Strongheart: The Lost Journals of May Dodd and Molly McGill

by Jim Fergus

  After all had greeted each other or been introduced, we got settled again for a time on our robes and blankets around the fire circle, making space for our new arrivals. When the food was ready, we all went up and carved hunks of meat off the various carcasses, a true pagan feast.

  “Where have you ladies been all this time?” I asked of Ann and Hannah as we sat back in our places to eat. “And why in the world have you come back?”

  “Me, I came back to find me darlin’ husband, Hóma’ke,” said Hannah. “Tell me, is he in this camp?”

  “Yes, he is, and if he’s not around here already, he is sure to be coming to the feast and dance.” At this news, Hannah leapt up from her place, not even finishing her meal, and said she was not going to wait, she would find her Little Beaver herself.

  “Yes, the child is truly smitten by that boy,” said Ann as we watched Hannah walk away. “It is one of the reasons we came back, but surely not my principal one, personally. Although, I must say, it did become extremely irritating listening to Hannah’s endless whining and crying over her lost husband. Truly, there are few things more tiresome, or useless, than a maidservant pining away for love. And, of course, she put the blame for their separation squarely upon me … not unjustly, I admit. To answer your question, we took the train east at Medicine Bow station, and, after some lengthy travel delays here and there en route, we finally made our way back to New York. There I booked passage for us on a ship bound to England. However, the only berth available was on a vessel that was still on its way to the city, and we had to wait for it to make port. Unfortunately, the bloody thing sank somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, which, of course, involved another long delay. During that period … and before … I had rather too much time to reconsider my decision to leave here. I could not get over that final image I had of you, Molly, and the confusion and disorientation it caused my essentially rational mind … which I believe I expressed in the letter I wrote to you. I had been greatly missing my home at Sunderland, but the more time I had to think about reentering the rather stultifying world of the British aristocracy, the less keen I became about returning there … Frankly, I began to miss my provincial friends here on the plains.”

  At this we all laughed, and Christian Goodman, who had now joined us with his wife, Astrid, said: “Yes, Lady Hall, it is true, we are peasants, one and all! And we missed you, too, reminding us of that.”

  “I realized that without my dear Helen,” she continued, “I really didn’t have a great deal to go home to. She and I kept largely to ourselves … due, of course, to the special nature of our relationship. And many of my old friends had made themselves scarce after that scandal became public, and I left Lord Hall. And so with all this damnable time on my hands, I spoke to a banker in New York and set in motion the long process of transferring funds from my accounts. Another ship finally arrived … but we let it leave for England without us. Instead we made again the long overland journey back here, and this time, the entire way, I had to endure little Hannah’s insufferably bubbly excitement about the prospect of being reunited with her little husband, Little Beaver. Upon arrival at Medicine Bow station, I had no difficultly locating Gertie via the Army. She, too, as it happened, was considering a change of life, which I’m sure she will describe to you herself.

  “And therefore, after what has seemed a long bit of aimless wandering, not to mention constant doubt and worry at the distinct possibility that we would make it all the way back and not find any trace of you … here we are…”

  “There will be dancing tonight, Lady Hall!” said Lulu. “To celebrate your and Hannah’s return, and May’s. Et aussi, la victoire, and also the warriors’ victory today on the battlefield.”

  “Splendid!” said Ann. “And I may just join in the festivities myself. You know that I’m mad about dancing, Lulu … for a girl with two left feet, that is. Truly, ladies, I feel already as if I’ve come home.”

  May and Gertie were in close conference together, two old friends reunited and catching up on what had happened to them both in these past months.

  For my part, I had begun to have a strange … even an uneasy feeling about all of us coming together at this particular time … the living and the presumed dead. I don’t know exactly how to say it, but it felt to me almost as if something was happening beyond us, out of our own control, for it seemed almost too much of a coincidence that we would all converge at this moment and in this place. I had the sense that we were puppet figures being manipulated by some master force … a silly notion, I know, but one I couldn’t shake.

  I left the light of the fire ring then, as everyone chattered gaily away, and I went to sit alone in the darkness beside the creek. I lay on my back in the grass to look up at the stars for some kind of answer to a question I did not even know how to pose. Without moonlight, and in this dry plains air, the stars were so dense against the black sky that it was almost impossible to even identify the constellations, the Milky Way a vast smear of whitewash. I have always taken comfort in this view, in the inevitable sense of self-recognition it forces regarding what a minuscule place we occupy in this vast unknowable universe; we are no more important than specks of dust blowing on the wind.

  A shooting star blazed across my line of sight, and I began to feel at that same moment my child moving in my belly. I took that as a good omen, and it anchored me back to earth. We must find a safe place for our children; it is the one overarching concern and responsibility of mothers of all species. For all my cynicism about the promise of a real world behind this one, the stars made me realize that anything is possible, and nothing unimaginable. Perhaps Holy Woman has brought us all together here, and we are getting close to finding that place. The birds and animals breed in the spring with the faith that their offspring will survive, and even if they don’t one year, even if they are destroyed by weather or predation or pestilence, they breed the following year with this same unextinguishable faith … and hope. And so the medicine woman leads us in ever-expanding circles, with the expectation, the hope, that this time she will find the opening, the entrance, the fissure, between this imperfect world and the better one beneath. Maybe I’m becoming a believer yet.

  The music is starting up, and it is time to go back to the dance.

  * * *

  The first event of the festivities is that of the warriors, recounting in dance today’s victory against the Crow. To our surprise, the very first to present is our own Martha. All those of us who know her well, white and Indian alike, are seated on the ground together. The orphan children we took in after their camp was raided by the soldiers and the Shoshone wolves have joined us, including my little friend Sehoso, Little Snowbird, who lost her baby to the soldier’s bullet. My little Mouse, Hóhkééhe, has also been waiting for me. The stars are so far away … but these children are right here.

  Now Martha enters the dance circle, wearing white face paint, her eyes rimmed in red, dressed in leggings and moccasins and a new warrior’s shift decorated with totem designs of birds, bears, and wolves. In addition she wears full battle regalia—a buffalo bone choker to protect her neck; a similarly styled breastplate with long rawhide fringe adorning each side; a leather-handled knife at her waist in a beaded and fringed sheath. On the other side of her waist, attached with a loop to the rawhide strap that serves as a belt, she carries a small beaded-handle stone tomahawk for close-in combat. She is stunning and terrifying at once, and I steal a glance at May, who stares in utter wonder at her friend.

  Accompanied by two overlapping steady drumbeats, one of a deeper tone than the other, three gourd shakers, and two flutists—all of whom Lulu has been working with to broaden the range of our music and to personalize it for the Strongheart society—Martha begins with a simple, prancing two-step, waving her hands forward in a kind of dogpaddle motion, mimicking the gait of a galloping horse, and clearly meant to bring to mind a warrior riding into battle. Now bending down, she picks up a lance and a leather shield that have been pla
ced for her in the circle. She wraps the thongs on the back of the shield around her left arm, and holds the lance in her right hand, the shaft tucked under her arm. She raises the shield, around the edges of which dangle eagle feathers, the center painted with three concentric red circles, in the middle of them a red hand in the universal sign meant to stop arrows and bullets. She faces the spectators, pointing lance and shield toward them, lowers her head and shoulders, bends her knees, and bounces slightly up and down to the beat of the music as if she is in the saddle and charging the enemy, her expression so fierce and focused that we have the uncanny sensation that she is charging us. As she rides, she moves the shield back and forth, up and down, ducking behind it as she deflects incoming arrows.

  Suddenly, she thrusts the lance forward, knocking her enemy off his horse, and the audience lets out a collective exhalation of breath that sounded something like aohhhhh, as if we have all been thusly unseated. Now Martha drops her lance and executes a kind of twirling motion with her body to suggest dismounting. She slips the tomahawk from her belt, takes several quick steps forward, drops to her knees, raises it high, and clubs the enemy with a single deadly blow. Slipping the handle of the tomahawk back into its loop, she draws her knife from the sheath, reaches down and grabs her victim’s head by the hair, and with a glint of firelight shining off the blade and a single sweeping backhand motion, she takes his scalp. She wipes both sides of the bloody blade on her leggings and slips the knife back into its sheath. As she stands, she detaches the warrior’s real scalp from the rawhide strap around her waist, raises it in the air, shaking it for a moment to the beat of the music, and then lets out a long, triumphant, ululating war cry that brings the spectators to our feet, joining her in ululation and spontaneously dancing in place, a kind of native version of applause in honor of Martha’s first kill and her extraordinary rendition of this feat. We white women are filled with pride for our Strongheart warrior. It is true that thus unleashed, we share the savage nature of all mankind, and why pretend otherwise?

  * * *

  Settled again in our place by the fire ring, Martha joins us, and all offer our congratulations and praise.

  “But Martha,” says May, who is surely the most astonished of all by her old friend’s performance, “not to overlook your remarkably athletic accomplishments on the battlefield, how in the world have you learned to dance like this, so graceful and expressive? I don’t mean to be unkind, dear, but you were never the most physically coordinated among us.”

  “For that, May,” she answers, “I must give full credit to my dance and theater instructor, Lulu LaRue—actress, dancer, singer, and choreographer. Perhaps you have already been introduced. Take a bow, Lulu.”

  “Oui, c’est vrai, it is true that we have a grand tradition of mime theater in France. I studied this art myself in Marseille when I was very young, under the tutelage of the son of the great Jean-Gaspard Deburau. I think the form will translate well into the native world, and I teach Martha how to do. Bravo, ma chère amie!… your interpretation and performance is brilliant.”

  “You see, May, I have come out of my shell,” Martha says. “I lived through an experience so ghastly that I am still unable to speak of it … but one day, I must tell you. The formation of our warrior society, and the training provided by Phemie and Pretty Nose, has strengthened my heart and my body and given me new confidence. I am no longer weak, and I am willing fight to my death for myself, for my people, and especially for my child.”

  “Where is Little Tangle Hair, Martha?” May asked.

  “He is in the camp of your husband, Little Wolf, with his father, Tangle Hair, and his second wife, Mo’ke a’e, Grass Girl, perhaps you remember her. He is loved and well cared for. I elected to stay with the Stronghearts when our band split off after the battle at Greasy Grass. I was not yet fully formed as a warrior, and I could not bear the idea of returning to life as a squaw. I have vengeance yet to take, and a man’s heart to drive a stake into.”

  “From what I have seen, my dear friend,” says May, “I would say that you are fully formed now.”

  “Yes, but truly only today did it come to fruition, May. Today, for the first time, I felt my true power. Soon I must go back and find my son.”

  “Yes, as I must find my daughter, Little Bird.”

  * * *

  The dancing and feasting went on all night, and they kept the fires burning, so that some of us simply curled up to sleep on the buffalo robes and blankets we brought to sit upon during the festivities, my little Mouse curled against me. We are all by now well accustomed to the steady, though sometimes monotonous drumbeat, but it also serves as a hypnotic and a soporific. Some of us wake periodically during the night and have those quiet, otherworldly conversations that seem to have a quality quite different from those by the light of day.

  May asked Gertie if she was still running her pack string for the Army, and Gertie answered that she has retired, though she’s kept a few of her mules, those that she’s most attached to.

  “What are you doing to make a living, then, Gertie,” May asked, “if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Oh hell, honey, ya know as well as I do that you and me can ask anything we want of the other, an’ get a straight answer. So, I’ll tell ya what happened. You know that I been burnin’ the candle at both ends for a long time now, workin’ for the Army and informin’ the Indians of the soldiers’ battle plans. I done it for you and your group a’ white gals, and I done it for Molly and her gang, too. I was takin’ Molly down to Medicine Bow station, after Cap’n Bourke took her prisoner…” Gertie half rolled over now to address me … “Maybe you already told her this part, eh, Mol?”

  “No, we haven’t talked about it.”

  “OK, then,” she said, turning back to May, “let’s just say then that somethin’ strange happened that didn’t really make no sense. Now, you know that I lived with the Southern Cheyenne a long time, had babies by ’em, traveled and lived some among the other tribes, too. So I got real used to strange things happenin’ that don’t have no explanation in the white world. And I finally got Injun enough over my years with ’em that these same things started to make sense to me, didn’t even seem strange no longer, just part a’ the deal, ya know? But this time, pretty much all the white folks who was there saw Molly fall off a cliff to certain death. Far as I can figger, maybe only Martha saw her rescued, and Lady Hall, she saw some version of both things happen, like she jumped and got rescued. She’s still got her knickers twisted about that.”

  “I am listening to this conversation, Gertie,” Ann said in a low voice, “and twisted knickers might be a slight misrepresentation. If you want confirmation, since they were the rescuers, why don’t you speak with our two native ladies, Pretty Nose and Phemie, now that you have the chance.”

  “I already done that tonight, Ann,” said Gertie, “and they say whatever we each saw is what happened. An’ that’s all they’ll say about it.”

  “That is a very enigmatic answer, and one that makes no sense.”

  “Nothin’ makes sense, Ann. But, see, May, I saw what all the white folks saw—the soldiers, Christian, Astrid, Hannah—I saw Molly … not so much jump, but fall off that damn cliff, saw it with my own eyes, plain as day, disappeared over the edge, end a’ story. Only, a’ course, it ain’t the end a’ the story, ’cause Molly is right here with us. An’ like I said, that’s why I thought you was both ghosts. Now, I may be a white gal but it made me realize that I been hangin’ around with the soldiers so damn long now I lost my Injun way of seein’ things. I realize I been workin’ for the wrong side, ’course that I knew all along, but I needed the job. I figgered I could use what I learned from the soldiers to help the Injuns, an’ a’ course, you gals. But see, there ain’t no more help to give, nothin’ that can save anyone now, you or them. This life is over for these folks. So when I found out that Lady Ann and Hannah had came back, and wanted me to help ’em find you all, I thought what the hell, an’ I quit my
damn job muleskinnin’ for the Army. I decided to throw in with the last of the hostiles … that includes you gals, by the way … fight an’ die with ya, ’cause that looks like how it’s gonna be. As to makin’ a livin’, I’ll do it the same way these folks do.”

  “You’re a good woman, Gertie,” May answers. “You’ve done everything you could for us, and for the Indians; you warned us time and again that the Army was coming. But these people are proud, and they aren’t ready to give up, and some of them won’t ever be ready. I don’t need to tell you that those of us still here stay mostly because we have no place else to go, and some of us have children, babies. I don’t know you, Ann Hall, but I was dear friends with Helen, and she spoke often of you. I know you’re a tenacious woman, as was Helen, and I admire you and Hannah for returning. At the same time, I think you’ve made a terrible mistake … probably all of us have made a terrible mistake. Gertie is right when she says there’s nothing to be done that’s going to save anyone, and we’re probably all going to die.”

  It was one of those brutally frank, middle-of-the-night confessions, the articulation of the thoughts and fears that nag us all in our dreams, wake us, and keep us awake until dawn comes, after which everything usually seems better, more hopeful, our night terrors exaggerated, and we go about our day. Now those of us who were awake at this witching hour and heard Gertie and May speak fall silent, recognizing the terrible truth of their words that will linger even after the first light of day, for the notion of death is not an abstract concept in this place.