A Shelter of Hope

by Tracie Peterson

  Trudging through the dry, brown grass, Simone paused beside a standing of mountain ash and watched as several birds feasted off the shiny red berries of the tree. The red leaves and berries made a pleasant contrast to the golds and greens painted across the landscape. Simone sighed and lifted the water buckets once again. Just beyond the ash trees their main source of water melodiously danced across the rocks, ever rushing away from the place Simone called home.

  How many times had she wanted to join in on the journey? She’d often longed to simply wade into the stream and follow it until she was far, far away. But she always chose to stay, for what reasons she still could not truly understand. Maybe it was that even after nearly two and a half years, Simone was still waiting for her mother to come back for her.

  But her mother wasn’t coming back. She was never coming back.

  Her mother was dead.

  Simone tried not to think about it as she filled the wooden buckets from the icy mountain stream. Her mother had never made it to the freedom she sought. Her father had tracked Winifred down and killed her and Simone’s little brother. He had returned to Simone that night and gloated his victory, reveling in giving the helpless child the complete details of his actions. She could still remember his face. Still hear his rage that anyone should dare defy Louis Dumas. But mostly, she remembered the way he had threatened to revisit the same horrors on Simone should she ever contemplate running away from him. Maybe that was why Simone stayed. After all, where could she go that he would not follow?

  Her fingers felt numb from the icy flow of the creek. It served to remind her that her heart, too, was numb—from grief and from the betrayal of those who should have loved her. Numbness was her only defense, and memories of her mother did not serve to maintain the strong wall she had erected.

  With the buckets now filled, she tried to shake off the cold along with her thoughts. Her mother had chosen her path, and now Simone would have to seek her own way. Staying, quite frankly, was easier than leaving. Doing nothing seemed safer than striking out against the only remaining family member she had. True, her father’s hatred was quite evident in his actions toward her, but he was all that was left to her.

  Struggling under her load, Simone contemplated whether or not it might be more to her advantage if he, too, went away and never returned. She used to pray for such a thing, but not any longer—mostly because she no longer prayed. She found it difficult at best to believe in the loving God her mother had trained her to know. If He were truly so good and so loving, He would never have allowed her to endure the miseries she knew as her life. For what fairness—what love—lay in allowing a small child to suffer such pain? How could God expect her to accept such a life?

  A sudden cramp in her stomach nearly doubled her over. Simone paused, set the buckets down, and rubbed her aching abdomen. It had been like this off and on since yesterday, but she dared not show her father the slightest complaint. Once, when she had fallen from a tree and sprained her foot, her father refused to acknowledge her injury. Since she was stupid enough, he had said, to climb up there in the first place, she should bear her punishment in silence.

  It wasn’t the only punishment she took in that manner. When she had been small, her father had seemed to take irrational pleasure in beating her until she cried out. One day she simply forgot to cry, and it was then that she realized the beatings would end much sooner when she remained silent. Her father’s pleasure could not be found in the stoic behavior of his child. At first, this had angered him even more and in turn he had beaten her even more severely. But then, when she was nearly unconscious, he had stopped. He’d looked at her oddly, threw down the blood-smeared stick he’d been using, and trudged off as if to contemplate what had just occurred. After that, Simone never cried.

  Simone straightened gingerly and the pain returned, and with it a very necessary urge to relieve herself. She wandered over to the seclusion of some thick shrubs and when she pulled up her skirts, she noticed blood on her inner thigh. Frantically, her mind raced to consider what harm she might have done herself. Had some insect bitten her? Had she somehow injured herself without knowing what had happened?

  She forgot everything, including the water buckets, and raced toward the cabin. She had little desire to confront her father with this news, but there was no one else to ask. And what if she were dying? Surely even her father would want to know that.

  “Papa?” she called, coming up to the pelt shed.

  “What do you want?” His harsh tone assured her this would be no easy matter.

  “Papa, I don’t know what is wrong,” she said, panting to draw breath.

  “Wrong? What are you talkin’ about, girl?” Louis Dumas questioned, coming through the opening of the shed. He held a long filleting blade in one hand, and his hands were covered in blood and bits of fur. The blood seemed a poignant reminder of her own condition.

  “Papa, I am bleeding.”

  “You mindless twit. What’ve you done?” His gaze showed nothing but the abject disgust he felt for her. His weatherworn face scowled at her from behind his heavy black beard.

  “I don’t know,” Simone replied honestly. “I went for the water—” “And where is it?” He roared the question, looking around her for some sign of the buckets.

  “I left them by the stream. I was afraid,” she admitted, not really understanding why she had opened herself up to an attack by admitting her fear.

  “Afraid?” he laughed and rolled his eyes. “Because of blood?”

  “But, Papa, I don’t know why I am bleeding. I don’t remember hurting myself, but there are pains in my stomach.” She touched her abdomen as if to reinforce the truth of the matter. “And when I raised my skirts, I found blood on my legs.”

  Dumas looked at her dumbly for a moment before he roared into a laughter so hideously unfeeling that Simone actually backed away in fear. “Stupid, stupid girl. Did your mother not teach you anything? You have the woman’s curse, that’s all. Yer cursed like all your kind, and it won’t go away till you marry.”

  “I don’t understand,” Simone said, barely finding the strength to challenge his reply.

  Dumas waved her away. “It’s a woman’s curse, I tell you. Every month you bleed—just like you bleed the hearts and souls of the poor, unsuspectin’ men around you. Now get me my water. You’ll be lucky if I don’t beat you for such stupidity.”

  Simone swallowed back the lump in her throat. Her humiliation was made complete as her father turned to go and laughed again, muttering to himself about how God could not have cursed him with a more dim-witted child.

  “A woman’s curse,” she whispered, moving back along the path toward the stream. Why had her mother not told her? Why had her mother not told her a great many things? she wondered bitterly.

  She retrieved the buckets, still wondering what it all meant—what the curse was about and why she should bleed in such a way. Her only hope of learning more than what her father told her was to seek out the old Indian woman who lived several miles away. Naniko would tell her what the curse was about. Until then, she would simply have to suffer in silence.

  Slipping away to Naniko’s cabin proved easier than Simone had imagined. She went on the full instruction of her father to seek out the old woman and trade her food for the animals she’d managed to trap in her crude fashion. Simone had watched Naniko capture animals many a time with little more than a hand-dug pit carefully concealed by fragile branches and straw. Naniko, drawing upon her Indian and French heritage, knew the ways of the land and had carefully imparted her knowledge to Simone on more than one occasion. Now, Simone hoped, Naniko would tell her the mystery of the woman’s curse …and Simone would no longer be stupid.

  Louis Dumas stared in open wonder as Simone made her way down the wooded path to the Indian woman’s cabin. He couldn’t help but try to calculate her years. Was she eleven? Twelve? It seemed impossible that she should already be that age, but the fact that the curse was upon her was rea
son enough for him to see her in a new light. She was nearly a woman grown. Nearly old enough to marry and bear children of her own.

  This idea seemed too startling to accept without great consideration. Simone was nearly grown. Nearly old enough to leave him as her mother, in all her unfaithfulness, had left him. Old enough to treat him as ruthlessly as every other woman in his life.

  His own mother, a prostitute who kept his lazy father in liquor and gambling money, had long ago taught him that women were not to be trusted. Just when he had needed her the most, she had run away with a peddler, leaving his grandmother and sisters to raise him. Even now he could feel the rod against his back as his grandmother sought to beat the evil out of him.

  Growling at the memory, Louis threw himself back into his work. Work! If Simone left him, who would work for him? Who would serve his needs?

  He could take another wife—he’d often thought of it. He’d even contemplated going north into Canada since the fur trade was played out in this area. It was only stubborn determination and an aversion to the responsibility of packing for the move that kept Louis Dumas in the area. Wyoming was a changed sort of land from the place he’d come to so long ago. The railroad ran stripes across the territory, and the Indians had been rounded up and moved onto government land. There remained a wild element to the vast, high desert plains and rugged pinnacles of the mountain ranges, but it wasn’t enough to make Louis a rich man. He’d considered mining the area, hearing wild tales from other folks about the richness of the untapped resources, but mining was hard work. Much harder, in his estimation, than trapping. No, perhaps Canada was the answer. And if not Canada, then somewhere else.

  He could go down to Denver and get himself another wife, then trek off to the north country. And if he didn’t need to concern himself with Simone, he might well find that a very pleasurable journey. He thought long and hard on the situation. Perhaps there would be someone in the territory to whom he could sell Simone. After all, short of her ability to work around the cabin, she meant nothing to him. Yes, that might be the answer. He could sell her over to someone else before the brat up and got the idea to desert him. Let her run away from someone else. Let his purse be filled with coins before the wretched creature betrayed him as the others had.

  It gave him a great deal to ponder.

  That night, Simone lay awake in her bed for a long time. She thought on what Naniko had told her and marveled at the changes in her body. She was becoming a woman, Naniko had said, and it wasn’t a curse—it was a good thing. Simone believed her, not because she felt any real bond to the woman, but because she didn’t trust her father to be honest with her for any reason.

  Sitting up, Simone hugged her knees to her chest and watched the dancing flames in the fireplace. Her father was leaving tomorrow for Uniontown, and after that it would not be much longer before he was gone for several weeks, maybe even months, in order to work his traplines and hunt. She’d heard him say that the area was worked out. Very little remained in the way of real food or support for their needs. And as if to prove his point, each year Louis seemed to venture away for longer periods of time. Not that Simone minded.

  She remembered the first year he had taken off after her mother had gone. She had only been ten years old, but she had learned quickly to survive on her own. Her father had called her stupid, but Simone knew that stupid people didn’t survive in the mountains. Stupid people died.

  That thought brought to mind her mother, and although Simone tried to push it aside, the hazy image of her mother’s smiling face haunted her. She could remember her voice better than her features, and sometimes it seemed that she whispered to Simone in her dreams.

  Despite her determination to harden herself to any sensation or feeling, Simone couldn’t deny the warmth that spread over her at the memory of her mother’s embrace. She thought of the hours spent learning to read and write, all under her mother’s tender tutelage. She remembered the stories and the way her mother read from the Bible and explained the meaning of the words Simone could not understand, though she understood a great deal. She had begun to read at the age of three, and by the time she was seven, the Bible didn’t seem such a difficult book to master. Of course, reading and understanding the meanings were two different things, her mother had often told her.

  Simone shuddered and hugged her legs tighter. She tried to imagine strong arms hugging her in return, but the feeling was fleeting and the emptiness it left in its place was almost unbearable. No more memories, she demanded of her mind. Memories caused pain. And pain was simply too high a price to pay.

  But her mind refused to listen to reason as her gaze fell upon her mother’s Bible and prayer book. When Simone discovered that her mother had quickly fallen through with her plan to escape on that day so long ago, the only things Winifred left behind to remind her daughter to hope for her return were her Bible and prayer book. Simone remembered the carefully penned note her mother had left inside the front cover of the Bible. They were to be her mother’s last words to Simone, and even now, try as she might to forget, Simone could still remember them:

  Darling Daughter,

  I love you more dearly than my life, and I would gladly give it to save you from harm. Look for me, I am coming back for you, just as Jesus promised He, too, would come back for us one day.

  Mama

  Simone refused to believe her mother’s words, just as she refused to believe the other words in that book. God could not possibly be who her mother claimed Him to be—a Father of mercy and love. There was no mercy in Simone’s life. There was no love. And therefore, there could be no God.

  She had wanted to burn the Bible and prayer book, but even as she stood over the fireplace on many an occasion, Simone could never bring herself to deposit the books into the fiery mouth. Something made her hold back. She tried not to think of it, but her mind was her enemy as far as Simone was concerned. No matter how hard she tried to keep those vivid memories from returning, she couldn’t forget.

  A tear slid down her cheek, and Simone angrily wiped it away, refusing to allow any others to follow. There was no room for such things in her life. No room for tears or smiles. She simply couldn’t allow herself the luxury of feelings. And if there truly was a God, she would have asked Him most sincerely to rid her of the ability to ever feel anything again.

  THREE

  May 1890

  SCOWLING AND MUTTERING CURSES, Louis Dumas led his horse down the muddy streets—if they could be called streets—of Uniontown. The furs he’d brought in from his winter traps were hardly the best, and therefore the amount of money in his pocket did little to lift his spirits. His boredom drove him to Uniontown nearly a month before any real warmth would come to the area. And while the cold weather should still be able to provide him with thick pelted furs, Louis knew enough to realize there were problems. The area appeared to be trapped out. Too civilized. The animals had gotten wise to him and the hordes of others who had come to settle the land and had moved deeper into the protection of the mountains. He tried not to think of what the months ahead might have in store. He could scarcely imagine the money lasting him the summer, much less grubstaking him for the winter months after that. He hated the thought of pulling up stakes and moving. Not that Uniontown held any real hold on him, but moving was a chore he’d rather not have to deal with.

  “Ho, there, Louis,” a man called to him from a bench in front of a battered-looking structure. “Comin’ in for a haircut and bath?”

  “Not hardly,” Dumas replied. He’d certainly not waste his time or his money paying someone to cut his hair when he could just as soon have his daughter see to the matter for free. No doubt Old Man Murphy needed the money as much as he did, and Louis couldn’t fault him for trying. “Might play a game of poker or two. You comin’ over to the Slipper?”

  Murphy grew thoughtful. “I jes’ might.”

  Louis nodded and, being intent on his purpose, walked on. He needed a drink. A strong one. And he need
ed to think about his finances. Thankfully, he could do both at the Red Slipper Saloon. Tying his mangy beast to a crude hitching post outside the saloon, Louis spit a brown stream of tobacco and saliva, then reached up to retrieve his rifle.

  “Louis Dumas,” a haggard but clearly female voice called out. “Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

  He took his time acknowledging the town’s only prostitute. “Ada. See you didn’t freeze out this winter.”

  “Same for you, Louis,” she replied.

  He looked up and nodded. Standing there smiling, two front teeth missing and sporting a scar that ran down the side of her left cheek, Ada could hardly be counted as the town’s welcoming committee. Nevertheless, Louis threw her a grin. After all, she was the only white woman around these parts, with the exception of his daughter.

  “Comin’ in for a drink?” she asked as if she didn’t know his intentions.

  “That and some cards,” Louis told her as he climbed up on the boardwalk.

  “There’s quite a game of poker going on. Has been most of the day,” Ada replied and toyed with the cuff of her serviceable brown dress.

  “Who’s playin’?” Louis asked before stepping into the establishment.

  “Mostly regulars. Gus, Dave, Flatnose,” she began listing. “Oh, and a new guy. Been here about a week and seems to have plenty of money to burn. Garvey Davis is the name.”

  Louis thought a moment on the name, then decided it meant nothing to him. “Any good?”

  “You mean at cards?” she asked, giving him another gap-toothed grin. “He holds his own.”

  Louis nodded. “Go pour me a drink, Ada. A good, tall whiskey, and bring it to the table.”

  “Will I see you later?” she asked, unmistakably hopeful.

  Louis laughed, slapped her on the bottom, and pushed her aside. “You might. Just depends on gettin’ my other business tended to first.”

  He didn’t wait for her reply but instead walked into the dimly lit saloon, rifle cradled in his arms. There were four tables in the establishment and just about the same number of chairs. Regular bar fights kept the chairs down to a minimum, and even though Ada had everyone’s pledge to replace the objects they’d destroyed, few of the men had honored their word where the chairs were concerned.