Dakota heard Fancy's knock at the door and opened it. Fancy hugged the girl, then stood back at arm's length to say what she had on her mind. It troubled her gravely that Dakota was leaving to face an uncertain future. "You don't have to go, you know, Dakota," she said worriedly. "Take my word for it, you can learn a lot more about life right here in Leadville than I ever would have believed. When I was your age, I ran away and I caused myself no end of troubles by doing it... maybe you could fall in love with some fine young man right here in town and then the two of you could go off to see the world together... Oh, Dakota, it's an awfully cold place out there when you're alone."
Dakota smiled at Fancy's concern and shook her head. "If I don't go now, Fancy, my courage will fail and maybe I'll never go at all—and then I'll die wondering 'what if,' and that would be so sad. Once I'm married and have children, there'll be no chance for adventure, will there? No, Fancy. Much as I hate to go, it's now or never."
"But you have such a long time to go before you die, Dakota. So much could happen for you right here in Leadville if you'll only give it a chance."
"None of us knows how long we'll last, Fancy... why, I could contract some dread disease tomorrow and carry memories only of St. Louis and Leadville to my grave."
Fancy laughed at the girl's fey turn of mind; she was loath to lose this young friend who had so gladdened her heart and who soothed the ache she felt about the unreachable Aurora. "That would be unthinkable, I must agree," she whispered, smiling indulgently.
Dakota, at least a head taller, hugged Fancy warmly; she took a package from the drawer of her dresser and handed it to her older friend.
"You know I've always kept a journal, Fancy, ever since I learned to write. I call it my Journal of Dakota's Grand Journey, because I always thought life was like a pathway through the bumptious terrain of the soul, and I wouldn't want to miss recording a single adventurous step. This trip to California will be a whole new chapter for my record, so I'm taking a brand new notebook with me, all full of clean white pages, just waiting to be inscribed. I was wondering if you'd keep volume one for me while I'm away? I'd die if anything happened to it. You see, my whole life's inscribed there, all my hopes and fears and dreams... all the thoughts that are mine alone in the world... and all the love I feel for those who mean most to me. It's the most precious thing I own."
"Of course I'll keep it for you, Dakota," Fancy said, warmed by the girl's trust. "I'll put it with my own keepsakes from childhood. My memories are sacred, too."
Jewel and Ford stood together at the Leadville railroad station, and it was easy to see they'd both cried some at the thought of this parting from their daughter. They looked solemn and only partially resigned; the look of parents who know life's hazards and wish there were a way to save their child from peril.
"I wish you didn't have to go," Jewel said, her voice suspiciously husky, as she embraced the girl and patted her back as if she were a small child.
"Hugging you is one of the nicest things can happen to a person, Mama," Dakota said, tears spilling freely down her cheeks. "I'll be back just as soon as I have something to write about and then I swear I'll never, ever leave you again."
Ford wrapped his arms around both of them.
"I want you to take this money with you, Dakota," he said huskily. "Now, I don't want any arguments, I know you saved up all your schoolteaching money for the trip, but this is a gift from your mama and me."
Fancy turned her head away from the poignant scene, tears blurring her eyes, and she was startled to see Rufus running out of the Crown waving his arms and shouting something, too far away to be heard. He had his shotgun in his hand.
What happened next transpired so swiftly, no one ever after could pin it down exactly. The young man with the gun in his hand materialized out of nowhere... he was suddenly before them on the street, calling out Ford... shouting something about being faster on the draw, as he lifted the lethal revolver.
The gunfighter, always on hair-trigger alert, was distracted by his farewells and his eyes were filmed with tears. He lunged for his pistol, but had to push Jewel and Dakota away before firing. Fancy, horrified into immobility, saw the realization flood Dakota's face, saw the alien gun spit lightning, saw Dakota fling herself into the bullet's path to save her father. The velocity of the shot hurled the girl backward into Ford's body, as Rufus' shotgun blast brought the gunman down. The whole event had taken only seconds.
Blood poured out of the wound in Dakota's chest and turned the traveling suit from beige to red in seconds. Fancy, with a cry, fell to her knees in the dust beside the girl and tried to stop the overwhelming torrent with her bare hands, but there was blood everywhere, too much to stanch... it spurted through her fingers, pumping away the girl's life with every heartbeat.
Dakota's eyes sought Jewel's; they were the eyes of a fawn startled by the huntsman's bullet, disappointed and surprised by the perfidy of Fate. Ford fell to his knees beside his dying child, with a groan of anguish torn from the depths of his soul. He touched her trembling lips with his fingertips as if it were a kiss—Fancy thought she'd never seen so tender a gesture.
"Daddy... Mama..." the girl whispered, like the voice of the dying wind. "... don't want to go..."
"No!" Ford cried out. "No!" as if to put heaven on notice, but the light had already begun to fade from Dakota's eyes. Her mouth, which had laughed so easily, trembled and she tried to speak again, but she couldn't breathe and blood welled up and spilled from her lips... she looked puzzled by the betrayal.
"Oh, God..." Fancy sobbed helplessly, her hands were crimson to the elbows with Dakota's blood, the front of her dress was drenched with it. "Oh, please, not this joyous child..." But the girl's eyes stared past her into eternity and she knew Dakota had set out on a different journey from the one she'd planned.
Ford crushed the body of his daughter and the body of his sobbing Julia to his breast so savagely, Fancy felt his anguished rage tear at her like talons. She stared at her own bloodied hands, unable to think or move. Then she threw her arms around all three she loved and they clung together on the dusty Leadville street for what seemed eternity.
Always on the run, Rufus had said a lifetime ago. Never sleep. One day, someone faster'n you, or more ruthless or luckier...
A crowd had gathered, the sheriff was shouting questions, the train had chugged into the station. Fancy knew the world was going on around them, but she could not move from the spot where she stood. This made no sense... this stupid, dreadful tragedy made no sense at all. She no longer railed at God, as she had in the strength of her youth, but she surely had the right to wonder at His unendurable callousness.
It was a soft June day when they buried Dakota Jameson. Fancy had placed a ruby ring on the girl's finger and pinned a single rosebud to the white batiste dress, in which she would sleep through eternity. The souls of lost roses... Dakota had said. Perhaps she'd find them wherever she'd gone.
The schoolchildren gathered at the graveside, and many of their parents were with them, despite the presence of Julia's nightbirds in quiet black sateens and cottons, and Wu's large family in their curious white mourning garments. The sun clouded over just as the coffin was lowered into the ground and Fancy, numb with sorrow, thought it was a sign... from then on she always thought of the eighth of June as the day they buried the sunshine.
Fancy had attended to the funeral arrangements and had badgered the minister into doing his duty, however reluctant he was because of Jewel. He stood now and read the words of Christian burial over the casket that contained the earthly remains of the blithest spirit Fancy had ever known.
It occurred to her as she watched Ford standing by Jewel's side that he'd been dressed in mourning all his life, as if waiting for this moment. The two were like statues out of a Greek tragedy, Fancy thought; they had aged in the two days since their daughter's death. So, too, had she.
The minister finished his droning words; Fancy hadn't heard a single one, for she'd
gone inside to her secret place, to be alone with her sorrow. She had to steel herself to look down into the hole that held the pine box, knowing Dakota was trapped inside. She wanted to tear the girl from her prison and carry her away somewhere; she wanted to shield Jewel's heart from the torment she was suffering. And Ford, sweet Jesus, just to look into Ford's haunted eyes...
The minister handed the shovel to Chance and he dutifully scooped earth onto the casket, a dreadful final sound, then passed the shovel to each of the mourners in turn. When it came to Jewel, the sorrowful mother waved the tool away and walked close to the edge of the grave that held her only child. From underneath her cloak she pulled a tattered old book and Fancy knew at that moment it was her mother's diary, the possession Jewel held most sacred in the world. She saw there was a letter clutched in the hand that grasped the book. Jewel hesitated for a moment, then with a sigh she leaned down and let her two last gifts to her daughter fall onto the coffin—she knelt there for a time, and Fancy, watching, thought her heart would break for her friend.
Ford stood behind Jewel and helped her rise; he stared down into the ugly wounded ground as if he intended to throw himself into the hole with his child. The tension in the air around him was palpable. What must he be suffering, Fancy wondered distractedly... it was his death Dakota had usurped. What parent's heart could survive such a sacrifice?
Very deliberately, Ford unbuckled the gun belt that never left his body. He held the familiar leather and iron crushed in his powerful hands for a moment, as if he meant to offer them in sacrifice to a God who demanded blood payment. Then he laid the guns to rest in the grave beside the letter and the book.
A murmuring went through the graveside crowd.
"Bury them with my daughter," he said fiercely, and the pain in his voice made people look away and search their own hearts for culpability in the sins of the world. Ford took Julia's arm in his own and held it like a lifeline as the mourners filed away. When everyone else had gone, Fancy took the Journal of Dakota's Grand Journey from her pocket and pressed it into Jewel's trembling hands.
"She told me it was her most precious possession, Jewel. She'd want you to have it now."
Jewel looked at her friend with grief-dulled eyes.
"What's it all about?" she whispered, and Fancy knew she was asking about life, and, having no adequate answers, could only shake her head in sorrow.
That night Jewel sat for hours in the old rocking chair with the journal pressed tightly to her heart, as if to catch the echo of a soft young heartbeat one last time before it faded forever.
"I'm going to miss you so damned much..." she murmured once through her tears.
Finally, long after Ford had fallen into exhausted slumber, Jewel rose quietly from her chair. She stood a long while motionless, then she pressed Dakota's journal to her lips in reverent farewell, a lingering kiss of absolute devotion for the child she had loved so deeply, and known so brief a time.
She tucked the book—so small to have contained a life—into the lock-box that had guarded her mother's diary through all the long years, and wondered as she turned the key, if she'd ever have the courage to read what was written between the covers.
The people of Leadville always wondered how it was that one tombstone in the little churchyard was always strewn with flowers. But Dakota loved flowers... so Fancy and Jewel never forgot. The inscription on the marble read:
Dakota Jameson
Beloved daughter of
Ford and Julia
Departed on the Final Journey, June 8, 1883,
and sorely missed by those she left behind.
She didn't mean to go so far...
Chapter 92
The Apache world, which had once seemed alien, now fit Hart like a well-worn boot; there were times when his "other" life as a white man seemed to have taken place in a different incarnation. He sketched so voluminously that Destarte joked they would soon need an extra horse to carry his work from camp to camp. He'd long since learned the Apache arts of war, as well as those of peace, honing his skills with bow and lance and rifle, partly for his own pride and physical well-being, and partly because the war that occupied Gokhlaya and the others must soon be his as well. Hart listened at the counsel fires as the strategies were planned, he played the war games with the other warriors and offered advice on tactics, when he was asked to do so, and he brooded over what his place must grow to be, in this strange new world he'd chosen as his own for an indeterminate period of time.
A transformation had taken place in Hart, so subtle that he never noticed it until it was near completion, although Destarte saw his metamorphosis with loving wonder. For a long while he'd remained a white man in his heart; at least, so he thought later when he pondered the evolution of his being. Yet at some unspecified moment, the Apache way had begun to be Hart's own way... not an alien culture to be studied and painted and emulated, but a worthy way of life to be cherished and embraced. Was it Destarte who had worked the magic, or Charles Paint-the-Wind, whom he loved so overpoweringly?... Was it the simple integrity of the tribe that spoke to him so clearly, he couldn't help but respond? Or was it all these elements that wrought the change and transformed him into Firehair? He was happy in his Apache life and more fulfilled than he'd ever been; that he knew it was all coming to an end made the moments to be shared with his small family all the more precious.
General Crook had the United States government goading him to subdue the Apache once and for all, and Crook was an able soldier who understood the People more than any of his predecessors had. Because Hart knew the capacity of the military, while Gokhlaya could only guess at its strength, he knew the Apache way was in imminent danger of extinction and thought long and hard on how to fulfill his obligation to the tribe, to protect his wife and child, and finally, how to make the transition from the Apache life to the one he'd left behind.
"How did your Power first speak to you?" Hart asked Gokhlaya one evening, when the soldiers' raids had ceased, briefly. He already knew each Apache brave sought communion with his Power, in a personal vision quest at puberty; that a man's Power came to him then, and remained in his periphery to protect him both in battle and in life. It was the moment when a boy sought his Power that his life was altered, as surely as his name was changed to whatever one the Power dictated. Hart had watched the change in men when their Power spoke to them, and he had begun to desire such knowledge.
"My Power called my name once when I was a young warrior," Gokhlaya answered his friend's question. "I walked apart and fasted and called to him to come to me. I was so anxious to learn the shape of my Power. The wind lifted and swirled and there was an unnatural stillness all around. 'It is not time that you should call upon me,' my Power said sharply to me. T will come to you in your Shadow Body, when you have learned through many sufferings.' Then the wind rose up again and the sands of the desert lashed my face and all became darkness. I fell to the ground and slept. Many strange dreams came to me, but I had not yet the wisdom to understand their meaning.
"Then, after Kaskiyeh, when all I loved had been lost, I went to the mountaintop to mourn. There my Power spoke again and told me things of which I may not speak to any man...."
Destarte bustled about the tipi tending to the meal as the two men talked; she cooked and played with Charles Paint-the-Wind, who'd grown to be a sturdy toddler, with a body that gave promise of his father's stature. Gokhlaya raised his eyes to the woman's and Hart saw a look of perfect understanding pass between them. There are men's things to be discussed, the look said. You must leave. Swift and noiseless as a shadow, she departed with her son by the hand.
Gokhlaya was silent for a moment, regarding Hart with his steady gaze; when he spoke, he sounded solemn.
"Is it that you wish to seek your own Power, Firehair?" he asked, but it was clear he already understood what the answer would be. Hart nodded, his throat curiously dry and tight. Both men knew then that the change had already happened; for the white man not only sought
his Power, but he did so with awe and reverence.
"I feel that my Power is seeking me," Hart said awkwardly.
Gokhlaya nodded understanding. "That is always the best way. You must fast and clear your mind of the things of this world. You must go to the Sweat Lodge and think on your decision. If, after that, it still seems right to you to seek him, you must go alone into the desert and remain there for however long the spirit decrees. I have it in my mind that your Power will come to you."
When Destarte returned and Hart told her of the conversation, he could see in her eyes that she understood the magnitude of his decision.
Three nights later, Gokhlaya took Hart to the Sweat Lodge. The small, humped structure was made of interlaced bows and mud, covered over with a blanket; the rocks in the firepit within were heated to a glowing, sizzling red by the time the men seated themselves, and Gokhlaya began throwing water laced with sacred herbs onto the rocks, in a rhythm he alone understood. A cloud of dense steam arose in the eerie darkness and Hart, who had been fasting, felt light-headed as it seared his lungs and permeated his body inside and out. Gokhlaya had cautioned his pupil not to speak at all, but soon the sounds of the Apaches singing outside the Sweat Lodge rose with the dizzying steam, and Hart heard the rich guttural chanting of the man who shared the lodge's purification with him. The white man felt an unfolding beyond the simple relaxation of bone and muscle; a dizzying lightness of mind and body overtook him, as the tension that had filled him began to dissipate, almost against his conscious will.
After a time beyond counting, for Hart's thoughts seemed to have become fluid instead of linear, Gokhlaya motioned him to follow from the dark lodge to the riverbank beyond the village. The Apache gestured to Hart that he must bathe, and the plunge into the icy water nearly paralyzed him, but it awakened his mind to a clarity unlike any he'd ever experienced. Gokhlaya indicated that Hart must return to the Sweat Lodge alone, and remain there until he felt the urge to begin his quest for vision. Open to whatever was in store, Hart complied, and sat for what seemed an eternity in the solitary steam.