of a mind of the wandering people of the Holy Lands and their many sins and punishments. The vast white-and-rose-colored metropolis, ornate with balconies and columns, with arched windows and ramparts, was in truth uninhabited. Its wind-eroded architecture of lime and sandstone was no less magnificent for being the work of Mother Nature, however. The distant cliffs drew his people forward, a line of small, noisy creatures scurrying beneath the silent, gleaming towers of rock, and in some days they reached modest walls truly wrought by the hand of man, the two humble adobe forts, Laramie and John, where the North Platte and Laramie rivers joined.
This confluence was a kind of city in itself, set between gently rising, grassy mountains. The fort walls were round-shouldered and erect with turrets and crude guard towers. Near them more than a hundred wagons and tents gathered in the open field, and Jeremiah was shocked to see among these the graceful tepees of Sioux considered to be friendly to the white settlers.
For two days he lived in this temporary city of emigrants, trappers, soldiers, and Indians as his family blocked and repaired their wagon and traded for provisions. He, William, and Lucinda explored Fort Laramie Trading Post together, and late in the day, as the Southern gentleman enjoyed spirits and cigars with a group of officers, Jeremiah and Lucy entered the lovely conical tent of a smiling old woman and made the trade of an old knife and frying pan for two pairs of buckskin moccasins with brightly colored beads on the fringes.
They compared their new footgear and raced across the field to the riverbank, the girl daring him, lifting her baggy work dress and sprinting fast as the wind. He struggled behind her, his heart nearly bursting at the sight of her bare white legs flying above the grass, and when they both collapsed and gasped for breath he envied the bead of sweat dripping down her red cheek and the round kernel of grass seed nuzzling her ear, and he noticed that the wheeze of his lungs was barely discernible.
Before sundown they listened to the foreign tongue of two long-nosed mountain men in raccoon caps, “Frenchmen,” she whispered, with four Indian-squaw wives between them and a dozen small children at their feet. There were a few words in their parlance that the boy thought he understood, and he told Lucinda as much and realized that it came of reading the Latin of his Bible. The Frenchmen waved their arms wildly as they spoke, their hats’ raccoon tails flapping with their long hair, and Jeremiah imagined a life of climbing mountains and trapping creatures for meat and fur and loving these beautiful dark women; and just as he imagined it all, he felt the girl’s hand in his own and looked to see the smile he’d first seen framed by willow and pigtails on that first week of their journey.
“A thimble for your thoughts,” she said.
He blushed. “I was just thinking of those Frenchies,” he whispered as she pulled him along toward the fortress doorway, “and that there might be something wonderful and mysterious about that life. I mean what it might be like to follow no rules nor government but what the waters and the wild tell your heart to heed.”
She squeezed his hand hard before releasing it, and he thought his knees might cave in from the warm strength of her touch. What powerful life there was in this fleet-footed girl! “You have such a talent for language,” she said. “Where was your schooling?”
He considered lying but didn’t even know what a believable answer would be, so he told her the truth.
“Your mother? That’s so quaint and rustic. Mother and the Bible and none other?”
He nodded.
They found a smith’s forge within the compound, and there, to his amazement, his own father swinging a hammer. Jeremiah urged her past this embarrassing scene, hoping she hadn’t recognized the gaunt old man, sleeveless and sweating; he grasped her hand and led her to the circle of musicians tuning a banjo and two fiddles. There William joined them, and Lucinda sang with another woman, and soon a dance was struck, and Jeremiah lost his wildwood flower to her beau once again.
THE PRAIRIE SCHOONERS set sail behind a new captaincy, the shared command of a Hayward named Irons and a drover named Griffon, and here they were joined by some dozen more wagons. The route was slightly uphill in a dry country of ravines and sparse forage, all the while within sight of Laramie’s Peak. The river led them north, narrow and treacherous for crossing, and the wagons had to be rafted across in places. The young man who’d lost his wife to the buffalo tried to swim his mule in a deep rapid and slipped under the churning water. There was word and sentiment among the emigrants who saw the accident that he’d made no effort to save himself. His corpse and the lame and useless mule were found a mile downstream. After the fellow’s burial his child was given over to the family of the girl who’d rescued her during the stampede.
When buffalo or antelope appeared along the way they were hunted, and at least one would fall to feed the emigrants at each encounter. Griffon spoke of an army escort near a pass in the Continental Divide, some week or ten days ahead, and the boy pictured a sheer ridge of lofty mountain from which he would be able to see from one sea to the other.
The days were scorching and dry but the nights frigid; the water was bitter with copper in it, and some cattle that drank heavily from a pool edged with a black scurf died presently. A few rattlesnakes worried the stock and were shot. The wagoners took to ridges and gullies, the trail often soft and sandy. Their campfires were fueled by the resinous sage branches.
Five days beyond Fort Laramie, Lucinda was kidnapped. Her mother saw the red-skinned assailants take her daughter and throw her across a spotted horse as she herself performed her toilet behind a bush. Mrs. Merriweather raved and screamed in her husband’s arms, mostly in self-accusation for not trying to rescue the girl, and a posse formed within minutes, led by William and Griffon. In recognition of his shooting prowess, Jeremiah was allowed to accompany the dozen men in the direction of the horse tracks left by the Indians. He flew behind William, the gentleman’s belt gripped in one hand and the family rifle in the other, determined to kill the red men and rescue the girl or die in the attempt. His brief life of some fifteen years would be forever validated should it end today with Will in rescuing that fair maiden.
The posse came to a rise and was signaled to halt before its ridge. Griffon had them dismount and belly-crawl to peer over the rounded brink, and Jeremiah saw a vast collection of conical shapes, like some mountain range of human handiwork. As a child he’d imagined tepees to be much smaller and not clustered in huge number like this; in the dusky light they stood against the rolling sea of sage grass and sand mountains like an armada of unspeakable power. His heart sank.
“It’s Sioux,” Captain Griffon whispered. The lips on his jowly face worked from grimace to frown, back and forth, as if wrestling with anger and despair. “It’s the Sioux nation,” he said and followed this with a curse.
William rose to one knee. “I don’t give a damn if it’s Napoleon’s army,” he muttered in his sweet accent. “I will not lie here like a frightened cur while those savages have at her!”
“Will,” David said, “I’m with you, but it would be suicide to attack them.” A few men muttered agreement with David’s assessment, and Badger Smith even suggested they head back for camp before dark. William cursed.
“Am I to understand that none of you will join me in rescuing a white woman from a pack of savage rapists?” William hissed.
“I’m with you all the way, Will,” Jeremiah said. “I’ll shoot ’em all if need be.”
“Now, hold up,” their new captain said. “I am in command of this company, and I will not send two boys off to their deaths jest like that.” The posse grumbled and argued as the evening began to set in. Small fires threw shadowy waves of light against the pole-and-skin structures. Jeremiah was so consumed by the
