Part 26

Here had been stationed the Sixth U. S. Infantry, who had wearily tramped for two months the banks of the Missouri river and dragged their boats after them, a distance of nearly a thousand miles of river travel to reach this post in the wilderness. Not a white man then occupied what is now the state of Iowa, except Julien Dubuque and a score or so of French traders. Not a road was to be found nor a vehicle to traverse it. But one or two boats other than keel boats and barges had ever overcome the swift current of the great Missouri thus far.

The Santa Fe trail, that wound over the hills west of the fort, connected them with the Mexican Spanish civilization of the Southwest, and the great rivers with their unsettled land far away on the Atlantic seaboard.

Seventy-five years ago these soldiers dropped the ropes with which they had dragged the barges and keel boats and themselves thither, and picking up spade and shovel, dug foundations, molded and burned brick, cut down trees, and built barracks for themselves and the three detachments of artillery who terrified the redmen with the mysterious shells which dropped down amongst them and burst in such a frightful manner.

They numbered about twelve hundred men, and the bricks they molded and the cellars they dug still remain to tell of the Fort Atkinson that was, beside whose ruins now stands the little village of Fort Calhoun, sixteen miles north of Omaha on the Missouri river.

Dr. Gale, whom we have thus seen considering a question of great importance both to himself and to the Indian woman with whom he seems to have some relation, was the surgeon of the Sixth Infantry, an Englishman, short, thick-set, and evidently of good birth, although the marks of his rough life and rather dissolute habits obscured it in some degree.

The point where Fort Atkinson was built was the noted "Council Bluff" at which Lewis and Clark held the Indian council famous in the first annals of western explorations, and it still remains a rendezvous for the various tribes of Indians, the "Otoes, Pawnees, 'Mahas, Ayeaways, and Sioux," attracted thither by the soldiers and the trading posts, and secure from each others' attacks on this neutral ground.

Shortly after the troops were located here an Ayeaway (Iowa) chief and his band pitched their tents near the fort. The daughter of this chief was named Nikumi; she was young and had not been inured to the hard tasks which usually fell to the squaws, so her figure was straight, her eyes bright, and her manner showed somewhat the dignity of her position.

Not a white woman was there within a radius of five hundred miles except a few married ones belonging to the fort; was it strange that Dr. Gale, the younger son of an English family who had left civilization for a life of adventure in the New World, and who seemed destined to dwell away from all women of his own race, should woo this Indian princess and make her his wife? He had chosen the best of her race, for all who remember her in after years speak of her dignified carriage, her well-formed profile, and her strength of will and purpose, so remarkable among Indian women.

For four years she had been his wife, and the child she had just seized and held in her arms as if she would never let her go, was their child, little Mary, as her father named her, perhaps from his own name, Marion.

But now this union, which her unknowing mind had never surmised might not be for all time, and his, alas, too knowing one had carelessly assumed while it should be his pleasure, was about to be severed.

A boat had come up the river and brought mail from Chariton or La Charette, as the Frenchmen originally named it, several hundred miles below, and the point to which mail for this fort was sent.

These uncertain arrivals of news from the outside world made important epochs in the life of the past. The few papers and letters were handled as if they had been gold, and the contents were read and reread until almost worn out. For Dr. Gale came a bulky letter or package of letters tied together and sealed over the string with a circle of red wax. There was no envelope, as we have now, but each letter was written so as to leave a blank space after folding for the superscription, and the postage was at least twenty-five cents on the three letters so tied together. The postmark of the outer one was New York City; it was from a law firm and informed Dr. Marion F. Gale, surgeon of the Sixth Infantry, stationed at Fort Atkinson, the "camp on the Missouri river," that the accompanying letters had been received by them from a firm of London solicitors, and begging to call his attention to the same. His attention being most effectually called thereto elicited first that Messrs. Shadwell & Fitch of London desired them to ascertain the whereabouts of Marion F. Gale, late of Ipswich, England, and now supposed to be serving in the U. S. army in the capacity of surgeon, and convey to him the accompanying information, being still further to the effect that by a sudden death of James Burton Gale, who died without male issue, he, Marion F. Gale, being next of kin, was heir to the estate of Burton Towers, Ipswich, England. Last came a letter from the widow of his brother, telling him the particulars of his brother's death.

Ten years before he had left home with a hundred pounds in his pocket and his profession, to make himself a career in the new country.

There were two brothers older than he, one of them married, and there seemed little prospect that he would ever become proprietor of Burton Towers; but they, who lived apparently in security, were gone, and he who had traversed the riverway of an unknown and unsettled country, among Indians and wild animals, was alive and well to take their place.

He thought of the change, back to the quiet life of an English country squire, after these ten years of the free life of the plains, and the soldiers and the Indians. The hunting of the buffalo, the bear, and the elk exchanged for the tame brush after a wild fox, or the shooting of a few partridges.

But the family instinct was strong, after all, and his eye gleamed as he saw the old stone house, with its gables and towers, its glorious lawns and broad driveway with the elms meeting overhead. Oh, it would satisfy that part of his nature well to go back as its master. This vision it was that had filled his eyes as they looked so far away. But then they came back again and rested on Nikumi and the child.

A certain kind of love had been begotten in his heart for the Indian maiden by her devotion to him, although he had taken her without a scruple at the thought of leaving her when circumstances called him away. But now he felt a faint twinge of the heart as he realized that the time had come, and a stronger one when he thought that he must part with the child. "But why need I do it?" he soliloquized. "I can take the child with me and have her educated in a manner to fit her for my daughter; if she is as bright as her mother, education and environment will fit her to fill any position in life, but with Nikumi it is too late to begin, and she has no white blood to temper the wildness of the Indian. I will take the child."

Not a care for the mother love and rights. "Only a squaw." What rights had she compared with this English gentleman who had taken her from her tribe, and now would cast her back again and take away her child? But ah, my English gentleman, you reckoned without your ordinary sagacity when you settled that point without taking into consideration the mother love and the Indian cunning and watchfulness, their heritage from generations of warfare with each other.

"What have you got?" she asked in the flowing syllables of the Indian tongue, for like the majority of Indians, though she understood much English she never, to the end of her days, deigned to speak it.

"Some words from my friends in the far-away country over the waters, Nikumi," he answered. "My brother is dead."

"Ah, and you are sad. You will go there to that land?" she said.

"I don't know, Nikumi; I may have to go over, for there is much land and houses and fields to be cared for. I am going down to see Sarpy, now. He came up on the boat today."

She watched him as he strode off down past the cattle station towards the fort. In the summer time her love of her native life asserted itself, and she left the log quarters which Dr. Gale provided for her, and occupied a tipi, or tent of skins, down among the cottonwoods and willows of the bottom lands where portions of her tribe were generally to be found. When he passed out of sight she took her baby and went to a tipi a short distance from hers, where a stalwart buck lay on a shaggy buffalo robe on the shady side, smoking a pipe of kinnikinick, and playing with some young dogs. She spoke with him a few minutes. He ceased playing with the dogs, sat up and listened, and finally with a nod of assent to some request of hers started off towards the fort. She followed shortly after and glided about from the post store to the laundresses' quarters, stopping here and there where groups of soldiers were gathered, and listening attentively to their talk about the news that had come by the boats.

She learned that these boats were to be loaded with furs from Sarpy's trading post and go back to St. Louis in a few days. In the meantime the young buck, who was her brother, had gone by her directions to Sarpy's trading post, just below the fort. She had told him what she knew and surmised; that the "pale-faced medicine man," as the Indians called him, had received a paper from his friends across the great waters towards the rising sun which told his brother was dead, and that he might have to go there to care for the houses and lands his brother had left; that she had heard him say "If I could take the child," and she feared he might take her papoose away; "and he shall not," she said passionately. "I must know what he will do. Go you and listen if the medicine man talks with Sarpy; watch him closely and find out all."

He had followed the Indian trail which skirted along the edge of the high bluffs on the eastern boundary of the fort, and reached the trading post from the north. Going in he uttered the single word "tobac," and while the clerk was handing it out to him he glanced around in the aimless, stolid Indian manner, as if looking over the blankets and skins hung against the logs. Back at the further, or southwest, corner of the store, near a window, and partially screened by a rude desk made of a box set upon a table and partitioned into pigeon-holes, sat two men. One of them was Dr. Gale, the other, Peter A. Sarpy.

To the ears of most readers the name will convey no particular impression; if a resident of Nebraska it would call to mind the fact that a county in that state was named Sarpy, and the reader might have a hazy consciousness that an early settler had borne that name; but in the days of this story and for thirty years later it meant power and fame. The agent of the American Fur Company in that section, Peter A. Sarpy's word was law; to him belonged the trading posts, or so it was believed; he commanded the voyageurs who cordelled the boats and they obeyed. Every winter he went down the great river before it was frozen over, to St. Louis, and every spring his boats came up after the ice had broken up, and before the great mountain rise came on in June, with new goods that were anxiously looked for, and eagerly seized in exchange for the buffalo robes, the beaver, mink, otter, and deer skins that had been collected through the winter. He was of French parentage, a small man, with the nervous activity of his race; the brightest of black eyes; careful of his dress, even in the wilds; the polish of the gentleman always apparent in his punctilious greeting to everyone; but making the air blue with his ejaculations if his orders were disobeyed or his ire aroused. Famous the length of the river for his bravery and determination, he was a man well fitted to push actively the interests of the company of which he was the agent as well as a member.

The Indian passed noiselessly out and going around to the side of the building seated himself upon the ground, and pulling his long pipe from the folds of his blanket, filled it with the "tobac," rested it on the ground, and leisurely began to smoke. It was no unusual thing for the Indians thus to sit round the post, and no one took any notice of him, nor in fact that he was very near the open window, just out of the range of vision of the two men sitting within.

"So upon me devolves the succession of the estate of Burton Towers," Gale was saying to Sarpy, "and my sister-in-law writes that some one is imperatively needed to look after the estate as there is no male member of the family left in England."

"And you will leave your wild life of the prairies to go back to the tame existence of rural English life? Egad, I don't believe I could stand it even to be master of the beautiful demesnes which belong to my family. Power is sweet, but Mon Dieu, the narrowness, the conventionalities, the tameness of existence!"

"No worse than the tameness of this cursed fort for the last year or two. It was very well at first when the country was new to us and the Indians showed some fight that gave us a little excitement, but now we've exhausted all the resources, and an English squire, even, will be a great improvement. You've some change, you know. St. Louis in winter gives you a variety."

"What are you going to do with Nikumi and Mary?"

"That's what I want to talk to you about. I find I'm fonder of the child than I thought, and indeed it gives my heartstrings a bit of a wrench to leave Nikumi behind; but to take her is out of the question. Mary, however, I can educate; she is bright enough to profit by it, and young enough to make an English woman of. I believe I shall try to get her away quietly, and take her with me."

"You ought to have lived here long enough to have some knowledge of the Indians, but I'm damned if I think you are smart enough to get that child away from its mother," said Sarpy.

"Well, I'll try it, anyway. The worst trouble I apprehend is getting away myself at so short notice. When do your boats go down again?"

"In about a week."

"To leave the troops without any surgeon is rather risky, but they're pretty healthy at this season, and young Carver has been studying with me considerably, and can take my place for a short time. If I succeed in getting leave of absence to go on to Washington, Atkinson will probably send some one up from St. Louis as soon as possible. I shall have to get leave of absence from Leavenworth here, and then again from Atkinson at St. Louis. Then I can send in my resignation after I arrive at Philadelphia. All this beside the intermediate hardships and delays in reaching there."

To the Indian outside much of this was unintelligible, but he heard and understood perfectly "I think I shall try to get her away from her mother and take her with me," and later the reply that the boats would go down in about a week.

That was sufficient for him, and he arose, gathered up his blanket that had dropped down from his shoulders, slipped the pipe into his belt which held it around his waist, and then his moccasined feet trod the narrow trail, one over the other, the great toe straight in a line with the instep, giving the peculiar gait for which the Indian is famous.

He found Nikumi back at her tipi: the kettle was hung from the tripod of three sticks over the fire, and a savory smell arose which he sniffed with pleasure as he approached, for Nikumi was favored above her tribe in the supplies which she received from the camp, and which included great luxuries to the Indians. Nikumi was very generous to her relatives and friends, and often shared with them the pot which she had varied from the original Indian dish of similar origin by diligently observing the methods of the camp cooks.

She had learned to use dishes, too, and bringing forth two bowls, some spoons, and a tin cup, ladled some of the savory mixture into them, for she had evidently learned the same lesson as her white sisters: when you would get the best service from a man, feed him well.

On the present site of Fort Atkinson may be found, wherever the ground is plowed over or the piles of bricks and depressions that mark the cellars of the buildings are overhauled, a profusion of old buttons, fragments of firearms, cannon balls and shells, and many pieces of delf. A quaint old antiquarian who lives there has a large collection of them which he shows with delight.

Who knows but that some of the fragments are pieces of Nikumi's bowl, for as her brother told her of Gale's words to Sarpy, her face added to its bronze hue an indescribable grayish tinge, and starting suddenly, the bowl fell from her hand, striking the stones which formed a circle for the fire, and broke into fragments. She forgot to eat, and a rapid flow of words from her lips was accompanied by gestures that almost spoke. They should keep strict watch of the loading of the boats, she said, and of the voyageurs in charge of them, and when they saw signs of departure of them, she would take the child and go--and she pointed, but spoke no word. He must make a little cave in the hillside, and cover it with trees and boughs, and she would provide food. When the white medicine man had gone he could tell her by a strip of red tied in the branch of a tree like a bird, which could be seen down the ravine from her hiding place, and she would be found again in her tipi as if she had never been absent. He grunted assent as well as satisfaction at the innumerable bowls of soup, and then stretched himself comfortably and pulled out his pipe.

Meanwhile little Mary, the heroine of this intrigue, was eating soup and sucking a bone contentedly. Would she be an Indian or an English maiden? She was an Indian one now and happy, too. And Nikumi? She had come to her white husband and remained with him contented and happy. He had been good to her in the main, although he swore at her and abused her sometimes when he got drunk or played at cards too long, but he was better than the braves were to their squaws, and she did not have to work as they did; she had wood and food and she could buy at the trading post the blankets and the strouding and the gay red cloths, and the beads with which the squaws delighted to adorn their necks and to stitch with deer sinew into their moccasins. She had lived each day unconscious that there might not be a tomorrow like it. But it had dropped from the skies, this sudden knowledge that had changed everything.

Had she had no child she would doubtless have mourned silently for the man who had come and taken her life to be lived beside his and then left her worse than alone; but the greater blow had deadened the force of the lesser, and only her outraged mother love cried out.

She sat on the buffalo robe inside the tipi and watched the child rolling about outside with the little fat puppy, hugging it one moment, savagely spatting it over the eyes the next. She had no right to rebel; an Indian did what he would with his squaw, how much more a white man, and to any decree concerning herself she would doubtless have submitted silently, but to lose her child--that she would not do, and she knew how to save it.

All unconscious of this intrigue, Gale made his preparations for departure, and it was soon known through the camp that he was about to go to the "states."

He had taken pains to conceal the fact of his intended final departure for England.

He secretly made arrangements with the man who acted as cook for the boats to take charge of little Mary until they got to St. Louis, where they could get a servant, and going down the river would take but a few days.

Gale's condition of mind was not to be envied during the interval before he started. He scarcely felt the injustice to Nikumi in thus leaving her, but he could not quite reconcile with even his weak sense of her rights that he should take the child away from her, and yet he fully intended to do so. He spent much of the time with Nikumi at her summer residence, the tipi, and she treated him with the same gentle deference and quiet submissiveness that were usual to her, so completely deceiving him that he did not once surmise she knew anything of his plans. The last two or three days he occupied himself in packing a case of articles of various kinds that he had accumulated: an Indian pipe of the famous red pipestone of the Sioux country, with its long flat stem of wood cut out in various designs and decorated with feathers and bits of metal; moccasins of deer skin, handsomely beaded and trimmed with fringes, some of them made by Nikumi's own hands; specimens of the strange Mexican cloths woven from the plumage of birds, brought by the trading Mexicans up the Santa Fe trail; a pair of their beautiful blankets, one robe, a few very fine furs, among them a black bear skin of immense size, a little mat woven of the perfumed grasses, which the Indians could find but the white man never, some of the nose and ear rings worn by the squaws.

Nikumi came to his quarters while he was taking these things down from the walls and shelves where she had always cared for them with so much pride. In answer to her inquiring gaze he said: "I go Nikumi, to the far eastern land, and these I shall take with me to show my friends what we had that is beautiful in the land of the Indian and the buffalo, that they wish to know all about." "And when will you return to Nikumi and Mary?" "I can not tell; I hope before many moons; will you grieve to have me go Nikumi?" "Nikumi will look every day to the rising sun and ask the Great Spirit to send her pale-faced medicine man back safely to her and the child." He put his arms about her with a strange spasm of heart relenting, realizing for a moment the wrong he was purposing to commit. But ah, the stronger taking advantage of the weaker. The strong race using for their own pleasure the weak one. "Ye that are strong ought to help the weak." He also prepared at Sarpy's trading post, and by his advice, a smaller package of such things as would be desirable for little Mary's welfare and comfort.

It was greatly lacking in the articles we should consider necessary these times, but when we realize that every piece of merchandise which reached this far away post had to be transported thousands of miles by river it is matter of wonder how much there was.