Gedi Puniku
(Cat Eyes)
Jeanie Johnson
OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR
Native American books
Apache Pride
Beyond The Heart
Cherokee Courage
Gentle Savage
Kiowa White Moon
Kiowa Wind Walker
No Price Too High
Paiute Passion
Savage Land
Shadow Hawk
Son of Silver Fox (sequel to Gentle Savage)
Within The Heart (Sequel to Beyond the Heart)
Historical or Regency/Victorian Romance Books
A Bride for Windridge Hall
Defiant Heart
Highroad
Indentured
Wild Irish Rose
Winslow’s Web
Contemporary Western Romance Books
Passion’s Pride
Single-handed Heart
Georgie Girl
Historical Western Romance Books
Elusive Innocents
20 th Century Historical Romance Books
Italy Vacation
Moments of Misconception
Radcliff Hall
Taxi Dancer
Action and Adventure Mystery Romance Books
Ghost Island
Futuristic Action and Adventure Romance Books
Chosen
Pony Up
Surviving
The Division
The Dominion
The Mechanism
Time travel/Reincarnation Romance Books
Egyptian Key
The Locked Room
Seekers
Seekers Two
Seekers Three
Non Fiction Books
Dream Symbols Made Easy (how to analyze dreams)
Chief Washakie (short history of Shoshoni Chief)
Peaches (inspirational)
The Prune Pickers (my childhood)
Whimper (true story of racial conflicts)
A Collection of short stories (some true)
Children’s Picture Book
Dandy The Horse
This book is a work of fiction. All characters are out of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is mere coincidence.
Story by Jeanie Johnson
Copyright 2017
All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE
1868
I have been told there is no such thing as fate. According to my mama, fate is just another word for the workings of God. “God directs us and leads our paths,” she would always tell me, but sitting there looking down at her lifeless body, I was not convinced. How could God leave me in the situation I was in? How could God, if he was a loving God, leave my mama in the situation she was in before she died? I stopped believing in God that day. He didn’t seem to be a friend of mine, and I was going to have to count on my own wits to decide what to do to lead me in the right direction. I had no idea what I was going to do!
I lay my hand on my mama’s cold, stiff hand. At least she was at peace. She had suffered during her illness and I couldn’t afford to send for a doctor. I knew she didn’t want to die and leave me all on my own, the way Papa had left us on our own. Papa had good intentions, but another saying my mama often repeated was that “the pathway to hell is paved with good intentions.” Was I destined to follow that pathway to hell, I wondered? It seemed like everything was leaning in that direction. I felt like I was in hell already!
“Now, Haley, you can’t blame your papa,” I could hear my mama saying, even though she was lying cold and still in the bed. “He is only trying his best. He loves us, you know that.”
I didn’t know that! I barely knew my papa. He was always busy trying to find a quick, easy way to make money. Nothing he tried accomplished anything because most of his efforts were just smoke and mirrors to fool the public who were duped into buying his wares. He was known as a “flimflam man”. I think he flimflammed my mama into marrying him. Now he was off trying to find gold in Wyoming. He had been gone pretty near a half a year, and only one letter from him. No money. No help to pay the rent. Just saying he had to stake a claim and then it would be a bit before he knew how well the site produced gold. How long was a bit, I wondered? To me, that meant we probably would never see any money coming from him. We were pretty much on our own. I was now pretty much on my own!
Once I informed our landlord that my mama had died, he would never allow me to stay in that little no account shack of a house on the outskirts of Kansas City, Missouri. We hadn’t paid the rent in months, and what little money my mama made doing sewing, barely kept us in food. We didn’t even own anything of worth except for the gold ring my mama wore on her finger. It seemed sacrilegious to take it off of her, but since I had stopped believing in God, or the sacredness of my parent’s marriage, seeing as how Papa had left us, I slowly worked it off of her finger.
Her fingers were so thin, it almost fell right off into my hand. I didn’t even have the money to bury her, but maybe the ring would bring enough to do it. Only once that was done, what was I going to do? The only thing I could do was go look for Papa, and hope he had struck it rich like he kept promising he was going to do.
I scribbled off a letter, addressing it to the last place we had received word from him, telling him not to come home because Mama had died. I informed him I was coming to Wyoming to be with him. I took the letter to the post office and dropped it in the slot. I wondered if the letter would even get to him? It was like I was dropping that letter into a dark, bottomless hole, and it would just get mixed up with hundreds of other letters. I was amazed that every letter could be kept track of and sent to the right person.
I stood in the post office staring at that slot as other people deposited their letters. An emptiness settled over me. Even my plans to join Papa seemed impossible. He was hundreds of miles away. I had never been to Wyoming before. I wasn’t even sure where it was. I would have to get a map, I decided.
I finally left the post office and I took my mama’s ring and pawned it. The owner of the shop looked at me sadly when I told him it was my dead mama’s wedding ring. He asked me where my papa was, and I told him. When I mentioned I was going to find my papa, he suggested I should get a gun. He said I couldn’t go off gallivanting cross-country without some sort of protection.
“How old are you anyway?” he asked, eyeing me with watery blue eyes.
“Eighteen,” I told him.
I wasn’t even sure of that. I may have been seventeen or nineteen, but I figured eighteen was pretty close.
“You don’t look it. You are too scrawny. You look more like a boy than a young lady. But even a boy needs protection taking off on his own.”
I shrugged. I knew I was thin. We hadn’t much to eat, and like my mama, I had lost a lot of weight. He was probably right, so I used some of the money to buy a gun and some bullets. I didn’t even know how to shoot a gun but having it made me feel safe.
At least I had Bandit, my faithful spaniel, along with Fire Cracker, my red roan horse. The only two things of worth I did own, but I would never sell either of them. They were more my friends than my possessions. The only reason I had a horse was that a few years back when we were camped for the night in our sheepherder’s wagon and Papa had hobbled our mare while we camped, a wild stud came along and mated with her. Papa said Fire Cracker was the only free thing we owned that was worth anything. Bandit was a stray that started following our wagon, and Papa couldn’t stop him from following us, so he let me keep him.
I found a penny map in a used bookstore, and then I stopped by the church and told the preacher my mama had died, and all I had was a dollar to pay
for her burial.
He took pity on me, accepting the wrinkled paper-money from my hand and said he would take care of it for me. It wasn’t even enough to buy a pine box to put her in, but buying that gun was my only hope for survival, so I hoped Mama would understand.
They wrapped her in the blanket on her bed, to put her in the ground. No one came to Mama’s funeral. I hadn’t expected anyone to come. We hadn’t been in Kansas City long enough to have many friends.
Previously, before we ended up in Kansas City, we traveled a lot in the little sheepherder’s wagon Papa used to transport his “wares”. We had been chased out of almost every town we stopped at, cause Papa’s wears was really a concoction he mixed up and claimed would heal your ills. It never healed Mama’s ills. Everyone, including myself, knew it was just wind pudding and rabbit tracks that did nothing but make you a little drunk if you took it.
When Papa left, he took that sheepherder’s wagon with him. I think he planned to sell his “wonder drink” along the way to Wyoming. If he made any money doing it, we never saw any of it.
I didn’t tell the landlord about Mama dying. I figured he’d learn soon enough. I just packed a few personal belongings, made a cot-roll out of quilts, gathered what little food we had in the house, strapped the gun over my long skirt and climbed up on Fire Cracker’s back. I figured I could supplement what little food I had with shooting something with that gun if I could actually hit anything. We didn’t own a saddle so I rode bareback. I tied two gunny sacks together full of what I had scrounged, with a short rope and slung them over the neck of my horse. I wouldn’t miss Kansas City. I never missed any place we left behind because we never stayed in any place long enough to get attached to it or the people living there.
I can’t ever remember having any friends. I never went to school because Mama book-taught me herself. She was actually a school teacher when Papa met her, so she knew everything there was to know about teaching. She could have earned money teaching if we ever stayed in a place long enough for her to apply for a position at a school. Papa always got restless and insisted we move on. There was no arguing with Papa, so we followed.
Bandit trotted obediently behind me and Fire Cracker. Like me and Mama, he was used to following along. As soon as Fire Cracker was trained enough for me to ride, I never rode in the Sheepherders wagon with Mama and Papa. I liked the feel of Fire Cracker’s warm body against my legs and the way he responded to my every command. I loved that horse and he loved me. He would protect me the same way Bandit would do. I figured with my gun and Fire Cracker and Bandit as backup, I would be safe enough.
I had studied the map all night in the flickering light of the only oil lamp we owned until the oil ran out. I would have to cross the Missouri River, follow it through Kansas, up to Nebraska until I came to the Platte River. There I could follow the Platte River all the way through Nebraska and on into Wyoming until I came to Sweetwater River, which was a lot smaller than the Platte. That wound around up through the hills towards South Pass City where the gold mining was supposed to be taking place. It was the county seat of Sweetwater County. Papa said the original gold was first found in Sweetwater River, and then in the surrounding area.
Sweetwater River was named that because when the people following the Oregon trail crossed that river, someone accidentally knocked a bag of sugar out of their wagon into the water. Everyone claimed the water of that river was so sweet, it must have been the sugar that caused it.
Papa said the first sign of gold in the Sweetwater River was reported in 1855. Then right after the Civil War, around 1864, more gold was found on upper Sweetwater River. By 1867 all the surrounding areas were booming with gold seekers, and my papa joined in along with the rest.
The only discouraging part was that it seemed so far away. It would take me months to ride that far on my own, I figured. However, I knew if I followed the river I wouldn’t get lost, and that encouraged me. I vaguely wondered if God would lead the way? I hadn’t made peace with God yet, though.
Kansas City was right on the edge of the Missouri River, so I didn’t have far to go to get to it. They called Kansas City “gully town” because of the deep trenches cut into the limestone bluffs to make way for streets and new buildings. They were building a bridge across the river for the trains to cross, and when trains were not crossing it, people on foot or wagons could cross it, only it wasn’t finished yet. That meant I would have to take a ferry across the river, and that cost money.
The closest ferry was in St. Joseph and that was several miles north of Kansas City. It would cost me twenty cents to cross over on my horse, and I was wondering where I would get the money? Then I remembered a piece of French Lace my mother had. She had sewn it to her wedding dress and told me it had been handed down in her family, so it must be worth something, I decided.
I went back to the house and rummaged in the trunk at the foot of Mama’s bed, finding her wedding dress. It was not very fancy except for the lace collar. The material of the dress was old and yellowed. I cut the threads that attached the collar and took it to the pawn shop. The same man who sold me the gun looked at me doubtfully. I told him it was rare French lace. He shrugged and handed me the twenty cents, cause he knew my mother was dead, and I told him it came off her wedding dress.
Now all I had to do was get to St. Joseph and cross the river. I didn’t figure I would need any more money, once I got across. If I did, I would just have to cross that bridge when I came to it, I decided. I asked someone, and they told me St. Joseph was about fifty-four miles away from Kansas City, so I figured it would probably take me a couple days to ride that far. It was the place where all the people going to the California gold rush in 49 had crossed. Lots of pioneers used that crossing and so did the pony express, so it was a well-traveled crossing.
I urged Fire Cracker forward, and Bandit followed faithfully behind. It didn’t take long to get out of Kansas City. It wasn’t a very big town. It didn’t even have a ferry, and that is why they were building the bridge. They wanted the town to grow. Everyone predicted once the bridge was finished, Kansas City would become more popular than St. Joseph.
I ate mostly canned crackers and dry biscuits. I had a canteen of water. Since I was going to follow the river, I didn’t worry much about taking a lot of water with me. Fire Cracker would eat grass along the way, which wouldn’t cost anything, and as long as I could shoot a rabbit or a squirrel I would probably survive.
I camped under the stars. I was used to camping. I had been camping all my life, so I figured it suited me. I didn’t feel lonely since I had my dog and my horse. There were no friends to miss. I had given up missing my papa. I missed Mama some but would have to learn to rely on myself now. I tried to put my past behind me. The only thing I was looking forward to was finding Papa and then telling him what a terrible father he had been to me. Mama said he loved us, but I had my doubts. You don’t leave people you love behind with no way of supporting themselves. I doubt I would find him at that gold mining camp. He was probably just using it as an excuse to leave the responsibility of me and Mama behind.
It was not love that drove me to find Papa. It was cause I didn’t know what else to do, and if nothing else, I wanted to give him a piece of my mind!
I woke early the next morning, hoping to get to St. Joe, as many people called it, before sundown. I wondered how often the ferry crossed? I didn’t want to stay in St. Joseph overnight, but I might have to, depending on if I could catch the ferry that same day. I was lucky. I made pretty good time. When I got to the ferry crossing, other people were boarding. They said it was the last trip over to the Kansas side of the river, so I was happy I had gotten there when I did.
I paid my twenty cents. It was supposed to be for one horse and rider. The man looked at my dog, I think trying to decide whether to charge me for bringing Bandit across. Then he shrugged and let me onboard. It was a steamboat ferry. The older ferries were hand driven, using long poles to push the flat rafts across th
e river. When the steamboat ferries started taking over, they put the other ferries out of business. Only in rare places did the old ferries still offer rides across the river.
I got down off my horse, as we crossed. There were a couple of men, riding mules, who admired my horse. Fire Cracker laid his ears back, so I knew he didn’t like the men. Bandit growled low in his throat.
“You know how to use that thing?” one of the men asked me, pointing to my gun strapped over my skirt.
I ignored him and looked in the other direction.
“Yer a pretty little thing,” the other man said.
They both looked like trappers or some sort of mountain men. I figured that is why they rode mules.
“Leave the girl alone,” the ferry attendant said. “Where you going?” he asked me, kindly.
“Across the river,” I said to let him know I had no intention of telling him my business.
“You have kin across the river?” he asked.
“Yeah. My papa is waiting for me,” I half-lied.
“You know, when I first came to these parts, I came as a Pioneer, back in the early 50s. I was heading to California where they said gold was aplenty and life was exciting. I crossed the river right here in this very place. Never found any gold though. However, the journey was rather exciting.”
Then he scratched his beard, apparently remembering the incident and started to tell me all about it.
“We unloaded our goods and camped upon the plain just below the town. The whole neighborhood for miles around was full of emigrants, tents here and tents there, the white covers of wagons and tents looked as though they had been prepared for a grand army. And indeed they had been, there were armies of men, with a goodly sprinkle of women and children. The city of St. Joe was much the gainer by the emigration. Thousands of dollars were spent there annually by those who cross the plains, it being one of the principal points where the emigration left the river. We bought one yoke of oxen, a span of mules, and many other 'fixins,' and made preparation for starting over the plains. There were hundreds of wagons waiting their turn for crossing the Missouri, and there were several boats busy, and among them a steam ferryboat. But their capacity for carrying all the custom that presented itself was too small, and as a consequence, there were many teams ahead of us in their turn.
Gedi Puniku- Cat Eyes Page 1