Walking away from Michaela after the painful hug she'd just given him was about as hard a thing as Sully had done in years. With Catherine only a few minutes gone on the stagecoach back to her family, everything had seemed to have happened all at once. She'd given him her necklace, Michaela had stormed off, he'd chased her and they'd had it out in the field near the immigrant camp.
"I can't be with you right now." She'd said to him, tears brightly in her bewitching eyes. It had cut him as a blow in a fistfight. He had told her he'd always be there for her and given her a last hug, figuring it was pretty much a goodbye to their courting.
The sad gasp from Michaela as she'd accepted his hug made him not want to let go, but he'd forced himself to step back and turn away from her before he said anything more. He had ultimately wanted to have settled everything and moved forward with their courting, but her admission that he'd hurt her, shaken her trust in him made him realize things were too raw. If only he'd realized how his compassion for Catherine was going to have been interpreted by Michaela!
Walking off in the morning sunshine, he played the words over and over in his mind. He thought about the argument the night before at the homestead as well. She'd demanded to know if there had been another since Abigail had been gone. He'd walked away from her then, too.
Wolf caught up to him and trotted on ahead, anticipating his direction. But Sully was too wrapped up in his frustration over things to pay much attention. Before he knew it, the hour had gone by and he wasn't far from camp. Sounds of the younger children yelping and playing brought him out of his fugue. Regardless of the brightness of the day, Sully felt as if a black cloud were hanging over him, pushing him down. He took off his jacket in spite of the cool spring air and started chopping wood.
As he finished with his pile, he remembered a tree the last storm had brought down and went to get to work on it. The activity kept his mind quiet and the axe gave him somewhere to direct his pent up energy. Though a dull headache was creeping over him, Sully pushed himself to keep busy. He thought about going back to the homestead later and forcing Michaela to listen to him. But her words kept ringing in his ears. 'I can't be with you right now.'
"Ha-ho, my brother." Cloud Dancing's voice came to him from behind just as he was getting ready to make another cut in the wood. Pausing in his swing, Sully turned behind him and saw his friend approaching. Then he realized the pile of pieces that had also accumulated behind him from his earnest work. "Do the spirits tell you of an early winter?"
The quip was something he'd come to cherish about his Cheyenne friend. Cloud Dancing had a way of bringing a lightness to their friendship that helped him not be so serious all the time. Looking again at the big pile, Sully smirked and stepped down from the log to shake hands. Wiping his brow, he rested his axe in the wood and grabbed the canteen to take a drink.
"I did not expect you back in camp so early. You will not see Shivering Deer in town today?" Cloud Dancing asked. Sully shook his head.
"Gone back East to her family." He said finally, worrying the handle of the axe with the palm of his hand. The medicine man could sense Sully was troubled by things. Ever since the army had slaughtered a small tribe out past Oil Creek, Sully had taken the sole survivor under his wing and tried his best to help her find her way. When he'd come into camp and explained things, although it was a tribe that Chief Black Kettle didn't associate with, he had the women of the tribe find an extra dress so that Sully could take her something clean to wear. Ever since then, he'd come and updated Cloud Dancing about things. But the past two days, Sully had been brooding and silent.
"It will be difficult." Cloud Dancing said, leaving the thought open-ended. The pause drew out between them and he realized that Sully didn't want to talk about things. Knowing how his friend was, Cloud Dancing crossed his arms and waited. Sully grabbed the axe and turned back to his work. Watching the wood chips fly as Sully began swinging rhythmically, the medicine man decided to wait until the evening to talk about why his friend was so quiet.
As Snow Bird took away the last of the food that night, Cloud Dancing's sons sat around the fire joking and chatting with each other. Sully had not stopped by to eat with them, and the medicine man grew concerned. He watched the treeline for Wolf to appear, but things remained silent. When she had finished inside the tent, she came out to find her husband smoking his pipe thoughtfully.
"The spirits speak loudly to my husband tonight." She said. "He is very silent to listen to all they have to say." She sat next to him. He smiled warmly at her, always so comforted in knowing how well she could read his moods. Putting the pipe down, he told her of his encounter earlier in the day with Sully. She had known all that had happened from the beginning.
"Something troubles him." He told her at last.
"Then it will trouble you until you go to see him." She suggested. Taking his wife's hand, Cloud Dancing smiled and held it close to her heart. Nothing more needed to be said between them. In the past years of having Black Wolf in their lives, Snow Bird knew that his spirit had joined in a powerful way with her husband. They were truly like brothers, even if Black Wolf was a white man. To others in the tribe who did not know him as closely, he was Sully. But to her and her husband, between just the two of them, he was still Black Wolf.
She watched him walk off to the trees, and went back inside to put away his pipe.
When he reached Sully's fire, it was clear nothing had been prepared. Wolf was nowhere to be found and Sully was just changing his shirt, coming out of his lean-to with a piece of jerky hanging out of his mouth. Cloud Dancing sat himself down at the fire and helped to stoke the embers as Sully finished dressing and joined him. It was clear he was exhausted from working so hard all day, but there was a different kind of tiredness in his eyes that bordered on pain as well.
"Tree took longer than I thought." Sully said in way of excuse. "I didn't realize how late it was." His voice was void of the usual tone.
"Spirits say you work too hard. That is why you did not see the sun go down." Still poking at the fire, Cloud Dancing waited out the silence this time, knowing his friend had tired himself out after a long day. Sully gave a sigh, almost on cue with the medicine man's thoughts. He couldn't avoid it any longer.
"Dr. Mike and I...naōevoto." Sully tried to use the Cheyenne word for 'quarrel' as he didn't want to say he had fought with her. In fact, throughout the day, he had tried to understand what all had happened between them and was at a loss. Cloud Dancing looked puzzled, so Sully continued. "I don't quite know how to explain it to ya. It wasn't an argument, at least she said she wasn't mad..." As his thought trailed off, he disgustedly threw a log into the fire. Sparks jumped and danced overhead.
"What happened?" Cloud Dancing asked. Sully ran his hands through his hair and groaned aloud. He'd been wondering the same thing. What had come over him since that day that Catherine had kissed him in the clinic? He kept his head down, rubbing his temples to make the tension stop. He'd wished he'd made it back in time for a proper dinner. He hoped he was just overly tired and hungry from chopping the tree all afternoon.
"Shivering Deer kissed me." Sully flat out got right to the point. "Brian walked in on it, told Michaela, and we argued about it. I told Shiv...Catherine that my heart belonged to Dr. Mike before she left town, but...Michaela is still mad that it happened." Closing his eyes, he tried to will the tension away.
"You said she said she was not mad." Cloud Dancing pointed out.
"Well, she said she wasn't mad today when we talked. But the other night she really was." Sully said. Rubbing his head again, he closed his eyes and hoped Cloud Dancing would leave soon so he could try to lie down. It was hard to think about everything again while his head was pounding.
"And how are you?" He asked in his comforting voice. Sully looked over at his friend.
"What?" He asked, not sure he heard correctly.
"How are you, my brother?" Cloud Dancing asked again. "It is something that did not just happen to her...it also happened to you." That his Cheyenne friend was concerned with how Sully felt about things took him a bit by surprise. Brian and Michaela had been so upset with him and Catherine had been so sad and resigned in leaving that he'd only focused on the hurt he'd caused everyone. He hadn't turned his attention to himself at all.
"I don't know." He whispered. "My head hurts from thinking about it all day."
"Did her attention come with kindness? Did this come openly?" It was a strange question. Sully could only shake his head. He sighed, weary of the pressure in his head.
"We were just talkin'. She didn't feel good and I helped her upstairs so she could rest. She was upset that she didn't belong anywhere and that folks in town didn't understand her..."
"They do not understand you."
"I didn't expect her to do it. She'd been so afraid of everyone and feelin' poorly that I just wanted to talk to her about how she was special. Before I could say that, she...kissed me." The two men sat in silence, taking in the story. Cloud Dancing knew not to speak. He could sense that the answer was inside Sully and that he just needed to talk things out. After a few minutes, Wolf came and laid between the two to warm his nose by the fire.
"I didn't take things like ta think she was sweet on me. Michaela was upset I didn't tell Catherine about us courtin', but why should I talk about that when it never occurred to me that I needed to say that? I don't go around talkin' about private things to strangers." Frustrated, he tossed an errant stick into the fire. "Ain't much for talkin' at all." Getting up to find his water skin, Sully took a long drink before bringing it over to offer to his friend. As he stood over the fire, he stared at the flames, feeling the frustration burn just as bright inside his heart.
"However Brian said it, she didn't even ask for me to tell her what really...happened." Sully searched Cloud Dancing's eyes at that remark. Standing finally, Cloud Dancing pulled out a pouch he often kept with him of willow bark. He offered it to his tired friend, who stared at it a few seconds before reaching out for it.
"You need to rest. When she wants the truth, she will come to find it." Clasping forearms in the traditional handshake, Cloud Dancing smiled kindly.
"I should go find-"
"She must seek the truth before she will hear it. Spirits say to stay with the tribe." To Sully, the words felt more like a command than advice. He nodded, the two men parted and Sully busied himself preparing some tea.