Billy scratched his head, but said nothing. He made his way down the street to the Silver Moon, a saloon owned by Ned Ray, a short, stocky man with a black patch over his left eye. Ray looked up as Billy entered. “Hello, Page. Didn’t know you were in town.” He was a hard man, a mark of his trade and from spending several years in prison. Without being told, he set out a bottle and glass. “On the house.”
Billy drank the whiskey, then another, letting the warmth soak into his bones. The room was well filled for that time of day. One of the customers, a slim, fine-looking man, approached the bar, and Ned Ray said, “This is J.W. Dillingham. Plummer just made him our deputy. Meet Billy Page.”
Dillingham’s blue eyes, set in a hawk-like face, scrutinized Billy. He acknowledged Page, set his hat on his neatly combed yellow hair, and drawled in an old Virginia accent as he left, “See you around, Page.”
“He’s a cut above most of Plummer’s men, Ray,” Billy remarked. He swallowed one more drink, and left the saloon to get a room at the hotel. He was so exhausted he slept soundly for three hours. When he awakened, he dressed and made his way to the Rainbow Cafe where he was pleased to find Bron having supper with Parris Pfouts.
“Billy!” Bron cried with a flash of pleasure in her eyes. “When did you get in?”
“This afternoon,” he said, taking the chair Pfouts pushed at him. “Got bored in Helena.”
Pfouts grinned. “Any man who’d leave Helena to come to Virginia City in the middle of a blizzard because he’s bored hasn’t got enough to do.”
Blackie Taylor, the owner of the Rainbow, came over at once. The red-faced man had lost all but a fringe of hair around the back of his skull, but it didn’t hinder his cooking. “Hello, Billy,” he smiled. “What’ll it be?”
“Steak and potatoes—and whatever kind of pie you’ve got, Blackie.” As Taylor left, Billy leaned back in his chair, a gleam of humor in his eyes. “I hear you’ve been trying to convert Boone Helm, Bron. Any luck?”
Pfouts interrupted, growling, “He’s no good. He stopped Bronwen on the street just outside the Silver Moon.” His mild face was set with anger as he spoke, which was unusual for the man. “He put his hands on her—tried to drag her into the saloon.”
Page frowned. “Helm ought to know better—but he’s a rough one. What’d you do, Bron?”
“Why, I went with him into the Silver Moon.”
“You didn’t!”
“Yes, she did,” Parris nodded. “I heard about it later from Doc Steele. He nearly laughed his head off.”
“Doesn’t sound so funny to me,” Billy remarked. “Boone needs a lesson in manners.”
“Oh, he got his lesson,” Pfouts nodded, and smiled. “The way Steele tells it, as soon as Helm got Bronwen inside, she started preaching to the whole bunch. Just pulled out a Bible and let it fly! Quite a sermon.”
“What did Helm do?” Billy asked.
“Tried to shut her up—but Dillingham put a stopper on him,” Parris answered. “He’s a new deputy—and a decent one for a change. He just set Helm down and told the whole crowd if they didn’t want to listen, they could leave.”
Page laughed and cast an admiring glance at Bron. “Didn’t Ned Ray act up? He’s a pretty tough guy.”
“Not as tough as Dillingham, I guess. He just stood there, Doc said, and listened with the rest.”
“Pretty tough congregation, eh, Bron?” Page asked. “Anybody get converted?”
“No, not then. But two of the men began coming to church,” Bron said. “We had over twenty last Sunday, didn’t we, Parris?”
“It’s going well. If we can get you and the hermit to come, we’ll know the church is really prospering.”
“Hermit? That fellow Zack Winslow living up the gulch? I haven’t seen him.” He bit into his steak. “What’s he look like? An old geezer with a beard down to his knees?”
“Oh no,” Pfouts shook his head. “He’s a slight fellow, not bad looking. Got the lightest blue eyes I ever saw—and the middle finger of his right hand is gone. Only odd thing about him is his hat. He wears pretty ordinary clothes, but a fancy derby—English type.” He told them about the Indian woman and Buck.
“He’s pretty crowded for a hermit,” Bron said.
“He was sorta forced into it, Bron,” Parris shrugged. “He’s a pretty hard chap. Doesn’t trust anyone.”
“He can’t be too tough,” Billy observed, “if he lets himself in for taking care of people.”
“That’s true,” Parris agreed.
Parris and Bron continued the discussion, talking about the church. Their animated conversation made Page feel excluded. Pfouts was not a handsome man, Billy noted, but he was neat and well-off—even more significantly, the most active Christian in town. The latter, Page knew, would be important to Bron Morgan. Wouldn’t be too surprised if Pfouts didn’t make her forget the man she lost, Page mused.
“What are we going to do about the Mize children, Parris?”
“Emmett’s kids?” Billy interjected. “What’s the matter with them?”
Pfouts shook his head. “The woman left him a month ago—without a word. That was bad, but two weeks ago, Emmett was shot to death.”
Billy lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “Who did it, Parris?”
“Nobody knows for sure. Most of us reckon it was Ad Cantrell. Mize had given him a bad beating a while back. Cantrell was running around after the Mize girl, Lillian. But there was no evidence. Dillingham’s investigating, but it could have been anybody. Mize was on his way home in the middle of the night, dead drunk as usual. He was found the next morning in an alley with a bullet in his back and his money gone.”
“Ad would be up to that, I guess.” Billy glanced at Bron. “Little different from Wales, eh?”
“People are murdered in Wales, too, Billy.” She turned the topic back to that of the children. “They’ve got to have some help, Parris. Did you know they’ve been served notice to move out of their house?”
“I suppose that’s some of Ray’s doing,” Pfouts spewed angrily. “He owns the place.”
“He rented it to a man named Parker for storage,” Bron said. “The children have to be out in a week.”
“That’ll be Christmas, won’t it?” Page noted. “Not much of a Christmas present for kids.”
Parris rose. “Come on over to the store, Bron. I’ll get some food to take to them. We’ll find some way to help.”
“I’ve had a little luck,” Billy said, taking some bills out of his pocket and giving two of them to Bron. “Maybe this will help some.”
“Thank you, Billy,” Bron said with a smile and left the Rainbow with Pfouts.
“Billy has a good heart, doesn’t he?” she commented as the two walked along.
Parris nodded. “Yes, but he’s wasting his life. Does nothing but gamble and—and other things.”
“Women, I suppose?”
“Why, yes, he’s known for that.”
“He’s a handsome fellow,” Bron remarked. The cold bit at her lips and cheeks, and she drew her scarf tighter around her neck. “Women would be drawn to him.”
“You seem to have a pretty extensive knowledge of man’s sins, Bronwen,” he said. “For a young woman who’s not been in the world, you see it very clearly.”
“Why, people are the same, Parris, as I told Billy. Some cover their sins better—but we’re all lost. Men like Boone Helm and whoever it was that shot Emmett Mize are dramatic. Their sins are wicked. But I needed Jesus just as much as they do now.”
The cold wind bit into his hands and Pfouts shoved them into his pockets. “You’re right, of course. Billy is such a likable chap, sometimes it’s hard to remember that he needs saving just as much as Helm.”
After buying some food at the store, they walked to the Oriental, where the Mize children lived. Parris knocked on the door and it opened slowly. Aghast at the scene before him, Parris exclaimed, “Why, Paul!” Paul Mize was wrapped in a dirty blanket, his face pinched and
lips pale. “It’s freezing in here! Why don’t you have a fire?”
He didn’t answer, and Bron said, “Parris, you make a fire. Where’s Alice, Paul?”
He pointed to the broken-down sofa. Bron hurried over to the blanket-shrouded little form. Pulling back the cover, she stared at the disheveled four-year-old peering up with large questioning eyes. “Hullo,” the child said faintly, her body shaking from the cold.
“You poor thing,” Bron said and gathered her up and carried her over to the stove, where Parris had the beginnings of a fire going. “Where’s Lillian, Paul?” Bron asked, holding the girl’s hands close to the stove.
“She went out.”
“Went out? Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
Bron gave Parris a quick glance. “I’ll fix them some supper. And I think I’d better stay here tonight.”
“Yes, perhaps so.”
The children were huddling around the stove, but lest they hear, Pfouts lowered his voice. “This is horrible! I’ll go find the girl.”
Bron fixed some eggs for the children, and talked to them as they ate, hungrily shoving the food into their mouths as if they were starved. By the time they had finished, the warmth of the room hit them, and soon both were sound asleep on the couch.
She washed the dishes, then sat and waited. Two hours went by, and finally the door opened and Parris came in with Lillian. The girl’s face was seething with anger.
“I found her with Harry Ide,” Parris stormed.
“You got no right to boss me around!” the girl yelled, tossing her head back and staring at them defiantly. “You ain’t no kin of mine!”
“Lillian,” Bron said gently, “Paul and Alice could have frozen to death.”
Lillian flushed but said defensively, “I left a fire in the stove.”
“You were gone long enough to let it die down,” Parris said. He was angry with the girl and showed it. “You can’t leave two children alone with a fire, don’t you know that?”
“Parris,” Bron interjected, “why don’t we talk about this in the morning? I’ll stay here tonight.”
“Nobody needs you!” Lillian cried.
“I think you do,” Bron countered.
Lillian whirled and ran out of the door leading to the back.
“I’ll try to talk to her, but I don’t see how they can live alone, Parris.”
“I know. I’ll see what I can do.”
As soon as Parris left, Lillian came out, her face a mixture of resentment and guilt. She had been so glad to get away from the responsibilities thrust at her that she had welcomed Harry’s invitation for a meal at the cafe. Time had slipped by and she had forgotten about Paul and Alice until Pfouts had come and almost dragged her out.
“I wasn’t doing nothin’ wrong,” she said defensively to Bron. Her face, though pretty, was worn with the strain of the past few days. She had slept little, wondering what would happen to them. Now it was catching up with her.
“I’m sure you weren’t, Lillian,” Bron soothed. “Would you like me to fix you something to eat?”
“No.” Lillian fully expected the woman to scold her, but when Bron began to talk about the blizzard and how it would make things harder for them, she said, “You’re some kind of a preacher, ain’t you?”
“Yes. I’m a missionary.”
“What’s that?”
Bron told her about God’s call on her life and the desire to bring the gospel to the Indians.
“Why do you want to go to them?” Lillian demanded. “They’re nothin’ but a bunch of wild savages.”
“But God doesn’t see them that way,” Bron said gently. “He loves them, just as He loves you, Lillian.”
“God don’t love me!” Anger flared in the girl’s eyes, and she shook her head, adding, “If He did, he wouldn’t let bad things happen to all of us.”
Bron prayed silently, then began to speak about the love of Jesus. The girl listened, but her face expressed a hard light of doubt. She had been so mistreated by her father that kindness was foreign to her.
Finally Bron said, “My, it’s late! Let’s go to bed.”
“We only got the one bed—in the back room.”
“Would you share it with me?”
“I—I guess so.”
Bron built up the fire, checked the children to see if they were covered up, and then she and the girl went to bed. The room was so cold that neither one removed her clothes. They snugged the blankets around their faces and bade each other good night.
For a long time Bron lay awake, praying for some answer to the problem. If this had happened in her village, there would have been relatives or friends to help care for the children. But this Montana was a different world, she had discovered. It was a savage place, much like the storm that prowled the country like a hungry wolf. She drifted off to sleep thinking of possibilities for helping the Mize children, but none seemed to fit.
Toward morning Bron awakened with a start. A dream—simple, but vivid.
She lay quietly for a while, then got up and went into the front room. The fire was low so she added more wood and sat nearby, thinking about her dream. When the children awakened, she fixed them a hot breakfast, and left them in Lillian’s care, saying, “I’m going to get some more blankets.”
Bron stepped out into the frigid air, shivering at the cold assault. The fresh snow crunched under feet as she made her way down the street. By the time she got to the hotel she was numb. She washed her face, changed clothes and went to the Rainbow for coffee. As she sipped the hot liquid, Parris joined her.
“I haven’t found anything yet—for the children, I mean,” he said. “We may have to send them to Helena or someplace.”
“An orphanage?”
“May come to that.”
“Let’s pray about it first,” she said. “I think Lillian is sorry about leaving Paul and Alice.”
“She’s an emotional wreck. Can’t be trusted to raise those children.”
“She needs help, Parris, but we must wait on God.”
For three days she did just that, praying much. The blizzard subsided, and although it was cold, it was not the killing kind. As the sullen earth warmed itself with a pale white December sun, Bron nourished the dream she’d had. Though she shared it with no one, it was always just beneath the surface of her conscious thought.
Like the Welsh and the Irish, she was sensitive to dreams. Both races have produced more than their share of dreamers, and Bron would often lie awake and think of the tales she had grown up with. Her uncle David had dreamed of his death in great detail two months before he died. Many times her grandmother Margaret, whom she greatly admired, had found an answer to a problem through a dream, despite her strong conservative Christian faith. She never failed to express her fierce faith in the Bible—from “cover to cover.”
Bron remembered Margaret telling her once, “God has many ways to speak to people, and if He chooses to speak to someone in a dream, what then, my Bronwen? If the scholars make fun of such, no matter. Hang on to your dreams, for the voice of Jehovah may be in them!”
Three days before Christmas, Bronwen Morgan made up her mind that her dream was a direction from God. But even then she did not speak of it. As good a man as she knew Parris Pfouts to be, he would not understand—nor would any other person in Virginia City.
She prayed that God would show her how to carry out the dream, but nothing presented itself—until the day before Christmas.
When she stepped into Pfouts’ store that day, he was talking with an Indian. “This is Fox,” Pfouts said. “He’s a member of the Arapaho tribe that lives near where the mission was. Some of his people went there.”
Bronwen was stunned by the sudden encounter with one of the people for whom she had left her home. She took a deep breath and nodded. “I’m glad to know you, Fox. I’ve come all the way from across the big water to try to help your people.”
Fox fastened his keen eyes on her. “
Good. Much hunger now. Need help.”
The direct reply took Bron off guard, but with it an idea flashed into her mind concerning the dream. “Your people need food.”
“Need food bad!”
“Very well, they shall have it.” She turned to Parris. “I’ve got some money left—about a hundred dollars. Get that much food ready and I’ll bring the wagon around.”
Astonished, he asked in alarm, “You don’t have the notion of delivering it yourself?”
“Why not? Didn’t I come here to help? Doesn’t the Bible say that if we see our brothers hungry, we are to feed them?”
“I’ll go with you,” Pfouts offered.
“No, I need to do this alone. Fox, will you take me to your camp?”
He had followed this exchange perfectly and nodded. “I take.”
Within an hour Bron was back. Parris argued against her rash decision. “You could get killed, Bronwen!”
“So if they kill me,” she laughed, “they could do it only once! And if they did, I’d be in the presence of the Lord—so load the wagon, Parris, and praise the Lord with me for the chance to serve Him in this way.”
When the wagon was loaded, she got into the seat and took the lines. “I’ve only driven a pony cart,” she said. “But it’s all the same, I guess. Goodbye, Parris.”
He was distressed, but there was nothing he could do. “Fox, you rascal!” he said. “You watch Miss Bronwen, you hear me?”
“I watch!” he grinned. He nudged his mount and led the way down the almost deserted street.
Dillingham had gotten wind of the venture and had stopped to watch the departure. “The lady preacher leaving us, Pfouts?” he asked.
“Going to take some stuff to the Indians.”
“Why, that’s right bold of her!” the deputy exclaimed.
“Too bold,” Pfouts grunted. He found it difficult to work the rest of the day, and when Blackie Taylor brought him a note at five o’clock he snapped, “What’s this, Blackie?”
“Note from Miss Morgan,” he said. “She told me not to give it to you before five.” He watched as Pfouts opened and read the message. “Ain’t no bad news, is it, Parris?”
Pfouts seemed stunned. “I don’t know whether it’s good or bad, Blackie.” When Taylor left, he read the note again and again.
The Wounded Yankee Page 10