Rosebud: Legend of Campfire Stories

By Rich Haney

Half white, half Sioux and totally beautiful, Rosebud -- from 1876 till 1891, as she aged from fifteen to twenty-nine in the pages of this book -- emerged as the greatest legend of the Indian Campfire Stories all across the Great Plains, an honor she still holds to this day. Madly in love with Lt. David Hamilton Maynadier -- the
most influential young officer at Fort Laramie -- Rosebud, in the spring of 1876,
cast her lot with Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa Sioux when she sensed the impending demise of the Sioux nation. She saw Custer die at the Little Bighorn on June 25th, 1876; she witnessed Sitting Bull's murder at Standing Rock on December 15th, 1890; and she barely escaped the Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek on December 29th, 1890. Her Sioux nickname was Wanekia ("Angel") but the soldiers that threatened what remained of her beloved Hunkpapas had ample reason to fear her as the very greatest of the Sioux warriors. During those fifteen years -- 1876 to 1890 -- no one, not even her idol Sitting Bull or her friend Crazy Horse, fought as tenaciously or as effectively as Rosebud did to preserve the life and the legacy of the Sioux nation she cherished.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 1, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469112657

Rich Haney

Born in Fluvanna County, Virginia, in 1945, Rich Haney began working part-time at WINA Radio in nearby Charlottesville when he was a high school junior.     While attending Lynchburg College, he continued to work at WINA on weekends.     Then, for eight years, he was Sports Director and Program Director for WINA.     During this period he did football play-by-play for Lane High School, then the record-setting, perennial state champions. He left WINA Radio in Charlottesville to become the Sports Anchor/Director of WTVR-TV, the CBS affiliate in Richmond, Virginia.      During his twelve-year stint at WTVR-TV, he also did football and basketball play-by-play on the radio networks of the University of Richmond, the University of Virginia and/or Virginia Tech University.     For five years he covered regional sports for the Raycom and CBS networks and also published a sports weekly, The Rich Haney Report, as well as a syndicated newspaper sports column. After a divorce, Rich moved to Montgomery, Alabama, when his son Tony received a baseball scholarship at Auburn University.    While Tony was at Auburn, Rich was the Sports Director/Anchor of WAKA-TV, the CBS affiliate in Montgomery.      It was in the Deep South, essentially alone for the first time, that Rich began researching and writing Historic Novels, which soon became his passion.      A recently published Civil War novel entitled CHATTAHOOCHEE encouraged him to move to Laramie, Wyoming, where he writes full-time. SACAJAWEA: Her True Story is Rich's first non-fiction work but, in Laramie, he has also deeply researched and written two Western Novels -- ROSEBUD and FAWN -- that are currently being represented by a New York agent.     His particular interest, symbolized by an extensive personal library that he is quite proud of, is the history of the American West, particularly the Plains Indians. ************     Even prior to the soon-to-be ubiquitous dollar coin, which debuts in March of 2000, Sacajawea is already the most memorialized female in American history.     Yet, controversy still rages as to whether she died in 1812 in South Dakota or in 1884 in Wyoming.     And where is she buried?     This book answers those questions by validating the Oral or Traditional History of the Shoshones, her own people, and explains why many white historians, including Ken Burns and Steven Ambrose, are wrong when it comes to America's greatest female icon.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

In the white-dominated world, the two most renowned Indian heroines, by far, are Sacajawea and Pocahontas. But in the Indian world, the greatest heroine, by far, is Rosebud. What accounts for this dichotomy? Well, the white world controls the media and the marketing; also, Sacajawea and Pocahontas are famed for deeds performed on behalf of whites. Rosebud attained her status as the most cherished Indian heroine and the greatest Legend of the Campfires Stories based on deeds she performed for Indians.

Half white, half Sioux and stunningly beautiful, the acutely bilingual, fifteen-year-old Rosebud, in the spring of 1876, was a shining light in both the white and Indian worlds in southeastern Wyoming Territory. She lived in a small, showcase Sioux village located at the confluence of the Platte and Laramie rivers within sight of Fort Laramie. Her striking beauty as well as her fluency in both English and Lakota gained her a measure of fame as Fort Laramie’s Indian Princess because she was often used as a translator when notables from the East stopped off at the fort after the railroad reached Cheyenne in 1867. The Sioux village within the shadows of Fort Laramie was a showcase village purposely used by the U. S. Government to illustrate that it could, indeed, have a good relationship with the Plains Indians. Of course, the Sioux village that featured Rosebud as its most luminous inhabitant was unique, because elsewhere a tempest was brewing after the Interior Department, late in 1875 and early in 1876, issued orders for all Indians to report to reservations or the U. S. Army would compel them to do so. By the spring of 1876, Fort Laramie and the other major Western outposts were gearing up to enforce that edict, especially after word was out that bands of Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapahoe were massing on the Little Bighorn River vowing to resist the orders to report to reservations.

In this milieu, Rosebud had fallen madly in love with Lt. David Hamilton Maynadier, the most influential young officer at Fort Laramie, and he verily worshipped her. A June 12th wedding was planned in the ballroom at Old Bedlam, the already famous Fort Laramie building that housed unmarried officers. Lt. Maynadier, whom Rosebud called Paco, had inherited a nice ranch on Horse Creek just north of Cheyenne and he had renamed it the Rosebud Ranch in honor of his bride-to-be. Because of his disenchantment with the plans the government had for the Plains Indians, Paco resigned from the army and, thanks to the respect accorded his late father, Colonel Henry Maynadier, the resignation was approved, effective the week of June 12 th, 1876.

But outside forces chipped away at Rosebud’s and Paco’s idyllic plans to settle as man and wife on the Rosebud Ranch. On May first, 1876, the fifteen-year-old Rosebud realized a lifelong dream when, for the first time, she laid eyes on her father. Her departed mother, a Lakota Sioux named Full Moon, had meticulously described Rosebud’s father and her aunt, Tall Girl, had gotten word that he had returned to the area as a trapper who now sold his furs twice a year at Fort Laramie. So, Rosebud, with her unique access to the fort, knew who he was the moment she spotted him enter the front gates atop a fur-laden wagon. She picked her moment and, using her incomparable looks, enticed her father into an alley and arranged a rendezvous with him five miles west of the fort near a grove of cottonwood trees that hugged a bend in the Laramie River. Rosebud, using a Colt-.45 Frontier Special that she had hidden in an inside pocket of her rawhide jacket, killed her father with two shots to the heart, after telling him she was his daughter and after confirming who he was by reminding him of a bad scar he had on his left shoulder.

The next morning, Rosebud told Paco what she had done, why she had done it and what he would find out at that grove of cottonwoods. (Sixteen years earlier, she explained, her young mother Full Moon had been kidnapped by a trapper, taken to a mountain cabin and raped repeatedly for two days. When the trapper was through with her, he tied her hands behind her back, took her to a remote meadow and shot her in the face, leaving her for dead. But she didn’t die and, nine months later, gave birth to a little girl she named Rosebud. The wound left Full Moon’s face horribly distorted and her name was changed to Funny Face. When Rosebud was nine, her beloved mother died of the fever. Because she was a half-breed, Rosebud was not adopted by her Sioux relatives. Missionaries arranged for her to be adopted by a Mormon family, Newton and Ada Davis, that lived in Colorado Territory. Supremely loved and superbly educated as Elizabeth Davis, Newton and Ada tearfully returned a twelve-year-old Rosebud to the Sioux after her mother’s sister, Tall Girl, became old enough to adopt her. Thus, the precocious Rosebud, awesomely beautiful and fluent in both Lakota and English, emerged as the shining light of Fort Laramie’s showcase Sioux village).

Rosebud’s faith in Paco was justified. He supported her deed but realized that the white man’s law would not agree with him. So, he formed a detail and rode out to the cottonwoods; he filed a false report at Fort Laramie, blaming the murder of Nathan Covington on a would-be robber who fled when a soldier rode over to investigate the two shots. That false report remains to this day in the archives at a refurbished Fort Laramie, which is now a major tourist attraction as the most vital fort on the old Oregon Trail.

Shielded from the whites by Paco’s cover-up, Rosebud envisioned a life as a rancher’s wife on the Rosebud Ranch. But General George Crook’s battered army limped back to Fort Laramie after losing a battle with Crazy Horse’s out-numbered Sioux up on Clear Creek. General Crook was so outraged that he court-martialed five of his officers and ordered Paco to replace one of them when they rode back out to re-engage Crazy Horse. Paco, even with his resignation approved but still six weeks from fruition, had no choice. And while General Crook realigned his army, another noted figure—famed missionary Mary Collins, known to history as Sitting Bull’s dearest white friend—arrived on the post and requested a meeting with Paco and Rosebud. Mary Collins, amazingly, delivered a message from Sitting Bull to Rosebud: The legendary Hunkpapa Sioux, the most powerful leader among all the Plains Indians, wanted Rosebud to join him at his encampment on the Little Bighorn River!

Unknown to Rosebud and Paco, Indian campfire stories had saturated the plains, telling how an incredibly beautiful, fifteen-year-old Sioux girl had performed this great deed on behalf of her deceased mother, and done it under the noses of the soldiers at the biggest and most important fort in the West. The monumental deed, the Sioux believed, appeased the Heavenly Gods and restored Full Moon’s rightful name, meaning that, in the Spirit World and on earth, she would no longer be thought of as Funny Face. To the Sioux, Mary Collins explained, Rosebud had become the greatest Campfire Legend and the greatest inspiration to your mother’s people during this period of their greatest frustration and deepest peril.

In early June, 1876, Rosebud, in the Mary Collins entourage, departed Fort Laramie bound for the Little Bighorn. A heartbroken Lt. David Hamilton Maynadier, Rosebud’s Paco, stood on a rise and watched until the prairie swallowed up the last traces of the wagon that carried the love of his life into the omnipotent unknowns that had so swiftly and unfairly engulfed them. And very soon after his separation from Rosebud, Paco rode out with General Crook’s refurbished army, which was doggedly back in pursuit of Crazy Horse.

* * *

And so, a stupendous deed on behalf of her mother catapulted the fifteen-year-old Rosebud into the Greatest Legend of the Campfire Stories. At about the same time, war clouds to the north scuttled her wedding plans and forced her beloved Paco, Lt. Maynadier, to go off with General Crook to fight her people, the Sioux. Moreover, Sitting Bull, the most powerful of all the Plains Indians, beckoned her to his encampment on the Little Bighorn after he had repeatedly heard campfire stories extolling her enormous deed and extraordinary beauty. Sitting Bull’s request transported Rosebud onto the pages of history but, sadly, separated her from Paco for fifteen long years as he waited for her on the Rosebud Ranch and she battled ferociously to preserve the Sioux nation as long as possible.

While Rosebud remains to this day the Greatest Legend of the Campfire Stories, she was and is known only to a select few in the white world. In that manner, the Sioux cradle and protect her memory with a passion that almost equals the passion that Rosebud had for her people. But the few whites who knew her cherished her as much as the Sioux did. This is evident from historically accurate quotes that permeate the telling of her story:

Lt. David Maynadier: A day never passes that I don’t hear you call my name, but, when I turn around, there is no one there. (During their fifteen year separation, Rosebud and Paco exchanged a series of heart-wrenching letters, carried back and forth, even across the Canadian border, by missionaries. The above sentence was included in one of Paco’s letters to Rosebud).

Sitting Bull: When I look at her each day, I dream of her each night; and always, in my dreams, I am fifteen-years-old, too. (As registered in the memoirs of Mary Collins, the missionary lady known to Western historians as Sitting Bull’s dearest white friend, Sitting Bull said the above words to Mary Collins as he explained why he wanted Rosebud to remain with him on the Little Bighorn even though he knew a major battle was imminent).

Rosebud: I will stay with you as long as you want me to, as long as you live. (In the presence of Mary Collins, Rosebud said these words to Sitting Bull on June 22nd, 1876—three days prior to the Battle of the Little Bighorn).

Crazy Horse: I have Black Shawl and it is my duty to hunt and to fight. Were that not so, I would spend my time searching for a Rosebud, like you. (Crazy Horse, the greatest warrior ever to set foot on American soil, said those tender words to Rosebud on the evening of June 24th, 1876, at the Little Bighorn).

Major Samuel Whitside: When you get to Wyoming, tell David Maynadier that not everyone with the Seventh Cavalry is a fiend. (These were Major Whitside’s parting words to Rosebud after he sneaked her away from Wounded Knee Creek just before daylight on the morning of December 29th, 1890. He then returned to camp and tried his best, as history records, to prevent the massacre of 304 helpless Minneconjou Sioux by the Seventh Cavalry out of revenge for the Little Bighorn. Safely in the mountains, Rosebud heard the shots and saw the residue of smoke from that infamous carnage. With her was a four-year-old Minneconjou girl, nicknamed Kitten, that Rosebud had adopted with the blessing of the soon-to-be murdered Chief Big Foot. Just fourteen days before barely escaping the Massacre at Wounded Knee, Rosebud had witnessed the murder of Sitting Bull on December 15th, 1890, on the Standing Rock Reservation, but she escaped under a plan devised by Sitting Bull to get her back to Wyoming and back in the arms of the man who wrote the letters, letters Rosebud had read to Sitting Bull).

Buffalo Bill Cody: During a long life, I have been hosted by Indian chiefs, American presidents and foreign kings and queens. But only one person’s presence ever made me feel small. She was a half-breed Indian girl named Elizabeth Davis. Sometimes, when I’m lucky, I still see her and hear her in my dreams. (Buffalo Bill Cody, the legendary frontiersman and showman, spoke these words to the Rocky Mountain News not long before he died in 1917 in Denver. In 1885, the then 39-year-old Buffalo Bill had fallen in love with the then 24-year-old Rosebud, who was in the guise of a white woman, Elizabeth Davis, when she and Sitting Bull were luminous additions to Cody’s world-famous Wild West Show. Rosebud had made the decision for Sitting Bull to join the Wild West Show to get her Tecumseh of the Plains away from the Standing Rock Reservation, where she knew Indian Agent John McLaughlin was devising a scheme to murder Sitting Bull under orders being handed down from the Western Military Headquarters in Chicago).

Rosebud: In my lifetime, I have loved four men with supreme passion. David Maynadier and Sitting Bull tied for first; Bill Cody and Sam Whitside tied for second. (Rosebud spoke these words while reminiscing with Mary Collins as they sat on the front porch at the Rosebud Ranch one spring day in 1906. The four men Rosebud mentioned verily read like a Who’s Who of the American West. David Maynadier was the superb young officer that fell madly in love with Rosebud at Fort Laramie in 1876; Sitting Bull was the greatest leader of the Plains Indians; Bill Cody was considered the most famous person in the world in 1885 when he became the only man, other than Lt. Maynadier, to ever make love to Rosebud; and Major Samuel Whitside was the young Seventh Cavalry officer that saved Rosebud’s life at Wounded Knee Creek on December 29th, 1890).

Mary Collins: While I am humbly but fiercely proud that history will remember me as Sitting Bull’s dearest white friend, I fully realize that a charismatic, sensual, angelic and breathtakingly gorgeous half-breed Sioux girl named Rosebud has left the largest and the most beautiful footprints on the West and on my heart. (In her memoirs, famed Western missionary Mary Collins mentioned Sitting Bull 137 times but referred to Rosebud only once, in that powerful sentence on the very last page).

Mary Collins: Rosebud herself restricted me to just one sentence about her in my memoirs, which turned out to be 654 pages that otherwise would mostly have been devoted to her. You wonder about these tears? It’s because, even beyond God and Sitting Bull, Rosebud lingers most fondly in my memory. I, of course, pray each day that God understands. (Mary Collins spoke these words at the Western History Symposium at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1912).

After reading the historically accurate, twenty-one chapters of ROSEBUD, I believe you will understand why Rosebud lingered most fondly in the memory of Mary Collins, even beyond God and Sitting Bull.

(Rich Haney, author)

CHAPTER ONE

Funny Face

In all her fifteen years, never before had Rosebud been consumed by such an awesome combination of anxiety, hope and excitement.

As a million butterflies began to congregate in her stomach and upper chest, she eased further behind the huge stacks of weather-darkened logs that were piled up near Fort Laramie’s imposing front gates. The vicissitudes of life had come down to this. Right now, she merely kept a wary eye on the lone occupant of a two-horse wagon that was loaded down with winter furs and pelts, goods obviously destined to be sold or traded inside the fort.

As the wagon passed within fifteen yards of Rosebud, and then disappeared through the gates, she was more convinced than ever that the driver was the father she had never before seen.

Her left hand spread across her chest as she tried to control the avalanche of butterflies.

After a sigh, she tilted back against the stack of logs, hoping the firewood would combine with the walls of the fort and continue to afford her the stealth she desired.

Each day, for five months, she had tried mightily to keep vigils near the gates of Fort Laramie in hopes of spotting her father. His features and mannerisms were imbued on her mind because of vivid depictions provided by her now departed mother, a Lakota Sioux named Funny Face.

Rosebud’s auburn hair was being animated by the wind and there was an inch or so of snow covering the logs and the ground. It was mid-morning on May first, 1876; summer was still a ways off in this harsh land where the Laramie River meets the Great North Platte.

she eased around the logs, shading her sparkling green eyes with her right hand as the morning sun glistened sharply off the dusting of snow. But she was more in control of herself now as she turned to the left and took a few steps into the narrow corridor that was formed by the logs and the walls of the fort. With head bowed and eyes closed, an image of the man driving the wagon evolved into a grim portrait that sharply caressed all her senses.

The scraggly blonde hair, the longish but handsome face and even the impressive blue eyes meshed with all of her instincts to assure her, once again, that her very own father was now inside the mammoth walls of Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory.

Now massively alert, Rosebud nervously inched her way to the front edge of the staked logs. she glanced off to the left until her squinting eyes focused on signs of the sioux village that was her home. it was a smattering of white and brownish, skin-covered teepees along with sod-based earth-lodges. Her very own teepee was in that cluster, no more than three-quarters of a mile southwest of the fort just on the other side of the forked confluence of the two famed Oregon Trail rivers, the Laramie and the North Platte.

Rosebud well knew that trappers who ventured to the fort in loaded wagons would need several hours, at least, to consummate their business.

With time as her ally, the idea crossed her mind that she might best be served by returning to her village to collect her massive thoughts and to allow her muddled mind to devise a specific plan of action. After all, everything to this point had been geared to facilitate one thing—the mere sighting of her father.

As her attention reverted back to the open gates of Fort Laramie, she soon let go of the fleeting thoughts about re-crossing the river. Her heartbeat quickened as she reaffirmed her decision to maintain close tabs on her father, and initiate contact with him inside the fort.

She moved alongside the lofty front walls, veering to her left to get around one of the two open gates. She was not at all surprised when she quickly encountered the two young soldiers who were posted as guards. With undisguised trepidation, she slowly entered the fort.

Your name ain’t on today’s list. Is Lt. Maynadier expectin’ ya?

Except when their names were on the approved day-sheet posted at the front gates, occupants of the nearby Sioux village were not allowed inside the fort, except on Saturdays, which was the regular day for trading. She was aware that this was a Thursday and that her influential friend, Lt. David Hamilton Maynadier, had not cleared her passage.

Still, she was well acquainted with the young soldier, Private Estes Ford, and the problem was not insurmountable.

Lt. Maynadier is expecting me. He…he doesn’t always leave my name, ya know.

Private Ford grinned, accepting Rosebud’s partial lie. She then walked past the guard station and into the bowels of the largest and most important fort in the West.

With her own tiny Sioux village nestled within the shadows of Fort Laramie, Rosebud’s unique access to the white man’s base of power was exhilarating unto itself but not the source of her titillation this day. That giddy distinction belonged to her father, whom she had just laid eyes on for the very first time.

Rosebud headed toward Lt. Maynadier’s quarters, but only to lend credence to her subterfuge.

Once beyond the view of the sentries, she angled to the right and in the direction of the row of buildings and outside tables that constituted the trading and storage area of the fort.

Well, I declare! Good morning, Rosebud. Trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, she had successfully run a gauntlet-like barrage of stares but a familiar voice off to the side stopped her. Corporal Levi Jacobs, one of Lt. Maynadier’s close friends, walked up to her. I know you’re not here to see me, but David’s in a meeting that involves the colonel. Still, I’m sure he can be pried away if …

Uh, no, Levi. I knew he had an important meeting. I’m here just to pick up something that he left for me over at the Quartermaster Building. Then I’ll have to return to the village. Thank you anyway. And good to see you.

After parting company with corporal Jacobs, Rosebud stuck to her task but continued to garner the customary stares and reflections from a multitude of other soldiers and some civilians. This day, she was bedecked in a tan, buckskin dress that ended just above her ankles. An expansive, white shawl was wrapped around her shoulders; a yellow ribbon tied around her long, wavy hair highlighted the top of her head and held a striking white-and-blue eagle feather in place. The thought trickled through her mind that Lt. Maynadier…she called him Paco…would not mind an unexpected visit but he might be more than a little miffed to learn that she was making herself available to a host of prying eyes. Still, because this had evolved into a very special day, she hoped to avoid Paco.

No stranger to Fort Laramie, she quickly got a re-sighting of the fur-laden wagon that had so markedly altered her day. In company with various other wagons, all aligned in front of stores or storage sheds, this particular wagon was now positioned at a hitching rail fronting the Quartermaster Building, the largest on Trader’s Row. But the owner of all those furs, her father, was apparently inside working out some details with the quartermaster.

Rosebud, seeking cover, squeezed between two other unattended wagons. She was patient but nervous as she waited.

After five long minutes, the tall, blonde-headed man stepped out onto the porch of the Quartermaster Building, accompanied by an assistant to the quartermaster. The two men stood on the porch eyeing the furs as they discussed which shed they would be stored in.

These are good ‘uns! Tell Jed I’ll be over at the commissary for an hour or so, and I’m hopin’ we can agree on a price for the whole load, ‘cause I ain’t anxious to hang around to peddle ‘em on Saturday. But tell him…I ain’t about to give ‘em away.

Hearing her father’s voice created a new emotion that sent shivers down Rosebud’s spine.

Also, while peering around a wagon loaded with winter-preserved potatoes, she was getting her first good look at her father as he stood, very straight and quite tall. He was wiry but strong, weather-beaten but handsome; she guessed he was about forty, but he looked much younger. She took note of his deep, resonant voice and also noticed his piercing blue eyes that meshed so luminously with his blonde hair, which jutted out from beneath a wide-brimmed Stetson.

As Rosebud quickly absorbed an amalgam of opinions, these fresh nuances included reminders of how very much her life was entwined with his, though he had yet to lay eyes on her.

The commissary, as the noon hour neared, would be quite crowded. Rosebud watched as Quartermaster Jed Brighton’s aide gestured for two soldiers to take the wagon to a designated shed.

Her father began descending the steps, bent on crossing the dusty, wheel-rutted stretch that slantingly separated the Quartermaster Building from the commissary.

With little aforethought, and minus any semblance of a firm plan, Rosebud sauntered out to her left and away from the potato-laden wagon that had afforded her that measure of anonymity. She kept drifting, airily, more to the left until she entered the peripheral vision of her father! She stopped, chastising herself for having orchestrated such a blatant and elemental approach.

Her father, on his leftward slant across the rugged corridor, caught sight of Rosebud but continued for a few paces before he slowed and then stopped. He now looked more forcefully at her, his eyes roaming up and down from the eagle feather to her moccasins.

concerned singularly with him, and leery of her openness, Rosebud allowed only a few seconds for his eyes to settle quizzically on her face. She then presented him a half-hearted smile and a slightly arcane nod before heading, in a trot, across the fairly busy lane that pointed to the west walls of the fort.

A few buildings shy of the commissary, she ducked into a narrow alley that she knew dead-ended just short of an outside corral. She also was aware that the Laundress Building, which formed one side of the alley, jutted out at one point to create a barrier that left barely a foot of open space. Rosebud squeezed sideways through that aperture and then used the abutment to conceal herself from the open end of the alley.

She waited now and with her heart pounding she intermittently glanced down the alley. Believing her gesture out in the corridor had left a message, she hoped her father, perhaps after disguising his intentions with a calculated delay, would soon venture into the alley to investigate.

At the moment, she did not feel particularly proud of herself. After her mother died, when Rosebud was nine, she had spent over two years living as an orphan with the Newton Davis family in Auraria, colorado, and thus she was quite fluent in both the English and Lakota languages. Depending on her whims, she could enter Fort Laramie as a young white woman, Liz Davis, or as the appropriately dressed Indian girl known as Rosebud. Encouraged by her lone wasicu (non-Indian) friend, Lt. Maynadier, she considered herself malakota (an Indian) and almost always chose the guise of Rosebud, as was the case this day. Reality, in deference to her mother, pained her now because of what she had just done. As her improvised plan swiftly unfolded, she had used her striking looks to entice her father into the alley. The effort spawned ambivalent battles that raged within her, but she remained undeterred.

Her fourth or fifth glance down the alley emphatically washed away the nagging tides of reservations, giving forth a burst of euphoria. For better or worse, she had quickly orchestrated a very private meeting, or confrontation, with the tall man. He was now walking slowly toward her, glancing periodically behind him to ascertain if his aberrant behavior was being noticed out in the main area of the sprawling, capacious fort.

Rosebud turned away from the sunlit opening, pressing her back and head against the outside wall of the Laundress Building.

Eyes closed, she tried to augment her plan, improve on it, but time was fleeting now. She leaned forward, peering past her left shoulder. Her father was standing five steps away!

She forced a smile, feeling a touch of security from the knowledge that the opening had been tough for her to slither through and would be much tougher, or impossible, for him.

He studied her face, then glanced back over his shoulder before looking a bit more comfortably at her. You from that Sioux village down by the forks?

Yes.

What’s your name?

My Sioux name is Rosebud. I…my father is white and I have lived with whites. My white name is…Liz Davis.

He judged her more intently now, before taking another gander back at the brighter end of the alley. When he looked back at her, she realized her revelation about her white father had not particularly registered on him.

You, uh, were sending me some kind of invitation out there. He paused, cocking his head to look past her and determine that the tight and increasingly darkening confines dead-ended. A grin took over his face. But why did you choose this alley? It ain’t even much of an alley. I can’t see you all that well.

I…I didn’t wanna create a scene.

But you’re not above teasin’ ‘n takin’ chances, are ya? Why me? You seem to have the run of this place, ‘n there must be a couple thousand young soldiers ‘round here.

His deep, clear voice was reminiscent of other tall, white men she had known. Her eyes searched his face and mannerisms for hints of the bloodlines they shared. Even in this severely shaded sector of Fort Laramie she detected some strong biological connections. Most eerie of all was the fact that many of his facial features, particularly his mouth, mirrored hers.

Rosebud, immersed in contemplation but also having to deal with his questions, took a deep breath. She quickly became more somber, more attuned to the task before her.

Both the nervousness and the frivolity, initially attached to this major event in her life, gradually dissipated and she was more herself, more the Rosebud that Lt. Maynadier had come to know—gorgeous, keenly intelligent and pragmatically focused. Still, this wasn’t the time or the place to reveal to her father that she was his daughter.

I…I am not a tease. I have a higher goal than that.

Her father had been patient as she deliberated and now he stared at her beyond her words. He sensed her sharply changed demeanor. He then peered back over his shoulder, once again checking the situation at the front of the alley. When he looked back at her, he seemed to have lost some of his patience.

You gonna tell me what that higher goal is?

I…I like being an Indian girl. But I don’t like the situation whereby the army arranged for this group of Sioux to live on the other side of those two rivers. We…we really live off of the white people, not the land.

Though trying hard, her father was still having trouble fathoming what was still an anomaly to him. Question marks were silently creasing his face, and she felt obliged to address them.

Wh…what I’m saying is, I’ve made up my mind to leave. I thought maybe …

As the rest of the sentence stayed inside her, his mood perked up noticeably. Ya…ya mean, with me?

For a time…maybe. I…I know you’re a trapper. I don’t know if you’ve …

Got a family or anything? Naw. I’ve got a partner, but he has his own cabin a ways down the creek from me. He gave her a smile now, then a grin. How old are you?

Uh, twenty. She had added five years to her age but the form he was continually sizing up would amply buttress the embellishment.

You…you can just leave here with me, ‘n not upset anybody?

No, not exactly. But I’ve left before and returned. I have no close family. No one would be shocked. I won’t ride out of here with you but I can meet you a short distance outside of the fort. I told you, I have lived with both whites and Indians. I pick the times. I…I’ve just grown tired of the fort…for now.

An excited but gentler smile lit up his face, telling Rosebud that he was buying what she was selling.

I, uh, can see that things could get kind of boring ‘round here. You, ah, you be ready to leave in a few hours?

Yes.

You tell me…how you want it.

You came from the west. Your cabin must be somewhere up in the mountains and back toward Laramie city?

Yeah. ‘Bout twenty miles from here.

About five miles out, there is a grove of cottonwood trees below a rocky butte where the Laramie River comes up from the southeast and makes a sharp turn. You know where that is?

Uh, yeah…sure. I pass by there.

I’ll meet you there. You tell me when.

Ah, well…I need to get shed of the pelts, ‘n get paid for ‘em. Then I need supplies. It must be 11:00 now. Can you be at that grove of cottonwoods…say, about four o’clock?

Yes.

And…you’ll be alone?

Yes.

Al…all right! If you’re honest with me, I’ll take care of you. You can stay with me, uh…long as you want.

And leave when I want?

Ah, sure. Anytime you want.

Rosebud nodded. Her father stared, somewhat incredulously, for several seconds. His face brightened, and he replied to her nod with one of his own. Next, he turned and headed back toward the front of the alley.

Rosebud eased backwards a half step until she was behind the abutment. She leaned back against the adobe wall, her chin going to her chest as she sighed deeply.

She was totally unafraid, and no longer critical of her actions. Four hours from now, she would be waiting…for her father! She had been waiting for him all her life, especially the last six years since the death of her mother, Funny Face. From the moment she first saw him ride up to the fort in his fur-laden wagon, she had not encountered a single doubt about his identity. A tip from a friendly Lakota brave had alerted her to the fact her father might be back in the area, and she was led to believe he now traded his pelts at Fort Laramie twice a year. That information coupled with indelible descriptions painstakingly provided by her mother instilled Rosebud with absolute assurance.

Having made a bed she was destined to lie down in, she utilized five more minutes of solitude in the alley artfully trying to craft more definitive elements to her daunting scheme. First off, she wanted to leave a span of time between her departure and that of her father. Then, as inconspicuously as possible, she would vacate the fort and return to her village. The rendezvous point, the grove of cottonwoods beside the Laramie River, would provide the isolation she sought, and she was rather satisfied with having injected that aspect of her plan. She was also keenly aware that her father didn’t fully trust her and, at this point, she felt the same towards him.

After conceding that she had probably done as well as could be expected in setting up a plausible scenario, she closed her eyes and tilted her face skyward.

Nahboa, she said aloud in Lakota, speaking to her mother’s spirit, koskalaka bluha. Taku wasteyslaka yacin huwo. Inahni you hiyu. Kola waste, nahboa, wan tona opawinge. (Mother, I have found him. I know that was your greatest desire. So, I must go now. I love you, mother, with all my heart.)

Right now, anxious anticipation topped the wide range of emotions that raged inside Rosebud.

Within twenty minutes, she had used a rocky section of the Platte to wade back across to her village, a tiny, smoky settlement of about seventy-five peaceful and very subdued Lakota Sioux. There were just a few young braves in the village, which consisted almost entirely of old men, women and children. An old chief named Aka Nata, which meant Strong Head in the Lakota tongue, had opted two years earlier to cast his lot with the U. S. Army after being guaranteed a parcel of land within sight of Fort Laramie. In exchange, Aka Nata gave up ancestral land further to the northwest where his people had interfered with white settlers. Aka Nata was Rosebud’s uncle but she detested his capitulation to the whites, and she felt belittled by their two means of slavish subsistence—farming and direct handouts from Fort Laramie.

Hanska Wincincala, which meant Tall Girl, was the only reason Rosebud had realigned herself with the Sioux. Tall Girl was the sister of Aka Nata and Funny Face, and thus she was Rosebud’s beloved aunt. It was a promise to Tall Girl, on behalf of Funny Face, that