My visible world was those few yards in front of my pony’s ears. Snow thickened his rough black mane and muffled his hoof-falls on the Dakota prairie.
“Oh,” I murmured. “Oh, oh, oh!”
My face was wet.
“Tazoo will not be Washitu”: my vow had separated me from my husband like a sword in our bed.
Again and again Low Dog repeated my father Red Leaf’s dream. Night after weary night I’d fly over the Shadowland whose lush green meadows have never been blackened by Washitu plows. The fish in the sparkling streams have never been offended by Washitu steamboats. As my father had before me, I saw the Santee who loved JesuChrist and were forbidden the Lakota Shadowland, just as they were unwelcome in the Christian heaven. Some of these unfortunates were known to me. When I was a child at the mission I had prayed with Two Magpies and Blackberry Woman.
Where can you go if you are not one person, nor another?
I had loved Plenty Cuts. I had opened myself to him. I thought our twoness was stronger than our onenesses. I thought we could protect us.
Bundled in Real Dog skins our second child nestled against my back. My Tazoo’s breath fluttered the hairs on my neck.
Plenty Cuts no longer knew if he was Washitu or Lakota, black man or red. When he put on his blue uniform coat, his walk stiffened and he walked like a Seizer walks. The lyrical Lakota cadences I loved gave way to guttural talk.
Sometimes I wanted to burn that coat. Sometimes I thought if he didn’t have the coat, he wouldn’t be the man who wore it.
Shillaber called him “Top.”
Who was “Top”? The stranger who had been my husband walked like “Top” and talked like “Top.” But if Plenty Cuts was “Top,” who was I? Just another blanket squaw? Who was Tazoo? One more worthless papoose?
The man who had been my husband didn’t need a wife; Top needed a woman. He who had hunted blackhorns for us didn’t need meat, he needed rations. My beloved Plenty Cuts didn’t need the Lakota. Top had his regiment.
Oh, and this was my heartbreak, that sometimes my beloved Plenty Cuts was who he was, the warrior who had fooled Chasing Crane, the husband who embraced me before the Lakota as my broth-er’s wives giggled behind their hands. It hurt when something he did or said recalled the husband who had stood naked beside me while we gave away everything to own our dead baby’s ghost.
Sometimes Plenty Cuts was Plenty Cuts.
But when he dressed himself in his blue coat, he was“Top.”
My pony shook his mane free of snow.
“Ah, Tazoo,” I murmured to my child. “Poor fatherless Tazoo.”
As we rode west across the Dakotas toward White Bull’s village the snow moths melted on my cheek like tears.
CHAPTER 56
HOKA HEY
“AND WHEN HIS FATHER ASKED, ‘WHO CHOPPED DOWN MY CHERRY tree?’ what did young Washington reply?”
Catesby Gatewood’s grandfather Samuel had known men who fought with George Washington. Samuel’d never said anything about any darn cherry tree.
Joe Lindquist, who was sixteen and in his last year of school, snickered. “Prolly told Pop the redskins felled her.”
The freckled teacher with the high forehead touched the switch on his desk but hesitated: Joe Lindquist was big for his age.
As if Lindquist hadn’t said anything, Mr. MacMillan smiled at the younger pupils and answered the question himself. “Young George Washington said, ‘Father, I confess I did it. I cannot tell a lie.’ ”
Catesby couldn’t stand this anymore. “If it was a cherry tree, why’d he hack it down? Heck, every darn fool knows what a cherry tree looks like. If it was winter, even, and the leaves were off, he’d know a cherry tree by the bark.”
Which brought Mr. MacMillan’s switch down on the back of Catesby’s hand.
Catesby said, “Ow.”
Slow spring flies buzzed the windows of the log schoolhouse on Olive Street; windows that had been freighted, their previous teacher Professor Vernon had informed them, “At considerable expense,” all the way from Salt Lake City.
When J. L. Vernon taught, school had been interesting. Vernon knew Latin and French and he spoke so knowingly about Paris and Vienna and London, you’d swear he’d lived there. “Learning, boy,” he’d told Catesby, “is the gentleman’s finest ornament.”
In December, after Vernon ran off with the two hundred forty-four dollars the Masons had raised for a school library, MacMillan took over. He’d been a preacher before he failed as a homesteader. The back of Catesby’s hand burned.
“Washington confessed, boy.” Catesby recoiled from the teacher’s breath. “George Washington could not tell a lie.”
Last month the Centennial Exposition—one hundred years of American progress—had opened in Philadelphia. Catesby had read about it in his mother’s magazines. They had a machine that talked and the biggest guns ever forged and the biggest blast furnace and all sorts of amazing machines. Catesby would have loved to hear about them, but when this schoolteacher mentioned the Centennial, “One hundred years, boys and girls. One hundred years!” he’d talk about the “Founding Fathers” who never made a mistake and apparently never farted.
Catesby’s grandfather was a fading memory: a big ruddy face and disheveled white hair. Catesby’s actual memories of Stratford Plantation had been overpainted with the postwar myth of a verdant Southland tended by contented darkies under benevolent masters.
One evening in the parlor as his mama was reading one of Molly’s letters, Catesby’d interrupted, “Ma, who is Jack the Driver?”
His Mama put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, dear . . .”
Mr. MacMillan paced in front of the room, prattling about Lewis and Clark. How Meriwether Lewis had “found” Montana.
Catesby bit his tongue where the words “Who lost it?” quivered. There’d been indians here before the white explorers: Joe Lame Deer told Catesby all about them. French trappers too. What was all the fuss about? Some Virginians had traveled up the Missouri until the Great Falls and they followed the Yellowstone to the Missouri on their way home. They hadn’t run into any Lakota war parties, which was lucky for them.
Pain! His ear! MacMillan was dragging Catesby out of his seat. “You will pay attention, boy . . .”
Instinctively, Catesby kicked the teacher in the shins. The man paled and emitted a soundless “Ohhh.” He released the boy’s throbbing ear. When the teacher bent to rub his ankle, Catesby punched him, aiming for the man’s ear. Instead, he knocked the teacher’s glasses across the room. Catesby heard a lens break.
After their first shock, the other pupils started laughing and huzzahing while Mr. MacMillan hopped on one leg like a whooping crane.
Fists clenched, appalled at what he’d done, in a room of hooting children, Catesby Gatewood was in the biggest trouble of his life. Catesby’s mama was dead set on “education.” Despite the postage and three-month delay, Sallie Gatewood subscribed to the Century and the Nation. Sallie read these purveyors of history, education, and ideas from “back East,” before they nested three days on the parlor table while his father didn’t read them before Catesby and Abby took their turn. Abby couldn’t scribble in the magazines because after the Gatewoods finished they were passed on to “less fortunate families.” Catesby’s father had put up ten dollars of the library fund J. L. Vernon stole. When his father remarked, “Too bad the vigilantes stopped hanging whites,” Sallie’d snapped, “Mr. Vernon is an educated man, Duncan. Isn’t that worth something?”
“Two hundred forty-four dollars, I reckon.”
Sallie Gatewood was so angry with her husband—or maybe at J. L. Vernon—that for three days dinner table conversation had been restricted to “Pass the peas.”
Catesby couldn’t believe what he’d done.
MacMillan hobbled to a bench his students hastily evacuated and rolled up his trouser leg. “Young Gatewood . . .” he began as if he had something profound to say.
Joe Lindquist jeered. “You�
��re in the johnnyhouse, now, Catesby. Damned if you ain’t.”
Catesby’s sister Abby ran to him, and he looked down into her tiny frowning face.
Nothing was going to get better here. That much was plain. Things had to cool down first. “Come on, Abby,” he said. “We’re going home.”
It had been a hard winter and the dirty remains of last week’s snowfall glistened under the boardwalks. Catesby’s Gitalong was tied beside the teacher’s shabby rig and pony.
He had made a failed man fail again. Despite his pounding heart and burning ear, Catesby Gatewood was ashamed.
“Catesby,” Abby asked, as he boosted his sister onto the horse’s rump, “what’s Mama going to say?”
Mama’s father had been a schoolteacher. Sometimes Mama talked as if her school days had been the best time of her entire life.
“Things are different out here!” Catesby mounted the horse.
His sister put her arms around his waist. “What’s different, Catesby?”
Didn’t he wish he knew.
It was Friday, so maybe he could hang around town until three o’clock or so and ride home like nothing had happened. He’d come back to school Monday and take whatever licking old MacMillan gave him and that’d be the end of it. Maybe if he worked extra hard Saturday and cleaned up extra good for church on Sunday, maybe his parents . . .
Nope. They’d find out. Some blabbermouth would ride all the way out to SunRise Ranch just to spill the beans. Grown-ups just can’t wait to tell on somebody else’s kid.
“What’s different, Catesby?” His sister hissed in his ear, “Slow down!”
Without meaning to, he’d been galloping his mare. How many times had Joe Lame Deer told him, “Don’t take your troubles out on your horse”?
Gitalong was a three-year-old. His father hadn’t let Catesby ride the powerful young horse until Joe Lame Deer assured him, “That mare would step on a timber rattler before she’d hurt that boy.”
Catesby fed her, watered her, curried her, trimmed her mane, held her while Joe shoed her, and rode her all over the valley. One night when he came home after dark, his mama had been half worried, half mad until his father said, “Remember Gypsy, Sallie?” For some reason, his mama burst into tears.
“Where are we going?” his sister now asked.
“To Meadowbrook. Joe’s helping with their branding.”
“Aren’t we going home?”
“I got to talk to Joe first.”
Instead of crossing at the SunRise ford, they continued downstream toward the Anceneys’ bridge. Meadowbrook was a big spread and when they needed help with branding or roundups, sometimes his father sent Joe and sometimes his father helped too.
Must he tell his parents? “Father, I cannot tell a lie.” Darn it, hadn’t that come back to haunt him. Maybe Joe would have a better idea. Joe knew things.
Catesby dismounted and led Gitalong through the timber to a creek trickling through a cottonwood grove. On the bank above the meandering stream, lightning had struck a tree. Big and little limbs were scattered around the blackened trunk as if the injured cottonwood had shrugged them off. Gitalong lowered her head to drink. Little Abby muttered and swatted at mosquitoes. Catesby hunkered upstream of the horse and scooped water into his cupped hands. The snowmelt was so cold it numbed his fingers.
“Catesby!” Abby’s strangled cry jerked him to his feet.
“What?”
Abby was turned around in the saddle, staring behind her. “Catesby!” she whimpered.
The boy bounded up the bank into a party of Lakota warriors. The two nearest ones—chiefs, he supposed—were smiling. Not good smiles.
“It’s all right, Abby,” Catesby managed. “They won’t hurt us.”
The younger chief said something to the older one who slapped his knee and laughed.
They weren’t the indians he’d seen in the shantytown outside Bozeman. They weren’t the drunk indians weaving and shouting down Main Street Sunday morning when the Gatewoods came into town for church.
Wolves aren’t dogs.
Their clothing had seen hard use. Fox pelts in the young chief’s headdress had been taken years before and his moccasins were patched.
Bows and quivers were strapped to their backs. Some had pistols. The chiefs carried repeating rifles.
The older chief was shirtless and his chest was quartered in red and blue paint.
Catesby swallowed. “I am Catesby Gatewood. This is my sister, Abigail Gatewood. A hundred men will come at my shout.”
The younger chief said something in Lakota and the older chief explained, “White Bull says, ‘If a hundred men will come, perhaps we should kill you before you can shout.’ ”
White Bull thought that was funny.
“Who are you?”
“I am Inkpaduta. Scourge of the Washitu. This is White Bull, the Santee who took a Seizer’s knife from his hand and made the Seizer cry.”
“You’re not from Bozeman,” Catesby said, knowing it was stupid as soon as he spoke.
“‘Bozeman’? What is ‘Bozeman’? We have come from the Grand-mother’s land to join the Lakota on the Rosebud. That will be something to remember.”
The other indians brushed by Catesby and spread out along the creek to water their horses.
Inkpaduta turned to White Bull. “Young Man Afraid of His Horses took a white beaver in this creek. The Washitu have killed all the beaver. I cannot remember when I took a good beaver pelt.”
Horses lapped cold water. Some of the indian riders stretched. One turned to another and said something. The other shrugged.
Catesby’s throat was so dry he was afraid he’d squeak. “The army is coming. They will make you go to the agencies.”
Inkpaduta raised his eyebrows. “Make us?” He laughed as if that were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “There will be good hunting on the Yellowstone. Perhaps the Seizers will come. Perhaps we will hunt together.”
White Bull started his horse down the bank. The horse’s tail swished and the manurey tip slapped Catesby’s shirt.
He would have no better chance. As if annoyed at the swipe, he pivoted, bent for a cottonwood limb, and jabbed the ragged bat into Inkpaduta’s pony’s testicles. Squealing, the pony reared onto its hind legs as Catesby jerked Gitalong’s head around, tossed her reins to Abby, and cried, “Meadowbrook! Ride like the devil!”
Gitalong lunged into a gallop and Inkpaduta’s rearing, dancing horse blocked pursuit. The indians laughed while Inkpaduta subdued his snorting beast. White Bull said something mocking. Cursing. Inkpaduta dropped to the ground and drew his scalping knife. “I am Inkpaduta,” he said. “I have counted many coups.”
Catesby was too scared to be scared. “My coup on your horse—does that count?”
White Bull snorted. An indian laughed: a high-pitched whinny. Catesby had that length of lightning-hardened cottonwood and maybe he could get in a lick before Inkpaduta killed him. Catesby set the limb on his shoulder like a baseball bat and he remembered something Joe Lame Deer had told him. “Hoka hey,” young Catesby Byrd said.
An arm, strong as an iron band, snaked around his chest. He was jerked off his feet. “Wait,” a voice commanded.
Inkpaduta crouched for his lunge.
“One step closer, and by God, I’ll knock your head to Virginia City,” Catesby yelled.
The man holding him said, “Inkpaduta, wouldn’t you be proud to have a son like this? Hoka hey! Hoka hey! He has saved his sister and his horse and he has counted coup on a great warrior. Inkpaduta, killing this boy will bring no honor.”
Sweat beaded Inkpaduta’s forehead. After indecision, he sheathed his knife, wordlessly mounted his pony, and kicked it. Hard. He galloped east toward the rivers: the Yellowstone, the Missouri, the Rosebud, the Tongue, and the Little Bighorn.
White Bull dropped Catesby onto his feet. When White Bull said, “Put away your stick,” Catesby dropped it. It was just a stick.
The other indians lost i
nterest, finished watering, and rode after Inkpaduta.
White Bull would have been a handsome man except for his jagged, frightening scar. He jabbed his finger at Catesby. “Tell your father what has happened here. Tell him a Santee Lakota warrior, White Bull, spared his son’s life. ‘Hoka Hey,’ eh, Washitu? That is truth. Today is a good day to die. But there will be better days ahead of you.” Swiftly, he was gone.
Catesby felt a sudden chill, as if a cloud had covered the sun. The hairs stood up on his goose-pimpled arms.
He watched the warriors until they disappeared over a ridge below the snowcapped mountains that once belonged to them. He half hoped they’d turn and wave, at least that White Bull would wave, but they didn’t.
CHAPTER 57
LETTER FROM RANDOLPH HOWLAND
TO MRS. EBEN BARNWELL
NEW BEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS
JUNE 24, 1876
Dear Pauline,
Thank you for your letter. The letters accompanying your repayments of my little loan have been more welcome interest than I could earn at any savings bank! How I’d like to serve you again at table six. How I miss your enlightening conversations!
In my years at Del’s, I’ve never looked for a face so much as I looked for yours.
I am glad little Augie is doing better in Richmond than he did at your family plantation. Augustus Barnwell is a city boy like me!
I have sad news to report. Mother passed away quietly in her sleep Friday last. She had accepted her fate and was glad to join her husband in the realm of peace and joy. Mrs. Jacob Howland was buried this morning in the family plot amidst grand tombs and headstones incised with sea captains’ names and depictions of their vessels. Though the occasion was solemn, I was reunited with kinfolk I had not seen in years. All the grandest Howlands know Delmonico’s!
Mr. Barnwell has not returned to the city. Rumors persist that he is in Pittsburgh. Without mentioning you or Mr. Barnwell by name, I have taken the liberty of inquiring about your circumstances with acquaintances in the New York legal profession. They are unanimous in their opinion that Mr. Barnwell’s desertion is adequate grounds for divorce.
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