by Noah Gordon
“Can you take steps to help the Sauks?”
“Take steps?” Hume sighed. “Dr. Cole, I’m a politician. Indians don’t vote, so I’m not about to take a public stand in their individual or collective favor. But as a political matter it will help me if we can defuse this thing, because my opponent is trying to use it to win my seat.
“The two justices for the Circuit Court in this district are the Honorable Daniel P. Allan and the Honorable Edwin Jordan. Judge Jordan has a mean streak and he’s a Whig. Dan Allan is a pretty good judge and an even better Democrat. I’ve known him and worked with him for a long time, and if he sits on this case he won’t let Nick’s people turn it into a carnival to convict your Sauk friend on flimsy nonevidence and help Nick win the election. There’s no way of knowing whether he or Jordan will get the case. If it’s Allan, he’ll be no more than fair, but he’ll be fair.
“None of the lawyers in town is going to want to defend an Indian, and that’s the truth. The best attorney here is a young fella name of John Kurland. You let me have a talk with him, see if we can’t twist his arm some.”
“I’m grateful to you, Congressman.”
“Well, you can show it by voting.”
“I’m one of the thirty percent. I’ve applied for naturalization, but there’s a three-year waiting period …”
“That’ll allow you to vote next time I run for re-election,” Hume said practically. He grinned as they shook hands. “Meantime, tell your friends.”
The town wasn’t going to stay excited too long because of a dead Indian. More interesting was contemplation of the opening of the Holden’s Crossing Academy. Everyone in town would have been willing to give a small piece of land as the school site, thus ensuring easy access for their own children, but it was agreed that the institution should be in a central place, and finally the town meeting had accepted three acres from Nick Holden, which satisfied Nick, because the lot was precisely shown as the school site on his early “dream maps” of Holden’s Crossing.
A one-room log schoolhouse had been built cooperatively. Once work had begun, the project caught fire. Instead of puncheon floors, the men hauled logs six miles to be sawed for construction of a plank floor. A long shelf was built along one wall to serve as a collective desk, and a long bench was placed in front of the shelf, so pupils could face the wall while writing and swing around to face the teacher while reciting. A square iron wood stove was set in the middle of the room. It was determined that school would begin each year after harvest and would run for three twelve-week terms, the teacher to be paid nineteen dollars a term plus room and board. State law held that a teacher had to be qualified in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and knowledgeable about either geography, or grammar, or history. There were not many candidates for the job because the pay was small and the aggravations were many, but finally the town hired Marshall Byers, a first cousin of Paul Williams, the blacksmith.
Mr. Byers was a slim, pop-eyed youth of twenty-one who had taught in Indiana before coming to Illinois, and therefore knew what to expect from “boarding around,” living for a week at a time with the family of a different pupil. He told Sarah he was glad to stay at a sheep farm because he liked lamb and carrots better than pork and potatoes. “Everywhere else, when they serve meat, it’s pork and potatoes, pork and potatoes,” he said. Rob J. grinned at him. “You’ll love the Geigers,” he said.
Rob J. wasn’t taken with the teacher. There was something nasty about the way Mr. Byers grabbed covert glances at Moon and Sarah, and stared at Shaman as though the boy were a freak.
“I’m looking forward to having Alexander in my school,” Mr. Byers said.
“Shaman is looking forward to school too,” Rob J. said quietly.
“Oh, but surely that is impossible. The boy doesn’t speak normally. And how can a child who doesn’t hear a word hope to learn anything in school?”
“He reads lips. He learns easily, Mr. Byers.”
Mr. Byers frowned. He looked ready to protest further, but when he glanced at Rob J.’s face he changed his mind. “Of course, Dr. Cole,” he said stiffly. “Of course.”
Next morning, before breakfast, Alden Kimball knocked at the back door. He had been to the feed store early and was bursting with news.
“Them damnfool Indians! They done it now,” he said. “Got drunk last night and burned down the barn out at that popist nuns’ place.”
Moon denied it at once when Rob spoke to her. “I was at the Sauk camp last night with my friends, talking about Comes Singing. It’s a lie, what Alden was told.”
“Perhaps they started drinking after you left.”
“No. It’s a lie.” She sounded calm but her trembling fingers were already removing her apron. “I’ll go see the People.”
Rob sighed. He decided he’d better visit the Catholics.
He’d heard them described as “them damn brown beetles.” He understood why when he saw them, because they wore brown wool habits that looked too warm for autumn and must have been a torture in the heat of summer. Four of them were working in the ruins of the fine little Swedish barn August Lund and his wife had built with such fierce young hope. They appeared to be searching the charred remains, still smoking in one corner, for anything worth salvaging.
“Good morning,” he called.
They’d been oblivious of his approach. They had tucked the hems of their long habits into their belts to allow freedom and comfort while they worked, and now they hastened to hide four sturdy pairs of sooty white-stockinged limbs as they pulled their skirts free.
“I’m Dr. Cole,” he said, dismounting. “Your far neighbor.” They stared without speaking, and it occurred to him that perhaps they didn’t understand the language. “May I speak to the person in charge?”
“That would be the mother superior,” one of them said, her voice scarcely more than a whisper.
She made a small motion and went to the house, Rob following. Near a new lean-to shack at the side of the house, an old man dressed in black spaded a frost-killed vegetable garden. The old man showed no interest in Rob. The nun knocked twice, quiet little rappings that went with her voice.
“You may enter.”
The brown habit preceded him and curtsied. “This gentleman to see you, your Reverence. A doctor and a neighbor,” the whispery-voiced nun said, and curtsied again before fleeing.
The mother superior sat in a wooden chair behind a small table. The face within the veil was large, the nose wide and generous, the quizzical eyes a penetrating blue, lighter than Sarah’s eyes and challenging instead of lovely.
He introduced himself and said he was sorry about the fire. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
“I am confident the Lord will help.” Her English was educated; he thought the accent was German, although her accent and the Schroeders’ were dissimilar. Perhaps they were from different regions of Germany.
“Please be seated,” she said, indicating the only comfortable chair in the room, large as a throne, upholstered in leather.
“You carried this all the way in a wagon?”
“Yes. When the bishop visits us, he will have a decent place to sit,” she said, her face serious. The men had come during Night Song, she said. The community had been busy at worship and didn’t hear the first rowdy sounds and the crackling, but soon they had smelled the smoke.
“I’m told they were Indians.”
“The kind of Indians who attended that tea party in Boston,” she said dryly.
“You’re certain?”
She smiled without humor. “They were drunken white men, spewing drunken white men’s filth.”
“There’s a lodge of the American party here.”
She nodded. “The Know Nothings. Ten years ago I was at the Franciscan community in Philadelphia, newly arrived from my native Württemberg. The Know Nothings treated me to a week of rioting in which two churches were attacked, twelve Catholics were beaten to death, and dozens of Catholic-owned homes we
re burned. It took me a while to realize they are not all of America.”
He nodded. He noted that they had adapted one of the two rooms in August Lund’s soddy into a Spartan dormitory. The room formerly had been Lund’s granary. Now sleeping pallets were stacked in a corner. Besides her desk-table and its chair, and the bishop’s chair, the only furniture was a large and handsome refectory table and benches of new wood, and he commented on the joinery. “Were they made by your priest?”
She smiled and rose. “Father Russell is our chaplain. Sister Mary Peter Celestine is our carpenter. Would you like to see our chapel?”
He followed her into the room where the Lunds had eaten and slept and made love and where Greta Lund had died. It had been whitewashed. Against the wall was a wooden altar, and in front of it a prie-dieu for kneeling. Before the crucifix on the altar, a large tabernacle candle in a red glass was flanked by smaller candles. There were four plaster statues that seemed to be segregated by sex. He recognized the Virgin on the right. The mother superior said that next to Mary was Saint Clare, who had founded their order of nuns, and on the opposite side of the altar were Saint Francis and Saint Joseph.
“I’m told you plan to open a school.”
“You are wrongly told.”
He smiled. “And that you intend to steal children into popery.”
“Well, that is not so wrong,” she said seriously. “We always hope to save a soul through Christ, child or woman or man. We always strive to make friends, draw Catholics from the community. But ours is a nursing order.”
“A nursing order! And where will you nurse? Will you build a hospital here?”
“Ah,” she said regretfully. “There is no money. Holy Mother Church has bought this property and sent us to this place. And now we must make our way. We are certain the Lord will provide.”
He was less certain. “May I summon your nurses if they’re needed by the sick?”
“To go into their houses? No, that would never do,” she said severely.
He was uncomfortable in the chapel and started to withdraw.
“I think you are not a Catholic yourself, Dr. Cole.”
He shook his head. He was struck by a sudden thought. “If it’s necessary to help the Sauks, would you testify that the men who burned your barn were white?”
“Of course,” she said coldly. “Since it is simple truth, no?”
He realized that her novitiates must live in constant terror of her. “Thank you …” He hesitated, unable to bow to this haughty woman and call her “your Reverence.” “What is your name, Mother?”
“I am Mother Miriam Ferocia.”
He had been a Latinist in school, slaving to translate Cicero and accompanying Caesar through his Gallic Wars, and he retained enough to know that the name meant Mary the Courageous. But ever after, when he thought of this woman—to himself and to himself only—he would call her Ferocious Miriam.
He made the long ride to Rock Island to see Stephen Hume and was immediately rewarded, because the congressman had good news. Daniel P. Allan would preside at the trial. Because of the lack of evidence, Judge Allan saw no problem with releasing Comes Singing on bail. “Capital crime, though—he couldn’t set bail at less than two hundred dollars. For a bondsman you’ll have to go to Rockford or Springfield.”
“I’ll put up the money. Comes Singing’s not going to run out on me,” Rob J. said.
“Good. Young Kurland has agreed to represent. Best for you not to go near the jail, under the circumstances. Attorney Kurland will meet you in two hours at your bank. That’s the one in Holden’s Crossing?”
“Yes.”
“Draw a bank draft made out to Rock Island County, sign it, and give it to Kurland. He’ll handle the rest.” Hume grinned. “The case will be heard within weeks. Between Dan Allan and John Kurland, they’ll see to it that if Nick tries to make anything much of this case, he’s gonna end up looking mighty foolish.” His handshake was firm and congratulatory.
Rob J. went home and hitched up the buckboard, because he felt that Moon had to have a place in the reception committee. She sat erect in the buckboard, wearing her regular housedress and a bonnet that had belonged to Makwa, unusually silent even for her. He could tell she was very nervous. He hitched the horse in front of the bank and she waited in the wagon while he took care of getting the draft and handing it over to John Kurland, a serious young man who acknowledged his introduction to Moon with politeness but no warmth.
When the lawyer left them, Rob J. got back up into the buckboard seat next to Moon. He left the horse hitched right where it was, and they sat there and peered down the street at the door to Mort London’s office. The sun was hot for September.
They sat for what seemed to be an inordinately long time. Then Moon touched his arm, because the door had opened and Comes Singing emerged, stooping so he could get through. Kurland came right after.
They saw Moon and Rob J. at once and started toward them. Either Comes Singing reacted in joy because of his freedom and couldn’t resist running or something instinctual made him want to get away from there, but he had taken only a couple of loping strides when something barked from above and to the right, and then from another rooftop across the street there were two more reports.
Pyawanegawa the hunter, the leader, the hero of the ball-and-stick, should have gone down with majesty, like a giant tree, but he fell clumsily like other men, and his face went into the dirt.
Rob J. was out of the buckboard and to him at once, but Moon was unable to move. When he reached Comes Singing and turned him, he saw what Moon knew. One bullet had struck precisely in the nape of the neck. The other two were chest wounds in a pattern little more than an inch apart, and likely both had caused death by finding the heart.
Kurland reached them and stood in helpless horror. It took another minute for London and Holden to come from the sheriff’s office. Mort listened to Kurland’s explanation of what had happened and began to shout orders, checking the roofs on one side of the street and then on the other. Nobody seemed terribly surprised to find the roofs deserted.
Rob J. had remained on his knees next to Comes Singing, but now he stood and faced Nick. Holden was white-faced but relaxed, as if ready for anything. Incongruously, Rob was struck anew by his male beauty. He was wearing a revolver in a holster, Rob J. noted, and he knew his words to Nick might place him in danger, must be chosen with the greatest of care, yet needed to be spoken.
“I never want to have anything to do with you again. Not as long as I live,” he said.
Comes Singing was brought to the shed at the sheep farm and Rob J. left him there with his family. At dusk he went out to bring Moon and her children into the house for food and found they were gone, and so was Comes Singing’s body. Late that evening Jay Geiger discovered the Coles’ buckboard and horse tied to a post in front of his barn, and he brought Rob’s property to the sheep farm. He said Little Horn and Stone Dog were gone from the Geiger farm. Moon and her children didn’t return. That night Rob J. lay sleepless, thinking about Comes Singing probably in an unmarked grave somewhere in river woods. On somebody else’s land that once had belonged to the Sauks.
Rob J. didn’t get the news until midmorning next day, when Jay rode over again to tell him that Nick Holden’s enormous stock barn had been burned to the ground during the night. “No doubt about it, this time it was the Sauks. They’ve all run off. Nick spent most of the night keeping the flames away from his house and promising to call out the militia and the U.S. Army. He’s already lit out after them with almost forty men, the sorriest Indian fighters anyone could think of—Mort London, Dr. Beckermann, Julian Howard, Fritz Graham, most of the regulars from Nelson’s bar—half the shickers in this part of the county, and all of them thinking they’re going after Black Hawk. They’re lucky if they don’t shoot each other in the foot.”
That afternoon Rob J. rode out to the Sauk camp. The place told him they had left for good. The buffalo robes had been taken down fr
om the doorways of the hedonoso-tes, which gapped like missing teeth. The junk of camp life littered the ground. He picked up a tin can, the raggedness of its lid telling him it had been sawed open with a knife or a bayonet. The label revealed it had contained cling peach halves from the state of Georgia. He’d never been able to make the Sauks see any value in dug latrines, and now he was kept from sentimentalizing their departure by the faint smell of human ordure that drifted to him when the wind blew in from the camp outskirts, a last shitty clue that something of value had disappeared from that place and wouldn’t be brought back by spells or politics.
Nick Holden and his group chased the Sauks for four days. They never really got close. The Indians stayed in the woodlands along the Mississippi, always heading north. They weren’t as good in the wilderness as many of the People who were now dead, but even the poorest of them was better in the woods than the white men, and they doubled back and twisted, laying false trails the whites obligingly followed.
The white men stuck to the pursuit until they were deep into Wisconsin. It would have been better if they could have returned with trophies, a few scalps and ears, but they told each other they’d scored a great victory. They paused at Prairie du Chien and took on a lot of whiskey and Fritzie Graham got into a fight with a trooper and ended up in jail, but Nick got him out, convincing the sheriff that a little professional courtesy was called for toward a visiting deputy. When they got back, thirty-eight disciples went forth and spread the gospel that Nick Holden had saved the state from the redskin menace and was a fine fellow to boot.
It was a soft autumn that year, better than summer because all the bugs were killed off by early frosts. A golden time, the leaves along the river colored by the cold nights but the days mild and pleasurable. In October the church called to its pulpit Reverend Joseph Hills Perkins. He had asked for a parsonage as well as salary, so after harvest a small log house was built and the minister moved into it with his wife, Elizabeth. There were no children. Sarah busied herself as a member of the welcoming committee.