In contrast to Tildie’s pensive mood, Older One rejoiced. She grinned at Tildie until Tildie realized what the old woman was thinking and blushed. Older One patted her shoulder and looked into her eyes with such a knowing expression that Tildie blushed again. Each time her eyes met the old woman’s, Tildie felt her cheeks grow warm. Each blush set Older One off in a cackling giggle.
The fire died down. The children slept in their bed. Older One brought in a new dress of soft, smooth leather for Tildie to wear. The eager Indian woman combed and braided Tildie’s blond locks, all the time whispering in her native language words which Tildie could only guess referred to the time when the blond giant would come to the tepee. Older One’s grins and chortling heightened Tildie’s embarrassment.
Tildie ignored Older One, but still she grew impatient for the Swede to come. She wanted information—when they would leave and where he would take them.
At last Older One snored softly. The tepee flap pulled back and Jan Borjesson’s huge form blocked the moonlight.
“Are you asleep?” he whispered.
“No,” Tildie answered, just as quietly.
He extended his hand. “Come and walk with me.”
Tildie rose from the pallet, crossed the small space, and took his hand naturally. His large dog greeted her, and she dropped the man’s hand to pet behind the dog’s soft ears.
“Her name is Gladys,” offered Jan.
“Gladys?” The oddly proper name for a furry beast startled a nervous giggle out of her.
Borjesson nodded his head, smiling down at her with the crooked grin that made him look so like her brother.
“After a schoolteacher from my youth. I was madly in love with her through two and a half grades. She married the blacksmith.”
Tildie looked up at him shyly, wondering if he was teasing her. His face gave nothing away.
They walked through the quiet Indian village. No matter what time of night, there always seemed to be a few Indians awake and watchful. Borjesson nodded to them as they passed, and they returned his nonverbal greeting with grunts and grins. Tildie suspected she knew what they were thinking, and again, she blushed. Perhaps in the moonlight, that telltale red stain would not be noticed by her companion.
At last he indicated they could stop. He offered a seat on a smooth boulder. Gladys sat beside Tildie and rested her chin in her lap. When Tildie did not take the hint, the dog nudged her hand indicating she would gladly accept a good rub behind the ears.
“S’pose you could tell me your name?” asked Jan. “I can’t exactly call you, ‘wife.’”
“Tildie, Matilda Harris.”
“Well, Matilda Harris, you must tell me how best to help you. Where do you wish to go? Where are your people?”
“I have none. I don’t know where to go.”
“Who were the couple who died in the accident?” He then explained, “My friends have given me a full account of how they found you.”
“My aunt and her husband,” she answered readily. “They were taking me to Fort Reynald to marry a grocer named Armand des Reaux.”
The tall man turned abruptly toward her, “You’re to marry des Reaux?” A note of disbelief sharpened his tone.
“I’ve never met him,” she hurried to explain. “My aunt’s husband arranged the marriage. John Masters said he couldn’t afford to keep me.”
“Well, you must certainly not go to Fort Reynald. Des Reaux is a mean, uncouth character. We’ll just cross that off your list of possibilities.” He sat quietly for a moment. “You say your aunt’s husband, not your uncle. Why is that?”
“I came out from Lafayette, Indiana, after the last of my family died. I didn’t realize my aunt’s second husband would be so different from Uncle Henry. I remembered him as generous and warmhearted. They lived near us when I was small.
“At the time it seemed a wise move, and even though the last six months have been difficult, I believe I helped my aunt some and made parts of her life more bearable.”
“Are there relatives from the other side of the children’s family?”
Tildie shook her head. “It’s just me and the three children now.”
Tildie looked away trying to hide her discomfort. She realized this gentle giant thought the children were her own. She didn’t ordinarily lie to someone who’d been kind to her. The blatant falsehood made her tense. Her parents had trained deceit out of her as any Christian parents would. She must tell him the truth, yet she feared he’d then devise some plan for their well-being that would mean separating them all.
Her conscience battled against her fears. Emotionally, she clung to the reasoning that the circumstances justified the lie. Adding to her guilt, his next words proved he wasn’t comfortable with lying, either.
“I’ll have to consider this, Tildie.” He spoke slowly, “I’ve never lied to these people. I worked hard to gain their trust. I don’t like pretending that we’re man and wife, and I would have put an end to it immediately except for a warning from Moving Waters. He believes you’re my woman and he hurried me here because Bear Standing Tall wants you for his own.”
Tildie nodded. “I know which one that must be.” She thought of the man who followed her and helped her with the girls when they fell into the stream.
“Fighting for the right to take you to your own people didn’t seem wise. Identified as my woman, you’re free to go with me.”
She nodded again. So, he was hedging in order to prevent an unpleasant circumstance as well. Somehow, that thought did little to alleviate her own burdened conscience.
“I can take you and the children out of here,” Jan continued, “but I’m not sure where to take you. They would think it most peculiar if I just took you to a nearby town and dumped you.”
“Would they know?”
“Ah, yes, they would know. They are an astute people, and this is their country. They are very aware of all the white men’s movements.”
“How do they explain the three children when you have been in this area for over four years?”
“I travel a lot. Gladys and I have explored thousands of miles. I’ve often been beyond their territory.”
At the mention of her name, Gladys left Tildie’s side to sit at her master’s feet. Jan affectionately petted her, and Tildie noticed for the first time the heavy frosting of white hair around the dog’s muzzle. Man and dog had been companions for a long time. This man knew the country, the Indians, the way of the land. She must trust him, putting their lives in his hand and trusting that this was what her heavenly Father desired.
“What do you think we should do about leaving here?” she asked.
“First, I’ll take you to my cabin. I need to do a few things to leave it for the winter. Then, I’ll take you back to Kansas City. From there you should be able to travel back East.”
“There’s nothing there for us. The children have, I mean, my aunt has… had, a ranch in Colorado close to the Kansas and Texas borders. The land would be ours now. We’re the only relatives.”
“You wish to return there?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“A woman with three children, running a ranch alone. Forgive me, but it doesn’t sound very practical.”
“A woman with three children returning East to no home, with no money or friends does sound practical?”
He grinned. In the moonlight, his teeth shone in that crooked smile. She waited.
He shook his head slowly.
“I don’t have an answer for that one. Can you give me twenty-four hours?”
“I don’t see that there is a point to it. You may try to make up a reason to dissuade me, but the fact is if God is going to introduce more trials in my life, I’d rather be tried in a place familiar to me than tried in a strange place among strangers.”
“You have friends at the ranch?”
“I lived there for six months before John Masters decided to take me to Fort Reynald.”
He was quiet for a moment, lookin
g up to the stars. When he finally spoke, the question startled her. “What happened to your husband?”
“I’ve never had a husband, Mr. Borjesson.”
He turned to look at her then. Although she hadn’t planned to tell him, she was relieved that she had. The deception had made her uneasy, and she knew that God would honor truth.
“I’m only eighteen. I would have had to marry when I was eleven to be Boister’s mother.” Tildie smiled as she saw his face in the moonlight. His expression held no hint of condemnation. “The children are my aunt’s. The Indians assumed they were mine.”
“This does get more complicated, doesn’t it?” The missionary smiled, and she noticed the crinkle lines around his eyes. She was glad she’d told the truth. She nodded, waiting to see what he would say.
“Well, there’s no sense making plans without prayer and a good night’s sleep. God will make the path clear if we don’t rush it. Are you content with that?”
“Yes.”
“I’m still here to help you. Do you trust me?”
“As long as you don’t try to separate me from the children or the children from each other.”
“Now, why would I try to do that?”
“Because it’s more practical?”
“I don’t see that tearing a family apart would be God’s way.”
Overwhelming relief flooded through Tildie. She grabbed the giant around the waist and hugged him.
“Thank you. Thank you.”
He laughed and awkwardly patted her on the back. “I haven’t done anything yet.”
CHAPTER 6
Jan contentedly sat with the men and told them stories from the Good Book. It pleased him that the Indians asked questions about the great God who cared for all people. He referred to what Paul said in Acts about the Unknown God, stressing that even if God were unknown to a tribe, that did not mean He did not exist.
In the evening, the people of the village gathered around the fire, and he preached to the women and children as well as the men. The custom of the Indians was to relate their stories with a rhythm. There was a cadence of speech reserved just for the great stories of old. Jan, while living with the Indians, had cultivated this method of delivery into his own style. Now he spoke not only in their native tongue, but with the same inflection and flow of their traditional stories.
Jan talked with the medicine man who had been hostile to his words on previous visits. In their legends, the Arapaho people revered a being called Creator who made earth. The old man showed interest in the Bible stories as he had never done before. Jan prayed that his Indian friend would truly hear the Gospel message.
“Tell me if the creator of my people will die if I turn to your God,” said the old man as he sat with the missionary in the evening.
“I don’t believe that is the way it is.” Jan replied earnestly. “You are a man who has always sought the truth. You have spoken to the one you call Creator whom you believe to have power over man and the world. I say that you have talked to God but did not know His name or the things He has revealed to us through His Son.
“When you spoke to the Creator of Rain, you were speaking to Jehovah, because He is the God of Rain. When you spoke to the Creator of Light, you were speaking to Jehovah, because He not only is the God of Light, but He created light, and the Book says He is Light. You have often spoken to the Creator, but now He has sent me to tell you that there is but one God, the one and only, true and living Jehovah.”
“And the evil spirits?”
“There is no God but the good and just Jehovah. Evil spirits would like us to believe that they have the power of God, but they do not. They have the power of fear. In God there is no darkness at all. God does not give us a spirit of fear, but of love, truth, and a sound mind. God casts out all fear.”
“I will think on these things, Jan Borjesson,” the man promised. Jan prayed that he would also remember what he had told him about the purpose of God’s Son’s journey to the people of the earth.
Another time he told the man, “God is fair. He does not want His people to be ignorant of Him. He sends someone to tell what He has revealed to others. If you were to walk for a hundred years, you would come near the land where His Son visited the earth.” He drew a small circle in the dirt and pointed to it as he spoke. “God did not want just these people so far away to possess the great knowledge of Him. He sent people out, here and here and here.” Jan drew more rings around the first circle. “These people were told about God. Then, more people went out at God’s command to tell of His greatness.”
Jan drew more rings around the original.
“You see the Truth of God is spreading.” He drew the circles farther and farther away from the center. “Now, I am here,” he said, pointing to the outermost circle. “It is because God wants the Arapaho to know.”
“It is like a pebble dropped in the pond,” said the old medicine man solemnly.
“Yes,” said Jan, knowing that it was often best to let the Indian think rather than to continue talking. After a few moments, the old man nodded, rose to his feet, and left Jan to wonder how much the man believed.
Three days after Jan had walked into the village, he left with his newly acquired “family.” They had little to carry as they set out on foot. Rolled blankets held meager supplies. Each carried a bundle and the Indian equivalent to a canteen. Gladys had her saddlebag pouches packed.
Jan explained that the Arapaho expected Tildie to bear the bulk of their burden. Women and dogs traditionally carried all as the semi-nomadic tribe moved around. He chortled. “The women particularly like when I tell how Jesus often honored women and sought to make their burdens less onerous. They are in favor of following our God in this area.”
Jan provided each of his fellow travelers with a walking stick. The girls’ had animal heads carved at the top knob. Little Evie soon found herself carried by the big Swede in a sling much like the Indians used to carry their smallest children.
They marched toward the mountains for several hours, then Jan called a halt under a shade tree next to a brook. They ate the bread Older One had given them and settled in for a nap. While the hot September sun beat down on the dry land and the winds flowed down off the mountainside, they would rest.
In the tepee of Older One, Jan slept with the little family group. He had nestled between Mari and Boister. Next to Mari had been Evie with Tildie near the outside wall. Now, as they prepared to sleep in the shade of the elm, Mari plopped down beside Jan. Evie and Tildie took up the other blanket.
Tildie watched Boister stand undecided. Obviously, he didn’t want to lie on a blanket with the girls nor settle beside Jan Borjesson. Finally, he sat between the two blankets with his back against the tree trunk.
When Tildie awoke hours later, he was a crumpled figure, alone at the base of the tree. Her heart stirred with helplessness. Nothing she did seemed to bring Boister back to his childhood. He never fully interacted with anyone. She had thought that in the Indian village, he was showing some signs of attachment to the men and boys who included him in their daily lives.
He must feel sad over parting from his Indian friends. He had found something there with the other boys, despite their cultural differences. He’d been accepted. Even though he seldom spoke, or maybe, because he was such a little stoic, the Indian boys had included him in their games as well as their forages out into the countryside. Boister had brought with him a bow and set of arrows, a knife, and several other things Indian boys valued. Tildie didn’t know exactly how he had acquired them. Perhaps the Indian men had given them to him as he learned alongside their sons.
Now Boister slept and he looked vulnerable like any other little six-year-old boy. The hard lines of his face were relaxed. He didn’t look tough. Tildie knew he must grow up to be a man in this harsh world, but she regretted his loss of childish delight. She had never seen him giggle with abandon like the girls. She closed her eyes to pray and drifted from the comfort of the Father’s prese
nce into a peaceful sleep.
She awoke to the smell of dinner. Jan Borjesson grinned at her as she stretched and sat up. He crouched by a small fire, sitting on his heels and stirring the pot Boister had carried.
“Hmm, that’s smells good.”
“It’s jerky and wild onions. Boister and I found a patch there by the stream. It still isn’t cool enough to travel comfortably, so I figured we’d eat a bite first.”
The breeze rustled the leaves above and played with the wisps of curly blond hair that framed Tildie’s face. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were red from the sun. Tildie reached up and pulled out the braid that hung down her back. With her fingers, she combed through the tangles and proceeded to redo the braid in a more orderly fashion.
The girls busily constructed a house out of sticks and leaves. Boister sat on a rock by the stream.
“There’s a trading post two days west,” said Jan, watching her as he stirred. “I have some credit there. We’ll get a horse and some supplies. Think you can fashion a bonnet out of whatever material old Jake has available?”
“I’ll certainly try.” She looked down at her deerskin dress. “I don’t look like an Indian or a white woman. Much longer in the sun and I’ll be red and blistering.”
“I was just thinking how nice it was to have company,” Jan said with an admiring glance. His next words ruined any illusion Tildie had of her attractive appearance. “I guess I’m not too particular on what my company looks like, whether you’re burnt or not. I’ve lived out here now for six years, and in that time, I’ve seen two white women. One was old Jake’s wife. She died four winters ago. The other was a Frenchwoman traveling with a trapper. She didn’t speak any English, Swedish, or Indian. Her trapper friend didn’t want her talking to anyone, anyway. Jealous type.”
Tildie smiled, thinking how the trapper had cause to be jealous. Jan Borjesson was a man who would turn any woman’s head.
The Brides of the Old West: Five Romantic Adventures from the American Frontier Page 71