To Ma, I guess, the matter spoke for itself. She had pulled us out of our lives and traveled hundreds of miles across the west, to tell Pa she was quitting him. She seemed to feel it was something she owed him. She did what she came to do, and that was that.
It shocked Pa, and it shocked Uncle Seth, who didn’t seem to be particularly out of sorts with his brother—but Ma quitting Pa didn’t really make much difference to the rest of the family. Marcy was too young to notice, Neva was trying to get the woodchoppers to arrange a dance, or at least some fiddle music, and as soon as we got in the fort, Pa’s Indian wife, who had two toddlers besides the one in her belly, presented G.T. with a little brown puppy, which started to lick his face. The puppy soon attached himself to G.T. like a leech. G.T. was too taken with the puppy to give much thought to what happened between Pa and Ma.
I think Pa’s little Indian wife—he called her Sweetbreads—probably saw that we were tired and hungry and gave us the puppy to eat; but G.T. took to it so that after five minutes no one would have dared to try and eat it.
I was the only one, it seemed, who took much note of what had just happened between Pa and Ma. Had she really brought us all this way just to tell him she was quitting him?
I believe the same question occurred to Uncle Seth. As we were finding a spot to park our wagon, inside the stockade, he looked at Ma kind of funny.
“Did you really come all this way just to tell Dick you were quitting him?” he asked. “If that was all you had to tell him, you could have sent me with the news.”
Ma looked a little exasperated by that comment—she hadn’t completely cooled down.
“No, Seth—I didn’t send you because I’m keeping you!” she said. “Or would you rather just live out here and run wild, like your brother?”
“Not me,” Uncle Seth said at once. “Not me. I’m so used to you now I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”
“That’s right, you wouldn’t!” Ma said sharply.
“I believe I will just go see Dick for a minute, though,” Uncle Seth said. “I’d like to find out if the business is prospering.”
“Go—Sherman can stable these mules,” Ma said.
I did stable the mules, with the help of G.T. and a couple of friendly young soldiers, who seemed fairly nervous—there had been rumors of an Indian attack, they said. Colonel Carrington, who was in charge of the fort, had never fought Indians in his life, which, in the soldiers’ opinion, meant that he wasn’t taking the threat seriously enough.
I knew nothing about the matter, of course—I wasn’t too worried about Indians yet, probably because I still had the business of Pa and Ma on my mind. I was beginning to get the notion that Ma might even want to marry Uncle Seth. Could that be why she quit Pa? And if it wasn’t that, could it be because of one of the little things, such as his two Indian families, or the fact that he only showed up in Missouri for a few days every year or two? I didn’t know—I never did know—but I turned the whole business over in my mind many times. It was such unfamiliar territory that I could not even be sure I knew the difference between a big thing and a little thing, where Ma was concerned.
Though that moment—the moment when Ma slapped Pa, first with words and then with her hand—lodged in my mind for years, I didn’t get to puzzle it over much at the time because we had barely got the mules unhitched and settled for the night before Ma had a set-to with that rude Colonel Fetterman, whom we had met in Fort Laramie. The set-to occurred just as the flag was being lowered for the evening, and resulted in our getting expelled from the fort for the night.
I don’t know how the quarrel started—by the time I heard voices rising and turned around to see Colonel Fetterman, in a pitch of rage, pointing his finger at Ma, the battle was on.
“Get out! Get out! Get this damn woman out of the fort!” he yelled, addressing himself to the little detail of soldiers who were lowering the flag.
The soldiers were stunned by this sudden command—they had been happy to see us. Stuck off as they were in a remote little fort, not too many new faces came their way. Neva had already made herself popular—though there was no fiddle in sight, one soldier had dug out a harmonica and was making music for her already.
“Colonel Fetterman, what is the problem?” one of the young lieutenants stammered out.
“You dare to talk to me like that! . . . Military matters!” Colonel Fetterman yelled. He was pointing his finger at Ma, despite the fact that he had on white gloves.
“Stop that, sir! Don’t you know it’s rude to point?” Ma said.
“I will not have a treasonous woman in this fort—get ’em out! Get ’em out!” Colonel Fetterman said. “We’ll cage our Indians any way we want to, and your opinion be damned!”
Then he stomped off.
The young officer looked deeply embarrassed.
“I don’t know what to say, ma’am,” he said. “I fear you’d best leave.”
“What? Is that fool the boss of this fort?” Ma asked.
“No—Colonel Carrington’s in charge—I suppose you could appeal to him,” the young man said.
There was a silence.
“You don’t seem to think I should appeal to Carrington, though,” Ma said. “Is that correct?”
“Colonel Carrington dislikes trouble of any kind,” the young soldier said. “In fact, he dislikes being disturbed at all, when it’s this late in the evening.”
“Does he dislike Colonel Fetterman?” Ma asked.
The young lieutenant looked even more embarrassed.
“Now you’ve put me on the spot, ma’am,” he said.
The string bean of a corporal who was folding up the flag wasn’t as timid as the lieutenant.
“No, Carrington don’t like Fetterman—nobody likes Fetterman. He has abused me more than once,” the corporal said. “But if I were you I’d just go camp outside tonight—the air’s fresher, anyway. There’s a passel of smelly old people in this fort, I can tell you.”
“Good advice—get the mules, Sherman,” Ma said. “G.T., give Marcy that puppy and help your brother pack up. I believe I’d feel cramped in here anyway, just from knowing Colonel Fetterman is around.”
Luckily we hadn’t unpacked much gear. The soldiers, all of them disappointed that we were leaving so soon, were quick to help rehitch the mules.
When we rolled out of the stockade Pa and Uncle Seth were sitting on the back end of one of the wagons, talking. If Pa was still disturbed by what had occurred, he didn’t show it.
“Hell, you just went in and now you’re coming out,” Pa said, hopping off the wagon. “Didn’t you like our nice little fort?”
“Yes, but it’s too small for Colonel Fetterman and me both,” Ma said.
“Oh, that goddamn whippersnapper,” Pa said, as if the mere mention of Colonel Fetterman explained everything.
Pa seemed friendly—so friendly I was hoping he would come over and camp with us. Being the oldest, I had spent more time with Pa than the other children—I suspect I missed him most. I would have liked to hear about some of his adventures, out in the west.
But he didn’t camp with us. When full dark came he went inside the fort, to his Indian wife Sweetbreads and his two button-eyed toddlers. One of the cooks had pressed some porridge on Ma, while we were in the fort, so we ate porridge, with a little molasses the cook had given her. I guess that molasses was the sweetest thing Marcy had ever tasted. I believe she would have drunk a quart of it, if we’d had it.
“What did you say to set the colonel off?” Uncle Seth inquired.
“I complained about the way the army caged that old Indian, back at the last fort,” Ma said.
The only one missing was Neva, who probably danced all night with the soldiers. G.T. and his puppy had a tug-of-war with a sock. Ma and Uncle Seth sat up late, talking. It felt odd to be camping so close to Pa—I couldn’t get him off my mind, couldn’t sleep, and sat up and watched the bright moon until it was almost dawn.
10
r /> THE next morning the smell of bacon brought me out of a deep drowse. It had snowed a little during the night, not much—just enough that we had to be careful to shake out our blankets. While I was warming my hands around a coffee cup Pa came driving his wagon our way, with five or six wood wagons behind him. He stopped the team for a minute and came tramping over, through the light snow.
“Morning, travelers,” he said. “What’s your plans?”
“Why would you need to know?” Ma asked.
“I want to borrow our whelps, for a day, that’s why,” Pa said. “I’ll take them out with the wood train and see how they perform with a saw and an axe. A good day’s work won’t hurt ’em—they might even like it.”
“You can come too, Seth, if you’re a mind,” Pa said.
“No, Dick—I prefer to avoid the saw and the axe,” Uncle Seth said. “Besides, it wouldn’t do to leave Colonel Fetterman unguarded, while Mary Margaret is around. If he was to cross her I expect she’d tear his throat out.”
“Just so it’s his throat, not mine,” Pa said.
Ma was watching Pa—I couldn’t tell what her attitude was.
“I believe I done you a favor by quitting you, Dick,” she said. “Now you won’t have to drag yourself all the way down to Missouri, every year or two, to make me a baby. You can make a passel of them right here in Wyoming, without the expense of travel.”
Pa had a pleasant expression on his face, and it didn’t change. He just pretended Ma hadn’t said anything. When he did speak it was only about the weather.
“The fort Indians say there’s a blizzard coming,” he said. “They know their business, when it comes to weather. It might be best if you stayed near the fort for a day or two, before you go traipsing back across the baldies.”
“Who mentioned going back?” Ma asked. “We might be planning to go north and strike gold, for all you know.”
“I doubt you’ll strike gold but you might strike the Cheyenne,” Pa said. “Hurry it up, Sherman.”
Of course, G.T. and I were eager to go with Pa, and Ma didn’t forbid it, though I don’t think she was too keen on the prospect.
“You wouldn’t be trying to steal my boys, would you, Dick?” she asked, when we were dragging our big gray coats over to the wood wagon. If the blizzard came we meant to be prepared.
“Just for the day, Mary Margaret,” Pa said. “We’ve got a wood train to fill before that blizzard arrives. There’s no reason to let two big strapping boys sit idle, that I can see.”
Ma looked a little stiff, but she raised no objections.
“I hate to leave my puppy,” G.T. said, as we were hurrying over to the wood wagons. But he didn’t say it loud enough for Pa to hear.
11
YOU boys are lucky, that mother of yours has got snap!” Pa said, as he led the wood train northeast of the fort, toward the thick forests that covered the mountains.
I thought the remark odd—after all, he was the man who had been married to Ma for sixteen years—it wasn’t as if she were a distant cousin, or just some stranger he had met in passing. Why would Pa talk about Ma as if she were just someone he admired, in a distant way?
I didn’t know—I still don’t—because we arrived at our place of work and had to jump out and start unloading the saws and axes. It was plain from all the stumps and wood chips all over the place that the woodchoppers had been working on the clump of trees for several days.
After watching us try to use axes for a few minutes, Pa changed his mind and assigned us to the big crosscut saw.
“You’re way off in your skills with the axe,” Pa said. “Seth ought to be ashamed of himself, for not teaching you better. You’re either going to cut your own foot off, or one of somebody else’s, which won’t do. Try the saw. It will spare the company a lost foot or two.”
I was chastened, and so was G.T. We had fancied ourselves the equal of any man, when it came to chopping firewood, but watching the other woodcutters soon put an end to that illusion. All the other woodcutters were faster and more accurate—of course, they used axes all day every day, while all we did was break up a little firewood for the campfire, when there was wood to be had.
Cold as it was, working with a crosscut saw on long lengths of pine log soon warmed both of us up. Before long we were down to our shirtsleeves, and were even thinking of taking off our shirts, as several of the woodchoppers had done. I don’t know about G.T., but I was soon thinking thoughts that weren’t entirely loyal to Ma, such as, why not live with Pa? The country was glorious—just being out in it was exciting, with the plains so vast and the mountains so high and adventure to be met with, every day.
Nothing of the sort could be said about Boone’s Lick, or anywhere around it. There were no grizzly bears and no Indians—it had been a while since G.T. had even trapped a good mess of crawdads.
If we stayed and became woodcutters, like Pa, I had no doubt we’d soon get the hang of the axes. And when there was no work to do, think of the hunting. We might find a place where there was still buffalo. We might slay a grizzly bear.
“Stay in rhythm, boys,” Pa instructed. “Just be easy and stay in rhythm. Don’t pull against one another.”
He grabbed my end of the crosscut saw and was just demonstrating the proper pull when we all heard a ti-yiing from the west and looked around to see about fifty Indians charging across the plain toward us.
“Whoa! Turn these wagons,” Pa yelled—I have never seen men move quicker to obey an order. In two minutes the men had four of the wagons turned to form a square, with the other two outside it, to serve as bulwarks. There was already a fair amount of wood in the wagons, enough to provide some cover. I guess there were about twenty of us, all told, on the woodchopping detail—though the Indians had us outnumbered, we all had rifles. The situation didn’t look hopeless.
Pa, though, seemed to take a cautious view. He was huddled down with a lanky old woodsman named Sam, the only man sawing who wore buckskin clothes.
“I expect they’re just funning,” Sam said.
The Indians had slowed up a little, but were still ti-yiing.
“I hope so,” Pa said. “It’s too late to try and make for the fort.”
“Oh, let’s just shoot ’em,” G.T. said.
“That might work if we had adequate ammunition,” Pa said.
“Don’t we?” I asked. I only had five shells myself but I figured Pa would have plenty.
Pa shook his head.
“The goddamn stingy army,” he said. “We don’t have much ammunition—the whole fort don’t have much, for that matter.”
All of a sudden a weak feeling came over me, much like the one that had come over me the day the grizzly bear charged. What had happened to the dead miners might be about to happen to us. Missouri began to look a lot better to me, crawdads or no crawdads.
“Don’t shoot, they may be funning!” Pa yelled, but despite Pa’s clear instructions the woodchoppers soon began to fire at the Indians, who were riding around us in a big circle, still ti-yiing.
“Stop shooting, damnit! They’re still out of range,” Pa yelled again.
I guess he was right. The Indians looked close, like the grizzly bear had looked big, but they weren’t close—unless the woodcutters were all bad shots. Not a single Indian fell, or even ducked. A few of them had guns and popped at us a few times—four or five others, showing off, I guess, raced into bow-and-arrow range and let fly. Most of the arrows just thunked into the wood wagons, though one axman got hit in the leg.
“We’re in plain sight of the fort,” Sam observed. “I expect they’ll send out a relief force, if these boys will just be patient.”
Neither Sam nor Pa had fired a shot, or even raised their guns.
“I wish I had a spyglass—damn it, why did I come off without one!” Pa said. He wasn’t paying the whooping, yipping Indians much mind. Instead he seemed to be trying to see into the forests.
“You think there’s more?” Sam asked.
br /> “There could be,” Pa said. “There could be lots more.”
“Doubt it,” Sam said. “The Sioux will rarely hold an ambush. The Cheyenne either—their young braves get too impatient to be in on the fight.”
“We could try for the fort,” Sam suggested, after a while.
“They’d be on us like weasels on a squirrel,” Pa said. “We’re safest right where we are.”
Just then it began to cloud over—I thought of Uncle Seth and his beliefs about bad things happening in cloudy weather.
The Indians who were harassing us began to yell even louder and to make insulting gestures—two or three of the woodchoppers continued to pop at them, but so far we hadn’t hit a single one.
“I hope that relief Sam was talking about gets here pretty soon,” G.T. said.
It was a comfort that we could see the fort—the back side of it, anyway—but from where we crouched, behind our wagons, it looked about fifty miles distant. What if everyone was in the mess hall, eating porridge with molasses, and hadn’t noticed that we were under attack? Maybe they were all so busy eating and cussing that they hadn’t even heard the shooting.
“This is the last time I ever come woodcutting with only four shells for my gun,” Pa said. “If the damn army can’t spare us no more ammunition than that, I believe I’ll just stay in.”
By then most of the woodcutters had shot up all their ammunition, and yet no Indians were dead. The woodcutters stood holding their useless rifles—they all looked scared.
Then six or seven more Indians came loping into the valley from the far end. They ti-yied a little, but they didn’t join the party that had us trapped. They were nearly naked, and all painted up, but they seemed in an idle mood. One got off and examined one of his horse’s hooves. The others rode off and left him. The Indian with the sore-footed horse gathered up a few sticks and began to build a little fire.
“Sam, I’m getting a bad suspicion,” Pa said. “You know how sometimes you can kind of feel Indians, if there’s a bunch of them around close?”