Along the Southern Platte River
Jennie’s party of women from the House of Flowers in St. Louis had found their way overland to Westport, then turned northwest and followed the Missouri River trail until it forked off along the Platte River. About a hundred miles west of the junction, where a trading town for trappers and explorers was located, lay a tiny, isolated settlement. The settlement consisted of a sutler and general store, a blacksmith, a three-room “hotel,” and a small cluster of tent dwellings—about ten people in total, including Jennie’s girls.
Ben, her faithful driver—and the only black man for five hundred miles in any direction, as far as she knew—rigged a place for himself in the back of his wagon. There he could attend to the horses and guard Jennie’s valuable possessions: some cooking pots and a few dresses.
Clara, the young woman who had been caught up in the commotion surrounding the House of Flowers, stayed by Jennie’s side as often as she could. Jennie and the few other girls did not try to talk her into becoming a prostitute to earn her keep, so she did some cooking and sewing and started a ledger book that recorded any money transactions—few as they were—that took place between Jennie and some “gentlemen customers.”
The days were long and dry, hot during sunlight, and cool at night. The little village saw boatmen and trappers and a few Indians coming and going periodically. Most of the time, the men sat around in the front room of the hotel, which was a makeshift saloon with planks set over barrels and a few kegs of increasingly stale liquor that were rarely replenished. They played cards and gossiped like women—about the women in their midst.
Certainly, they didn’t turn Jennie away when she came. They were glad to see women—any women—let alone women as pretty as she and as nice as her girls. They became occasional customers too, though they had little cash to pay. Jennie came up with a barter system, so that she and her girls could obtain food and supplies in return for their services. Within about a month, they had the system down, and it seemed to work well for them.
One day it rained, and the men gathered for a card game in the stale-smelling saloon.
“How did we get so lucky?” Bartholomew Wills, the owner and only resident of the Platte Hotel, said. He had come here from St. Louis, like Jennie, on the run from the law. He was a natural-born gambler, but unfortunately not very good at it. His debts had caught up with him, forcing him to flee as far west as he could. There was nothing beyond this little settlement, as far as he knew.
The others were men of similarly questionable backgrounds. They didn’t probe into each other’s pasts and didn’t reveal anything about their own.
“I mean, to have Miss Jennie of the famous House of Flowers in St. Louie right here amongst us. Must have done something right at some time in our lives.” He laughed. He was holding a winning hand.
The others were silent, concentrating on their cards. Compared to the rest, Wills was a chatterbox. He liked to boast of his business prowess and successes back in St. Louis. No one believed him, and he didn’t even believe himself. But it passed the time in this dreary, lonely place.
Thunder rumbled and crashed outside. The men smoked cigars and bet on their hands.
Just then Jennie came into the saloon-hotel lobby. She held a blanket over her head against the downpour, but it hadn’t helped much. She didn’t wear a hat, so her black hair was damp and hung down over her lovely face. The men stopped and gaped at her as she stood there and shook her head. Drops of water flew everywhere, even over the card table, but the men did not protest.
“Well, Miss Jennie,” Bartholomew Wills said. “Welcome to our humble establishment. You light up the place like a lantern, like the sun, which we so sorely miss today.”
“Thanks, Mr. Wills. One of my girls is sick and I need some medicine.”
There was no doctor in these parts, unsurprisingly, so Wills kept some medicines and chemicals behind the bar. Mostly powders and potions that were months, if not years, old. He had won them in a card game with a traveling medicine salesman who had accidentally wandered far from civilized society. Word had it that the man had lost his scalp somewhere out on the plains after he had left the little village with no name.
“Hope it’s nothing serious, ma’am,” Wills volunteered as he rattled around among the bottles behind the bar.
Jennie said nothing. She thought she knew what was the matter with the girl: She was pregnant. It was probably the worst thing that could happen to the young woman. And it would be another mouth to feed for Jennie and the others. But her heart went out to the girl, who was desperately sick this morning.
“Thank you,” she said finally when Wills handed her a bottle of powdered stomach medicine.
“You’re quite welcome. Are you—er—that is, are the girls going to be around tonight?” he asked, somewhat sheepishly.
Jennie smiled, even though she didn’t feel like it, and she said, in her best professional voice, “Yes, Mr. Wills. I would love it if you were to call on us this evening at any time. You’re always welcome, as I hope you well know.” She lifted a wet strand of hair from her eyes and put it behind her ear.
“Thanks, Miss Jennie,” Wills said like a schoolkid.
The other men looked down in amusement and embarrassment. They would all probably come calling at some point that night.
Jennie took the medicine, put the blanket over her head again, and stepped into the rain. It was pouring hard, in sheets, and she stepped through mud puddles on her way back to the tent where the sick girl lay. She administered the medicine and helped the girl get comfortable, then went to her own tent. There, Carla was expertly sewing a torn undergarment for one of the other girls.
“Is Marie doing better?” Carla asked.
Jennie said, “Yes, but I’m afraid she’s in for a long haul.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean she’s probably expecting a baby.”
“Oh, my!” Carla exclaimed innocently. “How can that be?”
“It probably happened in the usual way,” Jennie replied.
“What way is that?”
“I hope one day you marry a nice young man and have lots of children, Carla. Then you’ll find out.”
“Oh . . .”
Jennie wished she were as naive and trusting as Carla—then again, she certainly had been trusting with Mr. Epson, the damnable thief who had stolen not only her money, but her house and her livelihood, her chance at a normal life one day.
She felt almost like a slave again, trapped in a place from which there was little chance of escape. But at least she was her own mistress, she did not have someone telling her what to do every minute of the day. She vowed she would never go back to that life—not ever. She would die first.
“Do you think I’ll ever get married, Miss Jennie?”
She was startled from her dark thoughts by Carla’s voice. “Surely you will—one day,” she lied to the girl.
Jennie went to the tent flap, opened it, and looked out on the rain. It reminded her of the old Bible story that she had heard as a girl, the story of Noah and the great flood that had covered the whole world. Maybe this rain would wash away her own cares and troubles. Maybe it would wash the whole world clean. Maybe, somehow, it would bring Art back to her—one day....
In the Blackfoot Village
On his second night in the Indian village, Art was brought before the council fire. He had eaten and slept and regained some strength, and he knew he would need it for whatever ordeal lay ahead.
They had taken his knife and his buffalo robe when they had captured him. They’d left him only his clothes, which were ragged and dirty, and his moccasins, which were worn but still good. So he stood before them, the Blackfoot elders and warriors, with no weapon or means of defense except his own hands.
He had heard how they might make him run the gauntlet, which meant taking blows and taunts from every man, woman, and child of the village. And after that—he didn’t know. But he assumed they would put him to death. How? Again, he had no idea, but he had heard stories of men being tortured or burned to death by various plains tribes. If he were a praying man, now was the time! But Art had never been particularly religious or churchgoing . . . though he did remember that preacher in St. Louis who had preached nonstop for hours and hours along the waterfront, and he had been spellbound by the man’s gift for words and his faith.
The men began speaking among themselves around the council fire and passing the pipe from hand to hand. Each man took a few leisurely puffs of the smoke when his turn came. They seemingly ignored Art, who stood in their midst. He listened, but could only make out part of what they were saying.
“He must be put to death. Tomorrow.”
“First we must hear his story. How did he kill Wak Tha Go?”
“What happened to him after the battle with our warriors? Why was he lost?”
“His own men turned against him and left him for dead.”
“We do not know what happened. He must tell his story.”
When the pipe had been completely around the circle, Brown Owl stood. He had gained stature among the people for his capture of this much-feared white trapper, Artoor. The men listened with respect to what he had to say.
“I agree with those who say we will hear his story. There are too many things unknown to us, too many questions.”
The elder, Buffalo Standing in the River, agreed with the younger man. “Yes, let the white one talk. Even if he lies to us, we will learn more than we know already.”
“I think he will not lie,” Brown Owl said. “I think he is a man who speaks truth, even if we do not like what he says.”
With sign and speech then, Brown Owl said to Art, the mountain man: “Artoor, you will tell us your story, what happened in the battle with Wak Tha Go and the others, then what happened to you that you were separated from your men.”
Since it was his first chance to ask directly, he said to the warrior, “Were you there at the battle on the island in the river with Wak Tha Go?”
“Yes, I was one of the warriors.”
“Were you the one who wounded my man Hoffman, the tall man with the yellow hair?”
Brown Owl smiled for the first time in a very long times. “Yes, my arrow struck his arm and drew much blood.”
“Yes, it did. But Hoffman is a strong man. He was not badly injured.”
“Then you will tell me, how did you kill Wak Tha Go?”
“It was not easy, but I sneaked into your camp. I stabbed him in his heart as he slept. I left my hat as a sign. I hoped your men would then go away. Which they did.”
Brown Owl was unhappy to hear Artoor tell this part of his story. But he had to grant that it took much heart for him to have done this deed. He could have been killed by a sentry or by Wak Tha Go himself, if he had awakened.
“We retreated but vowed to fight again,” Brown Owl said. “We will find your men and kill them one day.”
“Well, I guess you might do just that,” Art admitted. “Are you going to kill me?”
Brown Owl did not answer immediately. He spoke a few words to the other men in council. They grunted, nodded, and some raised their fists in a defiant gesture. None of it boded well for the trapper who was their prisoner.
“I guess that answers my question,” Art said. He was resigned to his own death now, as he had not been after the mauling by the grizzly, after surviving in the wilderness for more than forty days. In fact, there had been many close calls in his life. Looking back, he was surprised that he had survived this long.
But this didn’t mean he was going to give up without a fight. He had plenty of fight left in him. The only question was, how and who was he going to fight? He couldn’t take on the whole village—or could he?
The man called Brown Owl was speaking to him: “Tell the men of my people how you came to be here. What happened to you? Why were you alone when we captured you?”
Art figured this would buy him some time, so he told the story of what had happened to him after the battle on the island. He told them of his encounter with the bear sow that nearly killed him, then about how his own men had left him behind—especially McDill, who probably would have killed him if it hadn’t been for Dog’s vigilance. He told them of his weeks of wandering and healing, of his killing the buffalo calf and eating its meat, crudely tanning the skin to make the robe that had sheltered him.
“My Great Spirit was looking out for me, I guess,” he said in words and signs.
The men around the council fire could barely believe what he was saying. How could one man, a white man, do this—fight off a grizzly attack and survive for two moons without food or shelter? It was almost beyond comprehension. They nodded in admiration of this man.
“Truly, he is touched by the Great Spirit,” one of the Indians said, echoing the thoughts of all the men around the council fire.
Brown Owl too felt a great respect for Art after hearing his story. But he knew that the trapper must die, could not be allowed to live since he was an enemy of the Blackfoot people. So Brown Owl put it before the council, for their judgment. “Now that we know the power of our enemy, who among you would want him to live to fight us in another battle and kill our warriors?”
“But must such a man be killed?” the elder Buffalo Standing asked, looking around at the others.
“Yes,” Brown Owl said. “It saddens my heart in a way to say it, but this is the only answer: He must die.”
Again, Art followed the discussion as best he could, but he knew immediately what was happening. It was his death sentence.
His mind went blank, free of fear or anticipation of what might happen next. The Indians kept talking, debating how and when he should be killed. They came to an agreement that he would be kept under double guard through the night, then killed the next day at noon. He could hear their voices, but what they said did not penetrate his consciousness.
Brown Owl was speaking: “This man has killed a great bear and survived for a long time with wounds that would have ended any other man’s life. He has been alone in the dangerous country and killed a buffalo calf with just a knife. We must treat him carefully and with respect. He is a great warrior.”
The others nodded and grunted in agreement with the plan to put two men on watch over the white man who had performed these great deeds of strength and survival.
He would not escape the judgment of the people, against whom he had fought so valiantly.
One by one the Blackfeet rose and filed away from the council fire, leaving Art there with Brown Owl and two men who were assigned to take the first watch. Art’s hands were still bound with strips of buffalo hide, and they took him away to a tree near the council tepee and bound him to the trunk.
He stood there calmly, observing everything, watching Brown Owl who supervised the other men. Then the young Indian war chief spoke to him.
“You, Artoor, will die tomorrow. It will be a swift and honorable death for a warrior.” He spoke in words and signs so that the trapper would understand.
Art just stared at Brown Owl. He did not defend himself or beg for mercy. That would not achieve anything but loss of respect from these men. The two guards stood on either side of the tree and watched him.
As Brown Owl walked away, Art thought back to his visit to St. Louis and Jennie. He thought of Mr. Ashley and their business arrangement, how he liked and respected the man for his seeming honesty. He remembered the great General Lafayette, who had visited the city to a warm greeting by the citizens and the town fathers.
Then he remembered the itinerate preacher who had been moving among the crowd down at the waterfront. The man had worn a long, black coat and a black stovepipe hat that had seen better days. He was skinny, probably hadn’t eaten in days, with a narrow, hooked nose and pointy chin that almost touched each other, like a puppet that he had seen once.
The preacher’s thin, bony finger had stabbed at the air, and his equally thin body had rocked and moved, as he spoke in a singsong voice, spouting Scripture and calling down God’s wrath on the people of “sin and debauchery,” on St. Louis itself, a “den of iniquity.”
Art almost smiled as he remembered the scene and how the preacher had held him riveted, listening to his sermon, wondering if the man were crazy or just on fire with the word of the Lord. Crazy . . . the word of the Lord . . .
An idea formed in his head as the young mountain man stood there, a prisoner of the Blackfeet in their village, with no chance of help or escape.
Luckily, Brown Owl had made sure Art was comparatively well treated, and that he had drunk some water after eating a few bites of supper earlier, before the council meeting.
Art swallowed once and began to speak, to preach in the same tone of voice as the man he had heard on the wharf in St. Louis. “Hallelujah, hallelujah! Sweet Baby Jesus, come to me, Lord,” he proclaimed like a born-again, water-baptized, true believer in the Lord Almighty.
“Come to the aid of your servant who has wandered in the wilderness for forty days in search of your righteous blessing upon him. Deliver me, O Lord, from the hands of my enemies, from the clutches of the devil himself who has blasphemed your name. Release me from bondage as you did your people, freeing them from the Pharaoh. Release me from the lion’s den as you did your prophet Daniel, against the king who would have him devoured by the lions. Open the doors of your heavenly city and let the sinner enter the gates of salvation!”
The two guards were startled by their prisoner’s words, which were incomprehensible to them. But they were also mesmerized by them, by the outpouring of the rhythmic, chantlike prayers and proclamations.
“Lord, you sent hellfire and brimstone upon the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah who had raised up the devil to worship instead of the Almighty, and their evil deeds made a stink that could be smelled all over the world. You sent the plagues upon the Pharaoh, who would not let your people go, the water turned to blood, the frogs, the locusts and mosquitoes, the death of Egypt’s cattle, the boils on man and beast, the hail that fell from the sky, the darkness that fell over the earth, and finally the death of the firstborn of Pharaoh. You have the power to make right what is wrong and to set free the unjustly imprisoned.
“You stayed Abraham’s hand when he went to the rock to sacrifice his only son Isaac in obedience to you. You lifted up the suffering Job when he did not despair of your love. You made David a king when he was a simple shepherd and singer of praises to you, and gave him the power to slay the giant who made war on your people. Give this servant the strength to slay your enemies and to lift up your people in righteousness. Hallelujah, hallelujah! Even though I be spat upon and persecuted for your sake, you shall lift me up to glory if I am faithful to you O Lord. . . .”
* * *
In the morning, Art was still preaching. He had not ceased all night long. He was amazed that the words and stories from his youth came back to him, that he had the strength to stand and to preach throughout the entire night. Throughout the village the people were talking about this amazing man.
Everyone knew the story of the grizzly bear and Art’s trek across miles and miles of the badlands even though he was nearly dead. Over time it would become a legend among the Blackfeet, but now it was still a freshly told story, and the man who had accomplished these feats was still among them, a prisoner tied to a tree near the council lodge.
Like most of the village, Brown Owl got very little sleep through the night. He made sure the guards were replaced, and each time he came to the tree where the prisoner was bound, he heard his ceaseless preaching. He had never heard a white missionary preacher before, though he had heard about them from others.
Over the years black-robed priests and black-coated preachers had come among various tribes to try to convert them to their strange religion. They were called Christians, and they taught that the Indians were bad for not believing the same things that they did.
Brown Owl respected the stories of others and cherished the stories of his own people. Why was one wrong and the other right? That he did not understand. And it made him angry that anyone would try to force their stories on someone who already had his own.
Before the sun rose, the young Blackfoot war chief stood with some of the other people of the village and listened to Artoor’s strange and magical words.
“The Lord shall show portents in the sky and on the earth, and blood and fire and columns of smoke will be seen by all the people. The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the day comes, that great and terrible day. And all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved, for on Mount Zion will be those who have escaped the fires and plagues and the wrath of the one true God.”
Whatever he was saying, it sounded frightening and powerful to all who heard him.
Art stood as straight and tall after several hours of preaching as he had when he had first been brought to the tree and bound there. His eyes were dark and glittery, as if he were under a spell. In fact, he was possessed by a powerful spirit.
He almost didn’t realize what he was saying, but he kept talking, kept preaching, letting his voice roll out in the singsong cadence with the words that tumbled back into his mind from the times when he was a child and his parents dragged him to church services and traveling preachers’ revivals.
“Proclaim this among all the nations. Prepare ye for war! Rouse the champions of the people, who will defend them in my name. Armies, prepare to advance. Hammer your plowshares into swords, your hooks into spears. Even the weaklings will be given strength in the Lord’s name. Let the nations arouse themselves and assemble in the Valley of Jehoshaphat and be led by the champions of war!
“The sun and the moon will grow dark, and the stars will lose their brilliance. For the Lord God roars from Zion, He thunders from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth tremble at the sound of His mighty voice!”
For the rest of the morning, Art preached without stopping or faltering. The people of the village, men, women, and children, all came to the tree and stood and listened to him. All of them heard him, though they did not understand the strange white man’s language.
The elders of the village huddled in an impromptu council nearby and whispered among themselves. They were amazed and concerned about this man, wondering whether he was a white devil who had come among them to destroy them.
As the sun rose in the sky, the mountain man preached on:
“When that day comes, the mountains will run with new wine and the hills will flow with milk, and all the streambeds of the country will run with water. A fountain will spring forth in the temple in the great city. Egypt will become a desolation and the land of the enemy a desert waste on account of the violence done to the Lord’s people, the innocent children whose blood they shed in their country.
“But the land will be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation! ‘I shall avenge their blood and let none go unpunished,’ saith the Lord, and he shall dwell in Zion with the righteous ones.”
Throughout the night the people of the village had heard him preaching without stopping. Very few had gotten any sleep that night. Throughout the morning women and children gathered around the tree where the man was bound and listened to his strange words. They talked among themselves, saying they thought he was crazy—that is, touched by the Great Spirit who created and protected all things.
Buffalo Standing in the River met with the other elders in the impromptu council. They watched and listened to Artoor, shaking their heads. They decided to call a full-fledged council meeting.
Buffalo Standing went to Brown Owl’s tepee. There the younger man sat with his wife, who had been among the women listening to the prisoner preach throughout the morning. It was nearly noon, nearly time for the prisoner to be killed.
“Owl, my young friend, the men of our village must meet to discuss what we are going to do.”
“The decision has been made. He is to be killed today. He is an enemy of our people.”
“Yet he spoke of peace to many before Wak Tha Go came and told us we must fight him. And now we hear him speak and we think he is crazy. If this is true, he is under the protection of the Father and Creator of all.”
Buffalo Standing led the young war chief to the council tepee where the others awaited. A pipe was lit and passed from man to man. Each one spoke his heart about this situation. All agreed that the prisoner should not be killed, that he should be released because he was clearly crazy.
When Brown Owl’s turn came, he took the pipe and was silent for a moment. In the silence, from outside Art’s words penetrated the council lodge:
“Listen, my people, to the words of the Lord. ‘It was I who destroyed your enemies. It was I who brought you up from Egypt and for forty years led you through the desert to take possession of the Promised Land. I raised up your sons as prophets and warriors.
“ ‘But because you have turned away from the Lord, I will crush you where you stand. Flight will be cut off for the swift, and the strong will have no chance to exert his strength, nor will the warrior be able to save his life. The archer will not stand his round, the swift of foot will not escape, nor will the horseman be able to rescue the fallen warriors. Even the bravest of men will throw down his weapons and run away on that day!’ ”
Finally, Brown Owl spoke. “The words of my brothers and fathers are correct. Although I have seen this man Artoor in battle and know that he is a skilled fighter, I see also that he is touched by the Great Spirit and we must honor the Spirit by letting him go.”
All of the men nodded and grunted in agreement. Then, one by one, they rose and filed out of the tepee. Outside, the elders and warriors gathered by the white prisoner. Brown Owl ordered the guards to untie him.
Art stopped speaking for the first time in nearly eighteen hours. His mouth was parched and sore, and he staggered, had to steady himself by holding onto the tree. His vision was blurred, and he blinked to gain clear sight of all those who were gathered around him. At first he did not understand what was happening.
Brown Owl signed to him that he was free. Others stepped forward and gave Art a blanket, his own hunting knife, and a parfleche of food.
“You are free to leave us, for you have the protection of the Great Spirit. Do not come back to make war with our people, or else we will fight you, and this time we will kill you,” the warrior told him.
Art took the gifts that were offered. Without a word, he walked away toward the east, away from the village. His head swam with words. His heart was full of strange emotions, but he was glad to be free. Now he would find his men, come hell or high water.
He wondered if Dog was out there somewhere waiting for him.