Navajo Sunrise
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Elizabeth Lane
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18
Prologue
New Mexico
March, 1864
Ahkeah stood in the cold moonlight, staring down at the grave the bilagáana soldiers had forbidden him to dig. His hands were raw and bleeding, the nails worn to stubs from scraping away the half-frozen earth. His eyes and throat stung as if he had just walked through a forest fire.
Even now that the grave was finished, the top piled high with stones, he feared it might not be deep enough to protect his wife’s body from the marauding foxes and coyotes that would close in after he was gone. She had died that afternoon, on the fifth day of the long walk from Dinétah to the place the soldiers called Fort Sumner—died in agony, her body swollen with a child that would not have lived even if she’d had the strength to give it birth. The passing soldier who’d fired a bullet into her temple had probably done her a kindness. Even so, it had taken three of Ahkeah’s friends, gripping him from behind, to keep him from leaping on the blue-coat and tearing him apart with his bare hands.
At the time he had wanted the soldier to shoot him as well. He had wanted nothing more than to lie on the icy ground beside the body of his sweet young wife, free from the burdens of grief and shame and from the hunger that gnawed at his vitals. But even then reason had whispered that it was his duty to live. There were people who needed him—his small daughter, Nizhoni, whose name meant beauty, and his mother’s elder sister, who had watched her entire family die on the cliffs at Canyon de Chelly, and had not spoken since. And there were others—so many others who needed his strength and his voice.
The crescent moon that hung above the mesa cast ghostly shadows across the desolation of the high New Mexico desert. Through the darkness, the lonely wail of a coyote drifted to Ahkeah’s ears. The yelping cry was echoed by another, then another. At one time Ahkeah would have welcomed the calls of his wild brothers. Now they only chilled his blood, because he knew that the sharp-nosed creatures would be gathering around the bodies of the Diné who had fallen along the trail.
He had begun scraping out the grave as soon as he knew his wife was dead; but the soldiers, jabbing him with the points of their bayonets, had forced him to leave her and move on with the rest of his people. Only after the dismal procession had made camp for the night and settled into sleep was he able to slip past the sentries and race back along the trail to where she lay.
Now the grave was finished. The remains of his beloved were as secure as he could make them. But how many others lay unburied along this trail of tears and misery? How many bones would lie scattered on the sand because there was no one to dig the graves?
Turning in the darkness, he faced the direction of the four sacred mountains that marked the boundaries of Dinétah, the homeland of his people. There, the great headman Manuelito and the last of his followers were still holding out against the overwhelming forces of Kit Carson and his regulars. Ahkeah longed to be with them in the mountains, to fight and die as a free man.
But Manuelito himself, his handsome face creased with weariness, had asked him to join the trek to the new reservation at Bosque Redondo, the place the Diné called Hwéeldi—the fort. “Our people will need you, Ahkeah,” he had said. “You grew up as a slave among the bilagáana, and you speak as they do. Go now, and be the voice of the Diné in this evil time. Go and speak for us all.”
Speak for us all.
Swallowing his bitterness, Ahkeah turned away from the sacred mountains and started back the way he had come. What words could he speak that were not hateful and angry? At one time the Diné had been the lords of the earth, their herds, fields and orchards the envy of all the land. He himself had owned more cattle and horses than a man could count in half a day, and his beautiful wife had worn robes of soft wool from her own sheep and necklaces of the finest silver. Then the bilagáana had come, wanting their land, and everything had changed.
Be the voice of our people, Manuelito had told him. But the Diné needed more than a voice. They needed food in their bellies and clothes on their backs. They needed dignity, hope and pride—things the bilagáana had taken away and flung far beyond their reach.
Perhaps forever.
Ahkeah moved with care as he neared the sleeping camp, slipping from shadow to shadow in the moonlit darkness. Even at this hour the sentries would be on patrol. If they caught him outside the boundary…
His pulse lurched as a flock of wood doves exploded, squawking, from the spidery branches of a creosote bush. Had the startled birds alerted the sentries? Ahkeah froze where he stood, ears straining, hearing nothing but the sound of departing wings.
What if the soldiers had already missed him? What if they were waiting for him in camp, knowing he would return to his precious daughter? Some of the blue-coats were just following orders. But there were vicious brutes among them, men who would relish the chance to make an example of any Diné who broke the rules—especially one who spoke to them as a man, in their own language.
The wind peppered Ahkeah’s face with blowing sand as he crept along the fringe of the camp. The huddled forms of his people lay scattered on the cold ground where they had fallen. Here and there, where the soldiers slumbered in their warm blankets, the embers of dying campfires glowed in the night.
He had left Nizhoni with her old aunt in the lee of a sheltering rock, beyond the supply wagon. If he could manage to cross that last small distance without being seen…
But it was already too late. Ahkeah saw four soldiers, armed with clubs, step out from behind the wagon, and he knew they had been waiting for him. Glancing to one side, he saw others appear out of the shadows. Their pale eyes reflected glints of firelight as they encircled him, cutting off all hope of escape.
Cursing and whooping, they fell on him like a pack of hungry wolves.
