By TLR
(Based on the episode The Savage)
Rated PG
Night.
Ben Cartwright put the ledger in his desk drawer and started for the staircase when a knock sounded at his front door.
He opened it to see a Shoshone standing in his doorway.
“Chato,” the man stated quietly as he lifted his hand in greeting. “Shaman of the Shoshone.”
Ben's brow furrowed. He hadn't forgotten the condition in which the Shoshone had left his oldest outside the lodge of Ruth Halversen, White Buffalo Woman. But he also hadn't forgotten that they could have killed him, and didn't.
“What can I do for you, Chato?”
“White Buffalo Woman suffers from great sickness. I have no help for her. She has no help for herself. Her last request is to see the white man who helped her before she dies.”
“The white man is my son, Adam.”
Ben turned and looked up the stairs.
“Adam!”
A few moments later Adam came downstairs tying the belt around his dark blue robe.
He stopped midway down the steps and looked at the healer.
“Adam,” Ben said. “He's here about Ruth.”
Even though Adam had almost died at the command of Chato, he continued down the stairs and joined he and his father at the front door.
Chato looked at Adam.
“My prayers do not work. My songs. My herbs. She is dying, and asks for you.”
“If she's dying, I'll take a doctor to her.”
Chato made a negative movement of his head. “White doctor already has tried. He gives no hope.”
Adam looked down. “Give me a few moments to change into some clothes and I'll go with you.”
Ben squeezed his arm. “I'll get your horse ready.”
After Ben watched Adam climb the stairs with fallen shoulders, he turned back to Chato.
“If one hair on my son's head is harmed...”
“I will see that he is treated well.”
::::::::::::::::::::::
Chato's quiet songs of prayer floated in the air behind Adam as he ducked to enter her lodge.
She lay on soft fur, breath slow and shallow.
“Ruth?” he said softly as he knelt down next to her. “I'm here.”
Her sick eyes searched for him with a faraway light.
“You came,” she breathed weakly.
He placed a pale pink flower in her hair, just above her ear.
“I still love you,” he said taking both of her hands in his and kissing them. “I think about you all the time.”
It was a few moments before she could speak.
“Sometimes...at night I have dreams that I went with you, and that we married, and had a child.”
Tears sparkled in his eyes. “I've had dreams like that too.”
Her lips formed a slight smile, her voice a small whisper as the life began to dim from her eyes.
“Tell me about them.”
His hands held hers even tighter, his voice soft.
“Well...in one of them, the best one, we were having a picnic by the lake at the home I'd built for you. We were watching our son play. He was about three. You were teaching him how to throw a knife into a tree, and I was getting the food ready...there was laughter, and happiness, and love...”
Chato's song stopped.
Adam couldn't hear her breath anymore. He lowered his head to her breast to hear her heart, but it was silent.
He offered a whisper of his own:
“Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought, but death part thee and me.”
End