Renegade Wind

By Nancy Morse

In 1883, as the final spike of the Northern Pacific Railroad is driven into the ground, completing the iron road through the heart of Lakota country, Black Moon’s nephew Storm carries the war lance into battle against the railroad. But with his abduction of a railroad magnate’s niece, the reckless warrior gets more than he bargained for.
High-spirited New York society girl Eliza Prentiss grudgingly accompanied her uncle to the wilds of Montana Territory to commemorate the completion of the railroad, but with the ceremony over, she is eager to return to civilization. When her train is attacked by Indians, she is taken captive by one of the renegades and brought to his hideout.
Struggling to come to terms with a painful past and the changing world around him, the only thing that can soothe Storm’s vengeful heart is love, but his efforts to court the fiery white woman in the hope of winning her love are dashed by her hatred.
As weeks go by and Eliza’s attempts to escape are thwarted, she is reluctantly drawn into the Lakota world and into the arms of her captor, who awakens within her feelings she has never known.
Can the love that ignites between these two wild hearts survive when her ruthless uncle summons the military to track down her abductor and teach him a powerful lesson and when a lie forces Eliza to make a heartbreaking choice?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Morse
• Release date: Dec 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005864323

Nancy Morse

Award winning author of historical and contemporary romance novels.

Book preview

PART ONE

The Wind

CHAPTER 1

THE Golden SPIKE

Gold Creek, Montana Territory, September, 1883

A trembling war cry echoed across the land, startling Eliza Prentiss out of her dismal thoughts.

She regretted her decision to accompany her Uncle Hilton to this untamed place and wished she had stayed back home in New York with her Aunt Martha. But rumblings of scandal had erupted there when the eighteen-year-old niece of financier and railroad tycoon Hilton Prentiss was seen dining at the Hoffman House on Broadway with the thirty-year-old son of a state senator. Upon hearing the rumors, her aunt had reached for her smelling salt holder and her uncle had flown into a rage.

Eliza didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Except for one little kiss in the moonlight, nothing untoward had occurred between her and the senator’s son. It certainly did not match the proportions of the scandal involving one of the Hoffman House’s proprietors who served four years in prison for killing a fellow financier over the affections of a songstress. But as her aunt and uncle were her legal guardians, she had reluctantly acceded to his insistence to accompany him on this trip to Montana Territory to give what he called ‘the whole sordid affair’ a chance to blow over.

As Vice President of the Northern Pacific Railway, Hilton Prentiss stood to rake in the profits from the venture to build a transcontinental railroad route across the northern United States from Minnesota to the Pacific Coast. Crews had built from both the eastern and western ends, meeting in the middle. Today, at this place where gold was first discovered in Montana Territory, a crowd of more than three thousand gathered to witness the golden spike ceremony, marking the completion of the last section of track across the vast stretches of wilderness. Billed as the Wonderland Route to the Pacific Coast, no one seemed to know, or care, that the tracks cut right through the heart of Sioux territory.

On this smoky, overcast Saturday, Eliza stood beneath a wooden covered pavilion decorated with pine boughs, bunting, and flags of Germany and Great Britain, among ambassadors, congressmen, governors of every state the railway connected, British and German officials, and former President Ulysses S. Grant, all having arrived on four Excursion trains from the east.

While the Fifth Infantry Band brought from Fort Keogh played Yankee Doodle and speeches went on throughout the afternoon, Eliza’s disinterested gaze flicked over the crowd.

There were Army officers in dark blue overcoats with the distinctive black braid trimming on their sleeves denoting rank, enlisted men in blue wool flannel shirts, cowboys in corduroy trousers, miners in starched white shirts and loose-fitting blue jeans, railroad men, and the local citizens, broken men in sturdy canvas trousers and their women in worn-out gingham.

The well-heeled gentlemen were dressed in close-fitting overcoats, striped trousers, and tall black silk top hats. The ladies’ former fashionable slim dresses were replaced with the new style introduced in Paris three years earlier with its exaggerated bustle which, in Eliza’s uncharitable opinion, made them appear to have the hind legs of a horse. The bustle may have been the undergarment to achieve the stylish silhouette of the day, but she preferred looser, less confining garments. Those constricting, long-boned bodices, tight sleeves and high necks were so defining that a woman’s shape could not go unnoticed. Yielding to her Uncle Hilton’s demand to dress appropriately for the occasion, she had chosen an elegant two-toned gown with a taupe jacquard crepe bodice and apron, gathered satin skirt trimmed in golden silk taffeta, and much to her consternation, the dreaded bustle, a straw filled cushion sewn into the skirt with steel half hoops inserted in the skirt lining all the way to the ground.

In spite of her uncle’s avowed hatred of the Indians, considering them an impediment to progress which, in turn, affected his wealth, he had boasted it would add a nice touch to the railroad’s completion to have an Indian give a speech and arranged for the Sioux chief Sitting Bull to be chaperoned to the ceremony. But when Sitting Bull began to speak, no one understood a word he said because he spoke in Sioux. Eliza had never seen an Indian before, and even though she did not understand a single word of Sitting Bull’s speech, a chill careened down her spine. There was something ferocious about his countenance that matched the sound she’d heard earlier. The terrible cry carried on the wind had been filled with the same anger and vengeance and raw aggression she saw now in Sitting Bull’s dark eyes as he stood at the podium speaking. She was relieved when his speech ended and he was escorted from the pavilion and hustled away.

When it came time for the final spike to be driven home, Eliza was jolted out of her disquieting thoughts by the boom of cannons and a rousing cheer from the crowd. The spike and the sledgehammer were wired to telegraph each blow to Northern Pacific officials in New York, where Eliza fervently wished she was at the moment.

What, if anything, would possess anyone to come to this godforsaken place? She was eager to get back to New York, to the elegance of the Hoffman House, the wonders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the tranquility of Central Park, the delicious steak dinners at Delmonico’s, and all the advantages a civilized society offered.

The only thing she did not miss was the condescending treatment of women. Expected to be meek and mild, with her intelligence and wit restricted to social events and amusing conversation, she’d been rebelling against it for as long as she could remember, not because it was her aim to be difficult, but because it was not in her nature to pretend to be demure. When other young women stepped daintily into a room, she surged through the door. While others used caution when crossing Fifth Avenue to avoid being run over by a horse-drawn tram, she darted across without fear. Her friends did their hair in elaborate styles, while she loved nothing more than to feel the wind blowing through her long, loose tresses.

She’d been here now three days, and from what she observed, the local women, although dried to leather by the frontier, seemed to have more sway in their own lives. In following their husbands to start a new life far from civilization, the hard work they endured, often taking on many of the tasks of men, made them tough and resilient. Unlike Eliza’s own lily-white hands, theirs bore scars and calluses. She hadn’t worked a day in her life, whereas hard labor was etched into the faces of the local women. And yet, she couldn’t help but wonder who had the advantage, someone like herself, dressed in a gown from the exclusive Lord and Taylor department store, or these plain women in their practical clothing.

When the ceremony was over, Eliza scanned the crowd milling about for her uncle and spotted him engaged in conversation with Northern Pacific President Henry Villard, a former Secretary of State, and former President Grant.

The men tipped their hats when she approached.

Did you enjoy the ceremony? Villard asked.

Very much, she said in her most convincing tone. Is it true the golden spike isn’t gold at all?

Well, yes, that’s true, he replied. We thought it fitting to use a working iron spike from the transcontinental project in Minnesota thirteen years ago.

I see, she murmured in her sweetest tone.

Hilton Prentiss was not fooled. His niece’s coy murmur was not as innocent as it sounded. Sure enough, her flair for disruption stoked his ire when next she spoke.

I noticed those who did the actual work of laying the tracks were absent from today’s ceremony. Forgive me if I am mistaken, gentlemen, but I was under the impression it was Irish and Chinese laborers who built the railroad.

Her uncle stiffened. To his dismay, she had a knack for turning what seemed to be a naïve remark into a pointed barb.

I also noted there were no accommodations for Montana dignitaries, she went on. Of course, I wouldn’t know for certain because I am, after all, just a woman and I have no head for politics, but from what I heard, they were given the cold shoulder by everyone here, with one exception. She turned her gaze to Grant and gave him a warm smile.

The Secretary looked away nervously.

Villard coughed and mumbled something unintelligible.

Grant returned her smile.

My dear, her uncle interjected, You haven’t eaten a thing since breakfast. You must be famished. Why don’t you go back to the train for dinner? He took her by the elbow and turned her away, squeezing tight to emphasize his displeasure.

My Uncle Hilton is right. Gentlemen, if you will excuse me. Gathering her satin skirts in her hands, she headed to the Excursion train for something to eat.

While most railway travelers had to make do with a stop along the route at a Harvey House for a meal, her Uncle Hilton had spared no expense in outfitting the Excursion train with a dining car. Beneath hissing gaslights it had wood paneling, plush seating, white-clothed tables set with sterling silver flatware and fine English china, and a menu to rival the finest New York City restaurant, all to impress European capitalists and eastern investors and induce them into buying stock.

After a meal of Puget Sound clam chowder, Hawaiian pot roast, and what was touted as the Northern Pacific Great Baked Potato, Eliza was sipping coffee from a china cup, when a group of men boarded the train and sat down for dinner. From the ceremony she recognized one of the railroad investors, a visiting dignitary from England, a banker, a Northern Pacific land commissioner, and an Army officer.

From behind a veil of cigar smoke the banker complained, What a farce. Track already laid was torn up to be re-laid for the ceremony.

Lincoln gave the railroad some forty million acres, the land commissioner said, making it the largest transfer of federal land into private ownership. The Montanans see it as giving the land away to rich easterners. There’s bound to be a lot of resentment over it.

I, for one, resent Hilton Prentiss pressuring me into buying railroad stock, the investor griped. I’m telegraphing my stockbroker to sell. I can’t imagine this big wasteland ever amounting to anything. The only event to put this place on the map was the Custer thing seven years ago.

Eliza was eleven years old when Custer and his regiment were killed at the Little Bighorn. She shuddered, recalling the gruesome headline splashed across the New York Tribune and the article describing in lurid detail how a combined force of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by men with names like Black Moon and Crazy Horse annihilated the Seventh Cavalry.

Crazy Horse got what was coming to him when he was bayoneted the following year at Fort Robinson, the investor said. But what about Black Moon? Anyone foolish enough to buy stock in this railroad will see the share price plummet with that renegade on the loose.

He’s living over in Pine Ridge country with his white wife, the Army officer said.

How does an Indian who hates whites as much as he does wind up with a white wife? the dignitary asked.

If you had seen her, you would know, said the banker. I saw her once many years ago in St. Louis. I’ll never forget that red hair and those green eyes. I’m telling you, gentlemen, Black Moon is one lucky Indian.

He’s nothing but an infamous dog, proclaimed the investor.

The dignitary smiled. Ah, but infamy is its own celebrity.

It looks like celebrity runs in the family, the Army officer said. We’re after his nephew now, a renegade named Storm. He ripped up track along the Union Pacific route, and lately he’s been attacking railway stations in these parts. That’s why I’ve been assigned to Fort Ellis. My orders are to track him down and bring him to justice.

If, by justice, you mean swinging at the end of a rope, it can’t be soon enough for me, said the investor. I’m inclined to agree with General Sheridan who said the only good Indian is a dead Indian.

We’ve been fighting the Sioux for years, the officer said. We’ve taken their land and herded them onto reservations. Their only path is continued resistance.

You sound as if you feel sorry for them.

They know nothing about progress, the officer replied. I pity them for their ignorance of the civilized world and for their demise because of it.

What about that killer, Storm? Do you pity him, as well?

We have reports that he harassed the crews laying track along the Northern Pacific route, but there’s no proof he’s killed any of the workers.

Aren’t the Sioux always warring against the Crow and the Pawnee? the investor said. How many of those has he killed?

We have no way of knowing, the officer replied. But what I do know is the tribes are starving and they’re prisoners of U.S. policies. If what General Sheridan said is true, soon every Indian will be a good Indian.

Eliza had heard enough talk about Indians. With the exception of Sitting Bull and the Crow delegation at today’s ceremony whom she had observed from afar, it was unlikely she would ever meet an Indian face to face. Taking a last sip of coffee, she removed the linen napkin from her lap, touched it to her lips, and got up.

The visiting dignitary nodded toward her. Now there, gentlemen, goes something worth fighting for.

Hilton Prentiss’s niece, if I’m not mistaken, said the banker. Wasn’t there something about a scandal back east?

The investor smiled licentiously. I wouldn’t mind stirring up a bit of scandal with that little beauty.

They all laughed, and five pairs of masculine eyes fixed with appreciation on the sway of the young woman’s hips as she left the dining car.

Eliza was tired. It had been a long day, and she was eager to retire to her compartment.

Unlike the Pullman sleepers, whose upper berths were folded down to accommodate sleepy passengers, with only curtains for privacy, her uncle had converted the Excursion train’s sleeper car into private individual compartments. Eliza’s compartment had a berth along the wall, an oilcloth ceiling, plush carpeting, drapery, an upholstered armchair, a dressing table, an armoire, a water closet, and an iron stove for heating. With its elaborately carved woodwork, her uncle’s idea of luxury was overly ostentatious. But what else could she expect from an authoritarian who thought his money could buy anything and gaining control over people was more important than earning their respect?

She lit a candle and undressed for bed, slipping into a white cotton nightgown and fastening the satin ribbon into a bow at her neck. Still bristling at the laughter of those men in the dining car, at her expense, no doubt, she sat at the dressing table and pulled the pins from her hair. Men were such fools, she thought with disgust as she brushed the chestnut locks. When her hair gleamed golden in the candlelight, she fashioned it into a loose braid and wound it around her head, tucking the ends under the braid.

Over her hair she placed a nightcap of China silk with fine lace edging and scented with orris root to give her hair its sweet fragrance. Every well-bred woman knew the secret to shiny hair was a silk nightcap, although Eliza could not imagine what difference it made when there was no special man to impress with shiny, sweet-smelling hair.

She’d never met a man who made her feel anything but bored. Even the son of the New York State senator had been dreadfully dull. Did there exist a man whose rebellious spirit was a match for her own? A man who could move her beyond the regimented norms of society to a place that knew no boundaries? A man unlike all the others? She suspected that if such a man did exist, it was in her fertile imagination and not out here in this land of flat valleys, mountains, dusty little towns, and Indians.

***

It was well after dark when Hilton Prentiss bid his cronies good-night and headed to the

Excursion train. In the dining car he ordered a Scotch whiskey. A famine had decimated grape vines used in wine and brandy production, and with Scotch Whiskey now the liquor of choice for drinkers worldwide, the shares he purchased in a Highland distillery were paying off nicely. A sleepy porter brought him his drink, and as he sipped his liquor, he was feeling quite pleased with himself. All things considered, it had been a relatively easy climb up the greasy pole to success.

He began his banking career as a clerk for a reputable Philadelphia banking house. Four years later he was made a partner. Months before the start of the Civil War he opened Prentiss and Company, a private banking house in New York, and helped finance the Union war effort by selling war bonds throughout the United States and Europe. After the war, he set his sights on the Northern Pacific Railway which had been having difficulty finding financial backing for its venture into the vast unsettled wilderness of Montana Territory.

In his estimation, today’s ceremony for the completion of the nation’s second transcontinental railroad was a resounding success. The press corps was sure to credit him for it. He could see the glowing headlines praising him for bringing civilization to the territory by reducing a six-month cross-country trip to six days. Those from mining centers bypassed by the Northern Pacific’s sweep through Montana Territory might vilify him, but the citizens from the towns lucky enough to see an economic boost thanks to having a railroad run through them would feel different.

The whole thing had been a gambit on his part to sell stock and increase his already sizable holdings. All that remained was for him to round up speculators to buy up land in these parts and begin building towns, with his banking house financing the deals. It was what he did last year for speculators from Illinois who platted a town along the Northern Pacific route and built a hotel, a schoolhouse, two churches, three general stores, several saloons, and a brickyard. The Prentiss Brick and Lime Company produced enough decorative bricks for the construction of the territorial capital building and scores of brick homes, and since the railroad had to stop at the town for water and coal, it also picked up cattle from the Prentiss Cattle Yards, both ventures ensuring him a steady flow of lucrative income.

There were a few loose ends to tie up here before heading back to New York. The only problem was his wayward niece. He had whisked her away from one scandal, but he wasn’t about to take the chance her saucy tongue and rebellious streak might create another one here. Fortunately, the main eastbound Excursion train would be leaving in the morning, and she would be on it.

The railroad was a powerful political force, and he had donated enough funds to the campaigns of federal, state, and local politicians to call in favors when needed. He’d heard talk about a band of renegade Sioux rampaging through the Dakota Territory. While there was slim chance of them venturing this far west to stir up trouble, tonight he had called in a favor from the commander at Fort Ellis and arranged for several enlisted men to accompany the train to the end of the line at Minneapolis, to protect his niece, but also to guard the payroll car and the cattle car carrying fresh beef from his herds driven along the right-of-way.

Downing his drink, Hilton Prentiss retired to his sleeping compartment aboard the train, secure in the knowledge that a political career was in his future. In the morning, after bidding farewell to his niece, he would meet with Senator Dawes, who had come west the month before to investigate charges of illegal land seizure at the Standing Rock Reservation, and who could be beneficial in realizing his political ambitions. It was only a matter of time before Montana Territory joined the Union. He was bound to be recognized for all he’d done to open up the territory. With the groundwork handily laid for a senatorial run, what could possibly go wrong?

CHAPTER 2

LESSON OF THE TRUE DOG

In the pine-studded foothills east of the Shining Mountains, the jagged peaks the whites called the Big Horns, Storm sat astride his pony surveying the landscape. The shadows were growing longer across the prairie. Soon the weather would change, and the gusty breath of winter would blow snow across the land. But on this day in Canapegi Wi, the Moon When Leaves Turn Brown, a gentle breeze flicked up the ends of the long black braids hanging over the shoulders of his shirt of tanned deerskin.

A full moon hung in the sky, surrounded by a halo of translucent white light. Looking eastward, he saw a new sun breaching the horizon, turning the sky red. It was the sacred color of dawn, of newness and beginnings, and he wondered what this new day held for him.

To the east the foothills opened onto the prairie stretching all the way to the Great Muddy River. He turned his face to the west where the Thunders lived and stared out over the low hills and broken ridges emerging in the first light of dawn. Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit who was within all things, created all this—the grasses, the trees, the mountains, all the four-legged creatures and the winged people. But even more important, He was above these things. He caused the waters to flow, smoke to rise, clouds to move across the sky, the vast prairie to be tinged with the blood-red of a sunset, an arrow shot from a bow to move through the air. It was the wish of the Great Spirit that these things should be.

Storm’s kinship with these things and his reverence for the Great Spirit made him who and what he was. Lakota. He was familiar with every hill and gully and grove of sandbar willow of the Powder River Country. He knew the best Sun Dance poles were to be found in the sacred Paha Sapa. He knew the rhythms and the moods of the land, its colors and textures, and that, like him, all living things had a place in the world. Even the white men, with their insatiable appetite for gold and disregard for the land, had a place in the world. Why else would Wakan Tanka have made such beings?

What was it about those pale-skinned creatures that made them so hell-bent on destroying the land? They were like a prairie fire, consuming everything in its path. Why did they have to come here and change everything?

During the time of his grandfather, this had been unspoiled Lakota hunting grounds, but that was before the metal road was laid for the iron horse that belched plumes of black smoke into the air as it cut its way through Lakota land. The Powder River Road became known as the Bozeman Trail, named for the white man who staked out a road heading north from the Shell River, across the Powder and the Tongue, leading to the gold diggings beyond the mountains in western Montana Territory, the land of Crow, and the faint wheel ruts dug into the road became a worn-out, beaten path. The flat-water was now called the Platte, and the Shell River Road—the Oregon Trail, the whites called it—which had been a trail for elk and buffalo for longer than anyone could remember, was now dotted with forts and outposts.

And what they could not change, they killed. There was a time when the herds of buffalo shook the ground when they ran across the plains, before the hide-hunters came with their long-barrel Sharps and killed the buffalo and there were not enough buffalo hides for the women to make new lodges and they had to use stiff canvas that rattled in the wind.

Smothering the cold anger rising in him, he slid from his pony’s back, removed his moccasins, and walked with bare feet upon the sacred earth. The soil had a soothing feel beneath his feet. But with his world spinning out of control and everything changing around him, what would it take to soothe his savage heart?

He made his way to a spot where he could look out upon maza canku, the iron road, snaking along the ground far below, the tracks like thin black ribbons in the dim light of dawn. The tin cones dangling along the bottom edge and the flap of the beaded pouch hanging from his belt tinkled when he withdrew the flint and striker and a few sprigs of sage from within. Concealing himself among the saltbush, he dropped to the ground into a cross-legged position and braided the sage. He gathered a few dried leaves into a small pile, and placing the flint along the edge of the pile, he scraped the flint with the piece of steel, causing sparks to fly into the pile. When a small fire was going, he lit the sage. The smell of the burning sage would please the spirits and the smoke would repel bad influences. With the white smoke billowing around his head, in this quiet time before the break of day, he uttered a prayer to the four directions.

Great Sprit of Light, come to me out of the East with the power of the rising sun. Let there be light on the path I walk. Let me remember always your gift of a new day, and never let me be burdened with the sorrow of not starting over again.

But wasn’t starting over again what he wanted to do? While he should have been content to be, he could not help but question what his life would have been like if things had been different.

He was the child of two people he never knew. All he knew of them were the stories he was told and the bundles wrapped in buffalo hide atop the scaffolds he’d seen as a boy.

His father had been killed by a jealous adversary when Storm was just a seed growing in his mother’s belly. From his father’s brother, the fierce Oglala warrior Black Moon, he learned the ways of warfare and to be relentless in his resistance to the whites, something he never would have learned from his gentle, peace-loving father. Still, there were times when he sat with a little one on his lap or played with the camp dogs and an unexpected tenderness sprang from his heart, and he knew it could only have been a gift from his father.

All the things that were a mother’s—her voice, her comforting touch, her hands at work cooking and tanning the hides, the mere physical presence of her—were stolen from him on a day much like this one when the bluecoats attacked the village on Box Elder Creek and killed many, including a young woman named Good Deeds. Just out of the cradleboard, he’d been too young to remember her. Even her face was lost to his memory. But he found another mother, his uncle’s white wife, who raised him as if he were her own. To him, she was ina, mother, the only one he’d ever known.

For the first years of his life he had belonged to her. She fed him when he was hungry, treated his scrapes and healed his wounds. From her he learned gentleness, and that not all white people were bad. Some, like her, and her trader-friend Jasper Gillette, were decent and kind. She taught him her language and even the words to some of the songs she sang, like Silent Night at the time of the year she called Christmas. Her tradition of giving and receiving gifts on that day was like the Lakota virtue of generosity, although the Lakota did not need a special day of the year to be generous. Generosity, bravery, fortitude, and wisdom were the virtues every Lakota strived to achieve, and she did her best to instill them in him from an early age, until it was time for him to continue his journey under the tutelage of his warrior uncle.

It was Black Moon who gave him his first bow and a quiver of arrows. He taught him the value of patience when hunting, and how to distinguish between the hoofprints of deer and elk, and whenever he made a kill, to offer a bundle of prairie sage to honor the gift of life the animal had given, whether it was as big as an elk or as small as a prairie chicken. But perhaps the most important lesson Black Moon taught him was to be like the wolf.

The true-dog often fails in his hunt, but his real strength is his endurance. Learn the lesson of the true-dog, his uncle counseled.