Nakoa's Woman (2 page)

He remembered when Meg first came to cook for them. His wife already lay indifferent to food and drink, and he was in wild rebellion at her dying. She had revealed no regret at leaving him, at doing what made him rage against his God. When he sat with her and touched her forehead, stroking her beautiful black hair away from her face, he remembered all of the times they had made love. He remembered their joys and their sorrows, and how she had almost died when she was having their daughters. He wanted to talk over this terrible calamity; he wanted her to share his agony as she had always done since their courtship, but she was silent, and gave no sign to his suffering. Her long lashes remained motionless against her cheeks, and when he kissed them, it was as if she had already died. He had wanted just one look, one glance into her soul; he wanted her to know his soul too, now at this time of departure.

Shaking, he finally left her and went down to the kitchen to the girls. It was then he saw Meg as if for the first time, her black hair shining against her white flesh, her large breasts straining against her bodice. He watched her breasts and imagined them naked, and he neither saw nor tasted the food she put upon the table. Meg’s lips were sensuous and full. He imagined kissing them, and kissing the naked swelling bosom, and he thought of her thighs, and in this sad autumn night with his life’s love dying above him, he made up his mind that those warm thighs would envelope him and bring him life.

Just before dawn he went to Meg’s bedroom. She knew his feelings and was waiting for him. He had never been so wild with a woman; all of his rage against death drove him into Meg again and again, and when she became frightened, he held her helpless until he was exhausted, but unsatisfied. He left her then and went out in the barn to milk the cows. Because he had been so rough with her he expected her to be gone before breakfast, but she did not leave. And when he brought her wood for the stove her eyes met his in new seduction. Her new dress was even tighter across her bosom, her voice was lower and more musical, and a scent had been placed at the base of her throat. With his own throat growing hot and dry, he tried to eat with his daughters.

Later Meg went upstairs to tend his wife. Ana and Maria went to sit with her, but he could not. He sat by the fire with his head in his hands. Then much later, Maria gently touched his face. “She is just sleeping,” she said softly, and went to bed after Ana. The fire burned itself out. In the cold he shivered and stiffly rose to his feet. He went to the kitchen to sleep where he had slept since his wife’s illness. Taking off his shoes, he stretched out his long frame, and thought of Meg. He went back to her bed that night and returned in the morning, and even when he was with her in front of his daughters it was all he could do to keep his eyes off her breasts.

His wife regained consciousness, and when she first opened her eyes, she gave him such a long and overpowering look of pure love that he wanted to moan in agony. She was dying in holy grace. He felt unable to touch her flesh again. He was hollow inside and was slipping down a void that had no bottom. His daughters could weep, but he could not. For what he had done and wanted to do again and again with Meg, he was denied even the solace of being able to weep. His wife soon sank into a deep sleep, and she remained this way for weeks. She would sleep and rally, and after seeming to gain strength, slip into unconsciousness again. All of these dismal days the skies were darkening, and more and more rain streamed against the small windows.

Now Meg sought him as much as he sought her. Neither one of them was satisfied just to meet at night, and when they met they were like savages. He thought her the lowest kind of bitch, for she would do anything to oblige him, but his wildness did not abate, and grew equally in her. It was a nightmare. But his only touch with reality seemed to be when he was with Meg.

One afternoon the girls were upstairs with their mother, and before he could go up, Meg came to him. She led him to her room and their intimacy had already begun when he heard a noise. Yet he could not leave Meg for his own life, nor would she give him up. Later he rested with his lips against her breast, and then he dressed and went into the kitchen. There wasn’t a sound in the house. He walked into the front room, and Maria was huddled, shivering and wet, in front of the fire.

“Where have you been?” he asked her, astounded that she would go outside in the driving rain.

“I went to the orchard,” she replied softly. “Mother is dead,” she said matter-of-factly. “I thought you might like to know that she died calling for you.” The way she looked up at him, he knew that she was aware where he had been.

Remembering, Edward Frame sobbed openly, his hands clenched into tight fists. Now he was alone with their daughters, and God, oh God, he did not know what to do. Were twelve wagons enough? Oh, my love, do you know? Do you know that all of the time it was you, and the loving and caressing that could be no more between us? Or do you look coldly down, unforgiving, because I am still mortal? Or do you know at all? “I don’t know what to do!” he whispered. “I don’t know what to do!”

In early April the twelve wagons moved out from Laramie. The great wheel by Ana’s side drove lizards and snakes from its path. Prairie dogs watched the wheel pass and then went back to sleeping in the sun. Ana felt Maria’s serenity, and ahead of them Edith Holmes pressed the life she felt moving in her womb. Clouds gathered and made the prairie ahead shimmer in sunlight and become somber in shadow. “Come into the world of light and darkness, my little love,” Edith whispered to her unborn child. Dust from the moving wheels rose ahead and behind them, but now there was not the safety of their wagons stretching from horizon to horizon.

Roll on, oh great wheels; nothing can stop the path you are making to the shining sea! The prairie wind is strong and behind us now are the still hands and the molding furniture; ahead lies the future. Time is pressing! Why wait for the other wagons? Why wait?

Anson Frederich returned Maria Frame to her wagon. He spoke briefly to her father and Ana and left her with them.

“I don’t like you out with Anson at night,” Maria’s father said crossly.

“When else can I see him?” Maria retorted. “The only time the train isn’t moving is when the sun goes down.”

“Why do you stay out with him so late?”

“We have a lot to say,” Maria said sarcastically.

Ana gave her a disapproving look and then retired to their wagon.

“Ana thinks I am naughty again,” Maria said wearily.

“No. She thinks you are deviling Anson Frederich, and so do I,” her father replied.

“What on earth is that?”

“You know damned well what it is!” Her father lit his pipe and studied her through its smoke. “It is all promising and no giving!”

“Father, what would you know about that?” Maria asked, suddenly bitter.

Her father looked at her shrewdly. “I mean you are making him want you and you have no intention of marrying him.”

Maria felt a rage building against him, a rage that she hadn’t felt even when she had seen him in Meg’s room. “I didn’t know you cared so much for marriage,” she whispered.

“I just don’t want you alone with Anson—so late at night,” he answered.

“Why not, Father?” she lashed out. “Are you afraid I would do for him what your little Meg was doing for you the afternoon my mother was dying?”

Her father recoiled. “Maria!” he breathed, as if the wind had been knocked from his body.

“That is my name!” Maria panted. “That was also her name—do you remember? That was my mother’s name too!”

“Maria, Maria!” he repeated brokenly.

“She called you too, when she was dying. I am sorry you were so busy!”

He lashed out and slapped her across the face, sending her reeling away from the fire. “Daughter” he choked, “do not judge me! Never—never—can you judge me! I am my own executioner! Do you hear? Do you hear?”

Maria got to her feet and walked toward the wagon where Ana apparently slept. “I will never hear you again,” she said grimly.

“You do not know anything!” he said. “You do not know any thing!”

“I know what I saw! I know what made me so sick that I had to go to mother’s orchard to throw up!”

“Mother’s orchard?”

“Her orchard! It was her touch that brought the fruit to your marriage! Not yours! You would bring blight—blight!”

“You do not understand,” Edward Frame said, close to weeping. “You will never understand.”

“She wasn’t even dead—she wasn’t even dead!” Maria began to sob. “With everything that was left—she called for you! She wanted you so! She wasn’t even—dead!”

“That is why,” her father said, turning to her with tears touching his face. “When she was gone, Meg became like cardboard to me. To me—then—Meg was your mother—I can’t speak my feeling, I don’t know why I did what I did—but it was not because I didn’t love your mother!”

Maria shuddered and hid her face in her hands. When she looked up, her father was walking away from her, his form bent against the light of the fires. Pity and revulsion for him combined with her overwhelming love drove her to the ground. She clawed the roots of the prairie grass with her fingernails, crying desperately.

From somewhere in the camp came the sound of a fiddle, and as she lay upon the earth and wept, hands clapped to a dancing tune, and the fiddle played gaily on and on.

When Edward Frame walked away from his daughter, he knew spring would never come to him again. He wondered if he had ever known spring at all; it must have been only a fleeting dream.

It was very late when he returned to their wagon. A coldness stayed within his heart, though the night was warm. A full moon had risen, and it shone serenely now upon the camp with all of the great wagons dark and quiet, and the Snake River flowing by so peacefully.

A white wolf called out from the hills, as if it knew something they did not. Edward Frame sighed, his troubled spirits sinking lower. There had been no new sickness, and they were just two weeks out of Fort Boise. The worst of the trip was over. They had made it; they were all alive.

He made his bed under the tarpaulin, but could not fall asleep. Something of danger seemed to be building all around him. He heard the two o’clock watch return to the wagons, calling out that all was well.

He tossed and turned, his mouth becoming drier. The four o’clock watch returned, calling out that all was well. Finally he dozed, still conscious of how restless the horses were in-the bright moonlight. And so it was that on the night of May 19, 1846, the twelve wagons bound for Oregon rested upon the silver prairie, rocking gently in the growing wind; twenty-nine men, seventeen children, and eighteen women all slept, and for all except one of them it was their last night upon the face of the earth.

Chapter Two

At dawn Edith Holmes began labor. The pain came like an enemy bent upon her life, lustful and torturing from the very beginning. How could she have forgotten for one moment how terrible the birth was? Why hadn’t she remembered back in that soft twilight when she had wanted to seduce and be seduced?

Jim sent the boys to the Frederichs’ wagon because she could not control her screaming. Every time she shrieked, Jim wrung his hands and wept.

“Edie! Edie!” he sobbed.

“Go away!” she said, for suddenly she couldn’t stand his crying.

“I can’t leave you, Edie,” he moaned piteously. “I can’t leave you!”

“What good can I do you now?” she flung at him bitterly, even when she did not have the strength to say it. He cowered at her side, covering his ears against her cries.

“Damn you! Go—to boys! No—get me rag—to pull on—something to pull on!” Why did all of the pain in the world have to come to her all at once?

“I’ll get Mrs. Bentley—and Maria,” he said.

“No! Not—yet. Just a rag—a rag—damn you!”

He handed her one of her dresses to pull on. She tore it, as she was being torn.

“It never happened like this before!”

“Didn’t it?” she gritted. “Didn’t it?”

“Edie, the whole train can hear you screaming!”

“Then let them—have your baby—instead of—” She could not go on. She had started to vomit now. At first she had the strength to vomit on the floor, but then she became too weak and vomit began to soak her pillow and hair.

“Edie—Edie—” He was clumsily trying to clean her up, and he placed something dry under her head. Time blurred and became red and swollen. A haze deepened in the wagon so that she could not see past Jim’s face. There were no contractions. There was just one giant pressure, and she bore down and pushed and pushed, but the baby would not move, and neither would the agony. She saw that the blood was bathing the lower part of her body; bile continued to mat her hair, and Jim could not keep her cleaned up.

The sun began to shine strongly upon the wagon. They seemed to be moving. Jim must be driving the team then, for a woman’s voice was with her now, but where was the woman? There was a whisper, not meant for her to hear. “She won’t stop bleeding!” Cool hands kept putting dry cloths under her hips. Then she remembered what she was doing, that she was giving birth, and she suddenly pushed again. “My God!” someone said. “She is being torn to pieces!”

Well, she was tearing up the dress, the silly little dress, with its tiny silly waist and pretty blue eyes. Who would need it again, the vain calico with its bright colors?

Someone began to weep softly. “I can’t stand it!” a voice said.

“Leave, child, and get some air!” another voice answered.

“No!” came the reply.

Yes! Yes! Why not? The dress is already rent and cannot be patched up. All of the color was leaving the dress now, that is what it got for trying to be so pretty and being vain about it too. Now they would throw the dress out upon the prairie and it would be hidden in the grasses with all of the other useless things, the empty cribs, the claw-footed chests, the useless tables.

Someone began to cry again. “Shouldn’t we call Jim?”

“No no! Not—yet.”

Jim. Her husband. Where had he gone? Out of the red air two hands wiped off her forehead, and another pair of hands held her own, her far-off dummy hands that remained attached to the blue calico dress. The voices belonged to Maria Frame and Mrs. Bentley, but how, oh Christ, could just two women save her from the white wolves? They were tearing at her insides. How could Jim have left her upon the prairie to be eaten like this? Didn’t he want his little baby? Didn’t he want his wife? What would her boys do without her in the years ahead? Oh, God, where was Jim?

Maria left the wagon, weak and sick, and stepped into the fresh air and sunshine. All of the wagons had stopped, and she leaned against the wheel of the Holmes wagon and cried bitterly. Ana walked to her and put her arms around her shaking shoulders. “She is dying!” Maria sobbed. “She won’t stop bleeding and she won’t have the baby!”

“Isn’t there anything anyone can do?”

“No no, nothing!”

Ana went into the wagon, and Maria finally straightened up and saw Anson Frederich riding toward her. She wiped her tear-streaked face. Anson pulled in his lathered horse and looked down at her. “Is she worse?” he asked, nodding toward the Holmes wagon.

“She is dying,” Maria said, starting to cry again.

Anson bowed his head. “I am sorry. Have you told Jim?”

“No. I will have to tell him now.” She suddenly noticed Anson’s horse.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“We have been looking for Lon Jacoby. He was riding lead and is missing. We can’t find him anywhere.”

Maria searched his face. “Is it Indians? Is the train in danger, Anson?”

“If it is Indians and a small band of them, they would not attack.”

“But we are a small train,” Maria said. They looked into each other’s eyes.

“Maria—Maria.” He had trouble forming his words. “If there should be an attack, remember that yours is the end wagon today, and that fresh horses are tied behind it.”

“Anson!”

“I will come to you—but if I can’t—if we are lost—you could escape the train on a fresh horse!” He bent from his saddle and clasped her hands. “Maria, you could escape at the first sign that the train is lost.”

“No! What could there be for me escaping?” Their touch upon each other tightened. “Anson,” she said suddenly. “I would be a good wife for you.”

“Maria,” he said, his expression changing, and making him almost a boy. “Would you marry me ever?”

“Anson, I will marry you! And now—oh, Anson, how could we die?”

“We will not!” He smiled warmly. They kissed, and controlled the world. “There will be a life for us together!” he said. Then he rode away from her, and Maria watched him until he and his horse were hidden by the wagons waiting ahead.

Far ahead, the men gathered and talked together in low tones. Danger had suddenly menaced them everywhere from the silent prairie. All sound had stopped, as though the heartbeat of the earth itself was no more. Every man was afraid. What had happened to the lead pilot? Was Lon Jacoby dead? Had he been killed by the Snakes? If he had been, where for Christ’s sake were the Indians now? Should they go on and try for Boise, or should they circle the wagons and wait? Wait for what, oh, God? If they moved on would they invite attack? If they stayed would they invite attack? If the pilot had seen trouble, why hadn’t he signaled? Where was he for God’s sake? Where was he?

Lon Jacoby lay near them, across a swell of the prairie, a gently sloping little knoll that hid him so well that the men searching for him had ridden by him several times. He was dead because he believed what most white men believed. He believed that the loading rifle was superior to the bow and arrow, and when he met a group of Indians he felt safe behind the shadow of his gun. When he saw trouble he immediately fired, and the sound of his one shot was not heard by the wagon train so far behind him.

It takes thirty seconds and sometimes longer to prepare a muzzle loader for reuse. The powder of the loading rifle has to be measured and poured, a ball pushed down the barrel with a ramrod, and the tube primed and the cap or flint adjusted—and in thirty seconds an Indian could aim and shoot ten arrows. If a man took one minute to reload his gun, he had to stand against twenty arrows, and the Indian could ride three hundred yards closer all of the time he was firing. But Lon Jacoby did not know this, and that is why he lay dead in the waving grasses near the men who were arguing about what had happened to him. He lay dead with only four arrows in him, but he was just as dead as if he had twenty.

Now Edith Holmes knew she was dying. She watched the sunlight shining through the canvas of the wagon. It must be a bright beautiful day, the feel of the sun was so warm. She reached for it. If she could hold it, she might not have to go. Had she had the baby? Would there be then, another child for Jim to care for alone? Poor Jim, poor helpless Jim. He must get a wife right away, a good wife for her boys. She prayed that he would do this. She was so tired and so sad. She could not even move the poor little blue calico arms. She could never hold one of her babies again.

She had always heard that a woman dying with birth went to heaven, but how could there be heaven when she would worry so about her boys? And she had been bitter at having each of them; she had cried because she had lost her pretty little waist and the free time of her girlhood. She had wept and stormed at all of the golden moments, a creature burrowing away from the sun.

Mrs. Bentley was gone. She and Maria had probably gone for Jim so that she could give him their last farewell. She hoped that she didn’t look too bad. She wanted him to remember her as pretty. She wanted just to touch him, and to touch her boys—and in her touch to tell her love and her sorrow.

Finally she dozed peacefully. She drifted softly into a warm sleep, heavy with the scent of the earth warming after a first rain. Near the garden, Jim came to court her again. His hair was slick and smelled of oil. He was so sweet and so shy. She was as gentle with him as he was with her; she soothed him and caressed him tenderly. Her dainty hands touched his rough ones. “Remember me gently,” she whispered to him. Joy was in his eyes because she loved him, and her boys appeared, and she touched each one with her love. Bright flowers bloomed all around them, and there was sweet flowing water, too, in the sunlight and the shade of that garden.

“Mamma!” a frightened little voice called in all of the beauty of that garden. Yet, she sighed happily, the small voice’s sorrow hidden in the petals of new flowers.

“Mamma! Mamma!” Again and again it was, and even in her own serenity, she knew its pain. She was jerked from her haven, torn between warmth and biting cold, and she became a chilled shivering thing. She gasped to breathe. The wagon was rocking crazily, wild shouts and running horses stampeded around her, and always came the cry of “Mamma!” and the tugging, tugging, the pull upon her of the barren earth. Why were they destroying the wagon? Wasn’t she dying fast enough? In the last convulsion of life she opened her eyes and looked up into the tear-streaked and terrified face of her youngest son. Lucid, she reached out to comfort him in his terror, but her little blue calico arms could not respond to her will.

There is a different death for each life; there are as many deaths as there are lives. Upon that day in May of 1846, the wagon train died a separate death from all of its people. It died quietly when the Snakes first attacked; only a long sad sigh, not apart from the prairie wind, traveled from one helpless wagon to the next, as death so swiftly and silently swept down upon them. The Indians came from a green and innocent rise, scarcely more than a knoll, and the later shouts, the screams and the frenzied cries of the men to form a circle with the wagons, were all the convulsions of death, for the corpse had already been formed.

The Indians were everywhere. The blue of the sky had been shadowed with their arrows. Amid the screaming of the women and the crying of the children, the pounding of the horses’ hoofs and the firing of the guns, the painted men darted, flashed, disappeared and appeared again, ten times as strong.

“Oh, Maria! Maria!” Ana sobbed. “We are going to be killed!”

“No, oh, no!” Maria said. “We will not die.” She grasped Ana’s hand. “Quick!” she said. “Get under the wagon!”

Their father was riding down upon them, and he reigned in his horse with difficulty. He gestured them away from the wagon, and Maria saw with horror that blood was running from his mouth. “Take horses—and go,” he gasped. “Train gone lost—lost.” His words ended in a new torrent of blood, and Ana clapped her hands to her ears and screamed. Edward Frame looked down upon his terrified daughters with an agony upon his face that burned Maria’s soul.

“I’ll cover—go,” and then he could speak no more but weakly clung to his gun and his horse.

“Father,” Maria’s agony cried, “Father—please forgive me. Dear God, forgive me,” but she spoke not one word to their father and led the protesting Ana to the horses tethered behind the end wagon. Tears blinded her, but somehow she cut out a bay for herself and a roan for Ana.

The horses were wild; the smell of the Indians, the smell of death, the rising clouds of dust, the shooting and the screaming had them white-eyed and dancing sideways in terror. Mounting, Maria glanced back at their father. Tears were streaming down his face and he looked at them both riding away without a gesture of farewell. Maria heard two horses pursuing them, and then heard two rapid shots. Their father had covered them and they had a chance to escape to the hills.

Out upon the prairie they rode, with the tall grass whipping at their skirts and the wind blowing all of the pins from their hair. Ana’s braids loosened and her hair billowed out behind her, brilliant and yellow even in the light of the fading day. She was riding behind Maria, hugging the neck of the roan in terror, and Maria remembered Ana’s fear of horses.

“Catch up!” Maria shouted back at her, for the gap between the two horses was increasing. “Kick him! Kick him!” Maria shouted, but Ana paid her no heed and did not even look ahead to guide the animal.