Edge of the Wilderness

Seventeen


Be not wise in your own conceits.

—Romans 12:16

Elliot Leighton lay on his back listening to Simon cough. He sat up. “We have to get you to a doctor, Simon.”

“I’m sorry, Elliot,” Simon said. “I don’t mean to disturb you—” He collapsed in another fit of coughing.

“Don’t apologize,” Elliot said harshly. “I’m not concerned about me. It’s you I’m worried about. You came back from the hunting expedition half dead from fatigue. If that weren’t bad enough, the thermometer has dropped through the floor—”

“I’ll be all right,” Simon wheezed.

Elliot got up and crossed the narrow room to where Simon lay. Feeling his forehead, he said abruptly, “You’re burning up.”

“It’s not that serious,” Simon insisted. He clutched his blankets beneath his chin, trying to will himself to stop shivering.

“Maybe not,” Elliot snapped. “But I’m going to get Mother Friend in here anyway. She’s the closest thing to a doctor available. Maybe she’ll know what to do.” He pulled on his overcoat and stumbled outside.

Simon listened as Elliot’s footsteps retreated in the distance, breathing a prayer of thanks. For a man who despised Indians, Leighton had come a long way since their arrival at Crow Creek late in the summer. Outrage at the conditions at the reservation had been followed by grudging respect for the men on the hunting expedition. Elliot’s going for Mother Friend signaled yet another change in attitude.

In an attempt to fend off another coughing fit, Simon stood up, breathing deeply, trying to ignore the pain across his chest. For a moment, he felt better. But then a wave of dizziness sent him crawling back beneath his blankets, where he lay shivering until Elliot came back.

“She wants you in her tepee,” Leighton said gruffly. “Said she has everything she needs there. Says the white man’s buildings are full of bugs. Doesn’t want to have anything to do with them.” He looked down at Simon. “Do you think you can walk?”

“Of course I can walk!” Simon said indignantly. He pushed his covers aside and stood up. Grabbing his coat, he had thrust one arm through a sleeve when he nearly toppled over. Elliot ducked just in time to get Simon to fall on his right shoulder, where he could hold him with his good hand. He braced himself and stood upright. “Just relax, Simon,” he ordered. “I’ll carry you up there.” Throwing a blanket over Simon’s back, he headed outside and up the hill, frowning to himself at how little his brother-in-law weighed. He didn’t think it possible, but Simon had lost more weight since they arrived at the reservation.

Mother Friend fussed over Simon like a mother doting on a grown child. She prepared a foul-smelling poultice and painted Simon’s chest. She burned noxious-smelling weeds and made him breathe deeply, inhaling the smoke. It sent him into another fit of coughing that brought the congestion up out of his lungs. Mother Friend inspected it and nodded with satisfaction. Elliot watched for nearly an hour. When he saw Mother Friend take the weed she had just burned and add it to boiling water and force Simon to drink it, he decided he was watching worthless incantations and witchcraft.

Mother Friend looked at him and smiled. “Go to bed, Silver Fox. I will send for you if there is a change.” She waved Elliot out the door. “Say a prayer before you sleep,” she said, patting him on the back. She lowered her voice and added, “Helping Words is very sick. You should have brought him to me before this.”

Elliot walked back up the hill toward the narrow shack he and Simon moved into when winter arrived. The night was clear. As far as Elliot could see, there was no glow of civilization. At home on a night like this, there would be glimmers of light in the distance from other villages. Here, there was nothing. Only the vast canopy of stars arching over black velvet that stretched away into the distance. Around him, the cooking fires in the center of each tepee made the skin and canvas shelters glow like Chinese lanterns. A wolf howled. Elliot shivered and rubbed his arms, imagining mounted warriors racing toward the peaceful scene, intent on killing. But Simon said they don’t attack at night, Elliot reminded himself.

Once back at the narrow cabin he shared with Simon, Elliot could not sleep. He stirred up the fire and sat beside it, watching the flames devour stick after stick of wood, remembering a conversation he and Simon had had only a week before. They were sitting before their meager little stove, alternately picking meat off a small roasted bird and drinking coffee when Simon began to talk about the days before the uprising.

“In the old days,” he explained, “each band had its own government. In camp, each band had its place in the circle.” He scratched a circle on the floor with the tip of his knife. “The circle was open toward the east for the rising sun. Another opening at the north or south provided a corridor through which the young boys took the horses to pasture and water. Each separate camp was grouped around a council tepee. Everything well organized, everything in order. I have seen a camp of hundreds be totally packed and moving in less than two hours.” He sat up and reached for his coffee cup. “They are a remarkable people. Perfectly suited to the land. They know how to use everything around them.” He gestured toward the door. “When you go out in the morning, look at the arrangement of the tepees and bark houses. You can still see the same circular design if you know what to look for. Even here the people tend to cluster by their old, camp associations.” He shook his head sadly. “If we whites had left them alone, they wouldn’t be starving.”

Elliot listened, more interested in Simon’s feelings about the Dakota people than the customs he was describing. As the weeks went by and he saw the people reacting to Simon, he began to see some of what Simon had said about their willingness to share, their caring for one another. He began to see them as people, and when he began to do that, he began to change.

“They have always been a very spiritual people,” Simon explained another time. He and Elliot had ridden out together after a herd of antelope someone had seen beyond reservation lines. When they came upon an odd arrangement of buffalo skulls, Simon said, “Almost everything in their lives has a spiritual significance. Of course most of us discount it all as godless superstition. But there is a haunting beauty in the symbolism of their ancient ways. Even the war paint means something. If a man wears black, it means he killed an enemy. Blue means victory.” He smiled. “There is language in the way the men wear their feathers. A scout’s feathers are painted yellow or white—and worn hanging down. Feathers standing up means he killed an enemy.” He paused. “Of course some of it we’ll never know, because they will never tell us what it means. Just before she died, I asked Buffalo Moon to tell me the meaning of a symbol on her moccasins. It was something I’d never seen before. She only smiled and said it was just a design she liked. I know better. But she took that secret to her grave.”

Elliot mused, “Someone should be writing these things down before they’re lost.” He was surprised to hear himself say it, but even more surprised to realize he meant it. The culture was obviously going to change, and much of it would be lost if no one documented it.

“Yes,” Simon said quietly. “Someone should.” He smiled at Elliot. “Perhaps that will be your ministry, brother.”

“Not me,” Elliot said quickly.

Simon studied his face carefully. “No,” he said finally. “Perhaps not.” He grinned and nudged his horse forward. “But I can’t tell you how pleased I am—how pleased Ellen would be—to hear you even voice the idea. It’s quite a departure from your previous position. And I don’t know anyone else who thinks the Dakota culture worth saving. Most either want to exterminate it completely or at best let it die a natural death through assimilation.”

“What do you think, Simon?”

Pulling his horse up, Simon thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t honestly know. Part of me wants them to change as quickly as possible because it will save their lives—and their souls. Part of me wonders if there isn’t a way to save their traditions and still win them to Christ.”

“Jane said she struggles with the same things,” Elliot said.

“Jane?”

“Jane Williams.” Elliot gestured toward a distant ridge where a huge buck antelope stood silhouetted against the gray sky. “Outspoken woman. Exasperating.”

“Pure gold, Elliot. There isn’t a finer woman in all of Minnesota.”

“Or Dakota Territory,” Elliot added under his breath. He put his reins in his hook and withdrew his rifle from its scabbard. “Unfortunately, she is completely dedicated to her beloved Indians. Whereas I am completely dedicated to returning east and seeing that my niece and nephew receive a proper education.”

“We can talk about that,” Simon said, lowering his voice and watching the antelope as it crossed toward them.

Elliot did not hide his surprise. “We can?”

Simon nodded. “Yes. After we get that big buck back to the agency.” He kneed his horse ahead of Elliot’s.

Later that evening, after they had returned to the agency with two carcasses on their pack mules, Simon resumed the subject.

“The fact is, Elliot, I don’t see any evidence of things quieting down anytime soon. Sibley has yet another campaign planned for next year that will keep the western bands stirred up. And believe it or not, he plans to remove most of the small detachment of troops we have in the spring. Even the cannon.”

“He can’t be serious!” Elliot interjected. “That will leave the entire agency vulnerable to attack!”

“Yes.” Simon nodded. “And it will keep everything in an uproar. I can’t believe the government is really going to keep the reservation located at Crow Creek. Superintendent Thompson’s glowing letters notwithstanding, someone somewhere is going to have to listen to the truth. Until the situation is more settled, I’d be a fool to bring my family out here. It really isn’t safe, and it wouldn’t accomplish anything.” He looked at Elliot. “Time in New York with their grandmother would be good for the children. I didn’t want to admit it, but I had thought about it even before your arrival. The difficulty was I thought it was too much to expect of Mother Leighton alone. But now that you won’t be returning to your regiment—” He stopped abruptly.

“It’s all right, Simon,” Elliot replied. “Perhaps it’s all for the best.” He smiled slowly. “I do rather like the idea of having children, and since marriage is out of the question—” He gestured toward the door. “Coming here has changed the way I look at the situation. I don’t share your passion for the ministry, Simon. God hasn’t called me that way. But as much as a layman can, I understand why you feel you have to be here. These people need what you have to offer. And if the children come to New York, I’ll do my best by them. And”—he put his hand on Simon’s shoulder—“I won’t be your adversary in the matter of Dakota ministry.”

Simon cleared his throat. “You know that I still intend to marry Genevieve. If she’ll have me.”

Elliot shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Yes. I expected you would.” He looked at Simon. “It will cause you difficulties.”

“Not with anyone I care about.”

“What about your children?”

“They adore Gen.”

“That’s not what I meant. Will they be—hampered in some way—looked down upon? I’m sorry, Simon. I’m trying to be realistic. White children with an Indian mother. People will wonder.”

“The children will rise above it,” Simon said firmly. “They know skin color doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it doesn’t matter in a person’s worth,” Elliot said. “But it certainly will matter in the way they are treated by people in New York. Is it fair to ask the children to endure that? To knowingly put an obstacle in their future?”

Simon didn’t speak for a moment. When he did, his voice was calm. “I have considered all of this already, Elliot. I’ll agree that perhaps it changes the situation a little that the children will be in the East where people might not be exposed to such marriages as much, but—I love her, Elliot. With no disrespect and with every sacred memory of your sister intact, I can tell you that I love this woman and I think she and I can have a good life together. And I truly believe the children will be better off with her as their mother.”

Elliot pursed his lips together. He sat with his head bowed for a long while. When he looked up, he said quietly, “Then I will stand by you, Simon. You and Genevieve.”

“Thanks be to God,” Simon said immediately. Then he asked, “Tell me what you meant earlier—about wanting children but knowing you won’t marry.”

He gestured with the hook. “Women positively recoil from this.”

“Has Miss Jane ever done that?”

He shook his head. “But then I’ve never approached her as a man interested in her as a woman.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know better.”

“Risk, Elliot. You have to take the risk.”

“Taking risks got my hand blown off at Antietam.”

“Which is worse, Elliot? Taking the risk and suffering loss, or shrinking back and living with the knowledge that you’re a coward?”

Thinking of Brady Jensen, Elliot was quiet for a moment. “I was in the hospital for weeks, Simon. I nearly died. I can’t begin to tell you what it was like.” He shuddered.

“But you came through. You survived. You should hear the Dakota men talk about you. They watched you struggle to learn how to handle that rifle on the hunting expedition. They were proud when you finally bagged that antelope. You are what we call a ‘man’s man,’ Elliot Leighton.” Simon nodded. “And again I say, you misjudge Miss Jane Williams if you think she sees nothing but a metal hook when she looks at you.”

“I would give anything to know that’s true,” Leighton said.

“You will have to give everything, Elliot—because you are going to have to overcome your pride and bare your soul to find out what Miss Jane Williams is really made of.”

Elliot smiled wistfully. “Isn’t it amazing that a man who has lined up and gone into battle quakes in his boots at the thought of rejection from a mere woman?”

Simon laughed. “There’s nothing ‘mere’ about Miss Jane, my brother. And I expect someday you’ll look back and know that the risk was worth the result.”

That had been a few days ago, Elliot thought as he sat alone in their tiny shack, worrying about Simon, worrying about Meg and Aaron’s future, and thoroughly terrified at the prospect of trying to court Miss Jane Williams. She would be polite, Elliot thought. She would hide her revulsion. But under no circumstances would she be interested in a freak. Elliot sighed and got up. He stepped outside and looked up at the moon. In the west, a bank of clouds was moving in. It had been a dry year. Elliot worried that just when he might have to convince Simon to return east for his health, it looked like it might snow. And he had heard about the storms that blew across this awful place.

Don’t let it happen, God, Elliot prayed. Not if we are going to need a doctor.