No Other Man by Shannon Drake Read Free Book Online Page B

could
come to them.
    Thunder Hawk was still not sure about the white man. But
Mile-High-Man had reminded him that he must learn to listen to many languages.
The message in his vision quest must be obeyed.
    Both his grandfather and his mother begged him to give David
Douglas a chance.
    He sat with his grandfather one day, still torn and demanding
to know why he should do so.
    "David Douglas is a chief in his land. A lord, they call
him. He is honored in Scotland, as his father before him."
    "We are nowhere near Scotland. We have Americans
encroaching on us always!"
    His grandfather smiled, nodding his wise old head. "He
came here like a warrior in his way, to make his own mark. Perhaps because the
nomad's blood was in his veins. Because he had read of wide open prairies, of
endless vistas, of tall grasses that stretched forever. He read about people
who were different. He came here to explore, and we seized him but did not kill
him. Even faced with certain death, he was a friend who wanted to know us,
rather than hate us. He sought knowledge, wisdom, those qualities we seek ourselves.
He needed to learn our religion, our way."
    "He left us."
    "His father and brother died; his white wife was very
sick. He loved both wives and did his duty to the woman he had taken first.
When he could have lived a life of greatest comfort, he returned here. His
place is in another land. His heart is here. Now he has arranged it that others
care for the title and property that will go to his older son by the white way,
yet he has come here with that son as well to live near the rivers where we
place our villages. He knows your world. He learned it with his blood. He was
our captive first, then our relative." He took a very deep breath, looking
at Hawk. "One day, a tide of white men will come. I saw it many years ago,
in my own vision."
    "The tide already comes!"
    His grandfather raised a hand in acknowledgment. "You
have yet to see the wave! There will be blood before then. We will fill the
prairie with our blood, nurture it, give to it. But we cannot stem the flow of
white men. Therefore, some of us must befriend them. Some must fight, and some
must die, and some must live. Else we have died and bled for nothing. Do you
understand?"
    "I understand I should fight!"
    "The hardest fights are often those we wage within ourselves.
Tell me, Thunder Hawk, when a Sioux brave has two ponies and his neighbor has
none, what must the brave do?"
    Thunder Hawk frowned. "Give his neighbor his second
pony. We must always look after one another; we must always be generous. We are
taught this from birth—"
    "Then you must be generous with this man who is your
lather. You will always be Sioux. You will also always be white. You cannot be
selfish with yourself. You must share your love with your mother, with your
people—and with your white father."
    His grandfather's words had heavily influenced him as had his
vision and the words of the holy man.
    But in the end, the main reason he had gone to live with Lord
David Douglas was because he learned that Flying Sparrow—Kathryn—was ill. She
lost weight daily; she could not sew the buffalo hides into a tipi, a garment,
or a inirfleche in which to carry things. She
couldn't live where i lie smoke sometimes wafted back into the tipi in winter.
Where there might be raids by whites or Crows or other enemies, where she might
have to run in the cold and the snow. She needed the care that Andrew Douglas
longed to give her. Hawk could begrudge David much, but he couldn't deny that
the white man loved his mother. That love was apparent in every move that the
man made.
    So he came to discover just what the white blood in him
meant.
    Life was different. So different.
    He found himself in a huge house with many
rooms. He learned to sit on chairs rather than on the floor.
    He met his white brother.
    His brother was named David, like their father. He spent only
part of his time in the United States, in the fine house Lord