by Adell Harvey
“We have very little left ourselves,” Sister Ahmanson said. “We plan to stay in Leavenworth, Kansas, and work until we can return home. You would be welcome to come along and secure work there, as well.”
Ingrid felt a warm glow flow through her. She was suddenly reminded of the inscription on the locket, “May God be with you always.” Surely God was with her, giving her a second chance to escape the horrors of America. She and baby Ammie would return to Copenhagen with these friends and find employment. After all she had been through, things couldn’t be any worse.
The peaceful spring afternoon quiet was suddenly shattered by a wail from the Indian compound. Ingrid recognized Hanabi’s voice screaming, “Come quick! It’s the Old One!”
Racing into Morogonai’s tepee, Ingrid saw her adopted Indian mother sprawled across the buffalo robes, her eyes rolled back. She bent down to check the old mother’s pulse, which was beating faintly. “What happened?” She began to cover her with a blanket.
Hanabi hesitated. “She has passed through so many hard and sorrowful events in her life, I don’t think she could bear losing you and Ammie. Just before she collapsed, she was talking about her girl who was killed by a grizzly bear and how the Great Spirit had given you to her for a new daughter.”
A stab of guilt pierced Ingrid’s breast. “And now she thinks I’m leaving her, too.” She felt a wretchedness of mind that nearly overwhelmed her. With the Ahmansons lay bright hope for a new future, but how could she leave Morogonai, the woman who had taken her in, taught her so much?
Struggling against her fears, she spoke with quiet firmness. “Tell Washakie that if he will allow me to travel with you to the spring hunting grounds, I will stay with you and look after Morogonai.”
When Old Gabe heard of her intentions, he did his best to talk her out of it. “An Injun village ain’t no place for a girl like you,” he insisted. “And besides, Mr. Ahmanson informs me the Mormonites are plotting to burn my fort. I told ya Old Brigham don’t take kindly to havin’ an infidel in his territory.” He paused to see if he was convincing her.
“Washakie will take care of me,” she argued. “You know I can’t leave Morogonai so heartbroken. I owe it to her to look after her.”
“I ‘spose ya don’t owe yerself nothin’,” he snapped. “And what about that baby gal? Ya want her growin’ up like an Injun squaw?”
Ingrid winced. Where did her loyalties lie, with Morogonai or Ammie? Or could the two be reconciled? The locket’s inscription flashed across her brain, “May God be with you always.” Couldn’t he be with her in an Indian village just as easily as on a wagon train headed for Kansas?
Realizing he was losing the argument, Old Gabe threw out his final volley. “Me and Vasquez has already decided to go back to scoutin’ for the Army. We won’t be around when the Mormonites come to burn down our fort, and we ain’t leavin’ them thieves anything to take back to Salt Lake with ‘em!”
In those words, a terrifying realization washed over Ingrid. If Old Gabe and Vasquez left Fort Bridger, she would have no safe haven if life with the Shoshones didn’t work out. A battle raged momentarily in her mind, and a look of tired sadness passed over her features. The look changed to one of serene peace as she vowed with a sense of conviction, “I will stay and care for Morogonai.”
The Ahmansons fought Ingrid’s decision to stay with the Shoshones even harder than Old Gabe had. “Word has it that President Buchanan and his Cabinet decided that the Mormons should be brought to respect the law,” Brother Ahmanson told her. “He plans to remove Brigham as governor of Utah Territory and appoint an entirely new team of officials to govern.”
“But won’t that make things easier?” Ingrid asked. “Surely, if the government is in control, it will put a stop to the terrible things that are going on there.”
Brother Ahmanson shook his head. “You don’t understand. Brigham Young will never give up without a fight. There’s going to be a war, you can be sure of that. They say that at the fall conference, Brigham prophesied he would remain governor of the territory, even ‘in the face of the constant malice and vexation of his enemies.’”
“You must come with us,” Sister Ahmanson insisted. “If the Mormons go to war against the United States, the Indians will be caught right in the middle of it. There will be no place of safety for you here.”
Ingrid’s determination faltered momentarily. Surely the sane thing would be to join the Ahmansons and the wagon train. Thoughts of Morogonai dying of heartbreak strengthened her resolve. “I’ll stay with the Shoshones till Morogonai no longer needs me. Perhaps I can meet up with you later in Kansas.” Her voice was firm, final.
Watching the wagon train fade into the distance away from Fort Bridger, all of her loneliness and confusion welded together in one great upsurge of yearning. Fighting the wave of apprehension that swept through her, Ingrid turned and walked toward Morogonai’s tepee, refusing to look back.
Chapter 13
AFTER ITS LONG winter respite had passed, Fort Bridger became a busy place. The Indians readied their horses, took down their tipis, and packed up to head for their spring hunting grounds. Old Gabe and Louis Vasquez were equally busy, cacheing their valuables “out of the way of them Mormon varmints,” in Old Gabe’s words.
In the midst of all the activity, Ingrid sat by Morogonai’s side, plying her with hot sage tea, and rubbing her chest and limbs with stronger mixtures of the tea, trying to coax her back to health. “I won’t leave you, ever,” she promised. A hopeful light came into the currant-black eyes, and Morogonai began to stir, her first movements since her attack.
Encouraged, Ingrid continued to bathe the old woman, talking continually to her, soothing, promising. “You must get well,” she insisted. “Baby Ammie needs her Grandmama. And I need you, too,” she added. “I need you desperately.”
A faint smile played around the wrinkled, sun-baked lips, and Morogonai attempted to speak. Ingrid leaned toward the face that had become so dear to her, intent on hearing her words. The old woman struggled, then the words came out clearly and with great determination. “I will live,” she pronounced.
Morogonai grew stronger each day and by the end of the week, she insisted she was ready for the journey. All the packing done, and after a sad farewell to Old Gabe, it was time to leave.
Washakie wrapped a buffalo robe around his mother and placed her on a huge roan horse. Then he handed the rawhide reins of a smaller pinto to Ingrid, seemingly pleased with his proffered gift.
She drew back in surprise. “A horse? But I can’t ride! I’ve never been on a horse!”
“You will learn,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact. “It is time to leave.”
The pinto was outfitted with an old Indian saddle, with very rough rawhide thongs as stirrup straps. With some difficulty, Ingrid managed to mount the animal, nearly toppling off the opposite side as she did so. The snickers and outright giggles of her Indian friends did little to help her disposition, but she was determined to show them. If they could ride a horse, she could ride a horse, too! Her determination and grit paid off.
At a given signal, the entourage departed, traveling at a pace much faster than Ingrid would have liked. She clung to the pinto for dear life, finally learning to adjust to the up and down movement of the saddle. “Maybe this won’t be so bad,” she encouraged herself.
Before long, however, her legs began to ache, and her back felt as if she had been squashed by a steamer trunk. Every muscle in her body seemed to scream for her to stop and get off of the horse!
The Indians paid no heed to her discomfort, intent on getting to the spring hunting grounds as quickly as possible. They didn’t stop until nightfall, setting up camp near a beautiful spring.
Ingrid was so stiff and sore she couldn’t get off her horse. Washaki had to lift her off the animal and stand her on the ground. But she couldn’t stand. Her legs crumpled, sprawling her in an exhausted heap. “My girl! My girl!” Morogonai cried in anguish. Running to
her side, Morogonai pulled off the leggings that seemed to be stuck to Ingrid’s legs. She let out a shriek, “Her legs! They are like raw meat!”
The rawhide straps had rubbed all the skin off Ingrid’s legs, leaving them bleeding and sore. “The soda water will heal them,” Morogonai promised her, beckoning for Hanabi to help her get Ingrid into the crystal clear spring.
Up to her waist in the cool water, Ingrid screamed and tried to climb ashore. The salt water caused indescribable pain in her wounds. She jumped and kicked and clamored desperately to get out of the torture. Hanabi reached down to help her out, but getting out of the salt water didn’t ease the pain. The intense pain blotted out all sense of control, all vestiges of dignity. Ingrid jumped and kicked, rolled on the ground, and cried.
Morogonai rubbed skunk oil into the open wounds, decreasing the pain a little, and taking away the sting of the salt water.
Then she put a buffalo robe down and rolled Ingrid in it, spreading a blanket over her. Ingrid lay there and cried herself to sleep.
When she awoke, hours later, the Indians were seated around a small fire. Hanabi had killed a duck and was broiling it for breakfast. “Come and eat,” she beckoned to Ingrid.
Ingrid tried to get up, but pain shot through her legs. She lay back on the robe and started to cry again. “You must eat,” Hanabi insisted, “we are preparing to leave again.”
Ride that horse again? Ingrid felt she would rather stay here in the wilderness and die! She managed to eat some of the duck and a little dried meat and felt her strength returning a bit. “I will walk,” she told Washakie, not quite sure herself how she would do so.
“We are going a long distance, and you cannot walk,” he insisted. “Morogonai will fix your saddle so it won’t be as painful.”
They put a buffalo robe over the old saddle and removed the rawhide straps. Ingrid climbed on, even less ceremoniously than she had the previous day. No one laughed this time, however, out of sympathy for this paleface they had all come to love.
To her immense relief, the buffalo robe softened the saddle, making it much more comfortable. Without her leggings, the soft hair of the buffalo robe soothed her wounds.
Again, they traveled all day through country that looked like the bottom of an old lake. Riding through the high marsh grasses slowed the horses considerably, a fact that didn’t disappoint Ingrid. The slower pace suited her, encouraging her to believe she might become a horsewoman yet.
That night, they camped by another spring. Hanabi took the babies down to the spring, but even her insistence that the water was fresh couldn’t convince Ingrid to get in. She had had enough of these mountain springs, thank you!
She sat on her robe near the fire, feeling guilty that she wasn’t helping more, but Morogonai refused to let her move. “It is your turn to be taken care of, little one,” she insisted. Together, they enjoyed a supper of fresh fish broiled on the coals, then Morogonai again bathed Ingrid’s sore legs with sage tea, followed by skunk oil.
The days fell into a pattern of riding from sunup to sundown, camping near a river or lake, fishing, then enjoying the broiled fish around a campfire. As Ingrid’s legs began to heal, she often took her turn at catching the evening’s dinner. Hanabi gave her a fish hook and a line made from the hair of a horse’s tail, and Ingrid soon became the best fisherwoman in the group.
Holding up a huge rainbow trout for everyone to see, she teased, “Maybe it’s because my Papa had a fish market back in Copenhagen, the fish know me!”
“And maybe it’s because I gave you the best fish hook,” Hanabi bantered playfully.
They continued to travel north and east, finally coming to the most beautiful valley Ingrid had ever seen. A trio of jagged mountain peaks rimmed the valley on the east; to the south lay another range of heavily timbered mountains; and to the west, a lower range resembled a pack saddle. Ingrid drank in the beautiful panorama, scarcely allowing herself to breathe for fear it would all disappear before her eyes.
“It’s so beautiful!” she exclaimed to Hanabi. “It reminds me of a huge wash basin!”
Hanabi nodded in agreement. “The Great Spirit made a wonder here. The white men call it Pierre’s Hole, after a French trapper who used to hunt here.”
The Great Spirit? Was he the Creator she had studied long ago in her catechism, the loving God of her childhood? Or the relentless, threatening tyrant of the Mormons?
Hanabi broke into Ingrid’s contemplation. “And see those three peaks?”
Ingrid turned toward the majestic peaks to the east that stood like sentinels over the entire valley.
Hanabi blushed and lowered her voice. “The Frenchmen named them ‘Le Teton’ because they looked like women’s breasts.” The two girls giggled at the naughtiness, then Hanabi continued extolling the virtues of this, her favorite valley.
They camped near a river that ran north and south through the center of the valley. There was no timber growing on its banks, but great patches of willows extended a mile or two on either side of the stream. Ingrid spent her days happily fishing for the enormous trout, drying them, and helping to tan the skins from the white-tailed deer the braves hunted among the willows.
Ammie played contentedly in her cradle board strapped to Ingrid’s back. Occasionally, Ingrid let her crawl in the soft, cool grasses. Each new accomplishment Ammie achieved filled Ingrid with pride. “I couldn’t love her any more if she were really my very own,” she confided to Hanabi.
“I know,” Hanabi said. “I love my Yagaiki so much, I would die for him. It’s little wonder that Morogonai is so sad about losing all of her children except Washakie.”
Her words sparked a new knowledge in Ingrid. “That’s why she loves me so much.” She let out a long, audible breath. “Just like I love Ammie, who really isn’t my birth child, Morogonai loves me that much, too!” The enormity of this revelation overwhelmed her. To have someone love her as much as she loved Ammie filled her with a bottomless peace and satisfaction. Life was good!
While the boys spent their time breaking colts, the men hunted, bringing in almost more elk, deer, and moose than the women could manage. When they weren’t busy tanning hides or drying the meat, the women went into the mountains to gather berries.
One spot, a canyon nestled against the base of the largest peak, was Ingrid’s favorite. A stream rushed in torrents down the mountainside, ending in a gurgling brook at the bottom. The warmth of the morning brought out the pungent fragrance of the pines, enticing Ingrid to take a break from berry picking. She laid back in the soft grass beside the waterfall, relishing the scent of damp pine needles and fresh mountain air. The light timber breeze was clean and fresh and springlike, but it reminded her a bit of winter, too, with little patches of needle-strewn snow still evident in the shade of the deep woods.
“I could stay here forever!” she sighed to Hanabi. “Just look at those wildflowers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many flowers in one place before in my life!”
Hanabi glanced toward the hillside, which was a riot of color. White, yellow, orange, and purple flowers competed for attention with the large groves of mountain ash and lodgepole pines. “I think they are anxious to get the important business of blooming out of the way before the dry season comes along,” she said, a poetic softness in her voice. “But we can’t stay here. Washakie says we must leave and head for the buffalo grounds up north, now that the buffalo have fattened up.”
“Why do we need buffalo?” Ingrid asked. “We’ve dried so much wild game and tanned so many hides, it seems to me we should have enough to last for many winters!” As if to emphasize her point, she rubbed her hand across her aching back and shoulders.
Hanabi laughed. “We trade the hides at the trading post for blankets and beads and other things we need. The harder we work, the more things we have to sell.”
Ingrid sighed, breathing deeply of the clear alpine air. “I wish we could stay here forever. Why must we always be moving on?”
“
It’s the way of our tribe.” Laughing at Ingrid’s naivete, she taunted, “Besides, if we spent the winter here, we’d have to climb out the smoke holes of our tipis.”
Ingrid shot her a questioning look. “Climb out the smoke holes? Why?”
“Because the snow would bury us. The snow gets so deep in this valley, it would cover many horses atop each other. That’s one reason we don’t stay here. Tomorrow, we will head north for the buffalo hunts, then start back south again, so we can be in Salt Lake for the fall trading.”
Ingrid shot upright. “Salt Lake? We’re going to go to Salt Lake?”
“That’s where we sell the most of our goods. The people in the city buy our robes and hides. Then they sell them to the wagon trains heading to California country.”
Ingrid felt the familiar icy fear twisting around her heart. Salt Lake? Would she never be free of the Mormons? Fear, stark and vivid, glittered in her eyes as frightening images built in her mind. She could not, she would not, accompany the Shoshones to Salt Lake.
Gathering up her berry basket, she headed back toward the other women. “We need to get back to camp,” she told them. “Morogonai is probably tired of looking after Ammie.”
Early the next morning, they broke camp and started for the great buffalo grounds to the north. After traveling for three days, they came to a large river, which Hanabi told Ingrid was called Piupa (Snake River). Here they joined another large band of Indians who belonged to the same tribe.
The women built boats of bulrushes tied in bundles. They lashed the bundles together until there were enough to hold 600 or 800 hundred pounds. The braves swam the horses, while some of the boys rode their ponies across. It took nearly a week to cross the river, but Ingrid was enjoying the fishing so much, she didn’t mind.
Waves of homesickness often overtook her as she sat by the river bank, reflecting on her life. Should she have stayed in Copenhagen? Of course, selling fish was a great deal different than catching them and not nearly as much fun!