St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (25 page)

of a conversation, "if your body's too tired, you

don't have to come."

I was surprised. Granny didn't usually make

exceptions--for anyone. I hid a wry smile. For

Granny to be worried, I must've been in worse

shape than I thought.

There was nothing I wanted more than to crawl

upstairs and sleep for twenty years. But Marilu

had waited all year to show me her new house. I

didn't know how I could possibly disappoint her.

So I got up--waving my hand dismissively--and

picked up our baskets. Granny appraised me and

nodded. She straightened out the dark green

breechclout on my Plains regalia, and together, we

went out the door.

It was freezing outside. Small wonder: The sun

was barely up, just peeking above the watery blue

horizon, the sky still smudged a charcoal black.

The stars had at last begun to fade.

Side-by-side, we walked out to the densely

crowded hospital parking lot. I saw Gabriel and

Rosa standing outside the doors of a giant black

SUV. Gabriel spotted us and waved; I smiled and

waved back.

"Hey, Skylar," Gabriel said when we had joined

him. "How are you feeling?"

I gave him a thumbs up. I couldn't wait for the day

when people stopped asking that question. Gabriel

opened the trunk of the SUV and Granny and I

stowed our baskets inside.

"Are you sure you're up to a big trip like this?"

Gabriel asked.

I nodded. I climbed into the back of the SUV

before he could decide otherwise.

Rafael was already in the SUV, the overhead lights

lit, his head hunched over Aubrey's battered copy

o f
Neuromancer.
I sat next to him and absently

brushed my fingers through the hanging curtains of

his hair. He looked up at me. "This is the best

book ever," he said, and buried his face in it.

Playfully, I rolled my eyes. I would have taken

him seriously if he didn't say that about every

single book he ever read.

The rest of the traveling party started filling into

the car. Rosa sat on Rafael's other side, her

regalia newly tailored to accommodate her round,

swollen belly. She caught my eye and smiled

sweetly, silent as ever. Granny sat in the row in

front of ours with her friends Mrs. Threefold and

Mr. Marsh, Mrs. Threefold garrulous, Mr. Marsh

obtuse. In the driver's seat was Gabriel. And in

the passenger's seat--Mr. Black Day. Where was

Mary?

"I heard you were sick," Mr. Black Day said

gruffly, and turned around in his seat. He had light

brown hair, but nowhere near as light as

Gabriel's. "I said to Aisling--this is what I said--'I

can fix him. You can fix anything with elm bark.' "

"Too true," Mr. Marsh said.

"And burdock. I'd mix some elm bark with some

burdock and you'd be just fine."

Well, I thought, laughing, I wish Dr. Demain had

thought of that.

"You're wrong," said Mrs. Threefold, who seldom

ever said the same about herself. "Red clover

cures cancer. Elm bark's about as useful as biting

your foot."

"How would you know? Have you ever had

cancer?"

"George, Hilde," Gabriel said mildly. "I think

that's enough."

The car squealed out onto the turnpike.

If you look at a map of the United States, Nevada's

not really that far from Arizona. The problem is

that the Paiute live in the north of Nevada while

the Shoshone live so far south, we're practically in

Mexico. So the ride from Nettlebush to Pleasance

takes about half a day.

I slept throughout most of the trip. At one point I

woke up when we were driving down the barren

Route 95, a country western singer warbling on the

radio. I felt feverish, my skin burning, my eyes

itchy. I didn't understand this. The cancer was

gone; I wanted to feel healthy already. Rafael's

hand was in my hair, his fingers ghosting the shell

of my ear. I didn't feel healthy, but I felt safe. I

buried my face against his arm. I hated being

weak. I hated it. But he never held it against me.

It was dusk when we arrived at the Pleasance

Reserve. We unloaded the truck and left our food

baskets at the community gates for the tribal office

to collect and distribute. We walked across

unhealthy patches of black soil, between decrepit

cob houses and sad-looking mobile homes. The

Paiute were waiting for us in the town center, the

camping tents pitched, the bonfire lit.

The pauwau with the Paiute tribe was always a fun

experience. The Paiute weren't much for dancing,

but they were full of stories about our historic

alliance. You needed only to listen to them to feel

yourself transported back in time. I sat with Annie

and Aubrey and a little old Paiute man with a

reedy voice began to tell us about the Pony

Express War.

"The Pony Express," said the old man, "was a mail

delivery service--and much glorified! Brave,

dashing men riding across the Plains on horseback,

delivering letters to estranged lovers! Stalwart

soldiers passing secret messages from fort to fort!

The white man did not concern himself much with

the Indian hunting grounds. The stampeding horses

scared away the elk and the buffalo and greatly

disrupted the ecosystem. But, no, this was not the

white man's concern. And this was far from the

worst of his crimes."

I knew a little bit about this story--Rafael had told

it to me a couple of years ago.

"In the spring of 1860, the Paiute and the Shoshone

set up camp together on the Plains. For the Plains

were the home of the Shoshone, and we Paiute

were quick to follow our Shoshone friends. But

misfortune that year was soon to befall us both.

"Among our tribes, there were two young girls

who were the best of friends. The one girl was a

Paiute named 'Kaisa Kaadu'--which means 'Little

Mountain Cat' in our language. And the other girl

was a Shoshone named 'Wahni Naipi'--which

means 'Little Fox Girl' in the Shoshone language.

"During that spring, Little Mountain Cat and Little

Fox Girl went fishing together on the Carson

River. The white man may have scared the elk and

the buffalo away, but the rainbow trout were still

plentiful.

"Suddenly five white men on ponies came riding

up the riverbank. Little Mountain Cat and Little

Fox girl realized that they were the Pony

Expressmen on their way home from a mail trip.

Little Mountain Cat and Little Fox Girl stopped

their work to admire the poetic sight of those

dauntless young men.

"The Expressmen called their horses to a halt and

dismounted, and they approached the two young

girls, calling to them in English. Neither Little

Mountain Cat nor Little Fox Girl knew what they

were saying. Ah, girls! If only they had run! The

white men encircled them and began to beat them

with their fists. The girls, blindsided, fought

back. This was not enough. One of the men struck

Little Mountain Cat so hard on the side of her head

that she bled through her ear and lost

consciousness. Little Fox Girl looked on in

horror. The Expressmen tied the girls with spare

ropes and threw them on the backs of the ponies,

and altogether they rode north to the Pony Express

station stop.

"There were perhaps thirty men lodging at the

station stop. And I am sorry to say that all thirty

men shared the girls that night, and did to them

such unspeakable things that I cannot mention

them. When finally the men had tired of their

company, they turned the girls away and forced

them to march miles back to the Shoshone-Paiute

camp.

"The chief of the Shoshone at that time was a

young brave named Pocatello, which in Shoshone

means Middle Road Maker. Middle Road Maker

was the strongest, fiercest, and most courageous of

the Shoshone. Middle Road Maker roused a

search party and looked all over for the missing

girls. When finally the girls dragged themselves

back to the camp, and Middle Road Maker came

upon them, the state they were in brought tears to

the warrior's eyes. Little Fox Girl walked on a

mangled leg, and the whole half of her face was

bruised black. Little Mountain Cat's head was

streaked with blood, her wrist curled as though

fractured. The girls' elkskins were bloodied and

damp, and Middle Road Maker realized that the

rank stench rolling off of their clothes was urine.

"Middle Road Maker ran to the girls and took them

into his arms, and they cried and told him the tale.

Then he brought them home to their wickiups,

where their parents received them with shock.

Middle Road Maker went in the dead of night to

the home of the Paiute chief, Numaga, or Gives

Grain, who was a very gentle man and much the

opposite of Middle Road Maker. And Middle

Road Maker told the horrific tale to Gives Grain;

and on that very eve, the gentle man became a

conduit of vengeance, and the two likeminded men

prepared for war.

"Friends, observe it; the joint force of the Paiute

and the Shoshone created an army such as America

will never see again! In just one day the Paiute

and the Shoshone stormed the Pony Express station

and decimated the assailants, and they freed the

tethered horses and set the station ablaze, so that

no one else would ever use it for such evil. The

flames towered so high and so prominent that Pony

Expressmen positioned elsewhere on the Plains

saw it as a sign of war. Skirmishes between the

Pony Expressmen and the Shoshone-Paiute lasted

for a whole year, during which the Paiute and the

Shoshone killed over eighty Expressmen, most of

them right here in Nevada. Finally the United

States militia stepped in and warned both parties

to cease their fighting. Both sides complied. And

so history says that the war ended in a stalemate.

But the truth is that the loss of so many mail

carriers and mounts, the two year delay in mail

deliveries, and the decrease in applicants willing

to cross paths with the Indians brought a final end

to the Pony Express in the form of bankruptcy.

And so the Pony Express War was the greatest of

Indian victories, and all fought in the name of two

little girls, whom we still love to this day."

The final note of triumph seemed to throw the

whole pauwau into a celebratory mood. The

Paiute started singing a charming little ditty called

Rabbit Guts. Everyone settled down to a dinner of

cornbread, hominy, and butternut squash. I was

terribly hungry, but I didn't want to whip out the

stomach pump in front of a bunch of

impressionable little kids. Instead I got up with

Granny, and we went looking for Aunt Cora and

Marilu.

Aunt Cora and Marilu were sitting aside a small

water well, listening to the hollow rattles and the

elderberry flutes. Marilu looked cute in her

cliffrose regalia and basket hat. Sitting with the

two of them was a woman I'd never seen before,

plump, but very pretty, a necklace of skink bones

around her throat.

"It still goes on today, you know," she said out of

the blue.

"What does, dear?" Aunt Cora said.

"I'm talking about the rape. Why do you think

Indian women are three times more likely to be

attacked these days than white women?"

Was that really true? I sat next to the woman. I

figured she was Marilu's mom; their noses were

the same.

The woman looked at me. She looked twice.

"Paul's kid?" she said. I had the feeling that she

was appraising me just as Granny would. "I'm

your cousin Melissa. But I don't like that. You're

too young to be my cousin. Call me 'Aunt.' "

I reached for a handshake. Aunt Melissa took my