man returned, at the peak of William’s fury against Griffon and their debate about possible sneak-attack strategies, Jeremiah saw that his own father was mounted behind his sister’s beau.
Apparently an incredible idea had been proposed. Harmless old Daniel, the only one in the party who had lived among savages, would take a good horse and a whole buffalo fur and trade them for the girl. The old man took one long look into Jeremiah’s eyes before setting out unarmed on the horse, and as the evening deepened the boy lost sight of his father in the dark fields between the ridge and the Indian camp.
“I will give him one hour,” William said, “before Jeremiah and I, and any others brave enough to face the savages, will bring the wrath of God into their midst.”
“Two hours,” the captain countered. William lifted his time-piece from a vest pocket and studied it in the moonlight.
“Where the hell’s Kearny’s army when we need ’em,” Smith grumbled.
“Fort Hall,” the captain answered. “Or somewhere ’twixt here and there.”
Something like the coyote’s wail, but different: a ululating cry of joined voices lifted into the prairie night. It was punctuated by the thumping of drums, a steady heartbeat resounding from the flickering city of tepees. Jeremiah momentarily lost all resolve and courage regarding the rescue effort with William as a chill ran from his extremities to his viscera. To enter that place of ghostly wailing and thumping seemed beyond the power of his moccasin-swaddled feet and trembling hands. The notion of turning back, of hiding deep in the covered wagon, washed across him; he fought it, remembering the face of the beautiful girl, imagining how the rest of his life might be one of eternal shame should he flee now. Then he thought of his father striding into that city of inhuman terror. How could the man do it?
A half hour passed. The drumming and cries stopped abruptly for about ten minutes, then recommenced. Some thirty minutes later he thought he heard a faint shout from the dark gulf between the cluster of hiding white men and the huge camp of red men, barely audible against the distant music of the Sioux. It became clearer: “Hey, Cap’n! You, Jeremiah! Jaybird! Come, give voice, I can’t see where ye be!”
“It’s my pap!” the boy whispered. It seemed that none other could hear the old man’s voice, and it made him temporarily distrust his own senses. He asked permission to shout into the prairie dark: “Pap! Pap!”
“Jaybird!” Now the others heard as well. “Keep a hootin’ so I can get a fix on ye!” From the
impenetrable darkness, disembodied came
• NINE •
8 AM
the voice of his father
as if from beyond the land of the dead, from the mouth of a child. Jeremiah sat astride his horse contemplating the phenomenon anew as the mare picked her way through the pine-and-oak forest to the willow-bordered river. At daybreak the encounter with the boy had seemed droll and vaguely mysterious, but now it sank like a heavy stone into the stream of his personal faith. Old Daniel McKinley was truly alive in the flesh of a little red-haired chap from San Francisco, sure as the sun shone and the river sparkled. He crossed the waters to the road and hurried back to Lucinda, wanting her warm embrace and empathetic ear, wanting the reality of his own children at Fin Hollow Glen, his father’s farm, and his heart lifted as he saw them rocking together on the porch, the mother reading to child and babe from the old volume of myths and tales from her own childhood and raising her arm to wave as he galloped up the lane.
“What was it?” she called out as he walked from the pasture gate. “You were gone an age. Ezekiel barked his head off two times. I took down the shotgun.”
“My Lord. Did you see what it was?”
“Whatever it was, Zeke scared it off. What took you?”
“I stopped at the hotel to see the boy, and Madison gave me a bathe.” He wiped his brow. “Yes. I believe I need a little water.”
“When do we go to the train, Pap?” Jacob yelled, squirming down from his mother’s lap.
“You had a bathe?” She moved Sarah from one knee to the other.
“Soon, boy. Lucy,” he began, and paused to consider the face of their baby girl, the intensity of her gaze. Did she regard him from the vantage of some previous lifetime, some fount of racial memory?
“Well, for pity’s sake, what did they want? What was the big mystery?”
“The boy,” he began. “I must tell you, that boy is... I mean to say, I feel convinced...”
“Who was Asi?”
“Asi?” He felt again something of the lightness of the hot pool and leaned against the porch rail.
“The telegram, for the love of Saint Joseph!”
“Oh, my, I nearly forgot!” He produced the envelope, and she snatched it quickly. “Wife, it’s only a bit of skulduggery, and my guess is it can only be the work of one man. Jake, would you fetch your pap a drink?”
The boy scooped the gourd into the water barrel under the eave, and Jeremiah drank rainwater slowly as he listened to his wife push through the door into the house and return before he finished gulping. She had his old family Bible on one knee and the baby on the other.
“Hold her,” she said, and he took little Sarah into his arms and gazed into those otherworldly eyes.
“It’s the professor, sure as you’re born,” he said.
“Ain’t we picking the perfesser up at the train?” Jake asked. His father watched his mother leaf through the fragile pages.
“That we are, boy, and soon. Are you ready?”
“I sure am!”
Lucinda scowled, and Jeremiah said, “Wife, this is just the kind of thing he’s done to me in the past. The man has a twisted mind, as you well know. He loves a good joke at the expense of scripture.”
“I love a good joke, too,” Jake shouted.
She leaned over the volume, frowning. “‘If a man is found lying with the wife of another man,’” she read, “‘both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman; so you shall purge the evil from Israel.’”
“Ha, ha!” Jake held his belly and forced a laugh. “That’s funny!”
Jeremiah leaned over Lucinda’s lap, and baby Sarah reached for the page. Her mother caught the tiny hand before it could tear the leaf. “You sure you got the right citation?”
“Twenty-two, twenty-two,” she said, tapping the heading. Sarah gripped her father’s bushy mustache and yanked his mouth down on one side. “Ouch! That’s one powerful child,” he said.
Lucinda studied the note again. Jeremiah settled
