Plenty Proud
Jeanie P. Johnson
OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR
Native American books
Across The River
Apache Pride
Beyond The Heart
Cherokee Courage
Gentle Savage
Gedi Puniku (Cat Eyes)
Kiowa White Moon
Kiowa Wind Walker
Little Flower
No Price Too High
Paiute Passion
Papago Promise
Sagebrush Serenade
Savage Land
Shadow Hawk
Shoshone Surrender
Son of Silver Fox (sequel to Gentle Savage)
White Hawk and the Star Maiden
Within The Heart (Sequel to Beyond the Heart)
Historical or Regency/Victorian Romance Books
A Bride for Windridge Hall
Defiant Heart
Highroad
Indentured
The Deception
Wild Irish Rose
Winslow’s Web
Contemporary Western Romance Books
Georgie Girl
Grasping at Straws
Mattie
Passion’s Pride
Single-handed Heart
Historical Western Romance Books
Elusive Innocents
20th Century Historical Romance Books
Italy Vacation
Moments of Misconception
Radcliff Hall
Reluctant Flapper
Samuel’s Mansion
Taxi Dancer
Action and Adventure Mystery Romance Books
Ghost Island
Holding On
Payback
Futuristic Action and Adventure Romance Books
Chosen
Pony Up
Project Rat Pack
Surviving
The Division
The Dominion
The Mechanism
Time travel/Reincarnation Romance Books
Egyptian Key
Letters From The Grave
Seekers
Seekers Two
Seekers Three
The Locked Room
The Vortex-book One
Non Fiction Books
A Collection of short stories (some true)
Chief Washakie (short history of Shoshoni Chief)
Dream Symbols Made Easy (how to analyze dreams)
Peaches (inspirational)
The Prune Pickers (my childhood)
Whimper (true story of racial conflicts)
Children’s Picture Book
Dandy The Horse
This is a work of fiction and all characters are out of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is unintentional.
Story by
Jeanie P. Johnson
© Copyright 2019
All rights reserved
Prologue
Ota Itan, (Oh-dah Ee-dahn) which, in the Sioux language means Plenty Proud, stood wrapped in a warm buffalo robe outside his tepee, staring out at the vast wilderness that surrounded his village. The robe sheltered him from the flakes of snow that were falling around him, dotting his hair and the fur of his robe with continued splotches as the show began to fall faster. Plenty Proud’s smooth, high, brow was now furrowed with concern as he thought over his mother’s words. Perhaps she was right about him being of the age to take a wife. He had counted coup and was reaching his twenty-fifth year, but he wanted it to be of his choosing. He felt he was being compelled to follow his mother’s wishes against his own desires, and even though he wanted to please and respect his mother, he was feeling uncomfortable about the prospects.
“You will like Little Bird,” he could hear his mother’s words echoing in his head. “She is the daughter of my best friend and comes from another clan. It is expected to take a wife from another clan so the strength of future generations does not decline with interbreeding. I have not seen her mother since she went to dwell with her husband’s tribe, and now that both of them are dead, we must take their daughter, Little Bird, under our wing. What better way to welcome a daughter, than to have my son offer himself to be her husband?”
“I am not ready for a wife,” he had grumbled. How did his mother know he would like Little Bird if she had never met the girl?
“You have put off taking a wife for too long now. A true brave is expected to have a wife once he is worthy of one. We have visited other clans, where you could have chosen a virtuous wife. Come spring, I wish you to collect Little Bird from her village, which will be moved closer to the trading post by then, and bring her to our village. She needs a protector, and you would make a good one for her. At least bring her, and if you still do not wish to take her as your wife, we will have to find a worthy husband for her.”
White Wing’s last statement gave him the opportunity to back out of a commitment he did not feel ready to accept, but knowing his mother, she would not make it easy for him to refuse her suggestion.
Plenty Proud gave an involuntary shiver. It wasn’t from the cold, though. It was a mysterious feeling that suddenly came over him that someone was in danger. His eyes began to scan the village, but all seemed normal for a winter village. Then his eyes raised and were focused on the distant mountain. Something about it caught his attention. It looked like the whole mountain was moving, and then it suddenly dawned on him why it appeared that way. It was a snow-slide. This one looked bigger than other snow-slides he had seen in the past. Now, he seemed mesmerized by watching it, knowing that anything in its path would be buried or destroyed as it tumbled down the mountain in an angry, thundering dash.
That unexplainable feeling came over him again, as though someone was in trouble and needed help, but he didn’t know where to look or how to help them. He had his own worries to contemplate, he thought as he gave a shrug. He was starting to get cold, and turned back to the warmth of his tepee, looking over his shoulder before he entered.
The mountain was still again. Whatever damage the slide had caused was unknown to him. He wondered why it troubled him so much, though. He had seen slides like that before, from a safe distance, and they had never made him feel the way he was feeling now. Maybe it was all mixed up in the thought that come spring, he would have to bring Little Bird to his own tribe and then decide if he truly wished to make her his wife.
CHAPTER ONE
Mackenzie lifted her head, trying to figure out what the noise was. “Did you hear that, Caleb?” she asked her brother who was sitting on the other side of the table from her.
Caleb shrugged disinterestedly. “Sounds a little like thunder,” he muttered.
“In the middle of winter?” she asked.
“Sometimes it does thunder during winter storms,” he informed her.
“How do you know? We have only been out here a few months,” she pointed out.
“Pa told me. He was out here on his own before he sent for us after Ma died.”
“If he hadn’t left all of us to become a backwoods trapper, Ma never would have died,” Mackenzie said bitterly. “Now he has dragged both of us into this miserable method of earning a living,” she grumbled.
“I know it’s hard work for a woman,” Caleb tried to comfort, “but what else could he do? He was making good money selling his furs, and now with us helping, he should do even better.”
“As soon as spring comes, I’m heading back to Missouri,” Mackenzie informed him.
“And do what?” he questioned. “You can’t be living there on your own. The reason we came out here is because we didn’t have any kin to take us in after Ma died. You’re stuck here, the same as me, Kenzie, and you know it.”
“Well, I hate it, and I’m
not going to stop hating it! There’s nothing out here but trappers and Indians!” She stopped and glanced over at Caleb. “It’s getting louder! I don’t think it is thunder, Cabe.”
“Pa should be back soon. Maybe he can tell us what it is,” Caleb suggested.
“I don’t like it, Cabe. I’m getting a bad feeling!”
“Everything gives you a bad feeling, Kenzie. Stop worrying so much!”
“If it’s not thunder, what can it be?” she murmured, going to the window to look out. “Cabe, come look! There is a huge cloud of snow tumbling down the mountain!”
“What?” Caleb jumped to his feet and sprinted to the window. “Good Lord, Kenzie, it looks like an avalanche, and it’s heading straight towards us!”
“What are we supposed to do?” Mackenzie screamed.
“Hope that the cabin holds and we aren’t buried too deep when it’s all over with. Get under the table! I hope Pa is not in its path!”
Caleb grabbed a quilt off of the bed and draped it over the table like a tent. “If the snow comes in the windows when it hits, the quilt may keep it off of us,” he said hopefully. “Maybe it will peter out before it even gets to us,” he added.
“It doesn’t sound like it’s petering out,” Mackenzie cried. The sound was getting so loud she could barely hear her own voice.
Now she could feel the cabin shaking, and amazingly, it seemed like the whole cabin was moving. Then she realized it was moving! For a moment she was amazed that the force of the snow could push the cabin down the side of the mountain, and then abruptly, everything started splitting apart, when the cabin crashed into several trees, and she could feel herself tumbling with the cabin as it started falling to pieces. She was screaming, trying to cling to the table leg. The quilt had gotten wrapped around the table as it tumbled, and was tangling her up in the table and taking her with it. She realized that Caleb was no longer beside her and she started screaming his name, as fear consumed her. Then everything went black.
It was quiet now, and Mackenzie was trying to figure out what had happened. She was cold and shivering and she thought she must have fallen asleep and now it was nighttime, because everything was so dark. She tried to sit up and bumped her head on the table, and then everything flooded back to her as she sank back down, rubbing her head.
The bump wasn’t the only place on her head that hurt. She realized the stickiness on her temple was blood, and she could feel the cut that started to sting when she touched it. Only she was so cold, the blood barely oozed from her cut, and her fingers were starting to feel numb. She pushed her hand out to feel around her, and felt the quilt, still draped around the table. It was cold and stiff, like it had been frozen. As she pushed against it, it didn’t budge, and she came to the conclusion that the table she was under was covered with snow, and the quilt was holding it all away from her. She began crawling along the quilt wall, feeling for a place to escape, but all sides seemed to be covered with snow, creating a cave with no way of escaping.
Mackenzie could feel her heart speeding and her breath came faster, wondering what she was going to do. She started screaming for Caleb, hoping he was nearby somewhere and could help her. Her screaming only filled the space around her. She wondered how deep she was buried and if she could dig herself out. She tried lifting one edge of the quilt but it seemed pinned to the ground on all sides. She couldn’t just sit there. She didn’t know how long the air would last, and sitting there was not helping her to escape her living grave.
Mackenzie began tugging frantically at the quilt, trying to pry up one side of it, to get to the snow that surrounded her. She could hear it ripping in her attempt, and finally it split apart, only to prove what she already knew. There was a wall of snow to greet her. Now, even if she had something to dig with, she didn’t know which end was up. Should she dig straight out from the table, or should she try digging up from the table?
She started crying in her frustration, because even if she knew which way to dig, she couldn’t dig with her hands. The snow would freeze them in no time. She felt in her skirt pocket to see if her mittens were still there, and gave a sigh of relief when she found them. She loved those mittens. Her father had made them for her out of soft rabbit fur, and now she pulled them over her hands and felt the feeling coming back to the ends of her fingers, as she sat, trying to decide what to do next. Mackenzie leaned her head against one of the table legs, and felt it give a little.
Letting out an excited cry, she grabbed the leg with both hands, pulling on it as hard as she could, working it back and forth until she had managed to break it free from the table. Now she had something to dig with, but in order to dig out, the snow would have to be shoved into her little cave under the table behind her. There would be no place to be after that and she didn’t know how deep she was buried or which way to dig.
Mackenzie began poking the leg into the snow, to see how packed it was. She decided she would dig in the direction where the snow seemed less packed, and prayed it would bring her to the surface. Because the leg could only loosen the snow, she would jab at it, and then push all the snow back towards the table with her hands, protected by the gloves, making a small tunnel to crawl through, which made her feel claustrophobic. The warmth of her breathing, and her exertion, was causing the snow in her little tunnel to melt and drip on her as she worked to push the show behind her and hoped she was headed in the direction of freedom.
Her long skirts and petticoats were hindering her progress, but if she pulled them up out of her way, then her knees would start to freeze. She had little choice but to do the best she could, keeping her skirt and petticoats between her and the snow to insulate her from the cold. Every so often, she would stop to rest, lying flat on her stomach, breathing in the coldness that surrounded her. She felt like a caterpillar trying to work itself out of its cocoon, only she was not going to come out as a glorious butterfly, if she made it out at all.
About the time she had worked herself into exhaustion, and was ready to give up, she poked the leg into the show and it suddenly gave way. A cold burst of welcoming air hit her face. It was the best cold air she had ever experienced. She was crying and laughing at the same time, as she started digging faster, making the hole bigger, so she could pull herself up and out of her snowy tomb.
Mackenzie sat, waist deep in snow, and looked around her. There was nothing but snow and trees surrounding her, with nothing to indicate that their cabin even existed. It must be buried in the snow, along with the table, she thought in a panic. Where was Caleb? She started calling out for him, but received no answer. Was he buried too and trying to dig his way out? There was no way of knowing, and just sitting here was not going to help find him or her father.
Mackenzie pulled herself the rest of the way out of her tunnel and tried walking, only to have her feet sink in the snow with every step. She was screaming for Caleb and her father, taking her table leg and frantically poking it in the snow, on the chance one of them was only shallowly buried in the snow somewhere. It was almost impossible to walk and she didn’t have the show shoes her father had made, which made it easier to walk in deep snow
Finally, she collapsed in despair, realizing it was useless trying to dig someone out when she didn’t even know where they were or even if they were still alive. She couldn’t stay looking for them. It would be getting dark, and the only thing she had to keep her warm was her mittens. The cold was already cutting through the material of her wool dress. Every step was a struggle as she headed down the mountain, not even knowing where to go, or what she was going to do?
Mackenzie tried to stay close to the trees where the snow was not as deep, as she stumbled and struggled through the snow, not even knowing what she would find if she ever reached the base of the mountain. She had only been out there for a few months, and as far as she knew there were very few people living on the side of the mountain except for other trappers, whom she had never met. She knew there were Indian villages somewhere, and that some of th
e trappers had married Indian women and lived in tepees just like them, but the villages were on lower ground where the snow was not as deep. And anyway, there was no way she would enter an Indian village, even if she managed to find one.
Even though Mackenzie’s hands were warm, the rest of her body was freezing. She had not had a coat on, and the shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders when she darted under the table had fallen from her shoulders. It had been the least of her worries at the time. Her feet were so numb now, she could barely feel them and she had heard about people getting frost-bite, and their toes turning black and falling off. The very thought frightened her, and she tried to walk faster, as her long skirt and petticoats dragged in the snow, impeding her even more.
Mackenzie stopped to catch her breath and looked up, taking in a deep, relieved breath when she noticed a slim pillar of smoke in the distance. Smoke meant humans, and she only hoped the humans were not Indians. She was still on the side of the mountain, so she decided it had to be smoke from a cabin somewhere. If it were Indians, she would see many trails of smoke in the sky coming from many different fires in some village. She didn’t think any Indians would be camping out here on the mountainside alone, so it had to be a cabin, she told herself… possibly, a trapper’s cabin.
As she made her way closer, she realized she was right. She could now see through the trees that there was a small cabin in the distance, and smoke was coming up out of the chimney. Her heart burst with thankfulness that she was about to be saved. She could almost feel the warmth of the fire within, as she began stumbling forward even faster, in the direction of the welcoming sight of the cabin.
Abruptly, she heard a clanking sound, and then a sharp pain radiated up her leg from her foot. She knew immediately what had happened. She had stepped in a trap, and now she was caught, the chain of the trap attached to a nearby tree, so the victim couldn’t escape. She reached her hands down and tried to pry the trap open, but she wasn’t strong enough to release the spring. The only recourse was to start screaming and hope that whoever was in the cabin could hear her.
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