Longshadow's Woman

Jonah didn’t particularly want his captor to die. He had heard the jailer tell her she must feed him. By remaining her prisoner now, he could build his strength and have a far better chance of escaping.

Shortly before they turned off the main road, she stopped to allow the mule to drink from a broad creek, beckoning for him to do likewise. He refused to be grateful, even when he was able to use the opportunity to step behind a massive gum tree and relieve himself. When the rope between them pulled even tighter so that he could barely lift his hands, he muttered under his breath. His trousers securely buttoned again, he moved back into the clearing just as the woman emerged from behind another tree, adjusting her skirt. For reasons he didn’t even try to understand, Jonah felt like laughing.

She had turned off the main road a mile back, following a smaller road until they turned off once more. Jonah fixed in his mind the landmarks. Eventually they came into a clearing. Passing by a cabin that was scarcely larger than his jail cell, she stopped outside a barn that looked as if it would take only one hard wind to collapse.

“You’ll sleep in there.” She pointed first at the prisoner and then at the gaunt, tin-roofed structure with a collapsed shed at one end.

Jonah could have told her he would be far more comfortable sleeping out under the stars, but that would require speaking her language. Silence could work to his advantage. He was still attached to the cart, though he could easily have freed himself, but to what end?

Instead, he waited for the woman to unhitch the mule. When she turned to look at him, a frown on her face, he saw that she was even younger than he had first thought. Turning abruptly, she picked up a stick, marched across the clearing and drew a line in the dirt surrounding the house. Turning back, she said, “I’m going to untie you now, but you’re not to step over this line, you hear?”

To emphasize her words, she pointed to him, then to the house, and shook her head vigorously. “Not go to house? Do—you—understand?”

He understood lines. The U.S. Government drew lines in the earth and called them reservations. Jonah would not cross her line. Wooden houses stifled him. They were ugly and drafty and too often smelled of unwashed bodies. Bitterness coloring reluctant amusement, he nodded solemnly.

“Then I reckon we’d better get you settled first and then see about cleaning you up. I don’t hold with fleas and lice, not even in the barn.”

Jonah would rather not “hold with” them, either, given a choice. He could feel the miserable devils crawling on his scalp and the skin of his groin. At this moment, he couldn’t have said who he hated more, the man he’d been forced to become, or the woman who reminded him of it.

Chapter Two

Carrie led her prisoner to the barn holding her rifle under one arm, with the lead rope wrapped around the wrist of her bandaged hand. Inside, it was barely light enough to see, but she didn’t dare put down the rope or the rifle in order to light the lantern. The man glanced around, his gaze going immediately to the new stall Darther had had built for his gelding. There was a cot just outside the slat wall where Liam slept when they were here. According to Darther, Liam, who usually reeked of whiskey and lineament, was both jockey and trainer. So far as Carrie was concerned, he was just another mouth to feed. She liked him no better than she did her husband, but evidently, he was part of the bargain.

So when the prisoner moved toward the cot, she jerked on his rope. “Not there,” she said, and then swore because talking to a heathen was like talking to that blasted mule. Neither of them understood a word she said.

Grabbing a hoe, she scratched a line in the earthen floor, dragging him with her as she moved. Then she pointed to the line and shook her head, indicating that he was not to go beyond the mark.

When he nodded his head she decided the poor wretch was not entirely without understanding. Next she would have to fix it so he could go outside to relieve himself without being able to run away. The privy would have to wait until she could think of a way to give him more slack. Rope was no solution. Even without a knife he could hack through it the minute her back was turned, using any of several rusted, broken implements lying around the barn.

He could simply jerk the end from her grasp, come to that. The rifle was all that kept him from freeing himself and taking off into the woods. Which meant that she was going to have to keep it nearby at all times.

Selecting a length of chain from among several hanging on the wall—hoping there were no weak links—she secured her prisoner by padlocking one end to his leg irons and the other to the hasp on the open barn door. Having to hold the heavy rifle and work with her good hand was an awkward, not to mention painful, process, but at least he had the freedom to step outside when he needed to.

“There now, I reckon that ought to do it, long’s you don’t trip over the chain,” she said, and then shook her head because it was useless, trying to talk to him. Which reminded her that she still had Sorry to deal with.

Throughout the entire process the man hadn’t uttered a sound, but his eyes had followed her every move. She almost wished he would complain, even if she couldn’t understand what he was saying. He was beginning to remind her a little too much of the starving pup that had turned up at her back door one day last winter. One look and she’d lost her heart. Shaggy tan fur, big golden eyes, just begging to be loved.

Begging to be fed, more likely, but she’d taken him in and made a fool of herself, crooning, whipping up the eggs and buttermilk she’d been saving for a big pan of cornbread. The miserable mutt had lapped the bowl clean, spattering goo all over her floor. Then he’d peed, snapped at her hand, and run right between her legs and out the door, leaving fleas, dog hair, and a mess for her to clean up.

That poor wretch in her barn looked as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. If anything, he was even dirtier than the pup had been, and while his eyes were gray, not yellow, they sure as shooting weren’t begging for love. She couldn’t afford to get softhearted, not when she was dealing with a hardened criminal.

Chained to the wall, Jonah watched her leave. Then he lifted his head, closed his eyes and swore fluently in three languages. He’d have done better to have gone back to the damned reservation instead of trying to make a new life for himself here in the East.

Closing his mind to the weight of the heavy leg irons, he tested the extent of his freedom, moving around the cluttered barn, studying the selection of tools available. All were rusted. Most were broken, but useful enough for his purposes. The woman was a fool. Perhaps he’d been a bigger fool not to have tied her up with her own rope, dug the key from her pocket and escaped.

Choosing a short length of baling wire, he set to work sharpening it to a fine point on the grindstone. The locks were ancient. Two twists of the sharpened wire and the first popped open, and then the second. He removed the hinged iron bands from his ankles and examined the raw and bleeding flesh. She had offered to let him ride on the back of the cart. Proudly, he had refused, but pride would be poor comfort if his feet rotted and fell off.

When he heard the cabin door open and close, he moved swiftly. By the time the woman appeared, he was back in irons, sitting meekly on a pile of straw. At least it was clean straw. Dusty, but with the sweet smell of the meadow, not like the straw pallet in his jail cell that had reeked of things he’d rather not think about.

“I brought you something to eat and a blanket.” Her voice sounded more hesitant now that she’d left her rifle behind. From the open doorway she eyed him warily before kneeling to place a thin woolen blanket and a plate of cornbread glistening with drippings just inside the door. “And here’s a bucket of water.” She reached behind her and swung the rusted pail inside. “You can drink your fill and wash with what’s left. Tomorrow I’ll take you down to the creek and you can scrub.”

She’d forgotten to mime and speak in those insultingly loud, single-syllable words. Not that she didn’t still treat him as if he were of somewhat lesser intelligence than that miserable mule of hers. Which, he thought with bitter amusement, was probably true.

Without moving, he continued to stare back at her through the fast fading light. She was small for a woman, lacking the soft layer of flesh most women kept even in the starving times. Under the shapeless garment that hung from her shoulders, she appeared more child than woman. Either way, it made little difference, as both were capable of inflicting cruelty on anyone they perceived as being different.

The smell of fresh cornbread and bacon drippings knotted his gut painfully. His belly hadn’t been filled since he’d been taken from his own land, but he’d be damned before he would shame himself by crawling in the dirt and falling on her bread like a starving animal.

“Well.” She hesitated, as if reluctant to leave. He wanted to shout, Go, woman! Leave me one small shred of dignity! “We’ll start pulling stumps come morning. I’ll bring you more food and show you where the creek is so you can bathe first. Um…the blanket. I know it’s hot now, but it gets cool just before morning.”

He made a sound in his throat that was something between a curse and a growl. It served the purpose. The woman fled, and he felt like laughing. Only, he felt more like weeping.

She had not brought him a cup. He scooped water from the bucket with his hands, then gave up and drank directly from the pail and poured the rest over his head. The bread was good, almost as good as that he remembered from his youth.

His youth…

Lying back on the bed of straw, his belly uncomfortably full, Jonah Longshadow stared up at the hayloft overhead and wondered at the curious pathways that had led him so far from his lodge on the banks of the Red River. He had come into this world a part of two distinct cultures, unwanted by his father, a white soldier who had raped his Kiowa mother. As a child he had often been taunted by other children for his white blood. As a youth he’d been watched by his elders. He had felt compelled to prove himself by counting coup on the enemies of his mother’s people. Increasingly bold, he had cheated death many times, for as a warrior, he was fearless, having little to lose.

But as a horse gatherer, he excelled most of all. By the age of eighteen, he was spending most of his time raiding the wild herds that roamed the area. Four years later, in the spring of 1875, he had just returned to his lodge after a week spent stalking a notorious ridge runner, a magnificent stallion that kept watch over his mares from the high ground. That night soldiers from Fort Sill had swept through, rounding up every warrior in the territory. Jonah, whose name had not been Jonah then, had been taken along with more than seventy others.

Pride had kept him from pleading his case, for as a warrior, he had worn the red cloth sash of the tribe’s elite Koitsenga—the Society of the Ten Bravest. Along with the other men, he had been put in chains and dispatched to Fort Sill. There, they had been placed in an unfinished icehouse and thrown chunks of raw meat once a day until they were eventually transported by way of wagon and railroad to Saint Augustine in Florida. Expecting to be executed once he reached his destination, Longshadow had instead been sentenced to indefinite imprisonment. The difference had seemed slight at the time, but that was before he met Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt.

Pratt was like no other white soldier in Longshadow’s experience. The man had fought against the Kiowa, yet he bore no malice, choosing to educate his prisoners rather than punish them for defending their homeland. He’d had the prisoners construct their own barracks, then moved them out of Fort Marion’s dungeons. Putting them to work as bakers, sailors, fishermen and field laborers, he had even allowed them to keep their small wages. During the time when they were working on their barracks, he’d enlisted the help of a few white women to teach them to read, write and speak English.

Warily at first, but with increasing eagerness, Longshadow had allowed himself to be taught. Somewhat to his astonishment he’d discovered that he was a fair scholar, partly because of an insatiable curiosity, and partly because he had recognized education as a powerful tool. With the world around him changing so rapidly, a man needed all the knowledge he could absorb in order to survive.

After three years, Lieutenant Pratt had persuaded his superiors that the prisoners were firmly reconciled to the white man’s way. They had been granted their freedom. Most had returned to the reservation, but a few of the once-fierce warriors had elected to stay in the East.

Longshadow had been among those who elected to stay. His mother was dead. If he went back, he’d be expected to live on the reservation with its invisible borders. The Kiowa way of life was finished. From his tutors he had learned about the Jesus Road and the Plow Road. The first he hadn’t understood; the second held no appeal. Instead, he had chosen the sea. Over the next few years he had saved the money he earned as a seaman, recognizing the power of the white man’s gold, for even then a dream had been growing inside him. A dream of one day breeding fine horses. But it would take more gold than he possessed, which meant more years of work until he could save up enough to buy breeding stock and the land on which to keep them.

As a prisoner he had sailed for a company that traded in the West Indies. Upon receiving his full pardon, he had returned to the sea, for of all the options, that one was most acceptable. Life at sea reminded him of the past, when his world had been wild, free and vast. And although he read, wrote and spoke English, he kept that knowledge to himself, having quickly discovered that most of his crewmates resented an Indian who spoke their language more precisely than they did. Although he liked Pratt, and would trust the man with his life—had done as much—he found it hard to trust other whites.

So after promising to return the favor by helping some white person in need, he arranged with Pratt to collect his pay directly from the ship owner and deposit it into an account in Longshadow’s name. Each time he returned to port, Pratt gave him an accounting, congratulating him on his good sense. While other members of the crew drank and gambled away their pay almost as quickly as they earned it, Jonah watched his savings grow. He studied the written account from the bank, visualizing the horses he would one day buy—a good stallion and two, possibly three sturdy mares.

For four years he had carried the dream, as one after another, three ships had foundered in the fierce storms called hurricanes and gone down. Each time, Longshadow, along with at least a part of the crew, had survived. That was when his mates had taken to calling him Jonah, saying that no ship he sailed on was safe.

Jonah recognized the name. It had come from the Jesus Book. He had rejected that path, but he accepted the name as a reminder that, just as the Feather Dance had not brought back the buffalo, neither his own god, who was called Tiame, nor the white man’s Jesus, had kept him from being punished for sins he had not committed.

Carrie braced herself to confront her surly prisoner and herd him to the creek. If she had to work with the man, he was going to have to scrub himself clean. She put up with her husband’s stench because she had to, else he’d knock her to kingdom come. For all his love of fancy clothes, Darther hated bathing. He always reeked of whiskey, sweat and cigars.

But she didn’t have to put up with a blessed thing from her prisoner. She’d paid her two dollars—he was hers to do with as she saw fit. And as long as she was going to be working at his side, she saw fit to clean him up. Once he knew how good it felt to be rid of his own stench and the vermin that infested his hair and his body, he would likely insist on bathing at least once a week.

She herself bathed every single day from either a bowl or a washtub. Once a week in the summertime she dunked herself all over in the creek and scrubbed, hair and all, with her best soap that had crushed bayberries added to the fat, ashes and lye to sweeten the scent. She did her best dreaming sitting in water, letting it lap around her, washing away the cares of the day.

With a towel over her shoulder, the Springfield under her arm and a chunk of plain soap—not the scented kind—in her apron pocket, Carrie let herself out early the next morning. The fog lay heavy across the clearing, sucking around the pines and gum trees. By the time it burned off, she intended to have at least five of the biggest stumps dragged out of the ground and all the way over to her burn pile. It would take more than a sore hand to slow her down, she told herself, setting her jaw in determination.

Scattering a handful of cracked corn to the chickens along the way, she sang out a greeting. “Rise an’ shine!”

Rise an’ shine… Carrie had been hearing those words in her head for as long as she could remember, saying them aloud even when there was no one to hear but the chickens and that aggravating mule. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember if they’d come from her own family or from one of the missionaries who had given her a home after the massacre. All she knew was that saying them made her feel better. As if she weren’t entirely alone.