He wants me to try again tomorrow, but I figure I best count my chickens and put an end to my shooting days before Mama catches wind of it.
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July 27. morning
There's a small woman with bent shoulders and sad eyes who helps Letty in the kitchen. I've noticed her hair hanging in her face and the fact that she doesn't like to look at a person when you speak to her.
Letty has told me that some Pawnee killed her husband and captured her, and she's so sad on account of she had a seven-year-old son and doesn't know what happened to him. One late night after she was captive in the Indian camp, she crawled right out of camp on her belly and stole a pony! She rode it all the way back without saddle or bridle until she found the trail. Some traders picked her up on the way and brought her here, where Mr. Bent gave her some work and some hope, too. He said if her son be alive, surely some traders would pick up word of it. But she's been waiting two years and no word!
Letty showed me how to roll out the dough just right. And how to cleverly flip it upside down into the pan using my whole arm. We made up a baker's dozen of pies at one time! She says the key to her pie is extra ginger. All the while we were rolling dough, I worked up my courage to ask Letty how she came to the fort.
Now if I understand her correct, she says she was a
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slave somewhere else, I think Missouri, and so was her husband. She told me how he was so brave in helping Mr. Bent in an uprising in Taos, that Mr. Bent himself somehow freed the both of them. I don't understand quite how this could happen to Letty or how Mr. Bent got her free, but I'm sure and certain glad he did. Letty said to me, "You wouldn't think it, child, but pie-making goes faster with story telling." I'm guessing we each have our own stories, some with happy endings, some not.
Soon the pies were ready, and we used long-handled paddles like boat oars to slide them into the adobe ovens out back of the kitchen. But not without scorching every hair off my arms, and my eyebrows, too!
Noon
Have gobbled down three pieces of pie in place of noonday supper, but I'm afraid Manny (not to mention Jem) has outdone me, and all on top of supper, too.
With our bellies too full to move, we plopped ourselves on the banco (bench), and I asked Manny some Spanish words. The Mexican traders speak so fast, they're hard to understand, but Manny's good at teaching! We looked around the fort and he pointed
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to things, then slowly pronounced the Spanish word. In just minutes I learned cinco new words. Sala is large room; candela is candle (easy to remember!); caballo, horse; pajaro means bird; and I won't forget em-panada de calabaza (pumpkin pie)! He also taught me sayings like, Vaya con Dios (Go with God) and ¡Silen-cio! (which I've already used on Jem several times).
Then he pointed to us. "Dos amigos," he said. I knew without asking.
Two friends.
Later
Jem came back from the river with Manny all out of breath and screaming Great Jumping Grasshoppers! I guessed from his ghost-white face he'd just seen a band of Pawnee. So I gingerly stepped outside the gate and looked, but did not see any Indians. I heard only a loud buzzing sound, like a swarm of bees had gotten right inside my head. That's when I saw them.
Hundreds of them, thousands. Millions! Jem was righter than right. Grasshoppers!
Those glassy-winged creatures covered the walls of
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the fort until you could not see a speck of adobe. A wall of grasshoppers! If Mama could come downstairs to see them, I'm sure she'd say a Bible plague had descended on us.
All the grasshoppers in Kansas Territory must be paying us a visit. Manny shut the gates to keep them out, but they still crawl into the folds of my dress, burrow in my hair, and land in my soup!
Jem and I have taken to exclaiming Great Jumping Grasshoppers at the slightest thing! Manny and Jem have started a game. We each catch a grasshopper and call, "Spit tobacco! Spit tobacco!" and sure enough an unsightly brown liquid issues forth from those creatures!
July 28. Bent's fort morning
There's all manner of wonders in this place. I poked my head into the parlor this morning, where I'm sure I was not supposed to be. A woman sat combing her hair all the while not withstanding the presence of Mr. William Bent himself. I knew it had to be him because he had a fancy shirt with a stand-up collar, and a scarf tied round his neck that looked like silk. He sat speaking with another man who may have been a
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captain or colonel or even a general! Beside the woman stood a crock of grease, which she applied so generously, it dripped like rain from her hair. Never before have I seen a lady washing her head in grease!
Mr. Bent laughed when he saw me staring. "Women will rinse their hair in anything to make it shine," he told me. He said his own wife, Owl Woman, rinses her hair with a tea made of mint.
Jem'll never believe I met Mr. Bent himself and he was talking to me about ladies' hair, of all things!
Night
I am un-lonesome, with so much to see and do here! Every evening is occasion to celebrate -- greeting new visitors as if each one is President Polk himself! Always there's dancing. Letty is the best dancer of all. She kicks up her heels and flounces her skirts as if she were a schoolgirl my own age. I could not help but think of Louisa Nutting -- how her violin playing would add to the celebration.
Manny dragged me into a round of Cuna, their cradle dance (not for babies!), which I don't know in the least. So I just held on and followed along. I felt more like a grasshopper than a dancer, compared with
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Manny. The dance is like the waltz, where you stretch your arms out to form the sides of a cradle, except the whole room started spinning as Manny swirled me around until I was dizzy as a doorknob.
Later Mr. Vieth let us have some of his tallow candles for a race. These candles burn fast, so Manny and I each lit one, then watched to see whose would go out first. The winner is the one whose candle lasts the longest. I am sorry to report mine did wink out first, so Manny got his wish, which was for one more (grasshopper) dance!
Long after Jem and I go to sleep, we can hear the men carousing -- so much drinking and gambling goes on here, it causes new furrows in Mama's forehead.
July 29
Jem and I heard a most strange cry coming from the belfry. What do you think we found but two caged-up bald eagles perched right atop the bell! A caged-up bird is sadder to me than a fish out of water, so we flipped the latch and there was such a tornado of wings, it nearly caused a wind to knock us over!
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Just as Jem and I were congratulating ourselves on our good deed, we heard the men in the plaza pointing and shouting. We thought it just another row until Mr. Ryder came and made us "acknowledge the corn," as in tell the truth.
When all was said and done, Mr. Ryder was quite disturbed with us. That freedom flight will cost him two horses! It seems the birds belong to another trader who was to be paid two horses in exchange for their feathers!
This trading business is hard to figure. How a few feathers could be worth a horse is beyond me!
Mr. Wendell has said the Cheyenne are skilled at capturing these birds, and brought two of them here to trade. Mr. Wendell talks like a book and has lived at the fort for some time. He knows the ways of the Cheyenne. Mr. Ryder says he speaks their language better than any Anglo in this whole entire country.
July 30, mid-afternoon
What yarns the men spin! I can't any more tell false from true. The men squat half the day on the dirt floor around a pan of dried meat. They smoke clay pipes. These pipes start out as long as my arm, but
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day by day they break off pieces and throw them on the ground until the pipes are quite short and I can't help but fear they'll set their hairy faces on fire!
One called Old Bozeman struts around like he's the biggest toad in the puddle. When he leaned over to light his pipe, his wig fell off and he was balder than a bald eagle. Jem and
I now call him Old Baldman.
Old Baldman tells one where he killed himself eleven grizzly bears. The hairy man next to him brags that he once lost an ear wrestling a mountain lion. Of course Jem has every one of those stories stuck to memory.
Later, Jem asked me if all those stories the traders tell in the plaza are true. I told Jem I think most of it's just plain bragging. A lot of hoorah, if you ask me. But Jem is full of questions, as usual. "What about all those strange things they say about Indians?" he asked me.
Now this surprised me coming from Jem, who was always one to believe the worst when it came to Indians. I myself am torn on the subject. So I asked him what the men were saying.
Jem said they talked of how the Cheyenne raided a Kiowa camp and stole a little white girl that was only two years old. Or one time when a woman left her
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husband, he raised his baby on buffalo milk. And there was one where a Ree shot his own son straight through with arrows, then plastered him up with mud and brought him right back to life.
I told Jem one thing I do know is, there's plenty of white folks who feel unkindly to Indians of any kind.
I'm not sure if I told him the right thing or not. It's hard telling good from bad out here. Right from wrong used to be a whole lot easier back in Missouri. But I'm sure glad to know there's something in that head of my brother's besides rocks!
Later
Jem said he saw a white man giving sacks of grain to a Cheyenne woman. The bags were right heavy, and the man wasn't helping her carry them. So Jem went over to see if he could help and just as he came upon her, she dropped the bag and it split wide open. And what should come tumbling out? Not corn or grain. Rocks! That bad egg was cheating her blind, filling the bottoms of his sacks with rocks just to cheat her out of some grain.
I hope they toss him in the calabozo and he has to stay a long time in jail.
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After Supper
Just this night, Letty was telling me how Mr. Bent himself owes his life to the Cheyenne. Apparently he had been ill almost to dying, where he could neither swallow nor speak. His wife, Owl Woman (called Mis-stan-stur by her own Cheyenne), forced a hollow quill down his throat and was feeding him broth she blew right from her own mouth, the way a bird might feed its babies.
When Owl Woman saw he wasn't getting any better, she called on a famous Cheyenne medicine man. He took one of Letty's big spoons and held down Mr. Bent's tongue. Now this part makes no sense, so I asked Letty to repeat it twice. She did indeed say sandbur. He rammed a bunch of these thorny burs down Mr. Bent's throat, and when he pulled them up one by one with a thread he had attached, they pulled out with them all the stuff that was sticking there making him sick. When the so-called operation was over, Mr. Bent sat up and swallowed soup on the spot.
How I wish that medicine man could work his magic on Mama. She sleeps most days and complains of the pains as soon as she tries to sit up or stand. Letty says the Cheyenne brew a tea from wild cherry
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bark that cures most ills, and I aim to find out how to get me some for Mama. But first I have to find something worth trading for it.
July 31
A white wolf kept coming around the fort this morning at daybreak. The men all thought it was a dog since it didn't look like the other wolves, so they lured the dog inside with a bait of raw meat and slammed the gate shut behind so's the other wolves couldn't get in. Soon the nice doggie went plumb crazy and chased near every person in the fort up onto the roofs. The men from up on the roof finally managed to lasso it, and they put it in chains and locked it in the bastion. All day it stayed there snarling and howling and growling bare-fanged at any human to come near.
But then Muldoon came and strolled right up to that lunging, snarling creature and patted its head, of all things! I swear that Muldoon could tie down a bobcat with a piece of string if he had the mind. From now on, that wolf is Muldoon's critter that follows him everywhere, kind of like Reuben.
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Night
Tonight we had the most fun -- a taffy pull! Letty boiled up a batch of New Orleans molasses and added to it sugar and butter and lemon and even vinegar (which thankfully you can't taste). As soon as the sticky mixture had cooled off, Letty handed us each a portion for pulling.
I pulled and pulled and pulled, and we were laughing and making it a contest. Manny was showing me how to pull just the right amount, then how to shape it into something. I pulled mine into a thin rope light as honey, then braided it together until it looked like a fancy horse's mane. Manny formed his initials, M R, out of taffy, for Manuel Rodriguez. Then I added an F before the M R, forming my own initials! When Letty was not looking we threw some at each other, and Manny got pieces of it stuck all through my hair!
Poor Jem started too soon and now has blisters on his skin! He ran to get some water and by the time he got back, his taffy had cooled off and was sitting there, one big ugly toad of a lump. He had no problem eating it, anyway.
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August 1
There is a funny old goat here they call Agnes, and Jem and I have seen it running up and down the ladder leading to the roof!
Midday
Nothing to do, so Mr. Ryder started a game where Jem and I keep count of the birds we have seen here. I am doing my best to sketch each one, and Jem says we should make them into a bird book for Mr. Ryder. So far we have seen:
turkey vulture (ugly) Mississippi kite red-tailed hawk
bald eagle (in the belfry, of course) golden eagle (huge)
hummingbird (doesn't hum but is fast) killdeer
kingbird (attacks everything) magpie
turtledove (sad sounding)
redheaded woodpecker (reminds me of Muldoon)
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blue jays (everywhere -- I like to save their feathers) and a burrowing owl, seen in the middle of daylight!
In the middle of our bird hunt out back of the fort, a Cheyenne girl came up to us on her pony. She wore a buckskin dress that had been tanned to the color of honey and looked soft as silk, with fringes on the bottom and beads and red cloth. The right side hung longer than the left. Underneath, she wore leggings made of the same. Her long hair hung down her back in two braids, shiny black as a raven's wing. I am afraid to say I could not keep my eyes from staring until I saw Jem gaping at her like he was seeing a ghost.
She let us pet her pony and then she showed us a trick her pony can do. The girl let out a high-pitched whistle, and the pony lifted its head and whinnied, showing great teeth that made the animal look like it was laughing at something awful funny. Then with a hand signal she got the pony to stop. Jem tried to ask her how she did it, but before we could figure out how to say it in a way that she might understand, she hopped into her saddle and was gone like a bird.
Next time I shall take an apple with me, for the pony.
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August 2 tenth day at the fort
I went outside the fort again today, in back of the corral, to search for Indian trade beads. They're called white hearts because they're rimmed in red glass on the outside with a white heart of glass at the center.
While digging around in the dirt I was keeping a watchful eye. I was sort of hoping for a new friend on account of missing Louisa and Eliza. Caroline, too. No sign of the Cheyenne girl or her pony. So I sat in the dust and ate the just-in-case apple myself, letting the juice run down my arms.
Later, Muldoon came up and told me he wanted to make me a real, honest-to-goodness bona fide trade. He held out a pouch he had beaded with an hourglass shape of blue beads and white beads all around it. Inside was a piece of flint and a steel for making fires.
I could not think what I could trade that would be worth one quarter as much. That's when Muldoon said all I had to do was make him some pemmican.
Pemmican! I thought for sure and certain he had to be talking balderdash. But he wasn't. Pemmican is a most foul-tasting concoction that Muldoon calls dessert. Letty taught me how
to make it, with lard,
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berries, and jerked meat, but it comes out tasting worse than buffalo chips!
As smart as Muldoon is, I'm the one who'll make out like a bandit on this trade!
August 3
This morning I had just gathered a small handful of red beads when the Cheyenne girl happened upon me. She jumped down from her pony and knelt in the dust with me to gaze at my beads. When she saw the few dusty beads I'd collected, she laughed like she had just heard a most funny joke. She pointed to her own white beads, then the blue beads she was wearing, letting me know that these are more prized than red beads!
Then she appeared to ask me a question. "Netones evehe? Netones evehe?" she repeated. I finally began to realize she was asking to know my name. I'm afraid I said "Florrie, Florrie," much too loud. Then, realizing we had no difficulty hearing each other, but rather, understanding, I myself had to laugh.
I pointed to a flower, the closest thing I could think of to my name, and she said, "Vehpotse!" Her eyes lit up as if she had just found a long-lost friend, and she now calls me Vehpotse!
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Then I asked her name in return, and she pointed to a black-headed bird with a long tail and said, "Mo'e'ha," then pointed to herself and repeated, "Mo'e'ha." She then let out a series of ee sounds just like the bird itself. Wait till I tell Mr. Ryder of her skill at birdcalls.
I didn't guess her name was Bird, so I asked Mr. Wendell at the fort and he did say Mo'e'ha sounds like magpie.
Of course! My new friend's name means magpie.
Later
After studying the magpies, I have made a serious sketch in my diary. This bird has a black beak and head, intelligent eyes, white wing patches, and a tail longer than its body. The tail has some of the shiny colors of Mr. Bent's peacocks at the fort. This puts me in mind of Mr. St. Clair and his paints. How I wish he were still with us in this world. I'm sure he would happily lend me some color for the magpie's tail.
I suppose I may never make sketches without thinking of him in sorrow. Would that I could show
All the stars in the sky: the Santa Fe trail diary of Florrie Mack Ryder Page 6
