“I’ve never heard of anyone taming a raccoon, Virginia. Do you think we could try it.”
Jenny nodded, but her thought was— This is a day I’ll remember for the rest of my life!
There wasn’t time to do more than glance through the house which consisted of one large room and two smaller ones. In the large room, the walls were covered with white birch bark and adorned with various trophies. Several beautiful fur pelts were stretched and nailed to the walls. The widespread antlers of a buck were nailed to the wall beside the door and there Jenny hung their bonnets and the jacket of her suit.
One glance was enough to tell her that the place was in need of a good cleaning. The wind had blown leaves in through the open door and swished down the chimney to scatter ashes over the floor. Mud tracked in on boots had dried and now crunched underfoot. Soot had collected in the cobwebs that hung in lacy strings over the black iron range. Jenny had no time to worry about any of that now. The trunks and boxes had to be brought in out of the wagon before dark.
“Margaret would be delighted to know that we’re living in this place that’s more of a pigsty than a house. She would say that it was fitting for the daughters of a whore.” Cassandra wiped her hand across the table and grimaced at the dirt her fingers picked up.
“I wish you wouldn’t repeat Margaret’s words in front of Beatrice.”
“It’s nothing she hasn’t heard before … a hundred or more times.”
“My hope is that we can forget about Margaret and … him.”
“Him is going to be hard to forget.”
“Shall we try, sweetheart?” Jenny hugged her little sister. “You know this place won’t be so bad once it’s clean and we get our things in place.”
“I like it, Jenny.” Beatrice opened a cabinet to look at the heavy earthenware dishes. “It’s like a playhouse.”
An hour later, all their possessions and the supplies from the store in Sweetwater except for the grain sacks had been dragged into the house. As she looked at them, the thought came to Jenny that she had not seen or heard a chicken. Cassandra had found a flat plank in the shed and had leaned it against the back of the wagon. The heavy trunk was slid down the plank, then pushed up the plank into the house. By the time they had finished, Beatrice was crying for something to eat; it was growing dark, and Jenny’s back felt as if it would break at any moment.
“We need some light in here and a way to bar the doors in case we have an unwelcome guest,” Jenny said as she opened one of her trunks to take out a box of sulfur matches and light the glass lamp on the table. “We’ll have to be careful with the lamp oil until we see how much of it there is. Now before dark, I’ll take the bucket and get water. Cass, go through the foodstuffs and see what there is we can eat tonight. Tomorrow we’ll cook a hot meal.”
“It’s cold, Virginia.”
“Put on a shawl. It’s too late to build a fire tonight. I’m not sure I know how anyway.”
“I know how to build one in the cookstove. I did it for Tululla lots of times. She said I made a better fire than Myrtle, who helped her sometimes.”
“I hope she taught you to cook on it, too.”
“She let me help, when Margaret wasn’t around.” Cass wrinkled her nose when she said her half sister’s name. “Oh, excuse me! She wants to be called Margo now. She said Margaret was so common.”
Jenny wondered, as she made her way to the crystal-clear water tumbling down the mountains over the rocks into the pool, if Cassandra would ever fully recover from the physical and mental abuse she and Beatrice had suffered at the hands of Margaret and her husband all in the name of discipline. Thank heaven they had not completely destroyed the self-confidence her intelligence and resourcefulness had given her little sister; her cynicism might fade with time.
After filling the bucket, Jenny turned to go back to the house. It was then that she saw at the edge of the grove the shadow of a building that must be the school. She paused for only a moment before walking rapidly to the house. There would be plenty of time to look over the school tomorrow. Right now she had to get back to the girls.
Virginia Hepperly, what in the world are you and the girls doing in this isolated cabin miles from another human being?
Chapter Three
Jenny and the two girls washed in the lukewarm water from the cookstove reservoir and bedded down in the double bunk in one of the rooms after Jenny had made up the bed with linen from her trunk.
The girls went to sleep almost instantly, but Jenny lay awake, mentally checking the two doors she had barred and the window shutters she had closed and locked. The loaded rifle hung on the pegs over the fireplace, the Smith & Wesson rested on the chair she had pulled close to the bunk.
For the hundredth time since their arrival in Sweetwater she mulled over the wisdom of coming here. Back in Baltimore, the opportunity had seemed to be the answer to her prayers. With the help of people in high places in the Bureau, she had covered her tracks well. It would take some time for Charles Ransome to find her and the girls … if he ever did. And if he did, he would have to take her by force to get her back to Allentown to stand trial for kidnapping.
Beatrice whimpered in her sleep. Jenny turned and took the small girl in her arms, as much to comfort herself as the child. She grimaced, recalling the bruises and cuts she’d found on the child’s little body, and prayed that God would forgive her for not having gone back to Allentown sooner to visit her siblings.
In her mind she saw flashes of the events that led to her flight with the girls; the meeting with an officer of Indian Affairs who told her about Walt Whitaker’s will, the transfer of money from her trust to the bank in Laramie. Thank heaven for Uncle Noah, her mother’s younger brother. Without his help she would have never been able to spirit the girls away.
Every minute of the long flight she had suffered the cold fear they would be discovered. Jenny had chosen their destination carefully and had been assured by the best legal counsel that once within this territory, she and the girls would be comparatively safe. No extradition agreements had been made with other states, and here women had the legal right to own property, to raise their children, and even to vote!
As added insurance against the danger of their being found and the children taken against her will back to Allentown, she had changed all their names from Hepperly to Gray. Her rascal of an uncle had thought of that, and he knew the right people in the right places to get it done.
She had feared the homestead would be exactly what it was. But she hadn’t anticipated Mr. Havelshell’s antagonistic attitude nor the hostility from Frank Wilson and the young man with the raccoon. And she had expected to be provided help with both inside and outside chores.
Lordy mercy! How was she going to cut wood, carry water, care for the livestock, and the girls, and teach school? How was she going to store food, much less firewood for the long cold winters? They had been whisked out of town so fast that she hadn’t been able to discuss with Havelshell the hiring of help. Obviously, the man didn’t want her here. All the hardships were part of his plan to get rid of her. If the teacher who came didn’t stay, and the conditions of the will were not met, the land would be sold at auction. She had been told that when she signed her contract.
Jenny had no idea of how she would use the thousands of acres of land if she got it. She would hire a land manager. Yes, that’s what she would do. The money left to her by her mother and her mother’s family would pay for his services.
Her tired body overcame her troubled mind and she slept soundly.
“Caw! Caw!”
She woke abruptly.
At first she was confused, conscious only of the pain in her back, shoulders and arms. Reality returned quickly. She threw off the bedclothes and got out of bed, her heart thumping.
“Caw! Caw!”
She knew the call of a crow, but hadn’t she heard that Indians sometimes used birdcalls to signal one another?
She slipped on a robe, picked up the pistol and went to th
e back door. After unbarring it, she opened it a crack and looked out. The area was bathed in the soft glow of dawn. The eastern sky was rosy with light from the rising sun. Two big black crows were perched on the side rails of the wagon where they had left the bags of grain. When Jenny opened the door wider, the creaking of the rusty hinges alerted the birds and they took flight.
Stepping out into the quiet cool morning, Jenny breathed deeply of the fresh mountain air. She felt … free. There was so much to do here, and she had a lot to learn. A favorite teacher once told her that when faced with a difficult task to do, she should take it apart, look at it closely and learn all she could about it. Then proceed one step at a time. In order to survive here and provide a home for her sisters, that was what she would have to do.
One of the first steps was to find out if there was an outhouse on the ranch, or if she and the girls would continue to use the chamber pot she had brought in her trunk. She walked away from the house … in her robe, her hair hanging down her back. There was no one here to see or care how she looked. It was a glorious feeling. For too long she had been the prim and proper Miss Hepperly, role model for the daughters of those who could afford to send them to the academy. But out here she would not have to wear the hated boned corset! Hurrah!
Jenny walked toward the grove where a small ramshackle structure stood leaning precariously to one side. It was the only building in sight that could possibly be an outhouse. However, there wasn’t a path leading to it. It sat in the middle of a grassy area. The door sagged on leather straps used as hinges. As she neared she could see that grass was high even at the door. Fresh wagon tracks and clods of sod dug up by horses’ hooves surrounded it.
When she opened the door, she could see that the building had been brought there in a wagon … recently. There was no floor in the building, which was not surprising, and the grass was as green inside as it was out. A soiled plank extended from one wall to the other—a place to sit. But a hole had not been dug in the ground for the body waste. Jenny backed away and closed the door.
The Bureau had apparently sent word to Havelshell that a lady would be coming to Stoney Creek Ranch and for him to arrange for a necessary building. He had hauled one out and just set it there, intending to make living conditions here as inconvenient as possible, thinking she would give up and go back East.
The nasty, hateful man!
Jenny went back toward the house, her mind working on the problems that faced her. First was food and how to fix it. Then the house had to be cleaned and made livable. They had to have a supply of firewood for the cookstove and for winter—a big supply for winter. In a few days, they would hitch up the team and go to town. She would post a notice that she needed someone to come, tend the animals, hunt fresh meat and cut firewood. Thank goodness she had money to pay for the help she needed.
Nothing had been said about when the school term would start. It was her understanding that the Indian agent would send word to the chiefs and that they would either send for her or come to the school. Thoughts of the school were cut off sharply when she came to the corral and realized that the two sorrels and the pony were eating at a pile of freshly cut grass.
Someone had been here last night or early this morning.
Jenny stood very still. The thought of someone’s being about and her not knowing it unnerved her. Her eyes slowly swept the area from the house to the border of trees that surrounded the ranch buildings. What she presumed to be the school sat in a small clearing hacked out of the forest. Built of logs, it blended so well with the woods surrounding it that she had not noticed it.
A boy sat on the ground, his back against the side of the building. He wore a light shirt and britches. A white band was tied about his forehead. He was too far away for Jenny to see his face, but it was turned in her direction. She wondered if he were the boy on the spotted pony they had seen the night before, the one Wilson said was an offspring of Walt Whitaker.
Jenny waved as she had done the night before, but there was no response.
“Thank you for cutting grass for the horses,” she called.
Still no response.
Were it not for her uncomfortably full bladder, Jenny would have gone toward the school. She hurried instead, to the house, found the chamber pot under the double bunk and let nature take its course. When she finished, she quickly dressed, tied her hair at the nape of her neck and went back outside, not taking time to do more than throw a shawl over her shoulders to ward off the cool morning air.
The boy was gone.
She was disappointed, but decided to visit the school while the girls were still asleep. Judging by the grass and bushes that surrounded the building, it had been there for several years. It was built of heavy logs set upright, but the door and window frames were weathered plank.
Jenny stood at the door for a long moment, looking out over the surrounding area. There was no sign of the boy or his pony, but she had the feeling that he was near … watching her. The quiet was absolute. She wondered why she wasn’t frightened.
Slowly she pushed open the door and stepped inside. When her eyes adjusted to the gloom, her breathing quickened. What had once been a schoolroom was a shambles. Planks had been ripped from the benches and tables; splintered pieces lay on the floor, others had been carried off. Pages of books littered the floor amid pieces of broken slate. Stick chalk had been smashed and ground into the floor under the heels of heavy boots. A large slate at the front of the room had been broken, and only the frame remained attached to the wall.
Anger rose within her. Words she had heard muttered on the docks of Long Island by the sweating stevedores came to her mind. Not for a moment, as she gazed at the destruction, did she assume that the Shoshonis had done this. The room had been vandalized by someone who didn’t want the Indians to have a school and probably when it had been learned that a teacher was coming.
Thank goodness she had brought a trunk full of books and slates. On her first trip to town she would send an order for more. Someone was trying to deprive the Indian children of the education arranged for so carefully by a caring old man who had wanted to give back to the Shoshoni some of what they had given to him. Stoney Creek Ranch must be the prize, and Alvin Havelshell was a part of the conspiracy to get it. But why was the schoolroom destroyed and not Whitaker’s cabin? Of course! Someone planned to live there after she was gone.
So angry was she, so deep in thought, so preoccupied with how she would confront Havelshell when she saw him again, that she was unaware of the boy standing in the doorway until she almost bumped into him.
“Oh!” She stopped short. Then, “Hello—”
He stepped outside and she quickly followed. He stood not ten feet away and looked at her with eyes so dark a blue she would have thought them black if the rising sun had not cast a beam of bright light upon him.
“Hello,” Jenny said again. “Please don’t run away. Oh, I don’t know if you understand me. I hope you do.”
“I do. Will you leave now?”
“No. Absolutely not! I came to teach and that’s what I’ll do, if I have any pupils.”
He said nothing for a minute or two, but he never took his eyes off her face. Jenny returned his scrutiny. He was a tall boy with a slim, well-muscled body.
Finally he said, “What’s pupils?”
“Students … children who want to learn.”
The boy seemed to be about thirteen or fourteen. His face was beautiful with features sharply defined and framed by hair as black and shiny as a raven’s wing. It hung in two braids over his shoulders. The white band around his forehead was tied in back and in the knot was a white feather. His shirt and britches were well worn but clean.
“I’m so glad you speak English. I was afraid I’d have to learn Shoshoni.”
“Not all who come to your school will speak your language. If you stay,” he added after a pause.
“Will you be here to translate?”
“Translate?”
&nb
sp; “Will you help me teach them English?”
“You will not stay.”
“Why do you say that?”
He shrugged. “They do not want you here. They do not want anyone here.”
“Who are … they? And why don’t they want me here?”
He shrugged again and turned to go.
“Please don’t go. There’s so much I need to know … if I’m to stay and carry out Mr. Whitaker’s wishes.”
He walked to a thick stand of sumac, stepped behind it, then reappeared leading the spotted pony.
“Will you come to the school?”
He shrugged and looked away from her. He seemed reluctant to leave.
“Thank you for cutting grass for the horses.”
“They must eat.”
“What are you called?”
“Woksois.”
“Your Shoshoni name? Do you have an English name?”
“My father called me … Little Whit. But I am no longer little.”
“You’re Walt Whitaker’s son?”
“He was proud to call me son,” the boy answered defiantly.
“I should think so. Any man should be proud to call you his son.”
“Any man? Ha! Ha!” He spit contemptuously on the grass. Eyes that had been so clearly expressionless were now dark with resentment and suppressed rebellion.
Jenny didn’t know what to say. She studied him closely. All her experience had been with girls. She was unsure how to handle a proud young boy.
“I am determined to stay. But there is much I need to know. Will you help me?”
His gaze left her face and he looked toward the house. When his eyes returned to her, they were hard, resentful.
“I am not to go there … to my father’s house.”
“Because it is not on the reservation. I was told that. I will write to the … Big Chief in Washington and tell him it is unfair that you should have to sneak onto your father’s homestead.”
“I am not considered real son by the whites.”
“Was your mother not legal wife to Mr. Whitaker?”
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