The Passionate and the Proud

by Vanessa Royall

  “Honey, you’ve got to give me some of that white powder real quick. Hurry. I can’t stand the pain much longer. Lately Ebenezer’s been giving me some in the middle of the night, but he had him a little too much of his own medicine last night, poor man.”

  Emmalee took the bag of opium powder from the bin in which it was stored and put a heaping spoonful into a mug of water.

  “Hurry.” Mrs. Creel was panting like a woman in childbirth.

  Emmalee held the mug to Mrs. Creel’s lips. The woman drank the elixir in gurgling desperation, then waited for its effect to take hold, grasping her swollen abdomen as she prayed. Finally, she felt the first rush of relief and relaxed a little.

  “Ebenezer thinks I don’t know what this is,” she said, smiling thinly.

  “Do you want some more?”

  “No. We have to ration it. It’s opium. I know. He tells me it’s a kind of peppermint to settle my stomach. He’s a dear man.”

  Emmalee covered the snoring Ebenezer with a shawl. “Shall I read to you?” she asked Bernice Creel.

  “No. I want to talk to you. There’s a favor I’ve got to ask. Honey, I don’t want Ebenezer to know this, but I’m not going to make it to Olympia. I can’t hold out that long.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Creel, don’t be silly. You’ll—”

  “No. Save your breath. I can tell. And I want you to promise me this: that you’ll take care of Ebenezer after I’m gone. Oh, I don’t mean to wait on him hand and foot, you know, but just watch out for him. He could get hurt the way he carries on.”

  She gestured at Ebenezer with a limp hand.

  “He didn’t always used to drink this much, you know,” she said defensively. “It was all that trouble he had during the war, and after.”

  “Did Ebenezer fight in the war?” Em asked. He looked much too old for it.

  “He’s always had this problem about picking the wrong side, the wrong man,” Mrs. Creel went on. “And in the Civil War he thought Jeff Davis and the Rebs would win. We lived on the Union side of the Ohio and almost all of our neighbors was loyal to Honest Abe. Well, one day that Union general, Boris Spaeth, comes through town on his way to attack Jubal Early’s troops in Tennessee…”

  Emmalee had read of the bloody exploits of “Mad Dog” Spaeth, most feared of the Union officers. “Go on,” she said.

  “Well, Ebenezer got it into his head to be a spy. He tried to get news of Spaeth’s progress to Jubal Early. Naturally, he was caught. Eb’s been in jail till just two months ago. We were ruined, lost the farm and everything. We haven’t a cent to our names.”

  Emmalee wondered how this could be true, since she’d seen very clearly that big hundred-dollar bill. She suspected that Ebenezer had a few secrets he wasn’t telling anybody.

  “It’s just lucky that Horace Torquist is the strong, generous man he is,” Mrs. Creel said. “He accepted us on his train, in spite of everything. And Ebenezer’s enjoying himself for the first time in years. He’s taken a shine to this handsome young scout. You know the one I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “Eb says this young man is really going to go places.” Just like Jefferson Davis, Emmalee thought.

  “And how is Mr. Landar these days?” she asked.

  Emmalee hadn’t seen Garn since that night underneath the wagon. He had gone off promising to do something that would, in a manner of speaking, redeem himself in her eyes. And he hadn’t come back at all. She owed herself a kick in the posterior for thinking, even for a moment, that he’d bother. But she had to admit, too, that if anybody required such a display of personal worth from her, she would have a strong impulse to tell them off.

  “Mr. Landar comes here at night?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes. He and my husband have a snort or two. Then Mr. Landar goes off to do whatever he does.

  “I think he gambles,” Mrs. Creel added. “He was telling Ebenezer they ought to roll craps. But, of course, Eb’s got no money.”

  Probably not anymore, if he gambled with Garn, Emmalee reflected. The man was completely unprincipled, to try to bilk a self-deluded old failure like Creel, and whomever else among this party of innocent farmers he could gull.

  “I’ll go over to the chuckwagon and get us all a little breakfast…” Emmalee was saying, when, from the ridge to the southwest, there came a long cry of woe and warning. It awakened the camp more effectively than Myrtle had ever done, and by the time Emmalee had pushed open the canvas flaps of the Conestoga and jumped down onto the ground, people were milling in wonder and alarm outside their wagons. They saw a horseman coming at breakneck speed down the ridge toward the camp, leading a riderless horse by the reins. Emmalee recognized Randy Clay. He was heading for Horace Torquist’s tent.

  She ran toward the tent, as did dozens of people, and got there just as Randy was reining his mount in a cloud of dust. The second horse tossed its mane nervously. Torquist must have been awakened by Randy’s cry, because he stepped barefooted out of the tent, buckling his belt.

  “Clay! What is it?” he asked. The wagonmaster was trying to be calm, but Emmalee noted a flicker of panic in his question.

  Randy made no bones about trying to appear composed. He wasn’t. “J. C. Steele and I were out scouting today’s trail,” he said, speaking raggedly, “and we…and we…”

  “Out with it. Clay, for God’s sake.”

  “…J. C.’s dead. He took an arrow right between his eyes. One moment he was talking to me, next minute there’s an arrow in his head and he’s on the ground, dead. I don’t know where it came from.”

  “You didn’t see any Indians?” demanded Lambert Strep, who had raced up in a nightshirt and hurriedly pulled on boots.

  “Not a glimpse,” replied Randy. Emmalee saw that he was trembling.

  “Arapaho,” said Garn Landar coolly, striding upon the scene. He was fully clothed: buckskin jacket, breeches, silver-banded hat. A rifle was slung over his shoulder. “Chief Fire-On-The-Moon. I told you.”

  The crowd, which was growing by the moment as more and more people came to see what was happening, now quieted to a hush.

  “But Randy didn’t actually see any Indians,” Torquist said hopefully. “The arrow could have come from some lone brave out hunting.”

  “Really?” Garn smiled, his voice easy, eerie. “Take a look up at the ridge.”

  The people, hitherto preoccupied with Randy’s news and Torquist’s reaction to it, turned and cried out in unison. All along the ridge, from sky to sky, were the Arapaho, hundreds and hundreds of them on horseback, brandishing lances and spears, quivers of arrows and long, curved bows. An army of painted savages poised above the encampment, conveying a sense of ominous, hideous power, but motionless and absolutely silent. Emmalee heard a collective gasp from the people around her, part of which was her own terrified exhalation.

  “What are you going to do now?” Garn asked no one in particular.

  “We can’t fight them,” mourned Strep. “We’re peaceable folk. We don’t even have that many guns.”

  This was true. With few exceptions—rifles for rabbits, a couple of shotguns for pheasant—the Torquist party was unarmed. Torquist had seen no reason for it. “Our virtue is our armament,” he had said on many occasions, “and the Lord is our defense.”

  “They don’t seem in any hurry to attack,” Torquist murmured in wonder. “Perhaps they’ll just move on.”

  His voice had spirit in it, an effort of optimism meant to reassure his followers.

  “They don’t have to do a thing,” Garn said, deflating Torquist’s fragile hope. “We’re trapped. The river and the creek are at our back and flanks. The ridge is in front of us. I couldn’t have picked a worse place to camp if you’d given me ten years to figure it out.”

  His voice had the heat of whiplash and true anger in it now. Emmalee realized how ignorant she really was. Only a little earlier she had been thinking how cozy this spot seemed.

  The other scouts now appeared—Cassidy, Ryder, and
Mexx—fully clothed, grim, and jittery.

  “Hey there, boys,” Garn drawled. “Steele’s dead, and you’ve got a little problem up there on the ridge. Which one of you dullards was bright enough to tell Horace to camp here?”

  “This is no time for recriminations!” cried the wagonboss. “We have to decide what to do.”

  But Cassidy, to his credit, took the responsibility for error. “I figured it’d be better to ford the river last night, so’s we wouldn’t have to start today all wet.”

  “We might well start today all dead” was Garn’s only comment.

  The people in the crowd were regarding him in a completely new light now, a wholly respectful light.

  “We have to plan what to do,” said the wagonboss uneasily. Emmalee, who was close to him, saw pain in his expression, and realized the cost of the effort he was expending in trying to maintain a commanding air.

  Suddenly the Indians on the ridge moved, just a slight shift of position. The center of their line parted and there appeared, riding up from behind the ridge, a figure of splendid but terrible wonder. On a pony white as snow, in a headdress of feathers three feet high, wearing bands of gold on his arms and legs, face and body painted vividly, sat a brave whose very bearing suggested ruthlessness, mayhem, and peerless contempt.

  “There he is,” said Garn quietly, in a voice that did not try to conceal awe. “Fire-On-The-Moon.”

  “Oh, my God!” breathed Torquist. He stopped, aware that he was displaying not only doubt, but fear.

  Then, intruding absurdly upon the scene, one of the Bent daughters, Priscilla, came running up, hollering, “Hey, everybody, there are two dead dogs down by the river!”

  She looked around, as if wondering why everyone was gathered here. Then she saw the Arapaho and froze in her tracks.

  “I have an idea,” said Randy Clay. “During the war,” he explained, “when Mad Dog Spaeth was beseiged in Fort Cuyahoga, he made it appear as if his troops had more cannon than they did by sticking stovepipes out of portholes on the battlements.”

  “I see what you’re getting at,” exclaimed Torquist.

  “And the attackers thought he had more firepower than he actually did. They withdrew. Now, if these Indians were to think we had cannon—”

  “But we don’t have cannon,” said Garn.

  “We’ve got wagonwheels. And axles. We’ve got wagonpoles.”

  “I get you,” exulted Lawrence Redding, blacksmith. “We’ll take wheels off the wagons, and cut wagonpoles to cannon-barrel length. We can grease them black, to look like the real thing. At this distance, them redskins’ll be fooled like nothing.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on that,” Garn said. “When it comes to putting mental pressure on an enemy, they’re way ahead of us. Fire-On-The-Moon drove half a camp to suicide once just by circling around its wagons and, once every hour, shooting a flaming arrow down into their midst. He waits. Until we find out what he wants, the battle is all his.”

  “Enough of that talk, Landar!” admonished Torquist. “Clay has a good idea and the only one I’ve heard so far. I think it’ll work.”

  The people, just minutes ago so favorable to Garn, now shifted behind their leader. They wanted to believe that Randy’s ploy would save them.

  “Women and children to the wagons,” Torquist commanded. “Men, begin removing wheels from the innermost circle of wagons.”

  Emmalee walked up to Garn. She could not help but think of those wildly intimate moments beneath the wagon. Her body recalled the feel of his bare chest against her naked breasts and her mind remembered how difficult it had been to pull away from him.

  “Hello, Emmalee,” he said to her now, as if that incident of ecstatic conflict had never occurred. “Better find a wagon and crawl inside.”

  She realized that he probably knew more about the Arapaho than the other scouts, certainly more than anyone else on the train. She also understood, in a very direct way, that his knowledge might be their best defense.

  “What’s going to happen now?” she asked.

  “I’m going to protect you.” He smiled, but his expression showed real concern. “Just like I said.”

  Emmalee was not about to make a wisecrack or debate the issue. Suddenly she was very glad that he was there, whatever his faults were.

  “What does that chief want?” she asked.

  “Frankly, other than live women and dead men, I don’t know what he wants.”

  “Do you think Randy’s plan will work?”

  “No,” said Garn. “But don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

  For once, Em did not reject the offer.

  The mock cannon, ten of them, did look reasonably authentic, even when viewed up close. Torquist’s men, working frenziedly, had stripped wheels and axles from wagons, fitted them with long, thin, blackened sections of wagonpole, and when they were rolled out beyond the wagons onto the prairie facing the ridge, Emmalee could almost make herself believe that they actually were cannon.

  The only problem was that she knew they weren’t.

  Three farmers took up positions, one trio per cannon, as if they were gun crews, and looked up at the Arapaho, still motionless, on the crest of the ridge.

  Horace Torquist came out of his tent, fully dressed and confident.

  “Now we shall triumph,” he declared.

  “Mr. Torquist,” bleated Jasper Heaton, the Indiana farmer, “A calf musta got loose from the herd last night, an’ she’s drowned or somethin’ down by the river.”

  “Not now, Jasper. Let us discuss it when the Indians disperse.

  “All right, men,” he ordered, his wild mane of hair like a burning bush beneath the red penumbra of dawn, “light your torches and prepare to fire.”

  The “gun crews” were equipped with torches, making it appear as if they were ready to fire the fuses and powder that would propel cannonballs. It was a colossal bluff. The torches were lighted.

  Up on the ridge, the warriors nearest Fire-On-The-Moon drew their ponies next to him.

  “They’re thinkin’ things over real hard now,” gloated Ebenezer Creel.

  Emmalee remembered a prayer she had learned at the Lutheran orphanage. She started to say it.

  Ten warriors left their chieftain’s side and began to ride slowly down the ridge toward the cannon.

  Emmalee caught a glimpse of Garn Landar shaking his head and smiling bitterly. She stopped praying.

  “If anyone fires a weapon at these braves,” he said, “I’ll kill him myself. Do nothing, or you’re dead right now.”

  The Arapaho braves rode down toward the camp, growing larger and more distinct as they came. Emmalee saw the fierce daubs of warpaint across their high cheekbones and their bold, proud eyes, black and glaring. They rode bareback, powerful thighs gripping their horses. Emmalee was aware of the arrogance of physical strength: strong legs, bulging breechclouts, iron-hand stomachs, deep chests, and mighty arms.

  “Hold your ground,” Torquist commanded his “gunners,” who turned and looked pleadingly toward him. The gamble was not working, and they knew it. The only question now was what the Indians would do when they got close enough to verify that the “weapons” were phony.

  “Don’t do a thing!” Garn warned again. “Don’t challenge them in any way. Maybe they’ll take this as some sort of a joke, although the Plains Indians are not noted for their sense of humor.”

  “I thought it was a good idea…” said Randy in his own behalf.

  “You tried,” Garn told him. “That’s more than most.”

  “Th-this is it!” faltered Torquist.

  The ten braves fanned out, one to a “cannon,” and halted their horses. They studied the wagonpole barrels carefully, then looked at one another with contemptuous grimaces that were terrible to behold. A warrior rode up to Mr. Torquist and raised his spear threateningly. The wagonmaster showed signs of coming completely apart.

  “He wants the torches doused, Horace,” said Garn.

 
No one was questioning Garn now; nobody else seemed to have any idea of what to do.

  The torches, useless anyway, were extinguished; the Indians looked fierce, disdainful, triumphant.

  Now the brave with the spear motioned Torquist to step forward. The wagonboss understood the signal well enough, but terror froze him to the earth.

  “Get out there, Horace,” ordered Garn, and in his voice was a register of authority Emmalee had not heard before. “Get out there, damn it. He’s not going to kill you.”

  For a moment it seemed as if Garn were wrong. Torquist stepped forward and the Indian regarded him dispassionately for a moment. Then, suddenly, the brave’s spear slashed down through the air, jabbed at Horace’s shoulder. He cried out and fell to the ground. The Indians turned and galloped back up the hill toward their leader, yipping and shrieking.

  Everyone rushed out to Torquist, who was on the ground, shaking and holding his shoulder. Emmalee saw blood seeping through his flannel shirt and onto his fingers. She could tell at a glance, however, that the wound was not deep.

  “What the hell do you make of that?” Ebenezer Creel cackled. “That there redskin coulda kilt old Horace, but he didn’t.”

  “That’s because he didn’t want to,” explained Garn. “Blooding a man, as that brave just did to Torquist, is a sign that he could have killed but chose not to.”

  “Why not?” asked Torquist, clutching his wound.

  “Because the man who has been spared is already at the mercy of the one who could have killed, and who could still do so at any time.”

  “How do you know so much about these things?” demanded Randy Clay, with considerable heat.

  “I spent a lot of years out here. The high plains are my home.”

  Myrtle Higgins pushed her way through the groups of people around Torquist, cut away his shirt, and began to apply a bandage. “What do they want, anyway?” she asked, looking up at the ridge, along which the Arapaho were still arrayed.