Ransom's Mark

by Wendy Lawton

  “My father never asked me why I wanted to go. He decided to send warriors first. They could bring food for trade and go into their village to see if the stories were true and if the Yavapai would consider trading for Aluitman if she were there. During the time they were gone, I still dreamed of you.”

  Olive squeezed her eyes shut. Could this have been the answer to her prayers when she asked God to send someone to ransom them? Shivers ran along her shoulders. It was almost funny. When Olive had prayed, she pictured God mobilizing the army at Fort Yuma to make a daring rescue. Instead, God spoke quietly to a Mohave chief and his daughter.

  “When the warriors returned, they told us about two white girls. They also told us that the Yavapai agreed to trade if we could meet their ransom price.”

  Topeka looked over as a snake slithered off a warm rock.

  “My father agreed, but he wanted me to go along to make certain that no last minute tricks were played. It was too late in the year to travel by the time all was settled. The snows would have blanketed the mountains before our return. I had to wait until spring.”

  “So that’s why so much arguing took place when you came with the men.”

  “Yes. We worried that they might agree to accept the ransom price and then ambush our warriors and recapture you on the trail. With the chief ’s daughter along, they wouldn’t risk offending my father.”

  Olive turned and looked at the back trail.

  Topeka laughed. “We are safe, little sister. We have our own warriors trailing us.”

  “But you still risked your life to save us?” Olive could barely get her thinking around this idea. “. . . and you paid the ransom for us?”

  “Actually my father paid the ransom price.”

  Mary Ann had been silent up to that point. “Oh dear, Olive,” she said, poking Olive in the arm. “It’s what we prayed!”

  “Prayed?” Topeka asked. “You mean you asked our Great Spirit—the god who made all things?”

  “I think so,” Mary Ann said, not quite sure of herself. “Did that god send his son to pay the ransom price for you?”

  “No. I do not think so,” Topeka said. She sounded as puzzled as Mary Ann. “You need to tell me more about this God of yours who sacrificed His Son.”

  As they walked, Mary Ann told Topeka about God. Topeka listened.

  Before long Mary Ann began falling behind, and Topeka called a halt in order to eat and rest. The warriors seemed impatient, but they did as Topeka directed. As they went off to find wood for a fire, Olive dug for roots to add to the pinole Topeka’s men carried.

  Topeka took the pinole—flour made of ground corn and mesquite beans—and made small cakes to cook on a hot stone in the fire. With the mush made from the roots Olive gathered, they ate a satisfying meal.

  The journey continued trouble free. The travel was difficult and even though Topeka had slowed the pace, they still covered more than twenty miles a day. On the eleventh day, late in the afternoon, they climbed one last steep hill. Mary Ann had to be coaxed and carried much of the way, but at the top, she stopped suddenly.

  “Oh dear, Olive, look!” She pointed down into a valley carpeted in a rich green and rimmed by craggy peaks all around. The lower foothills were also covered in grass and wildflowers. “This is the place I want to live.”

  “What a beautiful valley, Topeka.” Olive could see that the valley stretched for some twenty miles or so. To the right she saw low huts tucked in a nook in the hills near the banks of the Colorado River that ran through the valley.

  “This is our home,” Topeka said softly.

  Coming into the village, the band of travelers was met by a running, laughing, dusty group of children. Songs, laughter, and clapping met them at every home. Topeka and the girls headed for the chief ’s home on the rise just overlooking the river by a grove of cottonwood trees. The house was set in an enclosure made of large peeled poles nearly twenty feet high. An opening in this enclosure formed the doorway and led to an inner grassy yard and a smaller, shorter enclosure with a reed-matted, mud-plastered roof.

  How different this is from the Yavapai village,thought Olive. The biggest difference came in meeting Topeka’s family. After her father quietly met Olive and Mary Ann, he turned to Topeka and hugged her, clearly excited to see her. Her mother couldn’t stop asking questions, hugging and smiling. They loved Topeka.

  The responsibility that seemed to ride heavily on the girl fell away. She laughed and danced around the inside yard, glad to be home. Inside she took a crusty cake of bread resting in the coals and broke it in three parts, giving Olive the largest. Nothing ever tasted as good. The girls ate every crumb.

  Olive and Mary Ann spent the next few months—or moons, as the Mohaves counted time—discovering things about their new home. Patches of winter wheat grew in the valley. Instead of only hunting and gathering, the Mohaves tilled the ground. That made Olive happy because she thought it surely must mean more food.

  As planting time came, however, the girls expressed dismay to Topeka at how the planting was done.

  “Back home, our farmers could have planted acres with the same effort your people plant one hillock with five stalks of corn.” Watching them exasperated Olive.

  “My people plant in the ways of our fathers,” Topeka quietly explained. “They must wait for the overflow of the Colorado to deposit rich soil. Then they take the seed gathered from the year before and plant it according to the moon.”

  “But if you grew more, you could collect more seed and grow more the following year,” Olive said.

  “We only want to grow what the land can nurture. We only want to grow what we need to fill our hungry bellies.”

  It frustrated Olive. She and Mary Ann were always hungry, and this was the time of the spring harvest. Topeka’s needs and her needs certainly differed.

  It was at times like these that Olive longed for home. She knew that her old home and even her family no longer existed. But home was the place you felt comfortable—where the ways were known—the smells familiar, the seasons predictable. It was where you understood the people—not just their language, but what they meant and where they got their ideas. She and Mary Ann remained strangers in a foreign land.

  It was not that the Mohaves did not make her feel welcome. In fact, when Aespaniola introduced them to the tribe he put one girl on either side of him, put his hands on their shoulders and said: “Let all the people help raise them. If they fall sick, tend them. Treat them well.” And, for the most part, the Mohaves treated them like part of the tribe. At first some of the children tried to boss them around, but one look from Topeka changed the children’s minds.

  Being treated like one of the tribe meant work, however —hard work. Both Olive and Mary Ann went back to gathering berries and digging for roots. They had to range far, since the scanty supply of roots nearby was reserved for the old women.

  One morning, as they took their baskets and prepared to gather berries, Topeka stopped them. “Come with me to our house.”

  “Now?” Olive was surprised. No one stayed at home during the day.

  “Yes. The physician has come to apply the ki-e-chook.”

  “Ki-e-chook?”

  “The markings we wear on our chins. It is time for you and Mary Ann to get the mark. When we ransomed you, you became ours,” Topeka said.

  “You mean this is the mark of a slave?”

  “No. You see I wear one. Am I a slave? Because you are ours, you are bound to us. We must protect you. If another tribe finds you while you are out digging roots, they will not hurt you when you wear our mark of protection.”

  Olive didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want the tattoo. It meant she would forever be different from her people. She wanted to go home, but if she had the ki-e-chook,she would always be different. She could never live unnoticed with one foot in each world—she would be forever marked as a child of the Mohave.

  She looked at Mary Ann, standing silently beside her. Her sister di
d not cry, but her chin quivered and she hung her head. “Will it hurt, Topeka?”

  “Yes, but you are brave, little sister.”

  It did not hurt as much as Olive supposed. They laid her down and the skin on her face was pricked with a very sharp stick in geometric patterns. The dye, made from a stone that could be found in the shallow parts of the river, had already been prepared. The stone had been burned until it crumbled easily into a powder and mixed with the juice from a weed that grew near the river. The pulverized rock dye was pressed into the pricked pattern on the girls’ chins.

  The doctor then pricked a line onto their upper arms and pressed the dye into the design. Getting the ki-e-chook didn’t hurt as much as Olive expected it would, but for the next five days, the pain was intense.

  Over the next few weeks, Olive kept trying to catch a clear reflection in a still pool on the river. When she finally felt she knew how it looked, she vowed to look no more. The ki-e-chook forever changed her. And to think she had worried about Lucy and Susan staining their lips with berries.

  Famine and Peace

  Time passed and Olive marked the seasons along with the Mohave. The spring gave way to a hot, dry summer. Hunger marked every day. The rains never materialized that first spring, and Olive learned that it almost never rained in summer in the Mohave valley. Parts of the river bottom dried and developed deep fissures. By autumn they harvested what little crops survived. Olive and Mary Ann gathered mesquite beans and dug for roots—much the same as they had with the Yavapai.

  Olive watched Mary Ann and worried. She ’d become little more than skin and bones. Her cough worsened.

  “We have to find more food for you, Mary Ann.” Olive knew the impossibility of this. They ranged farther and farther in their search for food. The Mohaves shared their food equally—not like the Yavapai who fed warriors first.

  “Everyone is hungry, not just me,” Mary Ann said. “I see little babies who cry all the time. Oh dear, it breaks my heart.”

  “I know, but you are all I have—I want you to get better.” Olive couldn’t imagine life without her sister. She kept Olive connected to the past. Sometimes they still talked in English together, but even that slowly slipped away. And Mary Ann still dreamed of escape or being ransomed back to the States. Without her, Olive knew she’d soon settle for the routine of desert life.

  Topeka and her mother worried about Mary Ann as well. More than once, Olive saw Topeka’s mother break a little piece off her own portion and secretly pass it to Mary Ann.

  The one hope that sustained them was the promise of coming rains. When it rained, the Colorado would flood, the land would once again turn green, corn and grain could be planted, and wild crops gathered. How they longed for rain.

  Olive took to watching Topeka’s face. In the early weeks of the dry spell, Topeka still seemed serene, encouraging the others and planning for the rain. As weeks stretched into months, Olive watched worry settle onto Topeka’s brow in furrows, much like drought cut into the landscape.

  Work increased for everyone as they ranged farther and farther to find food. Grain played out completely. The Mohaves subsisted on a mush made from mesquite roots that had been pounded to a pulp and mixed with water to cook up into a gooey, stringy lump. The mush filled a person’s empty belly and helped stave off the worst hunger pains, but it didn’t seem to have much nutrition.

  Because of the drought, the hunters could no longer find game. During autumn that year, the ducks and geese never even stopped to rest from their migration south. The earth had been picked clean, and the marshes had dried.

  Once, while out digging for roots, Olive and Mary Ann came across a man leaning against a tree. His skin looked like pemmican. His eyes were sunken. They remembered him from when they first came—he had been a bold young warrior then.

  Olive ran to fetch the physician. After he examined the man, the doctor said there was little he could do. It was not disease, just starvation. This man’s family had needed the food, and he hadn’t managed to save enough to feed himself.

  As he lay dying, his family cried. Olive wondered if they cried tears of regret. After he quietly slipped into death, his body was placed atop a stack of dried brush and burned, according to Yavapai custom. Those burning funeral pyres became all too common in the days to come.

  One old woman remembered a grove of tenatas —trees— which once sustained their people in a long ago drought. Too old to go herself, she gave directions to the younger ones. When Olive learned it was a journey of nearly sixty miles over a treacherous mountain route, she begged Topeka to let Mary Ann remain in the village. Topeka agreed and promised to care for her.

  Olive set off with a group of women. A few warriors came along for protection but little else. Carrying food was strictly women’s work. Olive packed her empty chiechuck, the container that, with God’s help, would hold the oth-to-toa berries.

  They walked far beyond their strength. Several women sat down as if to await death, but friends always urged them on. After three days the party finally came to the place described by the old woman. They found the tenatas, which were really bushes resembling mesquite but with a much broader leaf. Some of these bushes grew as high as thirty feet but the tenatas were old and the fruit sparse. Those few berries that withered on the branches did little more than nourish the gatherers.

  The taste surprised Olive. Even shriveled, the taste of the oth-to-toa berry was pleasant. When smashed and mixed with water it reminded Olive of the juice of an orange. The thought of finding more of these berries and bringing them back to nourish Mary Ann gave Olive renewed energy.

  Dear God, let me find some young bushes. Please. I just know these berries will refresh Mary Ann. Guide me.

  Olive emptied the few remaining berries into another woman’s chiechuck and set off with a small party from their temporary camp in search of more berries. After wandering for two days, covering what must have been another twenty miles, they came upon a valley filled with the bushes. Olive and the women gathered berries to fill every single container. Since there were still so many left, each person ate as much as they could hold—trying to store up their own reserves for the continuing famine.

  No one expected the berries to be so hard to digest. Within hours many writhed in pain. Olive’s stomach seemed to squeeze in on itself until she could barely take a breath without pain. Some vomited, and others kept running for the forest to get relief. Olive’s stomach settled down after a while,and she rallied enough to be able to bring water to the ones who still suffered. Three Indians became so sick they died of stomach distress. Since the others could not carry the bodies home, they built a funeral pyre right there in the valley of the oth-to-toa berries and sadly burned the bodies.

  Having observed so much death, Olive returned to the village, dreading what she would find. When she saw Mary Ann with Topeka she experienced a mixture of relief at seeing her sister alive and despair at seeing that she’d become even thinner and more gaunt.

  The berries gave a welcome, if temporary, relief. Topeka hoarded them and eked them out little by little.

  Hope was even harder to find than food. Topeka’s mother continued to try to slip extra bits of food to the girls even though her family starved as well. One day Topeka came to find Olive pounding the scant bits of mesquite root against a flat rock with Mary Ann sitting nearby. No one expected Mary Ann to work any longer—her weakness became more apparent each day.

  “Come, sisters. My mother wishes to speak to you.” Topeka reached out her hands to help them up. “Just leave your work, Olive, you can come back to it.” No matter how grim their situation, Topeka smiled.

  They walked toward the chief ’s house. Olive remembered worrying about meeting a chief all those months back when she first came. She had learned that the Mohave chief was a man respected by his people for his wisdom and fairness. Olive and Mary Ann had come to respect him as well.

  But they had come to love Topeka’s mother. From the very first she ac
cepted them and cared for them. In the early days, when Olive tended to draw comparisons between the ways of Mohave farmers and the ways of the Illinois farmers, some Mohaves took offense. Topeka’s mother just listened and smiled.

  Now she stood smiling again. “Aluitman, I have a gift for you. You must keep it secret and guard it well.” The chief ’s wife still called her by the Indian contraction of her full name.

  Olive didn’t speak. She couldn’t imagine what Topeka’s mother could offer. Since the famine, the Mohaves had precious little and everything they did have—like blankets and chiechucks —they shared freely already.

  “Come.” Topeka and her mother led her to a plot of flood plain near the river that had been marked off with stones. It was about thirty feet square. “This is the field for Aluitman and Mary Ann. You may plant your crops like they do in Ill-a-noy.” She held out a bark pouch.

  Olive opened the pouch and found seed grain—corn, melon seed, and wheat. She cradled the pouch in both hands. Carefully hoarded seed represented the only hope of food for the future. This gift was given out of great sacrifice. Topeka’s mother must have understood that Olive and Mary Ann needed hope more than anything.

  Olive couldn’t help herself—tears ran down her face.

  The Mohaves prized emotional restraint, but Topeka’s mother seemed to understand that Olive’s tears welled up from a deep sense of gratitude. “You plant the wheat now to harvest in spring,” Topeka’s mother said. “Then, when Colorado floods and brings rich new earth, you plant corn and melon.”

  “Hide the corn seed,” warned Topeka. “With so many of our people starving, it could be made into a mush that would feed a family for three days.”

  Each day the sisters toiled on their own piece of ground. Olive dug a deep hole near a rock and hid the pouch containing her spring seed. They spent hours tending the plot and praying over every shoot. Recently Mary Ann had started singing again. Now Olive would work as Mary Ann’s thin voice whispered long-remembered hymns. If only Mary Ann could grow stronger. Olive didn’t know how they could get by until harvest came.