The Chisholms: A novel of the journey West

V Annabel

The buffalo were on one of the islands in the middle of the river. When she saw them, she thought at first they were just some bushes clumped out there on the island, brown and standing six feet tall. Then one of them moved, and she recognized them from drawings she’d seen, and said to Bonnie Sue, “Hey, there’s some buffalo.”

Bonnie Sue just looked at them and said nothing.

Annabel didn’t know what on earth was wrong with her. Maybe she missed home same as did all the others, or maybe just Sean Cassada, who used to kiss her in the cornfield fore the feud started. The buffalo weren’t scary at all. They just stood there, five of them in all, chewing grass. Looked like big hairy cows, was all. One glanced up across the river, probably smelled humans or heard them, but went right on back to eating. All five of them paid no mind to the wagon as it went rumbling by.

“Like to shoot me one of those for supper,” Bobbo said.

“How’d you get over to the island without spookin era?” his father asked.

“Don’t know,” Bobbo said. “Water’s shallow here, no more’n two or three feet deep.”

“I’ll bet any splashin’d set em runnin,” Hadley said.

“Yeah,” Bobbo said, and kept watching the buffalo.

They stopped later to look at the chart again. Ever since leaving Timothy and his wife, they looked at that chart like it was the Bible. They were getting close to the South Fork, Annabel guessed, which was where Pa said they’d have to cross over. Be there in a day or so, he said, meanwhile we just keep following this old river. The chart was marked with the word PAWNEE on either side the river, but Annabel hadn’t seen a one of them and didn’t want to either. Further west, where the river branched, there was CHEYENNE on the South fork, and ARAPAHO on the north fork, and to the northeast there was DAKOTA. However you looked at it, seemed like a big mess of Indians out there. Every time they came across some buffalo bones, Bobbo and her father studied them real close, trying to figure from whatever meat the wolves had left just how fresh the kill was. Where there were buffalo, there were Indians hunting them. But aside from those five grazing midriver, they didn’t see hide nor hair of either till the Fourth of July.

They all got near to drunk that Independence Day.

“You’re too young to be partaking of hard liquor,” her father said.

“She’s a woman now, Hadley,” Minerva said.

“Eh?”

“Give the child a sip.”

“Woman or child, which is it, eh?” Hadley asked, and handed Annabel the jug. She drank from it, and then passed it on to Bonnie Sue, who sat there looking... Annabel didn’t know what. Angry or something. Minerva began giggling.

“Way we’re swillin the stuff,” she said, “the Pawnees’ll descend on us for sure. Find a drunken band of no-goods.”

“We’ll ask them in to share a nip,” Hadley said, and winked.

“Ask them in where?” Minerva said.

“Why, here in the family circle,” Hadley said, and slapped Bobbo on the back suddenly and hugely, almost knocking him into the fire.

“Thought we were just stoppin to noon,” Minerva said, and again giggled. “Instead, here we are havin a party.”

“That’s right,” Hadley said. “This is Independence Day, the birthday of this great nation of ours...”

“Okay, Pa,” Bobbo said, grinning.

“Be ashamed to call myself American, we didn’t celebrate one way or another.”

“Right, Pa.”

“Where’s my rifle?”

“What you want with your rifle?”

“Need to shoot it off in the air, make some noise around here.”

“Hadley, don’t you go shootin—”

“You know what I hate about bein out here? It’s so damn quiet all the time.”

“You go shootin your gun, you’ll draw Indians,” Bobbo said.

“Hell with it then.”

“No reason to cuss, Had.”

“Let’s have another drink. Hell with it.”

The sun hung a fuzzy ball in the sky, the landscape seemed to shimmer. Annabel looked off into the distance. There was only dust at first. A moving cloud of dust. Rising. As though the earth itself were ascending heavenward. And then what seemed to be the timber moving. Her mouth fell open. Those were buffalo out there.

Thousands and thousands of them.

They stretched from horizon to horizon. Where her first glimpse less than a week ago had been somewhat akin to looking at a drawing in a book — five of them grazing motionless — this now, this population, struck her dumb with terror and disbelief. She had never before seen so many living things in one place or under one sky, neither humans collected in a circus tent in Bristol, nor horses or cows in pasture, nor even bees swarming or ants skittering when she poked at a hill with a stick, nor anything on God’s green earth as multitudinous as these buffalo now that darkened the plains.

They came galloping down from the hills and through the ravines toward the river, chattering among themselves to raise a din that sounded less than choirly, the thunder of their hoofs rolling like drumbeats to accompany their own disharmony. Brown they were, so brown as to be black, moving out of the shimmering haze so that it seemed their very motion caused the ground to quake and shift them out of focus, dust and haze and motion combining to create an ocean swell of furry humped flesh and flying hoofs. Minerva’s eyes popped wide open soon as she heard that distant murmur like a crowd of people mumbling stead of what were only shaggy beasts nudging and nattering as they rushed for the bank of the river. Even Bonnie Sue, who Annabel was of a mind to ask, “Excuse me, are you dead?” stirred enough to look off toward where the entire universe was in rolling motion.

Bobbo raised his rifle. Its crack sounded thin and sharp on the air. Smoke rose from the barrel in a wisp darker than the moody sky, rushing away on the wind. A beast toppled and skidded into the dirt, and Bobbo’s exultant cry carried away as swiftly as the dissipating smoke.

They ignored the parts Timothy had told them were relished by Indians, usually eaten while the beast was being butchered and the organs still fresh. Timothy had witnessed virtual orgies, he’d said, braves smashing in the skulls of slaughtered cows or bulls to get at the succulent brains inside, slashing open bellies to scoop out blood with their cupped hands. Kidneys, eyes, testicles, and snouts, hoofs of unborn calves, udders warm with milk, livers, tongues — all were delicacies. Said he’d once enjoyed a raw pudding of liver and brains, still steaming, offered to him by his father-in-law in a bowl made of ribs cut from the slain buffalo. Enough to have made Annabel want to throw up. Never told them how to skin one, though, so they just went about butchering it the same way they’d have butchered a deer back home.

Bobbo cut off the balls and then slit the jugular and let the blood drain out. He cut a ring all the way around each of the hind legs, and then sliced both legs up to the crotch and peeled off the hide and did the same with the front legs, where he made his cuts up to the massive chest. He was sweating long before he finished peeling all four legs, and was beginning to think there was an easier way of doing this. He’d have to ask somebody when they got to Fort Laramie, but meanwhile the carcass and the job were spread out there on the ground in front of him.

The shaggy beast must’ve weighed fifteen hundred pounds at least; took the whole family to roll him over so Bobbo could make his cut from belly to chest. He realized he’d never get the hide off in one piece, so they rolled the animal over again, and Bobbo made another cut from the neck over the hump to the tail. The bull was on the ground on his belly now, his legs spread and already peeled, looking like somebody’d taken off his black wool stockings but left on his black fur coat. Bobbo surmised by now that there’d been no need for peeling the legs at all, but he’d already done that, so there was no use fretting over it. With Hadley’s help, he pulled and sliced and yanked both halves of the hide loose from the animal and then Hadley chopped off the head with an ax, just behind the ears, same as he would have a deer.

This was no dainty little deer they were carving up here, though. It was instead a beast could feed a regiment, and they became speculative butchers on the spot, chopping the animal up the middle with the ax and then quartering it, and seeking out what they thought were the choicest cuts, Minerva hovering and advising, telling them to save this or that organ till to all intents and purposes they were keeping for food all the Indians themselves might have kept, save the eyeballs and the other balls Bobbo’d cut off first. Minerva even had them keep for marrow the leg bones Bobbo had meticulously exposed when he’d still thought he was dealing with a doe or a buck, and she asked him now to rescue whatever blood he could from spilling onto the ground; said it would make a good rich gravy later on.

There were buffalo chips everywhere, scattered among the bright yellow sunflowers. They made their fire, and fed it with the dried and weathered dung, and then put up steaks to fry, three inches thick. Hadley lifted his cup and said, “God bless this land of ours, God bless it.”

On a hill some three hundred feet above where they sat around the fire and raised their cups and echoed Hadley’s toast, partially hidden by a conical peak sculpted by wind and rain, an Indian watched them.

The scout was called Otaktay.

He was one of the braves in a Dakota war party of four. The organizer and leader of the party was an eighteen-year-old named Teetonkah. He was the oldest of the four; the youngest was only sixteen. Teetonkah had still been a small boy many years before when during the Moon of the Duck Eggs, a Pawnee war party attacked his village and captured half a dozen Dakota women, who, it was rumored, later caused the smallpox epidemic in the Pawnee nation, killing countless numbers of their children. Teetonkah had been on many war parties since that time; raids were constant, the war between the tribes was incessant.

When he decided to organize this war party, he did so because he wished to gain more honor for himself by capturing Pawnee horses. And Pawnee women. He liked Pawnee women. His first experience had been with a Pawnee woman captured by his uncle. Teetonkah had taken her fiercely and proudly. She had whimpered beneath his assault. There were now four Pawnee women in the village, and he found all of them more comely than any of the women in his own tribe. He wished to own a Pawnee woman of his own. Perhaps two. Horses as well. A dozen horses perhaps, and three or four Pawnee women.

He sat at the fire now and listened in astonishment to Otaktay’s report. Otaktay had removed the white scouting cloths from his head and shoulders, and was sitting on his haunches to the right of Teetonkah, who was his cousin. In the first quarter of the Moon of Moulting Feathers, Teetonkah had invited him and two others to his tipi. He told them first that he knew them all to be courageous and venturesome and that he trusted each of them well. He then went on to explain that at the time of the Wood-Cracking Moon last year, a band of Pawnee raiders had stolen from his older sister Talutah a pony she had dearly loved, and she had been crying over the theft since that winter past, and this made Teetonkah’s heart very bad. He wished now to ride out against the Pawnee and find their horses where they were and take them away as they had taken Talutah’s.

He said this was an auspicious time for such a raid since it was at this very moon a year before that the tribe had attacked the Pawnee in vast numbers and taken many scalps and many horses. Teetonkah asked his cousin and his friends to join him now in this quest that would heal his sister’s broken heart. He wished as well to capture some Pawnee women, whose skills were surely being wasted planting seeds when there were strong Dakota braves eager to plant within them seeds of quite another sort. All the young men laughed. They had all sampled the treasures of Teetonkah’s uncle’s captured Pawnee maid.

The young men talked long into the night about the route they would take to the Pawnee village, though the route was familiar to all of them. Teetonkah, as organizer and leader, scratched a map into the earthen floor and promised to leave his uncle a drawing on buckskin of their exact route, indicating which rivers and hills they expected to cross or climb, so that they could be found at any time by others in the tribe. In acceptance of Teetonkah’s plan, they smoked the pipe he proffered, and left the village on horseback early the next morning. There was no grand farewell as they rode out south. There would be time for celebration if and when they returned victorious. With horses. With women.

Teetonkah was carrying several pairs of moccasins, and a wooden bowl attached to his belt with a leather thong; on the warpath each man ate and drank from his own dish. He carried, too, a leather pouch of vermilion paint and grease, with which to decorate himself and his horse before he rode into battle. A wolfskin was draped over his left shoulder, the animal’s nostrils threaded with the leather thong at the end of Teetonkah’s war whistle. A medicine bag was tied to his horse’s bridle. There were herbs in this leather pouch that could be ingested by horse and man alike to cure toothache or lameness, stomach trouble or pains of the heart. None of the four who rode out that morning had any intention of meeting with the white man or engaging him in battle. They were off to steal Pawnee horses and Pawnee women; this was the only war they expected to make.

“A wagon alone,” Otaktay said.

The others looked at him.

“Alone,” he repeated.

“It is a trick,” Teetonkah said.

“I saw nothing else wherever I looked. If there are others, they are hidden better than I can find them.”

“Yes but it is a trick,” Teetonkah said, and then immediately asked, “How many are there in the party?”

“Five that I could see.”

“And how divided?”

“Two men and three women.”

“Horses?”

“None. But two mules drawing the wagon.”

“We are far from home,” one of the others said. His name was Enapay, and he had been named for his courage. “Were we to attack the white man, we would have to abandon our plan against the Pawnee.”

“Why do you say that?” Teetonkah asked.

“We would have captives,” Enapay said. “We would take the women captive, would we not?”

“Yes,” Teetonkah said.

“Then we would have them with us when we rode against the Pawnee.”

“No,” Teetonkah said. “We would ride home with them first. Then later—”

“While others in the village—”

“—ride against the Pawnee.”

“While others in the village enjoy what we have risked our lives for,” Enapay said.

“There are those we trust,” Teetonkah said.

“I trust no one where it comes to a woman’s belly,” Enapay said. “White women secrete a musk that can be smelled even by horses. I have seen horses pawing at lodges where white women were kept bound within.”

Teetonkah laughed.

“It is true,” Enapay said.

“It will be safe to take them to the village. My uncle will guard them.”

“The way he guarded his own Pawnee woman,” Enapay said sourly. “If there is one in the village who has not had her, I will gift him with however many horses I capture from the Pawnee.” He scowled into the fire, and then said, “If ever we ride out again.”

“We will do this with the white man first. And when we have taken the three women home, we will ride out again.”

“That was not our plan,” Enapay said. “I do not like changing plans.”

“But the wagon is alone,” Teetonkah said simply.

“There are two men,” Enapay said.

“Who do not know we are here.”

Enapay considered this. It was true that four surprising a smaller number of men could be thought of as eight or even ten. But the white men had rifles, and in this war party there were none. He mentioned this now. “There are rifles,” he said. “Otaktay, are there not rifles?”

“Yes, there are rifles.”

“And we have none.”

“We will have rifles later this night,” Teetonkah said.

“The women, all three, have hair of a yellow color,” Otaktay said.

“The women are sometimes fierce,” Enapay said darkly.

“More the reason to take them,” Teetonkah said, and grinned.

On the ground near the fire, the wolfskin he had earlier worn on his shoulder was spread with the head pointing toward what had been their destination: the Pawnee village. He lifted the skin now, and placed it on the ground again so that the wolf’s nose was pointed toward where Otaktay said he had seen the solitary wagon.

“Is there any here who has dreamed of a wolf?” he asked.

Howahkan, who had been silent till now, said, “I.” He was the youngest among them. His face looked troubled. Two of his brothers had been slain in encounters with the white man, and though he was eager to avenge their murders, he was also somewhat afraid. He accepted from Teetonkah the pipe he offered, and holding the bowl in his left hand, the stem in his right, said in the strange rasping voice for which he had been named, “Wakang’tangka, behold this pipe, behold it. I ask you to smoke it. We want to get horses. I ask you to help us. That is why I speak to you with this pipe.” He reversed the position of the pipe now, holding the bowl in his right hand and the stem in his left, pointing up toward his left shoulder. “Now, wolf,” he said, “behold this pipe. Smoke it and bring us horses.”

“There are no horses,” Otaktay said.

“I know that,” Howahkan replied.

“Then do not pray for horses when we know there are only mules.”

“Pray for help in capturing the women, too,” Teetonkah said.

“I would have you do the pipe,” Howahkan said, insulted, and started to hand the pipe back to Teetonkah.

“It is you who dreamt of the wolf,” Teetonkah said.

Howahkan nodded sullenly, put the unlighted pipe in his mouth, and said, “Wakang’tangka, I will now smoke this pipe in your honor. I ask that no harm come to us in battle. I ask that we may get many horses.”

“Again the horses!” Otaktay said. “He knows there are only mules.”

“And many women,” Howahkan said, looking to Teetonkah for approval. He lit the pipe and puffed on it then, holding the bowl in both hands. “Behold this pipe,” he said, “and behold us. We have shed much blood. We have lost brothers and friends in battle. I ask you to protect us from shedding more blood, and to give us long lives.” He puffed on the pipe again, and then passed it to Teetonkah. Teetonkah smoked the pipe solemnly and silently, and then passed it to Otaktay, who puffed on it and handed it to Enapay, who still seemed doubtful. He accepted the pipe, but before he smoked it, he said again, “I do not like changing plans. The plan was for the Pawnee.” He put the stem between his teeth then, and drew on the pipe and let out a puff of smoke.

There was no medicine man among them, who would have sprinkled water on the wolfskin and sung a song and prayed to Wakang’tangka for rain to hide them when they attacked. But Howahkan had dreamt the night before of the warrior wolf, and they asked him now to sing a song for rain. He was not a medicine man; he knew no songs for rain. So he sang a song he thought applied to the attack they would make as soon as it was dark. They stood about him as he sang hoarsely in the gathering dusk; beside him, Enapay imitated the sound of an owl.

“Someone like this,” Howahkan sang.

“Is not likely to reach anywhere,

“You are saying.

“Horses

“I am coming after.”

Enapay reached into the leather pouch at his waist and daubed his fingers with vermilion paint He painted a crescent on his mouth so that it appeared a grinning red wound curling upward to his cheekbones. He painted his hands and his feet red. From a rawhide case he took a single feather and fastened it at the back of his head, standing upright, for he had earned it by killing an enemy without himself having been harmed. Below that single erect feather he fastened two others horizontally, to signify that he had counted coup on two fallen enemies in the same battle. The others were fastening feathers now and applying paint. Otaktay was putting on a decorated war shirt. Howahkan, expecting they would be attacking the Pawnee on the morrow, had searched all that day for earth a mole had worked up, and he mixed that now with blue paint and a powdered herb, and rubbed the war medicine on his body and on that of his horse. He offered some of the medicine to the others, and they all accepted, rubbing it on their chests and their limbs, Teetonkah mixing his with vermilion paint, which he daubed in a wide band across his forehead and across his horse’s chest.

Otaktay complained that they had done and were still doing everything wrong-starting with Howahkan praying for horses while doing the pipe, and again just now when he’d sung “Horses I am coming after,” though he had been told repeatedly there were only mules. And now each was painting his horse and face in colors and designs different one from the other when surely they had been on war parties where a medicine man was in attendance and the horses and faces had been painted uniformly. On such a party recently, a man named Wambleeskah had made medicine, and had painted Otaktay’s horse and those of the others with white clay lightning flashes from the mouth over the chest and down the front legs and on the hind legs as well. He had then painted a blue band across the forehead of each horse and had painted blue spots on their flanks. There had been six braves in the party, and he had painted each of their faces blue and had then painted white lines across their foreheads and trailing down their cheeks.

Otaktay insisted that those in this party at least mount their horses facing east and then walk them single file in a circle before riding out against the wagon. Teetonkah told him he was an old woman. Howahkan, his face blue and smelling of earth and medicine, laughed — but only because he was nervous.

It was close to seven-thirty now. The night air was cool. The afternoon haze had burned off before suppertime, and there were stars and a moon, lazy cloud traces occasionally crossing its face to cast drifting shadows on the ground. The fire blazed not thirty feet from where the wagon stood. The mules were picketed between the wagon and the fire. Everyone in the family was still awake, but a guard had been posted nonetheless — Bobbo on the side of the wagon exposed to the prairie. Marauding wolves ventured closer and closer to the fire, drawn by the scent of the slain buffalo, eager to get at the carcass. In the darkness, they howled their intention, circling restlessly. Annabel didn’t think they’d come clear into camp, but she wasn’t sure.

“Can I take a shot at them, Pa?” Bobbo yelled.

“No, leave them be,” Hadley yelled back.

“Raise the dead, way they’re yammering,” Bobbo said.

Standing just this side of the wagon, between it and the fire, Minerva was brushing her hair, counting the strokes.

“Drive a man crazy with that countin out loud,” Hadley said.

“Thirty-three-thirty-four, thirty-five...”

“You’ve had too much to drink, Min.”

“Thirty-six, hush, thirty-seven...”

The wolves were still howling.

“Let me take a shot at them, Pa,” Bobbo called.

“Leave em be, son,” Hadley said.

Bonnie Sue had already crawled under her blanket. “Does anyone in this family have any notion of sleeping tonight?” she asked.

Annabel giggled. She’d taken off her bodice and skirt, and was walking barefooted in her petticoat, toward the dark side of the wagon. “Whyn’t you let him shoot one of the critters?” she said. “Otherwise, they’ll be at it all night long.”

“Ain’t there nobody planning to sleep tonight?” Bonnie Sue asked.

Annabel giggled again.

“Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine,” Minerva said.

A little distance from the fire and the wagon both, not so far from either so that the wolves would get her, Annabel lifted her petticoat and let down her drawers and was preparing to pee when she heard what sounded like a whistle or a pipe, one of them wooden pipes the mountain people back home were all the time whittling. She peered into the darkness and could see nothing. It occured to her that not a moment before she’d seen the moving shadows of the wolves, had even been able to make out their eyes gleaming in the darkness. She couldn’t see nary a wolf now, nor did she hear them howling anymore.

“Bobbo?” she called.

“Yeah, Sis?”

“You hear something just—”

Somebody grabbed her from behind. She screamed, and urine ran down the inside of her leg and then stopped abruptly. He pulled her over by the hair, flat on her back, her underdrawers bunched around her ankles. She saw him only upside down. His face was painted with a grinning red mouth, feathers were in his hair. He had a tomahawk in his hand. She screamed again, and tried to scramble away, but he pinned her to the ground and straddled her as he would a pony, and then put the tomahawk down and reached for something at his belt.

She grabbed for the tomahawk at once.

Her fingers closed on the leather-encased haft and she swung the thing like the simple hatchet it was. His hand was coming up from his belt; there were leather thongs in it. He dropped the thongs and tried to protect his face, the fingers of his hand widespread. The sharp flint edge of the tomahawk cut through two fingers and struck him clean between the eyebrows, splitting open his forehead. Blood spurted out of him like a fountain. Annabel screamed and let go the hatchet.

She was still screaming when she came around the wagon tongue, pulling up her underdrawers. There were three more of them, one of them painted blood red like the one she’d just split open, another blue, the last a color seemed brown or black. Her father lay on the ground just near the back of the wagon, blood pouring from the side of his head. Bonnie Sue was on the bottom of an Indian straddling her same as she’d just been, only this one was wearing a beaded shirt. Bonnie Sue kicked and punched at him, but he had his forearm pressed hard against her throat and she was choking. Annabel ran to the fire, pulled a flaming stick from it, and ran back to where the Indian was on top of Bonnie Sue. He had a knife in his hand, he’d pulled a knife from his belt, Jesus, he was going to kill her!

She pushed the burning stick at his naked arm where the shirt ended, and the Indian let out a yell and jumped off Bonnie Sue. Annabel threw away the stick and started running. She could hear horses out there someplace; there’d be more Indians on them in a minute. The one she’d just poked with the stick grabbed her arm, swung her around, and punched her full in the face. She heard something snap inside her nose, and fell to her knees in pain, her hands covering her face. Blood was pouring from her nose. Where was the Indian, where’d he...? She turned, saw him running back to where he’d dropped his knife. He picked up the knife. It was a metal knife, the firelight glittered on its edge, he was coming back to where she sat with her petticoat tented over her knees.

Almost without looking at her, he stuck the knife in her and pulled it out again.

She felt only pain like she’d been burned, and then saw blood spreading into the white petticoat, and clutched for the wound. Blood welled up between her fingers. He pulled her hair away from her face, and brought the knife to her forehead. She thought: Please, no, and tried to scream but could not find the strength, and could not raise her hand to stop him. He slit the flesh across her forehead, just below the hairline, and was beginning to peel back her scalp when Bobbo shot him in the back. Feathers and beads exploded between his shoulder blades. He fell forward onto Annabel, his hand releasing the knife, the blade still caught between the scalp he’d been lifting and the skull beneath it.

The other two Indians had hold of Minerva, the one of them wearing the wolfskin and the other with his face painted entirely blue. Bobbo couldn’t reload, they gave him no time “to reload. He ran to where his mother was trying to fight them off, and swung the stock of his rifle at the back of the one with the wolfskin, but the Indian was strong and fierce and shrugged off the blows like they were flies annoying him. Minerva was holding to the wagon wheel with one hand, and with the other she was hitting them with her hairbrush. The Indians kept talking to themselves all the while they tried to pry her loose from the wagon wheel, and finally the one with the wolfskin began punching her repeatedly in the chest, and the one with the blue face turned on Bobbo with a knife and came at him with the blade extended toward his gut.

Bobbo reached for the Indian’s thrusting hand instinctively, ignoring for the moment the knife that was clutched in it, grabbing for the wrist the way he’d grabbed for Will’s or Gideon’s when they were rassling, pulling the Indian toward him, using the force of his own momentum, and at the same time bringing his knee up into the Indian’s groin. The Indian’s eyes opened wide in the painted face. Bobbo saw the face an instant before he dropped the knife. As Bobbo stooped to pick it up, he thought: He’s no older’n me. His hand closed around the bone handle. Maybe younger, he thought. The Indian was doubled in pain on the ground, his hands clutching his balls. Bobbo plunged the knife blade deep into his chest. He raised the knife and plunged it again. And then another time. Then he turned away and vomited into his hands.

Behind him, the Indian with the wolfskin pulled Minerva off the wagon wheel, looped one arm around her waist, and began dragging her toward where she could hear horses whinnying and pawing the earth. They had torn her petticoat up the front during the struggle and her breasts were exposed; she was embarrassed that her son would see her this way. Oddly, she felt neither fear nor anger. She knew only that this Indian painted red was trying to take her someplace she didn’t want to go. Stubbornly, she resisted. Kicking, striking with her closed fists wherever she could reach him, she resisted with every ounce of strength she possessed. She could still feel the pain where he had struck her between the breasts, but she struggled fiercely until he hit her again full in the mouth, splitting her lip and causing it to bleed, knocking loose two teeth, which she spat with blood into her hand. He knocked her hand away from her mouth, and the teeth went flying. He caught hold of her wrist, dragged her into the darkness. She could see four painted horses. He unhobbled one of them and threw her over a blanket stinking of sweat and piss, and then swung himself up over the horse’s back and made a clucking sound to the animal. She knew then that unless she did something at once, unless she found the will and the strength to stop him, he would take her wherever he wished. She thought suddenly of the patroon Jimmy Jackson. The horse was in motion.

She rolled back against him and eased herself upright so that she was riding as she might have sidesaddle. He must have thought she was preparing to leap from the horse; he immediately put his left arm around her, twisting his hand into the torn petticoat, his right hand clinging to the reins, the wolfskin on his shoulder stinking as bad as had the blanket. It was then that she clawed for his face, reaching for his eyes. He screamed aloud, the horse veering as he yanked at the reins. Her spread right hand found something soft and jellylike, her fingers were closing on his right eye, she would pluck the eyeball from its socket like a hard-boiled egg, in an instant she would blind him.

He threw her from the horse. He flung her away from him as though she were a curse. He did not look back. He kept galloping away from her while behind him she lay trembling on the ground with the thought of what she had almost done.

By their reckoning, they were still two hundred miles from Fort Laramie.

They feared Annabel would die before they got there. They had made poultices of spirit turpentine and sugar, and they applied one of these to the head wound, and wrapped it tight with a clean cotton petticoat torn into bandages. The second poultice was larger; they put it over the jagged gash in her side, but the blood wouldn’t stop, it kept seeping up through the poultice. They changed the poultice three, four times that night, and each time the blood worked its way through, and they didn’t know what else to do to get it to stop. They had no recourse to remedies they knew: chimney soot mixed with lard, pine resin. All they could do was change the poultice each time it got drenched again with blood.

They kept expecting the Indians to come back.

They figured the one who’d got away, the one wearing the wolfskin, would return with a passel of them this time, if only to retrieve the horses. There were angry black and blue marks on Minerva’s breasts where the Indian had struck her, and she ached with each breath she took. Hadley had pulled the stumps of her broken teeth, and she’d stuffed a rag into her mouth to stop the bleeding. But her jaw and lip were swollen, the lip split besides from the force of the Indian’s blow. She swore to Hadley she’d have blinded him like Samson given just another moment. He said, “No, you wouldn’t have, Min.”

The horses were fine animals, a stallion and a pair of mares, looked like the Chickasaw running woods horses they were familiar with back home, Spanish breeds crossed with those the colonists brought from England. Bobbo wanted to ride one of them ahead, try to catch up with the wagon train. If there was a doctor in the party...

“No,” Minerva said.

“Ma,” he said, “I could fetch him back with me.”

“I’d fear for your life,” Minerva said softly.

By morning, Annabel’s bleeding had stopped. They put a fresh poultice on the wound below, and bandaged it tightly, and changed, too, the poultice and bandage on her head. At six o’clock, they broke camp and began moving ing toward the South Fork of the Platte.

She was burning with fever when they crossed the river on the morning of the seventh. The weather had turned sticky and hot, adding to her discomfort. She lay on a quilt in the wagon bed, covered with a linen bed sheet had been part of Grandmother Chisholm’s dower. There had been little rain in this part of the country, and the river was low and the bottom firm. For this much they were grateful; they could not have coped with anything the likes of the Kansas.

“Have I been scalped, Pa?” she asked.

He smiled and patted her hand. “No, darlin,” he said. “You’ve still got all your beautiful hair on your head, where it’s sposed to be.”

“What happened to your ear that’s all bandaged?”

“An Injun figgered I’d look best with but a single ear.”

He’d seen the Indian an instant before the blow struck, saw the rounded stone head of the weapon in his hand and knew it was not a hatchet. There’d been the whistle first, and then the sound behind him, and he’d turned to see the Indian with his face painted blue, the same one Bobbo later stabbed, and the maul coming for the back of his head. He’d turned, trying to duck away, but the blow caught him full on the ear, and that was the last he knew of anything till he felt Minerva’s gentle hands upon him, washing away the blood and dressing the wound. He had a headache now the likes of which he’d never had in his life.

“Did he take it from your head then, Pa?” Annabel asked.

“No, darlin, it’s still there,” Hadley said, and they both laughed.

“Is my nose broke? It feels broke.”

“Yes, darlin,” he said.

He knew she was going to die.

The earliest they could hope to find a doctor was at Fort Laramie, unless there was one in the Oregon train ahead. But with Annabel sick this way, Hadley couldn’t push too hard, and their rest periods were longer and more frequent. He was afraid as well that too much jostling would start her wounds to bleeding more heavily. They were seeping blood again, and Minerva was worried they’d soon begin to fester. On the high plateau between the two forks, they found a pine forest and slashed the trees for resin and made poultices to keep in readiness should the bleeding get worse. When they moved out of the narrow crotch where the river forked, they could for miles still see both forks, the one to the south angling ever wider, the other constantly on their right. They stopped often to wet the cloths they put to Annabel’s burning forehead. Were they home, they’d have made snakeroot tea, or boiled wild ginger roots or penny-royal leaves to bring the fever down. But they were not home.

The pine forest was the last real timber they saw for several days. Here and there a solitary tree stood specterlike on the riverbank, but for the most part the plains were unwooded. The thick luxurious grass that had earlier covered the prairie was all but gone now. The animals seemed not to notice the difference, and ate the yellow grass as heartily. But to the family the entire countryside had of a sudden become barren and dry, and they began to think of this as the true landscape of the west, and wondered if it would remain this way till they reached the Rockies. Already the rock outcroppings seemed to promise distant mountains.

More and more often, they found discarded items from the party ahead. It was as though the parched and empty land discouraged the trappings of civilization, made butter churns and spinning wheels seem superfluous and perhaps foolish. There was no milk to churn or yarn to spin in this sandy land of limestone, granite, and marl. The discarded household items made the Oregon train more real, almost tangible. If only they could travel a mite faster, if only those ahead would rest a bit longer, why then they would meet. And, God willing, there’d be a doctor with the party who could minister to Annabel and relieve her pain and make her well and whole again.

The two Indian mares were tied to the wagon on short halters behind. On the wagon’s right, Bobbo rode the stallion; he’d washed the paint off it last time they’d stopped to water. He was having difficulty staying on the frame saddle, and swore at the animal as if it understood English. On the seat up front, Hadley clucked to the mules, and Minerva scanned the horizon for Indians. A rifle was on her lap. Inside the wagon, she heard Annabel ask again had she been scalped, heard Bonnie Sue answer, “No, you’ve still got your scalp right there where it should be.”

Minerva turned her face away from Hadley’s lest he see she was on the edge of tears.

The valley of the North Platte was ahead of them now.

This was the sixteenth day of July, and they hoped to reach Fort Laramie by the eighteenth or nineteenth. It no longer mattered whether or not they overtook the Oregon-bound wagon train. They had given up hope of doing so, as easily as a pauper gave up hope of one day becoming rich. Now Fort Laramie was their salvation; at Fort Laramie there would be a doctor; at Fort Laramie there would be medicine. The fort signified civilization; without whatever help awaited them there, they knew Annabel would die.

They marvelled that she was not dead already, and praised God for his mercy.

The touch of her flesh was blistering. Neither the gaping wound in her side nor the gash where she’d near been scalped had even begun to heal. Instead, both were festering with pus. Her eyes were luminous and round, glowing with the fever that ignited her. She spoke of playmates none of them had ever met, and once she screamed aloud that the top of her head was gone and begged Bobbo, who was sitting by her side, to please, sir, find her head as was missing, sir, not recognizing him as her brother though she stared full into his face, her green eyes wide and wet.

They passed without interest landmarks they might normally have greeted with enthusiasm. Ash Hollow, where after miles of shadeless travel, they found the forest of magnificent trees that had given the bottom of the valley its name, undergrown with roses and other wildflowers, running with a spring of icy cold water. Court House Rock, which was said to resemble an actual courthouse in St. Louis, though they’d been there and could remember none like it, four hundred feet or more of clay and volcanic ash rising in tiers beside the trail. Close by it stood the rock called Jailhouse, which did not look like a jail to them, nor did they care. Fourteen miles past that was famous Chimney Rock, about which they’d heard so much in Independence.

Annabel did not see it when they passed it now. She was babbling in delirium of a red devil with brighter red spots, and Bonnie Sue recalled that the Indian who’d stabbed her had his arms painted that way.

“There’s the rock resembles a smokestack,” Hadley said.

“Aye,” Minerva said, and touched her daughter’s forehead.

She died just as they were crossing the plain beyond.

The ground here was covered with cedar driftwood. They could not bury her on this wood-strewn plain, where all seemed rotted debris. Bobbo remembered hearing in Independence that there’d been a flood years back, carrying timber down from the Black Hills. Hadley said that seemed likely. They stood with their hands in their pockets. Inside the wagon, Minerva was keening.

They crossed the cedar plain to the place marked Scotts’ Bluff on their chart, and near the river escarpment they found a patch of level land sparsely covered with browning grass. There were no flowers in abundance, as they’d seen the month before, but Bonnie Sue found growing by the river some wildflowers she could not identify, and she wove these into a garland they placed on Annabel’s head, over the bandage covering her wound. There was no sawed lumber with which to build a coffin. They wrapped her in blankets as though she were a babe in swaddling clothes, and then they lowered her gently into the earth. Hadley spoke over his dead daughter. He did not read from the Bible, he knew the words by heart; nor could he have seen them anyway with his eyes brimming. Minerva stood beside him, clinging tightly to his hand.

“ ‘The harvest is past,’ ” he said, “ ‘the summer is ended, and we are not saved. For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead?’ ” he asked softly. “ ‘Is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain—’ ” His voice broke. He began crying openly. “ ‘—of the daughter of my people,’ ” he said, and then said, “Amen.”

“Amen,” the others said.

They stood with heads bent as Bobbo shoveled earth into the grave. Then they replaced the browned sod, and drove the wagon back and forth over the grave so that Indians would not find it and dig it up. They camped that night a little way from where they had buried her, not wanting to leave her alone so soon in the wilderness.

In the distance, they could see the snow-covered peaks of the Laramie Mountains.

They reached Fort Laramie on the twentieth day of July.

Minerva’s swollen jaw had subsided by then, her split lip had healed. Beneath the bandage still on Hadley’s head, his ear was crusted and scabby where the Indian maul had struck it. But the ear was covered, and there was nothing about the physical appearance of any of them to indicate they’d been attacked by Indians two weeks before. Unless you looked into their eyes.

A dozen or more tipis formed a virtual Indian village on the level stretch of ground behind one wall of the fort, and more were scattered everywhere on the surrounding terrain. The Chisholms passed through them on their approach, Bobbo riding the Indian stallion, the mares trailing on halters behind the wagon. There was still war paint on the chest of one mare, where they could not scrub it clean this morning at the river above the fort. Indian dogs barked and nipped at the wagon wheels and the hoofs of the horses. Indian children ran half-naked in front of the mules, taunting them with sticks. Tall Indian men in white buffalo robes eyed the horses and noticed well the painted chest of the one mare. Squaws stood over simmering kettles, stirring, watching silently as the wagon went through.

At the main entrance to the fort, they left Bobbo to watch the animals and the wagon, and went through first a gate and then an arched passage. A second gate beyond opened into a courtyard that looked to be a hundred feet square. There were as many Indians inside the fort as there were out, squatting on the ground or in the doorways of rooms built against the walls. The walls were at least fifteen feet high, topped with a stockade fence shorter and flimsier than pictures they’d seen of the old fort back home, before the pickets were torn down. There were Indian squaws and children inside here yapping and yammering, food cooking, Indian men stopping at one or another kettle to pluck a piece of greasy meat from it. At the end of the fort opposite the main gate, there was a postern gate and a railing where half a dozen mules and as many horses were hitched. A flight of steps rose to a gallery above. As they approached, a man came down those stairs, his hand extended.

“My name is Lucien Orliac,” he said. His voice was tinged with the faintest French accent. “I am in charge of the fort.”

“Hadley Chisholm,” Hadley said, and took his hand. “My family.”

“How do you do?” Orliac said. He shook Hadley’s hand briefly and then said, “Ladies,” and nodded to Minerva and Bonnie Sue in welcome. He was wearing a broad-brimmed black hat, a sleeveless buckskin jacket over a homespun blue shirt banded at the wrists. His trousers were brown, and he wore leather leggings and beaded Indian moccasins. He had a thick black beard and black eyebrows, and black hair spilled in ringlets from beneath the flat black hat. From the neck up, he looked like a charcoal drawing Timothy might have made.

“You are traveling alone?” he asked, surprised.

“Yes, sir,” Hadley said.

“You are lucky to have come this far unharmed.”

Hadley said nothing.

“The apartments in the fort are completely occupied at the moment—”

“We want only a place to—”

“Company personnel,” Orliac said. “Their wives, their children. You understand.”

“We need to rest,” Hadley said.

Orliac looked into his eyes. “You are welcome to stay within the walls,” he said.

“Thank you,” Hadley said. “I’ll go fetch my son.”

He began walking toward the main gate. Orliac fell into step beside him. Minerva seemed uncertain as to whether she should follow or not. She took Bonnie Sue’s hand, and together they stood close by the interior wall, watching the Indians, listening to their alien babble.

“The factor is in Winnipeg just now,” Orliac said. “I would have offered you his apartment, but it is occupied.”

“That’s all right,” Hadley said.

“A wagon train was here ten days ago; they’ve departed now for Oregon. All but some with lingering fever. It is they who are in the factor’s apartment.”

“Thank you anyway,” Hadley said.

“You’ll be safe here inside the fort,” Orliac said. “Or indeed anywhere near it.”

“Are there soldiers then?” Hadley asked. “Soldiers? No, no,” Orliac said, shaking his head. “This is the American Fur Company, eh? We are here for trade, that’s all. No, no, this is not an army outpost.”

They had reached the main gate now. Outside, Bobbo still sat on the wagon seat, looking apprehensively at the Indians all around. Orliac saw the horses at once.

“You have met Indians?” he asked.

“Yes,” Hadley said.

“I would bring the horses inside,” Orliac said. “I do not think any of the Indians here would steal a horse belonging to a white man, eh? But these...” He shrugged elaborately. “The saddles, the bridles, the paint...” He shrugged again. “They are without question Indian horses. I would bring everything inside. The wagon, the mules, the horses especially. Yes,” he said, and nodded, and extended his hand to Bobbo. “How do you do, young man. I am Lucian Orliac.”

“Bobbo Chisholm.”

“Come, come inside. Where did you meet these Indians?” he asked Hadley. “Bobby, bring them in. Come.”

Bobbo put the rifle on the seat beside him, and then picked up the reins. He shouted to the mules, and the wagon moved forward through the gate, the horses behind it. Orliac stepped aside to let them past.

“You said where?” he asked Hadley.

“Thirty, forty miles before we crossed the Platte.”

“Ah? They were Pawnee?”

“I don’t know,” Hadley said.

“No matter, you are safe now,” Orliac said, and smiled. “Here the Indians are interested only in trade, eh? They bring us furs, we give them in return guns, powder and lead...”

Hadley looked at him.

“... blankets,” Orliac went on, “cloth, looking glasses, beads, tobacco — never whiskey. It is company policy never to trade whiskey to the Indians. Come. Ah, there’s Gracieuse,” he said. “My wife.”

The woman was an Indian. Buxom, barefooted, her face long and slender, eagle nose, prominent cheekbones decorated with bright red circles of paint. She struggled across the courtyard with a pile of buffalo robes in her arms. A spotted dog trailed her, sniffing at the backs of her legs. She kicked at the dog, almost stumbled, and then kicked at it again. The dog went yelping away across the courtyard.

“Her name in the Sioux language is Mahgahskahwee,” Orliac said, and laughed. “It means Swan Maiden. I call her Gracieuse.... Do you speak French?”

“No,” Hadley said.

“That means ‘graceful.’ It could be a second meaning, don’t you think? Gracieuse!” he called, and his wife dropped the robes against the wall and hurried to him. He spoke to her rapidly in what Hadley supposed was a mixture of Indian and French, and the woman rushed off again.

“I’ve asked her to prepare some tubs, eh?” Orliac said. “You will want to bathe, I am sure.”

“Thank you,” Hadley said.

“We’ll find food for you as well. You are not to be frightened by any of the Indians inside the fort. The women are either married to our people, or else are sisters or cousins of the wives. The men are also relatives of one sort or another. C’est comme une grande famille — fathers, cousins, uncles. There is nothing to worry about, truly.”

“Where do you want us to...?”

“Near the wall there. Where Gracieuse has put the robes. That will be all right?”

“Yes, fine.”

“I know it is not very private...”

“It’s fine,” Hadley said.

“If you wish, we can unload the wagon and find someplace to store your belongings. Then perhaps the women could sleep in the wagon. If that is what you prefer.”

“We’re used to sleeping on the ground,” Hadley said.

“There has been very little rain; maybe we will be lucky still, eh?” Orliac said, and smiled apologetically, and hunched his shoulders, and held out his hands, the palms showing. “She is heating the water. It will be in the kitchen that you will bathe. I shall ask the cook to go somewhere,” Orliac said, and took a watch from his pocket and looked at it. “Yes, there is time before he starts the meal.”

“Thank you,” Hadley said again.

“I have put you there near the offices and storerooms, where there is not much traffic at night. It is away from the corral, too.” He glanced across the courtyard to where Bobbo was taking the harness off the mules. Five or six Indians had gathered around the wagon and were studying the horses. “Ah, Bobby!” he called. “You found where to put them, good!” He turned again to Hadley. “How many were there? The Indians.”

“Four,” Hadley said.

“Pawnee?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you took three horses from them, eh? Good.”

“They killed my daughter,” Hadley said. Orliac looked into his face.

“I am so sorry,” he said, and took his hand at once.

A party of white men arrived the next day.

They were dusty and bearded, wearing blue army uniforms. They arrived in a convoy of two mule-drawn wagons and eight horses. Minerva watched them as they crossed the courtyard toward the stairs at the far end. They were carrying leather cases that seemed heavy from the way the men were bent under them. Probably valuable, too, otherwise they’d have left them in the wagons outside the main gate. They were on the gallery now. One of them knocked on Orliac’s door. Behind her Minerva heard the shuffle of feet. She turned.

The Indian was wearing a white buffalo robe.

He was tall and straight and his face was painted black. There were shells in his ears and strung around his neck.

“Un-p ’tee-plez,” he said to her.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Un-p’tee-plez,” he said, and thrust out his hand.

“Get away from me,” she said, and whirled toward the wall, and picked up the rifle leaning against it. “Get away!” she said sharply, and thrust the muzzle at him. Her finger was inside the trigger guard and wrapped around the trigger. The Indian scowled at her. Then he took his nose between thumb and forefinger, and blew snot into the dirt at her feet. Turning, he stalked regally across the courtyard again.

Minerva was trembling.

The men were government surveyors returning from South Pass, where they’d spent the summer. The leader of the expedition was a major named Abner Duggan, burly man with a browned, wrinkled face, white mustache under his bulbous nose. Must’ve been about Hadley’s age, Minerva figured, but looked a lot older. Drank too much wine. Was pouring for Hadley now, and leaning over, and talking straight into his face. Wasn’t drunk, but his tongue was loose enough to make him sound a trifle disrespectful. They were in the Orliac apartment, six of them sitting around a big wooden table. Orliac and his wife, Gracieuse, Hadley and Minerva, Duggan and his aide. The invitation had not included Bonnie Sue and Bobbo. This had seemed strange to Minerva, who was used to everybody in a family eating at the same time. The two of them were in the fort’s kitchen now, but she’d have preferred them here beside her. She’d almost turned down the invitation, in fact, but Hadley’d convinced her they could learn things from the two surveyors about the trail ahead.

“When did you plan to leave?” Duggan asked.

“As soon as my sons catch up,” Hadley said.

“Where are they now?”

“I don’t know. We left them outside St Louis near the end of May.”

“The twentieth of May,” Minerva said.

“It’s my hope they’ve done what they had to do, and are already on their way here,” Hadley said.

“Just the two of them alone?” Duggan asked.

“Yes.”

“Well,” Duggan said, “the Pawnee’ve got troubles of their own right now; maybe your sons won’t be bothered.”

Orliac glanced swiftly at Minerva and immediately said, “Major Duggan, the Chisholm family has recently—”

“Let me tell you what you’ll find west of here,” Duggan said, and lifted his glass and drank, and smacked his lips. In what sounded like surprise, he said, “Very nice, Orliac,” and then wiped the back of his hand across the wine-stained white mustache and turned to Hadley. “What you’ll find — beside Indians, that is—”

“Cheyenne, Sioux, and Gros Ventres,” Duggan’s aide said. He was a man named Howard Kelsey, a captain. Very thin, with pale white skin, delicate as a woman’s. Had a mustache, too, but his was narrow and black. He offered the information about the Indians as if Duggan had called for it. Duggan acknowledged it with a tap of his forefinger on the air.

“Right,” he said, and tap went the forefinger. “Roaming out there in parties a thousand strong, some of them.”

“Major Duggan,” Orliac said, “I feel I should tell you—”

“Four thousand, one party,” Kelsey said.

“Right,” Duggan said, and tapped the air. “You ever see four thousand Sioux or Dakota or whatever they choose to call themselves—”

“Dakota,” Kelsey said.

“—riding across the prairie in war paint?”

“Scary,” Kelsey said.

“But that’s not all you’ve got to worry about, Chisholm. There hasn’t been rain out there for the past two months—”

“Serious drought,” Kelsey said.

“Indians cutting down cottonwood boughs to feed their horses.”

“No grass at all.”

“Or burned yellow where you find a patch of it.”

“Plague of grasshoppers, too,” Kelsey said.

“What the drought didn’t finish off, the grasshoppers did,” Duggan said, and laughed and poured himself another glass of wine. “Orliac,” he said, “this is really very nice wine.”

“Comment?” Gracieuse asked.

“Le vin. Il trouve bon, le vin. She speaks no English,” he said. He seemed to be explaining this more to himself than to anyone sitting at the table.

“No water, no grass,” Kelsey said.

“And no game,” Duggan said. “The Indians are eating their own horses out there. That’s what’s out there, Chisholm,” he said, and nodded for emphasis.

“Were you thinking of heading for Fort Hall?” Kelsey asked.

“Fort Hall’s five hundred miles from here,” Duggan said.

“You couldn’t get much beyond there,” Kelsey said. “There’d be snow in the Rockies.”

“You’d be stuck at Fort Hall for the winter,” Duggan said.

“Some picnic, that,” Kelsey said, and rolled his eyes. “It’s a smaller trading post than this, you know.”

“You want wilderness,” Duggan said, “that’s wilderness.”

“Snow-filled Rockies ahead of you.”

“Behind you hostile Indians.”

“That’s wilderness,” Kelsey said.

Duggan tapped the air.

“What do you say, Bobby?” Orliac asked. “You want to be in the fur business? We expect to trade this year alone more than fifty thousand robes. I have room for another clerk here, eh?”

“I don’t think so,” Bobbo said.

The robes were piled high in the center of the courtyard, the fur on them thick and black. They all looked alike to Bobbo, but Orliac was sorting them for quality. Everywhere around them, there was teeming activity. Women bickering and children scampering, babies shrieking. Company men bawling orders in French. Trappers striding through the fort in leggings and leathers. Through the main gate, Bobbo could see tipis being taken down, travois being packed with goods acquired in trade. In the distance, more Indians moved slowly toward the fort, laden with robes to barter. Like the robes, the Indians all looked the same to him.

“Do you know how they treat these hides?” Orliac asked.

“No, sir.”

Whenever he thought of his sister, whenever he tried to remember her as she’d been, he could only visualize the Indian with the blue face, and the Indian writhing in pain as Bobbo plunged the knife again and again and...

“They take the brains of the animal, eh? And they mix it with ashes. That’s after the hide is scraped clean of flesh. The women do the work. It’s why they have so many wives. A man can shoot a dozen buffalo in as many minutes, eh? But to dress the hides? That is quite another matter. It takes all spring and half the summer.” He lowered his voice. “I have heard of a tribe that dresses the hides with piss. Piss! Do you think that’s true?”

“I’m sorry,” Bobbo said. “What did you say?”

He had been thinking again of Annabel.

And had seen again the Indian with the blue face.

The river here was cold and clear and running swift. It reminded Bonnie Sue of the Clinch back home. Except that in Virginia, she had gone to the river to write in her diary or to try to think of stories. Here, she came to the river to cry.

She cried for Annabel, and she cried for herself.

She cried for her baby sister because she could remember her when she was still in her wooden cradle with her eyes searching all over and her thumb in her mouth and her pillow wet with drool. You leaned over the cradle and a toothless smile came on that round little face, made you want to bust out laughing. She could remember holding Annabel’s plump sticky hand and taking her for walks in the woods, showing her where there was a rabbit hole and here was a wasps’ nest, and little Annabel nodding like she knew just what was being said about this or that, but probably not understanding a thing. Looked so cute that Bonnie Sue would just scoop her up in her arms and hug her to death. She could remember Annabel being a pest, too, asking questions all the time about what was it made a cat meow and a pig oink and a dog bark instead of talking like people did. Or wanting to know how you danced a jig, or knitted and purled, or baked cookies, or wrote the letter M, which she always had trouble with, making it look more like an N all the time. Bonnie Sue kept telling her to just add another loop, and whenever Annabel did, it came out looking like a worm crawling along, loop after loop after loop.

She loved that child.

Alone by the river, she cried for her.

And knew — ah, God — knew that if her sister hadn’t come at that Indian with a burning stick in her hand, poked it at his arm and made him jump off Bonnie Sue, where he was straddling her and choking her...

She squeezed her eyes shut.

She could hear the river rushing swiftly.

She could feel the beat of her own pulse.

She began to cry again. For her sister, for herself.

On the twenty-seventh of July, a week after the Chisholms arrived at the fort, the family from the Oregon-bound train emerged at last from the absent factor’s apartment. There were six of them. A man and woman who looked to be about Hadley’s age, three daughters in their teens, and a strapping son who reminded Minerva of Gideon. Pale and thin, blinking at the sun, they came down the gallery stairs. A gaggle of squalling Indian brats followed them across the courtyard to where Minerva and Bonnie Sue were sitting on robes against the wall. The wall, and the wagon close by it, had become their home. The robes were their beds and their coverlets, the wall was their protection from whatever dangers lay outside the fort, the wagon contained the clothing, the tools and utensils they needed to get through the day and then the day following it. Minerva watched as the woman turned abruptly and flapped her hands at the Indian children, who scurried away laughing. She came to Minerva then and extended her hand.

“How do,” she said, “I’m Martha Hasty. I’ve heard of your misfortune, ma’m, and me and mine wish to offer our condolences.”

“Thank you,” Minerva said softly, and took Martha’s hand. “I’m Minerva Chisholm, this’s my daughter Bonnie Sue. I’m glad to see you up and about.”

“This here’s my husband Jeb...”

“Ma’m,” he said, and took off his hat.

“My daughters Mary Louise, Ellie Jean, and Josie...”

The girls curtsied.

“And my son Tom here.”

“Ma’m,” he said. Hair the color of Gideon’s, curly like his, too. Not as big. Grinning. Didn’t know what to do with his hands. Stuck them in his pockets at last.

“Mrs. Chisholm, might you care for some tea?” Martha said.

The two women sat in the kitchen of the fort, on stools at the huge table the cook used for chopping vegetables and carving meat. It was eight in the morning. He had long since finished with breakfast, and would not be starting the midday meal for hours yet. He listened as the women talked and sipped the tea they’d brewed on his stove. He could not understand a word they said, but he liked the lilt of their voices. He liked American women. They were skinny. He liked skinny women. Mais belles poitrines aussi. Skinny but soft. He liked that.

“We shouldn’t have come this far,” Martha said, and laughed. She had a laugh that jingled like silver, twinkled clear up into her blue eyes. There were freckles across her nose and on her cheeks; Minerva’d never before seen a woman her age with freckles. Always thought freckles were for young people. Liked this woman Martha Hasty. Liked her from the minute they shook hands, offering her sympathy, husband taking off his hat like a gent, little girls well-mannered, boy the image of Gideon. Pale, so pale, the lot of them. “Should’ve turned back when Mary Hutchison did...”

Hutchison’s wife. The tall spare woman in the sun-faded bonnet and dress. Minerva nodded.

“... just after her children took sick. But Jeb said we’d gone that far already, and we was with a big party, he figured it was safer. It was my thinkin if a party’s takin sick all around you, then best to leave the party, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d have left in a minute,” Minerva said.

“Cause when you get right to it, we’re head-in back anyway, ain’t we?” Martha said. “Them surveyors are leavin day after tomorrow, and we’re going with em, hell or high water. It’s six hundred miles to Independence, which ain’t just a walk in the park, but they’s eight armed men on horses, and another two drivin the army wagons, not countin Jeb and Tommy. That’s an even dozen men with guns; that ought to be enough t’discourage any Injuns between here and Independence, don’t you—”

Minerva burst into tears.

Martha blinked at her. The cook looked up at the sound of the weeping.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” he asked. “Pourquoi pleut-elle?”

“Oh my God, I’m sorry,” Martha said. “Mrs. Chisholm? Are you all right?”

She blamed herself.

She should have been firmer with Hadley, should have insisted back there in Louisville, forced him to turn around right then and there. Or certainly at the Kansas, Ralph Hutchison telling them there was fever ahead, his own two children looking frail from the ordeal, the river raging besides. Should have told him there was no sense continuing, didn’t want to go on, just them and the Oateses, with her not speaking a word of English. Should have said, Hadley, let’s turn around with the others. Hadley, let’s go home. Kept her mouth shut instead. Knew there was no use saying another word. Stubborn as a mule once he made up his mind. Knew there was nothing she could say to get him to give up.

She blamed him.

Blamed him for whatever it was made him decide to quit Virginia. Wasn’t nothing wrong with Virginia. Had a good home there, a life. Wasn’t a life anymore, the minute they left. Blamed him for not telling his sons and daughters alike to just keep their mouths shut that time in Louisville. He was the father here, he was the head of this family; if he wanted to sell his whiskey dear and head back home, why then that was his business and never mind voting. That’s what he. should’ve done right then, taken a stand, told the young’uns they didn’t like the way this family was being run, why then they could just go find theirselves a better one. But no, he got himself bullied into continuing on. Blamed him for what happened at the river, too, when they were waiting to be ferried across and anybody with a grain of sense was turning around for home. Should’ve realized that once they missed the chance there at the Kansas, why there’d be no heading back ever again. They’d be left alone at the Coast of Nebraska, and Indians would find them sure as rain.

Blamed Bobbo, too.

Supposed to be standing guard that night, yelling instead all the time about wanting to kill the wolves, like he was on a hunting expedition instead of out in the wilderness with Indians creeping up. Yelling back and forth to his father, Hadley still drunk. Both of them probably drunk, the one supposed to be watching for trouble, and the one supposed to be his father. Pair of worthless... Why didn’t he shoot sooner? Why’d he shoot after the man had... Oh, Jesus. Couldn’t he see the man was... God, God. Should’ve shot him, killed him, killed him before he could, before he... Dear, dear God. Blamed Bobbo, and blamed Bonnie Sue for being so homesick and moody all the time; hadn’t been so involved with her own misery and with pining for Sean Cassada, she would’ve maybe been able to do something that night, help Bobbo, help her sister.

She blamed them all.

She blamed herself.

In their corner of the courtyard, with a buffalo robe beneath them and a light comforter covering them, they whispered in the coolness of the night.

“The Hastys are leaving for Independence in the morning,” Minerva said.

“I know that,” he said.

“Be going with Major Duggan and his people... What do you think of him, Hadley?”

“Loudmouth.”

“Aye, but of what he said.”

“He seemed to know.”

“Hadley, I want to go with them,” she said, and caught her breath, and waited. “We could be back in Independence before summer’s end,” she said, and again waited. “And if we chose to go all the way to Virginia—”

“Min, it’s—”

“—we could be through the Gap by November.”

Hadley was silent.

“I want an answer,” she said.

“Min,” he said, “it’s six hundred miles to Independence.”

“Aye, and five to Fort Hall.”

“We’re halfway between nothin and nowhere,” he said. “I’m scared, Min. I don’t want to go ahead, and I don’t want to go back where my little girl...” He fell silent again. Then he said, “Forgive me, Min, I thought I was doin right. I wanted to find us land we could plant and harvest, I wanted to make a better life than we had back home. Instead, I–I seem to have done everything all wrong. Sent my two sons off to God knows where, took my family into a wilderness where — where my daughter...” He could not utter the words, he choked them back. “Min,” he said, “I’m a man can’t move for fear and for sorrow. I don’t know what to do, Min. I never been scared of nothing in my life, I never grieved for nobody this way before. I miss her so much, I miss her to death.”

“What do you want to do, Had? Whatever you want to do...”

“I want to stay here, Min. At least through the winter and maybe longer. Maybe always.” She said nothing. He waited, but she said nothing.

“There’s land up by the river, timber enough to build us a fine cabin. We could clear a field for planting; the soil’s rich, Min, we could grow things here.”

“Aye,” she said.

“Min, do you not long for a floor to sweep?”

“I do, Hadley.”

“Min, I don’t know who owns the land up there. If it’s American Fur does, then I’ll talk to Orliac about a fair price for what we’d need. If it’s public land, then we’d have to write the government, I reckon, tell them our intentions, ask what the price would be. I’m guessing a dollar, a dollar twenty-five an acre, and I think there’s a minimum you got to buy, a quarter section I think it is. We could squat, meanwhile, if it’s government-owned. Ain’t nobody going to come chase us off it. Min?”

“Yes, Hadley?”

“Would that suit you, Min?”

“If it would help you to mend again, it would suit me.”

“I only know I can’t leave here now,” he said.

“Then we’ll stay, Hadley.”

“I’ll talk to Orliac.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Min,” he said, “I love you, Min.”

“And I love you, too,” she answered.

The surveyors had packed their instruments into the wagons, and now they stood in the morning sunshine, waiting for the Hastys to say their farewells. The day was clear and hot. Captain Kelsey had taken off his hat and was wearing a blue bandanna around his forehead. It gave him a devil-may-care look entirely out of keeping with his prissy nature. Major Duggan stood with one hand on his horse’s bridle, chatting idly with Orliac. A dozen or more Indians were standing against the adobe wall, watching the leavetaking.

Minerva recognized among them the one who’d accosted her shortly after their arrival at the fort. Despite the heat, he was still wearing the white buffalo robe. His face was painted black; it glistened greasily in the bright sunshine. His eyes found hers. He grinned toothily, and then shoved himself off the wall and came toward where she and Martha were talking. Minerva was already starting to back away. But the Indian thrust out his hand to Martha instead. “Un-p’tee-plez,” he said, his voice demanding and somewhat threatening. Martha giggled nervously, and then shrugged. Orliac turned from the major.

“Allez! Allez!” he shouted, and shooed the Indian away with his hands. The Indian grasped his nose between thumb and forefinger. Apparently thinking better of what he was about to do, he turned away sullenly and went to stand against the wall of the fort again.

“He wants a favor, un petit plaisir,” Orliac said, and shrugged. “They are spoiled by emigrants all the time, eh? They want only a biscuit or two, a cup of coffee — but they are nuisances. You must never show you are in the slightest afraid. They can read faces; I sometimes think they can read minds.”

“Minerva, will you be all right?” Martha asked, and took her hand between both her own.

“I think so, yes.”

“We’ve scarcely met,” Martha said.

“I shall miss you,” Minerva said.

The women embraced. Jeb Hasty shook hands with Hadley, and then climbed up onto the wagon seat. “Tommy?” he said.

“Yes, Pa.”

How much like Gideon he looked. She was about to weep again; she wished she could learn to control these sudden fits of weeping that came upon her. She bit her lip. Kelsey wheeled his horse about; the crowd of Indians back away.

“Let’s move it then!” Major Duggan said, and pointed sharply eastward with the same forefinger he’d used to tap the air.

They watched the wagons and horses departing. Martha waved from the seat. Surprisingly and unexpectedly, the Indian with the painted black face stepped out from the others and waved back. He kept waving. The wagons moved into the distance. Far out on the horizon, Minerva saw dust rising, moving. She watched. Horses and riders coming from the east, closing the gap between themselves and the wagons. The horses stopped alongside the lead wagon. The dust settled. And now again the horses were in motion. A pair of riders. One of them astride a piebald. The other on a black...

Gideon, she thought.

Will, she thought.

Aloud, she shouted, “It’s them, Hadley, they’re here!”

Arms wide, skirts flying, she ran to greet her sons.