The Holy Warrior

by Gilbert, Morris

  Chris studied her a moment, then looked at Caroline. “It’s got to be unanimous. Caroline, do you have a word from the Lord on this?”

  “Oh no!” Caroline shook her head. “But,” she went on, reaching out and touching Missy’s shoulder, “Missy is right. We can’t desert them—even if they’re wrong.”

  The stillness that followed, briefly interrupted by a coyote’s call rising in a series of yips, could almost be felt. Sky was sitting back from the fire, as usual, distancing himself from the rest of the group. He studied his father’s face with a puzzled expression.

  “I don’t understand,” he remarked at last, breaking the silence. Chris turned quickly to look into the eyes so much like his own. “The big man, he hates you—and the little man is keroti.” He moved his head slightly from side to side and asked Chris, “Why go with them to die?”

  Chris smiled at the description of Aaron Small, and when Missy asked what keroti meant, he explained offhandedly, “Well, it’s a bird, Missy—a very small bird with lots of feathers. It puffs itself up, swelling out and strutting, trying to look bigger than it really is.” Missy giggled and Chris added quickly, “Not that I’m criticizing Brother Small, of course.”

  Caroline gave a rare smile that made her face almost beautiful in the warm light of the fire. “We are bound not to speak evil of anyone, especially of the Lord’s anointed, but...” She paused, searching for a kind way to put what was in her mind. “Brother Small has been very effective in his work—but he has not realized how different this mission is going to be. He’ll come to himself, I’m sure.”

  Once again Sky spoke. “The big hunter—he will not change.”

  Chris looked swiftly at his son, surprised by Sky’s insight, but nodded in agreement. “That’s the trouble, son. Ring Tanner is bad medicine. He was up in the Milk River country with Tom Sellers and Milt Cannon in the dead of winter. Tom fell into a crevice and broke his leg. Well, that was rough—Milk River’s a bad country, especially in winter. Most partners would have built a hut and toughed it out till spring. But Tanner took off. Milt stayed, and he got out all right. But the point is this: If trouble comes, Tanner won’t stick.”

  “Then it’s decided,” Caroline stated. “If he’s that kind of man, the people need you more than ever, Christmas.”

  “I think Caroline is right, Chris,” Missy agreed.

  The boys were silent, and Chris turned to Dove. He studied her thin face. “It’s your say, Dove. The trip by boat would be a lot easier for you.”

  White Dove’s face was softened by the glow of the fire, and she smiled. “You must decide. I will go with you.”

  He sat there, a big shape in the flickering light, and then he got up abruptly. “All right. We’ll go with them—but we’re gonna have to pray like we’ve never prayed before. Better get some sleep. It’s going to be a hard trip—but we won’t leave for a few days.” He gave a short laugh, adding, “First item in the morning is, I go to Brother Small and eat humble pie.”

  True to his word, after breakfast Chris walked over to the other camp. He knew exactly what he would say, having racked his brain the night before in order to find the right words to smooth things over. Every eye in camp was on him as he approached the leader. “Brother Small, we would like to join your wagon train if you will have us.” The preacher drew himself up, and the light of pride in his eyes assured Chris that his little speech had done its job.

  “Certainly—certainly!” Small replied, with a magnanimous wave of his hand. “We all make mistakes, don’t we? And I must say that your spirit of humility is a thing that’s good to see in a minister of the gospel!”

  “When did you plan to leave?”

  “As soon as possible!” The man turned to go.

  “I’ll have to trade my horses for oxen,” Chris informed him. “These were fine for a short trip, but they won’t do where we’re headed. Oh, and Brother Small...”

  The preacher turned back to look at him.

  “Brother Small,” Chris said quickly, “it seems to me that some of your wagons are overloaded—and I know ours are. It might be good to take care of that here where we can sell the surplus. Be better than tossing it out later.”

  Small generously conceded, and for the next two days a continuous debate went on as to what should go and what should be sold. Soon Chris discovered that the party had enough to supply a general store, including an over-supply of bacon, flour and beans, plus an enormous quantity of useless articles: pins and needles, brooms and brushes, glass beads and hawkbells, jumping jacks and Jews’ harps, rings, bracelets, pocket mirrors, pocketbooks and boiled shirts. “Looks like a flock of birds building nests,” Chris remarked to Barney.

  Finally the preparations were complete and at dawn they pulled out. Missy recorded the first weeks in her log:

  July 12, 1811: We left at five, just as the sun came up. Rev. Small led us on a big white horse, but by noon he seemed to have had enough and got off. I noticed he could hardly walk, he was so saddle-sore, and rode on a pillow for the rest of the day. We’ve gone only twelve miles, but I’m sure we’ll do better as the trail toughens us up.

  July 26, 1811: We left Independence, Missouri, this morning. Now we are in The Great American Desert. Nothing between us and the Yellowstone except a few small trading posts and one or two army forts. We are truly in the hands of God—but He is able!

  August 14, 1811: It is late and I am very tired. I write this by the light of a candle. Tired as I am, I want to put something down while it’s still fresh. We have become a little tougher now, and I will write what happened today as a sample of our days on the trail.

  We got up this morning at four A.M., and made fires out of buffalo chips. There is no wood to speak of, so the chips are the only fuel we have. It made me a little sick to have to touch them, at first, but Barney made us all laugh by calling them “prairie pancakes.” I don’t know what we’d do without his good humor! The women cooked breakfast while the men hitched the teams. After breakfast Rev. Small led Bible reading and prayer. This morning he managed to insert a sermon into the middle of his prayer, and we got a late start.

  The hunters go out in front of the train, usually about five miles. They watch for water, too, which is already a problem, and will get worse, Chris says. Most of us walk beside the wagons to make it easier on the oxen, but it’s fun, too. There are lots of beautiful wild flowers to pick.

  Dove walked for about an hour this morning, and it put some color in her cheeks—until she had a coughing spell and had to ride for the rest of the day. I pray constantly for her to be healed.

  At noon we stopped to eat a cold lunch and rest the animals. One of our wagon wheels almost lost the iron rim, and Barney Sinclair fixed it. He’s such a shy fellow. Caroline went over to talk with him while he worked, and it flustered him so much he nearly hit his nose—instead of the wheel—with the hammer! Caroline told me later that she had to keep the conversation going; he didn’t seem to know how to talk to her. But he’s a good man. Fixed the wheel like he fixes everything else that goes bad. Now it works like a charm.

  Stopped by a little stream for the night’s camp. Drew the wagons in a circle, made fires and cooked a good meal. After supper Barney got his fiddle out and played. Such a cheerful sound! Mr. Tennyson sang some sad Irish songs. He has a beautiful voice. Caroline and I sang some hymns, too.

  Chris is worried. I can tell. I asked him why he looked so glum when things were going so well, and he said, “This is the easy part. We hit the Platte soon, and that’s when we can stop sleeping easy.”

  The days seem to flow into one another. The enormous open sky and the immense spaces in every direction have made us draw closer to one another. We have become so much of a team. By the time our party crossed the Big Blue, a tributary of the Kansas River, and turned toward the Platte River, there were few secrets left among us.

  Asa has fallen madly in love with fourteen-year-old Anna Schultz—a phenomena that borders on the brink of insan
ity to Sky. He tried to talk Asa out of his mooning by saying, “She’s only a girl, Asa. She can’t even throw straight!”

  They were a week past the Blue River when Sky cornered Chris and asked, “Will you teach me to shoot?”

  Chris, who had just bent over to pick up his rifle, stopped abruptly with surprise. This was the first time his son had asked him for anything since leaving the Pawnee camp, and though Chris felt it might be a sign of Sky’s acceptance, Chris knew better than to overreact. And so, swallowing the surge of joy that ran through him, he shrugged and said, “Do what I can.”

  The two of them walked through the short grass without speaking. In an hour the wagons looked small in the distance, and Chris stopped. “Guess this is good enough. Got your rifle loaded?” For the next hour he tutored the boy in the art of long-range shooting. Sky had been too proud to ask for help, and he had picked up many bad habits. Still, he had a natural hunting ability; for once he had learned to follow the few simple techniques Chris showed him, Sky was able to send the slugs where he wanted them. His eyes glowed when he hit a white stone no bigger than his fist at one hundred yards.

  Chris nodded. “That rifle’s a mite heavy for you now, Sky, but in a year you’ll be handling it like it was a straw.” He let his hand drop on the boy’s shoulder just for one instant. “You’ve got a good eye and a steady hand.”

  Sky’s blue eyes dropped to the ground as he mumbled, “Thanks.” Well, it’s a start, Chris thought. Every day the boy would appear just as Chris got ready to go. “Want to hunt a mite?” Chris would ask. Sky would shrug carelessly, “Might as well.”

  All of this did not go unnoticed. Missy sat beside Dove one time, watching with her as the man and boy went out together. “That’s good—isn’t it, Dove?”

  “Yes,” Dove nodded, and gave a rare smile. “He is like his father.”

  “He’s like both of you. Best looking boy I’ve ever seen. I... I’m glad he’s opening up to Chris.”

  Caroline was walking along beside the last wagon, which Asa was driving, and she too had seen the pair leave. It pleased her so much that she kept her eyes fixed on them and did not notice the gopher hole in her path. She stepped into it and was thrown sharply to the ground with an intense cry of pain. She called out, but the bawling of the oxen drowned her out. She tried to stand, failed, and fell again.

  “Miss Caroline! You all right?”

  She looked up to see Barney Sinclair’s homely face as he dropped to one knee beside her, his anxious eyes searching her face. In spite of the excruciating pain in her left ankle, she had to smile. “Well, Brother Sinclair, you finally did speak to me—even if I had to break my leg to get you to do it!”

  Barney’s face burned, but he grinned. “I’m a bit gun-shy around ladies, fer a fact. Especially...”

  “Especially what?”

  “Well—especially... p-pretty ones!” he stammered, then added quickly to cover up his confusion, “We’re gettin’ left behind, Miss Caroline. Can you walk atall?”

  “I—I don’t know, Barney—” She grasped his hands as he pulled her to her feet. “Let me hold on to you!” she said. Since her eyes were on her feet she did not see the expression of alarm that swept across his face as she held him tightly around the middle. “Don’t let me fall!” she cried out, forcing him to put his arm around her waist. She tried to walk, but each step on her left foot was agony, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  Seeing her white face, Sinclair stopped. “Here, this won’t do, Miss Caroline! Ain’t nobody seen you fall but me, I reckon. You set here and I’ll go git a wagon.”

  “No!” Caroline’s terror of immense spaces attacked her with thoughts of wolves and creeping Indians. “Don’t leave me alone, Barney!”

  “But, Miss Caroline...!” Barney protested. Watching the wagons rolling farther away, he came to a sudden decision. “Don’t want to be forward, but I got to git you to the wagons.”

  “Barney!” Caroline cried out in alarm as he reached down and swooped her up in his arms. “Barney—you can’t carry me! I’m too heavy!”

  “Heavy? Why, Miss Caroline—you don’t weigh near as much as a yearling calf, and I’ve packed them fer a mile many a time.” In spite of himself he began to relax, laughing. “Don’t mean to compare you to a calf—but you sure are little!”

  It was Caroline’s turn to blush, for he was holding her close, his arms under her legs and around her back. Caught in that awkward situation, she didn’t know what to do with her arms. Should she let them dangle or put them around his shoulder? With an embarrassed laugh she decided on the latter, saying, “I feel like a fool!”

  He was walking at a fast pace, closing with the wagons, which were still fifty yards away, and both of them were painfully aware of their embrace. Caroline’s soft form in his arms was doing strange things to Barney’s mind. He could smell the faint odor of some delicious scent, lavender he thought, as the breeze caught her hair, brushing it against his lips. Her cheek was smoother than he had thought possible, and the curve of her lips more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen.

  Caroline, too, was disturbed, bothered by the sensations that ran through her, and she was relieved when they reached her wagon. Keeping in step, Barney lifted her over the tailgate as easily as if she were a child. She bit her lip as the injured ankle took her weight, but she looked out at once, saying, “Thank you, Barney. I would have been terrified if I’d been left.” Impulsively, she put her hand out—and, just as impulsively, he took it. “You’re very strong!” she exclaimed.

  He was walking along behind the wagon, oblivious to the fact that he was talking easily to an attractive woman for the first time in his life. Until now, his experience with women had been limited to dance-hall girls who left him cold with their bright smiles and empty eyes. Barney was well aware of his lack of good looks, and had learned to avoid rejection by not putting himself in situations where it was a risk, or by cutting himself down—beating them to the draw, so to speak.

  “Well, fer a feller skinny as a snake, I reckon I’m fairly stout. Good thing, too, since I ain’t got much upstairs.”

  Caroline replied indignantly, “Don’t talk like that, Barney! I’ve seen you fix things that no one else could. You play the fiddle better than any man I ever heard. And Asa tells me you know the name of every flower and bird in the world.”

  He stared at her, then shook his head. “Aw, Miss Caroline, a feller picks up stuff like that just by livin’, but I can’t...”

  His mouth clamped shut and his ears turned red. Suddenly he bolted around the side of the wagon and was about to disappear, but she called out swiftly, “Barney—wait! Come back!” He stopped, looking back with an unhappy light in his eyes, and fell in behind the wagon again. “What is it you can’t do?”

  Caroline was mystified at the misery in Barney’s face. Several times he would open his mouth to speak, only to shake his head and clamp his lips shut. Sweat covered his face, and she could see that his large hands were clenching and unclenching nervously. “Barney—what on earth is it? Nothing can be so awful!”

  “Yes—yes, it is!” he gasped hoarsely, and he took his hat off and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He pulled the hat down firmly on his head, gritted his teeth, then said loudly: “I can’t read!”

  “Why—Barney...!”

  “Can’t read a sign to say what town it is. Can’t write no more than my name. Can’t read the Bible. That’s the worst of it—can’t even read the Word of God!”

  Sinclair’s eyes were misty, and Caroline’s heart went out to him. She once again held out her hand and as he took it, blindly, she said, “Barney—I’ll teach you to read.”

  “Oh, Miss Caroline, I couldn’t learn! I’m too old!”

  “Nonsense!” Her voice was sharp but her eyes were warm. “When I fell down and you helped me up, did I say, ‘No, I’m too old’?”

  “No—you said, ‘I’m too heavy.’ ”

  “And I was wrong, wasn’t I?
Are you too proud to sit under a woman’s teaching—is that it?”

  He shook his head in protest. “No!”

  “Then let me help you—as you’ve helped me.” Her voice was soft and she saw the yearning in the homely face. “By the time we get to the Yellowstone, you’ll be reading the third chapter of John. I promise. Will you let me teach you?”

  He dropped his head and drew his sleeve across his eyes. Then his hand tightened and he looked up with a mixture of wonder and joy on his face. “If you could teach me to read—maybe I could be a preacher someday. That’s what I really want more than anything else!”

  Caroline looked at him intently, seeing not the quick-witted humorous outside that he showed the world, but the sensitive spirit lying beneath.

  “We’ll start tonight after supper, Barney,” she said simply.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE PLATTE

  From the Big Blue crossing, the trail ran north to meet the Platte, then turned west to follow its south bank. “Nebraska,” the Indians called it, meaning “flat and shallow,” while the French dubbed it with an equivalent word: the “Platte.” Both names did descriptive justice to the river’s broad band of flowing silt. Barney reckoned its measurements graphically: “My law, Chris—it’s a mile wide and an inch deep: too dirty to bathe in and too thick to drink!”

  They saw Indians fairly often, but always at a distance. When Small asked Chris about the danger of an attack, he answered, “Not likely. This valley is in a kind of neutral ground between the Pawnees to the north and the Cheyennes to the south. But we better put out a guard from now on.”

  Ring disagreed loudly. “No need of that. Not till we get to Pawnee country anyway.” He grinned wolfishly, adding, “Reckon the Pawnees will come callin’ for your hair, Winslow. I heard about how you took Black Elk’s woman—and he’s a bad ’un.”