Strongheart: The Lost Journals of May Dodd and Molly McGill

by Jim Fergus

  “Yes, I know well that she wishes for me to leave her to die,” he answered. “But I cannot. She did not let me die.”

  “But you are a young man, too young to die, and she is an old woman, sick and tired, and ready to go to Seano. You must let her go, Hawk, if that is what she wishes.”

  “I give her food and water. She eats and drinks. I make her comfortable at night to sleep.”

  “I think you do that for her, and also for yourself, my husband.”

  “Yes, in these last months,” Hawk admitted, “I have lost my grandfather, my mother, my wife, and my son. I do not wish to also lose my grandmother. She is the last person I have left in my family.”

  “No, Hawk, that is not so, you have me left, and the child we are going to have.”

  We try never to be far from running water when we travel, and we dropped down later that afternoon into a small creek bottom to make an early camp. When we stopped, Hawk and I hobbled the two horses to allow them to graze on the lush grass, and we unlashed the travois from his mount. Before we bore his grandmother to the place where we would camp by the river, Hawk bent down to tell her that we had arrived for the evening. It took us both only a moment to recognize that Bear Doctor Woman was dead. I know she had been waiting for me, or perhaps for his mother … it makes no difference … to return to look after her grandson, Little Hawk, so that she could die in peace and begin her journey to Seano.

  Hawk cut some sapling trees and built a burial platform, upon which we placed the travois bearing the old woman. She seemed almost weightless as we lifted her up. Hawk also placed a few of her possessions and spirit totems on the travois, to aid her passage. Darkness has descended as I write. I have built and lit the fire. Hawk sits cross-legged beneath his grandmother’s remains, and in a very low voice he begins to sing to her, or to the Great Spirit, or perhaps to both … I do not know and do not ask.

  I sleep, and I wake in the night, and still he sings, and when I wake again at dawn, he sings still. Finally, he stands, raises his arms toward the heavens, and turns to bless each of the four directions. I stoke the fire and warm a little meat that had been meant to serve as our evening supper. We eat in silence, then prepare the horses for departure, pack up our own few belongings, and ride out as the sun breaks the crest of the eastern hills, and a new day arises.

  22 August 1876

  More days of wandering, though often where we find buffalo herds or other game animals plentiful, we stay in one place for a longer period of time. I still visit my friends regularly, riding back and forth from our respective camps and often spending the afternoon with them. Yet Hawk and I are still camping and traveling away from the others, for we cherish our time alone together. How I love this man, and he me, and how our love grows from day to day. We are happy talking together, or just riding in silence, setting up and breaking down our camps. I accompany him on his hunts, becoming rather accomplished, if I may say so, in the art of archery, and I help him to skin and butcher what we kill. Although no one else will ever read it … I blush writing this … we are incapable of getting enough of each other’s bodies, we seem never fully sated, always wanting more. We make love when we wake in the morning, after the midday meal, before we go to sleep, and often in the middle of the night. I feel always wanton in his presence, hungry to give and receive pleasure; we are like animals in rutting season, and often all it takes is simply a glance between us to make us ride into a copse of trees, dismount, and throw ourselves at each other. I cry out lustily at my release when Hawk pleasures me, and frequently I begin weeping, a feeling I have never before experienced. This is where love grows, how hearts swell and bodies burst with joy. God … it is wonderful.

  I have spoken at length to Hawk about Ma’heona’e, Holy Woman, the blind one who leads us. He says she is very wise, and when I ask him where she is taking us, he admits that he does not know. He explains that some believe in an ancient tribal creation story that tells of a real world behind this one, a world from which the first People came thousands of generations ago, a world where there is no war or famine, where the earth is fecund, the animals, birds, and game plentiful, the buffalo herds endless, the rivers and seas full of fish, a world where the mountains, plains, and oceans are so vast that much of it has never been traveled by human beings, and where people of all tribes and all colors live in peace and harmony, with endless space for all, the way this world was supposed to be.

  “It is said that the People live there much in the same way as we do here,” Hawk says, “they are born and they die, sometimes they have accidents on their horses, or are killed by bears or wolves, or trampled by buffalo, but they do not die of the sicknesses the whites have brought among us. The children do not starve to death, nor are they shot by arrows, killed with knives or lances or bullets, for people do not kill each other, and there are no guns. They dance, sing, feast, marry, make love, and give birth. They hunt, gather roots, plants, and fruits, and they plant small crops to feed themselves. They play games and have contests of athletic skill, physical strength, horsemanship, archery, and running. The women, too, compete in these contests, and often against the men. And sometimes all compete against other tribes, and though the competition is spirited and sometimes even fierce, it is all friendly and in good nature.”

  “How lovely. And this is the world to which the blind woman is leading us?” I ask.

  “Yes, she says she knows how to find it,” he answers. “She saw it in a vision.”

  “It sounds like the way the People describe heaven, except everyone is not dead. It sounds like a wonderful dream.” I laugh, a bit sarcastically. “No wonder it’s taking so long to get there. And you believe this?”

  “I do not know what to believe.”

  “Which means you don’t really believe. And yet we follow her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Out of respect. My grandmother said that Holy Woman has big medicine, and to follow her is the correct thing to do.”

  “How did your grandmother know it was Holy Woman who was leading us?” I ask.

  “Because she knew her,” he answers, “and because my grandmother was a fine tracker. She knew how Holy Woman travels and she recognized her horse’s gait and the imprint of its hooves on the trail. We have been following you for some time.”

  “I feel that we’ve been traveling in ever widening circles.”

  “Yes, that is true.”

  “It makes no sense.”

  “No, it does not make sense,” Hawk admits. “Yet we have found buffalo to hunt, and other game to feed us. We have not cut the trail of soldiers, and their scouts have not cut ours.”

  “Not yet, at least,” I say. It is true that we have been well nourished in our travels so far, and have not encountered enemies. Except for the inescapable sense of trepidation and fragility, the sense of our own tenuousness, it has been a pleasant sojourn thus far. Especially for Hawk and me, since we have refound each other.

  “But must we not soon be looking for a place to make our winter camp?” I ask. “Or find Little Wolf and his people? We cannot just wander forever.”

  “Yes, but it is in winter when we are settled that the soldiers attack us. And the larger the village, the easier it is for the wolves to find. As all have learned, we cannot defend ourselves against such attacks; we cannot protect our families.”

  “So we just keep moving, indefinitely?” I ask. “Following a blind woman in ever widening circles, hoping to find the entrance to a perfect, mythical world, a utopia that does not exist? That is madness. We cannot stop winter from coming on, and we must be settled before the snow falls.”

  “Ma’heona’e takes us in circles because in her vision that is how she found the real world behind this one, by traveling the sacred circle. She has been there, and seen it, and came back to tell the People, and to lead them there.”

  “Yes, she had a dream, and she found herself in that perfect world, and in her dream I’ll bet she could see a
gain. And now we’re all traveling to find her dream. Except dreams only exist in one’s dream world, not in the world in which everyone else lives. It is a beautiful notion, a beautiful dream, and it describes a place where I wish we could all live. I admire Holy Woman for all that she has suffered and endured, but it is madness to follow her in circles.”

  Hawks looks at me with that sly, almost imperceptible smile that has always melted my heart … and my body. I take his strong brown hand, so lean and perfectly formed, in mine, press my lips to it, slide them across his fingers, and take them in my mouth. I adore the way he tastes and smells. His other hand slips under my antelope hide shirt to find my breast … and then … and then … maybe we have already arrived in the perfect world to which Holy Woman is leading us, and we just don’t know it yet.

  5 September 1876

  Early this cool, autumnal morning, as Hawk and I sat by our fire wrapped together in a trade blanket, we heard the first morning call of a meadowlark. I was surprised when Hawk answered with one of his hawk calls—not the screeching, high-pitched sound the raptors utter when flying, rather a kind of inquisitive single chirping tone, as if he and the meadowlark were engaging in conversation. We heard then at some distance a horse whinny, and snort, and several others respond to it and I thought there must be a whole group of riders approaching us. I was alarmed but Hawk did not seem to be.

  Shortly thereafter, two women rode into our camp, each trailing a pack horse, well laden with goods, and a string of half a dozen additional horses, three attached to each of the pack animals. I recognized the first woman, the prophet Woman Who Moves against the Wind. She greeted Hawk in Cheyenne and slid agilely from her saddle. He stood and answered her warmly. I have always been a little intimidated by this woman, Little Wolf’s most trusted advisor. She is tall, powerfully built, and has the unmistakable air of authority about her. She was dressed in traditional beaded leggings and moccasins and a deer hide shift, split up the middle for riding. She carried a quiver of arrows on her back, with a bow tied behind her saddle, and a Winchester rifle in a scabbard strapped to her horse’s neck. She pointed in the direction from which we had heard the horses and spoke again to Hawk, something about a number of horses hobbled and grazing in the meadow behind our camp, a gift she said they had brought to us. He smiled, nodded, and thanked her.

  The second rider was a white woman. She sat her horse for a moment, taking in the scene with an alert gaze that missed nothing, seeming to size us up before also dismounting. She wore a stylish, broad-brimmed hat of a sort we saw recently when we came upon a cattle drive headed north, the Texas cowboys wearing headwear such as this. Beneath the hat, light brown hair worn loose spilled over her shoulders. She had a fair complexion that, like my own, has been darkened a few shades by exposure to the sun. She cut a fine figure, dressed rather stylishly in a canvas shirt, denim trousers tucked into high leather boots, a pair of leather chaps, and a fringed frontiersman jacket, similar to the one our Christian Goodman sports. Beneath her jacket, I saw that she wore a holstered revolver on her hip.

  Hawk clearly knew her, as well, and expressed both pleasure and great surprise to see her now. She seemed to speak like a native, answering him in what sounded to me like perfectly fluent Cheyenne, of which I was envious. In fact, I admit that on first sight I experienced a slight twinge of jealousy. It is not an unattractive language once one becomes accustomed to it, with a certain lilting cadence, and this was an undeniably pretty girl who had interrupted our honeymoon. I wondered for a moment if she had been captured as a child and grown up among the People, as had Hawk’s mother, though if that were the case, she would clearly not be dressed in white-woman attire.

  Hawk invited them to join us at our fire. Woman Who Moves against the Wind said that she had coffee to share and pulled a rawhide bag of it from her saddlebag, while the white woman fetched a tin coffeepot and two cups from a parfleche strapped to her pack horse. Some of our group have coffee and other items taken from the Army’s pack animals captured at the Little Bighorn, as well as tobacco taken off dead soldiers. Hawk and I had run out of coffee some time ago, and have since been drinking a kind of bitter tea brewed from roots, mint, or whatever other edible herbs and berries we come across.

  As is customary when one has visitors, from his saddlebag Hawk took his pipe and pouch of tobacco, which now included that of Josh Miller, to offer them a smoke. In order to make it last longer, we have mixed it with the native herbs the Cheyenne smoke when the real thing is not available. Now we sat around the fire, drinking coffee and passing the pipe. I tried to absorb as much of the conversation as I could, though I made no effort to try to participate in it. They appeared to be discussing the movements of the troops, the scouts, our own plans, a winter camp, the location of Little Wolf’s village. The white woman had not yet addressed me, and finally, feeling a bit left out, as I passed the pipe to her I asked her in my rudimentary Cheyenne if she spoke English.

  She laughed. “Rather well. Do you?”

  I, too, laughed. “A great deal better than I speak Cheyenne.” I held out my hand to her. “My name is Molly.”

  “And mine is May,” she said, taking my hand.

  I felt a small shiver run up my back.

  I stood and fetched Josh’s saddlebags, inside which I keep Meggie’s, Ann’s, and my ledger book, the young soldier’s diary, and Carolyn’s leather-bound calendar book. I came back to the fire, took out the ledger, and slipped the single loose sheet of paper from inside the cover.

  “I believe I may have something of yours. That is, if you are who I think you might be.”

  “And who would that be?” she asked.

  “May Dodd?” I suggested tentatively.

  “Yes … it’s true, I was May Dodd a long time ago, before I became May Dodd Ames, upon taking the name of my common-law husband, later reverting to my maiden name. Then I became May Dodd Little Wolf, known familiarly as Mesoke, Swallow, after I married the great Cheyenne Sweet Medicine chief. More recently, since I have been interacting again in the world of the whites, I go by the alias Abigail Ames. Now I’m not really sure who I am any longer. And who might you be?”

  “I am Molly McGill Hawk, known familiarly as Heóvá’é’ke, Yellow Hair Woman, or Mé’koomat a’xevà, Woman Who Kicks Men in Testicles. Take your pick … both names, I must say, are considerably less charming than Swallow.” May laughed heartily, and with the formal introductions out of the way, we shook hands again, firmly and warmly, like two old friends reunited, though we had just met.

  Now she took the piece of ledger paper from my hand, placing it on her crossed leg. She looked down at it and smoothed it lightly with her fingers, smiling ironically. “Good God, if it isn’t the proverbial message in a bottle.” She looked into my eyes with a searching gaze. “How in the world did you find this?”

  “In your cave, where you left it.”

  “But how? When?”

  “Some months ago, in the spring, late April or early May, I would guess.”

  May laughed with a slightly bitter edge. “You must be one of the new group of white women in the brides program, aren’t you?” she asked. “I should have known. And you’ve kept a journal. I see that it did not take the government long to replace us. Surely you must know by now that the program was discontinued before your arrival, and that you have been abandoned in the wilderness by your government?”

  “Yes, of course,” I answered. “We know all about that. We are fugitives. You and I have a great deal to talk about, May.”

  “Indeed we do, Molly. But, please, tell me first, what in the world led you to the cave?”

  “Your friend Martha took Meggie and Susie Kelly and me there. You see, Martha lost her mind for a time, and she was certain she would find you there. She hadn’t accepted the fact that you were dead … and, indeed, you aren’t. We went with her to humor her, to try to coax her back to reality. However, not finding you in the cave had exactly the opposite effect.”

  “The
n you must have seen our burned village. What brought you there in the first place?”

  I told May then about the capture of our group, and the time we had spent in Crazy Horse’s village, and I explained that after we left the Lakota, Hawk took our little band to Little Wolf’s burned winter village, to pray to the remains of his mother, wife, and son.

  “But that’s astonishing, Molly,” May said, “because Martha almost did find me there. Perhaps in her madness she somehow sensed that. Wind and I stayed in that cave for forty-eight days while I was recovering from my wound. The medicine woman saved my life and nursed me back to health. We must have only recently left when you arrived. It is true that I had no calendar, but Wind had counted exactly how long we had been there, and I computed that it must be sometime in late April or early May. We couldn’t have missed you by more than a few days. Had we only stayed a little longer, we could have joined you … and … believe me … saved ourselves a great deal of trouble.”

  “May, I’m very confused about something,” I said. “Woman Who Moves against the Wind was with Little Wolf’s band. How could she have been with you in the cave at the same time?”

  May laughed. “Because there are two of them?”

  “What in the world does that mean? Two women with the same name?”

  “Like the Kelly girls, they are identical twins. I lived for ten months in Little Wolf’s lodge and I never knew that myself, for they are rarely seen together. It was the two of them who built the burial scaffolds upon which the charred bones of our dead were placed, including those of Hawk’s family.”

  “You must tell Hawk about this,” I said.

  “Wind has already done so.”

  We sat in silence for a long moment, perhaps both of us pondering the strange and desperate circumstances that had brought us together.

  “In your time here, May,” I asked, finally, “has it ever occurred to you that you’re living among a different species of beings, in a world other than our own?”