My daddy stepped up. “Yes. We’ve had a run in with cholera.”
White Thunder acknowledged daddy and turned his attention back to the captain. “I do not know the exact name for it in your language. Some would call it a pestilence.”
Daddy put one hand over his brow to block the morning sun. “I don’t know if I’d go that far…”
“Hurry up, daylight’s wasting.” Captain Faber was an impatient man.
The old one spoke again and White Thunder translated. “He says that you must not cross into the mountains with it.”
Daddy wrinkled his forehead. “This is not the first wagon train to have an outbreak of cholera.”
Faber interrupted. “You’re not stopping us. In fact, you’re holding us up. So, unless you mean to bring the rest of the Pawnee over here to stop us, we’re moving on.”
White Thunder shifted in his seat a little. “We mean you and your people no harm, but the pestilence must not reach the mountain range.”
The captain walked over to the lead wagon, rummaged around inside of it, and pulled out a shotgun. “There are two of you, and many more of us. We’re going to Oregon. Now, I suggest you get on and let us finish.”
White Thunder bowed his head and pushed his reigns to the side, spurring his horse to walk away. The old one was less inclined. He gazed at the captain and they locked eyes. White Thunder yelled something at him over his shoulder before he finally broke away and followed. Faber watched them ride off and didn’t put his shotgun away until they were well out of range. “First the devil, and now the Pawnee. I don’t know which one is worse, but we’re going to have to get past them both.”
They finally let me ride on the wagon, but I wish I could have walked. My tummy hurt so bad and I had to get out three more times before lunch and relieve myself. Daddy wouldn’t let me eat; he said it would make things worse. That was all right because I wasn’t hungry anyway. I just had drops of salt water. At first it was really bad, but I liked it by the end of the day because my mouth was really dry.
The Indians followed us from far behind all day long, and by the time we stopped, there were at least ten of them way off in the distance. Daddy asked Captain Faber about it and he said he had never seen anything like it before. “If they were going to attack, they would have done it by now. Anyway, we’ll be out of Pawnee country early tomorrow and they’ll back off. We’re getting closer to Crow territory; they won’t dare cross over.”
I didn’t sleep well that night. I had constant nightmares about Indians attacking. The next morning, I woke to some fluid in my ears. I touched one of them with my finger and it came away covered in scarlet. I was bleeding! Was this part of cholera? I didn’t know, but it was very scary.
I felt like I wanted to scream, but I held it in. My bottom lip quivered, but I managed to keep control of myself. “Mama,” I whispered.
She didn’t answer.
“Mama?” I was a little louder this time.
She still didn’t answer. I reached over and tried to shake her awake, but I knew right away that something was wrong. Where my mother had gone to sleep at my side the night before was nothing more than a dried husk of a woman. Her cheeks were sunken in and her eyes had fallen back into her skull, leaving two empty holes.
I pushed away from her withered form and cried. Flakes of dried skin fell away from her, leaving bits of skull exposed.
I couldn’t help it, I screamed that time. Daddy was already up making his morning rounds, but it didn’t take him long to come to me. We were sleeping inside the wagon and it rocked as he hurried in the back. When he saw her, he placed one hand over his mouth and cried, too. He crawled over to where she was and took her up in his arms. Her brittle bones crumbled and fell apart in his embrace.
He looked at me with tears streaming down his face. “Laura! Luara! All the others, she looks just like all the others.”
I was terrified. “What happened? What happened, daddy?”
It seemed like ages before he could answer me. He just shook his head and cried. He eventually composed himself and said “Cholera. It had to be cholera. Oh, my God. Why didn’t we just go to Sacremento?”
I didn’t think I had any more tears in me, but I did. “Daddy! I’m bleeding!”
“What?” He was as scared as I was.
I showed him my ears. “I’m going to die! I’m going to die, too!”
He dusted off his clothes and came over to where I was. Still in tears, he held me and rocked me back and forth. “Daddy, I want to go back to Georgia.”
He kissed me on the forehead. “We can’t, sweetheart. We’re too far to turn back now.” He went back to where my mother’s dry bones now lay in a dusty heap. “Oh, Laura!”
Captain Faber was suddenly at the front of the wagon, pushing the drape to one side. “What the Hell’s going on in here?”
It didn’t take him long to figure out what he was looking at and he softened his demeanor. “Calvin, I’m sorry.”
There was an uncomfortable silence before he spoke again.
“We can take the time to bury her, but then we have to go. I think the entire Pawnee nation is behind us now.”
He looked up from where he cradled what was left of mama. “More Indians?”
He looked more serious than I’d ever seen him before. “Yes, many more. I’m sorry for your loss, but we need to get out of Pawnee territory right away.”
We buried mama somewhere on the plain and prepped the teams to move out. I couldn’t stop crying, but I knew we had to move. The men were terrified of the growing number of natives behind us. There were two more deaths on the wagon that morning, but we made record time across the plains. The mountain tops came into view about noon and the number of Indians grew by the minute. By the time we stopped for the night, there were many more Indians than there were wagoneers. The captain made us pull the wagons in a tight circle that night and we all slept inside.
I was so sick I couldn’t even move. My daddy just gave me water and a little bit of laudanum that made me very sleepy. Boomer, much to my father’s chagrin, bedded down with me that night. I was thankful to have him next to me to keep me safe and keep me company. That night, I heard them talking around the evening cookfire. Their voices weaved in and out as the dehydration and laudanum played with my senses.
“We’re well into Crow territory.”
“Crow territory?”
“Are they going to attack us?”
“Pawnee and Crow have always fought each other.”
“I think some of them are Sioux.”
“What’s making them come together now?”
“Are they going to attack?”
I drifted off to an uncomfortable, restless sleep, with fever dreams waking me up throughout the night. I don’t think the men rested. They kept a constant vigil with guns at the ready and fires lit. The Indians didn’t attack, but that just made the travelers more nervous.
The next morning came way too early and three more people were dead. Shriveled up and dehydrated from cholera, so my dad said. I wasn’t a doctor, but I wasn’t sure it was the same thing. I woke again with blood pouring from each one of my ears.
“Daddy! Daddy!”
It didn’t take him long to come check on me. The toll of the trail was showing on him. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and his cheeks were sunken in with dehydration. A scab of old blood ran from one of his ears and trailed down his neck. He was sick, too.
“What is it, punkin?”
“My ears are bleeding again!”
“I know, baby, I know.” He held me close and rocked me like mama used to do. “I’m going to take care of you. No matter what happens, I’m right here with you.”
We didn’t move at all that day, just held our positions and buried the rest of the dead. The Indians kept their distance, but there were even more of them now. I had never seen so many in my life.
The sun eventually set on the longest day of my life and the men took watch again, a
rmed with shotguns and rifles. All that night, I slept in fits and starts with Boomer at my side. The men kept the fires going all night long and I don’t think any of them slept.
The next morning found me with bloody ears again. Daddy came to check on me just as the sun was coming up. “Daddy, my ears!” He took a piece of cloth and wiped the blood from my neck.
“Don’t worry, Daleela, Daddy’l take care of you.” He closed his eyes and hugged me tight the way momma used to do. I cried into his shoulder, but I was so dehydrated that I didn’t have any tears left.
I don’t know how long he held me like that, but Captain Faber came by and interrupted. “Doc! Get on your feet. We’re moving out!”
“Moving? What about the Indians?”
“They ain’t attacked us by now, they ain’t going to. We have to be over the mountain range before cold weather sets in, and every day we waste is another bet that we won’t make it. Now, get up and get moving.”
I cried some more. “Daddy! Doesn’t he know you’re sick, too?”
He seemed a little surprised that I had noticed. “Baby, men like that don’t care. Besides, I knew what we were getting into when I signed us up for this. I’ll be okay. Here; I want you to take another dose of laudanum.”
“What about you? You need some, too.”
He closed his eyes for a second and then looked at me like I was a grown-up. “I can’t take that and do what I need to do. Just take your medicine and stay in the wagon. I lost your mama; I can’t afford to lose you too.” With that, he was gone. It was the last time I ever saw my daddy and I still miss him to this day.
Things moved pretty quickly after that. I don’t know if the things I saw were from the big dose of laudanum my daddy gave me or not, but I swear to you that everything I’m about to tell you I saw with my own two eyes.
No sooner had the men start to pack than I heard the commotion. It sounded like coyotes at first, but I soon realized what it was and peeked out the back of my wagon. The Indians, hundreds and hundreds of them, had started advancing on our position. They saw that we were going to leave and they were determined to keep us from reaching the mountains.
They whooped and hollered as they rode down a hill not too far off to the east. Captain Faber started yelling at everyone to get ready. He pulled his shotgun from the lead wagon and corralled most of the men and a few of them women into position. Everyone who could shoot was given a flintlock and I think one of them even had a repeater. The wagons were still in a circle, so the people gathered on the side where the Indians were coming and took position. I could hear Boomer barking, but I didn’t know where he was.
“Fire!” Captain Faber yelled out as the Indians grew closer and there was a second of silence that seemed to last forever. I flinched when the rifles started discharging, they were so loud! A cloud of smoke erupted over the circle where so many had fired at once. After that, they just kept shooting and shooting. In the distance, I could see Indians falling, one by one, as they took bullets and fell to the ground. I had never in my life been as scared as I was in that very moment.
So many Indians went down, but the majority of them just kept coming! I didn’t even know there were that many out here! There was no way we could stop them all, just no way. I didn’t know what they would do to us, to me. Some of the kids back in Missouri had said that they met Indians and that they were really nice, but others told terrible stories about what they did to little girls. Terrible things.
“Boomer! Boomer!” I called out to the dog that had kept me company so long on this journey. I didn’t have a gun and my daddy couldn’t be here to protect me. Maybe Boomer could help keep me safe. He heard my cry and leapt up into the wagon. He didn’t like the gunfire and he curled up in my lap. Just knowing he was there made me feel better.
The Indians were close enough so that I could see the individuals now. White Thunder was there, leading his people on. He had a rifle in one hand, but he wasn’t shooting it. I couldn’t figure that out. Why wasn’t he shooting back? I looked around. Most of them had long guns or bows, but none of them were shooting! More fell as they came closer and closer, but they wouldn’t fire back!
“Spread out!” I don’t know who yelled that, but it wasn’t the captain or my daddy. The Indians finally reached the wagons and began circling around them. The people inside had stopped shooting, they were terrified and didn’t know what to do next.
I was startled by a flap being opened behind my head and I turned just in time to see a young brave crawling into the wagon with me. Boomer stood up and started barking, but the Indian paid him no mind. He locked eyes with me for a second. I think he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. I turned my gaze downward and took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next, but I knew that it wouldn’t be good.
Boomer stopped barking and I dared to look up. The young man was patting his head and he settled down. The brave sniffed twice, said something to me in his own language that I didn’t understand, and ducked back out.
I was very confused. I looked back out of the flap on the inside of the circle and it was chaos. Indians were fighting the people and going through the wagons, throwing supplies out into the open. A couple of them had lined up on one side of a wagon and were flipping it over!
It landed with a crash and they started beating their fists on the bottom of it. I couldn’t imagine what it was they were doing. A few lined up against another wagon and began to flip it as the first one erupted into flames. Behind it, I could see White Thunder’s grandfather holding a torch. He was setting the wagons on fire!
Captain Faber fired his shotgun at one of the natives that was helping to flip one of the wagons and he went down. Another replaced him as a group converged on the old man and disarmed him. He struggled to get free, but they held him down and kept him in place. Just as they had done the first wagon, they rolled this one onto its side and began beating their fists along the bottom of it.
I was so wrapped up in the spectacle, I didn’t notice the Indians lining up against my own wagon. It pitched to one side and I fell back from my vantage point. Boomer cried out as we both rolled back. It settled and White Thunder suddenly appeared at the front end, pushing the flap back so hard it ripped. “Get out!”
“What?” I was terrified.
“Get out now!”
I wasn’t in the frame of mind to argue with him, so I crawled to the back of the wagon and climbed out as fast as I could. The entire thing rolled over just as Boomer and I landed on the ground and it crashed. I could hear the Indians banging against the wooden bottom.
My feet were still tangled up in my nightgown, but I managed to stand and ran away from the melee. I slammed right into White Thunder’s grandfather. Close up, he looked older than anything I had ever seen in my life and he was still holding his torch in one hand. He barked something in Pawnee and raised it up over his head. I couldn’t run that way anymore, so I turned and ran back into the circle.
I still have nightmares about what I saw there. Just as I ran into the circle, my eyes caught on something that should not have even been real. It was a monster. It had skin like a person, like a white person, but it crawled like a spider. It emerged out from under one of the wagons and crawled up the side of it, just like a spider would! There was a sudden eruption of yelling from the Indians and they all stopped what they were doing.
Before I could even begin to process what was happening, a volley of arrows flew at the beast. A few Indians even shot rifles, adding gunfire to the noise. The thing got away easily enough, it was very fast. It climbed up on top of the wagon it was on and leapt to another one, leaving a trail of arrows and bullet holes where it had been.
I swear the thing had arms and legs just like a person, but they were too long and spindly. The arms had two elbows and the legs had two knees each, almost making it look like a giant daddy long legs. The Indians converged on the wagon that it had landed on and started rolling it over.
Bef
ore it tilted over too far, the thing crouched a little and then jumped! It wrapped its limbs around one of the braves and they both fell to the ground in a heap. That’s when I noticed that the monster’s head was on backwards, I think, I don’t know, but it was wrong. It didn’t have hair, just eyes on the back of its head where the hair should be. They were huge, white eyeballs with black centers.
Anyway, it must have had a mouth on the other side of its head because what I saw next had to be its tongue. It looked like a long, blood-red snake and it shot out and buried itself into the brave’s ear. I’ll never forget his cry; he screamed and stiffened up with his entire body. He struggled, but the monster was too strong. It had him in its grip.
Before the other Indians could intervene, the monster managed to kill him. It only took a second, but his body shriveled up and began to flake away before it let him go. It jumped back up onto the top of another wagon faster than anything I had ever seen.
I put my finger to my ear where the blood was dry and crusted. A thought entered my head but didn’t stay long. The beast ran across the top of the wagon and jumped down right where I was, knocking me over. I rolled through the grass and landed on my back, facing straight up. The beast was standing right over me! It did indeed have a mouth on the underside of its head and it was horrific. There were teeth, but they were all sharp like razors and not in rows at all. Just scattered in its mouth. That long tongue shot out and swept across one of my eyes, leaving a trail of slime on my face.
Boomer was at my side before I could get hurt. I heard him barking at the monster before I saw him. The monster barked back, I swear it barked like a dog, and Boomer took a flying leap, attaching himself to the thing’s throat.
I stood up as they tumbled off of me and rolled through the encampment. More of the wagons were on fire now and I could feel the heat pressing on my skin. Boomer was on top of the monster with his teeth buried in its neck and shaking his head. I didn’t know that this kind of thing was possible (I never knew monsters were real, either), but the thing switched back to front. The extra elbows and knees on it bent backwards and the thing stood up on all fours again. It bucked Boomer off and spun its head around.
Strange Dominion Page 3