These Is My Words Read online

  Little old Clover was a top notch fellow after he got out of diapers. I will sorely miss his little puckery smile and all.

  August 16, 1881

  Now I got a Angel Brother to be with my Angel Sister. The boys is about to bust with feeling they pestered Clover on his last day on earth.

  Miss Savannah Lawrence—that is such a pretty name, she is my best friend—is beginning to share her reader and show me to write better.

  Two days after burying Clover we is still at the spot cause Mama and Papa just walks around lost like and saying they can’t leave him. It is a hard time but I am making myself useful and then one morning there is uneasiness in the air. The horses is skitterish and high and even Mr. Lawrence who is used to them is having a hard time. He and Papa kept looking to the bushes and hills and that day put the wagons into a closed space hard against a hill and herded all them horses into it.

  Noon comes high and hot and Mama cooks up catfish for dinner. As I am doing dishes first one arrow hit the wagon tongue right near where I am standing then another past my head so close I hear the feathers flick something and spang into a water bucket. Then the air is filled with arrows and we don’t know where to turn or hide. There is surprise from us and screaming from them Indians and they are riding around and around and scaring us to our death. Dust is strangling us like a hot dry blanket and I feel sick. Then a Indian hollers at us and does a lot of pointing and yelling and then waits like he is wanting us to answer him. As soon as he sees he is getting no answer he slipped into the dust and was gone.

  All is quiet as we count noses and all unhurt, not even a dog or chicken or any of Mrs. Hoover’s fancy island geese. Papa and Mama is suddenly back to right and we spend all after noon loading rifles and packing shot wads and getting ready and nobody eats much supper either. I have tore a hole in my yellow gingham from catching it on an iron fire tender while running from the arrows, so I am fixing it before dark too, but the light is poor and I am purely tired.

  In my sleep I see a canyon open up before me as I ride Rose full out and we can not stop and pitch headfirst over the edge and down in the bottom of the canyon is a little house with a open hole like a mouth and inside the mouth is my Angel Brother and Angel Sister. Ever time I sleep I see this over again and wake sweating and shaking like the fever so my teeth rattle together. It is a lost and mournful feeling. I won’t let myself sleep any more, so I just lay here and write this by the fire and wait for daylight.

  August 17, 1881

  Before the first light is clear, we hear whooping that comes from the open gates of hell. It is much more terrible than my brothers a playing in the yard. We have our rifles ready and begin firing back as arrows rain in on us. They are hitting the horses and the cows and all about me is the sound of screaming. Horses are screaming, the Lawrence girls are screaming, Mama and Harland are screaming and the Indians are making sure the devil knows we’re coming.

  I think I was screaming too but it is too awful a noise to know and I am loading along side Mama. It just seems like it will never end. They are all about us and riding bare backed with their toes holding on, they fire arrows and a couple of repeater rifles with both hands free. Suddenly next to me Mr. Hoover takes a arrow plum in the throat and I will not write what next happened but he is gone to his reward. Mrs. Hoover is struck dumb for some minutes and then commenced to bawling at the same time she picked his rifle from under his body and shot a Indian surely in the chest as if she was a crack marksman.

  My heart is aching and heavy as I remember this next, as bullets went past one went smack through my skirts and took Ernest in the leg at the knee. He hollered to make my bowels twist in a knot, and I began to think we are all going to die soon. Papa is a firing away, Mama at his side runs to Ernest and hugs him. At that second Mrs. Lawrence was hit deep in the stomach and doubled over into the dirt the scared horses was kicking up. Then sudden as the breath of death there is quiet except for Ernest moaning and some hurt horses crying.

  Dear Mrs. Lawrence is gone, Mr. Hoover is gone, Papa has taken a ball clear through the arm but it is a small clean wound and not even much blood, and good old Ernest is in a frightful state as Mr. Lawrence looks him over.

  He isn’t sure of his doctoring, he says with such tears in his eyes, but there had been many a boy in the war who didn’t live from less, and he says the leg must come off. All the laudanum that Mr. Lawrence had is broke and leaked out from a bullet that hit through their canvas and got the medicine bag and the doctor tells us to hold him down tight. It is a certain thing and quickly done. Luckily the doctor has much experience, but Ernest pleaded to God and Jesus and all the angels and Mama and Papa and everyone he knew to save him and afterward he is in bad shape.

  I keep looking in on him and touching his hands and he squeezes me ever so softly, then I go so he can’t see me crying over him. My head aches bad. I asked Papa couldn’t we turn back and go home. He set his hand on my arm, and said, Girl, there’s never any turning back in life. But don’t you worry, he says. The Lord is watching over us. Then I felt real hollow and low and mean. If He is a watching us, I wish He’d lend a hand now and then.

  Papa was cussing the Indians as he dug graves for our friends and it was decided to rest Ernest’s little leg with Mr. Hoover.

  August 20, 1881

  For a nineteen year old brother Ernest suddenly seems mighty small and there is nothing for his pain so he cries sometimes like a baby and then finds a dreadful and fitful sleep. God if you see us in here please help my Ernest I love him and we need him as a brother and a good boy who never had a mean bone in him.

  Besides our folks, we lost one dray horse and two stock horses and a sheep, the Hoovers lost an ox and a pack horse, and the Lawrences lost one milking cow and a calf and a dray. Mama says we should pray and so does Mr. Lawrence but I can’t seem to put my mind to it much.

  Mrs. Hoover is storming around like a tornado. She neatens up things and later sends buckets flying with a kick, she is fit to be tied for sure. Papa says to pack up, we will leave before sunup to get a jump on the Indians and beeline for Fort Stockton.

  August 23, 1881

  Fort Stockton is just a little settlement of soldiers, not a dozen souls there. As we rolled on down the Concho river we came to a creek coming in from the north called Rockey and some live oaks, and we drove the wagons under a big tree and camped. All seems hot and scorched here in Texas country. It is deader and more worrisome than the Territories we come from, and even Papa is feeling he may be wrong about San Angelo.

  I am learning to write better from Savannah and I love her like a sister, she has given me a present of a reader and half a newspaper from last January which I can read without stopping. I learn to spell better from it too.

  August 28, 1881

  Rained in the evening and cool. Next day the mud on the trail and near the tracks is too thick to walk in or pull a wagon so we are stuck, but the air is fresh and dry and Savannah and Louisianna and the other sister I will tell about now have had a time and want to bathe in a stock tank deep among some near trees.

  The water is fresh and rainy but Papa says no, not away from the wagons. We are low on food and he needs to go hunting, too, and there are signs of antelope all around, but his arm is hurting real bad from the bullet hole now. We set about to make the camp look like there’s plenty of men about, pointing rifles all about us just leaning on wagon seats and such, but they are gone hunting. I’m sure they are sorry we did not think before to butcher up the cow that was Indian killed.

  When they were gone Mama said for us girls to all go together and watch carefully, and bring back two buckets of water and hurry. Mama and the boys will stay at camp and maybe have a bath in a wash pan.

  The girls are glad to slip quiet as a deer into the trees and quick get out of their dresses and into the water. Savannah has brought a little piece of soap in a cloth. Alice is a little noisy until Savannah’s sister shushes her. I don’t know why but it felt wise to be quiet. T
he water felt like sweet fingers on my head but it still ached inside.

  Savannah’s other sisters’ name is Ulyssa, after General U. S. Grant, which is a name from the northern side of the line but I don’t mention that. Ulyssa is gentle as a lamb and tiny as a hummingbird, dark haired and pretty as if she could be a queen. If she was Queen Esther in the Bible she looks like a king would save a nation for her. Her eyes sparkle and her skin is smooth as a white feather and I’ve seen every one of my brothers look at her and turn beet red. They can’t open their mouths when she is around and they trip over their own feet like puppies.

  I got my shimmy on and my drawers and one underskirt and I hear a funny whimper and turn around, and there with a knife big enough to skin a grizzly is a nasty dirty pair of men. They are wearing skins and wooly beards all filthy with tobacco spit. The one with the knife has got Savannah by the mouth with the knife to her throat and cuts her a little so blood drips fast on her wet skin. The other one is grinning real mean like and says, any one makes a sound my brother will gut her ’fore she’s dead.

  All of the Lawrence girls are whimpering and yet I notice the men are staring hard at Ulyssa. As one makes a move toward her I stepped back a bit into the bushes. Alice saw me and I pointed to her to run, but as she does, Savannah lets out a cry and there is a new cut on her little throat. Alice crouched down like a scared rabbit and I scrunch myself down low. He throws Ulyssa to the ground and punched her with his fist hard in the stomach, and commenced to taking down his pants.

  In my head I am screaming fight back Ulyssa! Fight back honey!

  Pretty soon Savannah is crying softly and Ulyssa is moaning but he’s got her mouth under his hand and he’s hard on her. Something comes into my mind from the Bible about being sore afraid and I never knew what that was before.

  When he stands up he is all bloody and he takes Savannah by the hair and the other fellow gets ready to take a turn on poor Ulyssa, but he says pointing to Alice, she’s next. Run Alice! Fight back Ulyssa! Fight back Savannah! But I cannot make a sound for Savannah will die as this fellow is cutting her just to watch her hurt. Ulyssa lays there meek as a dove and takes it and I am filled with fury that has no name.

  Without a thought in my head that fury takes hold of me and I run back to the camp barefooted through the brush. Not saying a word to anyone I yank a rifle from a wagon seat and sling onto Roses’ bare warm back. My toes curl around her and my hair is flying and my skirts are up to my waist. I let go of the reins and steer her with my legs back to the water tank and hold on like an Indian and fire that rifle first at the man holding Savannah, the one who had already hurt Ulyssa. After I get him between his eyes, the other fellow lifted his self up to see and I got him in the side, probably through the gut, and he rolls off Ulyssa. I slung myself down and grabbed up Alice and then Savannah who had fainted away hard. You girls, I hollered, get your sister into that water and clean her up.

  They all three raised Ulyssa up and towards the water then Ulyssa lifted her poor bruised face and screamed at something behind me. The gut shot one was moving, and I gave him another dose. When I turned back around I nearly fainted myself for standing so close to me I could hear him breathing was an Indian man in skins and bear claws and face paint. He was tall and brown as a tree, and he looked at me hard. Without saying anything he pulled a flint knife from his belt and took a scalp from both those men. He held them toward me and shook them kind of like he was a giving them to me. I pushed them back with the tip of the rifle and he said some words and dropped them scalps and then disappeared into the bushes. Only then did I hear his pony’s hoofs.

  We was back to the wagons before the men, and there was a darkness in my insides like I never knew before. When Papa and Mr. Lawrence got back they wanted to know what was the shooting. So I told my Mama and Papa, and then there was the sound of the girls’ explaining in their wagon, I could tell from the whispers and then the tears.

  I have never felt so sorry and so angry and so ashamed all at once. Mr. Lawrence went to see the men’s bodies and you could hear him roar like a stuck bull from the woods when he seen them. Mama and Papa just fret, walking around, not able to sit still for a second.

  I want to run. I want to run and run and go far away, back to the Territory or off to some foreign land where there is no more sorrow. If I could follow Clover to Canaan that seems like a good spot. But I am too scared to move a muscle. I just sit here, aching to run away, and stiffened up so’s my legs wobble like a newborn calf, thinking about running and yet sitting holding on to this milk stool like it was the last handle on the earth there is. Mama came and held my shoulders and patted my head real gentle. She didn’t say nothing but her hand on my head did.

  September 2, 1881

  My face feels all pulled down and I declare I don’t think I know how to smile no more. Mama is crying saying it is her fault for letting us go but it is not. Albert don’t say anything to me but he pulled all my stickers out from running for Rose in bare feet, and poor sick Ernest raised himself up and told me I done a good thing and God surely knows it.

  September 5, 1881

  We move on like stone statues. I feel like my legs are made of wooden branches and my heart is a hard rock inside. For days I do not even tie up my hair and it flows around me like an Indian’s. I can’t find my bonnet and my traveling clothes are ragged and so is my soul.

  Papa and I have a fever from so many mosquito bites they are about to eat us alive. They torment Mrs. Hoover and her face is swole up but she don’t notice, just drives them oxes like a haunt. Worst of all, none of the Lawrences, not even Savannah, will have a thing to do with me. They turn their heads when I talk and will not walk near me. Mama said she has heard of Quakers doing this it is called Shunned, for some act of sin. I asked Mama was it a sin to do what I done, and she said no, it was the same as David slaying Goliath, it was only to save Ulyssa and the others, not because of meanness that I did it. I would do it again, too. I am not sorry, but this has hurt my heart and spirit more than all the other trials, for being forsaken is worse than being killed.

  September 7, 1881

  I heard Mr. Lawrence saying to Papa that he thinks these Indians are Comanches and this is their land and we are trespassers, then they get into a big argument about whether or not it is right to fight them for our very lives. Mr. Lawrence says they have been mistreated by the U.S. Government Indian Agents and I’m sure that’s so, but we have no way to talk their language nor do they seem to want to listen. In my head I remember the day the Indian man came and hollered at our camp and hadn’t hurt anyone yet and I think he was trying to say something, but no one will lift their eyes when I speak so I don’t say anything.

  Ernest says he wants to get up and sit by the fire tonight for dinner and so I am happy for the company as Albert lifts him from the wagon. Mr. Lawrence is making Ernest a wooden leg like his own and it seems to be a fine one all lined in the pocket with lambs wool. Soon he will be good enough to try it out. Good old Ernest lightens my spirit and he keeps looking at me with admiring in his eyes.

  I took Savannah’s reader and her newspaper and laid them on her wagon seat tonight when she was asleep. It is as if I have done something to them and I can’t understand it at all.

  Just as I begin to try to remember all that had happened, I see the fire sparkle in a pair of eyes in the bushes and I put my remembering away for another time and stay close to the shadows so I can watch.

  We are closing in on San Angelo and should be two or three more days. It seems Papa was right, it is good ranch land, rolling hills and streams and not dry like around El Paso. It looks as if it gets good rain. There is brush and thick grass and it seems to be good grazing country. It is still rough going, and the brush sometimes hides big rocks that seem to jump up to try to smash our wagon wheels and trip our horses. Before noon, that rigged up axle broke. Papa goes to Mrs. Hoover’s wagon without even asking her and unlashes one of the spare axles and commences to jack up our wagon and pu
t the wheels on the new axle. It is a strong hard wood and too big for our wagon so the wheels will not track with the front ones, but it is sound and will keep us moving ahead of the Indians.

  While he is doing that, Mama says to me to butcher a chicken for noon dinner and I picked up the hatchet and took one from the pen and walked to a fallen tree to use for a chopping block. As I lay that chicken down she stretched out her neck and calmly laid her head on the wood making little cooing sounds. I lifted the hatchet and shook her. Fight back, chicken, I said. Then I hollered at it, fight back, chicken! In a minute I was yelling Fight back Ulyssa! Fight back Ulyssa! over and over like a lunatic.

  I was standing there shaking all over and crying out and I could not chop that chicken to save my life. Suddenly over my shoulder I hear these words in Savannah’s voice, Well, you are WRONG, Papa! and then Savannah is there and taking the chicken and the hatchet from me. Everyone has circled around me while I was crying. Savannah says, I’ll do it for you, it’s all right, then she bursts into tears and drops the hatchet and the chicken and throws her arms around me and we both cry to beat all.

  Harland took to chasing that chicken to have her for lunch and calling out come here, little Drumsticks, and we all smiled for the first time in many, many days. Before too long that chicken is turned to drumsticks and I felt hungry enough for two people but still had to share. Still it is a good meal and we all feel tattered but friendly again. Then it occurs to Papa that we are still in a line and easy to attack, but we are going to push on quickly and we begin to move out.

  Not five turns of a wheel and we roll down a little ridge and into a wide, spread out circle of what looks like a hundred Comanche warriors with their bows drawn. As we look behind they have closed ranks and surround us completely. We have our rifles but don’t want to draw down fire because we are a lost cause.