Holding the Fort

by Regina Jennings

  “That I’d be willing to fall off my horse and suffer a cracked skull again if it caused you to hold me like you did on our first meeting.”

  Her chest filled with a long breath. Her eyes darted to his forehead, where the scar was still visible. She moistened her lips, then with a tentative reach, smoothed back his hair. He leaned into her palm. Her skin was smooth and cool. Her touch was light as she combed her fingers through his hair.

  “Please don’t attempt any more stunts,” she said. “At least until after General Sheridan has visited.”

  “I make no promises.” But there were a lot of promises he wanted to make to her, and soon.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Did you dance?” Caroline asked over her botany text.

  Louisa looked up from the arithmetic book, which she was still working through day and night to stay ahead of Daisy.

  “Did I dance where?” she asked. Breakfast had been a quiet affair, with Daniel treating her with the same courtesy and friendliness as before, leaving their romance to develop out of sight of the children.

  “Caroline, Pa said we aren’t to pester Miss Bell,” Daisy said. “If we have any questions, we are to talk to him.”

  “He said that, did he?” Louisa asked. Major Adams took care of everything.

  “Father is gone, and Miss Bell is my governess. I’m of age to get instruction on courting,” Caroline insisted.

  “Not when it’s our own father.” Daisy wrinkled her nose.

  “We did not dance.” Louisa kept her finger under the arithmetic problem she was tackling. “It was only dinner.”

  Forgetting her own rules, Daisy asked, “Then why did you have to go to Lieutenant Jack’s? That’s just peculiar.”

  “Did Father tell you how pretty your dress was?” Caroline again. And this time her botany text had closed. “You have to tell us what’s going on.”

  “Ask your father,” Louisa replied. How could she explain to the girls what had happened when she couldn’t make any sense of it herself? The fearsome, powerful Major Adams in love with her? The world had turned upside down.

  A bugle sounded. Books dropped, cushions flew, and heels pounded across the floor as all three ladies ran to the door.

  General Sheridan had arrived.

  Two columns of spry horses trotted through the high golden prairie toward the fort, carrying men in blue uniforms. The flags at the fore of their procession snapped in the stiff wind. The dust stirred by the hooves trailed off behind them like a rooster’s tail. Had Daniel given the girls instructions on their reception of the general? Louisa hadn’t heard anything, which was fortunate, because she was already too late if she’d wanted the girls to stay inside the house.

  They stood on the porch as the cavalrymen took their places to receive the general. Louisa’s heart swelled with pride as she spotted Daniel astride his horse. His hat was jauntily pinned up on the side. His sword caught the sunlight and reflected it across the dark uniforms of his troops.

  The fort had never looked better. Every wooden building was freshly whitewashed. Every fence repaired and painted, every trough full, and every woodpile stocked. He’d worked so hard for this moment, even enlisting their displaced guests from the agency. She couldn’t believe she’d get to share this success with him.

  By the time the columns reached the fort, the men were bristling in anticipation. Through his own example, Daniel had impressed on the troopers the importance of honoring the general with their best efforts. Every chest swelled with pride as Sheridan rode past their formations to meet Daniel beneath the flagpole in the center. The general was a broad man but rode like he was born to the saddle. Upon seeing him, no one would doubt that he’d earned his rank.

  Both men dismounted. To her surprise, General Sheridan had to look up to return Daniel’s salute. He reached out his hand for a hearty handshake. Louisa felt a weight lifted that she hadn’t even known she’d been carrying. Everything seemed to be going well. She prayed that it would continue that way.

  With the general’s arrival, Louisa gave up all hope of finishing the day’s lessons. After the initial review, she, Caroline, and Daisy went inside to put away their lessons and help Private Gundy prepare for dinner with the general. Sergeant Nothem would oversee the main courses, but Gundy was assisting him, so Louisa set Daisy to polishing silver while she and Caroline unwrapped and washed the fort’s official china, which was saved for receptions of this nature.

  “What are you going to wear when we have the concert?” Caroline asked.

  Louisa carefully dipped a plate into the warm, sudsy water. “No one cares what I wear. I’m just glad we have your dress ready. But the general has some important business to settle before anyone will be ready for entertainment.”

  Caroline looked troubled. “I don’t know if this concert is such a good idea. I feel prideful getting up and singing in front of people, as if I think I’m so good that I deserve an audience.”

  “That’s not it at all.” Louisa shook the rinsing water off the plate before laying it on the towel. “You’re not singing because you think you’re the best performer in the room. You’re singing because you want to give the people in the audience something special. All of your talent and all of your practice is a gift to them. And even if the men were deaf, they would love it because you are Major Adams’s daughters. You are the young ladies of Fort Reno, and they take pride in your accomplishments. Trust me in that.”

  Caroline traced the 24-karat gold edging on the rim of a plate. “As long as it’s more about them having a good time.”

  Louisa smiled. “If there’s anything I’ve learned in my years of . . . being a lady, a winsome, heartfelt performance will be more appreciated by a room of troopers than a technically perfect aria.”

  “I can’t imagine what your coming out was like if you performed to rooms of troopers often.” Caroline gave her a thoughtful look that told Louisa she wouldn’t be fooled forever. Louisa was lying to the very people she was supposed to guide.

  Louisa lifted the next plate off the stack. What would Major Adams say if he knew the woman he loved had been a dance hall singer? While he could overlook Bradley’s reckless past, a woman was a different matter. Especially a woman you wanted to court. Even worse, the more Louisa came to know Daniel, the more she worried that it might not be her past that hurt him. What if her lies were the worse offense? She had been honest while in Wichita. People had paid for her voice, and she hadn’t exaggerated her skill one jot. Here at Fort Reno, she’d pretended to be something she wasn’t. For all she knew, she was teaching the girls everything wrong. She was taking Daniel’s money when she was unqualified.

  Loving Daniel and wanting God meant that she had to confess. Last night she’d been astonished by his honesty. Was she willing to be that honest? Could she return his love without telling him everything? Louisa caught a glimpse of her reflection in the spotless china plate. This had to come to an end, but how?

  There was nothing like the presence of a superior to make you feel like a visitor on your own base. Daniel stood aside as General Sheridan stepped forward to greet Chief Stone Calf of the Cheyenne, Chief Powder Face of the Arapaho, and Little Medicine, a Cheyenne warrior. It had been four days since the general had arrived, and the fort had been turned upside down. A thousand extra men hadn’t created the chaos that five generals did. Each of them had their own assistants who took precedence in the adjutant office, crowding Daniel’s men out of the building. Each wanted the prime stables for their horses, the best cooks for their private kitchens, and insisted that Daniel be available around the clock.

  He’d have to remember to cut Lieutenant Hennessey some slack occasionally.

  Sheridan’s ruthless reputation had guaranteed that the Indians came in for a council, but even Daniel could tell they were skeptical. Unlike the fighting warriors, Stone Calf wore a navy button-up vest over a white long-sleeved shirt and fringed buckskin trousers. The other two chiefs were dressed similarly in a mis
hmash of white and Indian items. Behind the three leaders was a youngster no bigger than Daisy, with dark eyes that seemed to be roving quickly, taking it all in. Daniel wondered what his role was. A chief’s son, perhaps?

  The generals escorted the chiefs inside the council room. Daniel paused to make sure that Ben Clark, the fort scout and interpreter, was on hand before he followed.

  General Sheridan didn’t even wait for everyone to take a seat before he picked up the typed treaty and announced its terms: All cattle leases canceled. Texas cattle forbidden to cross the Cheyenne and Arapaho lands. Rations to be returned to their original quantities for six months, after which the U.S. government would evaluate the tribes’ progress in farming and adjust.

  Ben calmly repeated each point. Stone Calf stopped him. He wanted to know where the cattle trails would go, if not through their land. Would another tribe collect the toll and leave the Cheyenne and Arapaho without this income?

  Instead of addressing the Cheyenne, Sheridan looked at his own men. “They’re worried about a few cowboys crossing their lands every day. What they don’t understand is that this land will soon be opened for settlement. The cattle trails will end when this country is divided up between farms and roped off with barbed wire.” Then he nodded to Ben Clark. “Tell him that we can’t predict the future, but for now all standing contracts between the tribes and the ranchers are null and void.”

  Ben Clark dutifully reported as he was told, but the junior member of the delegation stood and respectfully tapped Stone Calf on the shoulder. The wizened patriarch waited until Clark was finished before turning to the youngster, whose black braids swung forward as he whispered into the ear of Stone Calf. Daniel suddenly remembered where he’d seen this boy before—at the school, where he was learning English.

  Stone Calf’s jaw tightened. The words he spoke to the rest of his delegation were short and gruff. Ben Clark folded his hands on the table and looked away as their faces hardened. Then, speaking to the officers, the boy said, “You speak to us of treaties, but you speak to each other of dividing our land. Where is the truth?”

  Besides practicing at the commissary, Louisa and the girls were doing their best to stay out of sight. Now that the fort was filled to the gills with soldiers, they had no business lollygagging outside, which was fine with Louisa. The fewer people who saw her, the better.

  Sitting in the parlor, Louisa paged through the grammar book, seeing things that she knew somewhat instinctively written down in rule form. She turned the book over to look at the cover. What would it be like to read a book of chess rules? Would it make some plays clear to her, like this? Seeing how she was much better versed in chess than writing, probably not.

  “I heard that Chief Powder Face is coming in.” Daisy twirled around the room with an open parasol. An occasional feather dropped out of her adorned braids. “Do you know why they call him Powder Face?”

  Louisa wrinkled her nose. All she could think of were her neglected cosmetics.

  “Because gunpowder exploded on him. They say his face is burned up from it.”

  “That wasn’t what I was expecting,” Louisa said.

  Daisy looked wistfully out the window. “I want to see him. Don’t you?”

  “Not if it interferes with your father’s work. And you have work to do, too. Get your slate.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Daisy paused. “I think I left it in the kitchen.”

  Louisa continued reading about homophones, surprised to find that popery and potpourri were different words. Sword and soared. Colonel and kernel. What in the world? Whoever decided to pronounce colonel like that? It didn’t make sense.

  The metallic click barely registered, but something bothered her. That sound, she’d heard it often and should check after it. And where was Daisy? She hadn’t come back in with her slate.

  “Caroline? Daisy?”

  “I’m sitting here,” Caroline called from the staircase, where she had her composition book spread on her lap. “No need to yell.”

  Had the noise been the latch on the back door?

  Louisa tossed her book aside and hurried to the kitchen, but it was empty. She rushed out the back door and saw Daisy running down Officers’ Row behind the stately homes. Louisa didn’t have to wonder where she was going.

  That child would be the death of her. Louisa snatched up her skirts and gave chase. No time to worry about what she looked like. She had to catch Daisy before she interrupted Daniel and the generals.

  But Daisy had too much of a lead. She disappeared around the corner, no doubt headed straight for the council room.

  Sheridan was good at maintaining control in many things, but being accused of lying wasn’t one of them. “It’s you who aren’t keeping your word,” he growled. “You charge the cattlemen a toll to cross your land, and then you let your people rob them. That’s what started this mess.”

  Ben Clark didn’t even try to intervene. The young Cheyenne boy was already relaying the inflammatory statement. Quick as a flash, he had his answer and reported, “The agency has cut our rations. We’re hungry.”

  “You wouldn’t need rations if you’d learn how to farm.”

  “Farming isn’t our way. We’re hunters. We see no reason to change.”

  This was getting nowhere. So far, even through their discontent, the Cheyenne had tempered their response. Darlington was still standing, and the teachers had been returned to their posts. Now that the fort was fully manned, the troopers and soldiers could protect Darlington, but if they made the Cheyenne angry enough, they would attack as a matter of honor.

  “I don’t see how we can come to any reasonable agreement while overlooking the trouble you’ve caused recently.” Sheridan leaned back in his chair and crossed his short arms over his round chest. “Unless you—”

  The door burst open. Daniel sprang from his seat, but the sight that met his eyes was worse than an ambush. Daisy stood framed by the open door with feathers randomly protruding from her braids.

  “I came for the treaty, Pa. Am I too late?” she asked.

  Daniel’s stomach dropped. “Excuse me, gentlemen.” He took Daisy by the arm. “You know better than to come in here. Apologize, and then go to Miss Bell.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. He’d stunned his sensitive child with his tone, but he couldn’t afford to spare her feelings. Not when so much was at stake.

  Stone Calf asked the boy a question, then looked down and nodded. After another question, he smiled. They were talking about Daisy. That much was clear.

  Ben Clark leaned toward Daniel. “The boy recognizes your daughter from the agency. They are commenting on her clothing.”

  In general, Daniel didn’t like any man making comments of any kind about his daughters. He looked again at Daisy’s new dress with the Indian beadwork and the feathers she’d woven into her hair. He could only hope the Cheyenne weren’t offended by her choice of decorations.

  “He’s asking about Daisy,” Ben said. “The boy is telling him that she’s your daughter and you’ve let her play with the girls at the Arapaho school.”

  What did it mean? The room was quiet as the chiefs and boy talked. A tentative knock at the door announced the arrival of Miss Bell, who was flushed and breathing hard. He motioned for her to wait as Stone Calf pointed to Ben and gave a pronouncement.

  Ben looked nervously at General Sheridan, then translated, “Stone Calf said he will only talk to Major Adams. He wants the generals to leave, or the council is over.”

  Daniel shook his head. “That’s not for Stone Calf to decide. General Sheridan is the senior commander. He doesn’t take orders—”

  But Sheridan stood. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense. You are fully capable of getting what we want, Major Adams. I don’t need another feather in my cap.” He flicked one of the feathers in Daisy’s hair as he passed out the door.

  The room emptied quickly as the generals and their aides exited. Louisa steered Daisy toward the door as well.

&nbs
p; “Stop,” the boy said. “They want your daughter to stay, too. They say it’s important for the young ones to know what is decided so they will keep the treaties in the future.”

  Daniel squeezed Daisy’s shoulder. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all. He tried his best to smile at Louisa. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, trying to believe it himself. “I’ve got her from here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Daniel’s meeting had been a success. While he couldn’t change the terms of the treaty, he could offer more help. If the Cheyenne would skip their slaughter of the cows for one week, Daniel would send his men to build a corral for a tribal herd. Perhaps before the Bureau cut their rations again, they would be able to supply their own meat and milk.

  Independence was what everyone craved for the Cheyenne and Arapaho, but they all needed to get a realistic picture of what that would look like.

  Daniel stood on his porch and watched as the chiefs rode proudly away. They’d gotten the government’s attention, so they were satisfied. No bloodshed showed a developing restraint on their part. The last of the agency workers and Mennonite missionaries had been escorted back to Darlington, where Agent Dyer was waiting, overjoyed to have the freedom to light a fire in his hearth and to walk the streets unmolested. Of course, he didn’t know that General Sheridan was recommending that he be removed from his appointment, but the general did what the general wanted and cared little that the agent and his wife had risked life and limb to stay at their post.

  And the general was the fearsome person expected at Daniel’s table for supper that night.

  With the tribes simmering down, the stagecoach could resume its route, as it was at that moment. Birds fluttered up from the high grass as the coach rumbled along the ruts toward the fort. With half the U.S. Army already stationed here, who was left? Maybe one of the officer’s wives.

  The battered coach swayed as it made the turn, then leveled out on the straightaway to Officers’ Row. Losing interest, Daniel went back inside to check on dinner. Sergeant Nothem and Private Gundy had been fighting over the kitchen’s territory all day. He hoped they’d come to a truce.