Edge of the Wilderness

Three


If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

—Luke 14:26

“I’ll be along in a while, Samuel.” Simon stood at the open church door, bidding his fellow missions committee member good night. “I need some time alone to think about what we discussed tonight.”

From where he stood on the church steps, Samuel looked up at the full moon just visible through a break in the thick clouds hovering over St. Anthony. He adjusted his oversized hat. “I know you are hesitant to venture off without your children, Simon. But even if they went down to Davenport with you, they wouldn’t see much of their father. You’ll be spending nearly every waking hour with the prisoners. The board is right to urge you to leave the children here and to go alone—at least initially. Once we know the fate of the prisoners, you’ll have a better idea about where to settle your family. For right now, St. Anthony is the best place for them. Nina and I are delighted to have them stay.” He reached out to put his hand on his friend’s bony shoulder. “You know we all look on your children with great affection. What with Miss LaCroix and Miss Williams’s attentions, I daresay your main worry will be how to abide them after they’ve been spoiled within an inch of their lives.”

Simon nodded. “But I still want to pray on it.” He stepped back into the church.

With a sigh, Samuel handed a ring of keys to his friend. “You’ll lock up then?”

Simon nodded again, closing the door firmly before Samuel could say anything more. With his back against the door, he stared across the entryway and into the dimly lit sanctuary. Why was it, he wondered, that empty churches always seemed to give him such comfort? He entered the sanctuary, pausing beside the last pew to look up the aisle toward the pulpit. It was a simple church. No stained-glass windows soared heavenward. But tonight the clear six-paned windows gracing the west wall were bright with moonlight. And just enough light shone to illuminate the simple cross hanging above the baptismal to the left. His eyes on the cross, Simon made his way to the first pew and sat down. Before he had a chance to pray, a verse of Scripture came to mind: All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Simon leaned back against the hard pew rubbing his hands together.

All things. Not just the things you understand, Simon.

Not certain whether he was talking to himself or hearing some inner voice of God, Simon thought, But they want me to leave my children, Lord. And Genevieve.

You’ve been praying about returning to the Dakota people for months. They need you now.

Simon knew it was true. He was needed down at Camp McClellan. At the meeting tonight, there had been great concern for Reverend Masters. All the long months while the Dakota men were imprisoned in Mankato, Reverend Masters had faithfully walked the fourteen miles from his home in St. Peter to Mankato in all kinds of weather, arriving in Mankato on Wednesday and staying through the weekend, conducting meetings and teaching before walking back home for a rest the following Monday. He had kept the grueling schedule from December until April when the men were moved to Camp McClellan above Davenport, Iowa. He was exhausted. It was time for someone to relieve him. Would Simon go and help? the board had asked at tonight’s meeting. No one knew how long he would be needed, but they hoped he could leave for Davenport before the end of May.

This is the way, Simon. Walk ye in it. I cause all things to work together for good.

Simon ran his hand over the gray stubble sticking up out of his nearly bald pate and sighed. He had much to be thankful for. No one knew that more than he. Patient, loving, kind Ellen Leighton had married him without knowing she was getting a self-righteous, noisy gong of a pastor for a husband—a man who was cold and indifferent to emotional need. Not until Ellen died early in 1862 did Simon realize how much he had depended on her. But by shattering the world Ellen had created around Simon and their two children, God began transforming him.

Six months after Ellen’s death, Simon thought he might finally have changed enough to be of some real use among the Dakota people. But then that world was shattered too. It was August of 1862 and Simon had just begun a promising work in a new Dakota village when the Minnesota Sioux uprising occurred and everything about the Dakota Mission was thrown into utter chaos—chaos that was not yet resolved, even nine months later.

All things work together for good to those who love Me, Simon.

Simon looked up at the cross. Yes, Father. He began to think over the good that had come from the uprising. He was separated from his children at the outset, but God protected Meg and Aaron. They were with Genevieve and Miss Jane through the entire ordeal. And just when things seemed their worst, Daniel Two Stars appeared in camp and helped them escape to the safety of Fort Ridgely.

Unable to find Meg and Aaron, Simon had become involved in events that continued to mold him into a better man. After he helped a group of mission workers escape to safety, somehow God had given him the idea of attaching himself to the troops as a chaplain and going with them after the hostile Dakota. Simon knew it was God working in his life, because nothing could have been more unlike him. He had always been a man of books—never a man of action. But the outbreak changed that. Once physically weak and indecisive, Simon became lean and muscular. Living among profane military men forced him to learn a new kind of leadership. And while he was changing he learned to trust God in ways he would never have thought possible. He prayed day and night for his children and Genevieve LaCroix, Lord, I believe . . . help Thou my unbelief. He knew he shouldn’t doubt, but it had always been his nature to be a little suspicious of God, to confine Him to the attributes of righteousness and justice, and forget His love and mercy. After all, he reasoned, he had prayed desperately for Ellen, and she died. At the time of the outbreak he was still a little suspicious of God, wondering if negative answers to prayer might be his lot in life. But when Simon prayed for his children, God answered with a resounding YES! Eleven-year-old Aaron and five-year-old Meg returned to him physically whole and remarkably unscathed emotionally.

Leaning back in the church pew, Simon smiled and counted God’s blessings off on his calloused fingers. Neither son nor daughter hurt physically. Neither one damaged emotionally. His prayer life renewed. Self-righteousness nearly conquered. Usefulness enhanced. Simon listed blessing after blessing, good after good, praising and thanking God for it all. But still, even after he spent time thanking God, there was the dread at the center of his being, the awful reluctance to leave St. Anthony.

He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, putting his head in his hands. I’ve just gotten a family again, Lord. After all the weeks of separation and fear, after all the grieving for Ellen. You have given me a family again. Surely You cannot mean that I should leave them. Not now. He finally whispered aloud, “I know I shouldn’t ask, Father, but I can’t seem to conquer these feelings. Please, God. Give me time to win Genevieve’s heart. Just let me stay a while. After she says she’ll marry me, then I’ll go. Is it too much to ask?”

The phrase feed my sheep rang in his mind.

I have fed Your sheep, Lord. I’ve been doing it ever since we came to St. Anthony.

It was true. Together with the Whitneys, Simon had given relief to many of the white victims of the uprising. He and Aaron had driven literally hundreds of miles to deliver supplies and relief funds from sympathetic eastern churches. It was good work. He did it heartily and was blessed to learn that his son had a remarkable gift of mercy. The boy might be only twelve years old, but he had lived through things that either matured or destroyed children. In Aaron’s case, they matured him. In many ways Aaron Dane was already a young man.

I sent you to the Dakota Mission, Simon. FEED MY SHEEP.

Before the native prisoners were moved, revival had come to the camps at Fort Snelling and Mankato. Men who had never been open to the gospel message were asking to be baptized. Praying. Taking communion. It was a miracle. Workers were needed. They were barely able to keep up with the demand for books, for Bibles, for teachers. Mission teachers Miss Huggins and Miss Stanford had already left to work with the women at Fort Snelling and had been with them when they transferred to steamships to be taken to Dakota Territory just two weeks ago. Miss Jane would be going, too, as soon as Rebecca and Timothy Sutton’s situation was resolved. In many ways it was one of the most exciting times in the mission’s life. How like God, Simon thought, to do His best work when everything was in a shambles from a human perspective. I know that’s often how God works. I shouldn’t wait for things with Gen to be resolved. I just need to trust Him and get on with it.

But when he thought of Camp McClellan, he couldn’t help shuddering with dread. Two hundred Dakota men had been transferred there from Mankato. In Mankato they had been shackled to one another and fenced in like cattle. Treated worse. Falling victim to disease and dying—a few every week. There was no reason to think Camp McClellan would be any different. But they needed him. For the first time in a quarter-century of Dakota mission work, the Indians actually wanted missionaries. And if it were not for his children, for Gen—

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. All things work together for good to those who are called. And I am calling you to Mankato.

Sighing, Simon stood up. He stared for a few more moments at the cross. Then he made his way down the aisle and out into the foyer. Shrugging into his worn coat he stepped out onto the front stoop and pulled the church door closed behind him and locked it. It had begun to rain. He turned his coat collar up against the light wind and headed up the street, past neat brick homes as far removed from the log cabins he had inhabited over the past few years as the moon above was from the earth. If it stopped raining, he would take the children fishing tomorrow. Perhaps Gen would go along. They could picnic beside St. Anthony Falls.

Simon shoved his hands in his pockets and headed up the street toward the Whitneys’. When he arrived, he paused to look up at the rambling two-story frame house. It was another example of God’s blessing. Samuel and Nina had been sent west from Illinois to help with the relief effort for white refugees from the southwest corner of the state. They agreed to rent the house almost on a whim, simply because it was offered so cheaply they could not resist. But once they were ensconced in the small quarters at the rear of the first floor with their two small children, they began to wonder about the wisdom of taking on such a vast property. God verified their choice by proceeding to fill the rest of the house. Two displaced Dakota Mission teachers, Lizzie Huggins and Belle Stanford, arrived first. Next came Miss Jane Williams with young Rebecca and Timothy Sutton in tow. And, finally, Simon and company.

Simon walked slowly up the steps and opened the door as quietly as possible, pausing in the entryway just long enough to hang up his coat and hat. At the bottom of the soaring staircase he removed his worn-out shoes. He looked around him, thanking God that his children lay safe in warm beds just upstairs. Then he felt ashamed, knowing that at this very moment Dakota children were dying of disease and neglect while their fathers and brothers were held at Camp McClellan. While they were still in Minnesota, the men had engaged in a lively correspondence with their families in Fort Snelling. Dr. Riggs said he once transported two hundred letters back to Fort Snelling in one week. Simon wondered how the two groups would communicate now that they were so far away from each other.

At the doorway to what he had come to think of as “his girls’” room, Simon paused. He turned the doorknob slowly. Careful to stay mostly out in the hall, he peeked around the door and toward where his precious Meg lay asleep, her red curls spilling over her pillow. It had stopped raining. Moonlight poured through the one tall window in the far wall. Perhaps a picnic would be possible, after all.

To his right, baby Hope lay asleep in the crib they had managed to cram between the doorjamb and the corner of the small room. A soft, rhythmic gurgling accompanied her thumb-sucking. Simon smiled to himself and started to back out of the room. But then he allowed himself one look back to where, next to Meg, lay the real reason he did not want to leave St. Anthony.

She had come to Simon and his wife nearly three years ago, the autumn before the uprising. She boasted the flowing dark hair and rich brown skin of her Dakota mother. But Genevieve LaCroix had none of her mother’s placid nature. She had been forced to stay with the Danes by her determined French father and she did not hide her reluctance. Love for her father and loyalty to her dead mother’s wishes made her stay. with Simon and Ellen Dane, made her study and learn, but love and loyalty could not keep the emotions raging inside her from shining in her brilliant blue eyes. Simon smiled to himself, remembering Genevieve’s defiance in the face of what she considered to be his willful ignorance of the Dakota people. You think everything Dakota is bad, she had yelled at him one night long ago. She had been so furious she had stomped her foot as she accused him, You think everything Dakota should be forgotten.

He hadn’t appreciated hearing it one bit. Mostly because he had realized she was right. He had spent ten years among the Dakota and managed to learn very little. Only Ellen’s death had ripped him out of himself and down to earth where he could forge a real relationship with his orphaned children and a new life as a true shepherd among the Dakota. And that, he owed to Genevieve. He longed to cross the room, to reach out and run his hand through the torrent of dark hair. He loved the two narrow streaks of white that had appeared at her temples during the weeks of her captivity. She had earned them protecting his children. Every time he saw them, his heart swelled with gratitude and love.

He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the emotion that had overwhelmed him when, after weeks of uncertainty, he saw her, unhurt and healthy, safe at Fort Ridgely with Meg and Aaron; holding a blonde baby in her arms that she and Daniel Two Stars had found, miraculously alive in a ruined cabin. They had named the baby Hope and to Simon she had become almost a symbol of the future family he hoped to create with Gen.

This will not do, Simon said to himself sternly. He jerked his head out of the room and closed the girls’ door firmly, standing with his head bowed for a moment while he tortured himself with memories. After being reunited at Fort Ridgely, Simon had taken his family to St. Peter for a few weeks. Aaron read the paper the day after Christmas and saw Daniel Two Stars’s name on the list of the condemned. Screaming “No!” Gen leaped on Simon’s horse and tore across the country to try to stop it. But she arrived too late. He found her, pale and trembling, seated on a boardwalk, her head in her hands.

Simon had never seen grief like that before. It nearly killed her. In the weeks that followed she grew so thin her clothes hung on her. She trembled with weakness and fear at every loud noise. Once, he found her hiding between the bed and the wall, her hands over her ears, her face streaming with tears.

And then . . . and then they had come to St. Anthony, been reunited with the other teachers, and slowly, over the past few weeks, Gen had come back to him. She began to smile again. She began to eat. Her slim figure filled out. Her blue eyes shone with health and a newfound peace. She laughed as she worked with the children.

Sighing, Simon ran his hands over his face and headed down the hall to the room he and Aaron shared. Genevieve. He whispered it aloud, listening to the beauty of the French name as it floated into the night air. She had been there when Ellen died. Had loved his children and waited patiently for him to recover. And when, instead, he sank deeper into self-pity and grief, she had pulled him out. She had set him straight and pushed him toward his children. How he loved her for it. Loved her for crying in his arms when overwhelmed by her own grief, loved her for listening as he read the Psalms to her in a desperate attempt to help her.

Simon crept into his room. Disrobing in the dark, he once again made the case for why Gen should marry him. They shared so much. And yet, Simon thought as he laid his head on his pillow and turned his face to the wall, he knew that Genevieve LaCroix had never once looked at him the way she had looked at Daniel Two Stars. Perhaps she never would. He punched his pillow and closed his eyes. He would not pressure her. He would give her time. By God’s grace, he would be patient.

But dear God in heaven, he prayed, how he loved her. How he longed to—This will not do.

Just before he fell asleep, Simon decided. He would go to Davenport.