Evan Hunter - The Chisholms - A novel of the journey West

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.”