Daughter of the Sword

by Jeanne Williams

  “You’ve told her you love her? As a man, not a guardian?”

  “Hell, that made her worse!”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, she took on about how blind and heartless she’d been and how I need a wife who won’t always love a dead man!”

  Deborah winced. Johnny passed a big hand over his eyes. “Sorry, but I’m at my wit’s end. I won’t have people sniggerin’, sayin’ I got the baby on her, or someone else who didn’t care enough to marry her.”

  “But you’ll take care of her! It doesn’t matter what people say—”

  “Hell, it don’t! I’ll carve up anyone looks at her sideways, but think about the kid! He’s your nephew—well, niece, maybe. No fun bein’ a bastard. But Sara’s not thinkin’ straight.”

  Watching his struggle, Deborah understood and was shaken at the depths of this formidable man’s adoration. Sara might be able to proudly carry and bear Thos’s child, rear him with her love for a shield and pride for armor, but Johnny couldn’t endure that she’d be gossiped about, speculated on by the men who stopped at the smithy. If that explosive situation developed, he’d kill anyone who insulted Sara; and if she persisted, there’d be insults.

  Head bowed, Johnny cleared his throat. “I’m older than Sara, ugly and rough. I wouldn’t expect her to share my bed. If she meets up with a man who’ll do right by her and the kid, she can divorce me.”

  “Oh, Johnny, she’d never use you like that!”

  “Whatever she does is fine,” he said stubbornly, “providing it doesn’t hurt her.”

  “You told her all this?”

  “Tried. Made a botch.” His smoke-dark eyes lifted to her hopefully. “Figgered maybe—You’re Thos’s sister. You might do better.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Deborah was quiet a moment, absorbing the news. Thos’s baby! He wouldn’t, after all, completely vanish. There might even be a little boy who’d look like him. Oh, Sara mustn’t make it a harsh and bitter thing, to bear the child of Thomas Whitlaw, the grandson or granddaughter of Leticia and Josiah!

  “Good!” breathed Johnny. “Can you come with me in the mornin’?”

  “That’s when we were going,” said Deborah. “I thought it was time I stopped imposing on the Landers, and, most of all, I wanted to know how all of you were getting along.”

  Johnny looked at her keenly. “Conrad’s not givin’ you trouble?”

  “No!” The sharpness of her cry startled her.

  “Loves you, don’t he?”

  Deborah nodded mutely.

  Johnny sighed. “And you’re still longin’ after Dane Hunter! Beats all, don’t it, the way people get so mixed around?” His gentle growl was soothing. “But listen, honey, don’t you feel bad about Conrad. It’s when a person’s got no one to love that they’re to be pitied.” He grinned at her attempted protest. “Hin! Don’t you reckon I know?”

  She had to smile at that. Johnny chuckled, too, before he went on. “You best stay here till that Rolf’s gone for good. We’ll keep you out of sight of strangers while you’re visitin’, but I sure don’t want that wild young feller learnin’ where you are.”

  He shook his head. “Never quite liked him, though I took to his brother the minute I laid eyes on him. Rolf’s sort of crazy. He may have gone after those raiders because he cared about your folks, but he wound up enjoyin’ what he was doin’. Said Dane can’t call him a youngster now. Said he didn’t kill from a distance, but up close, and has the scalps to prove it.”

  Deborah shuddered. “That’s going to be awful for Dane! What’ll he do?”

  “What can he do?” Johnny spread his snarled, blackened hands. “Rolf was a handful, I guess, even in England.” He added hopefully, “Maybe he’ll join the gold rush and get his hair lifted! My brothers-in-law always admired that gold shade of hair.”

  He said it with such wistful reminiscence that Deborah wondered if he’d possessed a scalp or two. She didn’t ask.

  The next morning, early, they bid Ansjie good-bye. “Hurry back!” she told Deborah with a warm hug. “I wouldn’t let you go, except that Mr. Chaudoin’s promised you’ll come again.”

  “You’ll be tired of me by spring.” Deborah laughed. “But after I move back to the smithy, you’ll have to come and visit. Maybe we can find you that doctor or handsome blacksmith—one who’s no dummkopf, enjoys his food, and is strong!”

  “We’ll find a doctor,” Johnny declared. “I don’t want any handsome competition!”

  “Who could compete with you, Mr. Chaudoin?” dimpled Ansjie.

  She waved them on their way as they rode out of the village across the frost-glittering, crunching prairie grass. Following was Sleipner’s two-year-old colt, the one Conrad had promised to Johnny. “Fine figure of a woman, your sister,” said Johnny to Conrad. “You’ll lose a grand housekeeper when she marries.”

  “For her sake, I hope that’s soon,” returned Conrad. “Ansjie’s twenty-three. From the way she looks at children, I know she wants some of her own, but there’s no one for her in Friedental. I’m serious about finding a doctor and blacksmith for the village, though, and you may be sure I’ll view prospects through the eyes of a possible relative.”

  “Well, if that don’t work, she’s mightily welcome to stay at the smithy for a while,” Johnny said. “All kinds of people stop, and come spring, the gold rush to Pike’s Peak’ll be on full blast.” He winked. “Maybe she better catch some feller on the way back when he’s got gold in his pockets, not just on his head!”

  “Ansjie has enough to marry poor.” Conrad smiled slightly. “I was glad to let my younger brother become Graf and lord of the castle, but I made sure of sufficient funds for Ansjie and myself.”

  The sun turned the high brown grass rosy-gold as the frost melted. Chica pranced coquettishly between Johnny’s Appaloosa and Sleipner, named, so Conrad had explained, for the eight-legged steed of Odin. The colt often ran ahead and kept a respectful distance from his elders. There was no wind and the air was bright, crystalline, bracing.

  At noon they watered their horses and shared the generous lunch Ansjie had packed: sausage, cheese, rye bread, boiled eggs, pickles, gingerbread, and dried fruit.

  “Enough here for supper and all day tomorrow!” Johnny said. “Whoever gets your Ansjie sure won’t waste away!”

  “No,” agreed Conrad. “And he’ll win much more than good food. Ansjie has heart to give, cheerfulness and hope.”

  Do I? thought Deborah. What can I give Dane, except my love? That, just now, seemed a despairing, battered thing. She knew she could be a good friend, but she had no confidence in her gifts as a lover. They hadn’t been enough to hold him before. Perhaps the only thing to say for her love was that it had lasted.

  They rode with an eye for other travelers, having agreed that Deborah would muffle her face with scarf and hood in the unlikely case of their meeting anyone, but the trip was uneventful. Squirrels; woodchucks, and prairie dogs were burrowed away for their winter sleep, but a sleek, coffee-brown mink was fishing in the creek and cottontails frequently bounded out of their way, one pursued by a coyote. Prairie chickens whirred and a hawk, wheeling in the sky, plummeted to seize one that left the cover of the grass.

  Maccabee and Laddie were still at work, so they only waved and shouted greetings, but Sara and Judith ran out, enfolding Deborah in their arms before she was well out of the saddle. Swept inside while the men saw to the horses, Deborah laughed and cried, said she was fine, and cut off the flow of questions to catch Sara’s hands and say, “Oh, Sara, it’s wonderful about the baby!”

  To her shock, Sara gave her a searching look. “You mean that?”

  “Well, of course I do! It was awful, Thos dying that young—there was so much he never got to do! But at least you loved each other. And the baby will keep him alive. What could it be but wonderful?”

  Sara looked as though some rigidity had melted. “That makes me happy. I thought you might not want an Indian to have your brother’
s child.”

  Stunned, Deborah couldn’t speak for a minute. Then she caught Sara’s shoulders and gave her a fiercely gentle little shake. “Don’t let me hear such foolishness again!”

  “But—”

  “Anyway, I’m stuck with you for a sister-in-law,” said Deborah with mischief. “Thos didn’t love anyone else!”

  “Just what I been tellin’ her,” approved Judith.

  “I’m glad, too,” Sara murmured. “But I—I told Johnny before anyone could see so that if he were angry, I could go away and no one would say bad things.”

  “But since he wasn’t angry, you’ll let him take the blame?” thrust Deborah.

  “No! I—”

  “People will blame him.” Ruthless because of her two loved friends, her dead brother, and the unborn child, Deborah pressed on, though she ached for the slender girl, who stared at her in disbelief. “Everyone knows how Johnny’s kept men away from you. Some will think the worst. And if Johnny hears you blackguarded, you know what he’ll do!”

  Sara made fists of her small hands. “It wouldn’t be fair to marry him!” she cried. “I still love Thos! I always will!”

  “All the more reason to marry someone who understands that and will help you with the child.”

  “He does it from pity!”

  “He does it from love.” Sara shook her head blindly. Deborah persisted. “I’ve seen for a long time that Johnny worships you. Let him do this thing, meshema. It will make him happy. He’ll be a strong, kind father. And he asks nothing.”

  “Look here!” They turned at Judith’s brisk tone. She had her hands on her hips and her eyes sparkled. “Wasn’t for that pesky pride of yours, Sara, what’d you want to do?”

  Sara bit her lip. Judith laughed, slipping an arm around her. “You study on it, you’ll see what’s right!” she encouraged. “But I hear those men and I bet they’re hungry! We better rustle!”

  After a hearty meal, they gathered in front of the fireplace. Johnny started humming “Sweet Betsy from Pike” and soon they were all singing. Maccabee led into “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” a song of how escaping slaves traveled toward the North Star, marked by the gourd, or dipper, and when they’d learned that, Conrad sang his English version of “The Rose Garden” and then taught them a lusty drinking song, till the men were roaring “Du, du liegst mir im Herzen …” as stoutly as if they were in some Hofbrauhaus. Judith began a song in which Maccabee joined with a tune so sweepingly infectious that the rest of them were soon chorusing.

  “Oh, now, my brother, when the world’s on fire

  Don’t you want Abraham’s bosom to be your pillow—”

  When they’d clapped and sung through that, Johnny sang in his rusty, oddly touching voice, his gaze on Sara, beautiful in the firelight:

  “I gave my love a chicken that had no bone,

  I gave my love a cherry that had no stone.

  I gave my love a story that had no end,

  I gave my love a baby with no crying.”

  And when he’d finished the tender riddle, Sara held her shawl almost as if she held a child and sang a Shawnee lullaby. Then she crossed to Johnny and put her hand in his.

  “That will be my song for our child,” she said. “But you may sing to him in English, or even in Sioux.”

  He stared at her. Then bafflement dissolved in joy and he sprang up, catching her in a bear hug that he belatedly gentled. “Hey, that calls for the best whisky! We’re goin’ to have us a weddin’!”

  Even Laddie was allowed to drink to that.

  Much as Deborah wanted to attend the ceremony, Johnny felt it dangerous for her to be seen in town till Rolf had positively left the region. Judith, as a runaway, couldn’t risk appearing, but the next day, when Conrad and Deborah rode back to Friedental, Johnny and Sara started to Lawrence, accompanied by Laddie and Maccabee.

  When Sara and Deborah embraced in farewell, Sara gripped her tightly. “You—you think Thos wouldn’t mind?” she murmured so no one else could hear.

  “If he knows, I’m sure he’s glad,” Deborah said. “He’d certainly better be!” She sounded so much the stern twin sister that they both burst into shaky laughter.

  Taking Deborah aside, Johnny had asked her if she wanted another Bowie. “Not yet,” she said. She needed no defense at Friedental. “When I come back, Johnny, then I’ll need one.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Then you will. But I’m glad you don’t want it yet.”

  At noon Deborah and Conrad finished the food Ansjie had sent with them, resting by the creek. “Johnny’s a good man,” said Conrad. “I think they’ll do well together.”

  “Yes. Strange, but it’s about the only way Johnny could ever have felt it was all right to ask Sara to marry him.” Remembering Thos, the manner in which he and Sara had glowed together, Deborah forced back the lump in her throat. “Johnny is a lot older, of course, but—”

  “He’s forty-three.” Conrad’s tone was dry. “Not such a vast age when one’s within eight years of it.”

  “I didn’t mean—” Deborah floundered. “I suppose it’s his beard and gray hair. Besides, he did seem old when we met four years ago because Thos and I were so young.”

  “Children, in fact,” suggested Conrad with a twinkle.

  “One does grow up,” said Deborah with hauteur.

  “Does one?”

  Evading that question along with his amused gaze, Deborah grew pensive. “I’m so glad about the baby and gladder that Sara quit being a mule, but it’s certainly going to be different when I go back. They’ll have each other and they’ll both have the child.” She chuckled ruefully. “I feel left behind. And I’ve a strong suspicion that Maccabee and Judith will marry. I think he’s cared about her since she first visited the smithy last summer.”

  “So patience may have it’s reward.” Conrad shook his head, rising among the leafless oaks. “I hope the man you love comes back to you. But remember, always remember, that I’m a man who loves you.”

  When she would have spoken, he smiled and raised his hand. “I’m happy in it. I won’t speak of it till you’ve seen him or had word. You owe me nothing. But you can ask me for anything.”

  She looked at him, distressed. He put out his hand and touched her face. “What I noticed the first time I saw you, and when I came to fetch you from, the smithy, is your April face. It changes so quickly from sadness to gaiety, and the other way around. You were meant to be a happy person, Deborah, but you’ve been fated to endure the struggle of your country. You will, I fear, have to weep often. Laugh, then, when you can.”

  “When I really think about my family, how they died, then I feel guilty, ashamed that I can eat and sleep and smile.”

  “But if you’re to live, you must. In you, your loved ones survive. You can work for what they believed; your children will have their heritage. You’re their link between what was and what will be.”

  “That’s so—heavy!”

  “Make it light. You don’t dishonor the dead by loving life, by joy.”

  She knew he thought of Röslein and that idolized elder brother. He helped her into the saddle and they continued on their journey. She felt as if they rode toward home.

  Ansjie’s welcome increased that feeling. Soon they were back in the familiar pattern, and this time Deborah wasn’t worried about her friends. She thought of Thos’s and Sara’s—and Johnny’s—baby with much the same anticipation as she had for Dane’s return, except that the birth wouldn’t be till September, and Dane should come after the snow melted from the passes, perhaps in June, surely by July.

  In late March the Mennonites began working the soil, “plowing the dew under,” which meant plowing from dew in the morning till dew at night. They planted wheat, corn, rye, and millet, acres of squash, pumpkin, watermelons, and muskmelons, as well as the large family gardens in the strips behind each house.

  “We get enough rain here for spring wheat,” Conrad told Deborah and Ansjie during an evening walk through t
he fresh-smelling fields and budding, leafing orchards. “But there’s a hard winter wheat grown by Mennonites in the Crimea that should grow well where there’s less rain and more cruel winds. I want to get some and experiment with it.”

  The villagers shared plows and oxen, but each family took care of its own fields, which were laid out in strips along the valley, divided so that choice and less desirable land was equally shared. There was no doubt that farmers like this would, learn the secrets of any earth they settled on and soon bring it to its best fruitfulness.

  “They put Americans to shame,” grimaced Deborah.

  “Remember that for generations their life has been the soil. They’re almost as devoted to it as to their religion.” He laughed. “Their motto could be the old proverb: ‘Pray as if work wouldn’t help; work as if prayer wouldn’t.’”

  Along the creek redbuds sprouted and tentative light green leaves darkened and grew, while orioles and bluejays flashed through them. Blossoms perfumed the orchard. Wild rose and morning glories peeked from the grass while buttercups, daisies, Johnny-jump-ups, and black-eyed Susans brightened the road edges. Crows called from their lookouts, and geese were on their way north again, honking, making their wedges in the sky.

  On their rides, Deborah and Conrad saw new-hatched prairie chickens and passed buffalo wallows, some small, some as large as the one where she’d met Dane and Rolf almost a year ago.

  It seemed a lifetime.

  Sometimes she felt unreal, escorted around Mennonite fields by a former Prussian count, teaching children whose native language wasn’t hers. Dane seemed a phantasm, too, someone she had dreamed up. She had a sense of waiting, of being suspended between lives and worlds.

  Ansjie had learned that Deborah’s birthday was in May, and it was celebrated with a birthday cake at the school and an hour of games and singing on the green near the well. The whole village came for a sort of picnic and the afternoon ended with children gathering around Deborah to sing “Yankee Doodle,” trying not to burst into laughter at her surprise.

  After supper Ansjie produced a lace shawl of gossamer-connected roses and insisted that Deborah have it. “I’ve two more,” she said. “When will I wear out even one?”