by J. R. WRIGHT
“How did you know to do that?” Rosemary near yanked the baby from his hands.
“I’ve seen it, from time to time, in Indian villages, ma’am, where they step from tepees and swat a bloody newborn. I often wondered why. Now I guess we know.”
“You’re quite a remarkable man, Mister McKinney,” she said, busily tying a piece of string around the umbilical cord, then cut it short. “If you had been around for the other three, we might have saved one or two. All stillborn, we thought. I’m sure glad we saved this one. I’m afraid it may be the last for me. I’m at that age.”
“In that case, me too, ma’am. Do you have a name for her yet?”
“Ever since you told me who was buried out there, I’ve been thinking Breanne. If you’d write it down for me I’d like to call her that, if it’s okay. I mean, she was your wife.”
“She’ll be proud, ma’am.” Luke drew a short pencil from his pocket, not bothering to tell her Breanne wasn’t in that grave. Not any longer.
“You can write it in the Bible over there,” she pointed to a shelf Pierre had installed in a gap between the logs, a place for Sarah to put her hair brush next to the mirror that once hung on the wall. Both the brush and mirror had been Breanne’s. “Did she have a middle name?”
“No ma’am, she didn’t.” Not that he ever heard.
“That’s okay, Breanne is like two names. Kind of like mine – Rosemary.”
Luke ended up spending the night. He couldn’t bring himself to leave Misses Fowler alone at such a time. Sleeping on the porch brought back old memories, and he reviewed them, but in a different light now. All those nights, thinking Breanne was just below in that grave. He needn’t dwell on that any longer. Finding her must be foremost in his thoughts now.
The following morning, once discovering Misses Fowler was up and moving about, Luke prepared to leave. The baby was also doing fine. He heard her crying briefly several times during the night, and again this morning. While he was saddling the mule, Rosemary shouted through the door.
“Would you like some tea, Mister McKinney? I’m afraid I’m fresh out of coffee till my husband returns.”
“No thanks, ma’am. I’d best be traveling on.”
“Well, thank you then… Thank you for saving my baby. She… Breanne is so beautiful…”
“Glad to be of help, ma’am,” he returned, smiling inwardly. He hoped to be telling the story of what had happened here to his Breanne someday. Then, for a fleeting moment, he was joyfully certain of it
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Now that he had proven she lived, where had she gone? He would find her, he vowed, if it took the remainder of his life… If Breanne were alive, he would find her! If not? If not, he would discover what had become of her.
It took four days to locate the Sauk village on the Maple River. It was near where it joined up with the Red, just as Beaver Charlie had said all those years ago. What kept them here, with so many whites crowding in, he wondered? He’d passed a dozen squatter farms on the way from the cabin.
Maybe it was because the Sauk had been mixing with Europeans for hundreds of years, or more. So Beaver Charlie had said once. Even their language was sprinkled now and then with a French or an English word.
“I’m looking for Beaver Charlie!” Luke shouted as he led the calico mule through the swarming village. It was late September, always a busy time for anyone this far north. Winter was coming on. Meat needed to be laid in, and mountains of firewood gathered, sometimes from miles away.
Most in the camp moved about with little concern over his presence, except for one old man who shuffled forward. “No,” he said, then signed as he spoke their garbled tongue. “Red Beard died. Go to happy place many years ago.” He pointed to the overcast sky, without looking up as he did it.
“Died from what?” Luke was anxious to know. As he remembered, even though he looked it, Beaver Charlie wasn’t that old.
“Of sickness. Many people in village die then.” The old man pointed to his heavily pockmarked face.
“Smallpox?”
“Pox,” the old man said, nodding his head in agreement.
“Does his woman live?” Luke asked.
“Yes,” the old man shuffled to a place where he could see between the lodges. When Luke caught up to him, the old man pointed.
Across the river from the village were two log cabins, very near each other. “She still lives in the cabin?” Luke asked.
“Yes. She lives with man who speaks of God.”
“A missionary?” Luke asked.
The old man nodded. Charlie had told often of the missionaries that came here. It was from one of them back then, freshly arrived from Fort Union, that word had come of the planned rendezvous at Woodhole, near the Mississippi that year. He also knew from Charlie that the small cabin next to his served as a temporary residence for these young men of God.
“How do I get over there?” Luke asked, not wanting to get wet on such a chilly day.
“Beaver dam,” the old man said and pointed up river.
Luke properly thanked the old Sauk and headed for the nearby river to find the crossing. Soon he was on the other side and walking up on the largest of the weathered cabins, both made of enormous cottonwood logs.
He should have asked the woman’s name, he thought, just as the plank door opened and a middle aged white man, dressed in buckskins, stepped to the porch.
“Howdy stranger,” the slightly graying at the temples man said with a broad smile. “Might you be lost?”
“Howdy,” Luke returned. “Actually, I’m looking for the wife of an old friend. His name was Charlie – better known as Beaver Charlie.”
“Mato?” (Bear) A short, plump Indian woman came from the darkness of the cabin. In the light she appeared to be about forty, but very handsome in the face, yet.
“Yes, Mato,” he responded, remembering Charlie saying his wife called him that.
“Mato die!” She pounded her fisted hands atop each other, to indicate many years had passed since then.
“Was there a fair-haired white woman here before he died?” Luke asked, pulling on his own long hair to show a similar color.
With that, the woman rattled on for some time, making an abundance of signs which he understood few of. That’s when the buckskinned man began to interpret.
“She said the white woman was here for only a short time. She went away with the white man of God that was here at the time. They went north when they left, which she thought was strange. The missionary men always came from the west. And when they left, they went back the same way.”
Luke just assumed they had gone to the cabin looking for him. That would be the reason for them going north initially. “Was the missionary done here and returning to wherever he came from?” he asked to the buckskinned man, expecting him to relay it to the woman.
“Yes,” her answer was. “The replacement missionary was already here. The one leaving with the white woman was going to catch a boat.”
“Do the missionaries still come?” Luke asked, with hopes of discovering where this one may have gone.
“Not in ten years. I was the last,” the buckskinned man answered. “They sent me here for two seasons, but nobody came to replace me, so I stayed on. By that time, I’d fallen in love with Peach here. I call her Peach. Her Indian name was more than I wanted to handle on a regular basis.” He looked over to the smiling woman, who seemed very happy with this man. “I didn’t feel right about continuing with the ministry once I’d sinned…”
“Where did you come from?” Luke asked.
“Ohio. The name is Wheeler. Otto Wheeler.” He put out a hand.
“Hill,” Luke returned, taking the hand for a firm shake. “Do you think this other missionary may have been from Ohio as well?”
“Maybe, but unlikely. The church takes volunteers from all over, Mister Hill. What is your interest in this particular missionary? Or, is it the white woman you spoke of, that you search for?”
>
“The white woman was my wife. She was taken by Indians from our camp north of here fifteen years ago. I thought her dead up until just recently. Now I’m looking to find out where she may have gone off to.”
“Well, if she stuck with that missionary, she could have ended up most anywhere in the east. What was her name?”
“Breanne.”
Hearing that, Peach repeated the name, “Breanne.” Then she said, “Luke!”
“Luke, yes!” He focused on her. “That’s me!”
With that, Peach went into another spell of uttering near gibberish. Only a few words of that did Luke make out.
“She said the woman was real determined to find this man, Luke. She insisted the Holy Man take her to him. Now Peach is sad the woman never found you.”
“Me too,” Luke said and bid the two of them goodbye shortly thereafter. The remainder of the day he followed the meandering Red River south, and as he did, passed squatter farm after squatter farm. The North Country was changing, and he wasn’t so sure he liked what he saw. Soon, if this kept up, there would be no open spaces, and that saddened him even more.
Luke followed the Red River south for days until it eventually tied into the Big Sioux. The Big Sioux took him to the Missouri, and the Missouri to the familiar sight of Fort Pierre.
The old fort hadn’t changed much, Luke noticed as he rode up to the big open gates and on inside. He was no longer worried about being recognized here. After all this time, surely there was no one remaining from the time Silas Jones ran the place. Except for maybe an old Indian or two, who may have seen him here back then. And with all this hair, even they would have difficulty making him out, he reasoned.
“What can I help you with?” a clean shaven, red haired young man, with a heavy eastern accent, said from behind the counter as he entered the vacant store.
“I need some oats for my mule.”
“Corn’s the best we can do,” the man said. “We have it on the cob.”
“On the cob is good,” Luke said, remembering when he and Sarah had coaxed the red horses all the way to Independence, tossing them ears of corn from the drifting mackinaw boat.
“Two dollars a two bushel jute bag,” the clerk said.
“One will do. And give me some bacon. Half a slab ought to do me.” Luke was anxious for a change from rabbit and prairie chicken, his main diet these past weeks.
“You from around here, Mister?” the clerk said as he jotted his order down. “I don’t recall seeing you before.”
“Nope! The name is Hill. I’m an Army Scout from Fort Kearny on the Platte.”
“Out lookin’ for Little Thunder? I hear tell he near wiped out Fort Laramie, late in the summer.”
“Nope!” Luke said again, wondering how he had gotten that bit of news so soon. “You have dried apricots?”
“Prunes is the best I can do for dried fruit.”
“Prunes will have to do, then. Four pounds.”
“Anything else?” the impatient clerk asked.
The place was empty of customers. Luke couldn’t understand why he would be so hurrisome. “Do you have whiskey, other than that stuff you trade to the Indians?”
“Actually we have it bottled now for the boat travelers. Pint or quart?”
“Pint. It’s just for an upset stomach,” Luke said. “There’s no piss in it, is there?”
“No, sir. We don’t do that anymore.”
“Well, that’s good to know. Best give me an extra pint then.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I didn’t see the ferry down at the river?” Luke said.
“No, sir. Too late in the season. Won’t be long before it starts to freeze. There’s a shallow place a half mile up, if you’re interested in crossing.”
“Thanks,” Luke said. “What’s the damage?” He reached for his gold pouch, deep in the buckskins he wore.
Once he had paid and loaded it all onto the mule, Luke couldn’t help but ask, “Where are you from, boy?” The accent was just too tempting. It reminded him of someone in his past he couldn’t quite put a finger on.
“Boston. My father was the overseer here for many years before he disappeared from a rendezvous in the North Country, about fifteen years ago. My family has an ownership here along with American Fur. My mother thought it best I come west, protect our investment, once I got old enough. This is my first season. I came on the first boat in the spring.”
Luke’s heart stopped. My God, was he looking into the face of Silas Jones’ son? A man he had killed? He supposed so; the resemblance was remarkable, and the accent was unmistakably the same. “Your name Jones?”
“Yes. How did you know?” he said. “Quincy Jones. Did you know my father?”
“No!” Luke said hastily. “I get by here occasionally. I know the story.” He climbed onto the mule.
“He was a good man, my dad,” the boy said, looking up into Luke’s eyes as if there was something in there he ought to know about.
Once away from the fort, Luke decided he wasn’t going to feel bad about having killed the boy’s father. No doubt the man had it coming, if for no other reason than killing Pierre. Perhaps the boy would turn out to be a better man than the father. But after some thought about it, he wasn’t so sure that would materialize either. Nine dollars for the little bit he’d gotten for his money? And by the looks of it, the boy had cheated him on the weight of the bacon, and the prunes as well. Now he supposed he had lied about there being no piss in the whiskey.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Bright Moon wasn’t too happy to hear Chaska wasn’t coming for her right away, even though Luke assured he would in fact do so, when the time was right. He just wasn’t sure yet when that would happen.
“Oh, honey!” Cola consoled Bright Moon when she broke out crying uncontrollably and took her to the living quarters in back of the store.
“Some of the Brule left here to join Little Thunder,” James Bordeaux said. “I was down there today doing some trading, and Chatawinna (Left handed woman) told me.”
“I don’t believe I know her?” Luke said, never having heard the name.
“Well actually, it’s not a she, even though he wears pretty beaded buckskin dresses most of the time.”
“Is that why they call him Chatawinna?” Luke asked with a smile.
“I believe so,” James laughed. “He has quite a following, men and women alike. That is why they had to make him a council chief of the Oglala.”
“So how many went to join Little Thunder?”
“A few hundred. All too young to be warriors. The story is, Little Thunder sent for them.”
“Why?” Luke asked.
“I think he’s building an army for future conflicts. He must know they’ll come for him eventually.”
“Certainly won’t be this year. Even if General Harney is coming, it’ll take a year to gather an army. He doesn’t move with less than a thousand soldiers.”
“Could be the beginning of an all out plains war.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Luke said. “All because of that blunder Grattan pulled. If it comes to that, I’m finished, James. I’m tired of cleaning up after their stupid mistakes.”
“What will you do then?” Bordeaux asked.
“Look around, James, they’re squatting everywhere. If they can do it, why can’t I? There’s some great grazing land west of here, where nobody has gone yet. If I get there first I can have my pick of the best of it.”
“Go for it! You’re not getting any younger, Tom.”
“I’m not as old as you. But I get where you’re coming from, just the same. That pounding I take in the saddle day in and day out is catching up to me.”
“How old are you then? It’s hard to tell with that bush on your face.”
“Thirty-two, this year. I was seventeen when I left St. Louis for the North Country fifteen years ago, and I’ve pretty much been on the move since.”
“Then it’s time you settled dow
n, Tom! Best do it now, or you never will! You’ll end up dying out there somewhere all alone. That’s the way they all go in your line of work, isn’t it? Jeremy Boggs got his just last year, over at Fort Hall. Cheyenne got him,” Bordeaux said and led the way to his bar in the back of the store, where two soldiers from Fort Laramie played pool and drank warm beer. “Have a drink and think on it.”
“Don’t mind if I do. Do you have any whiskey that’s not pissed in?” Luke laughed.
“Who does that anymore?” Bordeaux asked. “I never did, but I know what you’re talking about. Many of the traders at the rendezvous generously thinned the whiskey with river water and often put red pepper in it, for extra kick. That’s why the Indians once called it firewater. Got to where they wouldn’t take whisky in trade without first sampling it. Any hint of hot and it was angrily rejected. Then, after a few traders were killed over the deception, that pretty much put an end to it.”
“Fort Pierre still pisses in theirs. I bought two pints and ended up tossing them both away. It smelled like that latrine over at Kearny.”
“Probably the workers at the store taking a little nip out of each bottle and refilling them with whatever they have at hand,” Bordeaux laughed. “Well, now you can have some good stuff.” He sat a bottle and two glasses on the bar. “See, I’ll even have some with you. Now I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t pure, even if it was my own piss in it.” He laughed again.
Luke took a long pull from the glass poured for him. He then came out with what was foremost on his mind. “I have a son, James.”
“Where? St. Louis?”
“At that Lakhota village in the Paha Sapa.”
“Chaska?”
“Yep. I just found out.”
“My God, Tom, how did that happen?”
“It’s a long story…”
After suffering a twinge of guilt while looking the son of Silas Jones in the face over at Fort Pierre, Luke realized someone other than the two of them ought to know he had a son as well. Some other human being, so the truth may be told someday, if it became necessary. And he could of think of no better person to tell than James Bordeaux.