Westward Hearts (36 page)

The captain cleared his throat. “We’re not trying to make you folks overly fearful of Indians, and we’re not trying to turn you into Indian lovers either,” he said. “We just want you to respect them. And that means respecting what some of them might be capable of. We don’t expect any trouble, but at the same time we don’t want to stir up any. So for the next few weeks we’ll double up on guard duty at night. And we ask people to be watchful and to stay a little closer to the wagons during the day. And if you go out hunting or fishing, you make sure that it’s in groups of three or more. And don’t let children go out without having an adult along.” He put a hand on Asa’s shoulder. “And I need you to attend a councilman meeting tomorrow morning. My wagon at sunup.” The captain turned to smile at the crowd. “How about singing that song for us now?”

After they sang the song, the group began to disperse, but Asa offered Eli and the captain some coffee and biscuits. The captain had other business to tend to, but Eli opted to sit a while. Elizabeth was glad he felt comfortable around their campfire…glad her father had extended hospitality.

“Sounds like you’re getting better on the guitar,” he told JT. “You must be practicing.”

“Thanks.” JT nodded eagerly. “I practice almost every night after chores are done.”

Eli pointed to Ruth’s feet now. “Those are mighty pretty moccasins, Ruth. Where’d you get them?”

She beamed at him. “Mama and I both got moccasins back at Fort Kearney.” She pointed to Elizabeth’s feet now.

“They look like they were made by Pawnee,” he told her.

“How can you tell?” Ruth asked.

“Those flowers there. I could be wrong. Might be Lakota. But I’ve seen work like that before, and it was done by Pawnee women.”

“You know a lot about Indians, don’t you?” Ruth said.

“I reckon I know more’n most folks.” He shrugged. “But that’s only ’cause I lived with a tribe for a while.”

“You
lived
with the Indians?” Ruth’s eyes grew huge.

He chuckled and nodded and then took a slow sip of coffee.

“How long did you live with them?” JT asked.

“A few years.”

Elizabeth was too stunned to speak. Eli had actually lived with Indians? How was that even possible? A white man cohabiting with Indians?

“Which tribe?” JT asked with interest.

“Crow.”

“Where did you live?”

“We’ll be near their territory when we’re in Fort Laramie. They’re mostly north of there. But they don’t stay in one place. They’re nomadic.”

“What’s nomadic?” Ruth asked.

“It means they move around,” he explained. “They follow the buffalo herd or where the fishing is good or where the berries are ripe. In a way it’s not so different from what you folks are doing. They take their homes with them.”

“You mean teepees?” JT asked.

He nodded. “You’d be surprised at how quickly they can put one up or take it down. The women help each other, and the next thing you know, they’re packed and ready to go.”

“The women are responsible for putting up and taking down their teepees?” Clara asked with a creased brow.

“Aside from hunting and fishing, which is done by the men, the women do most of the work related to their survival. It’s hard work being an Indian woman.”

“It’s hard work being a farmer’s wife too.” Clara exchanged a knowing glance with Elizabeth.

“In a way, you emigrants are living similar to the Indians, traveling in a group, taking your homes with you. Except most white folks don’t know how to travel light.”

“I suppose if we wanted to live in teepees and wear buckskins, we could travel more lightly.” Asa sighed. “We might have to travel more lightly when we start climbing those mountains.”

“Did Indians make your clothes?” Ruth asked.

Eli nodded.

“Mind if I ask how it came to be that you lived with the Crow?” Asa bent down to light his pipe.

“It’s not a story I usually tell, but since you folks are friends…” Eli wrapped his hands around the tin cup. “I had an uncle who was a fur trapper for Hudson Bay Company. He’d come visit us in Virginia once in a while, always telling us all sorts of tall tales. I was about Matthew’s age, and both my parents had passed on, when my uncle made one of his visits. He invited me to journey out West with him, and I saw no reason to say no. We left in the spring, and I discovered that I loved the traveling and living off the land and seeing new places. But it didn’t take long to realize I wasn’t overly fond of the trapping business. Still, I loved my uncle and knew he appreciated my companionship. Unfortunately, he drowned in the Bighorn River the second winter I was out there. That’s when I decided I didn’t really care to be a fur trapper at all.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, son.” Asa refilled his coffee cup.

Eli just nodded. “I’d decided to head back to Fort Laramie to spend the rest of the winter, but along the way I ran into a party of Sioux. I thought they were a hunting party at first, but they had a young woman with them, and something didn’t add up. After spending a day with them, I suspected the girl was being held against her will. My uncle had been friends with some Crow Indians, and I’d learned a few words—enough to figure out the girl was Crow. And I also knew there was bad blood between Sioux and Crow, so I figured that whatever their plans for the girl were, they couldn’t be good. As a matter of fact, I didn’t feel too safe myself.”

Everyone was listening intently now, and Elizabeth felt worried that this story might turn out to be as unsuitable for young ears as the one Gertie had been telling earlier. But Ruth and JT were so enthralled that she knew she couldn’t send them to bed early. Besides, she wanted to hear the rest of his tale too. Just then Eli glanced over at her, and almost as if reading her thoughts, he barely tipped his head before continuing.

“So I asked the girl, as best I could, if she’d been kidnapped, and it turned out my hunch was right. So that night, after the Sioux were asleep, I snuck the girl out of their camp, and we took one of their horses and got away from them. We rode long and hard all night and throughout the next day. I wanted to distance ourselves from the Sioux and get back to Crow territory.” He slowly shook his head as if the memory of fleeing those angry Sioux was an unpleasant one. “And when I returned her to her people, they were so thankful to have her back that they made me feel very welcome. So welcome that I stayed there for quite a while.”

“Do you speak their language?” JT asked.

Eli nodded.

“Were the Crow Indians nice?” Ruth asked.

He smiled. “Very nice. They were like family to me.”

“Thanks for telling us your story,” Ruth said politely. “It was almost like reading an adventure book.”

“A good bedtime story for you.” Elizabeth picked up her lantern. “How about if you bid everyone goodnight?”

Ruth looked disappointed but didn’t argue as she told everyone goodnight. As Elizabeth walked her back to their wagon, she could tell by Ruth’s lagging steps that she was more tired than she’d admit. “We’ve had a long and exciting day,” she said as she hung the lantern on the side of the wagon and helped Ruth climb into the back. “And tomorrow will be here before we know it.”

After getting Ruth tucked in and hearing her prayers, Elizabeth excused herself. “I want to make sure JT gets to bed too,” she told Ruth. And that was true, but she was also curious if Eli was telling any more stories about himself around the campfire. However, when she got back, Eli was gone, and it appeared that everyone else was heading for bed too.

“Time to call it a night,” she told JT. She bent to pat Flax’s head. “You too, old boy. Tomorrow’s another long day.”

“Eli is truly an interesting person, isn’t he?” JT said as they walked back to their wagon together.

“He most certainly is,” she said a bit crisply. She was just beginning to put two and two together regarding Eli. Remembering how he’d mentioned losing a wife and child to smallpox about twelve years ago, which was probably about the same time he’d lived with the Crow Indians, had gotten her to thinking. She’d heard scandalous tales of rough mountain men who’d married Indian women out West. She also recalled hearing reports of smallpox epidemics in the previous decade and of thousands of Indians dying as a result. Yes, she decided as she checked on the chickens, it all seemed to add up. In all likelihood, Eli had been married to an Indian woman.

She was just about to go inside her wagon when she heard something rustling on the other side of Matthew’s wagon. She froze, listening intently, and knew that she was hearing the sounds of footsteps. But not normal footsteps…more like someone trying to be quiet…sneaking around. She wanted to alert JT, but he was already safely tucked into his hammock beneath the wagon. And so she tiptoed to the front of the wagon, and reaching beneath the seat, she quietly slipped out the gun that was wrapped in an old shawl.

Unwrapping the Colt Dragoon her father had given her, she shivered at the feel of the cold metal. She knew the gun was loaded, and holding the wooden grip with one hand, she cradled the barrel in front of her and crept around to peek on the other side of the wagon. Her hand trembled slightly, and she wondered if she really had the grist to shoot another living soul if she had to. But one thought of her sleeping children and she knew that she would do anything to protect them.

But to her surprise, barely illuminated by the lantern inside Matthew’s wagon, she saw two people—a man and a woman embracing. She blinked and then peered hard, trying to determine who these clandestine lovers might be. And then, recognizing the shape of her brother’s hat, she realized it was Matthew! And he was kissing Jess!

Elizabeth let out a quiet gasp and backed up, worried that they might see her spying on them. But as she wrapped the Dragoon back in the shawl, slipping it beneath the seat, she felt anger toward her brother. Certainly, she had suspected that he was attracted to the girl. But to meet her in the night like this? What did Matthew think he was doing? And why was Jess sneaking around like this in the middle of the night? Tomorrow Elizabeth would have to give Matthew a big-sister scolding. Perhaps she would have a word with Jess as well.

W
hen Elizabeth found Matthew the next morning, he was just coming back from the river with a pail of water in one hand and a bundle of branches and twigs in the other—and he was whistling a happy tune.

“I need to speak to you, little brother,” she said in a stern tone.

His eyes widened. “Something wrong?”

She nodded, placing a hand on his forearm. “I want to keep this private.”

“What is it?”

So she confessed to having spied on him last night. But when she finished, he simply laughed, as if such displays of impropriety were perfectly acceptable. “Matthew Dawson!” she scolded. “What if someone else saw you? Can you imagine what Gertie would say? And Jess is such a nice girl. At least I thought she—”

“Jessica is a
very
nice girl!” He scowled.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure she is. And that’s exactly why you should respect her more than to sneak around at night like that.”

“I
had
to sneak like that, Lizzie. Otherwise someone would see us and start gossiping. I asked Jessica to meet me behind my wagon because I really needed to speak to her—in private.” He glanced over his shoulder to where the Bostonian girls were carrying water from the river and giggling. “Do you realize how hard it is to have a private conversation around here?” he said quietly.

“But it looks bad, Matthew. And what about JT and Ruth?” She lowered her voice too. “What would they think to see you and Jess, well, behaving like that? Can’t you see, it’s just not right?”

He frowned. “Then how else was I going to ask her to become my wife?”

Elizabeth blinked. “You asked Jess to marry you?”

He nodded with an expression that reminded her of when he was a little boy—right after he’d gotten away with something big.

“Matthew, are you serious?”

“Dead serious. And Jessica has agreed to be my bride.”

Elizabeth was stunned speechless. How had this happened so quickly? How could he be so certain? He’d only known her for a couple of months, and part of the time he’d assumed she was a boy.

Now he looked slightly dismayed. “Don’t tell me you don’t approve.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I’m just shocked, Matthew. Genuinely shocked. Are you truly engaged?”

“I asked and she accepted. She still needs to tell Ruby, and I want to tell Ma and Pa.”

“So you honestly plan to marry her then?”

“Of course I do. I already told Brady, and I planned on telling the whole family this morning—unless you’ve already tattled on me.”

“No, no, of course not. I haven’t told a living soul. I wanted to speak to you first.”

“So now you’ve heard it from the horse’s mouth,” he said as they walked back to camp.

And then Elizabeth admitted to how frightened she’d been last night. “I heard that rustling sound back between our wagons and started to imagine I might have to shoot an Indian,” she said quietly. “Do you know how unsettling that is?”

His expression grew grimmer now. “I’ve done guard duty a few times. Trust me, sis, I’ve given that some thought myself.”