wasn’t my fault the sawmill just happened to be on the way to everything else.”

  “All I know,” he said gently, “is that first summer every time I looked up from my work a pair of blue eyes was watching me.”

  “I was worried you would leave with Otter and go back to your old horse-thieving ways.” She spun around and hugged him fiercely. “I knew you were a better man than that. Even then I knew.” She looked up at him, abruptly returning to the subject and the reason Gen suspected Daniel had not been sleeping well. “The children are coming to see us, Daniel. Not the house. Not the barn. Not our things.”

  Daniel gently disengaged himself and pointed to the moon. “Far away in New York they see that same moon. But that is all that is the same between us now.” He leaned against the top board of the corral fence. “Aaron has grown to be a young man since he left Minnesota.” He shook his head. “Thinking of marriage. Imagine that.”

  “He’s only seventeen. His ideas about Amanda Whitrock are romantic daydreams, that’s all.” Gen added abruptly, “And they are ridiculous daydreams, at that.”

  “You said yourself he grew beyond his years because of the outbreak,” Daniel reminded her gently. “You only protest because you don’t like that girl he writes about.” He changed the subject. “I look at the photograph Jane and Elliot sent us and I can’t believe that young woman standing next to Aaron is Meg.”

  He chuckled softly. “I wonder if her temper still matches her red hair.”

  “She still has a temper,” Gen said. “But once she realized little Hope was staying with us, she stopped pretending to be the spoiled baby of the family. Mothering Hope grew her up a lot.”

  “Hope doesn’t know me at all,” Daniel said. “All she knows is that grand house in New York where servants set her breakfast before her in silver dishes.” He turned and looked up the hill. “They will be expecting a house like that,” he said, nodding toward where Jeb Grant’s two-story frame house stood overlooking the valley and the two log cabins below.

  Gen could almost see their cabin shrinking in the moonlight as Daniel compared it to Jeb Grant’s and Leighton Hall. She spoke up again. “Aaron and Meg don’t care about those things, Daniel. They will never forget what you did for them—those nights when you protected us. Nothing will ever change that—or their love for you. And you can be assured Hope knows all about you. About us.” She swallowed to keep her voice from wavering as she considered that Hope, the baby she had left behind, the child she loved so much, might not recognize her anymore.

  “They love a memory,” Daniel said. He beat his chest, mocking himself. “The Indian hero who saved them during the outbreak of 1862.” He shook his head. “What will they think when they learn that hero is a poor man who doesn’t even own the land he farms? What will they think when Jeb Grant rides down to inspect the fields and they see I am little more than a servant to a white man—just like the servants who bring them meals and wash their clothes?”

  “Stop it.” Gen stomped her foot impatiently and hit him lightly on the shoulder even as she flung a desperate, wordless prayer to heaven, asking for help to encourage him. “Stop talking about my husband as if he were nothing.” Her voice was tinged with impatience. “The man I love is a hero. Three years ago he saved the lives of a half-breed girl and three white children. He was repaid with prison and nearly hanged, but he never gave up. And now, it is 1866 and he is rich in everything that matters. He has worked hard and harvested a fine stand of corn, his friends respect him, and”—she reached up and, laying her hand alongside his cheek, made him look at her—”he pleases his wife who will adore him until the day she dies.” Standing on tiptoe, she kissed him, gently at first, then not so gently. When Daniel returned the kiss and pulled her against him, she wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “What would I do without you, little wife?” he whispered.

  Gen planted a kiss on his weathered cheek. “That, best beloved, you will never have to discover. I almost lost you once. I’m never letting you go again.” A cool breeze made her shiver. She linked her arm through his. “Now stop brooding and take me inside. I’m cold.”

  “Stop ordering me around,” he teased, quoting with mock seriousness. “A contentious wife is a continual dripping.”

  “I am not being contentious,” she taunted back. “I merely want you to obey the scripture that tells husbands to love their wives … oh, and the one that talks about husbands rejoicing in the wife of their youth.”

  “I can do that,” Daniel muttered. He swept her up into his arms and carried her the short distance to their cabin door, setting her down just inside.

  “Yes, I know,” Gen s
aid, taking his hand and leading him into the darkness.

  With her arm bent beneath her as a pillow, Genevieve LaCroix Dane Two Stars lay on her side watching her husband sleep. The chill wind that had sent them shivering indoors had brought snow. Gen could hear the wind picking up as it hurled icy flakes against the northern wall of their little cabin. When a gust of wind swept across the top of the chimney and launched itself downward, a shower of sparks revived the flames and briefly illuminated her husband’s face. Gen reached out to touch his lower lip, to follow its curve to the corner of his mouth and then across the jaw and finally into the mass of glossy black hair spilling across his pillow.

  They had been married just a little over a year and still she woke often, having dreamed again that these months of happiness were the dream, that Daniel truly had been hung as one of the criminals from the uprising back in ‘62. Sometimes she saw him hanging on the gallows. Sometimes she watched in an agony of grief as the soldiers covered the thirty-eight bodies in a shallow mass grave, their heads covered by sackcloth hoods, and then one of the hoods slowly fell away to reveal a face—his face, her beloved Daniel’s.

  In some dreams, she was still married to Reverend Simon Dane but then, instead of being a good wife and nursing him through illness, instead of being faithful and mourning his death and mothering his children Aaron and Meg and their adopted child Hope, she ran away and found herself in some awful place where men abused her. Whatever the dreams, they all had the same theme. She was a worthless woman, and Daniel was not alive after all.

  Now, lying next to her living, breathing Daniel Two Stars, Gen moved closer, praising the Lord who had reunited them, willing away her evil dreams with prayers. She prayed for the children who were to come in the spring and visit them here in Minnesota. She prayed for Elliot and Jane Leighton, who were joyfully keeping their promise to Simon to raise his children in New York and let Genevieve return to Minnesota. She prayed that Elliot would succeed in his efforts to sway Washington officials to help the Dakota still in Minnesota. She thanked God that the Dakota in Crow Creek, South Dakota had been moved to a new home in Nebraska and prayed that it would be a good place for healing between the nations.

  She thanked God again for Simon Dane, who had taken her into his heart and then, in death, had given her a new life with Daniel. She had been a good wife, Simon had said in a letter dictated to Elliot from his deathbed. She had been a good wife and now she must go home to Minnesota where Daniel Two Stars waited for her. The children would be fine. They wanted her to go. And finally, months after Simon died and after a talk with Aaron, the man-boy who had grown up before his time, she had come home to Minnesota.

  Genevieve thanked God for home, a tiny log cabin on Jeb Grant’s sizeable farm. Ironically, it was land that used to belong to Daniel and his friend Robert Lawrence back in the ages before the madness called the Minnesota Sioux Uprising of 1862. Now Robert and Daniel plowed fields that were no longer theirs in return for a portion of the crops and the right to live in two small log cabins with their families.

  Only a few weeks ago a Mr. Adams had stopped at the farm with questions for Jeb Grant. It seemed that Jeb had contacted the famous Bishop Whipple, a friend of the Dakota, and Bishop Whipple had in turn contacted Mr. Adams. Adams came in person to get Jeb’s written recommendation for Daniel Two Stars and Robert Lawrence to receive part of a fund appropriated by Congress that would help the remnants of the Dakota tribe still in Minnesota.

  “Be glad to write you a recommendation,” Jeb had said, shifting nervously from one foot to another, “ ‘ceptin’ I cain’t write.” He had turned to Daniel and said, “I’ll tell you what to write and you put it down.” He looked at Mr. Adams. “That all right with you?”

  Mr. Adams had agreed, and so it was that an educated Dakota Indian wrote his own commendation upon which an illiterate white man made his mark so that more white men would see and believe that there were at least two Dakota men in Minnesota who had never scalped a child or outraged a woman.

  “I’ll be back before planting next spring,” Mr. Adams had promised. “You may get more than money, and there’s talk of trying to get farms up by the old reservation.”

  But Mr. Adams had ridden away with the papers extolling the virtues of Daniel Two Stars and Robert Lawrence and had not been heard from again. As she lay beside her husband, Gen could not imagine even a tiny corner of Minnesota being given up for Indians to inhabit. She had not realized when she came back from New York how universally despised they would be. Even though he could not read, Jeb sometimes brought down a newspaper from town, and what she read in it caused Gen to shudder. Savages. Murderers. Fiends. Looking at her husband sleeping next to her, she shook her head at the ignorance being displayed in those newspapers. Sometimes it worried her, thinking of the hatred lying so fertile just beyond the boundaries of Jeb and Marjorie Grant’s farm.

  She thanked God for Jeb and Marjorie Grant, good people with good memories of Indians in their home state of Kentucky. Two years earlier when Daniel and Robert were serving as army scouts and discovered a half-dozen ancient Dakota fleeing the Crow Creek reservation and trying to return to their homes in Minnesota, Daniel had brought them to Jeb, begging him to let them stay on his place. Jeb had agreed. The fact that two of the old women helped Marjorie bring twins into the world helped their cause. But Crow Creek and old age had taken their toll, and the little cemetery on the hillside behind Jeb’s barn had grown steadily until now all the ancients had gone to the spirit land, leaving only Daniel and Genevieve Two Stars and Robert and Nancy Lawrence.

  White settlers were trickling back into southwestern Minnesota—settlers who were well read in the stories of Indian depredations but illiterate when it came to the subject of Christian natives who had defended white captives, often at risk of their own lives. Gen had begun to notice that neither Daniel nor Robert ventured far off Jeb Grant’s farm of late, and when they did, they rarely invited their wives along.

  Gen struggled to be content. In everything give thanks, the Scriptures said. She closed her eyes and gave thanks. Daniel is mine. We have a roof over our heads. The Grants are kind. We are not hungry. Daniel is mine. Robert and Nancy are such good Christian friends. The children are happy in New York. They will come to visit. Daniel is mine. Always, her prayers circled back to the wonder of having the love of her life near.

  “You be careful,” Nancy had teased her once. “You worship the water that man walks on. One of these days he’s going to sink. What are you going to do then?”

  “Why, I’ll dive in and pull him up,” Gen laughed and returned to her work.

  Everything was very nearly perfect, Gen thought. Except for the neighbors who didn’t understand. And Daniel’s worries about what the children would think of him now. Lying in bed listening to the wind blow outside, she closed her eyes and argued with herself. Things will change when Elliot and Jane come. Daniel will see that the children don’t care nearly so much about possessions as they do about seeing us. And the neighbors will see the children and finally accept who we are. Please, God, let the people see who we are. Make them see past our skins and into our hearts. All we want is a place to be. Just a place to be. Is it too much to ask?

  She lifted her head and looked at her husband again. So handsome, she thought. Such a beautiful man, even with the premature wrinkles around his eyes, the deepening crease between his eyebrows. Worry, Gen thought. He was always worrying. She had thought the news that Elliot and Jane were bringing the children for a visit in the spring would have been cause for rejoicing. Instead, Daniel worried more.

  We’ll put up a tent, Jane had written. It will be such fun. Just like the old days when the mission held its annual meeting on the prairie. You won’t believe how the children have grown. And they are so excited about seeing you again.

  Daniel’s worries were groundless, Gen thought. But she didn’t know how to make him believe it. He would just have to see for himself. She would spend the winter working on
the quilts she was making for each of the children. Aaron’s was almost finished, a simple blue-and-white nine-patch, small enough to include in his bedroll if he ever lived his dream of being an army interpreter.

  Gen thought ahead to spring. She pictured the children arriving just as the crops were rising out of the ground, as the garden was planted, and as the wild roses she and Nancy had transplanted were blooming. She told herself the children’s visit would be a celebration and at last Daniel would see that nothing mattered but their love for one another and their love for the Lord. He will see, Gen thought. She nestled against him.

  Without opening his eyes, Daniel drew her closer, settling her head on his shoulder. “The storm is worse,” he murmured, half asleep.

  When Gen shivered slightly and curled one leg over his in an attempt to get warm, he opened his eyes, raised up on one shoulder and looked down at her. He said nothing, only pulled the worn comforter up around her shoulders before finding a more creative way to keep her warm.

  Two

  It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: but every fool will be meddling.

  —Proverbs 20:3

  “No!” The shrill denial split the early afternoon quiet in Leighton Hall’s garden. From where she knelt beside a rosebush in one corner of the garden, Margaret Marie Dane looked toward the house just in time to see Amanda Whitrock flounce down the back porch stairs and storm in the general direction of the white gazebo on the opposite side of the garden.

  “But Amanda,” Aaron pleaded from the back stairs, “it’s not until next summer. I’ll be here all this winter. We can still go to’ the winter festival together.”

  “I don’t care!” Amanda shot back over her shoulder. “You’ll miss my birthday party—and it’s the most important one! A girl only turns sixteen once in a lifetime, Aaron Dane.” She disappeared into the gazebo.

  Aaron hesitated on the back stairs and caught a glimpse of his sister hunkered down in the rose garden. With a woeful glance toward the gazebo, he stepped off the porch, thrust his fists in his pockets, and sauntered toward Meg.

  “Somebody’s angry with Aa—ron,” Meg sang softly as he approached. “Somebody’s angry with Aa—ron and her name is Mandy Dane.” She snipped a white rose off a bush and twirled it in the air at her brother.