Cherokee Sister

by Debbie Dadey

  I started to ask Leaf if she was all right, but everything got very quiet. From our place outside on the ground I saw Captain Reynolds take two small boys and a woman older than Elisi out of the cabin. The little boys clung to the woman’s skirt. Next a screaming woman kicked Brownie as he pulled her out the door. The woman held a baby in one arm, and she fought off Brownie with the other. Brownie threw the woman and the baby into the dirt. Then the whole front porch exploded with fighting. Myers rolled out the door, struggling with an Indian man. He punched the man while Brownie kicked him over and over.

  “That’s not fair,” I shouted. “He’s outnumbered.”

  “Too bad,” Conners said with a grin.

  Captain Reynolds stepped on the porch as the Indian dropped to the ground. Blood was splattered all over the Cherokee’s blue shirt. I thought he was dead, but he groaned when Myers kicked his side.

  “We’ll sleep here tonight,” the captain said with a stone face. Then he shook his head, turned, and went back inside the cabin.

  Conners sat on the porch, his rifle aimed toward us. The other men went inside, leaving the hurt Indian where he had fallen. His wife huddled beside him. Before long the smell of frying bacon filled the air. I was so hungry, the smell made my stomach ache. But no one offered us anything, not even when Brownie replaced Conners on the porch. Brownie didn’t make a sound unless someone groaned. Then he chuckled.

  “What kind of man enjoys someone else’s suffering?” Leaf whispered to me. I didn’t know.

  We sat in the dirt, staring at the cabin as night fell. I knew that back at Mr. Eldridge’s, church services were over and Mama and Papa were looking everywhere for me. First they’d be mad, then they’d be scared. Mama might even cry. I didn’t want her getting worried. It was dangerous for the baby. It didn’t matter how much I fretted; there was nothing I could do about it, except pull another bead off my dress and drop it on the hard-packed ground.

  The night grew cold. Elisi pulled her woolen shawl around us as we all lay down. Beside us the other prisoners huddled together to sleep. The two little boys’ voices echoed in the night breeze before their grandmother quieted them in Cherokee.

  “They want to know why they cannot sleep in their own beds,” Leaf told me. I wondered the same thing as the baby began to cry.

  “The poor child is cold.” Elisi sighed and pulled her shawl away. Immediately the night air swept over me. Leaf and I sat up and watched Elisi hobble over to cover the woman and her baby. Silently the woman shared the shawl with her hurt husband. Elisi paused for a moment in the starlight, then pulled something from the leather pouch around her neck. She knelt down beside the man for several minutes.

  I lay back on the cold ground, looking at the stars. Mama and Papa were home now, looking up at the same stars, wondering where I was. For all they knew, I had run off or gotten eaten by a cougar. Maybe they wouldn’t look for me. After all, the baby was due and Papa couldn’t leave Mama and the farm. Maybe I had made Mama so upset that the baby had come early and it was a boy, as Papa had always hoped. Then they wouldn’t need me anymore, especially when I had caused so much trouble. I would have done a hundred chores without even being asked if I could just be safe at home again. A tear slid down my cheek, making me colder than the night air ever could.

  When Elisi came back, she sat between Leaf and me and tucked us under her big, heavy skirt. “Snuggle together,” she said. We scrunched up tight. Being close to Elisi made me feel as if someone was watching over me. I felt her shiver and I realized that Elisi was cold too. I tried to think of some way to help her, but I was so tired I fell asleep.

  Sometime early the next morning, while it was still very dark, I woke up. Someone moved. It was Captain Reynolds. I held my breath as he stood beside the little boys, the moon casting just enough light for me to see them all. The captain took the blanket from his shoulders and laid it over the tiny sleeping figures. Then he quietly went into the house. Myers grunted from the porch where he sat keeping watch.

  I burrowed my head back inside Elisi’s skirt and fell asleep again until the dawn exploded with rifle shots.

  11

  Morning Fire

  Elisi squeezed Leaf and me close as two shots boomed through the morning silence. She held us so tightly we couldn’t move. I didn’t open my eyes even when I felt the sun warm my cold cheeks. I was afraid to see what had happened. I hoped those shots meant help had come, that someone had taken Conners, Brownie, and those other horrible men far away from us. But I was afraid they did not mean that.

  “Get up!” Conners yelled from the porch. I opened my eyes as Elisi pulled her skirt away and the cold morning air rushed over me. I hugged myself to keep warm. The others did the same. None of the Indians had proper warm clothing. Only the two little boys had a blanket.

  Brownie carried a few sticks of firewood and some kindling from the porch. He dropped them in the dirt, then went inside the cabin and came out with a burning twig, which he used to light a small fire.

  “What in blazes are you doing?” Conners bellowed at Myers.

  “Captain said to make these Indians a morning fire,” Myers spat back.

  Conners shook his head and raised his rifle toward us. “Not too close,” he warned. “No tricks.”

  Nine of us gathered around that tiny fire, which most days I could have put out with my spit. But that morning I didn’t have any spit. Thirsty and hungry, I huddled as close to the warmth as I dared with Conners watching. I listened to the others speak in Cherokee and felt alone.

  I caught a few words that Leaf had taught me. Sv-no-yi meant night. Ti-s-qua-lv-da meant run. The rest I couldn’t understand, except for boy, a-tsu-tsa. When the old woman motioned to a boy sprawled on the ground at the edge of our makeshift camp I understood. The Eastmans, the first family we had picked up, were gone. They must have gotten away during the night, except for one of their sons. That was what the gunfire had been about that morning. One son had been shot and his family had been forced to leave him behind. Maybe they hadn’t even known he’d been shot and were still hoping he’d catch up.

  “We could have gotten away too,” Leaf whispered to me. “We could have been free.”

  “Or we could be like him,” I said, nodding toward the boy who couldn’t have been more than thirteen. The shoulder of his shirt was stained bright red. Elisi left the fire and carefully knelt beside him. She pulled his shirt away and Leaf went to help her. Elisi gave the boy something from the pouch around her neck and Leaf used Elisi’s apron to wrap his shoulder. The boy nodded his thanks.

  I hated to leave the fire but felt as if I should help. Before I had the chance Conners yelled at me, “Tell them to get back from the fire.”

  I looked at Conners and shrugged. “Get back from the fire,” I said to the old woman and her family. They looked at me with blank eyes and I knew they didn’t understand me.

  Conners was beside me and snarled, “Tell them in Cherokee, you fool!”

  “I don’t know how,” I explained. “I’m not a Cherokee.”

  “I won’t play that game with you, girl,” he snarled. Then Conners kicked me in the leg, knocking me to the ground, and aimed his rifle butt at my chest.

  Before he could strike, a wagon pulled into the clearing, brimming with furniture, supplies, and children. Conners left me sprawled on the ground and went back up to his chair on the porch. A white man and woman stepped down off the wagon and entered the cabin. The children stayed in the wagon, peering over the edge at us. Something about them reminded me of Miranda, the girl I’d met at the church meeting, a lifetime ago it seemed then.

  “Are you all right?” Leaf asked as she helped me off the ground.

  I rubbed my leg. It was sore but not broken. “I’m fine, but I wonder what they’re doing here,” I said, nodding to the children in the wagon. “They act like we’re going to scalp them.”

  “Maybe we should,” Leaf said. I looked at her, expecting to see a teasing smile, but her mouth was a
hard line.

  In a few minutes Captain Reynolds came out of the cabin. “Let’s move,” he ordered. Rifles were aimed at us as horses were saddled and the walk began again. The Indian man who’d been beaten leaned on his wife. The grandmother carried the baby while the two boys held on to her skirt. Elisi told me the family’s name was Bridge. The wounded Eastman boy staggered along by himself. He wouldn’t let anyone help him.

  As we moved away from the clearing the white family began carrying things from their wagon into the cabin. The children clambered down from the wagon and one of the older boys stuck out his tongue at us.

  “How can they do that?” I asked Leaf and Elisi. “That’s not their house. How can they just move in like that?”

  Elisi and Leaf didn’t answer. But I knew they were thinking the same thing I was. Someone was moving into the trading post.

  Then I remembered Miranda saying her papa wanted a place by the river. My stomach churned. Elisi’s store was near the river.

  12

  Rain

  West. We always moved west. We walked in silence, too troubled by what we were leaving behind to fear the Dark Land that lay ahead.

  “Remember the time Cobb took us hunting?” Leaf whispered, interrupting my thoughts.

  I had to smile. Cobb had spent days helping us make tiny bows with arrows. Then we’d walked into the woods like regular hunters. Of course, we hadn’t caught anything, but that didn’t matter because Cobb had showed us so many things about the woods.

  “Never eat this plant,” Cobb had pointed out. “It will kill you overnight.” I looked along the trail, hoping to see the plant. If I could get the men to eat the plant our troubles would be over. I didn’t really want to kill the men, but it didn’t matter because I didn’t see the plant.

  I did see Leaf watching the sky, and that reminded me of something else Cobb had taught us, how to find our way by the sun. That was how I knew we were traveling west, into the land of Leaf’s nightmares.

  “Cobb will find us,” Leaf said to me.

  I nodded with a big lump in my throat. I wanted to tell Leaf the truth. I knew Cobb wasn’t coming. But I couldn’t say those words to my best friend.

  Two days of walking with little water and no food had made my legs feel like fence posts. I had never been so tired. I tried to keep my mind off the terrible journey. I thought about the only other long trip I’d ever taken when my family traveled from South Carolina to our new Georgia home, just outside the Indian territory. In South Carolina Papa had shared Mama’s family’s farm, hoping someday to save enough to buy his own. But when Papa’s brother died and left him the Georgia land, Papa couldn’t wait to move. He was excited about his new farm, but Mama was sad about leaving Grandma and Grandpa behind.

  It had been a long, miserable journey. I had thought it would never end. I was only five, but I still remembered how awful it had been. But this was much worse. At least then I could ride in the wagon when I got tired. Sometimes I had even slept on the bouncing wagon seat, leaning against Mama. I had no one to lean against now.

  Elisi walked slowly but steadily, never complaining. I was certain she wasn’t pretending anymore. She was really hurt. The Eastman boy who’d been shot staggered along, and I wondered if his parents were watching us, waiting for their chance to help him. If they were, they must have suffered to see him struggle so. Maybe they were nowhere near us. Maybe they had no choice but to leave him behind to go to the Dark Land with us.

  We were all struggling, thinking of those we had left behind, hoping they would rescue us. I knew Cobb could not come, and the boy’s family had no strength against this small army. Would Papa be as helpless? Maybe I was foolish to think he could save us.

  The Bridge family seemed the weakest. The baby cried almost constantly and the two little boys whimpered, clinging to their grandmother and making it hard for her to walk. But the worst sound was the grandmother’s wails, the most pitiful, chilling noise I’d ever heard. I was almost glad when Conners yelled, “Shut up or I’ll shoot the bunch of you!” I don’t think they needed to know English to understand his threat.

  Leaf must have felt sorry for the little boys because she scooped them up and carried one in each arm. I was so tired I didn’t know how Leaf had the strength, but I also knew I couldn’t let her carry them alone. I took a little boy of about three. He smiled at me with sparkling brown eyes, played with some of the beads on my dress for a while, then fell fast asleep on my shoulder, sucking his thumb.

  At first it was pleasant to hear him sucking away and to feel his warm body close to mine. Before long, though, my shoulder felt as if it would break under his weight and my right arm went numb. I tried putting him on my left shoulder, and that helped for a while, until that arm lost its feeling too.

  Then the rain came. It fell lightly at first and cooled our bodies, sticky from the afternoon heat. I held out my tongue to catch some water.

  As the trail became steeper, the skies ripped open and dropped streams of water on our heads. Tiny, muddy rivers formed around our feet, and the dense, driving rain made seeing difficult. I worried that our trail would be washed away, along with my beads. Desperately I tore another bead off and dropped it in the mud beside me.

  “Oh, no,” I moaned when I stumbled over a rock and almost dropped the little boy. “Can things get worse? Rain is all we need.”

  “Maybe it is.” Leaf stooped to help me up on the narrow tree-lined trail. “In this mess we should be able to slip away easily.”

  I looked down the embankment beside us. There was no way a horse could follow us there. The men would have to chase us on foot.

  “But what about Elisi?” I asked. “Is she up to it?”

  Leaf nodded, then flung the rain off her face. Conners shouted and we started walking again.

  “Give your child to his elisi,” Leaf commanded. I obeyed and felt guilty that the little ones had to walk again. It gave me chills to think about leaving them behind.

  I worried as I watched Leaf hold Elisi’s arm. Could we do it? Could we get away? Or would we end up shot, like the boy? Or worse? Elisi shook her head several times. I could hear only a little of what Leaf said because of the storm, but I knew she was telling Elisi that we should make a break for it.

  “It is our chance to get away,” Leaf said.

  Elisi shook her head. “It is too dangerous. I do not want you to get hurt.”

  Leaf kept talking and talking. I heard her say, “I do not want to go to the Dark Land.” Thunder rumbled in the distance and my heart beat so that I thought it would jump out of my chest. If Elisi agreed, what would happen? Even if we did get away, would they chase us forever? If we found our way home would they take us again? Leaf and Elisi might not even have a home anymore.

  Leaf must have been persuasive, because finally Elisi nodded her head. Leaf turned. Our eyes met. Now! Leaf said to me without words. A second later the three of us ran between the trees. Weeds whipped our legs, and rocks tore our feet as we hurtled down the slope. We had almost reached a deep ravine when shots rang out. Elisi fell to the rain-soaked ground.

  “No!” Leaf screamed and fell beside her. Blood oozed from Elisi’s thigh and Leaf quickly pressed her hand to the wound. I froze, staring at the blood. How could this be happening?

  “Keep going,” Elisi begged. “I will be all right.” I looked at the ravine and the hundreds of hiding places it afforded. They would never find us there. I looked at Leaf and I knew. We couldn’t leave without Elisi. Kneeling down in the pouring rain, I lifted Elisi’s head out of the mud. Blood dripped from between Leaf’s fingers and spilled onto the ground.

  Leaf pushed me. “Go, Allie. You are not even Cherokee. Run!”

  “No!” I shouted. “I won’t leave you!”

  “Hurry,” Elisi urged, “before it is too late.”

  But it was already too late. Conners approached on foot, pointing his rifle. “Stupid Indians! Get your carcasses back on the trail!” he bellowed and shoved his
warm gun into my back.

  “She’s hurt,” I called over the rain.

  “You! You shot her!” Leaf screamed, and jumped at him with bloody hands. I grabbed Leaf’s arms and held her away from Conners. I didn’t want her shot too.

  “I should shoot you all,” Conners yelled. “It’d save me a lot of trouble.”

  I held Leaf tight until I felt her stop struggling. When I let go she dropped down beside Elisi.

  Conners spat tobacco juice at Leaf. “Damned Indians,” he snapped. “You shouldn’t have run! It’s your own fault!”

  13

  Village on Wheels

  “Why did you shoot her?” Captain Reynolds asked, towering over us as we huddled on the ground around Elisi. His black boots were almost touching Leaf’s mud-covered knees.

  “They were running away,” Conners growled.

  Reynolds shook his head. “She could barely keep up before, and now she’ll have to ride. Put her on your horse,” he ordered.

  Conners stared in disbelief. “My horse?” he said.

  “That’s right,” Reynolds said, his face a hard mask.

  “I ain’t putting that animal on my horse!” Conners roared.

  For a long moment Reynolds stared at Conners. Finally the captain said, “I’ll not have our progress slowed because you were eager to shoot.” Without another word, he walked off to his horse and the line of Indians.

  Conners lifted his rifle. For a horrible second, I thought he might shoot the captain in the back. Instead Conners jerked Elisi off the ground, then half dragged, half carried her up the slope. Everyone in our group could hear his cussing as he slung her onto his black horse.

  Elisi winced but never said a word about the bloody spot on her thigh. The old Mrs. Bridge hurriedly wrapped Elisi’s leg with a strip of underskirt. The white material quickly turned bright red.

  “Move on!” Captain Reynolds yelled, and Conners jerked the reins on his horse to jolt Elisi along. The trail widened enough for Leaf and me to walk on each side of the horse, holding on to the stirrups for support in the mud. I leaned against the horse’s black belly, smelled its wet hair, and felt the warmth of its body. As the rain continued to pour, that heat gave me strength to keep going.