La Vengeance des mères

by Jim Fergus

  “Hawk will be the ranking warrior when we leave here,” said Susie when they had finished their little biography. “He is the one you would want to talk to, Molly.”

  “Thank you for that,” I said.

  “That don’t mean he’s going to let you girls come with us,” she said. “And me and Meggie still ain’t in favor of it.”

  “Understood,” I said. “But can you arrange a meeting between us? You say that Hawk learned English in the Indian school, so we should be able to communicate.”

  “We have never heard Hawk speak a single word of English,” said Meggie. “We were told he tried to forget everything about his time there, including the language. Despite his mother having been one, he hates the whites. Even more now since the soldiers attacked our camp. That’s why Susie and me are surprised he didn’t kill you lassies.”

  Meggie and Susie looked at each other again in silent twin communication. They both nodded.

  “Aye, that’s it, then,” said Susie, “we been trying to protect you girls from the full truth, but maybe this is the best time to tell you what happened to our own group of white women. It would not be fair to you if we didn’t. And maybe this’ll discourage you once and for all from wishin’ to come with us.

  “You see, a company of U.S. Army cavalry attacked our village at dawn on a bitter cold morning in February. Out of a baker’s dozen of us white brides who had still stuck with the program, only me and Susie, and one other lass lived to tell about it … all the rest of our friends died … and the infants of those who had ’em were killed, too. Meggie and me lost our own twin babies to the cold the next night, trying to make our way here … we were married to twin Cheyenne boys, and both of us gave birth to twins … four babies froze to death, one after the next … That’s all you need to know about us so don’t ask any more questions … and that’s why we’re goin’ to fight the Army. In the end we expect that we, too, will die. But see, we don’t give a rat’s ass, ’cause we already lost everything we had to live for and we got nothin’ left to lose. Aye, that’s what you have to look forward to if you stay with us. You’ll be gettin’ mixed up in somethin’ way over your heads. You lassies are not that far down the road yet. Before you go any further, maybe returning to your ‘homes,’ wherever and whatever they be, ain’t really such a bad choice for you, after all. And Molly, just so you know, Hawk’s wife, son, and mother were also killed in the attack. Like us, he’s got a heart full of vengeance.”

  Now we fully understood what we had suspected all along but had not yet heard voiced. Of course, we had seen glimpses of the Kelly sisters’ barely concealed anguish, but I believe that because our own situation was so precarious, and we so fragile, we had not really wanted to hear the full story, had not wanted to know that the brides program had ended in the butchery and death of nearly all their friends, as well as their infants. Attacked by the very government that had been charged with protecting them, no wonder they wanted us to turn back. We all sat now in silence, as if in a kind of memorial … to Meggie and Susie’s fallen comrades, and to our own, and most of all to their babies, to all the infants and children who have perished senselessly … my own daughter included. What kind of God, what kind of world, what kind of human beings allow such horrors to take place on earth?

  28 March 1876

  It has been decided. Today we learned that the Lakota leaders have agreed to give us the horses, and all that is still in question is with whom we are to ride—with Gertie back to Fort Fetterman, or with the Kelly girls and the Cheyenne to wherever they lead us … assuming that they even agree to accept us. Although the Kellys’ words were sobering to our girls, appearing not to offer a single good option, that same night around the fire circle in the tipi, we spoke again privately and at length among ourselves. We remembered Meggie and Susie’s advice the very first time they came to see us, that we had only ourselves and each other upon whom to rely. And so it was decided that above all we must stick together. It was agreed that after seeing so many of our own group killed in the attack on the train, and then having been held hostage these past weeks, the notion that all had been for naught, and what we faced now was simply a return to the grim fates we left behind, seemed out of the question. Susie was wrong about one thing: we had already come too far down the road and there was no turning back for us.

  To their credit, Meggie and Susie arranged for me to meet with the man called Hawk, and they said that if I was able to convince him to let us ride with them, they would not stand in our way. As I had suspected all along, I sensed their relief that the decision had been taken out of their hands.

  Rather than going to Hawk’s lodge as a humble, beseeching captive white woman, or have him come to our own tipi, where he would see us all as such, I wanted to meet him alone and on more equal footing. I proposed that the meeting take place outside the village, and that I would arrive there on horseback. As the representative of our group, I wanted him to know that we were not so helpless, after all, that I could at least ride. I asked the Kellys to let me choose my own mount among the horses given us, and I asked that Gertie accompany me to the meeting place. “However, I wish to speak privately to Hawk, Gertie,” I explained, “and unless I need you, I want you to hang back when we get there.”

  “You’re takin’ a real chance, honey, that you’ll even be able to communicate with Hawk,” she said. “You heard what the girls said, they never heard him speak a single word of English in the year they’ve known him. And neither have I, and I’ve known him since he was a boy.”

  “I’m a teacher, Gertie,” I said. “If Hawk spent four years between age eight and twelve at an English school run by Jesuits, believe me, he speaks English, whether he chooses to or not. Children that age absorb language like sponges, and he has not forgotten it. Of that I am certain. I spoke to him when we were captured, and I believe now in looking back that he understood me.”

  A meeting place was set in a copse of cottonwoods on the river at a short distance from the village. From among those horses offered us, I chose a chestnut mare to ride, a compact little filly with a white blaze on her forehead, who seemed to possess a certain calm maturity that attracted me. Many horsemen don’t care for mares because they can be difficult and cause trouble among the geldings and stallions, but I’ve always gotten on well with them. I’ve named her Spring, because it is the season of renewal, of new beginnings.

  Gertie on her big gray mule, and I on the smaller chestnut, rode away from the village together, some of the people coming out of their tipis to watch us. I don’t pretend to be an accomplished equestrian, but when I was growing up on the farm when they were working in the fields, my parents set me on the backs of Percheron draft horses before I could even walk. Early babysitters, these were huge gentle giants, with hooves the size of frying pans, and later I used to ride one to school, as did many farm kids. I hadn’t been on horseback since I left the farm those years ago, but right away it felt natural and after our long confinement gave me a wonderful sense of freedom. However, I experienced again a pang of homesickness and regret for ever having left there, a terrible mistake that changed my life irrevocably, can never be righted, and will haunt me to the grave.

  Gertie must have seen it in my face now as we rode. “Honey, I know sumpin’ real bad has happened to you,” she said. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but I see the rough form of it, and if ever you need to talk about that, ole Gertie here is a pretty damned good listener. I’ve had some rough times myself, lost a coupla chillun along the way, so I know damn well what that’s like.”

  I turned and looked at her then in some surprise. “Are you just taking a stab in the dark, Gertie,” I asked, “about what might have happened to me?”

  “Sure, honey, you can say I’m taking a stab in the dark if you like,” she said. “But I have hunches about people, Molly. I see things … not always real clear, but I see things.”

  I nodded. “OK, I will keep that in mind.”

  As we appro
ached the meeting place, Gertie reined up and pointed. “That’s Hawk there in the trees.” He sat motionless on a paint horse beneath the cottonwoods, bare of leaves still, his back to us, looking off across the river.

  “Good, I wanted him to arrive before we did,” I said. “I’m going to ride in alone, Gertie. You don’t need to wait for me. I know the way back.”

  “I like your style, honey,” she said. “You remind me of myself some years ago. Good luck to you.”

  I pressed my heels lightly to the mare’s flanks and was pleased to see that she responded by quickening her step into a trot, and when I nudged her again she broke into an easy lope. I had been given only a kind of native rawhide hackamore, little more than a glorified halter with reins really, but I was accustomed to that from the farm, and I had already ridden the mare briefly and knew that she had been trained to neck rein. In this way we rode into the meeting place, where I slowed her to a walk. Hawk had turned at my approach, so that as I came alongside him the horses were head to butt and the two of us faced each other.

  The unseasonably warm weather continued, and in the river bottom the whorled flattened yellow grass of last fall was studded by a few optimistic shoots of pale green just breaking through, while tight buds were still waiting to swell on the cottonwood trees.

  We sat our horses and looked in each other’s eyes for a long moment.

  “My name is Molly,” I said finally. “Molly McGill. Thank you for agreeing to meet me.”

  He did not respond, or give any indication that he recognized me.

  “I’m sorry I don’t speak Cheyenne or Lakota,” I said, “but I think you know what I’m saying. We met before, as you may remember, on the train. I rode with you. And I was at the powwow.”

  Again Hawk simply watched me, his expression giving nothing away.

  “You can answer me in Cheyenne, if you like,” I said. “Of course, I won’t understand you, but I intend to learn your language. I’ve always had a facility for languages. I speak French, because my family lived close to the Canadian border and we had French neighbors. And I speak some Norwegian, as well, because we had neighbors on the other side of us from Norway … they raised dairy cows … ah, yes, I imagine you’re finding all this quite fascinating, aren’t you?” I don’t know whether or not it was just my imagination, but in that moment I thought that something like a tiny smile might have flickered across Hawk’s mouth … no, no, just as quickly, I realized that this was simply wishful thinking on my part; his expression remained utterly neutral, revealing nothing.

  “I think you know why I am here,” I continued. “The twins must have told you. It is to ask you to take my friends and me with you when you leave here. We wish to join Little Wolf’s band, and take up life there among your people. We were sent here by our government, volunteers in the Brides for Indians program, but we are no longer affiliated with that … no, forgive me, that is a poor choice of words on my part … that you would surely not understand. I mean to say, we no longer work for the government. You see, the brides program is defunct … that is to say, it has been terminated … ended … yes, the program has ended. Now we are strictly on our own, completely independent, you see … oh, dear, I am sorry, I’m babbling, aren’t I?…”

  “I know what ‘affiliated’ means,” the man named Hawk said.

  “What? You do? You speak? I knew you spoke English. You understood me on the train, didn’t you? I knew it. I sensed it … but … but … how do you know what ‘affiliated’ means?”

  Hawk held his hands out to me, the backs of them badly scarred. “I went to an Indian school run by Jesuit priests. I had a good teacher. I refused to speak the white man’s tongue, I would only speak my people’s language. Every day he beat my hands with a stick until they bled. And he said, ‘Don’t you understand, you little savage, that you are no longer affiliated with the Cheyenne tribe? You live in the white world now. You will never see your people again. You will become a Christian, and you will speak our language.’”

  Despite the scarring, Hawk had finely formed hands, with strong, tapered brown fingers, which I now reached over and took in mine, a gesture of intimacy that seemed somehow natural between us, without artifice, as if we had known each other for a long time and shared some complicity. “I am sorry for you,” I said. “I have known teachers like that myself, men and women who enter the profession expressly as a pretext to be cruel to children. I don’t blame you for not wanting to speak English.”

  But then he did and we talked. Hawk had no objection to having our group join those returning to the Cheyenne. Indeed, he said that the Lakota had agreed to give us the horses for no other reason than that they wished to be rid of us now. How popular our little group is! The government abandons us, the Lakota want nothing more to do with us, Meggie and Susie Kelly want to send us “home” … wherever that be. However, Hawk seems to feel that Little Wolf, who lost so many of his band in the attack the sisters described to us, will accept us, having already had experience with white women among his people, including his own wife, May Dodd.

  “But why did you bring us here?” I asked Hawk. “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to kill us on the train?”

  “I didn’t kill you because you weren’t afraid of me,” he said. “You said it was a good day to die. It is the Cheyenne way to sometimes spare enemies who display bravery”—he paused and looked away as if embarrassed—“and also because you have hair the same color as did my mother.”

  “I am pleased to remind you of your mother, if that is what saved us,” I said, “but I am not your enemy, nor am I brave. As the twins say of themselves, I simply have nothing left to lose. That is much less heroic than courage. It is only the longing for nothingness.”

  Hawk looked at me again and nodded. “Yes, I understand that,” he said.

  4 April 1876

  The warm weather continues, nearly all the snow already off the plains, a faint blush of green grass sprouting on south-facing hills. The early spring and the news of our release has offered a small surge of spirit, a bit of hopefulness. Our horses have been corralled near our tipi, and we have been conducting riding lessons for those girls who are inexperienced. Indeed, as Gertie suggested, the Lakota clearly did not give us the pick of the string, and some of the mounts are skittish and unpredictable. Lady Hall is by far the most accomplished rider among us, and has been working with the horses in addition to instructing the beginners. “Let me observe, first of all, ladies,” she said, “that as our friend Miss Gertie warned, these are hardly hunter/jumper thoroughbreds we have here. Indeed, if one were to arrive for the hunt seated upon one of these nags at any of the estates at which my noble class pursues that distinguished sport, one would be roundly ridiculed and summarily forbidden from participating. However, in our rather diminished circumstances, as Miss Molly here has suggested, we are required to ride the horses we have been given, not the horses we wish we had been given. And crow bait though the majority be, grateful for them we are. When I have finished my training course, the lot of them should be biddable enough for all of you to manage, and I shall keep the wildest of the wild as my own. I have never shrunk from an equestrian challenge. Indeed, as a girl I refused to ride sidesaddle, I donned men’s breeches, and rode unladylike, scandalizing the British nobility with my spread legs.

  “Now, ladies, regarding your personal relationships with your mounts,” Lady Hall continued, “let me just say that each will size you up in the same manner in which you do them. If they find you timid or wanting in authority, they will sense it immediately and take advantage of you. This is a very poor precedent to set. Thus from the beginning, a firm hand is essential. As incompetent as you may feel on the back of your horse, establish your mastery over the beast, even if you have to pretend it. They will respect you for that, and respond accordingly.”

  This was sound advice from Lady Hall. Nevertheless, the equestrian efforts of some of our girls were not without a certain comedic value, and fortunately, but f
or minor bumps and bruises, no one so far has suffered any serious injury. Oddly, our Norwegian girl, Astrid, who hails from a family of fishermen, took rather naturally to horseback. She said the rolling motion of the horse’s gait was not unlike that of a boat bobbing on water, which comparison seems to possess a certain logic. Our irrepressibly optimistic gamine, Lulu, on the other hand, appeared to have no natural aptitude whatsoever for riding, although the horse chosen for her was one of the most gentle of the bunch. She somehow managed to slide off its back at a walk, and when helped back on, she slipped off the other side, which gave all of us a jolly chuckle at her expense. She’s a sweet girl and allowed us our moment of merriment with her usual perfect good nature.

  Despite her lady’s expertise on the subject, our Liverpudlian girl, Hannah, was one of the most recalcitrant of equestrians, refusing even to mount her horse. “I shall walk alongside my lady’s horse,” she announced in an uncharacteristically firm voice, and no amount of commanding, cajoling, or threatening from Lady Hall seemed able to move her from her position.

  “Very well, Hannah,” said Lady Hall finally in exasperation. “But you will hold the rest of us up if you insist upon walking, and we will eventually be forced to leave you behind.” She swept her arm across the vast open country that lay beyond the village. “Of course, you will be all alone out there, and as you become weaker and weaker, the wolves will begin following you, the entire pack yipping and howling at the prospect of their coming meal. Soon they will be further emboldened and begin nipping at your heels, while high in the air above you, the buzzards will now be circling, biding their time, waiting to pick clean your bones when the wolves have finished feasting on your entrails. No, it will not be a pleasant end for you, my dear Hannah, of that I can certainly assure you.”