These Is My Words (42 page)

He took off his hat and bowed to me and smiled, and said, sort of loud so everyone could hear, as I know they were straining to anyway, Mrs. Elliot, in the absence of your husband, and on behalf of General Crook, the commander of this fort, and the many soldiers whose lives have been saved by your husband’s courage, will you allow me the privilege of accompanying you in church this morning and seeing you safely home?

Well, you could have heard a pin land on a pillow in that room. Certainly, I said, if you don’t mind wiggly children over much.

Then the preacher came in and the singing started. Sergeant Lockwood whispered to me that he was much improved but still couldn’t draw breath to sing. He held first Charlie and then April, then Charlie again, and both of them were busy all through the service admiring and poking at his brass buttons. I remembered how hard Jack works polishing all those buttons for an occasion. It made me appreciate how Sergeant Lockwood has just now given to me a gift of his support and admiration for Jack, and also a gift of the time he would have to spend polishing those buttons again after my children got through handling and drooling on every last one of them.

I took Sergeant Lockwood’s arm when the service was over, and then there was such politeness and gentility around us, you would have thought I’d walked into a different group of people. He saw me to my door and I thanked him kindly, and said I appreciated very much what he had done. It was the first time I noticed what an unusually handsome looking man that Sergeant is. When he smiles he has a real sparkle about him and he would make some girl a fine catch, and lots of handsome children. He just gallantly lifted his hat and went on back to his quarters. Jack has some real good fellows at this fort.

November 12, 1887

Jack tells me that Blue Horse is a Yavapai warrior. They live a ways from here and the Apaches have tormented them for more than three generations, but they are not Comanches or Cheyenne or any of the tribes of Apache, so I have no reason to feel nervous with him. He has continued to make himself at home and now as the weather is cooler, he lets himself in the front door as if it was his own home, and sits by the fire. He just nods hello to me, and I keep on with my work, and he cleans the rifles or mends his saddle, or sometimes even tells April little stories. They are wonderful stories, and I find myself wishing I could put everything aside and sit like a child and hear more of them. I wonder if Indian folks write books that I could get them stories in, but Jack says he thinks only a few of them have writing if they have gone to a white school, and then not in their own language.

I am amazed that Indians are not friends with each other. I asked Jack to tell me as many tribes as he knew, and I was spell-bound by his words for a long time. No wonder the Army has hired him as a specialist in Indian Affairs, he has more knowledge up his sleeve than I ever would have guessed. He can name nearly a hundred tribes, and knows some of the language of several of them, and knows which are enemies of what group, and where there is trouble and where there are peaceful treaties. I asked him so many questions he got tired of explaining. And I said I would give him a recess, but I wanted to know all those things and more. He just laughed and said I was a regular taskmaster and would be a fearsome examiner in school, because there was no part of his brain I hadn’t picked and sorted through.

November 22, 1887

Jack surprised me good today. It is my birthday, and we left before sunup to head for the ranch. When we got there around noon, Mama and Savannah had made about the biggest spread of fine food I’ve ever laid eyes on. There was some kind of carrying on happening, and every now and then I would catch Savannah and Jack whispering together, and them winking at Mama, and Albert grinning like a hound dog. We had our fill of everything, and when I said the little ones need a nap and was going to put Charlie in the house, Jack held my arm and said, Not yet. It’s time.

Suddenly they were all around me in a circle, and Jack made a big fuss at clearing his throat, and then let out with a string of words like I have never heard before. He said so many Therefores and In-as-muches and such that I was lost in it all. In the end, he was smiling, and pulled out from his blouse pocket a big fold of thick, cream colored paper. It was addressed to me, although it had been opened and resealed at least once. He didn’t hand it to me but instead took a smaller folded paper out. Then he proceeded to read it.

M
EMBERS OF
T
HE
U
NITED
S
TATES
B
OARD OF
E
DUCATION,
ON THIS DATE OF
O
CTOBER 18, 1887,
DO HEREBY CONFER UPON THE STUDENT HEREIN NAMED
,
S
ARAH
A. E
LLIOT,
A FINAL EXAMINATION GRADE,
WRITTEN, FOR THE TWELFTH LEVEL OF NORMAL SCHOOL,
OF NINETY-FOUR AND ONE HALF PERCENT
.

After that I couldn’t hear anything but all my family hollering and hooraying and clapping. I sat in my chair, kind of dizzy. I passed even higher than Harland, and he is going to college. Oh my, was all I could say. Mama is so proud she could bust.

When we got the babies napping, we had pie and coffee and I read my document over and over. It is the best birthday of my life. I will never forget this one.

November 29, 1887

I took some time by myself today and went for a ride. It is so good to be loose from the children and the house for a spell, even a short one. I rode first out of town and up into the low hills to the west. Then as I headed back through town, I turned up to the dirt trail that leads to the new university building. There it was, almost up on one side, made of cut stone blocks. Men were working on putting blocks on one wall upwards of the third story. As I stood there, I was filled with a strange thought, that younger folks than me will be able to learn wonderful things that will always be a mystery to me, inside those walls. It was a kind of achy sadness, that here, so close, someone was going to learn from a real professor. Of course, I will never have time to go to college, and it would be foolishness, now that I have a husband and children to take care of and a ranch to run.

It seems there is always a road with bends and forks to choose, and taking one path means you can never take another one. There’s no starting over nor undoing the steps I’ve taken. It isn’t like I’d want to not have my little ones and Jack and that ranch, it is part of life to have to support yourself. It’s just that I want everything, my insides are not just hungry, but greedy. I want to find out all the things in the world and still have a family and a ranch. Maybe part of passing that test was a marker for where I’ve been, but it feels more like a pointer for something I’ll never reach.

December 5, 1887

Raining today again, and I was up since about three this morning comforting Charlie. He is cutting a whole row of teeth at once, and colicky and vomiting. Poor little fellow, I know he must have a headache. I remember being a half grown girl and getting my last teeth in and how it hurt. I don’t know why it upsets his stomach so much, but this has happened with every tooth he has.

April has taken today to take leave of her senses. It must be the rain and the fussy baby, and she is not getting enough attention. She upended the sugar jar and broke it, so there was sugar all over the kitchen and glass in it so it is all wasted and dirty, then she found my sewing scissors and thought Toobuddy needed a hair cut, and there is three big patches of hair gone off the poor dog, and when I sent her outside, it started to rain again.

All day long I had been at my wit’s end alone with these children, and just barely heated up some scraps of beef from yesterday and put in a little vegetable to make a stew, when here came Jack with Blue Horse and some other soldier I don’t even know as company for dinner, and on top of that asked me to cut his hair and draw him a bath as he was too tired to haul the water.

I am ever thankful that soldier took one look at me showing with a baby coming along, with my hair falling down, and the broom lying at a mound of broken glass, and supper boiling over on the stove, April wearing a dirty pinafore screaming for me to hold her, and just then the baby in my arms spit up all over me, and he said, You know, Captain Elliot, I forgot to rub down my horse, but I’d be kindly obliged if you’d let me have supper some other time.

When he left, I turned to Jack Elliot and said, If you are too tired to haul water, you are too tired to bathe in it, and I am fit to be tied. Your supper is on the stove and your children are driving me to distraction and April has lost the scissors under the house through a crack in the floor so there will be no haircut tonight. If that don’t please you, then I will put on a uniform and ride out of here tomorrow morning and chase around the countryside and you can wear this apron and tend these crying children and this drafty house from dark to dark and then tell me you think I should haul you a bath.

He looked real startled. It is the first time I have ever just purely lost my temper over anything Jack has done. Blue Horse laughed, but when I frowned at him he quieted real quick. I have just had my fill of men and their ways of ordering people around, lately. I handed Charlie to Jack, dripping and nasty and crying, and went to our bedroom and shut the door. Then I changed into my nightgown and went to bed. I couldn’t sleep with the sound of children crying and the dog barking outside, and Jack trying to hush everyone. I knew there were burned fingers and dishes banging around and water spilling on the floor and lots of fussing, but I just stayed in bed, and before long I went to sleep.

December 6, 1887

My kitchen was clean when I got up this morning, and the children were sleeping and looked like they had had their faces washed before they were put to bed. Jack was doing something on the back porch, and before long he came in and stoked up the fire and had a big tub, and said he was drawing me a bath, and please make ready. So I was mighty grateful, and I told him so. He said as soon as the sun was up he would go under the house and find the scissors and so he would wait to have a bath after he crawled through the mud. I told him I would be glad to cut his hair then, but he said, no, it was worth six bits not to make a mess in my kitchen for me to clean, what with everything else I had to tend, and he would go to the town barber. He said for me to have a nice soak, and if the children got up, he would see to their breakfast.

Well, I was still feeling pretty starched from all the turmoil in this house last evening, but I didn’t mind at all when he poured hot water and handed me the soap and then even took the brush to my back for me.

Then he said, Remember the first time I did this?

Well, I said, I don’t think I’d forget it as long as I live.

He said, You are beautiful.

I just had to roll my eyes. My hair was sticking out everywhere, and wet, and I am six months into bearing this next child. I look like a watermelon on a vine, I said.

What is more beautiful than that? Jack said. You are the best thing in my life, and sometimes I forget. Give me your arm.

Jack, I said, the children will be up soon.

He just laughed kind of low. I’m not after anything but tending to you, Sarah.

I looked at him kind of sideways. And I gave him my arm.

January 2, 1888

Jack is gone down to the Graham mountains with a handful of other private soldiers and a Federal Marshal, tracking some thieves who bushwhacked the U. S. Army Paymaster and took the Army payroll. The paymaster, a Major, is laid up in the hospital nearly beaten to death, and the gold is gone which was our pay, so I have to buy goods on credit until they either catch the men who did this or the government replaces the money. I hope to goodness they post a better guard around it. I am not using ranch money for drygoods because I have placed an order for fence wire and horseshoes and a new champion bull that is coming from Kansas, and it will provide more for our future to save for those things than to have an extra pound of sugar right now. At any rate, Mr. Fish knows me well enough to trust me with it until I either make more soap or the payroll comes in.

Sergeant Lockwood asked me to allow him to take us to town for church. Well, I said that would be fine, thinking how kind he was to come to my rescue before. We drove to church yesterday in my buggy and he sat with us and again let the children practically wallow in his lap with more patience than Job. Folks around were still holding their noses in the air, but instead of ignoring me so hard their eyes would shut, they seemed to be glancing and outright staring.

I had to fix supper anyway, so I asked him to take some with us. He did, and stayed part of the afternoon, and we all had a fine visit now that he is feeling so much better. He played with the children and talked about exciting things he’s seen and funny stories about being in the Army which I’ve never heard from Jack. It was a real pleasant evening.

January 9, 1888

I have a problem I don’t know what to do about or who to ask. It has nothing to do with the payroll money being late, but it has a lot to do with Jack being gone. Sergeant Lockwood came by yesterday morning, and asked me so kindly to allow him to escort me and the children to church again today. Then this morning, when I woke, I had the strangest feeling of being out of sorts. I got dressed, and dressed April and Charlie for church, and waited for him to come. But when I heard his boots on my porch, a cold chill came over me, and when I answered the door, I told him he was so very kind, but I was suffering from baby sickness again, and was suddenly not well enough to attend church. He looked sorely disappointed, and then offered to go to the druggist for me, or to stay with me. He would keep me company, he said, or he would tend the children and bring me tea and crackers, or any number of things. To all these things I said no, no, no, until he finally gave up and left. My heart was about to jump right out of my throat before he did, though.