0800722329 (31 page)

It didn’t keep the rattlesnakes out, however. And each morning before I let America Jane run outdoors chasing the Kelpie when the dog wasn’t otherwise “employed” with cows, I’d beat the grasses, shout to them to head on away, to look for mice another day. I didn’t want them killed. They had their work to do. I wanted them to do that work away from those I loved. Lizzie crawled and pulled herself up on me when I sat in the rocker under the tree and knitted winter socks.

On a day in early August with the cabin half finished, Mr. Warren and the drovers left to go into the hills to check the cows’ pasture again. In the evening dusk, I took out my leather tools and worked a strip of hide that might one day become a belt. It wasn’t like baking, where my efforts were quickly eaten; tooling leather was a lasting art. One that soothed.

The men had been gone a day when a family heading east stopped at our site. I wasn’t wary. From a long distance I could
see the rider make his way with a pack animal. A second rider followed him. The sheep bleated at his arrival and I recognized him then as the mixed-blood man we’d followed with his family the year my father and brother and I went to the ocean. He carried a letter from my father. I waited until I’d fed them and they’d moved on before reading it.

The letter told of news, that Nancy and her Andrew had set a wedding date for the following year.

On yet a more important note, Rachel and I have taken your advice. We are buying cattle. We will drive them over Wiley’s pass and run them with yours. Expect me and the girls in August. Rachel will come when the school term ends in October. Your sisters are looking forward to being with you again.

I hadn’t told Mr. Warren I’d invited him! That might have been a mistake, but I saw it as the road to reconciliation for them and for me when I’d sent my letter. I never expected my father to actually do it. Make a visit, that’s what I’d suggested. Or had I offered more? Mr. Warren had planned for this journey for years and my father impulsively listens to me after one missive? I’d invited him to visit, but he buys cattle and joins us? What would Mr. Warren think? I spent that evening tossing in my bed. America Jane kicked off the light cover over us as the heat of August stayed the night. I saw the sun come up. “Grateful I am,” I told my girls.

I’d finished my daily Bible reading in the morning and written a congratulatory letter to Nancy when I stepped outside the tent and saw the road filled with dust. Maybe thirty Indian horses with riders came over the ridge and down the trail, their hooves like the thunder of the waterfalls; like the sham spectacle my
father had asked the Nez Perce to display. Were they Yakima? Cayuse? Umatilla? Nez Perce? Enemy or friend?

“Quick, girls, stay inside.” America Jane stood rooted, staring at the dust. “We’ll play a game. America Jane, you hide under the tick, pretend you’re playing in snow.”
Had
she ever seen deep snow?
“Pretend you are a mouse hiding under the quilt. Take Lizzie with you. Try to keep her quiet.” My heart pounded. “Don’t come out no matter what you see or hear.”

I grabbed the varmint rifle next to the door while their eyes bore into me like dark stones inside the whites. Lizzie began to whimper.

“No.” I hissed. “No sounds. America Jane, hold her close. You are mice hiding from the hawk. Not a sound. Go. Now.”

My throat felt parched as the chicken house floor. My hands shook and I felt sweat dripping down my ribs. There were too many riders, but I could hit a few perhaps, let them know I was in control. Keep bullets enough to shoot my children and myself, if necessary.

I stood beside my rocker, heart hammering as a butter churn, my fingers feeling fat and sluggish near the trigger as I held the rifle at my side. When the dust settled around them, the lead man said, “The Nimíipuu bring greetings. There is no need for weapons.”

The voice was soothing and in some odd way familiar.

“What do you want?”

“We camp here.” He wore a head band around straight black hair that rested on his shoulders. He spread his arms out wide to take in our tent and beginning cabin, the river and the land. We’d taken their place just as the Whitmans had done, settled; uninvited.

“Each year,” he continued, “but not all year.”

He spoke in English, but I responded in Sahaptin, the lan
guage slipping from my tongue as though I were ten. “My husband and I were unaware.”

He frowned. “Eliza Spalding?”

“Yes. But how do you know that?”

He sang out my name again, dismounted. “It is Timothy. We hear that you have come to this country.”

I put the rifle stock to the ground, held the barrel with my hand.

“You are frightened? Do you not remember your old friend?”

From far away his voice carried across the years. “The one who left me behind at Waiilatpu.”

His eyes softened. “Yes. That Timothy.”

“I . . . I . . .”

He opened his arms to me then and I found myself dropping the rifle and, like a grateful ten-year-old child, running into them.

I cannot describe the joy, the reunion. A few of the others I also knew. I asked after Matilda, learned she had died, but Timothy said Old Joseph, my father’s first convert, spent winters near Lapwai as before and worshiped in the old building. “We keep the old ways but your father’s Jesus ways too. Sometimes. Some do not understand why he left us, you and your father and mother.”

“Why we left you? But you didn’t prevent what happened. The Cayuse are your relatives, you could have stopped it. Then you sent us away and chased the hostage bateau to make sure we left.”

“You believe this?” He pushed back strands of long hair the wind teased.

“I do. You took my family up the canyon and held them hostage there. Isn’t that why my father couldn’t come to save me?”

“This is a false story you tell yourself. He could not come because his presence would have risked all the hostages, maybe your family and all those with white skin. Blood filled the air and made men foolish. But your father chose wisely, though he hated to let you be there at Waiilatpu. We had to hold him back. Your mother, too, had to hold him back. And at the end, we escort the bateau, for safety, happy the ransom was paid. We could not prevent what one tribe chose to do, but we could protect the agreement made to release you. That is what we did.”

“But I thought . . .” How had I confused their intent? “You didn’t force us from Lapwai? Prevent us from taking our clothes and books?”

“We thought it safer for you to go to those white towns for a time, but we wondered why Spaldings didn’t come back to us.”

For a
time.
My mind swirled like a river eddy. My father blamed the Catholics and the Mission Board. I blamed the Nez Perce. Who did my mother blame, or did she?

He looked around. “I do not see your mother or father. They have gone to heaven?”

“My mother.”

He spoke in Sahaptin to those who had dismounted, telling them of my mother’s passing. “Your mother was loved.”

“I know.”

“Your father too. We did not understand why he did not come back once you were free.”

I frowned.
They
wanted us back?
“My father writes to the Mission Board every month, begging those men to allow him to return. But you do not want us.”

“Who tells you this?”

“You sent us away. My father . . . he tries to tell them that you are not warring Cayuse or Yakima, but all Indians are the same to the Board.”

“As some of my people see all white people too.”

“My father is coming here. You will come back when he visits?”

His face broke into a wide smile. “We will stay. We stay to see Father Spalding.”

“And us? My family and I. We are intruding, I know, but can we remain?”

“It is your way,” he said. “But we know a daughter is like her father: faithful, caring of The People and the land. Planting.” He nodded toward my small garden patch, one of the first things I’d completed after we arrived.
Am I like my father in
other ways too? Strident. Forceful. Stubborn. Unwilling to forgive or
see other possibilities.

“Yes, planting.” That’s what my parents had done: planted wheat and potatoes but more, planted the love of God into the hearts of many.

The Nez Perce set up their camp a short distance beyond our tent, dogs sniffing history at old haunts. I thought then of how easily The People accommodated our intrusion. I brought my girls out and introduced America Jane, who curtsied her respect, then ever curious, eased her way into the throng of children who were part of the Nez Perce party. I held Lizzie on my hip, bouncing her as I listened to the sounds of people laughing as they worked, watched the horses be unloaded of their travois packs and be set free to tear at grasses. Skin-covered tipis rose up like white asters, dotting the landscape along the river. Timothy introduced me then to his wife and children. I served them dried beef and knew when Mr. Warren returned we would slaughter a cow and serve fresh meat. We’d have a feast of welcome. Maybe they had tried to keep us safe and protect my parents and siblings. At least today my girls would experience the pleasure of these people before Waiilatpu, as
I once had. There’d be so much to tell Mr. Warren when he returned, to ask my father when he arrived. Evening settled on us like a knitted shawl. And in the quiet I organized my thoughts. Timothy squatted on his heels before the small fire I’d built outside the tent to keep the coffee hot.

“We aren’t far from that place where I last saw you,” I told Timothy. “Do you remember that day?”

Timothy drank the grain coffee I’d prepared. I sat on the rocking chair just outside my tent, holding Lizzie on my lap. Dogs barked in the distance and thin threads of smoke rose up into the red sunset sky. The sun felt warm against my face, heat bristled beneath my collar.

“I remember. We go by that place when we return to Lapwai, and I speak a prayer to the Great Spirit and to the Jesus God that their souls rest. I would take you there?”

“All that sadness? No. I couldn’t.”

“Sadness. Yes, this is a good way to say what happened there.” He took another sip from the tin cup and Lizzie fussed so I put her down to crawl on the blanket beside me, handed her a wooden toy I kept in my apron so she’d sit. She wasn’t yet strong enough to stand alone nor pull up without help. I wasn’t sure I was either.

“You were a sad child at that place.” Fire sparks flitted up into the sky. “I wished to rescue you but could not. It is a lesson I have learned often since. Some things cannot be changed. We must fill the vessel we are given.”

I stroked my daughter’s dark hair. “Someday, maybe.”

“When you are ready, I will take you there, Eliza Spalding, so you can put bad memories to sleep forever.”

“It’s Eliza Spalding Warren. And maybe one day I’ll go with you.” I still had another to forgive—myself. I had not acted as I might have to blunt the pain so many felt at Waiilatpu.

23
Knitting Lives

“They’re friendly Indians?”

“Yes, of course. Timothy was an early convert of my parents.”

Mr. Warren had returned, leaving the drovers with the cattle, and his welcome to the Nez Perce was a wary one as we stood outside the tent. “How’d they find us?”

“Timothy said he heard I was here. From someone in The Dalles, I imagine.”

“Will they stay the winter? They’re consuming grass here and some of those tipis are set right where I hope to build the barn.”

I hadn’t been aware of my husband’s animosity toward the Indian people. I wondered if Little Shoot had left so abruptly on his own. “They’ll likely leave as soon as Father gets here and they can see him.”

“Your father is coming? When did that happen?”

“He wrote.” I picked at a button on his vest. “He’s bought cattle and he and my sisters are bringing them through, the way
you came, and heading to the Touchet River. They’re . . . it looks like they’d like to settle here, too, run their cows with ours.”

“What? The whole Spalding spawn is coming here?”

“Spawn. What a terrible thing to say of my family.”

“You’re right. I love your sisters like the ones I never had.” He brushed my hand away. “You organized this, I know it. You can’t just let things unfold on their own.”

“I have been like that, I know. And it’s brought you a consternation. But I sent the invitation
to visit
, really that’s all I suggested.”
Hadn’t I?
“I would like to have a bridge between my father and me. Between the two of you too. My father took on the rest. You know how impulsive he can be. You’re like him in that way.”

Had I married in part to get away from my father and found a man not all that much different from him? If that was so, then God must have a sense of humor.

“I don’t think I’m anything like your pa.” He cleared his throat of the dust and spat.

“Let’s just see what happens. He may not even come.” Timothy and several men approached then and I put my hand on Mr. Warren’s arm. “Be pleasant.”

He snorted, tossed what was left of his coffee onto the trampled grass, the beads of moisture sparkling in the morning sunlight.