“Sure. Tell you what, we’ll pick up some goodies in town for her and the students. Be a nice surprise for them.”
“Can we stay for church? I promised her I’d bring you.”
“This is Friday, isn’t it? I guess it’ll work out. We’ll go tomorrow and come back after the service Sunday.”
Laurie was up early the next morning anxious to start, and when they went to the general store in Bismarck, she scurried around bright-eyed with excitement, picking out some cans of food and some sweets for the Indian youngsters.
He finally had to say, “Whoa, now, Laurie. You’ll make them sick with all this rich stuff!”
When Winslow went by the fort to tell Sergeant Hines of the outing, Hines looked at the sky’s dull lead color and said doubtfully, “Don’t like the looks of that sky, Tom. Don’t fool around. Could turn into something bad.”
“I’ll hole up if it gets rough,” Winslow nodded. He left the office and climbed up on the seat of the wagon next to Laurie, who was bundled up to her eyes. “All right?” he asked, and when she nodded, he flicked the reins and the horses started forward. The river they had to cross was swollen from the late rains. They drove their wagon onto the ancient ferry, not certain of its safety. The ferry skewed across the current, then fell five hundred yards downriver as the power of the water took it. Winslow hung on to the wagon and Laurie, worried about the danger, but then the engines revved up and the ferry slowly worked its way upstream and nosed into the slip. Relieved, Winslow picked up the reins and drove the wagon ashore.
They saw almost no one on the road, and the cold seemed to have brought a silence on the land. As they rocked along the rutted tracks of the road, their voices sounded loud as they talked and Laurie sang some of the songs she’d learned from Eileen. Her flute-like young voice rang out in the clear air. Once she stopped and said, “It’s a lonesome time, winter is. I like summer better.”
They arrived at the mission at noon. Faith grabbed Laurie and hugged her. “What a nice surprise!” she cried, then turned to Tom. “Nice to see you.” She was wearing a heavy black wool skirt, a checkered blouse, thick-soled boots, and a short fur jacket, which made her seem bulky. Instead of a braid, her thick auburn hair hung loose down her back, almost to her waist.
Laurie tugged Faith’s hand, pulling her to the back of the wagon bed. “Look—we brought some good stuff to eat!”
“Bless you both!” Faith said, looking at the wooden box filled with canned goods. “I’m so hungry for something different I could eat anything!” She hovered close as Winslow brought the box, her eyes sparkling with excitement as she pulled out each can, reading the labels. “Smoked oysters!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never tasted them, but I’ll bet they’re better than the tough old ham I’ve been living on.”
Nothing would do but that she fix a dinner right then, and Winslow noticed how she drew Laurie in, letting her help with every aspect of the meal. “I’ll have a go at that woodpile, Faith,” he announced. “You’re going to need a big stack if that storm hits.”
He found two short lengths of an oak trunk, and for the next hour he sawed lengths of the oak, split it into wedges, and stacked it against the side of the house, handy to the door. When Laurie stuck her head out the door, calling, “Daddy—come and eat,” he put the axe down and went into the house.
Faith said, “This may not be the best meal you ever had, Tom, but I’ll bet it’s different!”
They sat down, and Faith bowed her head, saying, “Thank you, Lord, for this food and for those who brought it. Thank you for giving us to each other. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Tom lifted the cloth covering a platter and stared at the food. “What in the world is this?” he demanded.
“Don’t ask,” Faith suggested. “Just eat!”
The supper consisted of potted ham, smoked oysters, canned salmon, candied yams, spiced peaches, and one item on Tom’s plate that Faith wouldn’t identify until Tom urged her.
“The can said it was calf brains,” Faith said demurely, a glint of humor in her eyes. “Laurie and I decided to let you have all of it.”
Winslow gave her a suspicious look, then took a small portion of the food on his fork. When he put it in his mouth and tasted it, Laurie piped up, “What does it taste like, Daddy?”
Winslow chewed thoughtfully, then said evenly, “Taste like? Oh, kind of like pig’s lips, I guess.”
“Tom!” Faith cried out. “You never ate such a thing!”
“Sure did! Last year of the war, down in Georgia. We’d been living on handfuls of parched corn for a week, and one of our fellows liberated a shoat. Small one, no more than thirty pounds. But when we dressed him out and started cooking, I guess every soldier in our company got a whiff of that pork and came around hoping for a taste.” He looked down at the table as the memory of that time swept over him, thinking of the wolfish faces of his friends, all of them skinny as rails and dressed in rags. Then he shook his head, forcing the memory away. “We ate that sucker, all except the hide, I guess. My share was three ribs and the lips. It was good, too, much better than mule, I always thought.”
“Daddy, not mule!” Laurie protested. “I don’t think it’s nice to talk about eating mule at the table.”
Winslow grinned, enjoying the discomfort of the two. “If you’re going to feed a man calf brains, you’ve got to take the consequences,” he said firmly.
After the more exotic elements of the meal, Faith removed a pie from the oven and set it on the table. Slicing it into wedge-shaped sections, she passed two of them to her guests, then took one for herself. Taking a bite of his portion, Winslow exclaimed with a note of surprise in his voice, “Why, this tastes like fresh apple pie!”
“Just dried apples, Tom, but I guess if you get hungry enough anything tastes good.”
After the meal Winslow said, “You don’t have enough wood, Faith. I’ll go drag in a couple of logs.” He sharpened the axe and rode out to a stand of hardwood two miles from the mission, cut three of them, and snaked them back one at a time. Afterward, he put in another hour cutting one of them into lengths. After he split them, he went inside and found Faith and Laurie working on a dress with needle and thread.
“Oh, Daddy, Miss Faith’s going to teach me to sew! And I’m going to make me a Sunday dress!” Laurie exclaimed. “Look what I’ve got done.”
Winslow walked over, took the cloth, and studied it. “Well, now, that’s good-looking work, Laurie. Maybe you can sew up some of my shirts now that you’re a seamstress.”
“Sit down, Tom, and let me get you some coffee and maybe a small piece of pie to hold you until supper.” She got up and Winslow sat back, talking with Laurie as he ate the snack. Then he grew sleepy from the warmth of the stove. Closing his eyes, he put his head back on the chair and listened to Faith and Laurie chatter. He awoke with a start when Laurie touched his shoulder, shaking him slightly.
“What was that, Laurie?” he asked, looking at her grinning face at his side.
“I said, supper’s ready.”
Winslow became aware of the smell of freshly baked bread and said, “I must have dozed off.”
Faith was putting plates on the table. “For nearly two hours,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone who could sleep like that. Just like a cat.”
Winslow got up, stretched, and made his way to the table. “I learned that in the army, I guess. How to sleep in little naps—whenever and however you could. Once when Stonewall Jackson was flanking three different armies in the Valley, we marched three hundred miles or more, I guess, in a few days. It rained one night, a real toad-strangler.” The memory made him squint his eyes, and he smiled wryly. “I’d just dropped to the ground, in a little depression. When I woke up, just my face was above water! And I was too tired to move! I remember thinking, Well, if it gets another two inches higher, I’ll drown. But then I won’t have to march anymore. But I didn’t drown, so I had to get up and march when the order came.”
“Was Jack
son a good general?” Faith asked.
“The hardest man I ever knew,” Tom shrugged. “If a man fell out from exhaustion, Stonewall had no thought of him. He’d give some impossible task to his officers and men; then, if it didn’t get done, he’d be angry. If it did, the most he’d ever say was ‘Good.’ ”
“Did you ever see General Lee?”
“Oh, sure, many a time—”
Winslow rarely talked about the war, but he did that evening. Faith and Laurie sat together on a battered overstuffed chair, listening to every word, their eyes seldom leaving him. Outside the wind rose, a low keening, with an occasional roar that struck the cabin like a blow. The stove glowed, radiating a pleasant warmth—a welcome contrast to the barren cold just outside the thin walls of the house.
Laurie leaned against Faith, who had let her arm fall around the girl. She grew sleepy, but she had never heard her father say so much about the war, and she wished he would never stop. There was a curious feeling about being held by Faith, and she sat there quietly savoring it.
Finally Winslow started and gave an embarrassed laugh. “I’m getting to be an old bore! Next thing I’ll be sitting around the courthouse with all the other old vets telling how I showed Bobby Lee how to fight a war!”
Faith shook her head. “It was a terrible time, wasn’t it? I’m glad it’s over.”
“So am I. I left a lot of good friends on those fields in Virginia.” Then, wanting to change the subject, he asked, “How’s the school going?”
“Not too well, I’m afraid.”
Winslow gave her a quick glance, noting that her face was somewhat drawn, with a few lines etched around her eyes. “You mustn’t be discouraged, Faith,” he said quickly. “It takes a long time to get to know these people. They’ve been shoved around for so long by white people, it’s a wonder they don’t hate us all.” Then he added, “Some of them do, of course. Geronimo and Roman Nose and Victorio—the real fire eaters. I don’t think they’ll ever become tame Indians. They’re just too wild to become farmers.”
“All the papers from the East are talking about the Indian problem. And they don’t agree with each other.” Faith got up and brought a few newspapers from a table. “This is from the Boston Post.” She read the item to him aloud. “ ‘The history of relations between the white man and red has been an unbroken story of rapacity, cruelty and of complete lack of feeling on the part of the white. Nothing has been constant with him except his sacred right to seize whatever land he wished from whatever Indian tribe he wished. We have no reason to be proud of our dealings with the weaker savage race. We have no right to call ourselves a civilized or cultured people with that record against us.’ ”
Winslow listened carefully, then said, “I wish more people felt like that.”
“So do I! But here’s an editorial from my own hometown paper, the St. Louis Globe.” She began to read, the anger noticeable in her face as she read:
“ ‘There is no use entering into a discussion of the morals of the white man versus the red man. All the debate in Christendom cannot blink the fact that the white man is a surging tide of conquest, of settlement and progress, whereas the Indian is content to roam nomadically across the land as he has done for tens of thousands of years, ignoring an earth which could provide him riches were he industrious enough to cultivate it. Primitive indolence and barbaric narrowness is his character, nor does he wish for anything we call civilization. Let us not shed tears over the ills done poor Lo. Poor Lo has been at the business of killing and raiding and stealing for many centuries—before the white man came. It is his one great objective in life. It is his profession and his pastime. Whereas, a white boy is taught to believe that the purpose of man is scientific and literary and social advancement, the one and only training an Indian boy ever receives is to go out and kill his enemy, thereby becoming great in his own tribe. Were the race of the Indian to die off tomorrow, there would be no permanent handiwork behind him, no inventions, no scholarship except a few primitive daubs on this or that rock, no system of ethics at all, not one worthy thing to justify his tenure upon the fairest of all continents. By contrast look upon the white man’s record in a brief 250 years here. That should be answer enough to all the silly sentimentality current in the East. It is time now to end the endless marching and countermarching of skeleton cavalry columns commanded by officers who know nothing of savage warfare. It is time now to send in one large and determined expedition to crush savage resistance permanently and to confine the red man to the reservation, so that at least the white race may get on with its appointed destiny, which is to harness the continent and to build civilization’s network across it.’ ”
Faith abruptly walked over to the stove, opened the door, and with an angry gesture threw the paper into the glowing fire. Her face was flushed with more than the heat of the stove, her wide, expressive lips were drawn tightly together, and her gray eyes glinted with agitation. “I wonder what that editor would think if someone moved in and took his home away from him as he says we ought to do with the Indians!”
Winslow had not seen her like this, and the outburst of fiery temper pleased him for some reason. “You look like a Sioux on the warpath,” he grinned at her. “Would you scalp that newspaperman if you got a chance?”
Faith stopped her pacing, gave Winslow a startled glance; then a rueful smile tugged at her lips. “Well, maybe not—but I’d like to yank some of his hate-filled hair out by the roots!”
“Gosh!” Laurie’s eyes were wide and her mouth open with surprise. “I didn’t know preachers ever got mad!”
Her remark tickled Faith, and she ran over and gave the girl a hug, laughing as she did so. “Now you know better,” she said, then straightened up and gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. “I guess you’re shocked at my fit, aren’t you, Tom?”
“No. You look very attractive when you’re mad. Makes your eyes sparkle.”
His remark took her off guard, and she studied him to see if he was serious. When he smiled, she asked him, “Tom, will it happen like he says? Will there be a big battle?”
“Yes, it’s coming. That editor could have said it all a lot quicker, like, ‘You Indians have the land and we want it, so we’re going to get it if we have to kill every last one of you.’ ”
“And we call ourselves civilized!” Faith exploded. “How can I preach the love of God to them when every day they see we don’t mean it?”
“You mean it, Faith. Some of them will see that.” He hesitated, then added, “I don’t think people find God in big groups, do they? It’s always one at a time. And you’re here to do that, I take it.”
“But . . .it’s so slow, Tom!” Faith said, her tone sad. “I’m only one person and there are so many of them!”
“Well, Jesus was just one person, wasn’t He?”
His question caught at her, turning her silent. She stood there, her hands behind her back, clenched together, and finally she nodded, “That’s right, He was. And He spent most of His time with just twelve men. Oh, He preached to large crowds, of course, but it was those twelve He really gave himself to.”
“That’s what you’ll have to do, isn’t it?” Winslow asked. “Get just a handful to believe you’ve got the right way for them. Then those few will have to go out and convince others.” He stopped. “Listen to me,” he said, “telling you how to do your job!”
“Don’t say that, Tom!” Faith protested. “Because you’re right. I can’t be grieving because I can’t do it all. But I can reach a few!”
“Are you going to preach in the morning?”
Faith glanced at Laurie, smiled, and nodded. “I’m going to try. Will you interpret for me, Tom?”
“If you trust me.”
“I trust you,” she said quietly. “There’s nobody I trust more.”
****
The congregation Winslow faced the next morning was predominantly women and children, with a sprinkling of older men. He had gone in and built a roaring fire in t
he large potbellied stove, then after a good breakfast, had gone back to the larger building with Faith and Laurie for the service. Faith wore a light gray dress with dark maroon trim and a pair of high-topped black shoes that peeped in and out from beneath her skirt. Her hair was pinned up, piled in a rich gathering, and she looked very attractive as she stood up and said, “We are happy to have Mr. Winslow and his daughter Laurie with us this morning. Mr. Winslow has worked with your people for many years, and I have asked him to interpret for me. But as usual we’ll have a song service first. Join with me as much as you can.”
The hymns were all familiar to Winslow, and he sang along, though feeling a little uncomfortable. The Indians knew only a smattering of the words, but they enjoyed the singing, humming along and pronouncing such words as they did know.
When they had sung several numbers, Faith looked a little nervous, but said in a strong, halting voice, as simply as possible without interpretation, “I have a little surprise for you.” Then she lifted her clear voice in a verse of “Amazing Grace”—in the Sioux language.
It was a poor translation and she made more than one error in pronunciation, but when she ended, a mutter of approval went over the congregation, and one old warrior smiled, saying, “Good!”
Faith sang the song several times, and by the time she had completed it three times, most of the congregation were singing along—especially the young people. “That’s so very good!” Faith nodded, pleased with her effort. “Soon we’ll have many songs in your language. And one day I’ll be able to speak to you without an interpreter, but today Mr. Winslow will help.”
Winslow stood next to Faith as he translated and found that she had mastered the art of using an interpreter well. She broke her thoughts and words up into small phrases, then waited until he had put them into the Sioux language. More than once he had trouble with some word or phrase, and the Indians liked that. This occurred early, for her text was from John, chapter three, and when she read the verse, “ ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,’ ” Winslow hesitated. “I don’t know just how to put that,” he said to Faith.
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