Crooked River (10 page)

As Indian John's trial drew closer, a gnawing dread began to grow inside me.

It was the same feeling I had at certain other times of the year. I always dreaded the start of the bitter month of March, which had taken Ma away. And the approach of Independence Day on account of how Pa and the men got rolling drunk on whiskey and went wild with their guns. And hog-butchering time because Pa said I was too softhearted.

And now, as the end of May approached, an uneasy feeling had come over me about the trial and what was going to happen. Everywhere I went, it seemed I heard folks talking about Mr. Kelley and Indian John. And most of what they were saying was mean and ugly.

Our gossiping neighbor, Mrs. Evans, said that she
had seen Peter Kelley riding through the settlement. “Yesterday, I think I saw that Indian lawyer,” she told us one morning while she was visiting our house. “He was riding an old, swaybacked horse along Water Street. What a poor stick he is.” She rolled her eyes. “Looks as if he's never done an ounce of work in his life. They say he don't own no farmland at all, not even a cornfield, 'magine that.” She leaned forward and grinned with her poor-looking teeth. “He ain't gonna last one day out here on the frontier, not one day.”

I didn't dare to turn my eyes in Laura's direction. The whole time Mrs. Evans was talking, I just stared at the knotholes in our table.

A few days later, I was standing in Mr. Perry's dusty little store buying one stick cinnamon and some sugar when I overheard words that were even worse. Mr. Perry was talking to a stranger. Only thing I could see of the two of them was the tops of their heads over a stack of barrels—Mr. Perry's gray, uncombed hair and the stranger's brown work hat. Mr. Perry was telling the man that there was gonna be a big Indian trial in our settlement in a few days, and after the trial was held, they were gonna hang the savage first and drag the Indian lawyer out of the state on the back of his heels second.

My stomach curled up inside me, and I didn't breathe a word as they spoke to each other. No one knew that me and Laura had gotten to know Mr. Kelley and Indian John. Or that we'd come to feel a great deal of pity in our hearts for them.

“Nay, I wouldn't do that,” the stranger replied in a slow voice. “If it was me, I'd give that skinny lawyer
a hatchet in the skull, same as that savage done to that poor white trapper. Then I'd throw his bones in the ground and let him go and defend all the misrable savages he wants in hell.”

I feared I was going to vomit up everything inside me.

Leaving the stick cinnamon exactly where it was and forgetting my little basket on a barrel, I told Mr. Perry that I was feeling an attack of the shaking ague coming on and I had to get home before I felt any worse. I ran all the way back to the cabin, holding my arms against my stomach and blinking tears out of my eyes.

I couldn't understand how they could speak so cruelly against kind and gentle Peter Kelley, who was only trying to do what he thought was right. Who else would have defended Indian John if he hadn't stepped forward? Wasn't there a single soul who was taking Indian John's side?

I tried asking Amos what he thought. One evening while he was cutting kindling, I stood by the chopping stump, rolling the strings of my apron around and around my finger.

“You want something, Reb?” Amos said finally, giving me a half grin. “Or are you just standing there to see what work looks like?”

“I'm wondering something,” I said.

“Wondering ain't getting anything useful done.”

“I'm wondering about the Indian's trial.”

Amos stopped chopping and wiped his sleeve across his forehead. “What about it?”

“I'm wondering why they're going to the trouble
of a trial and a jury and lawyers if everybody already believes he's guilty.”

Amos went back to chopping. “Because that's the way justice is,” he said, over the sound of the ax. “If you was a man, you would see that. Even a guilty Indian gets a trial in this country before he gets hanged. That's the fair way things get done.”

“But what if—” I paused and took a deep breath. “What if it comes out in the trial that maybe he ain't guilty?”

Amos sighed loudly. “Why don't you ever use your head, Reb? If he wasn't guilty, there wouldn't be a trial, now would there? There wouldn't be no need for a jury or lawyers if he was innocent, right? What kind of sense would that make?” He picked up the ax and lowered it hard, sending splinters of wood everywhere. “Now just go on and leave me alone.”

What Amos meant was a bafflement to me. My mind twisted and turned trying to understand his words. They didn't make an ounce of sense, truly they didn't. No matter which way I looked at them.

When I saw Mr. Kelley again, I decided I would ask him what he believed and I would warn him about Mr. Perry and the other men. Even if, like Amos, he thought I was nothing but a rattlebrained fool.

Peter Kelley finally came back on a day that Laura was making soap at the Hawleys’. When I opened the door and saw his familiar coat, I knew that Laura would never forgive herself for leaving. We had just about given up all hope of seeing him again. Day after day we had jumped at each knock on the door, only to find another person waiting outside.

“May I come in?” Mr. Kelley said in a hurried voice. He had a square haversack slung over one shoulder, and in his left hand, he held a brown leather book that was stuck full of papers.

I nodded and wished that Laura was there. Mercy was playing with a big pile of wood shavings on the floor behind me, and I am sure that I looked like the foolishest thing, with wood shavings stuck all over
my clothes. All the things I had been intending to ask Peter Kelley had suddenly left my head.

“Laura ain't here,” I said as he stepped inside. “She's gone off to the Hawleys’ for the day.”

Mr. Kelley hesitated. I watched as he gazed up at the loft above our heads and then back at the door he had come through. I could tell he was considering whether to leave or stay.

“I don't know when I can find a way to return, not with all the men in the fields and the settlement as busy as it is,” he mumbled, as if he was speaking to himself more than me. He gave me an uncertain look. “You'll keep an ear out for your Pa and brothers?” he asked.

I nodded.

“You'll tell me if you hear anyone coming down the road?”

I nodded again.

Reluctantly, he started up the steps to the chamber loft. While he was talking to Indian John, I sat in the open doorway of the cabin, slowly cutting up a bowl of potatoes and keeping an eye out for Pa and the boys, who had gone to the settlement. Mercy played on the floor behind me.

I tried to decide what to say to Mr. Kelley before he left. Should I warn him about Mr. Perry and the other men? Tell him everything I had overheard in the store? Was it blasphemous to repeat the words my brother Amos had said about the trial? Or should I just keep silent, as my Pa always said I ought to do?

At the sound of Mr. Kelley's footsteps, my heart
thudded in my chest and my mouth felt dry as ashes. I could not think of what words to say. The questions tossed to and fro in my mind. He would surely think I was a half-wit or a fool if I spoke. And how could I go against my Pa and the men?

I ran my tongue across my lips. As Mr. Kelley was tucking the brown book back into his haversack, I stammered quickly “Will you win, do you think?” It was not the question I was fixing to ask, but it was the only one that came out.

“Win?” He squinted at me.

“The trial,” I said.

Peter Kelley's forehead wrinkled up as if he was thinking what to say, and his serious brown eyes stared at me for what seemed like a long time before he replied. I reckon maybe he didn't want to answer on account of who my Pa was and what I might tell him.

But finally, he said, “Yes, Miss Rebecca. I will win.”

His voice was as sure and solid as a block of stone, and I had to swallow hard when I heard it because I figured he didn't know a thing about Mr. Perry and the men.

“What if the men aim—” I paused, praying that Pa would never find out what I did. “What if the men aim, well, to cause you trouble?” I said in a voice that was almost a whisper.

“Trouble?”

“At the trial,” I mumbled. “Because of you, well, defending an Indian.”

Mr. Kelley slung his haversack over his shoulder and gave me a wide easy grin. “I don't expect the
judge or the sheriff would stand for that,” he said with a shrug. “And if someone didn't serve as the lawyer for the Indian's side, what sort of trial would there be?”

Peter Kelley ducked through the doorway and was gone before I could tell him what my brother had said. Or that, truth be told, the sheriff for the Crooked River settlement might not help him either. He was one of my Pa's good friends. And he was none too fond of Indians either, from what I knew.

But perhaps Peter Kelley was right. Perhaps the judge would be on his side.