Authors: Nancy E. Turner
Savannah’s other sisters’ name is Ulyssa, after General U. S. Grant, which is a name from the northern side of the line but I don’t mention that. Ulyssa is gentle as a lamb and tiny as a hummingbird, dark haired and pretty as if she could be a queen. If she was Queen Esther in the Bible she looks like a king would save a nation for her. Her eyes sparkle and her skin is smooth as a white feather and I’ve seen every one of my brothers look at her and turn beet red. They can’t open their mouths when she is around and they trip over their own feet like puppies.
I got my shimmy on and my drawers and one underskirt and I hear a funny whimper and turn around, and there with a knife big enough to skin a grizzly is a nasty dirty pair of men. They are wearing skins and wooly beards all filthy with tobacco spit. The one with the knife has got Savannah by the mouth with the knife to her throat and cuts her a little so blood drips fast on her wet skin. The other one is grinning real mean like and says, any one makes a sound my brother will gut her ’fore she’s dead.
All of the Lawrence girls are whimpering and yet I notice the men are staring hard at Ulyssa. As one makes a move toward her I stepped back a bit into the bushes. Alice saw me and I pointed to her to run, but as she does, Savannah lets out a cry and there is a new cut on her little throat. Alice crouched down like a scared rabbit and I scrunch myself down low. He throws Ulyssa to the ground and punched her with his fist hard in the stomach, and commenced to taking down his pants.
In my head I am screaming fight back Ulyssa! Fight back honey!
Pretty soon Savannah is crying softly and Ulyssa is moaning but he’s got her mouth under his hand and he’s hard on her. Something comes into my mind from the Bible about being sore afraid and I never knew what that was before.
When he stands up he is all bloody and he takes Savannah by the hair and the other fellow gets ready to take a turn on poor Ulyssa, but he says pointing to Alice, she’s next. Run Alice! Fight back Ulyssa! Fight back Savannah! But I cannot make a sound for Savannah will die as this fellow is cutting her just to watch her hurt. Ulyssa lays there meek as a dove and takes it and I am filled with fury that has no name.
Without a thought in my head that fury takes hold of me and I run back to the camp barefooted through the brush. Not saying a word to anyone I yank a rifle from a wagon seat and sling onto Roses’ bare warm back. My toes curl around her and my hair is flying and my skirts are up to my waist. I let go of the reins and steer her with my legs back to the water tank and hold on like an Indian and fire that rifle first at the man holding Savannah, the one who had already hurt Ulyssa. After I get him between his eyes, the other fellow lifted his self up to see and I got him in the side, probably through the gut, and he rolls off Ulyssa. I slung myself down and grabbed up Alice and then Savannah who had fainted away hard. You girls, I hollered, get your sister into that water and clean her up.
They all three raised Ulyssa up and towards the water then Ulyssa lifted her poor bruised face and screamed at something behind me. The gut shot one was moving, and I gave him another dose. When I turned back around I nearly fainted myself for standing so close to me I could hear him breathing was an Indian man in skins and bear claws and face paint. He was tall and brown as a tree, and he looked at me hard. Without saying anything he pulled a flint knife from his belt and took a scalp from both those men. He held them toward me and shook them kind of like he was a giving them to me. I pushed them back with the tip of the rifle and he said some words and dropped them scalps and then disappeared into the bushes. Only then did I hear his pony’s hoofs.
We was back to the wagons before the men, and there was a darkness in my insides like I never knew before. When Papa and Mr. Lawrence got back they wanted to know what was the shooting. So I told my Mama and Papa, and then there was the sound of the girls’ explaining in their wagon, I could tell from the whispers and then the tears.
I have never felt so sorry and so angry and so ashamed all at once. Mr. Lawrence went to see the men’s bodies and you could hear him roar like a stuck bull from the woods when he seen them. Mama and Papa just fret, walking around, not able to sit still for a second.
I want to run. I want to run and run and go far away, back to the Territory or off to some foreign land where there is no more sorrow. If I could follow Clover to Canaan that seems like a good spot. But I am too scared to move a muscle. I just sit here, aching to run away, and stiffened up so’s my legs wobble like a newborn calf, thinking about running and yet sitting holding on to this milk stool like it was the last handle on the earth there is. Mama came and held my shoulders and patted my head real gentle. She didn’t say nothing but her hand on my head did.
September 2, 1881
My face feels all pulled down and I declare I don’t think I know how to smile no more. Mama is crying saying it is her fault for letting us go but it is not. Albert don’t say anything to me but he pulled all my stickers out from running for Rose in bare feet, and poor sick Ernest raised himself up and told me I done a good thing and God surely knows it.
September 5, 1881
We move on like stone statues. I feel like my legs are made of wooden branches and my heart is a hard rock inside. For days I do not even tie up my hair and it flows around me like an Indian’s. I can’t find my bonnet and my traveling clothes are ragged and so is my soul.
Papa and I have a fever from so many mosquito bites they are about to eat us alive. They torment Mrs. Hoover and her face is swole up but she don’t notice, just drives them oxes like a haunt. Worst of all, none of the Lawrences, not even Savannah, will have a thing to do with me. They turn their heads when I talk and will not walk near me. Mama said she has heard of Quakers doing this it is called Shunned, for some act of sin. I asked Mama was it a sin to do what I done, and she said no, it was the same as David slaying Goliath, it was only to save Ulyssa and the others, not because of meanness that I did it. I would do it again, too. I am not sorry, but this has hurt my heart and spirit more than all the other trials, for being forsaken is worse than being killed.
September 7, 1881
I heard Mr. Lawrence saying to Papa that he thinks these Indians are Comanches and this is their land and we are trespassers, then they get into a big argument about whether or not it is right to fight them for our very lives. Mr. Lawrence says they have been mistreated by the U.S. Government Indian Agents and I’m sure that’s so, but we have no way to talk their language nor do they seem to want to listen. In my head I remember the day the Indian man came and hollered at our camp and hadn’t hurt anyone yet and I think he was trying to say something, but no one will lift their eyes when I speak so I don’t say anything.
Ernest says he wants to get up and sit by the fire tonight for dinner and so I am happy for the company as Albert lifts him from the wagon. Mr. Lawrence is making Ernest a wooden leg like his own and it seems to be a fine one all lined in the pocket with lambs wool. Soon he will be good enough to try it out. Good old Ernest lightens my spirit and he keeps looking at me with admiring in his eyes.
I took Savannah’s reader and her newspaper and laid them on her wagon seat tonight when she was asleep. It is as if I have done something to them and I can’t understand it at all.
Just as I begin to try to remember all that had happened, I see the fire sparkle in a pair of eyes in the bushes and I put my remembering away for another time and stay close to the shadows so I can watch.
We are closing in on San Angelo and should be two or three more days. It seems Papa was right, it is good ranch land, rolling hills and streams and not dry like around El Paso. It looks as if it gets good rain. There is brush and thick grass and it seems to be good grazing country. It is still rough going, and the brush sometimes hides big rocks that seem to jump up to try to smash our wagon wheels and trip our horses. Before noon, that rigged up axle broke. Papa goes to Mrs. Hoover’s wagon without even asking her and unlashes one of the spare axles and commences to jack up our wagon and put the wheels on the new axle. It is a strong hard wood and too big for our wagon so the wheels will not track with the front ones, but it is sound and will keep us moving ahead of the Indians.
While he is doing that, Mama says to me to butcher a chicken for noon dinner and I picked up the hatchet and took one from the pen and walked to a fallen tree to use for a chopping block. As I lay that chicken down she stretched out her neck and calmly laid her head on the wood making little cooing sounds. I lifted the hatchet and shook her. Fight back, chicken, I said. Then I hollered at it, fight back, chicken! In a minute I was yelling Fight back Ulyssa! Fight back Ulyssa! over and over like a lunatic.
I was standing there shaking all over and crying out and I could not chop that chicken to save my life. Suddenly over my shoulder I hear these words in Savannah’s voice, Well, you are WRONG, Papa! and then Savannah is there and taking the chicken and the hatchet from me. Everyone has circled around me while I was crying. Savannah says, I’ll do it for you, it’s all right, then she bursts into tears and drops the hatchet and the chicken and throws her arms around me and we both cry to beat all.
Harland took to chasing that chicken to have her for lunch and calling out come here, little Drumsticks, and we all smiled for the first time in many, many days. Before too long that chicken is turned to drumsticks and I felt hungry enough for two people but still had to share. Still it is a good meal and we all feel tattered but friendly again. Then it occurs to Papa that we are still in a line and easy to attack, but we are going to push on quickly and we begin to move out.
Not five turns of a wheel and we roll down a little ridge and into a wide, spread out circle of what looks like a hundred Comanche warriors with their bows drawn. As we look behind they have closed ranks and surround us completely. We have our rifles but don’t want to draw down fire because we are a lost cause.
About forty Indians break from the line and come forward and calmly surround our entire herd of horses. As we sit helpless and watch, there goes our future and all our stake in San Angelo. They have bows drawn, but they do not move to attack. Then one Indian man cuts from the line and moves into the herd, weaving through the horse backs until he comes to a roan with a white nose wearing a rope halter. He scoops up the reins in his hand and pulls Rose from the bunch and starts toward us. Calm as you please he comes right up and looks us all over, rides over to me and holds out the reins. I took Rose from him and then he turned his pony like a top on hind legs and galloped away. The same Indian was the one who scalped the bad men and offered me the scalps. There was a different kind of respect in his eyes when he looked at me than anyone ever had before.
September 19, 1881
We have made San Angelo and it is just a little place of a dozen wood buildings and some tents, and within a week my Papa had grown badly infected in his arm and had a spell of pain in his chest and grabbed his heart and died. That very day I had talked to him about our plans and he said, You all will do fine, just fine, and, I’m tired, girl, just so tired. Let me sleep some and then we’ll plan more. And then he went to sleep and then he roused and said he was strangling and, Help me! to Mama, and then fell down in the floor.
I have no idea what took my Papa away. How can we go on without Papa, I just don’t know. He was wiry and strong and yet gentle always. Oh, Papa. I always felt like I had a hold on things when there was Papa to turn to.
My brothers are sitting around asking each other over and over what will we do now. They ask me what do I think Papa wants us to do, as we have no horse ranch, and almost no money to start up one. We would have to hunt mustangs and break them ourselves, just us four children. Likely we will all starve. Ernest says Papa would want us to stay here and last it out. Harland says he wants to go home. He don’t understand how we have sold that place and have no home to go to. Albert just looks at me and shakes his head. He says what do I think but every time I try to think Papa’s voice comes into my head telling some tale or giving directions about a good way to trim barb wire or such.
Albert, I says, we are about give out now, and I hate to think of traveling all that way again through all that sorrow. Yet staying here means trying to spread out our money thinner than smoke. He said to me he will ask up and down for work, but as I saw him walking off, he crossed back and forth between the buildings and I seen his shoulders hang lower every step. We have lost all and are living in a little hotel room temporarily.
Mama is just a hollow ghost of a person now and don’t eat unless you make her, nor comb her hair. She just sits and holds her pilgrims progress quilt and rocks back and forth. The sound of the squeaking rocker is reminding me she is still with us and I think she will get better in time.
September 21, 1881
Mrs. Hoover sold out her wagon and gave us the money for a stake, saying she wanted no part of it and would have burnt it to the ground long ago rather than go on this foolish pioneering with Mr. Hoover, and besides she had a inheritance and was going back to Boston where she belongs. I saw her to the train and she was wearing the finest travel duds I ever saw and had four trunks of dresses she had been dragging in that Conestoga to load on the train.
Ernest is beginning to walk now, and he and Albert and I have decided it is up to us to take care of Mama for the rest of her days.
Albert asked us would we trust him with the money, so maybe he could put a clear head to it all if he knew just how much we have amongst us. He said did we agree with him that some kind of action was better than sitting and waiting our fate, which don’t appear to be a good one. I for one told him that taking a quandary by the horns and wrestling with it was a better plan than expecting it to go away. So I handed him my money, and we shook on it. Harland did it too, but Ernest was mad. Finally, though, he saw no other way for us to make it in this life, so he did the same.