Opal's Journey: A Young Girl's Adventure with Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce 1877 Flight for Freedom

By Lionel Gambill

Refusing to give up their ancestral land and be driven into the newly established reservation, several Nez Perce bands led by Chief Joseph, White Bird, and Looking Glass embarked on a fighting retreat covering four states: Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, with an attempt to reach safety in Canada. Along the way the native warriors outwitted the U.S. Cavalry again and again, but eventually surrendered some 40 miles from the Canadian border where Chief Joseph made his famous I will fight no more forever speech. About 750 men, women, children, and elderly set out on the march; over 100 died in battles and extreme hardship. Based on historical facts mostly the story was told through the eyes of a fictitious nine-year-old white girl, Opal, who befriends the Nez Perce and goes through the war with them. The oppression of the Native Americans was one of the darkest pages in the U.S. history, yet the spirit of these proud people could never be destroyed even in the face of death and exile and material impoverishment. Also the spirit of reconciliation prevailed as the peacemaker Chief Joseph eloquently summed up:

Whenever the white man treats the Indians as they treat each other, then we shall have no more wars. We shall be all alike brothers of one father and one mother, with one sky above us and one country around us, and one government for us all. Then the Great Spirit Chief who rules above will smile upon this land, and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by brothers hands upon the face of the earth. For this time Indian race is waiting and praying. I hope that no more groans of wounded men and women will ever go to the ear of the Great Spirit Chief above, and that all people may be one people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496915405

Lionel Gambill

Lionel Gambill, a WWII veteran, is a writer and editor who once worked at the Stanford University Press. Deeply touched by the tragic sufferings as well as the irrepressible spirit of native Americans, in particular the Nez Perce tribe, Gambill was inspired to spend more than ten years researching, writing, and rewriting a historical novel set amid the heroic four-month and 1,170-mile flight for freedom of Chief Joseph’s people from June to October of 1877. Gambill visited the Nez Perce people and followed the trail on three occasions. He made a humble donation to their Homeland Project as well for establishing a greater Nez Perce presence in the Wallowa area and having Chief Joseph buried in his homeland with his people as he wished.

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© 2014 Lionel Gambill. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 06/03/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-1541-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-1542-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-1540-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014910063

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CONTENTS

Preface

Disclaimer

Acknowledgments

Prologue   Independence Day At The Finishing Academy

Book One

Oregon

Chapter 1   A Sea Change On The Way-Lee-Way

Chapter 2   Aunt Phoebe’s

Chapter 3   Dreaming

Chapter 4   New Kid In Town

Chapter 5   War Department

Chapter 6   The Incident At Whiskey Creek

Chapter 7   Sarah Watkins

Chapter 8   Shooting Snoogers

Chapter 9   Esmy And Rosebud

Chapter 10   Phoebe Has The Vapors

Chapter 11   Opal Goes To The Revival

Chapter 12   The Wellamwatkins

Chapter 13   Bertha Bouchard And The Perfectionists

Chapter 14   A Valentine For Henry

Chapter 15   Uncle Hin

Chapter 16   Phoebe Sees The Doctor

Chapter 17   Mcbeth Meets Smohalla

Chapter 18   Jerry Gets A New Name

Chapter 19   No-Arm Shows The Rifle

Chapter 20   Opal Learns To Be A Good Girl

Chapter 21   Opal’s Crime

Chapter 22   Doctor Bland

Book Two

Idaho

Chapter 23   The Snake River

Chapter 24   Tepahlewam

Chapter 25   It Is Already War

Chapter 26   Lahmotta

Chapter 27   At The Slate Creek Stockade

Chapter 28   Around The Circle

Chapter 29   Peeta Auüwa Pah

Chapter 30   On The Weippe Prairie

Chapter 31   Over The Lolo Trail

Book Three

Montana

Chapter 32   Fort Fizzle

Chapter 33   Peace Flares Up In The Bitter Root

Chapter 34   Izhkumzizlakik Pah

Chapter 35   In-Meks

Chapter 36   Opal Calls On Mister Sherman

Chapter 37   The Trap Closes

Chapter 38   The Yellowstone, The Musselshell, The Missouri

Chapter 39   Tsanim Alikos Pah

Chapter 40   Is The War Quit?

Book Four

The Grandmother’s Land

Chapter 41   Balls Of Fire

Appendix

for D

In whose loving eyes I first saw Opal’s fire

PREFACE

Few stories have so gripped me, so touched my heart, or so inspired me as the Nez Perce 1877 flight for freedom. It ignited in me a wish to reach across the years, to connect with the spirit of those proud people—a spirit that could never be destroyed even in the face of death and exile and material impoverishment.

Chief Joseph’s unshakeable integrity stands as a mighty touchstone. My heart cries out, I want to be like him! And my rashness in depicting him in a work that is part fiction is tempered by my desire to show him, not bigger than life so much as deeply human in the best sense of that word.

That this great man was a product of his culture, an embodiment in one individual of the deep spiritual and ethical values of the Nimiipuu people, does not diminish his power to inspire. In my pantheon of American heroes he stands shoulder to shoulder with John Adams, with Abraham Lincoln, with Eleanor Roosevelt, with Martin Luther King, each determined to do right, to tell truth, and to step forward and be counted on the side of the downtrodden and the disenfranchised.

He was a peacemaker, the peace chief of his band, the Wellamwatkins. His spiritual center was in the land, in the Wallowa, his beloved valley of the winding waters. In this alienated age wherein the natural world is a stranger to most people, we need to learn over again to recognize how sacred that world is, lest we destroy it and ourselves.

Mixing fiction with history is a risky business. Having characters who are mere products of my imagination interact with historical people on these pages is doubly risky, but it suits my story-telling purpose. It’s presumptuous enough of me to write about people whose culture I did not grow up in, but it would have been far more presumptuous to pretend to write from the viewpoint of an indigenous person when I am not an indigenous person and cannot possibly know what an Indian thinks or how an Indian feels. Given that fiction is a lie in its particulars, its redeeming quality should be to shine a light on inner truth, and I can only hope this story achieves that.

The device I chose was to let the reader see events as through the eyes of a fictitious nine-year-old white girl, who naturally would have been filtering everything through her own previous experience and socialization. Wherever possible I have let historical persons speak in these pages as they did in real life. My initial motivation for telling this story was to entertain and educate a dear friend who was nine years old at the time I began my novel. Opal, the protagonist of this novel, could serve as a surrogate through whom my friend could be introduced to many remarkable people. I hope it can do so for those who choose to read it.

Novato, California

September 2007

The Nez Perce Historic Trail, 1877

trail%20map-1.jpgNez%20Perce%20trail%20map.jpgBand.jpg

Chief Joseph Band, 1877

Chief%20Joseph.jpg

Chief Joseph, circa 1880

DISCLAIMER

Let it be known to the reader that none of what follows is true. In telling my story I have taken outrageous liberties with the known facts; all the more so with the unknown facts. My protagonist is a creature of my imagination, as are her relatives and many of her friends. There was never a girl named Opal Cassidy, nor did she ever travel to Oregon or ride with Chief Joseph and his people on 1,170-mile trek. That some of my fictional characters insisted on having actually lived is no fault of mine. In some instances I have given fictional personalities to persons who evidently did live. I humbly apologize to them.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Mick Clumpner

Simone Wilson

Wilfred Scott

Otis Halfmoon

Chloe Halfmoon

Nancy Halfmoon

Diane Mallickan

Antonio Smith

Horace Axtell

Mae Taylor

Dale Burt

Lee Whittlesey

Jim (the ranger at Bear Paw)

Jim Sullivan

Curator at Chinook Historical Museum

Dharia

Ellen

Wilma

Sonia

PROLOGUE

Independence Day at the Finishing Academy

F OURTH of July or no Fourth of July, if there was one thing the girl called Daisy did not want to hear, it was a band playing marches. It grated on her how the other five girls had got all pumped up with excitement, four of them standing on the bottom rail of the fence watching the band tune up and the fifth craning her neck to see from her post at the back door. Yes, she had once been just like them, she knew that, but now at age ten, to feel her pulse quicken with anything but fear seemed a betrayal of dear friends, most of all those who lay buried in the bosom of their mother the earth.

And wasn’t she living a lie? But what was she to do? A girl has to toe the mark. And she had bought in, had become Frobisher’s show pupil. What’s the use of being precocious if you don’t make good use of it? At least she wouldn’t have to listen to any blather about screaming savages; Frobisher had given her word. It was part of the bargain between them.

She kicked at the ground, then quickly brushed the dust off her shoes with her hand. She tried, hands over her ears now, to shut out the rattle of drums and the tuning up. She’d made her peace, why did they have to stir up old memories?

Daisy, come see! They’re going to start.

It was Molly, the new girl. Their dresses fluttered like flags in the breeze, and Molly had caught their fever.

They’re going to play! Daisy, they’re going to play a march!

But the girl called Daisy barely nodded, wiping her eyeglasses, squinting against the sun. She closed her eyes and turned her back, wanting with all her being to shut out the blaring fanfare and the jaunty quickstep and the drums rattling and booming. She even welcomed the shrill voice from the doorway; it was Letitia.

It’s time! It’s time! Miss Frobisher wants us in.

And the girl called Daisy fumbled with the cap she had carefully pinned in place till it covered the French braids, her pathetic little gesture of defiance that she didn’t want Frobisher to see. She held the door, waiting till the others were inside, one of her little duties; Sergeant Daisy, the other girls called her, and she half enjoyed their mockery. The band muted now with the door closed, the room was almost silent as the girls stood in line behind Edna Frobisher. Harold Talbot, the photographer whose shop was around the corner, stood off to one side, a portfolio in his hands. Red, white, and blue bunting hung across the back of the stage and below the windows.

Edna Frobisher smoothed her skirt and cleared her throat.

"Welcome to our ice cream social. As I introduce our girls to you, I beg you to think of them not as wayward girls but as creatures who needed to be brought into our cocoon so they can put their old lives behind them and spread their wings, so they can be butterflies, and no longer be forever—uh—worms.

We now have six in our family, two more than at that horrid time two years ago when a pall was cast over our celebration by the awful massacre at the Little Big Horn, and we mourned the gallant men and true who had just given their lives, most of all for their brave and stalwart commander, General George Armstrong Custer.

Several older women dabbed at their eyelids with their handkerchiefs. Frobisher, who looked as if she were staring at a distant mountaintop, continued.

What that brutal massacre taught us was that savagery still raged, almost at our doorstep. It taught us that wild nature still needs to be tamed.

Brow darkening with each word, the girl called Daisy, smelling betrayal at hand, had begun to draw in a deep breath, suddenly interrupted by her keen awareness of intruders. There had been no sound but the increased loudness of the band, now half a block down the street. All her senses at alert, she waited, listening, while Frobisher, oblivious, continued her introduction.

We had another reminder this last autumn when still another horde of screaming savages was corralled less than twenty miles from here.

Anyone with keen hearing might have heard a long low moan from the throat of the girl called Daisy; if one didn’t know better, one might have mistaken it for the growl of a panther. Cold rage in her eyes, she clenched her fists and muttered under her breath.

She said she wouldn’t do that. She promised. Why do the double-tongued Soyappo have to be that way?

Frobisher’s syrupy voice went on, as if she didn’t hear.

As you know, not all of our wild Indians are redskins. Just as our Army has reined in the savage who sits in darkness, we have corralled our six pale-skinned wild Indians and we are civilizing—

Firecrackers, two, three, four, five suddenly battered the gloom, loud and close. A shuffle of young feet and guffaws as the pranksters beat a fast retreat from the open doorway through which they had tossed their string of two-inch salutes. The ladies who filled the seats had not even had time to shriek in dismay before the deed had been done. Frobisher turned toward her charges, and saw that the space was empty where a moment earlier the girl called Daisy had stood. She stared at the space. The girls turned around, shrugging.

Then slowly a small brown-haired head loomed from behind Miss Irene’s piano, and a pair of blazing eyes scanned the room. More slowly still, the girl called Daisy, moving cat-like, emerged, rose to her feet and resumed her place in the line of girls, beads of sweat on her brow, her hands trembling ever so slightly.

Frobisher turned back to the podium.

Notice, if you will, as I introduce the girls, how demure, how self-effacing they are. Rough-hewn when they came to us, they have, like diamonds in the rough, been polished, their rough edges made smooth. Each will be an ornament to any man’s home, taking her place with modesty, never brash, never bold, and always quiet and obedient.

And so the introductions began. Frobisher would call a girl’s name, the girl would step forward, and Harold Talbot would hold up a photograph, the before of which the girl herself was called upon to be the after.

Now only one girl remained to be introduced. Frobisher had saved her trump card for last.

Daisy.

Talbot held up his photograph, pivoting slowly so everyone could see. Two or three women in the audience gasped. Several leaned forward, adjusting their eyeglasses. Frobisher, satin-smiled, savored her triumph.

"Incredible as it may seem, the demure young lady standing before you was once the surly, sullen-faced animal you see in the picture. The sepia tone is fitting, since the subject was spattered with mud. Mister Talbot made that photograph only last October after we rescued Daisy from the real wild Indians she had taken up with.

Daisy is just ten, and a living lesson in frugality. She has saved every penny she has earned here. The girls, by the way, earn their allowance by doing useful work. Daisy is also diligent and studious. She shines most brightly in Geography. She knows every river, every creek, every mountain in the Montana Territory, and having learned Montana, is now studying Saskatchewan. She will now tell you something about what she has learned here.

Daisy curtsied.

I think the most important lesson I learned here is to never forget that we’re only children and don’t know what we want, we only think we do out of the sin of pride, and we need a grown-up person like Miss Frobisher to tell us the varnished, I mean unvarnished, truth. She tells us what we want and don’t—no, that’s not what I meant to say—she tells us what we should wan—what we should and shouldn’t do—like she says, we need to have our rough edges chopped off and to be a lady you have to learn to change yourself from what you were because otherwise you’d be like some wild animal and she teaches us so—sometimes now we don’t even hear the wild animal when it tries to speak to us, and—

She pressed her lips together, inhaled, half closed her eyes, the agony she had buried stirring afresh. The silence hung over the room like a tule fog, seeming even to quiet the distant blare of the band and the crackle of firecrackers. Miss Frobisher stood stiffly at the podium. The girl called Daisy looked down at her feet and began again.

Excuse me, sometimes I forget who I am. Miss Frobisher tells us what we need to know, and that makes us free to—to do what we’re supposed to do and not have all this stuff going on inside us that can make us want to do other things, and—that’s what I learned here. Thank you.

Frobisher put her smile back on.

The girls will serve tea and ice cream before going up to their quarters, and then we shall hear an inspiring message from our surprise guest. And Daisy, you will help Molly with her curtsy.

Outside, the girl called Daisy wiped her eyeglasses, stuffed her hankie back in the cuff of her sleeve, and began her lesson.

When you curtsy move slower. Watch me. See how my feet cross? Now you do it.

Molly curtsied, her gaze never leaving the eyes of the girl called Daisy, who nodded her approval. She saw the hero worship in Molly’s face, and felt a flush of pleasure rising in her bosom.

That’s better. You can make it just a mite faster. Watch how I hold my dress on each side. The idea is to not drag it on the floor but you don’t want to show anything either. Face me and copy the way I do it.

Standing face to face, they curtsied in unison.

Good. Only you got to look like your eyes don’t see anything, like you’re dumb and don’t know anything and don’t want to.

She saw Molly’s puzzled look.

Listen to me. You want to get by? Stay out of trouble, whatever it takes. Grown-up folks know best. Don’t think too much. Don’t stand out. Yes-sir them and yes-ma’am them. The dumber they think you are, the less trouble they’ll give you…

Oh Lord, she thought, now what have I done? She looks like I’d just burned down her doll house.

Look, you’re a lot like me, or the way I used to be. Maybe that’s why I like you. You want the world to be all truth and justice and fairness, and you want to believe what people say. I can tell you it isn’t like that. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ve seen too much that I wish I hadn’t.

She glanced toward the back door to the two-story frame house, Frobisher’s house and school.

We’d better get back to courtesies.

This time Molly’s eyes glazed over, staring into space.

Good. You’re catching on fast.

Molly leaned forward, unabashed adoration sculpting her face into a little round valentine.

Know what?

What?

I always dreamed of living with Indians. Did you? Did you really live with Indians? What was it like?

"It’s not how you might think it is. You can get hurt—bad. And it’s not some dress-up game. Braids and buckskins don’t make you anything but another white person playing at something. I’m not an Indian because I didn’t grow up Indian. But I learned a lot.

"I have people here in my heart, some alive, some dead, who made themselves real to me like only four or five other folks I’ve ever known. I see people here in town who look like they’re not more than half-alive. These people here in my heart live their lives so big it would scare most folks half to death.

"When I was with the Wellamwatkins I had two hundred people in my family. When we joined the rest of the Nimipu I had seven hundred, more than seven hundred. And they took care of me like I was theirs, and pretty soon I felt like I was theirs. There wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do for me, or anything they wouldn’t give me. I learned from them that if you want to find the sweetest gift of all, give something to someone and feed yourself on the pleased look in their eyes. Stop the Nimipu from giving and you’d break their hearts.

"I’ve been cursed by the Soyappo, white people. I’ve been shot at. You see, they thought I was an Indian.

"I learned to ride a horse bareback. I learned that a tipi could feel like home, or the bare ground with the sky over it, and a river for a bath tub. I learned to live with the animals all around us—otters, raccoons, a coyote, the ravens. It was like the animals too thought I was one of them… Sometimes I’d swear we could understand each other as if we talked the same language.

"I learned how each place is alive in its own special way—a particular bend in a creek, the way a certain cottonwood or willow stood on a slope. White folks see a tree or a field or a river only with their eyes. I think my Indian friends could see it with their bodies, with their skin. Maybe some day I will too, I don’t know. Where I am now, I can’t talk to animals anymore. I wouldn’t even know how.

Yes, I lived with Indians. Your curtsies are fine. Let’s go inside.

On an easel just inside the door she found the sepia portrait of herself. Next to the easel was a stand on which sat a vase full of blue violets. She took one of them and held it up close to her eyeglasses. Where was it, when was it, that she tried to pick a wild blue violet on her way from California to Aunt Phoebe’s? Could that be only last year? But the thought was left suspended somewhere in the gloom, shattered by Frobisher’s voice slithering its syrupy way through the hubbub from across the room.

She was just a savage, a complete savage!

Those words sinking in, she strained to freeze the docile exterior she had so carefully constructed, lest the inferno blazing up in her bosom sweep the façade aside, leaving in its place a mirror image of the enraged sepia face in the photograph. Then, seized by a reckless impulse, she took Molly by the hand and pulled her back to the doorway.

Can I trust you to keep a secret?

Yes! I’ll never tell.

What I told you before about don’t think too much and look like you don’t see anything, that’s what the Frobishers in this world want you to do. Believe the garbage about savages and all, and you’ll get by, and I can tell you the price, the price is you get sick inside from all the lies, You can be her show pupil and pretty soon you don’t know who you are. All that stuff she says is lies, what does she know about Indians, or anything for that matter, and I’m tired of lying. I want to know who I am and I want you to know who I am and don’t ever breathe a word to anyone…

I won’t, I promise.

My name’s not Daisy.

She clutched the blue violet, tightly, remembering Oregon, trying to remember the person she was just a year earlier. She cupped her hand to her lips, next to Molly’s ear.

It’s Opal.

BOOK ONE

OREGON

CHAPTER 1

A Sea Change on the Way-Lee-Way

D AY dawned clear and cold. Under a lead-gray sky a skift of fresh snow had dusted the mud-crusted stage road between Pendleton and La Grande. A year earlier the snow and the strange hills would have ignited Opal’ s stampeding curiosity. She would have cast the scene into memories to share with—

The thought froze in her throat. The one she would have carried those images to was no more. Each new moment was only one more numbing reminder that her loving father would never again hold her, comfort her, call her beautiful. He had been so big in her life; now she felt dwarfed by the emptiness that never went away. Nine years old, she thought, and my life feels older than those hills.

Hello, Aunt Phoebe, she imagined herself saying. I’m here to spend the summer with you and Uncle Horace and Cousin Violet. Just don’t expect me to have fun. No smiles. No laughing. I’m your miserable niece Opal, and I’ll try to keep my dour face from dragging down your spirits.

She had to get busy, do something, anything, to keep the stopper on the ache in the pit of her stomach. And she didn’t want Bertha to see her turmoil. She grabbed her valise, pulled it up onto the seat between her and the stagecoach window, took out some notepaper and a pencil, and formed the words in her mind:

Dear Mommy,

If I could do one thing with my life, such as it is, I would chase all over the world trying to stop people from killing people. If I could even save one person from getting killed, I’d count my life worth the suffering.

Your loving daughter,

Opal

But the pencil wouldn’t write those words. She stared at the paper, listening to the steady clop-clop of the horses’ hooves and the creaking wheels, and finally scribbled:

La Grande, Oregon, 23rd March, 1877

Dear Mommy,

My bladder wishes the stage had a W. C. like the train.

Your loving daughter,

Opal

She found an envelope in the valise, addressed it, folded her note, inserted it into the envelope, put it into the valise, then popped the valise shut. The noise unleashed a rush of old memories. She held her breath and gritted her teeth, trying to hold back tears. Bertha noticed.

Something in your eye again?

‘ts nothing.

Nothing but a pain that won’t go away because you won’t give in to it and let it run its course. It hurts me to see you locking your feelings up.

I should never have brought Daddy’s valise. I used to help him pack it when he went away on union business. How can I feel rage and not want to kill the thugs that shot him? And I don’t want anyone killed, not even them.

When they came within sight of La Grande she took a tin box out of the valise, opened it and took out one of her mother’s cookies, put the cookie in her mouth and the box back in the valise, took out a wool muffler and wrapped it around her neck, and popped the valise shut, holding her breath.

At the stage station she got out, the cookie between her teeth, dragged the valise across the coach floor, and set it down on the wooden sidewalk. A couple of hundred feet down the street she spied a building with a flagpole in front.

Bertha, I got to mail my letter and find a W. C. or a privy.

Hurry back. Henry should be here soon to meet us.

Halfway to the post office she saw a newspaper office, stopped, tilted her eyeglasses down over her eyes, and read the headlines in the window.

Mountain Sentinel

La Grande, Oregon

Saturday, March 17, 1877

THE THREAT OF WAR IN THE WALLOWA

General Howard’s Efforts to Prevent an Indian Uprising.

Two Companies of First Cavalry at Walla Walla

Are Ordered to the Forks of the Wallowa & Grande Ronde

To Prevent an Outbreak by Non-Treaty Indians.

Her face went slack, the half-eaten cookie motionless in her mouth. She tightened the muffler around he neck, still staring at the headlines. The newspaper was almost a week old, and the Wallowa was where Aunt Phoebe lived. She could be riding into the middle of a battle.

She did her best to stuff this newest upset into a corner of her mind, mailed her letter, found a privy, and a few minutes later, crossing the rutted street, stepped into a pothole and twisted her ankle.

Damn!

At the stage station Bertha was warmly hugging and kissing a tall, gangly man. Opal waited patiently until Bertha noticed her.

Opal, this is my friend Henry Fontenelle, come to take us to the Wallowa. Honey, you’re limping. What happened to your foot?

Twisted my ankle; ‘ts nothing.

Henry crouched down, eye-to-eye with Opal.

If it hurts, it isn’t nothing. Where does it hurt?

She raised her foot, pointing to her sore ankle. He gently cupped her foot in one hand and rested the fingertips of his other hand ever-so-lightly on the swollen place.

Tender there?

She nodded vigorously. He eased her foot down to the ground.

Try not to put too much weight on it for a day or two. Then little by little put more weight on it. Then the more you use it the better it’s going to feel.

He tilted his head slightly and gently brushed aside a ringlet that had fallen in front of her left eye.

Just like your heart.

His words, the tenderness in his eyes, and the gentleness of his touch, unleashed in that selfsame heart—just for a moment—everything that heart had resisted. It made her eyes turn soft and her jaw muscles ease, allowing even her lips to feel. She nodded, almost smiled. Henry stood up and rummaged in the back of his wagon.

Just a moment, and we’ll get you settled.

He found a cushion, placed it on the floor in front of the rear seat, fetched a shallow wooden box and placed it open-side-down on the ground, then without another word, scooped her up in his arms, one arm under her waist, the other under her knees, stepped up onto the box, set her gently onto the rear seat, and lowered her leg slowly until her foot rested on the cushion. She gazed at him, her eyes and mouth wide open, her breath halting. Her chest shuddered. One kindness from a man and here she was, teetering at the edge of an abyss, as if anything could ever bring back the solace of loving arms. She stiffened her chest and swallowed hard, pushing against the yearning of her traitorous, vulnerable heart.

Soon they were out of town on a rutted wagon road that crossed a broad valley. Off to the right she could see willows where a stream had cut its way along the foot of a steep bank that rose on the other side, perhaps twenty feet higher than the valley floor. As they rode on she saw places where the stream looped across the little prairie, carving curlicues in the snow-crusted straw-colored grass. Henry nodded toward the stream.

The Grande Ronde river. ‘Way-lee-way, as the Indians call it.

Opal’s eyes brightened.

And it goes ronde and ronde, doesn’t it?

But the French name was not what most stirred her heart and her curiosity.

Will we see Indians? Will I see Yellowstone Park? I studied about it in school.

Bertha glanced back over her shoulder.

Honey, Yellowstone Park is hundreds of miles away, in the Wyoming Territory. And if there are Indians, I’m sure Henry knows them.

Henry noticed Bertha’s teasing smile.

Opal, would you like to meet Indians?

Yes! Yes! I want an Indian girl for a friend.

He smiled and nodded.

I think that just might be possible.

Near a place called Elgin they came upon a disabled wagon, its back canted to one side, the left end of the rear axle dug into the snow between the spokes of a broken wheel. The driver and a woman in a gray frock stood next to the wagon. Henry reined up, climbed down, talked to the driver and the woman, and then returned, carrying the woman’s carpetbag. The woman limped, dragging her left foot behind her. Henry and the driver helped her up onto the seat next to Opal, and Henry set the carpetbag on the wagon bed.

Sue—Miss McBeth here—is on her way to Lostine and we’ll drop her off there.

Miss McBeth was pinch-faced and beady-eyed, her hair pulled back tight into a bun.

Just as the wagon began to roll again Opal heard hoof beats behind them. Turning, she saw a horse and rider approaching at a fast trot. The rider, a tall thin man with black hair, a walrus moustache, and deep-set eyes, wore a huge white sombrero. When he spoke he had the loudest voice Opal had ever heard. It seemed louder than a trombone, louder than a bellowing bull.

HALLOO! WHY IT’S MISTER FONTENELLE. HOW ARE YOU, HENRY?

Just fine, Ad. And you?

IN THE PINK, SIR, IN THE PINK!

Henry turned to his passengers.

Ladies, this is Mister Chapman, Arthur Chapman, from Cottonwood. Ad, Miss McBeth, Miss Bouchard, and her young friend, Miss Cassidy.

MY PLEASURE. I KNOW MISS MCBETH. FINE DAY FOR A RIDE.

YES IT IS—Yes it is.

WORRIED ABOUT INDIANS, LADIES?

The ladies shook their heads no.

NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, LADIES. NOTHING BUT A PACK OF COWARDLY SCOUNDRELS. IF THEY GO ON THE WAR-PATH, WE’LL MAKE SHORT WORK OF ‘EM.

Henry scrutinized Chapman.

You think so, do you?

ABSOLUTELY. GIVE ME A GATLING GUN AND A MOUNTAIN HOWITZER AND I CAN WHUP ‘EM MYSELF. RAT-A-TAT-TAT! BOOM! GOODBYE INDIANS! I’M RUNNING LATE. HAVE TO MOVE ON. HASTA LA VISTA.

By the time Chapman had galloped off down the road, Opal’s composure had come apart.

"I don’t want a war! I don’t want any killing! I don’t want soldiers killed. I don’t want Indians killed. I don’t want anybody killed!"

Henry reined in the horses. Bertha had turned in her seat and had one hand on Opal’s arm while she handed her a handkerchief with the other. Miss McBeth waited until Opal had stopped bawling, and then spoke slowly.

Opal, there needn’t be a war. I’m the missionary to the Nez Perce Indians. They signed a treaty. They agreed to give up their excess land and live on the reservation. The troublemakers are a handful of Non-Treaty Indians still stubbornly sitting in darkness.

Henry was staring at Miss McBeth, his shoulders hunched up. He started to speak, then held back, then finally spoke, his voice low and tautly restrained.

If you’ll forgive my saying so, Miss McBeth, the Non-Treaties say—rightly, I think—that they never signed the Treaty of 1863, that the government chose a few turncoats to sign away the rights of entire bands of Indians who opposed the treaty.

McBeth’s eyes hardened. Opal noticed that when she spoke, her mouth seemed to move independently of the rest of her face, as if it weren’t connected.

"Chief Lawyer a turncoat? You can’t be serious, Mister Fontenellle. I dare say, the name Lawyer will live in honor and glory long after the world has forgotten Chief Joseph and his Dreamer-cult heathens.

A scant 23 years separates us from the Millennium, with 800 million souls rushing to death! Their only hope of salvation, of survival even, is to give up their indolent and sinful ways, learn the gospel, live one family to a house, and wear citizen clothes. I have digged our boys up from the pit, full-grown heathens. Barbarians! They had no standards of right.

Henry was half-turned around now, his jaw jutting out.

Perhaps, Miss McBeth, their standards are merely different. As for barbarians, Colonel Kelly and his volunteers slaughtered Chief PeoPeo MoxMox, a good man, a blameless man, who went to them under a white flag of truce. Slaughtered him and cut him up for souvenirs. Colonel Wright rampaged through the Washington Territory wantonly murdering Indians. If that is civilization, then civilization is no better than barbarism.

For several miles they rode in silence. Henry’s passionate defense of the Non-Treaty Indians struck, like flint to kindling, the craving inside, and all of Opal’s carefully shored up and mortared fortifications were dust and she felt insubstantial, as if the next breeze would swoop her up and toss her about like so much chiffon, and it frightened her and it felt delicious.

The sun was high in the sky when they rounded a bend and saw just ahead several men, some in uniform and most on horseback near a fork in the river. Four of the men on horseback turned toward Henry’s wagon as it approached. One was an Army officer. The civilians wore coats and ties, and two of them were Indians. The white civilian had a mustache and a long scraggly beard. He wore a gold watch chain on his vest. One of the Indians rode forward a few paces and waved.

Pika!

Sue McBeth waved back.

"It’s one of my boys! Archie, hello!"

She hastened to explain.

My boys call me Pika. It’s Nez Perce for ‘mother.’

The white civilian avoided Miss McBeth’s eyes, a look of pained disdain on his face. The Indian who had waved dismounted. Sue McBeth introduced the four men who had approached. The white civilian with the scraggly beard was John Monteith, the Indian agent at Fort Lapwai, the Army officer was Captain Stephen Whipple, and the suit-and-tie Indians were Archie Lawyer and James Reuben.

With a nervous glance toward Henry, Miss McBeth chattered on, ignoring Monteith’s ill humor.

"Mister Monteith and I will soon have all our wild Indians reined in where they can become civilized, and it will be soon, won’t it, Captain Whipple?

Whipple, his hands resting on the pommel of his saddle, nodded.

Soon enough. Chief Joseph is a reasonable man. He won’t subject his people to war. Meanwhile, just as a precaution, we’ll be moving a larger force in here May first, to keep the peace.

McBeth glanced at Opal.

And to protect settlers?

Whipple leaned back.

To protect settlers and Indians, ma’am.

Sue McBeth, with some help, climbed down from the wagon and shook hands with Archie Lawyer and James Reuben. Bertha stood up, turned to Opal, and nodded toward the space on the front seat that she had just vacated. Opal smiled and nodded yes. Bertha helped her move.

Henry had dismounted and was checking the wagon’s harnesses and doubletree. Monteith edged toward Henry.

Once before I gave Joseph thirty days to bring his band to the reservation.

His eyes gleamed as he spoke.

This time the Army will see to it that he does so.

Henry climbed up to his seat on the wagon, taking the reins in his hand. He stared at Monteith as if examining a specimen.

Do you really mean to drive those people in by force, make them gather their horses and cattle from a dozen valleys, and all their belongings, the residue of thirty centuries, and cross two rivers, in thirty days?

Monteith’s beard and mustache twitched.

They have had sufficient notice.

And will they have game, and salmon, and roots and berries, and grass for their horses and cattle?

Certainly not, Mister Fontenelle, they will have none of that.

You’d take away their sustenance and way of life?

"Exactly so. You have made my case for me. When the men can hunt and fish, they will not be home tilling the soil. When the women can go off and dig roots, they will not be cooking and cleaning for their men. When a man can breed horses, letting them feed off thousands of acres of grass, and trade or sell them for a good price any time he needs a dollar or two, they will have their sustenance and their way of life and be wild savages forever."

By wild don’t you mean free? Haven’t we just fought a war to stay free? Isn’t free will part of your own religious conviction?

The Lord did not ask them to be free. They are going to live in houses, one family to a house, and they are going to marry for life, one man and one woman, and raise crops, and the women will stay in their kitchens and the children in school. We make it easier for them to choose freely by reducing the temptation to choose wrongly.

I appreciate your concern for your charges, Mister Monteith, but—if you’ll forgive my saying so—the script you have just outlined sounds to me like a recipe for an explosion.

Monteith stiffened.

Our duty is to save their souls. Good day, sir.

Opal cared little for any details of the disputation she had just witnessed, but her heart knew that Henry was defending people who’d been made to feel powerless—defending them passionately, much like someone who had been dear to her for most of her life.

Now, passions of her own had flooded her, sweeping aside—just for the moment—her defenses, and taking hold of her to such a degree that no conscious will was at work as she rose up to a kneeling-upright position on the seat, looped her arms around Henry’s neck, and kissed him, then pressed her cheek against his and sat back down, circling her hands around his arm.

Had someone been watching, they could have seen half a dozen weather changes in the terrain of that small face—the relief of a wanderer suddenly finding the path home to warmth and comforting arms, the shadow of a loss too great for small shoulders, a sudden desperate clenching of the balance bought by going dead inside, and then the eyes closing and the biting of the lips before she burrowed her head deep in the fold of Henry’s jacket, her chest shaking with the ebb and rush of the war inside.

Henry gave the reins a tug, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

Now, perhaps out of weariness more than will, she gave herself up to lacy shadows of leaves playing on her face, to treetops tracing sweeping arcs above her, curving one way, then the other as the wagon wove its way on the winding road alongside the tumbling white plumes of rapids in the Wallowa river. Trance-like, her mind almost a detached observer, she witnessed her surrender to heady fragrances of grasses, to willows and cottonwoods and mock orange. She abandoned herself to the sun’s warmth on her skin. The chill gone, she nestled alongside Henry, at peace for the first time that day.

She studied the profile of his face, outlined against the steep cliffs towering above the river, smiled her approval, and rubbed her cheek affectionately across his shoulder.

For a moment their eyes met, and the worship he saw spread through him like wine on a frosty winter’s day, catching him so off-guard that he was hardly aware of his own eyes reflecting back the tenderness that had just captured him.

Your daddy adored you, didn’t he?

It was her turn to be caught off-guard.

Bertha told you!

No, you told me.

When? How?

With your eyes, with your arms, with that sweet kiss. You have a divine boldness that grows only out of feeling cherished. How was that for you?

She tightened her hands around his arm, struggled with her resistance, afraid to go to that fortified place inside, felt the wish and the fear, ricocheted between giving in and holding fast, and somewhere inside made a leap into the darkness.

I lived in the middle of Daddy’s love, like a lily in a pond. I thought I’d live there for—a lot longer than I did.

He put a comforting arm on her shoulder and drew her closer. She swallowed hard, trying to hold back the storm.

Daddy was a mill-hand at the sawmill. He tried to organize the workers into a union. A lot of them joined, went to meetings, went on strike. The company thugs shot him and he died.

He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

I’m sorry. I wish I could have known him. He must have been a great man, and you must miss him terribly.

She nodded, biting her lip.

He hated to see people mistreated or neglected. He said every person deserves to be loved. He said—

Suddenly the tidal wave inside her seemed higher than the cliffs above her. She stiffened her chest muscles, felt the tension returning.

I can’t talk any more about what he said. I’m tired. I need to rest. Goodnight, Henry.

With that she lifted her legs up onto the seat and turned over, resting her head in his lap, and quickly fell asleep.

Henry, looking down at the little figure that had just placed itself at the center of his life, blinked at suddenly reawakened sensations: that the sunshine felt comfortingly warm and the fragrances of budding, almost-spring life under the cottonwoods was heady, blinked as anyone might if presented with the gift of a dear and precious small person whose joy and well-being could easily become more important than his own, could even become a condition of one’s own.

Then he realized, sadness eating into him at the thought, that he might never see her again after this day, and what a pity that would be.

When she awoke she sat up and slipped her hands around his arm again.

Henry?

Yes?

Why can’t they all live together—Indians and settlers? Then they won’t have a war.

That’s what Chief Joseph proposed. But the settlers—most of them anyway—want it all. They want the Indians out.

Now Sue McBeth chimed in.

Chief Joseph also threatened to drive the settlers out.

He said that in desperation. His people were outraged after the murder of Wilhautya, a man who had never hurt anyone.

He turned to Opal.

A settler named Alex Findley shot Wilhautya, but he was tricked into it by another settler, Wells McNall. That was last June. We might have had a war, but the Indians never blamed Findley and McNall didn’t fire the shot.

They had passed a fork where another river, which Henry said was the Minam, flowed into the Wallowa. Across the river were huge hulking grassy bluffs, rounded at the tops, with broad horizontal brown-black rock outcroppings like thickset brows under a domed forehead. Opal, her imagination kindled, wondered what great sorrow was borne by those brooding brows, and she felt a tingle in her bosom that might have been excitement or fear, she wasn’t certain which. Ahead, the bluffs opened up into a wider valley.

She felt suddenly overpowered by this place. It felt alive; it felt magical. It was almost as if she had stepped through Alice’s Looking Glass into a mysterious land, and that land was already drawing her into its spell and beginning to possess her.

She sat upright, looking from side to side. Henry watched, his smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes.

Looking for Indians?

She nodded.

I hope they like kids.

They do. Ask Miss McBeth.

Opal turned. Sue McBeth seemed to find the subject distasteful.

I’m sorry to say they allow their children to have their own way altogether too much of the time. In a day school the moment they lose interest they are off on their ponies with bow and arrow, leaving a despairing teacher to preside over an empty classroom.

She noticed the mischievous smile on Opal’s face.

And I see they have a ready convert.

Opal took off her eyeglasses and tucked them in her purse, glancing furtively from side to side. McBeth leaned forward, her voice hard.

"There are no Indians out there!"

Bertha was on the edge of her seat now, and Henry was visibly struggling to hold back his anger. Miss McBeth put her fingers to her mouth and sat back.

Forgive me. You have to understand the trials a missionary confronts. These Indians have no moral sense. Marriages are easily made, and as easily broken. How can a child grow up in a stable home? Even the tent moves from place to place with the seasons. Some of them live three and four families in one lodge. One man can have two, three, even four wives in his lodge.

McBeth had now fixed her gaze on Bertha.

There’s scant satisfaction in an Indian woman’s life. It’s a life of abject servitude, and we—Christian women everywhere—have a duty to rescue our suffering sisters.

Now she had Bertha’s attention.

Miss McBeth, I believe in women’s rights. I’d like to hear more about my sisters.

McBeth’s eyes blazed.

They must give up their nomadic ways. The men must take over the farming. The women must give up their root-gathering forays so they can stay home and cook. You look puzzled.

The edge in Bertha’s voice reflected her sensing an all-too-familiar story.

Are you saying a woman’s rights are to cook and clean house?

McBeth was breathing hard.

"Forget about the false, unnatural equality promised by the women’s rights movement. Women and men can find true egality by taking their proper place in life. The wife of one of my boys comes to school dressed like a civilized person, like the wife of a future minister of the gospel should dress. As soon as she returns to her lodge she takes off her long dress and dons her squaw skirt and habits—the habits of the wigwam!"

Opal, facing forward now as she watched the valley opening up ahead, heard thunder in the distance, far behind them. McBeth seemed not to notice.

"I see them sometimes on their horses, the way they go root-gathering, wearing their blanket and tacmul—the head-kerchief—their limbs exposed from leggings all the way up to the short, scanty squaw skirt, as they sit astride their horses."

Opal’s attention was torn now between the image of short-skirted women and the thunder, which hadn’t stopped.

What’s a squaw skirt? Listen—

She whirled around, kneeling upright on the seat, staring wide-mouthed past the two women, her eyes big.

Look! Look!

Half a mile behind them was a pack of horses and riders, Black horses, white horses, spotted horses, roan horses, the riders in a dazzling panoply of colors, ribbons flying from their hair-braids as the hooves of their horses cast up clods of earth and snow, faster and faster, closer and closer, shaking the ground with their thunder, the riders’ whoops and shrill