Kiowa White Moon

by Jeanie P Johnson

  “The gold was still in his pan, so who ever did it, wasn’t doing it for the gold,” Emmet informed us.

  “Could it have been Indians?” Darie wanted to know, as her eyes brimmed with tears. She was the only one who had connected the two incidents together.

  I was holding back tears myself. “I don’t think Indians would just shoot father for nothing. He wasn’t trespassing on their land.”

  “But they are pretty riled up about Kit Carson, and what he did. Maybe they just did it out of revenge,” Emmet suggested.

  “They would have shot him with an arrow, so we would know it was the Indians who did it, to show us their revenge,” I reasoned. “What did you do with him?” I asked suddenly.

  “We came back to get a horse to put him over, in order to bring him back. It is too dense to bring the wagon there,” Nigel informed me.

  “When did you say you heard the shot?” Emmet asked Darie again.

  “This morning, when everyone was gone. I was wondering where everyone went. Even Clinton and Bertha weren’t around. I had seen them walking off together, and Connie had taken off as well. Later, Bertha came in, but Clinton wasn’t with her. I guess that was because he was at the cave with Connie.”

  “There are no farms anywhere near ours, and the Santa Fe trail is five miles away, so I can’t imagine anyone who could have come this far and shot him,” Emmet said. “If it was a white man, they would have taken the gold. It must have been an Indian, seeing as how it was an Indian that who Clinton.”

  Emmet gave me a piercing glare, because he thought I knew something about why the Indian had shot Clinton. “Maybe there was more than just one Indian in the woods, and one of them had a gun,” he added.

  “I told you I thought I heard a gun shot,” Bertha murmured. “That is why I thought Clinton had been shot with a gun.”

  “If they were out shooting people,” Nigel piped up, “why didn’t they come to the farm and shoot us too, or ambush us when we were at the cave?”

  This made Darie start to whimper, thinking that maybe they would come in the night and kill us all.

  I couldn’t imagine that Muraco would allow one of his Indian friends to shoot my father. There had to be some other explanation, I kept telling myself, unless Muraco hadn’t know about it, because he had been with me.

  “We need to go back and get him,” Emmet murmured. “I’m going to grab one of the horses, and get the lantern out of the barn. I’ll wrap him up and put him in the barn over night, and in the morning, we can bury him beside Mother.”

  I knew Emmet was trying to be brave, but I could tell he was about to break down in tears as well. I stepped forward and gave him a hug. “This doesn’t sound right,” I whispered in his ear. “When you come back, I’ll tell you about that Indian.”

  Emmet gave me a surprised look, and then nodded. He grabbed Nigel, and they left the house. I put my arm around Darie’s waist, to lead her upstairs to her room. She looked like she was about to collapse. It was then, I thought about Bertha, but when I looked, she was no longer sitting in the chair we put her in. She must have gone back to be with Clinton, I assumed.

  I remained with Darie, until she had calmed down, and then I went downstairs, because I wanted to go out to the barn and wait for Emmet and Nigel to return. I decided I would stop by the parlor and check on Bertha and Clinton before I left the house, though.

  As I neared the door, I could hear them talking softly. She was probably telling Clinton what had happened, I figured, and laid my hand on the knob and turned it. I started to open the door, but then I could feel myself stiffen, as I heard what Bertha was saying.

  “They found him,” she was whispering. “The place will be ours soon. After all, I am his wife, and once you marry the girl, that will seal the bargain.”

  “She won’t marry me, Ma. She said she is going back to Missouri.”

  “Then you’ll have to convince the younger sister to marry you. We don’t want any trouble with the brothers. Once we are installed into the family, no one will question our right to the gold.”

  “I’m not sure this was a smart idea,” Clinton muttered. “I don’t know anything about mining for gold, and it’s a sure thing, we don’t make very good farmers. If they don’t stay here and work the farm, we’ll never survive. I thought you said there were gold nuggets in the stream, and it would be easy pickin’s. I didn’t see very much gold in that pan, Matthew was holding.”

  When he said that, I put my hand over my mouth to muffle my whimper.

  “He told me the stream was full of gold,” Bertha continued. “No telling how many pans of gold he already has stored in the chest. I know he has the gold stashed in a chest under the bed, but he has the key. Once I get the key, I’ll have access to it. He paid for that buggy with gold, so I know he has plenty, only Constance tells me that the gold in the stream is starting to get sparse. If you weren’t so lazy, you would have gone out with him and learned how to find it.”

  “You didn’t say anything about me becoming a gold miner. We should make Emmet do it, now that his father can’t do it any longer!”

  “Maybe we should have held off,” Bertha murmured, “but once you marry one of those girls, the boys will be more likely to stay and work the farm, and Emmet will agree to keep panning for gold. Maybe he can find a place where there is more gold. Then we’ll have a right to the gold, and everything else that comes with it. Once we have control, we can run things our way. I was shocked when I discovered how stingy that man turned out to be. I thought when he bought the buggy, he would be more generous with his money.”

  “Constance says she’s leaving, come spring,” he changed the subject.

  “That gives you the whole winter to woo her, or her younger sister, for that matter, which ever one you choose.”

  It was then, I let go of the handle and quietly walked away, but I was shaking so bad, I could barely contain myself.

  Everything suddenly started to fall into place. No wonder Bertha though Clinton was shot with a gun. She probably thought father had ended up shooting him, before he could shoot father. Then, when she heard father had been shot, she knew it was with a gun.

  From what they had said, Clinton must have killed my father over his gold, and I wished I had never helped Clinton. I wished I had left him in that cave to die! Muraco was right. He deserved to die.

  I sat shivering in the barn, as I waited for Emmet to return, not because I was cold, but because I couldn’t believe my father ever trusted that woman. Clinton must have come to the cave, right after he had shot my father. No wonder he laughed when I had mentioned I was going to tell father about him. I was trying to figure out what we should do. There was no way I was going to remain on the farm, as long as those two were there.

  The closest town was Dodge, but it was a lawless place. It was the only town big enough to have a sheriff, but it was a sure thing, they would do nothing about the murder, since we couldn’t prove Clinton had killed our father. I certainly did not want to go to Dodge, even to look up the sheriff.

  If we remained, I would be tempted to kill both Clinton and his mother for their mean hearted actions. Hell, who would miss them, I wondered. Only I wasn’t that cold blooded. Maybe Emmet would be, though.

  If they could kill my father without a thought, what would keep them from killing any one of us, if we did not cooperate with them? The only reason they needed us to remain was so we could work the farm, and pan the gold, but once the harvest was in, they may not need any of us any longer. They would have plenty of food to last the winter, and Bertha was certain that father’s chest was just full of gold nuggets.

  If she discovered he had used most of his gold for the trip to Dodge, and to buy the buggy and horse, no telling what she would do in her anger. Neither of them knew how hard father worked just to get the small amount of gold he was able to glean from the stream.

  As soon as the barn doors opened, I threw myself into Emmet’s arms. He thought it was because I wa
s so upset at father dying, but it went beyond that. Finally, I began explaining to him what I had heard. Then I told him all about how I had helped Muraco, and why he had shot Clinton with an arrow.

  Emmet stood there with his fists clenched at his side. “I should kill the bastard!” he growled.

  “That’s for the law to decide. If you kill him, Bertha would turn you into the sheriff in Dodge. They know her and Clinton in Dodge. They don’t know us, and would probably believe her over us,” I warned.

  “I should kill him just for what he tried to do to you. You should have left him to die in that cave. They were both in on father’s murder, no matter who pulled the trigger. It was probably the plan from the beginning. It was most likely the only reason Bertha married father in the first place, and then brought her son in order to take advantage of you. And to think, I was trying to encourage you to marry that man!”

  Nigel stood at a distance, with the lead to Buck in his hand, just watching, his face contorted, and I could see tears streaking down his face.

  “We have to make some sort of plan,” I cautioned. “And I don’t want it to include murder. It is a sure thing, if we remain here, there may be no way to get around it. We could demand they leave, but they could always come back in the dead of the night and kill us all. For now, we should just pretend we don’t know anything, and continue with the harvest, until we can come up with a plan.”

  I went back up in my loft room, and Emmet and Nigel, removed father’s body from the horse, and laid it in one of the unused stalls. Then they left the barn. I felt a chill settle over me, thinking of father lying cold and stiff in the stall below my loft. I threw myself down on my make-shift bed, and I proceeded to cry myself to sleep.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  By the light of the next day, I was spent. I had barely slept the entire night, trying to think of a plan that we could follow. If we stayed on the farm, we could be risking our lives, but it was fall, and there was no way we could make it back to Missouri before winter hit.

  It wasn’t fair that we should have to leave the farm we put so much work into. Maybe there was a place close by we could go to, just to spend the winter, I thought. If we could manage to take all the stored food, and leave in the night, Clinton and his mother wouldn’t have anything to sustain them over the winter, and they would be forced to return to Dodge. Later, we could come back to the farm. Plans kept running wild through my brain.

  I would have to talk to Emmet about it, I thought. Since Darie was responsible of fixing the meals, Bertha wouldn’t even notice how much food was in the pantry or the cellar. We could remove it a little at a time, store it in the barn, and then eventually load it on the wagon. I just couldn’t figure out where could we go to spend the winter.

  I heard the barn door opening, and looked down to see Emmet coming in the barn. He climbed the ladder to the loft and looked at me with sadness and anger in his eyes. I could tell he hadn’t gotten much sleep either.

  “I think I have a plan,” I told him, when he sat down beside my pallet.

  “Shoot the two, and bury them in the meadow?” he asked.

  He probably had thought about doing that, and even though Clinton deserved to die, I did not want it to happen at Emmet’s hand. It would make Emmet hard and cold if he committed murder, and it wasn’t just a matter of shooting Clinton; he would have to kill his mother too, and then we would have that on our conscience for the rest of our lives.

  “I think we could probably force them to leave for good,” I told him. “If we pack up all the food in the wagon, and leave in the night, they wouldn’t have anything to live on over the winter. We could take Buttercup and her calf, so they wouldn’t even have any milk, and maybe bring some chickens, as well. They could probably eat eggs and what chickens we left behind, but that would only last them for awhile, not the whole winter. As far as I could tell, Bertha probably doesn’t even know how to clean a chicken or cook it. They would have to leave for Dodge before the weather got so bad they couldn’t make it there.

  “We could turn the pigs out to fend for themselves, and catching those pigs wouldn’t be easy, seeing as how Clinton is wounded, and Bertha knows nothing about pigs. Once they discover we are gone, and they have no food to eat, they will be forced to go back to Dodge. We can leave the buggy and horse for them to use, in order to get there.

  “Since they know nothing about farming, and Clinton knows nothing about panning for gold, they would have no reason to come back. Do you know where father has the key to the chest he kept the gold in?”

  Emmet nodded. “He put it in the lining of his boot. He told me that once, in case anything happened to him. Just where are we going to go, until they leave?”

  “That is the only problem. We will have to figure that out. We will take the gold out of the chest, and fill it with rocks, and lock it up again. If Bertha wants gold, she is going to have to pan for it herself, and I don’t think either of them know how to do it. Even if they did, they can’t eat gold. We have to make sure everything in the field is harvested, so they won’t even be able to dig something up, in order to eat. What we can’t harvest, we will just have to destroy.”

  “It may not all fit in the wagon,” Emmet stated.

  “Then we will take it to the cave, and store it there, piling rocks up in front of it. When we come back, there will be more food for us to use.

  “It’s going to take a lot of work, and we would have to do most of it at night,” Emmet predicted.

  “Anything you harvest, like bucketatoes or carrots and corn, we can take to the cave, except for what I bottle up. Some of that food we can put in the cave as well, and some of it, we can take with us. A lot of the store-bought stuff can be stored in the cave along with the rest.”

  “The only problem is, we don’t have any place to go, and once it starts snowing, we’ll need some shelter.” Emmet looked disgruntled.

  “I’ll try to think of something, but until then, let’s start storing the food, and removing it from the cellar and pantry and storing what we will take with us in the barn, until we are ready to load it into the wagon. We’ll keep enough food in the house to make the normal meals, and later, on the night we leave, we will take all that food too.”

  “If it doesn’t work, what will we do?” Emmet asked, looking seriously at me.

  “It has to work,” I insisted. “If they realize they have no way to last the winter, they most likely will just leave before winter hits. We could camp out until then and come to the farm, from time to time, to discover if they have left. Once they are gone, we can come back for good.”

  “Nigel is out starting to dig the grave,” Emmet murmured, interrupting me. “I need to go out and help him. I just came in here to tell you that. After breakfast, we plan to bury father.

  I nodded. I would have to go into the house, and act like I didn’t know anything about how father died, and take care of Clinton, no matter how much I despised him, but it was the only way to keep them from discovering what we knew.

  Darie was fixing breakfast when I entered the house, but Bertha wasn’t anywhere around. I figured she was with Clinton in the parlor. I opened the door and looked in.

  Bertha looked up at me, but I couldn’t read her expression. Clinton lay on the sofa with his eyes closed.

  “How is he doing?” I asked, glancing at Bertha, who had one of her magazines in her lap, as she sat in a chair near by.

  “He’s been restless, but I think he will survive,” Bertha told me.

  “We are going to bury father, after breakfast,” I informed her.

  She gave a weak sob, and covered her eyes, and I felt like slapping her in the face because I knew it was just an act.

  “After we bury him, Emmet and Nigel can help Clinton upstairs,” I continued. “Do you think he is strong enough to walk a little?”

  Bertha looked worried. “Perhaps,” she murmured. “Those same Indians who shot Clinton, were probably the ones who killed your father. I hope they
don’t come here and try to kill us.”

  “I guess we will just have to take that risk, since there is no place we can go. I heard they have killed ranchers in the past, but that was mostly in Texas, not out here, in Kansas.” I gave her a smirk, hoping that the thought of Indian attacks might scare her away.

  “Do you know where your father kept the key to his chest, where he put his gold?” she said, changing the subject. “He told me if anything happened to him I should know where he kept his gold, but he never mentioned where the key was.”

  “Beats me. He never mentioned it to me either. Maybe Emmet knows. Only I wouldn’t worry about it, if I were you. Most of the money he had in that chest was used to get supplies in Dodge, and buy the buggy and the horse that brought you here. He probably wasn’t able to get much more gold, since he came back.” I gave her a pleasant smile. “When Clinton gets to feeling better, maybe he should start panning for gold himself, before the snow comes. Emmet needs to take care of the harvest.”

  “Matthew told me he had plenty of gold,” Bertha said, her voice shaking slightly.

  “Father always was a bragger, but he probably stretched that story,” I said, enjoying watching her face fall. “Any gold we own is still in that stream, and getting the stream to give up its gold isn’t easy.”

  “You don’t say? Surely he must have had something set aside for emergencies.”

  “What emergencies? We have plenty of food to live on, and had father not been killed, by spring we probably would have had a little more gold to get extra supplies with. Everything we have, has been put back into the farm. It is our livelihood. That is why father was so careful about how much of that gold he used. Getting that buggy was the biggest expenditure he ever made,” I said smugly, knowing that she would realize that Clinton killed my father needlessly over her own greed.