Blue Dawn of the Shoshone People was a curiosity to every passing wagon company. The Big Road wasn’t crowded but she passed companies every little while. Most of them were entirely male, and they walked beside creaking wagons drawn by oxen. A few companies consisted of families, and these usually had wagons with the big sheets curving over the tops. Once in a while a single family traveled on its own, risking trouble but going at its own pace.
She rode beside the river the whites called the North Platte, with her two spare ponies behind her. Once in a while she shifted her high-cantle squaw saddle to another of the ponies, so that all bore her burden. The breeze-curried prairies stretched endlessly in all directions, and at some distant place they merged with the sky. Often they were rough and hilly, and in these places she feared trouble, apart from the eyes of other travelers.
She had evolved a way of dealing with these white people, and stuck with it. She never spoke English but only her own tongue, though she understood them well enough. She
scarcely knew what to expect. The all-male companies sometimes eyed her in a way that worried her, their assessing gazes obvious. Other times, when westering families crowded around her, parents sharply warned their children to stay away from the filthy squaw.
“Don’t you get close to her, hear me? You’ll get nits.”
“Hey, Ma, a wild injun! You think she’ll kill us?”
“Diseased, that’s what. Look at her, dark and savage, them eyes full of fever.”
She pretended not to hear. It was safer. But sometimes men who knew a thing or two about sign language or Indians waylaid her.
“What tribe’s you, little lady?” an ex-Confederate soldier asked. He was still in his shabby grays, but the stripes had been ripped off from his arms. He was walking beside a mule-drawn wagon with half a dozen bearded young men.
She ignored him.
“You understood me well enough, I’m thinking. Was I to guess, I’d say Snakes. You a Snake?”
She saw he knew something, and finally nodded.
“You going somewheres?”
She shook her head.
“I’d say you’s going somewheres. We’re inviting you to dinner, little lady.”
She stared, and moved to go, touching her moccasins to her pony, but this one caught her hackamore.
“Such a rush,” he said, grinning. He had watery blue eyes and a gray slouch hat, and a hairy face. She read his intentions all too well.
There wasn’t much she could do with only a sheathed knife at her waist, and half a dozen of these rather young drifters eyeing her. For the moment she would stick with her
silence. They caught her ponies, peered into the panniers, found the packet of letters, and read them.
“Looks like these are for some squaw man named Skye. But you ain’t Crow, far as I can see,” the blue-eyed one said. “You got you a man named Skye?”
She simply refused to acknowledge anything.
“You git yourself off that pony, sweetheart, and join up with us for some chow and we’ll pass a jug around after she gets dark,” he said. “Don’t pretend you can’t understand me. I read you mighty well, and I know damned well you’ve got every word I’m saying.”
She saw how it would go. Once they started drinking, it wouldn’t be long before they would have their way with her, and then maybe kill her.
“Miz Poontang, off that pony now,” one said.
“I do not know that word,” she replied.
He grinned. “Likely we’ll teach you.”
“I am on my way to St. Louis to see my son. He is in a school run by Jesuits.”
“Yeah, they got a school for breeds and bastards.”
“I don’t know those words.”
“Half-breeds, Miz Poontang, whelped by whites and colored.”
“I am very happy to go see my son.”
“Well, we’re right happy to spend a happy night in this happy place with a happy lady.”
“Please let go of the horse. I will go now.”
“Get down, little lady. We’re going to have us a party.”
The others were igniting a fire of kindling and buffalo chips. They looked as eager as this unkempt veteran in gray, but were leaving the matter to him. There was no one else in sight. They were a mile or two from the North Platte River,
where she might escape in the underbrush, but here they were in open prairie.
“Guess I’ll have to help you down,” he said.
“I don’t know your name.”
“Johnny Reb,” he said.
In one fluid move, he slid an arm around her waist and lifted her down. He pushed her to the ground and held her there with a strength that surprised her.
“Got some ponies here,” he said to one of the others.
That one gathered the lead lines and led them into the twilight.
“Nice party, Miz Poontang. We got a little jug we’ve been saving, just for this heah evening.”
Once they began sampling the jug, she would be lost. The others looked uncommonly cheerful as they did their evening chores in a lingering twilight.
“My husband, Mister Skye, was with the Royal Navy. Then he was a big man with the American Fur Company. Then he was a guide.”
“Husband, is it. You mean he took up with you.”
“I was given by my family, the Shoshone way.”
The talky one grinned. “Sho’nuff,” he said. “What did the white man pay, eh?”
“He gave the gift of blankets and horses.”
“And you went off and whelped.”
Why did this man talk like this? As if it was all bad or wrong or cheap? Mary thought maybe she knew.
“Colonel Bullock took my son to St. Louis when he was eight,” she said. “I have been sad ever since then. Many winters have passed, and now I will see him. It is said he learns well, and knows words and numbers. I am very proud of him.”
“Breed,” her captor said. “Just a breed.”
“Our friend Colonel Bullock watches over us.”
Johnny Reb grinned. “Yank colonel, eh? That ain’t the way to make friends with me, Miz Poontang.”
“This man, he comes from a place called Virginia. He says it’s a very good place.”
“Likely story, squaw.”
The company had completed its evening chores and was gathering at the fire now, an eager anticipation flushing their faces. She thought she had sealed her own death, letting them know of her connections. They could not afford to let her go, now.
She studied everything in the twilight, noting where her ponies were picketed, where her packsaddle was, where they had put her halters and hackamore. Darkness would be her friend, if she survived that long. She eyed them coldly, a deep dread in her, but one mixed with resolve. She might never see her son, but some of them would never see another sunrise. She feared it had come to that.
Why did they dismiss her so? Her race, maybe. These were those who had black slaves, or at least fought on that side. Anyone colored like her could be beaten and used. They might do both, beat her and use her before they killed her. It would all be fueled by the fiery water in that crockery jug. Maybe if they had enough of it, they would fall senseless and she could escape. But maybe they would force her to drink, hold her arms, pry open her mouth, and pour it into her. She had heard of such things.
She knew then what she would do.
“Hey, Johnny Reb. You want a party? Let’s party.”
He grinned at her. “We’ll take our time, Miz Poontang.”
“You got two jugs? Three jugs?”
“Just this one, sweetheart.”
“I’d like a jug all for me.”
The others were paying attention now, smiling. She wondered if they were going to eat, but no one was cooking anything. Apparently the evening’s entertainment trumped hunger. But the dark was the only friend she had.
“Hey, how about some eats, all right?”
“Who needs food?” Johnny Reb asked.
“I do. You keep me here, you feed me.”
“Nah, Miz Poontang, you don’t need a mouthful.”
“You make food. I make food.”
But she heard a cork squeal out of its socket and laughter. The plug was gone from the tan jug, and now the six men were all smiles. They settled into a small circle, legs the spokes in a wheel, as the night thickened. The smoky fire threw wavering orange light on them.
“Oh, it do smell like heaven,” one said.
“Want it neat, or cut?”
“What do ya take me for?” One of them lifted the jug and sipped.
“Ah!” he said, and laughed.
The jug went around. It came to her. She took a tiny sip.
“Oh, no, that ain’t how it’ll be, Poontang. Drink!”
She pretended. They watched hawkishly.
“You drink or we’ll pour it down you, bitch.”
She sipped slowly, not swallowing, and passed the jug along.
“Swallow, bitch!”
They were staring wolfishly at her now.
“Makes me sick,” she said, and spit it.
“Then get sick, squaw.”
But the jug had passed her by that time, and now the slugs going down male throats were longer and fiercer.
When the jug returned to her, Johnny Reb grabbed it, grabbed her, stuffed it into her lips, hurting her teeth, and poured hard. She gasped, coughed, and splattered whiskey over her heavy skirts.
“Drink!” he snarled.
He jammed the jug into her face and lifted it.
She clasped her hands around the jug to steady it, and then he let her hold the jug.
That was her moment. She lifted the jug upward, and then threw it with both hands into the smoldering fire. It shattered. The whiskey spread, and then flared in yellow flame.
“Goddamn bitch!” her captor cried, and threw her to the earth.
She rolled and sprang up, ran away from the flame, her heavy skirts slowing her progress.
He cursed, raced after her, grabbed her, and threw her down again.
She fought crazily, raking him with her fingernails, biting and writhing, but he caught her hair and yanked hard, throwing her head back with such violence that she felt something snap in her neck.
Then he was riffling her skirts, jamming them upward, his big chafed hands rough on her legs. She bit his arm, her teeth drawing salty blood, and he howled. She slammed a knee into him, catching his groin, and he howled again, his body folding. He let go of her, grabbing his crotch, and she rolled free. She didn’t wait, but staggered to her feet and plunged toward the mercy of dark, stumbling over prairie until she tumbled into a shallow depression, a foot or two deep, and there she threw herself to earth and stretched tight in the lee, where the bold orange light from the whiskey-fueled fire would not probe her. She scraped air into her
lungs, quieted her gasping, and then forcibly stilled her body in the shallow safety of the gully.
“Goddamn squaw,” her captive yelled. “She’s out there.”
“Get the horses in,” someone said.
“Thieving redskin’ll steal’em.”
“What’d you give her the jug for, goddammit?”
“Oh, shut up, damn you.”
“A tin cup. Shove the tin cup of it down her throat.”
“Go to hell, Jackson.”
She heard someone come close, and this time she pulled her skinning knife from its waist sheath and waited. If it was to be blood and death this night, then she would give and take, even if she was one lone woman among hard young men.
“She ain’t far, and we got her nags,” someone said.
“I’ll kill her. Breaking that jug. Goddamn squaw.”
“Who cares about the jug? I was looking for some entertainment.”
“Who’d a thunk a squaw’d fight back? They just roll over.”
“You think she’ll give us trouble?”
“We’d best find her and shut her up for good.”
“Fat chance in the dark. She’s down to the river by now.”
“We’ll find her. Get the horses in, and if she comes for them, we’ve got her.”
Mary listened bitterly.