Lost on the Prairie

by MaryLou Driedger

  Joe stops when we reach a gurgling spring. The water is a reddish colour.

  “It might be poisonous,” Joe says. “Don’t touch it or drink it.”

  Joe looks up and inhales a deep fast breath that fairly trembles with wonder.

  “Look, Peter,” he whispers. “Up ahead. Have you ever seen such a thing?”

  There in front of us, blanketing every tree branch in sight, hovering over rocks, perched on flowers and clinging to grass stalks are thousands and thousands of orange and black butterflies.

  “What are they doing here?” I ask softly.

  “Stopping for night. On their way to Mexico for winter.”

  “Land sakes! That’s a longer trip than the one my family is making from Kansas to Canada.”

  “Let’s get up a little closer.”

  Joe takes two steps forward and stops. He turns around, his eyes wide and wild.

  “I can’t move! My feet are stuck! I’m sinking. Help me, Peter!”

  Chapter 8

  ''PETER, YOU SHOULD GO FOR help.”

  “I don’t think so, Joe. By the time I come back you may have sunk in over your head.”

  “Won’t happen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Father says as long as you don’t fight it, quicksand won’t swallow you.”

  “But how will you get free?”

  “Someone will have to pull me out.”

  “I can try. I’ll get the horses and bring them here. They have ropes wrapped round their saddle horns.”

  I make my way back to the hollow entrance where we’ve left the horses. I don’t worry now about walking quietly. If the spirits want to come and get me, they can. I’m more scared for my friend Joe than I am of spirits. I guide Prince through the trees till we get back to the quicksand. The mustang follows us.

  I unwind the rope from Prince’s saddle and make my way carefully over to Joe. “I’m back.”

  “Don’t get too close,” warns Joe.

  I toss the rope out to Joe and he ties it tight around his body.

  I plant my feet firm as tree roots and pull. I pull till the newly healed wounds on my palms break open and leak blood. I pull till my legs and arms feel like they are being ripped in two.

  “I haven’t moved,” says Joe.

  “How about I get Prince to help?”

  As I twist the rope around Prince’s saddle, I mutter in his ear, “You and me together, pal. We’re a team. We can get Joe out.”

  “Pull, Prince,” I order, and he starts moving forward. I grab the rope too and add the last bit of the strength I have left to the effort.

  “Moved a little,” says Joe.

  “Pull harder, Prince,” I shout. Prince’s hooves are trying to move forward, but it is hard for him to get his footing with wet leaves and rocky earth all around.

  “I have to go for help, Joe. But it will soon be dark and I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

  “Leave Prince. You take the mustang. He knows the way home.”

  “Won’t you be scared?”

  “Got all the butterflies for company.”

  I look at the colourful creatures. Some are cradled in the blooms of flowers, their petals closing up around their wings for the night. Others have formed a huge black and orange flying carpet between tree branches. A few have even landed lightly on the quicksand around Joe.

  “Butterflies bring good luck,” Joe assures me. Only a slight quaver in his voice makes me realize he’s probably a sight more scared than he’s letting on.

  “I’m going to leave the rope around Prince’s saddle so you two will stay connected while I’m gone,” I say.

  “Watch over Joe,” I tell Prince. He lifts his head and looks at me in a chiding way as if to say he knows his job and I needn’t remind him. I mount the mustang and grab the reins.

  “Gruss Gott,” I say to Joe.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s a German blessing my family uses.”

  “Taŋyáŋ ománi,” says Joe. “It is the way we say ‘good luck on your journey’ in Dakota.”

  Joe keeps chanting the words as I ride off. “Taŋyáŋ ománi, Taŋyáŋ ománi. Taŋyáŋ ománi.” His voice gets quieter and quieter as the mustang picks his way through the trees and we finally leave the hollow.

  It’s definitely dusk, but I can still see the outline of the hill Joe and I climbed earlier. I figure we will head that way but the mustang has other ideas and he veers south and trots alongside a ridge. Joe said he knew the way home, so I loosen my hold on the reins and let him have his head. He is surefooted and breaks into a gallop. I hang on for the ride, as evening darkens the sky. The stars are bright and plentiful, the moon a huge orange circle. My grandfather told me looking at a full moon for too long a time can make you crazy. I decide I won’t take any chances and keep my eyes looking straight ahead between the mustang’s black-tipped ears.

  Then I hear a sound that begins low and throaty and builds up to a full-blown howling. Despite Grandfather’s warning I jerk my head up towards the sound to take a quick look. On the ridge to my right is near to a dozen coyotes, their noses pointing up at the moon and their mouths open wide. That canine choir is some comfort to me and takes me away from thinking about Joe and what could be happening to him.

  We had coyotes at home in Kansas too, and on summer nights our whole family would gather on our front porch in the darkness and wait for the them. The first kid to hear one would give a loud shush and whisper, “Listen. Coyotes.” And then we’d sit there with the warm night wrapped around us like a comfortable quilt listening to that fine prairie music. Sometimes when the coyotes were done, Mama would start in on a hymn in her soaring soprano, and Papa would join her with his down-deep bass, and then all us kids and Grandpa would chime in too. We had a pretty fine family choir. I wonder if I will ever sing in that choir again.

  The mustang’s not even spooked by the coyote’s yowling. He just keeps galloping. It’s as if he knows we need to hurry and get help for Joe.

  And then I hear hooves pounding. Sounds like a stampede of horses coming towards me. I wonder if they are a wild bunch. The hooves suddenly silence and I hear Mr. Little Thunder’s voice echoing through the darkness, “Joe, Peter, Joe, Peter, Joe, Peter,” over and over and over again.

  “I’m here!” I holler, loud as I can. “I’m here. I’m here.” It isn’t long before Mr. Little Thunder and a whole bunch of Little Thunder relatives ride into view.

  “Peter? That you?” Mr. Little Thunder shouts.

  “Yes. I was coming for help. Joe and I were in Sica Hollow and he got stuck in some quicksand.”

  Mr. Little Thunder turns to the other riders. “Let’s go. Peter, climb up behind me. The mustang is tired. He’ll find his way home.”

  I slide off the mustang and give his rear a friendly pat that sets him off. Mr. Little Thunder reaches down, and I grab his arm and swing up behind him on his stallion. It’s getting cold and I’m glad for the warmth of Mr. Little Thunder’s body on the saddle as we ride.

  I’m thinking how cold Joe must be getting. I hope he’s stayed still and not panicked. I hope those coyotes haven’t scared him. I hope a bobcat or a bear hasn’t found him, or one of the spirits of all those dead people that haunt Sica Hollow.

  It isn’t long before we reach the hollow’s edge. “Leave the horses and walk,” Mr. Little Thunder orders.

  The riders all pull kerosene lanterns out of their saddlebags and strike matches to light them.

  Mr. Little Thunder has one for me too.

  “You lead the way, Peter,” he says, and he and I step to the front of the line of bobbing lights snaking through the hollow.

  It’s so dark that it’s hard for me to be sure exactly where Joe and I walked before, but when we come to the gurgling spring with the rusty water I know I’ve been leading the rescue party in the right direction.

  I start calling out, “Joe. We’re here.”

  Then the others start shout
ing Joe’s name too.

  Mr. Little Thunder holds up his hand to quiet us. He’s heard something.

  There’s a low moaning somewhere ahead. It sounds the way my brother Alvin did once when he ate too many strawberries and had a stomach ache all night.

  Then a groaning is added to the moaning as if the wind suddenly came up and set all the tree branches to creaking and cracking. Only thing is the air is still. There is no wind.

  “What is it?” I whisper to Mr. Little Thunder. He puts a finger to his lip and shakes his head, and that’s when the wailing starts. It’s so sad it cracks your heart. It reminds me of the way Mama went on and on and on when Herman died.

  I’m truly scared now. Poor Joe.

  Has Hand come to claim him and turn him into a murderer like he did to those other boys?

  Have the troubled spirits of the people who drowned returned? Have the coyotes streaked down to circle round him?

  ''THE SOUND IS FROM THERE,'' Mr. Little Thunder points to his right. Now he takes the lead and we all follow him.

  My heart is squeezed tight and barely beating. Could that have been Joe moaning and groaning and wailing? Will he still be alive when we reach him?

  And then Mr. Little Thunder is crashing through the trees and I can’t keep up. When I reach him he is kneeling down beside Joe’s body, mumbling all soft and tender as if he is praying: “Cunwintku, cunwintku, cunwintku, my son, my son, my son.”

  Joe is no longer in the quicksand. He is lying just as still as can be. Prince stands at Joe’s head nuzzling his hair. Bunches of butterflies are perched on Joe’s muddy pant legs, on his toes, on his bare arms, and along the rope still wrapped around his chest and still attached to Prince’s saddle horn.

  As Mr. Little Thunder bends his head to lay his ear on Joe’s chest, the butterflies rise slow and gentle as morning fog and flutter off.

  “He’s alive!” Mr. Little Thunder shouts. He unties the rope around Joe’s chest, then picks Joe up and drapes him over his shoulders. All of us turn, and we begin the trek out of the hollow. Moonlight streaks through the trees around us and casts eerie shadows on our bodies.

  I’m walking just in front of Joe and his papa, and I can hear Joe muttering, “They came for me. They came for me.”

  Then he says it louder and louder.

  “They came for me. They came for me.”

  Mr. Little Thunder stops and lays Joe down on the ground again. To our surprise, Joe lifts his hand to rub his head and then sits up. Mr. Little Thunder puts his arm around Joe’s back.

  “They came for me.”

  “Who came for you?” I ask.

  “The spirits. They were swirling all around me in the quicksand, moaning and groaning and wailing. I couldn’t see them but I could feel them and hear them. And then suddenly I was being pulled.”

  “By Prince? You still had the rope around you,” I remind him. I don’t even wait for Joe to answer I’m so worried. “Did the spirits try to hurt you?”

  “I don’t think they could because thousands of butterflies came gliding down and covered my body to protect me. I turned my head to look at Prince and a young girl was sitting in his saddle and riding him forward.”

  “But Prince wasn’t strong enough to pull you out before.”

  “I know. But with that girl on his back he did.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “She was Dakota, about my age, in a buckskin dress with a beaded belt around her waist. She smiled at me. Then Prince lurched forward and I was out of the quicksand. It took me a minute to catch my breath, and when I looked around again, Prince was still there but the girl was gone.”

  “Who do you think she was?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe shakes his head.

  “Could it have been Fawn?” I wonder aloud, “The only one of the Sica Hollow people to survive the fight between Hand and the Thunder Spirit?”

  “Perhaps so,” says Mr. Little Thunder. “You need to get home, Joe. Can you walk?”

  “I’ll try, Father,” says Joe as we help him to his feet.

  Joe walks a little slow but he does just fine. We’ve got a long trek back through the twisted trees and over the trails covered with wet leaves. Even once we reach the horses, it will be a fair ways home in the dark and cold. Lots of time for me to think about what’s happened tonight and all the other adventures I’ve had since leaving the train station in Kansas.

  Just a couple weeks ago I’d never been farther from our family farm than Newton, two miles away, and I’d never known anything but doing farm chores and going to school and church and visiting our neighbours who lived all round. Will Mama and Papa and Alvin even believe me when I tell them about the copperhead and the roller coaster accident, my near drowning in Enemy Swim Lake, and now my night in Sica Hollow?

  Why, I’m almost like Harvey in Captains Courageous! I’ve not looked into the eye of whale or witnessed a fishing schooner being cut in half by an ocean liner. I haven’t been lost in thick fog at sea or been haunted by a dead sailor like Harvey was, but I’ve sure been having some adventures! No doubt about that.

  Chapter 9

  THE NEXT MORNING, I POKE my head into Joe’s room on my way downstairs. He is still fast asleep. I guess he is plumb tuckered out from yesterday’s adventure. Mr. Little Thunder comes into the kitchen as I’m eating fry bread and honey.

  “Come out to the barn,” he says to me. I gulp down the rest of my food and follow him.

  In the barn Mr. Little Thunder is giving the mustang I rode yesterday another rub down.

  “I can’t ever thank you enough, Mr. Little Thunder, for taking me and my horses in.”

  Mr. Thunder nods but he is frowning. What is on his mind?

  Has his family had enough of me?

  Are they going to ask me to leave?

  Does Mr. Little Thunder blame me for what happened to Joe yesterday?

  Mr. Little Thunder gets some water for the horses from the pump and fills the trough in front of them. He looks at me.

  “Yesterday you acted as a brother would.”

  I start to shovel horse manure out of the stalls and put it in a wheelbarrow Mr. Little Thunder has placed nearby. He looks at me.

  “I will get you back to your own brothers.”

  “Should we go to the railroad car once more and check if someone has been there?”

  “I did.”

  “And had someone been there?”

  Mr. Little Thunder shakes his head.

  “I can’t believe that,” I say and I hurl a shovelful of horse dung that misses the wheelbarrow and lands with a splat on the floor.

  Mr. Little Thunder takes a rake and starts to spread out hay in each horse stall. I go over to clean up the mess I’ve made.

  “Your family could be having troubles,” he says.

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “There’s people in Sisseton who have your name, Schmidt.”

  “Do you know them?”

  Mr. Little Thunder shakes his head. He comes over to me and hands me a small square torn from an old newspaper. It’s an advertisement.

  I read aloud. “Wanted. Good girl that can sew to help in Schmidt’s Dress Shop and Millinery. $3.00 a week.”

  “That’s my name for sure,” I say, “but Papa and Grandpa never talked about relatives in South Dakota. Where did you get this ad?”

  “Went to Sisseton for flour and bullets a couple months back. Picked up a newspaper.”

  “And you just happened on this ad?”

  “The name jumped out at me yesterday morning when I took a piece of old newspaper to start a fire in the stove.”

  “Have you ever seen this millinery shop?”

  “The lady who runs it is married to Henry Schmidt, the miller. It should have come to mind when you spoke your name.”

  “So you think we’d best go and talk to them?”

  Mr. Little Thunder nods. “We can head out tomorrow early. Sisseton is a fair way away.”
r />   “Is there a train station in Sisseton?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should we stop there and check if they’ve received word about my missing train car?”

  “Yes.” Mr. Little Thunder picks up Prince’s foot and turns up his hoof to clean it.

  “Will I be coming back here?”

  “Not sure. Depends what we learn.”

  “So tonight could be my last night here?”

  “Might be.”

  “Then I may only have one more day with Joe?”

  Mr. Little Thunder nods and picks up Prince’s other hoof and starts to clean it. After he leaves the barn I stay for a spell. I lean on the railing between the horses’ stalls.

  I’m not sure how I feel. I know I need to do something to get back together with my family. The rest of my train, and my parents’ train, are bound to have arrived in Saskatchewan already, and my Mama must be going crazy with not knowing where I am. But I’ve come to feel safe here with the Little Thunders, and Joe is starting to become almost as fine a friend as my brother Herman was to me.

  I stand between Prince and Gypsy just breathing in their warm comfort for a minute or two.

  “We’ve sure been having some adventures,” I say to them. “Guess we might be in for more.”

  Prince and Gypsy move their heads up and down as if they are agreeing with me.

  ''WE'RE TAKING THE WAGON,'' MR. Little Thunder informs me when I step outside the next morning. “I need to bring back supplies.”

  Joe’s mother has filled a sack with food for us and when I see it on the wagon seat I get a little catch in my throat because it reminds me of the dried apples and smoked sausage and buttered bread Mama gave me when I left Newton. That seems so long ago. It sure would be fine to taste some of my Mama’s cooking again.

  It’s still dark when we roll off down the road. Gypsy and Prince follow along at our slow and steady pace. I said goodbye to everyone last night and hardly slept a minute, excited and wondering about what today might bring.

  Mr. Little Thunder and I don’t say much on the trip. There’s a real chill in the air, and although the buckskin jacket and leggings Joe’s grandmother made me keep my body warm, I rub my ears and nose every few minutes to keep their tips from freezing. The steam from the horses’ bodies rises up like a fog, covering Mr. Little Thunder and me.