La Vengeance des mères

by Jim Fergus

  23 June 1876

  This afternoon, the chaplain gathers us all together to announce his intention of goin’ down to Crook’s camp himself, to try to recover Molly back from the Army.

  “That’s all very well, Christian,” says Lady Hall, “but how do you intend to do that? You are a deserter, they will arrest you, and quite likely execute you. And we will have lost yet another of our merry band. That will simply not do, sir. I will not permit it.”

  “Molly risked her life to help me,” says he, “and she saved mine in the process. I don’t know how I intend to do it, but I owe it to her to try. I owe it to the good Lord.”

  “And I, too, am going with him,” says Astrid. “Molly is our friend, she has been good to me, to all of us.”

  “Why, I’ll be comin’, too, then,” says Hannah. “Molly ’asn’t done anything wrong, why wouldn’t the Army just give her back to us? At least we know where she is now, and if we don’t go for her, it may be too late, we may never know again.”

  “I daresay, Hannah dear, I must agree with you,” says Lady Hall. “If we do not act posthaste, Molly could be spirited away forever … back to serve her prison sentence, God forbid. Therefore, allow me to make a proposal: do you ladies remember what Miss Gertie told us? That the Army, the government, would send us back where we came from? Now that may cause no particular hardship to those of us who came here from some relatively benign place, of our own free will with no strings attached … I speak, specifically, of myself, Hannah, and Astrid. However, others who came out of less fortunate circumstances … Carolyn, for instance, Molly, Lulu, and Maria, you have much more to lose by being sent back. Why don’t those of us who are at less risk make the journey to General Crook’s camp and plead Molly’s case? That, of course, does not include you, Christian, for the aforementioned reasons. But what can they do to the three of us? We signed up for the program, and the program ended without our knowledge. They cannot send us back to prison as they can Molly; or to an insane asylum as they can Carolyn; or deport her back to face a homicidal Mexican gangster, as they can Maria; or a pimp in Saint Louis, as they can Lulu. Nor can they court-martial us … nor, it seems to me, can they arrest us, or otherwise prevent us from going upon our way. We are civilians, after all, and we have done nothing whatsoever illegal.”

  “Aye, m’lady…” Susie points out, “unless one counts fightin’ against the United States Army at the Rosebud.”

  “Ah, well, yes, that is clearly the part we do not mention, isn’t it, dear? No one will recognize us. It goes without saying that you and Meggie will not be joining us on our little excursion, for you two are far more easily identified … in addition to the fact that you have had more … shall we say … more intimate contact with the soldiers than have we.”

  Now the chaplain makes the case that it was his idea to go to Molly’s aid in the first place, and he says he won’t allow Astrid to go without him. Furthermore, he points out that for obvious reasons, none of the Cheyenne scouts will be willing to guide their party back to Crook’s camp, nor will they be capable of finding the way there alone. “The fact is, you need me,” says Christian.

  At this, Lady Hall, stubborn and bossy as she can sometimes be, has to admit that the chaplain makes a good point. And she allows finally that he should come along. “Provided, that is,” says she, “that you stay out of sight when we get there, and do not try to enter the Army supply camp yourself.”

  “Agreed.”

  Just as all these arrangements are being made, who should arrive in our family encampment but Martha, and without her baby we are all surprised to see. With all that’s been happening we’ve hardly seen the lass these past weeks, for she spends all her time with her own family, and never lets her son out of her sight. But as she trots in on her little donkey, Dapple, she seems a different person than last we saw her … aye, she seems like her old self … maybe even better than her old self …

  She slips off the beast and comes toward us with a firm step.

  “Has something happened to little Tangle Hair, Martha?” asks Susie, concerned.

  “I heard Molly was taken,” says she, ignoring the question. “I heard she was taken by that man.” This last she says in a kind of rattlesnake-like hiss.

  “Indeed she was,” says I. “But she’s escaped him now.”

  “Nobody escapes Jules Seminole,” she says. “Don’t you understand that? He never lets you go. Even if you get away, he comes back for you, he haunts your dreams, he takes you again and again and again. That man must be killed, and a stake driven through his black heart. That is what I intend to do, once and for all.”

  “But what are ya talkin’ about, Martha?” asks Susie. “How ya plannin’ on doin’ that, lass?”

  “Where is Molly? I am going to her. She needs me. I’m the only one who knows what it’s like. I’m the only one who can stop him. She saved me once, she gave me back my life, my son. And I shall give her back hers. She’s going to have a child, you know? A boy. Woman Who Moves against the Wind told me. But she is in grave danger, and so is her son. I must find her, I must go to her, I must save her.”

  “You’re talkin’ crazy now, Martha,” says I. “Ya can’t do any of those things. And what would ya do, anyhow, leave little Tangle Hair again?”

  “He will be fine in the care of Grass Woman. He will wait for me to return. He is a good boy.”

  “But Martha, dear,” says Lady Hall, “we are leaving tomorrow to travel to General Crook’s supply camp and try to gain Molly’s release. That is where she is now. She is no longer with Seminole.”

  “Excellent,” says she. “Then I shall come with you. Seminole will be lurking not far away. Of that I can assure you … I know that man.”

  “Dear, if the soldiers should see you there,” says Lady Hall, “and happen to recognize you, they will send you back to Chicago. You will lose your son again.”

  “I will go in my disguise as Red Painted Woman. No one will recognize me. You girls didn’t even recognize me at first. They’ll think I’m just another squaw … which, indeed, I am.”

  At this, Susie barks an astonished laugh. “But how do ya even know that’s what everyone called ya, Martha?”

  Martha looks at her with a withering gaze and says: “Honestly, Susie … do you really think I’m that stupid?” And this makes all of us laugh, which even gets a laugh out of Martha. Somehow she has come back to us, and stronger than ever, and we got no idea how, or why. Now all agree that if she wishes to go with the contingent to Crook’s camp, so be it. We have to say that m’lady is the perfect emissary to plead Molly’s case, and we trust her to take care of Martha, too … although given how Martha is behavin’, it seems like she may be able to take care of herself.

  As Lady Hall points out, there is no question of me and Susie goin’, or Phemie for that matter, who would be even more recognizable to the Army than us, for Gertie told us that her reputation as a warrior goes all the way back to the Mackenzie massacre. She says the soldiers who were there still speak in hushed, frightened voices of the tall negro Cheyenne they call the Black Panther, who fought so fierce and bare-chested against them. Speakin’ of Phemie, she’s the only one not camped with us, and we don’t know where in the hell she is. None of us have seen her since the Rosebud battle. She didn’t come to the victory dance that night, nor did she ride with us on the way here. And in an encampment this big, it’d be almost impossible to find her.

  Pretty Nose tells us that on the way here last night she came upon the tracks and then the night bivouac of yet another Army regiment who must also be following our trail. We figure it’s some part of the Montana and Dakota forces Gertie told us about. But whoever it is, with all the soldiers in this country now, one thing for sure is that there will be more blood spilled, and the Strong-heart Women’s Warrior Society will ride again … aye, especially now that we got Pretty Nose back. Me and Susie intend to be in on the action, again, and we bet Phemie’ll come out of hidin’ for the occasion,
too.

  War is funny that way … aye, it’s kinda like the first time ya let a boy inside your knickers … it’s usually a big disappointment, a letdown, maybe it even leaves you feelin’ a little sick to your stomach. But then another part a’ you wants to try it again, and when ya do, knowin’ more or less what to expect, it’s that much easier, and even easier the time after that, until pretty soon, damned if you don’t get to likin’ it. And that’s how it is with makin’ war … not so different really than makin’ love. It’s true that me and Susie weren’t real pleased with ourselves after the Rosebud, but with the passage of a mere couple a’ days, baskin’ in the respect of the Cheyenne for our bloody deeds on the battlefield, the shame has begun to fall away. As it does, we are left again with the bottomless pit of our vengeance, the need to fill it up with more blood, more dead soldiers. Aye, we are warriors, savages, damned in the eyes of man and God, that much is sure. We follow a new God now … and maybe that, after all, is what drives men … and women to war … like a drug you can’t get enough of …

  LEDGER BOOK XIII

  (continued by Lady Ann Hall)

  Flying

  23 June 1876

  On this, the eve of my departure on our mission to free Molly, snug in my tipi with my little friend Bridge Girl, I, Lady Ann Hall of Sunderland, finally pick up the pen, having successfully prevailed upon Meggie and Susie to allow me to take with me this, their very last ledger book, nearly half the pages of which are still blank.

  I must confess that given all the ledgers those girls have filled in the course of this strange adventure, I have felt rather slighted. After all, as the author of the letterpress to my dear friend Helen Elizabeth Flight’s seminal ornithological portfolio, The Birds of Great Britain, I am the sole published author among us, and yet, if I may speak frankly, our self-appointed, unofficial auteurs have been quite stingy in sharing their precious paper with me. And while not meaning to cast aspersions upon their respective literary talents, I find it difficult to believe that two largely uneducated twin sisters, who effectively lived as street people … fond as I am of them, would it be awfully catty of me to say “streetwalkers”?… in Chicago’s Irish town … (By the way, as a small reminder to myself, I must mention right here that I fully intend to tear these pages out of the ledger for my own keeping before I return it to the Kellys); while our other author is a young woman who grew up on a farm in upstate New York, teaching country children in the same one-room schoolhouse in which she herself was educated … well, all of that to say I simply find it difficult to believe that their combined skills would be up to the task of doing justice to our tale. And yet … upon reading these few pages here contained in Meggie’s hand, I must admit that those two Irish scamps, as we all refer to them, have a certain lively, if, perforce, unsophisticated writing style, but one true to their nature and redolent of their true voice. To Molly’s literary efforts, of course, I cannot speak.

  In any case, with no ledger books left to them, and not exactly being welcome any longer at the trading posts to replenish their supply, it seems unlikely that the Kellys will be able to continue their journals, even if they wished to. For their part, they seemed quite willing to bring them to a close, and presented me with these last clean pages, in order that they might focus full-time upon their ghastly business as warriors.

  “Aye, Lady Hall, go on then, you’re welcome to it,” said Meggie to my request, “me and Susie ’ave said what we ’ave to say. And with the Army headed this way again, and judgin’ from the size of our own forces, this next battle promises to be the grandest yet, one for the history books, and me and Susie ain’t goin’ to miss it.”

  “’Tis the gods’ truth, we’ll be plenty busy, m’lady,” added Susie, “makin’ a place for ourselves in those books. But you be sure to bring this back. An’ if we don’t make it, you give it to our old tipi lass to put with the others. Elk Woman is her name, Mo’éh á’e.”

  And so it is that I take up the pen to tell whatever remains to be told, or, I daresay, until I simply run out of paper, whichever comes first.

  24 June 1876

  From our first evening bivouac, somewhere in the foothills of the Bighorns:

  True to his word, the chaplain has proved to be an efficacious guide. With the expectation that the Indian scouts of the approaching Army troops would certainly pick up and follow the trail that the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Sioux, and we among them took from the Rosebud to the Little Bighorn, Christian wisely decided upon an alternate route, skirting a wide berth farther west and then south, a somewhat longer, elliptical passage but one where we would be far less likely to encounter enemies, with which this region is clearly rife.

  In the matter of arms, Christian and I each carry Winchester rifles, and I a Colt .45, in my case, both for the protection of our little group and in order to feed us, he, of course, solely for the latter purpose given his religious convictions. For the hunt, we confine ourselves to small game, largely rabbits and prairie grouse, which are easily obtained and less time-consuming to butcher and prepare. We need to travel as lightly and quickly as possible, for, of course, we have no way of knowing how long Crook’s Army will stay where they are, or how long they will keep Molly with them. Saddle-hardened as we all are by now, and having traveled this first day from dawn to dusk, we expect to arrive at our destination by midday tomorrow. Too knackered now to write further …

  25 June 1876

  And thus we have arrived as expected, and have found a secluded campsite along a side creek of the Tongue River, roughly a mile and a half from the Army base camp. Christian immediately set about catching trout for our lunch. It has already been determined that he, Astrid, and Martha will stay back here, while Hannah and I go in alone. We can have no real idea of how we might be received. I am dressed in my tattered, much-mended waistcoat and knee breeches, Hannah in demure native attire—a deerskin shift with moccasins and leggings. Even if we do not exactly look the part on first view, we hope that between our accents and relatively fair hair, we can quickly present ourselves to the soldiers as respectable white women. Of course, we carry no weapon with us, so that we cannot in any manner be considered threatening … simply an eccentric British noblewoman and her maidservant, out for a Sunday ride in the wilderness. I feel for some peculiar reason like Don Quixote, with his loyal retainer Sancho Panza, off to tilt at windmills.

  26 June 1876

  Well, then, I daresay, it did not go as we might have hoped … We rode into the Army encampment on their main wagon route, and were promptly stopped by guards, who regarded us with puzzled expressions and asked us to identify ourselves.

  “I am Lady Ann Hall of Sunderland,” I said in my most patrician tone, “and this is my maidservant, Hannah Alford of Liverpool.”

  “And what business brings you … ladies … here?” asked one of the guards in an insolent tone.

  “I have come to request an audience with General George Crook.”

  “An audience?”

  “A meeting, good sir. I should like to meet with General Crook.”

  “Would ya now, ma’am, and on what business might that be?”

  “That might be business between me and the general, sir.”

  “Go fetch Captain Bourke,” he said to the other, regarding me with an equally insolent expression. “Tell him there’s a lady here askin’ to see the general.”

  The second soldier did as the first told him, and a scant ten minutes later, returned with the captain in tow. I must say I was jolly well interested in meeting the man in person, having heard a good deal about him from Meggie and Susie, particularly on the subject of his romantic adventures with our distinguished predecessor, May Dodd.

  He introduced himself. I must admit he is a handsome, manly fellow, with an air of natural gallantry about him, and I could see how he might have turned an impressionable young woman’s head. He told the two guards to look after our horses, and led us inside the camp to a tent that seemed to have been set up as a k
ind of administrative office. There he seated us in front of a campaign desk, and took a seat himself on the other side.

  “I understand, madam, that you have requested an audience with General Crook.”

  “That is correct, Captain.”

  “You must understand that the general is a very busy man. It is quite irregular for civilians, not to mention women, to be calling upon him at a supply base camp in a theater of war. May I ask you, madam, what would be the purpose of this meeting?”

  “It has come to our attention, sir, that one of our colleagues, a woman by the name of Molly McGill, may be in your care.”

  The captain furrowed his dark brow in an expression of concern, and, I detected, genuine sadness. “I see … a colleague … yes, of course, I see…” He pulled some papers from a basket on top of the desk, and rifled through them. “This Brides for Indians program,” he said in a low voice, as if speaking to himself, “has been my bête noire for almost two years now. Utter madness…” Pulling several sheets of paper from the bundle, he looked at me, and at the paper in his hand, then at Hannah, and back at the paper. “Lady Ann Hall and Hannah Alford, both of Great Britain, I presume?”

  “Exactly so, Captain,” said I. “A pleasure to be formally introduced, sir.”

  He smiled wryly and nodded. “The pleasure is all mine, Lady Hall … Miss Alford.”

  He looked at the next sheet, studied it for a moment, and regarded us again. “I see that you both have the rather unusual distinction of volunteering to the program without having been in previous situations of any particular distress or urgency.”

  “Which is to say, Captain Bourke, that we were not patients in a lunatic asylum, incarcerated in prison, or fleeing some other equally desperate history? Yes, that much is quite true. I volunteered of my own free will and for a very specific reason—to discover what fate had befallen my dear friend, the artist Helen Elizabeth Flight. Perhaps you knew her, sir?”