Strongheart: The Lost Journals of May Dodd and Molly McGill

by Jim Fergus

  I laughed. “Yeah, something like that. You’re getting to know me a little too well, cowboy. It’s probably good that we’re going to part company soon.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he said, in a serious voice. “When you get back, Molly, will you get in touch with me right away?”

  “Hey, I’m not going anywhere just yet, let’s save the good-byes for later.”

  But I was going somewhere. I was planning to stay up all night if I had to, and finish my edit of the last journal, and then I was going to slip out early in the morning before JW woke up. That’s why I showed him where May and I kept the journals, so he could put it back himself. I didn’t want to say good-bye to him, because I figured we’d both fall apart, and I needed to stay strong … and so did he.

  THE LOST JOURNALS OF MAY DODD

  Still Alive

  At this shocking request, so matter-of-factly stated, my relief and gratitude were breached by waves of anguish flushing through my body, gooseflesh rippling over my skin, a terrible tingling sensation, my head reeling as if from a physical blow so that I feared I would faint. “Leave my daughter?” I managed to say. “You ask me to give up my child?”

  —from the lost journals of May Dodd

  1 November 1876

  I don’t know what Howls Along Woman had in mind by having us travel in a blizzard at night, except it seemed an essential part of her vision that needed to be respected for us to reach our destination … which, in retrospect, I suppose was sufficient reason. But I have to say that it was one of the most terrifying experiences of any of our lives, and I think we all nearly immediately regretted having left … and, given the choice, would have turned back to the safety of our band’s winter village … that is, if we knew where back was.

  The blackness of the night was complete, even the blowing snow that stung our faces. It was like being blind, and I wondered how our horses could possibly see; I saw not even the head of my horse, let alone Chance’s mount directly in front of me … if he was still there … no possibility of shouting to each other, for the roar of the wind drowned out all other sound, our senses completely disordered; no concept of direction, up, down, or sideways; no sense even of forward motion but for the flexing of Lucky’s flanks as she walked. It seemed that we were not moving, perhaps even being pushed backward; no sense of time, has it been five minutes, one hour, five hours, the entire night? When we left the village, Feather on Head rode to my left, with Wren’s baby board hanging on her breast, the straps of it tied securely to her back; Martha to my right with Little Tangle Hair similarly fixed upon his board, but I had no idea if they were still there, either, and I was terrified for them. My little Horse Boy, fulfilling his duties, rode with the herd and the pack animals. He is a slightly built child, and I remembered Gertie’s parting words, the cold wind swirling so hard around us, that I feared he would be blown off his mount, and I would never see him again … We were all of us locked in our own private maelstrom, each attached to a stationary horse, walking in place in the middle of an ungodly blackness that would never end; wherever we were going, if we were going anywhere, we would never arrive, that was the only thought certain in my mind. Molly was right, this was insane, we were all fools for listening to the girl’s vision. I thought I knew what dying felt like and maybe this was it, a whirlwind of darkness.

  And then it was over … I can’t say that the storm gradually lifted, or that we rode out of it, rather it simply, suddenly, released us from its grip and was gone. Chance turned around in his saddle. “I guess we made it, Mesoke,” he said with a smile. “But I was startin’ to have my doubts. Don’t think we’re goin’ to be travelin’ that way again real soon.”

  It was true that the friends we left behind just last night suddenly seemed impossibly far away. “I don’t think so either, cowboy.”

  Martha and Feather on Head, each with our babies, were safely on either side of me again, and both began to weep with relief, as did a number of the others. It looked to be just the first light of dawn wherever we were, the sun not yet risen, cold but windless, the winter further advanced here, it appeared, than in the other world behind this one.

  Pretty Nose now rode back through our line, to make certain all were still with us. “We need to sleep now, right here,” she announced in English, Arapaho, and Cheyenne, as she made the rounds.

  We were in a rolling semiarid landscape, cut with a series of deep coulees, and canyons that looked a little like some of the country around the Tongue River. She posted three sentries, and we led the horses into one of the coulees, at the bottom of which a small spring ran. We watered and hobbled them but left them saddled, took out blankets or buffalo robes from the pack panniers, and collapsed on the ground, I with Wren wrapped in my arms, after she had fed contentedly at Feather on Head’s breast, Chance at my side. Horse Boy slept with his horses, who appeared to be as exhausted as we were. I felt sorry for the sentries. I knew they would be relieved in an hour or so and would be allowed to sleep then, but I didn’t know how they could possibly keep their eyes open. We slept.

  We did not wake until midafternoon, except for Pretty Nose, who had wisely sent out Red Fox and Warpath Woman to scout the surrounding area to be certain that we were in a secure place. They returned with news that there was an Army detachment encamped roughly four miles from us, although the Indians do not observe distance, or time for that matter, in the same way as we, so we translate the number of miles based on how long it took them to ride there and back. Pretty Nose says that the soldiers have no Indian scouts with them, which means they are probably returning to their base camp having already fought, and their wolves have all gone home, which is what they do after being released from duty. The soldiers must have been still asleep in their tents when Red Fox and Warpath Woman came upon their camp, and did not appear to be moving today, for there was no activity and no fires burning. Even the sentries they had posted on two sides of the encampment were asleep. She believes this is further evidence that they have been engaged in battle, and are now resting … which means their guard is down. Pretty Nose surprised us then by saying that we are going to attack them tonight.

  “We are going to ride part of the way there, leave the horses with the boy, and go in on foot, to kill as many of the soldiers as we can in their tents.”

  “How many tents are there?” I asked her.

  With her hands she counted to thirty, which would suggest that that there might be roughly sixty soldiers altogether, assuming two to a tent.

  “And how many horses?

  She indicated about seventy-five.

  I looked at our tiny band and did the head count again. We had four Indian Strongheart women—Pretty Nose, Warpath Woman, Kills in the Morning Woman, and Woman Who Moves against the Wind; two Indian men warriors—Red Fox and High Bear. We had four white Strongheart women—Martha, Astrid, Ann, and me. We had two noncombatant white men—Christian and Chance; Red Fox’s wife, Singing Woman, and their two young sons of about eight and ten years; High Bear’s wife, the Arapaho girl, Coyote Woman, and their son of four or five years, and daughter of about six or seven. We had Horse Boy, about eleven; and two babies—Wren, and Little Tangle Hair, and their nannies, Feather on Head and Grass Girl. Twenty-three altogether, with only ten warriors. Against the soldiers, we were at least at a six-to-one disadvantage, except that they would presumably be asleep in their tents, not expecting attack. But then there was the likelihood of a fellow who wasn’t asleep, or one who had gone outside to take a pee, and those would surely cry out to warn the others … and then what would become of us? Still, Pretty Nose was our war chief, and I did not question her judgment … at least not aloud to the others. To Chance, I whispered, “What will you do?”

  “You know damn well, May, that I can’t take up arms against my own Army, my own people. Is this really what we came back here for? I thought we were goin’ to Chicago and get your kids back.”

  “I know you can’t, Chance. But I can. They killed my friends
and their babies. I have a score to settle. If the soldiers came upon us now, they’d do the same thing again. After this we’ll go back to Chicago.”

  “I guess that’s why them Shoshone folks call this the dead world, because that’s what we all do here, ain’t it, we just kill each other.”

  “I asked what you will do, Chance, meaning will you ride with us there, or stay here and wait for our return?”

  “I’ll stay here,” he answered. “Someone will need to look after the other women and children, and your babies, in case you don’t come back.”

  “You don’t sound that upset about the possibility. You just sound mad at me.”

  “Hmmm,” he muttered, gazing away at the landscape—the plains, the undulating hills, the buttes and rock formations that seem to stretch out forever in this country, and he nodded. “That’s what you think, is it, May, that I ain’t upset about losin’ you? That I’m just mad at you? Maybe I’m upset about losin’ you, and mad, OK?”

  “OK, Chance,” I said, placing my hand on his.

  That afternoon and evening were spent arranging our weapons and warrior outfits. The killing was to be done with knives, but if the camp were to be alerted to our presence, and we were forced to fight our way out, those of us with guns were told to take them. Thus I would be wearing my gun belt and Remington single action Army revolver in a holster at my hip.

  Lady Ann came to me to say that she had decided not to go on this mission. “I’m going home, May, and this time for good. I might be willing to make war against the soldiers if we were attacked or were attacking them on the battlefield. I hate them for killing my Helen and your other friends, but I’m not going to sneak into their tents like a common criminal and murder them in their sleep.”

  “Tell me, Ann, what is the difference,” I asked, “between that, and them attacking our camp at dawn on a frigid winter morning, shooting low into the tipis to kill us in our beds? Killing old women, men, and children, as well as our warriors?”

  “I’m sorry, May, but this is not my fight any longer. Helen is gone, and I don’t have the heart for it.”

  For that I had no further argument. I nodded. “Alright, I understand.”

  “I should also tell you, though she will herself, that Astrid, too, has decided not to participate. Christian’s pleas have apparently won out.”

  Now we were down to eight warriors instead of ten.

  Feather on Head, Grass Girl, Singing Woman, and Coyote Woman went to work mixing grease paints of bear fat and various colored pigments. They would paint our faces after we ate; there would be no sleep tonight. We knew that each of us was to be paired with a partner, and having learned now of the defectors, Pretty Nose told us who our teammates would be—she and Wind, Warpath Woman and Kills in the Morning Woman, Red Fox and High Bear, Martha and me. I was a little surprised that she had not paired me with Wind, with whom I had experience, and taken Martha for herself. But then I realized that as chief and our most experienced warrior, Pretty Nose was simply trying to create the strongest teams, and to do so she was keeping the Indian women together. I was untested in battle, and Martha, despite having taken her first scalp, was hardly a veteran warrior. With Ann and Astrid both deferring, and our strongest warriors, Phemie and Molly, no longer among us, we were the last of the white Stronghearts and clearly the weakest of those going out tonight.

  We ate lightly of dried buffalo and hardtack biscuits—a sort of tasteless, thick cracker—that the Shoshone had obtained from traders and given us as one of their numerous gifts when they came for the war games. Martha and I did not have much appetite, both of us nervous about the coming encounter. Especially after hearing Ann’s description, I did not feel that we were going to war but on an assassin’s mission. Other than the bandit Three Finger Jack, who deserved it, I had never killed another man, and though well trained by Wind on the subject, I wasn’t even certain I would be able to … At the same time, I knew that if either Martha or I hesitated, and one of our victims woke up, we would risk giving the others away.

  We finished dressing in our warrior outfits—I in my hide shift, leggings, and moccasins, my hair braided, an eagle feather affixed to one of them, a bone choker around my neck, and knotted around my waist the strap of buffalo hide that served as a belt and held my knife in a beaded sheath. A loop on the strap served to hold the stone-headed tomahawk Wind had made for me back at the cave. I donned my gun belt.

  Finally, the four noncombatant women applied our grease paint. I possessed the small mirror I had purchased back in Tent City, and after Feather on Head had finished her work on me, I looked at myself in it. I did not recognize the savage woman looking back at me, her face painted red, large black circles like the mask of a raccoon around her eyes. Martha was similarly colored, but the pigments reversed—her face black, eyes rimmed in red; the painted faces of our Indian women were equally fierce, Pretty Nose simply with lightning bolts on both cheeks. As I regarded the others, I could only imagine how terrified those young soldiers would be, awakened by a slit throat, these hellishly painted faces the last sight they would see on this earth.

  Chance came to my side as I mounted. “Look, I know I ain’t goin’ to talk ya outta this now,” he said. “So you just take care a’ yourself, May. Don’t do anything stupid … although I guess it’s too late for that, too … Do what you need to do, but then you come back to your daughter and me.”

  “I promise, Chance. But just in case … something happens … I want to say, thank you. I want you to know how grateful I am to you.”

  “For what?”

  “For being who you are, for being my husband, for loving me. You are the finest, sweetest, most loving man I’ve ever known … I’ll see you back here when this is over … and then we’re going to Chicago.”

  There were no tears, we were too scared for tears.

  We rode out, Martha and I side by side. Horse Boy, too, among us. He was needed to guard the horses while we went about our gruesome business in the camp. It was a cold night, with a full moon in the sky that in this dry plains air lighted the land like a beacon, boldly casting our shadows moving across the ground.

  “May?” Martha whispered.

  “Yes?”

  She turned to me. “Look at us … Did you ever imagine this?… did you ever imagine when we left Chicago only a year and a half ago, that we would be dressed and painted like this?… Riding off with an Indian war party to attack a U.S. Army encampment of soldiers?”

  “That’s all the time it’s been, is it?” I said. “Good God, it seems like an entire lifetime has passed. No, Martha, I could never have imagined this, nor anything else that’s happened to us, and to you, since we’ve been here.”

  “Do you think you can do it? Do you think you can kill a soldier in his bed?”

  “I don’t know … and you?”

  “I killed that Crow warrior … I took his scalp … I’ve become a savage … but I don’t know, either…”

  “I killed a man in his bed, Martha, I slit his throat. I haven’t told you. I was glad I did it. But this is different. Still, we must remember that the soldiers would kill us if they had a chance. They’ve already killed our friends and their babies.”

  “It would be easier if we were fighting them in a battle, they would be our enemies then.”

  “That’s what Ann said to me. But they’re our enemies now.”

  “Did you read Meggie and Susie’s journals, May?”

  “Yes, and I have them. Molly gave them to me, all of them, hers, too.”

  “They thought that taking vengeance against the soldiers would give them some release from the pain of losing their infants. But it didn’t, it just made them feel worse.”

  “I’m not looking for release from pain,” I said, “which, in any case, seems an impossible goal. At this point, I just want to survive.”

  “So do I,” said Martha. “And yet we’re leaving our babies back there, and risking our lives to kill a few soldiers? How does tha
t help us to survive?”

  “We’re Strongheart women, Martha, we took a blood oath to support each other. We’re going because Pretty Nose asked us to. These people are fighting for their way of life, and for their lives.”

  “Yes…,” she said, “and you and I don’t even know if we can do it.”

  * * *

  We arrived at the spot Red Fox and High Bear had scouted to leave our horses, and dismounted. We were still some distance away from the Army encampment, but close enough that we could smell the smoke and see the dying glow of their fires.

  Pretty Nose came to Martha and me. “You two will stay back here.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “To help Horse Boy look after the horses. And if you hear a signal from us, to ride in with them … in case we need to escape. I’ve already told the boy, he knows what to do.”

  I was certain now that Pretty Nose must have sensed Martha’s and my hesitation. “You don’t trust us to go in with you, do you?” I asked.

  “It is not that, Mesoke. I do trust you. But you are white women, and you do not move as we do, like ghosts. The soldiers will not know we are there … unless something happens. That’s why I need you here, in case the camp wakes, and you must come for us.”

  It is true, what she said, and Martha and I watched as the warriors began to run toward the soldiers’ encampment, spreading out across the plain, their gait light, lithe, and silent, as if their moccasined feet barely grazed the ground, running with the same balletic grace of a herd of antelope. It was only Phemie among us who could match, and even exceed, the elegance of their stride. Truly, they did move like ghosts, like another species of human being altogether, one perfectly adapted to this landscape in which they have evolved, and where they belong far more than do we.