Edge of the Wilderness

by Stephanie Grace Whitson

  Unable to find Meg and Aaron, Simon had become involved in events that continued to mold him into a better man. After he helped a group of mission workers escape to safety, somehow God had given him the idea of attaching himself to the troops as a chaplain and going with them after the hostile Dakota. Simon knew it was God working in his life, because nothing could have been more unlike him. He had always been a man of books—never a man of action. But the outbreak changed that. Once physically weak and indecisive, Simon became lean and muscular. Living among profane military men forced him to learn a new kind of leadership. And while he was changing he learned to trust God in ways he would never have thought possible. He prayed day and night for his children and Genevieve LaCroix, Lord, I believe … help Thou my unbelief. He knew he shouldn’t doubt, but it had always been his nature to be a little suspicious of God, to confine Him to the attributes of righteousness and justice, and forget His love and mercy. After all, he reasoned, he had prayed desperately for Ellen, and she died. At the time of the outbreak he was still a little suspicious of God, wondering if negative answers to prayer might be his lot in life. But when Simon prayed for his children, God answered with a resounding YES! Eleven-year-old Aaron and five-year-old Meg returned to him physically whole and remarkably unscathed emotionally.

  Leaning back in the church pew, Simon smiled and counted God’s blessings off on his calloused fingers. Neither son nor daughter hurt physically. Neither one damaged emotionally. His prayer life renewed. Self-righteousness nearly conquered. Usefulness enhanced. Simon listed blessing after blessing, good after good, praising and thanking God for it all. But still, even after he spent time thanking God, there was the dread at the center of his being, the awful reluctance to leave St. Anthony.

  He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, putting his head in his hands. I’ve just gotten a family again, Lord. After all the weeks of separation and fear, after all the grieving for Ellen. You have given me a family again. Surely You cannot mean that I should leave them. Not now. He finally whispered aloud, “I know I shouldn’t ask, Father, but I can’t seem to conquer these feelings. Please, God. Give me time to win Genevieve’s heart. Just let me stay a while. After she says she’ll marry me, then I’ll go. Is it too much to ask?”

  The phrase feed my sheep rang in his mind.

  I have fed Your sheep, Lord. I’ve been doing it ever since we came to St. Anthony.

  It was true. Together with the Whitneys, Simon had given relief to many of the white victims of the uprising. He and Aaron had driven literally hundreds of miles to deliver supplies and relief funds from sympathetic eastern churches. It was good work. He did it heartily and was blessed to learn that his son had a remarkable gift of mercy. The boy might be only twelve years old, but he had lived through things that either matured or destroyed children. In Aaron’s case, they matured him. In many ways Aaron Dane was already a young man.

  I sent you to the Dakota Mission, Simon. FEED MY SHEEP.

  Before the native prisoners were moved, revival had come to the camps at Fort Snelling and Mankato. Men who had never been open to the gospel message were asking to be baptized. Praying. Taking communion. It was a miracle. Workers were needed. They were barely able to keep up with the demand for books, for Bibles, for teachers. Mission teachers Miss Huggins and Miss Stanford had already left to work with the women at Fort Snelling and had been with them when they transferred to steamships to be taken to Dakota Territory just two weeks ago. Miss Jane would be going, too, as soon as Rebecca and Timothy Sutton’s situation was resolved. In many ways it was one of the most exciting times in the mission’s life. How like God, Simon thought, to do His best work when everything was in a shambles from a human perspective. I know that’s often how God works. I shouldn’t wait for things with Gen to be resolved. I just need to trust Him and get on with it.

  But when he thought of Camp McClellan, he couldn’t help shuddering with dread. Two hundred Dakota men had been transferred there from Mankato. In Mankato they had been shackled to one another and fenced in like cattle. Treated worse. Falling victim to disease and dying—a few every week. There was no reason to think Camp McClellan would be any different. But they needed him. For the first time in a quarter-century of Dakota mission work, the Indians actually wanted missionaries. And if it were not for his children, for Gen—

  If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. All things work together for good to those who are called. And I am calling you to Mankato.

  Sighing, Simon stood up. He stared for a few more moments at the cross. Then he made his way down the aisle and out into the foyer. Shrugging into his worn coat he stepped out onto the front stoop and pulled the church door closed behind him and locked it. It had begun to rain. He turned his coat collar up against the light wind and headed up the street, past neat brick homes as far removed from the log cabins he had inhabited over the past few years as the moon above was from the earth. If it stopped raining, he would take the children fishing tomorrow. Perhaps Gen would go along. They could picnic beside St. Anthony Falls.

  Simon shoved his hands in his pockets and headed up the street toward the Whitneys’. When he arrived, he paused to look up at the rambling two-story frame house. It was another example of God’s blessing. Samuel and Nina had been sent west from Illinois to help with the relief effort for white refugees from the southwest corner of the state. They agreed to rent the house almost on a whim, simply because it was offered so cheaply they could not resist. But once they were ensconced in the small quarters at the rear of the first floor with their two small children, they began to wonder about the wisdom of taking on such a vast property. God verified their choice by proceeding to fill the rest of the house. Two displaced Dakota Mission teachers, Lizzie Huggins and Belle Stanford, arrived first. Next came Miss Jane Williams with young Rebecca and Timothy Sutton in tow. And, finally, Simon and company.

  Simon walked slowly up the steps and opened the door as quietly as possible, pausing in the entryway just long enough to hang up his coat and hat. At the bottom of the soaring staircase he removed his worn-out shoes. He looked around him, thanking God that his children lay safe in warm beds just upstairs. Then he felt ashamed, knowing that at this very moment Dakota children were dying of disease and neglect while their fathers and brothers were held at Camp McClellan. While they were still in Minnesota, the men had engaged in a lively correspondence with their families in Fort Snelling. Dr. Riggs said he once transported two hundred letters back to Fort Snelling in one week. Simon wondered how the two groups would communicate now that they were so far away from each other.

  At the doorway to what he had come to think of as “his girls’” room, Simon paused. He turned the doorknob slowly. Careful to stay mostly out in the hall, he peeked around the door and toward where his precious Meg lay asleep, her red curls spilling over her pillow. It had stopped raining. Moonlight poured through the one tall window in the far wall. Perhaps a picnic would be possible, after all.

  To his right, baby Hope lay asleep in the crib they had managed to cram between the doorjamb and the corner of the small room. A soft, rhythmic gurgling accompanied her thumb-sucking. Simon smiled to himself and started to back out of the room. But then he allowed himself one look back to where, next to Meg, lay the real reason he did not want to leave St. Anthony.

  She had come to Simon and his wife nearly three years ago, the autumn before the uprising. She boasted the flowing dark hair and rich brown skin of her Dakota mother. But Genevieve LaCroix had none of her mother’s placid nature. She had been forced to stay with the Danes by her determined French father and she did not hide her reluctance. Love for her father and loyalty to her dead mother’s wishes made her stay. with Simon and Ellen Dane, made her study and learn, but love and loyalty could not keep the emotions raging inside h
er from shining in her brilliant blue eyes. Simon smiled to himself, remembering Genevieve’s defiance in the face of what she considered to be his willful ignorance of the Dakota people. You think everything Dakota is bad, she had yelled at him one night long ago. She had been so furious she had stomped her foot as she accused him, You think everything Dakota should be forgotten.

  He hadn’t appreciated hearing it one bit. Mostly because he had realized she was right. He had spent ten years among the Dakota and managed to learn very little. Only Ellen’s death had ripped him out of himself and down to earth where he could forge a real relationship with his orphaned children and a new life as a true shepherd among the Dakota. And that, he owed to Genevieve. He longed to cross the room, to reach out and run his hand through the torrent of dark hair. He loved the two narrow streaks of white that had appeared at her temples during the weeks of her captivity. She had earned them protecting his children. Every time he saw them, his heart swelled with gratitude and love.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the emotion that had overwhelmed him when, after weeks of uncertainty, he saw her, unhurt and healthy, safe at Fort Ridgely with Meg and Aaron; holding a blonde baby in her arms that she and Daniel Two Stars had found, miraculously alive in a ruined cabin. They had named the baby Hope and to Simon she had become almost a symbol of the future family he hoped to create with Gen.

  This will not do, Simon said to himself sternly. He jerked his head out of the room and closed the girls’ door firmly, standing with his head bowed for a moment while he tortured himself with memories. After being reunited at Fort Ridgely, Simon had taken his family to St. Peter for a few weeks. Aaron read the paper the day after Christmas and saw Daniel Two Stars’s name on the list of the condemned. Screaming “No!” Gen leaped on Simon’s horse and tore across the country to try to stop it. But she arrived too late. He found her, pale and trembling, seated on a boardwalk, her head in her hands.

  Simon had never seen grief like that before. It nearly killed her. In the weeks that followed she grew so thin her clothes hung on her. She trembled with weakness and fear at every loud noise. Once, he found her hiding between the bed and the wall, her hands over her ears, her face streaming with tears.

  And then … and then they had come to St. Anthony, been reunited with the other teachers, and slowly, over the past few weeks, Gen had come back to him. She began to smile again. She began to eat. Her slim figure filled out. Her blue eyes shone with health and a newfound peace. She laughed as she worked with the children.

  Sighing, Simon ran his hands over his face and headed down the hall to the room he and Aaron shared. Genevieve. He whispered it aloud, listening to the beauty of the French name as it floated into the night air. She had been there when Ellen died. Had loved his children and waited patiently for him to recover. And when, instead, he sank deeper into self-pity and grief, she had pulled him out. She had set him straight and pushed him toward his children. How he loved her for it. Loved her for crying in his arms when overwhelmed by her own grief, loved her for listening as he read the Psalms to her in a desperate attempt to help her.

  Simon crept into his room. Disrobing in the dark, he once again made the case for why Gen should marry him. They shared so much. And yet, Simon thought as he laid his head on his pillow and turned his face to the wall, he knew that Genevieve LaCroix had never once looked at him the way she had looked at Daniel Two Stars. Perhaps she never would. He punched his pillow and closed his eyes. He would not pressure her. He would give her time. By God’s grace, he would be patient.

  But dear God in heaven, he prayed, how he loved her. How he longed to—This will not do.

  Just before he fell asleep, Simon decided. He would go to Davenport.

  Four

  The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.

  —Proverbs 12:15

  “Are you out of your mind?!” Major Elliot Leighton nearly jumped out of the seat he occupied in his mother’s opulent New York dining room.

  Margaret Leighton glared at her son and glanced meaning-fully toward the massive cherry-wood sideboard where the kitchen maid was preparing their after-breakfast coffee.

  Elliot grabbed the gold damask napkin off his lap and dabbed at his mouth. He smoothed his black mustache around the sides of his mouth. “Aren’t you finished with that coffee yet, Betsy?” Elliot watched with satisfaction as a blush spread across Betsy’s cheeks. She quickly picked up the sterling-silver coffeepot and filled the two waiting cups. As the aroma of fresh coffee filled the room, Elliot smiled to himself. He had been right, of course. The little busybody was lingering to hear the rest of his disagreement with his mother.

  Neither Elliot nor his mother spoke until Betsy had set a steaming cup of black coffee at their places and, with a nervous little curtsy, backed through the door into the butler’s pantry. Adding two lumps of sugar to his coffee, Elliot said, “You cannot be serious, Mother. It is absolutely out of the question for my sister’s children to be raised in the howling wilderness of Dakota Territory by a half-breed savage.”

  Margaret sputtered, “Genevieve LaCroix is not a half-breed savage! Why won’t you believe me, Elliot?” She reached up to brush a wisp of white hair out of her eyes. “I won’t deny that last year when Ellen wrote that she and Simon would be bringing one of their students here, I had my doubts about housing an Indian. But, Elliot, Genevieve was nothing like what we have read in the papers. Everyone here was impressed with her.”

  Elliot harrumphed and stabbed the meat on his plate. Stuffing it in his mouth, he chewed, staring defiantly at his mother.

  Seeing that her pleas were having little effect on her eldest child, Margaret pressed on. “She is half French, you know. And Miss Bartlett had only praise for her as a student.” She pleaded, “You weren’t here, Elliot. You didn’t see. Simon was completely undone when Ellen died. If it hadn’t been for Genevieve, I honestly do not know what would have become of Meg and Aaron. She brought Simon back to his children.” Margaret’s deep brown eyes filled with tears. “It was so touching, Elliot. Truly. Simon became a father after Ellen died. And Genevieve made it happen.”

  Sarcasm dripped from every word as Elliot enjoined, “You mean the great, the all-righteous, the holy Reverend Dane came down from his throne?”

  “If only you had seen it, Elliot, you wouldn’t be so disbelieving. God worked a miracle in Simon. And He used Genevieve to do it. The children adore her. She was practically their mother already by the time they left for Minnesota last August.” Defiance shone in her eyes as she said, “I think Simon should marry her.” While her son snorted his disapproval, Margaret withdrew a rumpled envelope from a pocket. She laid it on the table and pushed it across toward Elliot. “Read for yourself, son. You’ll see how the children feel about her.”

  “Children haven’t the slightest idea what’s best for them,” Elliot said crisply. He ignored the envelope, reaching for a biscuit instead. Cutting it in half, he slathered it with butter. Taking a huge bite, he spoke as he chewed. “At least that’s what my mother told me when she packed me off to a military academy against my wishes.” He swallowed and stared across the table at his mother with icy gray-blue eyes.

  Margaret paled and bowed her head. She fumbled with her napkin and blinked back tears.

  Taking a boiled egg from a silver bowl to his right, Elliot laid it on his plate and began to tap the shell with the back of his spoon. “It’s all right, Mother,” he said. “I’m not chastising you.” He sliced the egg in half and removed the shell from each half with one hand. “In the end, you were vindicated. Military life suits me. Or should I say suited me.” His mouth turned down at the edges. “What a pity I won’t be able to continue the family legacy of stellar military careers.” He ran his hand through his long white hair.

  The gesture sent a pang of grief through Margaret Leighton. She had given a healthy, raven-haired son to the Union. The Union had taken him first to Bull Run, then on to Shiloh. And on Bloody Monday, down at Antieta
m, the Union had taken his left forearm and hand, turned his hair white, awarded him a medal, and then handed him his discharge papers.

  “You have served the cause well, Elliot,” Margaret said gently. She ran a finger absentmindedly around the rim of her coffee cup as she said, “I’m very proud of you, son. As is the entire village. As would be your father and your grandfather if they were still alive.” Margaret looked up. Her voice trembled as she said, “What you gave to preserve the Union can never be repaid.”

  Elliot shrugged and took a swig of coffee. He looked down at his empty left sleeve and pulled the end of it across his lap before picking up his fork and stabbing a piece of boiled egg.

  The simple gesture brought tears back to Margaret’s eyes. She looked away for a moment. When she could speak again without emotion clouding her voice, she said, “You gained a reputation for levelheadedness and compassion as an officer, son. Please don’t allow what you have read about the West—about Indians—to cloud your reason.”

  Elliot set down his fork and ran a finger down a column of the newspaper that lay open on the table beside him. “Listen to this, Mother. It’s an eyewitness account of the recent release of a few white captives who were separated from the main group and kept all winter:

  The poor creatures wept for joy at their escape. They had watched for our coming for many a weary day, with constant apprehensions of death at the hands of their savage captors, and had almost despaired of seeing us. The woe written in the faces of the half-starved and nearly naked women and children would have melted the hardest heart.

  He continued, “This article speaks of wide, universal, and uncontrollable panic all across the southeastern corner of Minnesota. It says more than five hundred people were murdered, and it describes every mode of death that horrible ingenuity could possibly devise.” His eyes flickered with rage when he looked up at his mother. “When I think of my sister’s children, my own niece and nephew being subjected to that—” He shook his head.