A Man for Temperance (Wagon Wheel) (19 page)

WHEN TEMPERANCE CAME OUT of a deep sleep, she noticed the sun had not yet created the faint line of light in the east she had grown to look for. Nevertheless, she woke with a vague sense of uneasiness she could not explain. Moving as quietly as she could, she dressed in the shelter of the wagon without waking the children. Rose was holding Billy in the crook of her arm, while Timothy and Bess slept soundly under a coverlet. Temperance stepped out of the wagon and looked first underneath where Bent and Rena customarily slept. Slight shock ran across her. Neither of them was there. She stepped back and called their names softly.

“What’s the matter, Temperance?”

Temperance turned to find Belle had come out of the darkness to her left.

“Bent and Rena aren’t here.”

“Not here? Why, they’ve got to be!”

“Maybe they’ve gone to relieve themselves,” Temperance said. She called out, “Bent—Rena, where are you?”

Only silence echoed back to her, but suddenly Quaid’s voice came, “What’s wrong?” He had been sleeping close to the fire and evidently had slept fully dressed.

“Rena and Bent are gone.”

The three of them stood for a moment motionless, and then Quaid said, “Where’s Thad?”

“He’s not here either.”

“Well, you stay here. I’ll start making a search of the camp.”

“Belle, you stay here. I’ll help Quaid.”

Quaid said, “I’ll go over to the left, and you take the right. Go in a short circle and call their names. Maybe Thad took them for a ride or something.”

“No, his horse is still here,” she said.

They started searching, and the morning began to assume a milky luminescence. Temperance found herself breathing harder than usual, and she could not say why. Ten minutes later, however, she was moving in a circle and listening to Quaid’s voice when suddenly she stopped dead still. There at the foot of a small sapling she saw what looked like a bundle. She took a deep breath and then moved forward and saw that it was Thad with his hands bound behind his back and tied to a tree with a gag in his mouth.

“Thad!” she cried and rushed forward. He was awake, straining in his bonds, and quickly she untied the gag, which was a filthy piece of cloth. He spat and could not speak for a moment. “Untie—my hands.”

She could not untie the rawhide. It had been wet and was as hard as iron.

“Knife in my pocket.”

Awkwardly she reached into Thad’s pocket and pulled out the large pocket knife he always carried. With trembling hands she opened it and managed to cut the rawhide. Thad nearly fell over but caught himself.

“What happened, Thad?”

Thad stared at her, unable to speak for a moment, then he shook his head and the depth of misery was revealed in the tone of his voice. “Indians,” he rasped. “They took Rena and Bent.”

“How could they?”

Instead of answering her question, Thad broke off and moved toward camp. He approached the wagon, and Belle was waiting. “What happened, Thad?”

“Indians. They raided us last night and took Bent and Rena.”

Thad moved to his blanket and was pulling it to him and as he did, Temperance called out, “Quaid—Quaid, we found him!”

The two women were joined by Quaid, who came running from the darkness. “What’s up, Thad?”

Thad was strapping on his gun belt, and the light was growing as he pulled out the Navy Colt and checked the load. “It was Black Eagle,” he said slightly. “He took Bent and Rena.”

“How’d you get away?” Quaid asked. “I never knew him to leave a prisoner alive. He could have killed all of us.”

Thad slid the Colt back in the holster and filled his pockets with ammunition. “I think he came to get me, but he thought of a better revenge. He thought Bent and Rena were my kids. He took them and dared me to come after them.”

“How many were with him?” Quaid demanded.

“Five. They got a good start.” He moved toward his horse, and Quaid said, “Wait a minute. Let me get saddled up. We’ll catch up with them.”

“You’re not going, Quaid.”

“What are you talking about?” he demanded. “This is no one-man job.”

“That’s what it is.”

Quaid suddenly looked stubborn and shook his head. “You know better than that. I’m not going to let you tackle that bunch alone.”

Temperance was trembling. “If you hadn’t been drunk,” she burst out suddenly, “this wouldn’t have happened!”

“That’s right.” Thad’s voice was flat and as hard as a knife blade. “It’s my doing, so I’m the one that’s going after them. I told you I was no good, and I guess you believe it now.”

“No time to argue about that, Thad. Both of us need to go.”

“Got a favor to ask of you, Quaid.”

“What favor?”

“We can’t leave these women and babies out here alone. I’m going after them, and you and I both know it’s a good chance that I won’t be able to get them back. I’m going to follow them until I do or die. I’d appreciate it if you’d stay with the women and see that they get these other kids back to their people.”

“It goes against the grain, it purely does,” Quaid protested.

“It’s what you need to do. I’ll come back if I can.” He wheeled suddenly and moved to where Judas was tied. Quickly he saddled the animal, took the hobbles off, and then filled two large sacks with grain, for he knew he’d find little grass for Judas. He swung into the saddle, paused, and looked at Temperance. In the pale beginnings of the morning, he saw tears running down her cheeks. “I’ve got to go,” he said. He struggled to find the obvious words, then shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Sorry.” He turned Judas and kicked his side. The big horse moved at once, and Thad did not look back.

“How much chance does he have, Quaid?” Belle asked in a tremulous voice.

“It’s a long shot,” Quaid said. “I feel bad letting him go alone, but I guess he’s right. Come on, I’ll get the animals hitched, and
we’ll get out of here. We’ll get to Fort Kearny, and the commanding officer will send out a company to find Black Eagle.”

“Do you think they can?” Temperance asked.

“Most of them can’t find their nose with both hands, but a few of them know Indians. Come on, let’s go.”

As Temperance turned, she found she could not control her tears. Noticing this, Quaid put one arm around her. He held her tightly and said, “I’ve seen Thaddeus do some things that looked impossible. Don’t give up on him yet.”

“But they’ll be waiting for him to come.”

“You and I’ll have to pray for him, that’s all. He’s on his own this time.”

“What about Rena and Bent?”

“Cheyenne like to take children captive. They’ll make Cheyenne out of them if they can.”

His words chilled Temperance, but she knew there was nothing she could do. “We’ll ask God to guide him,” she whispered, then turned to the work at hand.

* * *

“BLACK EAGLE WAS TELLING the truth.”

Thad murmured the words aloud as he bent over the saddle. There was no need to look closely at the ground because the Indians had made no attempt to hide their marks of passage. The sun was climbing in the sky, and Thad moved at a slower pace than he would like. It was obvious the Indians were going at full speed; the tracks showed that. Besides, they had extra horses, and it was hard to cover the tracks of the band.

The land had broken up into hills that lifted themselves into the sky and soon gave way to washes and canyons, some of them
large enough to conceal a war party. Thad had to follow the tracks, but he also had to sweep the horizon, constantly searching for a possible ambush. He knew Black Eagle was the best of war chiefs among the Cheyenne, and though the chief might have a low opinion of Brennan, he would take no chances.

All morning he followed the obvious trail left by the war party, and with part of his mind he tried to anticipate what might happen when he caught up with them. One man attacking six Cheyenne warriors was not the best odds in the world, but doggedly he forged forward.

At noon he stopped by a small spring and saw that the Indians had paused there too. He drank but had no hunger. After resting Judas for an hour, he mounted and continued his pursuit. All afternoon he deliberately built a wall around his thoughts. He attempted to block images of Bent and Rena that trooped through his mind vividly.

Brennan had thought he was past the point of feeling responsibility for anyone else. His life as a loner had made caring for others of no account. But now a renewed sense of duty was driving him.

The sun reached the meridian, then began its journey into the west, and it seemed that the Indian ponies were slowing down. Several times he dismounted and leaned down close, looking at the prints. They were not the prints any longer of horses traveling at full speed, and he was grateful for this. There was no letup in his pursuit.

Finally the sun dipped below the mountains in the west, and it was too dark for him to follow the trail clearly. An impulse came to him to rush ahead, hoping to come upon the band, but that, he knew, would be futile. He unsaddled Judas, staked him out, and fed him some of the grain. He was not hungry, but he
knew that unless he was lucky, the pursuit might take several days and he would need his strength. He fried bacon and ate it morosely, then washed it down with water from his canteen. He sat before the fire, his mind blunted by the tragedy. He had been in tough spots before with Indians, but never when the lives of two children were at stake.

He fed the fire carefully, not needing the warmth of the blaze, but it made a cheerful crackling noise, and the orange dotting the darkness seemed to be a counterpart to his dark spirit. He could not sleep for a time, but finally he lay down on his blanket. Sleep did come but only in fitful snatches, and it was never deep, the kind that rested a man.

He came awake from a fearful dream he could not remember and then sat upright and found himself trembling. The dream had been unlike any he had ever had. The details were vague, but in the dream he felt he was falling into a hole that got blacker as he fell. He remembered crying out with fear and terror, something he had never done in his whole life.

He rekindled the fire and drew the blanket over his shoulders to ward off the chill. It was useless to make plans, so he gave up trying. But as he sat in the night’s thick darkness, he still felt the fear from the dream. With a shock he realized what it meant. Falling down the deep hole was what his life was like, and at that instant he could almost hear Peter Cartwright crying out with a voice like a trumpet: “Jesus died for sinners.”

That was the beginning of the worst night Thad had ever known. He sat there, and as he did, a portion of the Scripture came to his mind:
Prepare to meet thy God.
He had heard a sermon on that when he was just a boy, and he was surprised that it had lodged in his mind. He tried to shove it away, but it was almost like a physical force.
Prepare to meet thy God.

“I reckon I need to prepare, but I’m too far gone for that.”

His voice made an uneven sound, husky in the silence, but it brought no relief. The night was more than a physical darkness covering his eyes. It went down deep. There was something even deeper in his soul. And as Thaddeus Brennan sat there, he knew that God had found him at last!

He never remembered afterward exactly how it happened, but he could remember vividly that he had struggled against God, crying out finally, “I can’t do it, God! I’m just no good!” And he remembered Temperance reading the story of the prodigal son one night. Twice he got up and walked stiffly around the small camp, once lifting his hands up and crying out, “God, I don’t know what You want. I just don’t know!”

Sometime before morning he had begun to weep. It was something he had not done since he was a small child, but weep he did. And then finally, as he was weeping, something came to his mind, to his heart, or to his spirit, he could never know which, that said, “Just call upon Me and I will take the darkness away.”

Brennan remembered later that he called on God, claiming the blood of Jesus. His memory was never very clear, but the peace that came on him was clear. It came at dawn when the sun had broken over the horizon in the east, and it seemed that the brightness that warmed and gave life to the earth entered into his own spirit.

He finally rose, wiped his eyes, and muttered in a husky whisper, “Well, Lord, I’m a mighty poor specimen, but no matter what else happens, I’m going to do whatever You tell me. Right now, Lord, I know You love these children, and I’m the only one that can help them. And You’re the only one that can help me. So, You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” He saddled
his horse and broke camp. As he rode off, his face was pale and he felt weak after the struggle. But new strength came to him, and he knew, somehow, that life would never be the same for him again.

* * *

RENA AND BENT WERE huddled together, watching the Indians. From time to time one of them would come over and look down at them. A tall thin Indian poked Rena with his finger and said something to the chief, whose name they found out was Black Eagle. Black Eagle had answered shortly, but the tall Indian called No Horses was insistent.

Finally Black Eagle shook his head and spoke sharply.