Maps of Fate

by Reid Lance Rosenthal

  Zeb staggered out of the smoke holding his side. He pulled up short, the tragic scene of Johannes and Inga spread before him. His eyes caught Sarah’s. He walked quickly to her, gathering her in one arm and pulling her close. She sobbed uncontrollably into his buckskin. A wounded Indian lay about a hundred feet beyond the wagons. He fought to rise to his knees, trying to stand, then toppled over.

  Mac showed up, one arm hanging limply, the broken shaft of an arrow protruding from just below his shoulder. Blood dripped from his fingers onto his dusty boot, each droplet raising a tiny puff of dirt. His shotgun was in the other hand, perched on his hip. With him was Elijah, with his Kentucky long gun, asking Mac, “Where in hell do you think they went?”

  “I don’t know. Strange they broke it off. I was pretty sure we were holding our own, but I figured they would make off with a few of us. Can’t explain it. Never seen nothing like it.”

  A tremor ran through Sarah as another shot rang out, several hundred yards from beyond the wagons to the southwest. Then, through the wavering, sifting battle cloud that was beginning to settle, she saw dim figures moving toward them. Five Indians materialized, as if a mirage, the haze of the fight and wavy ground reflections of sun-heat distorting their figures. They rode slowly, with their backs straight, no war paint, no screams. Taller than those who had attacked the wagons, Sarah felt other subtle differences, too, perhaps in their clothing.

  Elijah raised his rifle, but Zeb knocked the barrel down toward the ground. “Hold yer horses. They ain’t Pawnee,” he glanced at the Indian lying just a hundred feet from them, then back at the approaching riders. “I’ll be damned, they be Sioux.”

  Reuben straightened up from Rebecca and picked up the Colt, which he had laid down on the ground when he knelt down next to her. Where he stood, outside the wagons, he was the closest to the approaching band of warriors.

  Mac turned to Zeb, “You don’t suppose…”

  Zeb nodded. “Yep, them Sioux is what turned them Pawnee around. They must of hit ’em from the rear. Ain’t often one Indian goes against another for a white man, leastways unless they were Army scouts.”

  Reuben felt numb—the shock of Inga’s death, the seething anger, tinged with guilt and worry he felt at Rebecca’s near kidnapping, her injury, the heart-wrenching empathy he felt for Johannes—it gripped his gut like the tight vise of a blacksmith’s tongs. He fought to get some measure of control back into his breathing.

  He was unsure of the intent of the approaching braves, but he could hear Mac and Zeb’s conversation behind him. Eight feathers hung from the lead warrior’s long black hair. He sat rigidly athletic, graceful, and proud on his mustang, a bow hanging around his neck and shoulder, an ornate shield painted with the claw of a raptor fastened high on one arm, its rounded top slightly higher than his shoulder. He held a bloodied lance in his right hand. Reuben quickly counted the arrows in his quiver—only three. He glanced behind him at Rebecca. Peering through the wagon wheel spokes, her eyes were fixed apprehensively ahead.

  The man rode steadily and deliberately. The four warriors behind him looked wary, and one clutched a bloody side, swaying a bit on top of his horse.

  They rode up to the wounded Pawnee. Still alive, the enemy warrior tried to rise to his feet, one knee bent, one foot planted. The Sioux brave in the lead urged his horse forward and without hesitation, ran his lance through the man’s chest, then wrenched it savagely backward. The Pawnee fell in a heap, no longer moving. A warrior behind him leaped from his horse, pulled the dead Pawnee’s head up by his hair, and with two quick circular motions of his knife, took his scalp.

  “Oh, oh my God,” came Rebecca’s low, horrified voice from behind the wagon wheel.

  Reuben watched as the Sioux leader silently raised the point of the lance to the sky. Then he urged his horse forward, and, fifty feet from Reuben, stopped, raising his free hand, fingers to the sky, palm to Reuben. Their eyes met over the short distance. There was a long silence. The tightness in his chest released slightly. He lowered his Colt, twirled it twice, and dropped it in its holster. He rose from his slight crouch.

  “Reuben…” hissed Rebecca, alarm in her voice. Without breaking eye contact with the warrior, he replied in a low voice, “It is fine, Rebecca. He is a friend. I feel it.” He slowly raised his arm, fingers up, open palm. The Indian’s mustang pawed the ground, the brave’s lips parted in the hint of a smile, and, speaking without words, their energies spanned cultures and a bond was formed.

  Zeb was suddenly at Reuben’s side. The Indian spoke in a resonant voice, and Zeb, without taking his eyes off the brave, said, from the side of his mouth, “His name is Eagle Talon. He wants to know yours.”

  Reuben looked at Eagle Talon. “Reuben Frank.”

  The Indian repeated slowly, “Roo-bin Frank,” then nodded his head. His eyes moved to Rebecca, and he spoke again.

  “He wants to know if she’s your wife,” Zeb translated.

  The question made Reuben smile. He glanced at Rebecca. “Not yet,” he replied.

  Zeb repeated the words, also moving his hands and fingers in sign.

  The Indian nodded, smiled, and spoke again.

  “He says she reminds him of his wife, and he says he understands, ‘Not yet’.”

  Reuben nodded, as did the Sioux. “Ask him his wife’s name, Zeb.”

  Zeb spoke and signed. The regal look on the brave’s face softened. A deep breath filled his chest. When he spoke, his tone was almost reverent.

  “Well, I’ll be damned and go to hell.” Reuben turned to look at Zeb. The mountain man’s eyes were wide, and his face wore a look of total surprise. Reuben could not have known his friend was remembering a Sioux village almost twenty years prior, and the delicate touch of a little Indian girl on his wrist. “What is it, Zeb, what did he say?”

  “I know this tribe, Reuben. They are Oglala Sioux. He says his wife’s name is Walks with Moon.”

  “Tell him that is a beautiful name, and tell him Rebecca’s name.”

  It was obvious Zeb was lost in thought and it took a moment for him to start speaking. The brave smiled at Reuben’s compliment toward his wife, and nodded when Zeb motioned to Rebecca and told him hers.

  “Ray-bec-ka.” He nodded his head vigorously, “Ray-bec-ka.”

  Zeb asked him something that Reuben couldn’t understand. The brave’s eyes clearly widened in amazement. He nodded his head and said one sharp word. Reuben did not need a translator to understand the emphatic, “Yes.”

  Zeb spoke again. The Indian looked serious and nodded. He shifted his eyes back to Reuben, lifted his lance, and said, “Toksa, Kola.”

  Reuben heard Zeb’s whisper to the side of his ear, “That means, ‘Until I see you again, friend’.”

  The warrior’s eyes moved to Rebecca. “Ray-bec-ka.”

  The five warriors wheeled their horses and cantered toward the northwest, their shadows fading in the quickly settling dust of the retreating Pawnee.

  CHAPTER 37

  MAY 10, 1855

  LETTING GO

  Reuben watched the Sioux until they were swallowed by the land. He walked back the several steps to the wagon and bent down next to Rebecca. The gash above her lip was jagged. The blood had mostly coagulated, though a thin trickle still seeped from the corner of her mouth, ending at her trembling chin. He took the kerchief from her listless grasp and gently tried to wipe the red streak from her face. She stared dully at his face.

  “Is everyone all right?” she asked.

  Reuben kept his eyes fixed on the handkerchief and rubbed the stubborn blotches of caked blood from her jaw. He raised the handkerchief to his mouth, licked it, and tenderly wiped the last remnant. He looked closely at her lip. “We need to get that sewed up.”

  She sat forward with effort, stretched out one hand, and clutched his sleeve. “Reuben, is everyone all right?” A vein of anxious panic laced her question.

  Reuben looked down at the ground, traced absently in the dirt with his f
inger, reached up one hand, took hers from his arm and wrapped his hand around hers, giving it a gentle squeeze. “No, Rebecca, everyone is not all right.” He sighed, once more awash in that bitter helplessness that had clutched him prior to his encounter with the Sioux.

  “Johannes?”

  “Johannes is fine. Well, he’s uninjured.”

  Her eyes widened and tears welled in her lower eyelids. Her lips trembled. “Inga?” she asked, her voice an unsettling blend of hope, despair, and knowing. She’s beginning to shake. Reuben sat down next to her, put his arm around her, and hugged her. Her voice rose, “Tell me, Reuben, is Inga all right?”

  He pulled her shoulder tighter to him and squeezed her more tightly. “Inga’s dead, Rebecca.”

  He could feel the shock radiate through her body. She turned her head into his chest and began to sob, “It’s my fault, Reuben, my fault. I asked her to accompany me west, thinking only of myself. I needed a companion, someone to take care of the basic chores. I had no right.” Her shoulders shook violently and she clung to him. “No right. Oh my God, that kind, beautiful woman is dead.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Rebecca. Inga loved the adventure. You did not trick her, she knew…” he paused and drew a deep breath, “she knew you were going back to England. She met her man, she saw the land, she felt a kinship with it, and she was a fine lady.”

  Rebecca’s anguished sobs intensified, “You don’t understand, Reuben, you don’t understand. I didn’t just kill her, I killed them. I killed them.”

  “Rebecca, you didn’t cause her death or anyone else’s,” he rested his cheek on her head and wrapped his other arm around her.

  “What am I going to tell Johannes, Reuben?”

  Her body was shaking. Reuben lowered his head and kissed her soft, dark brown hair. “There’s nothing you need to tell Johannes. He has a strong soul. He will be grief stricken for a long time, but he will emerge from it. I think Inga taught him much about himself, about life…and about love.” Did he have a chance to tell her before she died? Did she know at the end that he loved her? Reuben felt a tear trickle down his cheek, and his throat felt tight. Get ahold of yourself. This will not help Rebecca. Or Johannes.

  In between Rebecca’s deep, ragged breaths were great heaving gasps. “I killed them…I didn’t know…I was around the front of the wagon and should’ve helped…I knew something was wrong…I heard the scream, saw Sarah’s face, but they were coming…Oh, Reuben, I wish I’d never left England…”

  Reuben cradled her heaving shoulders and patted her on the back. Her sobs subsided, but only slightly. “Who else?” she asked, her voice muffled by his shirt.

  Reuben took a deep breath. “Sarah’s fine. Mac took an arrow in his upper arm and is bleeding badly. Johannes tells me that Dr. Leonard, though he wasn’t injured, is very sick and having trouble breathing. Johannes had to drag him across the stream when the Indians torched the stranded wagons. Both of the Thompson brothers were killed, though they fought bravely. Abraham took a bullet in his knee. With Dr. Leonard incapacitated, we really have no medical person on the wagons other than Thelma, and her experience only comes from watching her husband over the years.”

  The government man from Washington is dead, too.” Reuben shook his head, remembering as he spoke, “I was standing right there, reloading the Sharps. One moment he was talking to me, the next moment there was an arrow through his neck. That man Livingston, with the four children, four wagons down from ours, took an arrow through the chest. He’s dead. Harris was shot in the leg. I think he will be fine. There are others wounded. That’s all I know. I’m going to have a look around, check in with everybody, try and find Johannes and Zeb, and see what Mac wants to do.”

  Her hysteria had lessened, relegated to narrowly spaced, heaving, rasping breaths. “Sarah? I must talk to Sarah. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Do about what, Rebecca? There’s nothing you can do. What’s done is done. None of it was your fault. You didn’t will any of this to happen.”

  She shook her head, still leaning into his chest. “No, Reuben. You don’t understand. I must talk to Sarah so that we can decide what to do.” She is tired, Reuben guessed, delirious, might even have a concussion from that blow. “Rebecca, let me help you into the wagon. It’s going to take at least a day to sort out this mess and…” his voice caught, “and to bury the dead.”

  He stood and half dragged her from behind the wagon wheel. She was unsteady, her face pale, her lip was bleeding again, and her magnetic brown eyes were red and puffy, and brimming with tears. The bodice of her dress was stained with blood, and there was a large tear in the fabric where the Indian had dragged her. She sagged against him and he reached down and scooped up her small form, one arm under her knees, the other around her back. Her arms were wrapped around his neck and her head buried in his shoulder. She shook and wept.

  “I killed two men today. Oh God, forgive me.”

  “You had no choice, Rebecca. They picked the fight.”

  Holding her, Reuben stepped over the tongue of the wagon. The flow of Two Otters Creek seemed unperturbed by the tragedy on its banks. Zeb stood nearby, clenching and unclenching his coonskin cap in one hand, comforting Sarah with the other. It was the first time Reuben had seen the mountain man without his headgear in broad daylight, and the amount of grey in his hair stunned him. Both of Sarah’s arms were wrapped around Zeb’s waist, her head reaching just below his shoulder. Her dress was ripped and tattered, and a large blood stain marked one entire side of the fabric. She was crying, her sobs and Rebecca’s mingling with the sounds of the other pioneers in a low wail of grief and shock that blended eerily with the strangely cheerful rush of the creek’s current.

  He exchanged looks with the mountain man, their eyes saying everything, yet nothing.

  “I am going to lay Rebecca out in the wagon. She needs rest. She may have a concussion. Do you know anything about stitching up wounds?”

  Zeb’s eyes dropped to Rebecca. “Her lip?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can stitch her up, but she’s probably gonna have a scar.”

  Reuben was shocked when Sarah looked up from the depths of Zeb’s buckskin shirt. A wide smear of blood marred the side of her face, the blue of her eyes almost indistinguishable beneath swollen eyelids and a heavy film of tears. Her usually fair complexion was devoid of color, other than the freckles across the bridge of her nose, which seemed out of place and somehow diminished.

  “Zeb, bring Sarah to the wagon, too,” he said, looking down at Rebecca in his arms. “Let’s stretch them out. They could use some time together. Wish we had a shot of whiskey—they could use that, too.”

  “Yeah, they need some whiskey, and I’d like to clean that lip off before stitching it up. Let’s find that bastard Irishman. He always has whiskey…if he survived,” he added, a hopeful tone in his voice as he helped Sarah.

  Back at the wagon, Zeb opened the tailgate, leaned down, and kissed Sarah on the head. “Hang onto Reuben for a moment, Sarah. Let me get up in there.” He handed Sarah off to Reuben, and she leaned against him for support while Zeb clambered onto the tailgate. “Reuben, this wagon’s in shambles.”

  “Inga was looking for ammo and Johannes’ saber.”

  Zeb straightened a few things around and laid out Sarah’s and Rebecca’s bedrolls. Reuben lifted Rebecca’s form up to the mountain man. Zeb turned and laid her gently down on her bedroll. Then Reuben scooped up Sarah in his arms and lifted her to Zeb.

  Zeb was about to jump down when Sarah’s pleading voice drifted over to the men. “Zeb, Zeb, I can’t lie here in these horrible clothes with Inga’s blood. Help me get them off, please.”

  Zeb and Reuben exchanged glances. Reuben climbed up into the wagon and together the two men gently took her dress off, removed the stiff, blood-soaked crinoline, and then her three stiff horsehair petticoats. The blood had seeped all the way through to her chemise.

  She looked down at herself. “Oh, God!”
Her voice was shrill. “Cut it off, Zeb. Cut it off me!” she said, her voice rising. “Get this blood off me.”

  “Well…Sarah…I…”

  “Get it off me, Zeb, please!” Her voice was frantic as she tried to rip the fabric away from her skin.

  Zeb looked at Reuben, his deep-set eyes helpless. He took out his belt knife, “Turn away from me, Sarah.” He carefully inserted the blade between her skin and the material, and ran it down the length of the chemise, peeling the fabric away as his knife hand moved.

  Her pale, smooth flesh was bare upward from the waistband of her pantaloons, her small full breasts visible from the side. She was breathing deeply and trembling, somewhere between shock and sobs. Reuben’s eyes widened at the definite roundness of her belly. Zeb noticed it, too, and again the two men exchanged glances. Zeb threw Sarah’s blood-soaked clothing out of the back of the wagon. They pulled the blankets up over her and turned.

  “Wait!” Rebecca was looking at them, her eyes blinking rapidly. “Reuben, please, take my dress off, too. Take it somewhere. Burn it.” Her voice was strident, her upper body shaking. Reuben looked into her beseeching, teary eyes. He sat down next to her, helping her roll to her side. Then he undid the buttons and drawstrings down her back, sliding the dress over her shoulders and down her legs before throwing it out back to the tailgate.

  She had not worn a rigid crinoline dome to give her dress a ballooning shape as Sarah had. A realization flashed through his mind, Sarah is trying to conceal. Instead, there were four sets of horsehair petticoats. He clumsily stripped the last layers from her until she was clad only in the chemise, the sheer silk revealing every curve of her body in filmy detail.

  Zeb, obviously embarrassed, looked at Reuben and said, “I’ll wait outside.”

  Reuben nodded. He bent down and pulled the wool blankets over Rebecca. She had curled into a fetal position, her eyes tightly closed. He bent down and gently kissed her on the cheek, then moved his lips to her ear and whispered, “Remember, Rebecca Marx, I love you. Now get some rest.” As he was standing, she reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing hard. “Thank you,” she coughed.