by Emily Tilton
Shaw turned to Thomas now. “You’ll go with the search party?”
“Indeed I shall,” Thomas replied. “I’m sure we’ll find her before nightfall. She must have struck out along the rails toward Martinville. We’ll split up when we get there in case she went the other way, though.”
On horseback they would cover a good deal more ground than Alice could, in the melting but still present snow. Already Joe had found her trail, quite clear and headed toward the railroad.
But when the ten men arrived at the crossing of the Brownsville road with the rails, there remained just enough light to see that something untoward had occurred there: clear, fresh tracks of horses led up into the hills beyond.
“Indians got her,” Ken said grimly, looking first at Joe and then at Thomas himself.
Thomas nodded. “They’ll keep her safe,” he said, trying to hide his own uneasiness.
“After they raided her wagon train?” Joe countered. “They may have been friendly before, Elder, but the Sioux are on the warpath now.”
“Against a defenseless girl?” Thomas asked.
“There’s not a lick of good in them,” Ken said, getting a little angry. “Let’s go shoot up their village.”
Thomas looked at Joe, realizing suddenly that something interesting and even helpful might come of this, for he knew that Joe had made friends with one of the braves from the village in the hills, the previous winter.
Joe frowned, then returned Thomas’ look. “Elder, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said slowly.
Curious and a little hopeful, Thomas responded, “What would you do, Joe?” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ken scowl at this favor, but Thomas felt Joe had earned at least the right to a deciding vote in the choice before them.
“Why don’t you and I go to the village, Elder,” he said, “since we know one or two of the braves.” Thomas, too, had come to know and like some of their Sioux neighbors.
Ken, of course, had kept aloof when the Indians came to visit, talking in the bunkhouse about good Indians and dead Indians. He was a fine natural man, all the elders agreed, and very helpful to the community, but certainly not an enlightened one.
He spoke angrily from his scowling mouth. “I say we go in, guns blazing. At nightfall, with surprise, we’ll rescue that girl in no time.”
“No,” Thomas said. “I think Joe has the right idea. If we get scalped, Ken, you can bring all the guns you want and call it our fault, but especially with Miss Rhodes involved, I would rather risk it and see what friendship might do.”
* * *
The sun was setting behind the hills when Thomas and Joe rode slowly into the little assembly of buffalo hide tipi lodges with the fire at its center blazing cheeringly. The brave who had challenged them as they ascended toward the little valley rode behind them in the proud if uncomfortable-looking alert, bareback seat of the men Thomas thought of as noble savages. He spoke no English, and Thomas and Joe no Sioux, but he had recognized them, and his face seemed to suggest that he knew why they had come, as he had gestured toward the village as if in wary invitation.
Three Rocks, whom Thomas knew to be the medicine man of the band, stood up from the fire where he sat with his dozen or so braves, as he saw them approach. He waited for Thomas and Joe to dismount, and then he came to greet them with a peaceful gesture of open arms, as soon as he saw that they had left their rifles holstered.
“You welcome,” Three Rocks said simply. “You look girl?”
Thomas heard Joe let out a sigh of relief, and realized he had emitted a very similar one.
“Alive?” Joe asked eagerly.
Three Rocks looked offended at first, but then he nodded a little wearily. “Yes alive. With my pale woman now in tipi.”
“Pale woman?” Thomas asked, feeling a frown come onto his face.
Three Rocks nodded again. “From wagons we fight. She know girl.”
Thomas glanced at Joe, whose face, in the glow of sunset and the firelight, seemed to display recognition. He spoke hurriedly to Thomas, in a low voice, clearly intending that Three Rocks not be able to follow.
“Alice said they captured all the women from the wagon train.” He grimaced. “Maybe Ken was right. We have to save them, don’t we, Elder?”
Thomas drew his lips into a tight line and furrowed his brow as he considered, turning from Joe to Three Rocks.
“How many pale women here?” he asked, keeping his voice as neutral as he could.
Three Rocks nodded yet again, as if glad to have an answer he thought would satisfy. “We keep five. My woman and four young ones.”
“They were all at least eighteen,” Joe said quietly to Thomas.
“What did you do with the others?” Thomas asked.
“We trade them to other bands who need women.” Three Rocks smiled. “No worry. All happy. Lakota know how make women happy be Lakota women.”
Thomas glanced again at Joe, and found him looking at the medicine man with very narrow eyes. The elder pondered for a moment, recognizing the difficulty of the situation. Joe’s prejudices might not be as violent as Ken Sweeney’s, but he had still grown up with tales of Indian savagery on the frontier. Such things did happen, Thomas knew, but he also knew that far more frequently the first native inhabitants of these great plains proved themselves far more humane—and more natural—than the Europeans who thought themselves so civilized.
He supposed that when Alice emerged—with the other woman, whom Three Rocks seemed to regard as his, perhaps in much the same way Thomas regarded Sally Treadway and Mae Burton as his—the evidence would point one way or the other. In the meantime, it seemed good to him to do his best to expound Dr. Brown’s doctrine as he thought the Scot would want it expounded here beyond the bounds of the so-called enlightened civilization the doctor deplored.
Thomas turned again to Three Rocks. “A firm hand makes a happy girl?” he asked, seeing Joe frown at a sort of question from the elder that the younger man clearly had not anticipated.
Three Rocks nodded, a small smile coming to his lips. “Same with you, in special pale men town where you use birch on girl bottom. Lakota man no lie with girl until girl ready for fucking. Lakota man teach girl be good. No whip girl unless girl do wrong thing. Get girl ready with hand, teach girl feel good. Fuck girl when she wet for him.”
Thomas spoke to Joe, then. “Dr. Brown might call that the perfect creed of the natural man, Joe. Do you understand? How many English or American husbands would show their new wives the same tenderness, on their wedding nights?”
Joe’s frown had deepened, but all the anger in his face had dissipated. The sun had fully set, now. Thomas had told Ken Sweeney to wait until an hour after dark before returning to Brownsville and gathering more men to attack the village; their time had started to run out.
Just then, though, two female figures emerged from one of the tipis.
“Alice!” Joe said, rushing over to her. The other woman, in her late thirties, statuesque but quite striking especially in the buffalo hide Sioux robe she wore, gave Alice’s hand into Joe’s with a smile.
Thomas and Three Rocks walked over to join them.
“Joe, Elder Hilton,” Alice said timidly, “this is Ma Gantner.”
The older woman smiled. “I think they call me Hard Spoon Woman now,” she said in a broad Southern accent.
Thomas felt his forehead furl in puzzlement as he looked to Alice, who seemed to understand. “Mrs. Gantner helped the Indian women keep the girls obedient after they were captured, she told me,” the disheveled-looking but still—from the set of her jaw in the firelight as she spoke—apparently plucky and self-willed girl said. “These Indians are much nicer than anyone seems to think back East.”
“See, Joe?” Elder Hilton asked gently. He spoke to Mrs. Gantner, then. “You are happy with Three Rocks?”
The woman nodded, a slightly bemused smile on her face. “He’s kinder to me than Pa Gantner ever was.”
Alice spok
e next. “If you don’t mind, Elder, I would like to stay here.”
Chapter Seventeen
Alice tried to concentrate only on Elder Hilton as she spoke, but she couldn’t help seeing Joe’s stricken expression out of the corner of her eye.
Well, better to end his hopes and mine now, with a clean break, then to go back to Brownsville and face Miss Reynolds and the conflict inside me.
Here with the Indians, as Ma Gantner had made very clear to Alice, a girl must simply do as she was told, no matter how shameful—but when she pleased her brave, he rewarded her so well she would be foolish to think of trying to return to live among regular folks again.
When she had first seen the older woman sitting in the tipi, Alice had thought her eyes must be playing tricks on her, or that her mind had run wild with the terror of being captured. After the three braves who had ridden down from the village had seized her, wordlessly, she had thought she might lose her wits with fear, and to see Mrs. Gantner seemed the confirmation.
They had put her in front of one of them on his horse, despite her feeble struggles, and they had brought her to the little village, where the middle-aged, dignified man called Three Rocks had told her, firmly but not severely, to go into his tipi. There she had seen her old mistress sitting tending the little, but very warm tipi fire that sent its smoke out the top of the lodge. Alice had stood and stared, trying to understand.
“Alice?” Ma Gantner had asked, clearly not believing her eyes, either. “Alice Rhodes?”
“Mrs. Gantner?” Alice had replied timidly. “Is it… are you really…” She had looked around at the strange dwelling, then at Mrs. Gantner’s Indian dress, trying to figure out what it might mean. She had realized then with a little shame that she hadn’t spared Mrs. Gantner or the other women from the wagon train more than a very occasional thought in the time since she had come to Brownsville. It had seemed, Alice supposed, to raise too many ideas that pertained too closely to her own situation; like those women, Alice had come into the power of men who had no qualms about disposing of a woman as would provide them with the greatest pleasure and comfort.
Now her mind had burned to understand what had befallen Ma Gantner, the woman who had spanked her so soundly with the wooden spoon, and then rubbed her so tenderly afterward… so that when Alice had come to Joe’s cabin she had understood already that there lay inside her lewd things that made Brownsville the right sort of community for her even if she would deny it as long as she could. If Mrs. Gantner sat here in the Indian’s tipi, it must mean that she belonged to him, and that must mean that…
And what had happened to the other girls?
“Come here, honey,” Ma Gantner had said, standing up. Alice had heard a great change in the woman’s voice even in those few words, but her memories of being the Gantners’ servant, subject to Ma’s firm-handed correction, had made her stand still, and even to take a step back toward the tent flap. But Mrs. Gantner had come toward her with open arms and enfolded Alice in a warm embrace.
“Oh, Alice, honey, we thought you were dead, and Three Rocks was lying to us to spare our feelings. I’m so glad you’re alright.”
Alice had felt terribly confused by the warmth of Mrs. Gantner’s greeting, though despite their history—or perhaps even because of it—it had felt very comforting indeed to have her head nestled into that ample bosom.
Then Ma had sat her down by the fire and told her the story of the women from the wagon train whom these Sioux had captured and brought here to their tipis.
“We were all terribly frightened of course, at first,” she had said. “Three Rocks wasn’t part of the war party that raided the wagon train, and none of the braves spoke any English, so we were all wailing and crying, sure that death or much worse was waiting for us, wherever they meant to take us. And everyone was weeping for the men the Indians had killed, of course, too—Pa, and the pastor, and all of them. But when we got here, Three Rocks explained that we would have to live with braves as their women, but that it was the way of their band, and the bands they trade with, to ready their women well for the time when they must lie with a man.”
Mrs. Gantner had told her tale forthrightly to that point, but Alice had thought she saw a blush creep across the woman’s cheeks, now, and Ma had looked down into the fire intently.
“So they sent us to different tipis, and I had to follow Three Rocks in here, hardly knowing what would happen. I was less afraid than I had been before, but I didn’t understand exactly what he meant about readying a woman, and I couldn’t imagine he wanted me as anything but a servant.”
Here Mrs. Gantner had looked up with a slightly guilty expression on her face, as if repenting of the way she had treated Alice when the younger woman had served the Gantners.
“That was how it was, too, for the first few days,” she had continued, “but…” She had lowered her face again to look at the fire. “Well, I don’t know if you noticed, but Pa and I didn’t really get along so well—never did, especially after we lost our babies to the scarlet fever a dozen years ago.”
Alice had suddenly felt a wealth of kindness toward the older woman that she would never have imagined she could find in her heart.
“We weren’t… together… you know, honey, lying together, as man and wife… well, for years before you came. And that’s why…”
Mrs. Gantner had looked up with bright, wet eyes at Alice then.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, honey. That’s why I spanked you that way.”
Alice had frowned and bitten her lip. She had wanted to tell Mrs. Gantner all about Brownsville, then, but the turmoil of emotion that had sent her running from Elder Shaw’s house and Miss Reynolds’ schoolroom hadn’t let her.
Then the older woman’s voice had taken an almost pleading tone. “Please say you’ll forgive me, honey. Three Rocks…” She had hesitated, looked down, then looked back up into Alice’s eyes. “He spanks me, too, but not the way Mr. Gantner did… more the way…”
She had drawn her lips into a line and looked away, her face quite red. Alice had suddenly found the mental presence to help her, and she felt sure now that it had been that moment that had convinced her to stay here with the Indians.
“The way you spanked me,” she had said quietly.
Ma Gantner had looked up, her eyes eager and hopeful. “You understood?” she had asked a little fearfully.
“Not then,” Alice had confessed. “But…”
Then the whole tale of Brownsville had come pouring out of her, even the most shameful parts, about the bottom-fucking and the birching. Alice had hesitated at first when narrating her arrival in Joe’s cabin, but Mrs. Gantner had guessed what she meant.
“Mr. Gantner never did that,” she had said softly and reassuringly, “but Three Rocks has my bottom almost every night, right here by the fire. I never thought it could feel good, but I love pleasing him that way now.”
When Alice had finished telling of Brownsville, and Ma Gantner had exclaimed over how strange, but—now that she had experienced life with the Indians—how well-ordered a place it was, the older woman had told the tale of the remaining girls of the wagon train.
“After Three Rocks spanked me and had my bottom for the first time, he asked me whether I had been spanked by my husband, and I had to tell him yes. Then he asked about whether I had spanked my servants, and I had to tell him about you, and how I loved to use the spoon on your pretty bare bottom.”
Alice had felt her face go very red, but her opinion of Mrs. Gantner had changed so much by then that she could hardly mind.
“So Three Rocks told me that I would help prepare the other girls, and he gave me this.” Ma held up a wooden spoon just as long and just as broad at its end as the one with which she had taught Alice such complicated lessons. “Then he named me Hard Spoon Woman. I guess I got the girls ready to lie with their Indian braves just as well as I got you ready to lie with your Joe.”
At just that moment, they had heard the commotion outside, an
d the voices of men speaking English with Three Rocks. Alice had meant to tell Mrs. Gantner right then that Joe would never be her Joe, and that she would stay here and learn to please one of the handsome braves who had captured her, but Ma had led her out of the tipi to go meet Elder Hilton and Joe himself.
“Alice,” the elder said quietly now, “Elder Shaw caned Miss Reynolds earlier this afternoon. By now he’s given her a rough bottom-fucking, too. She’s one sorry schoolmistress, now, and she will be more than happy to be allowed to apologize to you when you get back.”
Alice felt a deep crease develop in her brow as she looked up at him, lacking a single idea of what to say. Beside the elder, looking intently at Alice, Joe spoke next.
“I’ll have to cane you, too, for running away, sweetheart, but you need to learn not to try to get away from your problems that way, when you have people who are trying to help you find the place that’s best for you.”
“What if this place, with the Indians, is best?” Alice asked him, suddenly finding her old defiance.
“It’s not,” Mrs. Gantner said firmly. “You have a man here who came to rescue you, and a place to live among your own people.”
“But…” Alice protested desperately. She wanted to say, But I don’t want to love him the way I do. I don’t want to have to want him the way I do. Three Rocks and his braves would have Mrs. Gantner ready her, and they would use her for their pleasure, and Alice wouldn’t have to face the terrible dilemma of wanting to be mastered by Ken Sweeney and wanting to be loved by Joe.
She knew that Joe’s response to her resistance would be to turn to the elder, to turn to the wisdom of Dr. Brown, to try to find a way to show her tenderness and consideration. Alice didn’t want that. Or… she didn’t want that now, and Joe couldn’t give her what she really wanted and needed, now and always.
Then Joe spoke again, his face no longer crestfallen but very stern. “Alice, that’s enough,” he said. “I’ve been trying to respect the elder’s wishes, and I’ve tried to go along with Miss Reynolds’ notions, and I know that Ken Sweeney is a good man who could guide you properly, but I’ve had enough. You are mine, even if we have to leave Brownsville so that we can belong to each other.”