MY INDIAN MA TAUGHT ME never to dwell on the past, nor to contemplate the future. She always said “There is no Day but This Day.” (Only she said it in Lakota.)

When I told this to my foster ma, she said, “I do not think your Indian ma taught you that. I reckon that is the way you are made. I would even venture to guess that was the way she was made.”

Then Ma Evangeline added, “Mind you, that is a good way to view this world. Life does not hurt too much if you are just living in the present.”

Pa Emmet, my preacher pa, said that went along fine with what our Savior said about not worrying in Matthew chapter 6 and verse 27.

But sitting here in my ELIXIR coffin-to-be, I cannot help thinking about what led me here.

I do not mean just the events of the past month or two, or even the past two years.

I mean before that.

I mean the Indian Massacre that has been a Blank in my Memory since it happened.

Maybe because I have been here a few days now with nothing but wind and white snow, I have started to remember what happened.

My Indian ma, Squats on a Stump, used to say, “You will never be a Brave but you can be brave. Shut your Mind and Harden your Heart.”

I have been shutting my mind for a long time. Hardening my heart, too. But now it seems there is something hiding in the forest at the back of my mind, waiting to come out. Can I shut it out forever? Can you shut up a beast in a forest?

I am going to keep writing and let that memory beast come out. I am going to write what happened when I was ten years old and the Shoshone attacked our wagon and massacred our party.

I remember it was a fine day with a sky as high as Heaven. Ma and Tommy Three had been singing songs about finding gold and being rich. Ma & Tommy & Hang Sung & I were walking beside the wagon, for the prairie was smooth and green from all the winter rains, with grass as high as my knee.

Three days before, we had seen about a million buffalo to the north. The rest of the wagon train kept going but Ma said we could hang back & kill a couple & smoke the meat & also skin a few hides to sell. She hated skinning hides, but she liked money.

So we stopped. Tommy Three shot and killed two big ones within the hour. For the next two days, all four of us were skinning & chopping & smoking strips of buffalo meat. We worked by the side of a stream and the water ran pink as strawberries with all the blood we washed off ourselves.

The day after we finished butchering those beasts, we saw traces of a Shoshone hunting party. I found an arrow with their markings in the carcass of a buffalo and Ma said she had seen the prints of five unshod ponies. We were not too worried for there was enough buffalo for all. Great herds of them covered the plain that spring.

On what was to be the last day of our sojourn there, my Indian ma got mad at me and cuffed my ear. She was in a bad temper as she hated scraping buffalo hides.

So while they were not looking, I took an old flour sack & my Indian ma’ s Baby Dragoon revolver & went off without asking permission on the pretext of gathering buffalo chips for fuel.

I stayed away all day enjoying the wind in my ears & the smell of the prairie & being on my own. I did not start back with my bag load of chips until the sun was a handbreadth from the horizon. As soon as I got over the next-to-last hump in the prairie, I heard something like whooping or screaming. I could not be sure.

I ran forward & then I slowed & then I stopped.

Finally I fell on my belly & crawled.

My Indian ma was right. I should have shut my mind and hardened my heart.

Now I am remembering what those five Shoshone did to them.

It was awful.

By the time I got there, the Shoshone were going through our possessions. They were taking some things & smashing others & throwing some down on the green prairie grass. Not far off, I could see Ma lying real still & also Tommy Three & Hang Sung.

I watched the five Indians start to chop up the wagon. I saw them find Tommy Three’s secret jug of whiskey that he kept hidden from Ma in a bucket hung from the rear axle. I heard them laughing.

It was night by now and they had made a bonfire of our wagon and were roasting hunks of buffalo meat on it. They feasted & drank & did drunken victory dances. I was like a mouse entranced by a snake. I just stared and stared.

By and by, I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I remember is lying there in the dew-drenched prairie grass in the gray dusk of morning.

The Shoshone had gone, taking their horses and ours. I rose up and went over the hummock and looked down at Ma and Tommy Three and Hang Sung.

They were all three dead.

And it was my fault.

If I had not gone off in a “huff” to be alone I would have been there to help them fight the Shoshone. I am a good shot and there were five balls in my Indian ma’ s Baby Dragoon revolver. I could have killed those five braves and saved us all.

I built a burial platform for Ma. I used pieces of the wagon and strips of canvas not too badly burnt—though it should be a tree and buffalo strips—and laid her on it so that her soul could climb the Milky Way to judgment. The platform was not as high as it should have been but I did my best.

For the other two I dug graves with a serving spoon, which was about the only implement the Shoshone had left. I felt bad about burying Hang Sung out there on the rolling prairie because he once told me that if he ever died he wanted his remains to be shipped back to China and planted in the land of his ancestors.

After I had laid their bodies to rest, I sat down and sang my own death song. That was when I got the Mulligrubs for the first time.

A day or so later, another wagon train passed by. They found me sitting there in that bad trance. As soon as they started cooking food, my appetite revived me. A preacher and his wife fed me & cleaned me & took me in. That was Ma and Pa Jones, who were my foster parents for two years.

But now they are dead: also because I wasn’t there when they needed me.

Was I wrong in leaving Jace to the wiles of Violetta De Baskerville, just because he said I was bothersome as a deer tick? I should have swallowed my anger and gone back to Carson to warn him that she was in cahoots with an evil man. Or at least tell Stonewall that I had finally got the bulge on her.

I have been sheltering in this Elixir Wagon for two nights and three days. Now my pages are finished & my pencils all used up apart from this stub, which I can barely grip. But it does not matter because I have finished my account. It will soon be getting dark again. I have taken out the picture of Jace and his family & stuck it in a crack between two planks of the wagon so I can look at it before I die.

I wish my Original Ma & Hang Sung & even Tommy Three had not died.

I wish Ma Evangeline and Pa Emmet had not died.

I wish Jace’s wife and children had not died.

It is getting dark now and the snow is still falling in flakes as big as goose feathers.

Cheeya is standing awful still & with his head hung down. We are not thirsty but we are cold & hungry, tired & downcast.

When I started writing this account I said I wanted to be on my own. But I sorely miss my pards.

I reckon God was right when he said it is not good for man to be alone.

I miss my old pards in Virginia City: ornery Ping & Titus Jepson, who feeds me, & Bee Bloomfield, who pesters me.

I miss my new pards in Carson City: clever Barry Ashim & Mrs. Murphy, who feeds me, & Carrie Pixley, who pesters me.

I miss Sam Clemens, who cusses so well, and Belle Donne, who cusses even better, and ugly Stonewall, who cries like a girl.

So I write this final prayer: “Dear Lord, I know I lost Jace’s friendship by betraying him, but please will you make sure he gets this account so he can see I was only trying to help? And bless all my other friends and grant that I may one day see them walking the streets of Glory. Amen.”