The Powder River

by Win Blevins

  Sergeant Breitshof had seen plenty of his comrades killed, and he had no damn-fool romantic notions about redskins.

  He swung down off his horse, picketed the beast, took his Springfield carbine, a trusty weapon left over from his Civil War action, and started hoofing. Like most cavalrymen, he hated being on foot. But on these goddamm short-grass plains you had to get down as far as you could and not skyline yourself for the savages.

  He started walking to the northwest. He was a big man, big-framed and big-paunched, and did not walk easily. But he moved like a professional soldier, cautiously, easing from hummock to hummock, squatting, watching, making sure he knew about whatever was over there before it knew about him.

  He caught himself thinking it for whatever savage he would find over there, and he liked that. He didn’t hate Indians personally, individually, but he was clear about their being an inferior race. He couldn’t tolerate the so-called idealistic Americans who didn’t face that reality. Inferior race. A backwater of history, foul and rank. For the sake of humankind, which had advanced beyond them, they must be swept away.

  The job of the soldier was to protect civilization—the state, the church, the family—against barbarians of every kind. Breitshof’s grandfather had fought against the barbarians in Africa. He liked to think his ancestors had probably fought barbarians back to the Crusades, or even the Huns. His was a soldiering family. He had migrated to America from his native Saxony to go soldiering against slaveholders first, and then against savages.

  Oh, some few of these Indian barbarians might adapt to civilization, like that tall, eccentric doctor at the agency. They were welcome to its benefits. But this bunch that was headed north, back to the blanket, they had thrown away their chance. They’d said they’d rather die than live like white men. That was fine with Karlheinz Breitshof.

  He stopped and squatted down. He let his eyes play across the area where something had moved. He had learned to let his eyes roam, light and unfocused, instead of peering at some spot. Without looking down, he made a practiced reach into a blouse pocket, got out his Navy plug, opened his Barlow knife, and cut off a chaw. He didn’t mean to move until he saw more.

  For his part Sergeant Breitshof meant to help these Indians die quickly. That would be merciful. He hated to see creatures suffering. But he had indulged in no false pity. He had seen too many of his comrades-at-arms die at the hands of these savages. Frederickson, especially, just this summer. Breitshof didn’t call many men friend—they had to earn it—but Frederickson had been a friend, and a drunken Indian had knifed him over a woman.

  Breitshof remembered the others. Davis, the boyish Welshman. Kelly—two Kellys, in fact. Morehead. Vanderkamp, the peculiar Dutchman. He didn’t remember their Christian names, for he didn’t hold with the American custom of calling people outside your family by their Christian names. He did remember their faces, though, and how they died, and how he had sworn to avenge them.

  He thought he heard a gasp, or a little cry, almost like a plaintive birdcall. He waited. It didn’t come again. He waited longer. He heard nothing, but he knew something was there. Someone.

  Sergeant Breitshof moved forward in a crouch. Crouching was humiliating enough—he refused to crawl. He crept up onto a knoll of thin grass and squatted to look around.

  And there she was, not twenty steps in front of him. An Indian woman, he supposed one of the Cheyennes who had run off, plopped out on a blanket in the sand. Her legs were spread wide, her knees were up, like she was rutting, but …

  She cried out, or moaned, or …

  Mein Gott, the sergeant saw. The woman was giving birth, actually giving birth. Right now. He could see the baby’s head out of her. And she was stretched back, resting.

  Breitshof shivered. Incredible. He felt his guts churn.

  He felt a great urgency to have something to do with his hands. He got out a piece of cartridge paper and began the ritual of tying another cartridge for his ancient Springfield—powder, ball, stout string, two ties, twist the paper end tight and fold it back. He tied the cartridge automatically, barely looking at what he was doing, his eyes riveted on the woman. When he finished, he held the finished cartridge in his left hand, uncertain.

  For the first time he noticed that she wore a white woman’s dress, a kind of fancy one, actually, with a lace collar and buttons down the back. He felt a spasm of anger. The woman’s buck would have stolen that dress, and likely raped and killed its rightful owner. Savages!

  The woman hunched. She was not even a woman, really, just a girl. Her dark face drew into an expression of intensity—Breitshof had never seen anything so fierce, even in battle. She tensed all over and seemed to tremble, then shuddered violently.

  The child lay on the blanket, free. From here Breitshof couldn’t see what kind of child. It raised a cry, not like the mother’s, yet infinitely plaintive.

  Suddenly Breitshof felt that he must see. It was a raging fever, this need to see. He stood and walked up to the girl, towering over her and the infant.

  The girl looked up at Breitshof and her face didn’t change. She saw him, but showed no fear. It was as though huge enemies commonly appeared to her in impossible circumstances and did not surprise her. Her eyes closed, her face set once more, she shuddered again, and the woman gave forth something more, something bloody.

  The child was a boy.

  Breitshof really felt feverish now, crazy. His face flushed hot, and he wanted to bellow.

  The woman picked up the umbilicus and bit it in half. Breitshof supposed she must have lost her knife. She picked up the little boy. She held the infant up to the west, the north, the east, the south, the sky above and the earth below—their damned pagan religion, Breitshof had heard. Then for the first time she acknowledged the stranger with her eyes. He saw that her face was very beautiful.

  Karlheinz Breitshof stepped forward and squatted down beside them. Shaky, in disbelief at himself, he reached into a pocket, got a clean bandanna, and offered it to the woman. She pushed her skirts down, took the bandanna calmly, and began to wipe off the glistening child.

  As Breitshof watched her, he was aware of being in a bizarre state, abnormally lucid, somehow elevated, yet trembly. He hated it.

  He still held the paper cartridge in his left hand. He put it into a cartridge box.

  The woman seemed to study him for a moment, head cocked. Then she turned her back to him and pointed over her shoulder to the buttons.

  So. She wanted to nurse the child and couldn’t get the fancy white-woman dress undone. He chuckled without making a noise.

  But the damned buttons wouldn’t come. They were cloth-covered, and the button holes were little loops, and he couldn’t get his fingers to work them. He tried several buttons, but his big, clumsy fingers wouldn’t work any of them.

  Karlheinz Breitshof touched the girl’s shoulder and pushed her gently to the ground. She flinched, and then seemed to accept without uncertainty or fear. He got out his Barlow knife and with his other hand grasped the high front of the dress. Then he put the knife tip to the girl’s throat, and neatly slit the dress down to the waist. Afterward he couldn’t help giving her a kind of twisty smile.

  Her small breasts exposed, she somehow seemed more naked than with her pelvis bared to the sky and bursting with child. She gave him a simple and indefinable look. She brought her son close and put a nipple in his mouth. The child sucked eagerly.

  Breitshof looked again at the fine dress and its satiny material. He flared his nostrils in anger. Her eyes were lowered, on the child. The kid had a pinched-looking face and was covered with black hair.

  Breitshof stood up. He brushed at his pants unnecessarily. He looked down at the mother and child. The mother looked up at him with beautiful, dark eyes, gravely, but he could not have said what her expression was.

  The sergeant wheeled and started walking back toward his horse. He turned once and looked back at the woman and child. No, he’d not kill them. For some reason he
’d lost the urge.

  Chapter 4

  Adam gave her the news, and Elaine jerked her hand back from the fire—it was singeing the light hairs on her fingers. So. The soldiers would be here this afternoon. And presumably the people would have their first fight with the bluecoats. Well, first fight in Elaine’s experience.

  Adam sat down on his spread-out tarpaulin and started taking his rifle and revolver apart to clean them.

  Elaine carefully turned the stick with her other hand, exposing a different side of the bread to the flames. So. All right, she would write that letter to her sister Dora now—she’d been planning to write it anyway. She reached for her ledger book and pencil. It was a silly thing to do, writing her sister, since she had no idea when the letter could be mailed, but it felt right. Adam understood, and had rigged a little tripod so she could cook while she wrote.

  in the Turkey Hills, Indian Nations

  September 13, 1878

  Dear Dora:

  I write you in pencil because I must write under the most dramatic circumstances. On our wedding night Adam and I were forced to flee the reservation with our people, embarking on a journey of fifteen hundred miles back to our homeland. It is an adventure you cannot imagine! Even now we are holed up in some timbered hills, where we have a military advantage, waiting for the soldiers to come up. Everyone thinks they will not fight—who would deny a people the right to go home!—but we cannot be certain.

  First a telegram informing you and mother without warning of my marriage, now a letter written on the eve of a possible battle! What a life you must think I live! (Adam says that if I lose this pencil, I’ll have to write you with a lead bullet!)

  Here she gave a brief summary of the Cheyennes’ decision to go back to the Powder River country and an account of the first night’s flight through the dark that made it seem like a child’s adventure story.

  I am confident that there is little danger of our being forced back to the reservation. Our country’s Indian policy is more enlightened than it was even two years ago—we learned something from the Custer affair and its awful aftermath. I believe with Morning Star, one of our two principal chiefs (and a gorgeous man!), that the soldiers will not resort to force. And we will not go back. Our people were promised the choice of returning to their homeland, and that is what they want to do. Here is a case demonstrating the power of faith!

  She decided not to emphasize further her view of that subject, lest she seem to protest too much. What Dora was eager to hear was the everyday part of Western living. Dora had even promised to turn Elaine’s letters into some articles for magazines—they were said to be hungry for tales from the West and ravenous for authentic tales of Indian Life.

  I am making a bread called bannack on a stick because we have no skillet. Adam’s grandmother Calling Eagle showed me how. You mix flour with white ashes from the fire for leavening, add water to make dough, cut the mixture into strips, and wrap it barber-pole-style around a stick.

  It would make an excellent campfire bread for any of you back in civilized New England! The Cheyennes do not much care for bread, being unaccustomed to it. Adam, though raised without it, considers hot bread a rare treat and will complain only of the lack of molasses to sweeten it!

  Two sticks of bannack are done now, the beans are hot, and I’ve opened a can of peaches for our family. You see we are about to have a feast! Canned peaches—such a treat! Fortunately, only Adam and I like them.

  To everyone else the treat is buffalo. Our scouts found a few buffalo two days ago, and yesterday our people surrounded them and killed them all. You should have heard the shouts and seen the irrepressible smiles. Buffalo again! Since the great herds have been slaughtered for their hides—it’s infuriating!—our people have eaten almost nothing but beef. Maybe that’s part of the reason diarrhea has afflicted most of them, Adam says—their insides aren’t used to beef.

  So we’re all celebrating, each family around its own little fire, many of us gorging ourselves. The occasion is compromised, though, by two matters. The first is those soldiers reported to be drawing up. The second is that several of our women and quite a few children are far behind us. The scouts found them only last night, straggling but coming along slowly. The scouts gave them some meat and encouraging words, and promised that the people would wait here in the Turkey Hills. Our thoughts are with them.

  She took a deep breath, and let it out in a gush. Though many Cheyennes thought they would not have to fight, they had taken precautions: they had moved into this high ground last evening, a clump of timbered hills named Turkey Springs. It still had several springs, but the wild turkeys were gone, killed off. The soldiers were coming from the south, and gullies ran off to the north, offering sheltered spots away from the shooting for the women and children.

  She set the stick on the cloth and slid the fresh-cooked bread off. She kept her mind carefully away from the thought of battle. She could see the soldiers in her mind, parading on their horses at Fort Reno, rank on rank of them, looking smart in their blue coats and Kossuth hats. She did not permit herself to think of these professional fighters against the ragtag bunch around her in these hills, a few dozen warriors, some old men and boys, lots of women and girls. Scores of modern Springfields—maybe even cannons—against a few, battered caplockers and lots of bows and arrows. Ridiculous. It wouldn’t happen.

  My husband, though, evidently feels no dread of anything. He has fought battles before—how bizarre it is to imagine him doing that! Killing people, and seeing his comrades killed!

  He is inclined to manual and mechanical things, which seems strange for an Indian. If he had not come to industrial civilization, he could never have discovered some of his favorite pastimes. His favorite is juggling some ivory balls, which he will do to amuse others or for his own solace of mind. (He says he decided to ask me to marry him while juggling those balls!) I have also seen him spend half an afternoon repairing a child’s toy, making it wind up and march once more. He was more pleased with his success than the little boy. I’ve helped him sew people’s skin up, which made me queasy, but he delighted in the expertise of his work. And he declares that he loves to do surgery on people, even to remove limbs. He says the cutting and sawing and cauterizing and suturing—awful to imagine, all of them!—give him a marvelous feeling of power, benevolent power. My love once saved a man’s life in Boston by amputating his arm below the elbow, and spent weeks of excited experimentation helping an inventor come up with a mechanical hand that worked.

  When he speaks about the adventures he had in familiar Boston, it seems exotic, because he is exotic. When he tells about the wild Virginia City of the gold-rush days, or fighting with Red Cloud and Crazy Horse against the army in Red Cloud’s War—or surviving the hazing at a snotty Eastern school!—I feel as Desdemona felt about her dark-skinned giant:

  ‘I lov’d him for the dangers he had pass’d,

  And he loved me that I did pity them.’

  She looked over at her juggler affectionately. He was absorbed in the metal parts of his Winchester, cleaning and oiling and making them gleam, checking and rechecking the way they moved, getting the action perfectly smooth.

  The center of Cheyenne life is the family. Our people eschew order and discipline of the group in favor of the sovereignty of the family. Some of our families even stayed back at the agency. If they decide to go a way other than the group’s, the leaders cannot make them change, will not try means other than persuasion, and will not judge their decision harshly. The chiefs are leaders only through counsel and example, and have no authority of force.

  Our family is four—Adam and I and his grandmother Calling Eagle and his mother Lisette. We would have been seven, but Calling Eagle’s son Red Hand died at the agency from the malarial fever, and his wife Rain did not come north with us. Lisette’s husband Jim Sykes died earlier of the same fever. We travel together, cook and eat together, and sleep close to each other under the stars (the people abandoned all their
tipis at the agency).

  Calling Eagle is kind to me. She makes small, nice gestures to me, like loaning me a mirror to use for combing my hair and helping me take care of my skin, which is terribly dried out by the sun and wind.

  Elaine began to wonder if she could send this letter to her family. It painted too bleak a picture. She would recopy it and censor it a little.

  Calling Eagle’s manner, though, is skeptical and gruff. She likes to tease, too. In a woman of her size—she’s taller than many men—all this can be intimidating. I think she suspects constantly that I am about to go into a dither about the lack of a roof or a chamber pot. Yesterday I hung back instead of helping with the butchering of some buffalo, which our people consider women’s work, so I am sure she thinks I will faint at the sight of blood. You will laugh at that, since you always said my callousness in skinning squirrels made you stop eating meat! It’s true, though, that the way the women reveled in the skinning and cutting took me aback. I am toughening my spirit for this life! And my body!

  Lisette, Adam’s mother, who is even now cutting strips of buffalo meat to dry on a rack, said little to me in the weeks Adam and I were courting, and still says little, for she is grieving for her second husband. She is as attractive a woman as you’ll ever see at about fifty, and according to Adam was quite the hellion as a young woman. I’m sure her spirits will recover, a development that will doubtless please various of our men.

  Elaine had never found out much about Adam’s family history. She knew his father, Mac, got killed. Adam’s brother Thomas got shot—Adam had used the word murdered—at the same time. There was something about Mac tracking Thomas down, and Thomas actually trying to shoot his own father, and someone Adam hated shooting them both. Elaine could hardly face the thought of a son shooting at his father, but she was learning that the Indians of the plains had been living through absurd, awful times, and absurd, awful things went on.