Crooked River (2 page)

“Lorenzo, this Indian of yours surely better be something to look at,” I said loudly as Lorenzo stood by the foot of the stairs. I squinted into the shadows of the loft, figuring that Lorenzo had hung an old coat from one of the rafters. Or fixed up a hat with goose feathers. That would be just the sort of thing he would do.

But I was wrong.

There in the loft, not more than a few steps away, was a real Indian staring straight back at me. My heart just about flew out of my chest at the sight, and I screamed.

I'm real ashamed to say that after seeing that Indian, I bolted from the cabin and tore down the road in the rain. Likely looked as if I had gone and caught myself on fire as I ran toward the settlement with my petticoats and bonnet strings flying.

I was so full of petrification, I never stopped for a minute to think why the Indian might be sitting there and what all Lorenzo knew.

And then I did the second wrong thing.

I yelled for help.

“Indians!” I shouted, and belted out every name I knew—Pa, Amos, Laura, the Hawleys, even Ma, who was gone, and Grandpa Carver back in the East. It was as if demons had taken possession of my voice and it was just shrieking out names on its own. I couldn't stop it.

All of the men within earshot came running at the dreadful sound of it. My older brother, Amos, came tearing across the field where he had been fixing a fence. Mr. Evans and old Vinegar Bigger flew out of their houses to help me. Even my Pa appeared, slopping down the muddy road with his rifle in his hand and a half dozen men from the settlement behind him. And that stopped me in my tracks.

My Pa.

I stood there in the middle of the road with my teeth rattling away on their own, trying to make sense of what I was seeing and all of the questions they were hollering at me. “You hurt? Were they Chippewas? How many? Which direction'd they go? Where's Lorenzo? Did they carry him off? Speak up, girl—”

That last voice was my Pa's.

“I says speak up,” he roared, moving close enough to strike me if he had a reason to. “Stop standing there like the village idiot and shaming your Pa. You tell the men exactly what you seen.”

Everyone got real quiet after that. The only sound was the rain splattering on the leaves around us. The men's eyes looked down at the ground because they all knew about my Pa. He had a temper like a timber rattlesnake, and even grown men kept their distance when they saw his anger rising. Everyone called him Major Carver. But my Pa wasn't the major of any army of soldiers—just gave orders to our settlement and us Carvers. And that was miserable enough.

“I seen an Indian, Pa,” I whispered, trying to keep
my voice from shattering to pieces. “There's an Indian hiding up in our loft.”

Pa's eyes narrowed. “One Indian?” he said sharply. “That all you saw? One Indian?”

I nodded. “Yes sir.”

At this, one of the men gave a big snort of laughter and some of the other men started to chuckle and exchange glances among themselves, as if they all knew something I didn't. I watched them rest the ends of their rifles on the ground as if they didn't mind one bit what I'd told them about Indians. Even my serious brother Amos shook his head and broke into a little smile. I could feel a red flush creep into my face as I stood there with all of the men laughing at me.

“I ain't lying,” I hollered in a voice that was choking up fast with tears. “You go on back there and see. I ain't lying.” I waved my arms in the direction of the house.

But the men just kept on chuckling and rolling their eyes at every word I said. Vinegar Bigger, who was standing near me, patted my shoulder with his old hand. He leaned over and said in a loud whisper, “Course you ain't lying, girl. We know there's an Indian in your Pa's house, 'cause we the ones who put him there.”

We the ones who put him there.

This was the first I realized what my Pa and the men had done. I imagine that my face went as white as a wall right then. All I knew was that the men had gone across the Crooked River to see about a
few Indians who were causing trouble. They hadn't breathed a word about what kind of trouble or why. And now they wanted me to understand that they had brought back one of those savages and put him in our own house?

I didn't understand a thing.

“Go on.” My Pa gestured to the men. “Go on back to what you was doing. Sorry she brought you running. Real sorry for your trouble.”

My Pa waited until the men were gone to start laying out all of his worst words on me. After they left, his face went straight from being soft with laughter to hard with meanness. “I don't know what the devil got into you, Rebecca,” he swore. “Running and screaming for help like you was being scalpt—that ain't funny at all, you understand me?” His voice got louder. “You understand me? You made us Carvers look like a bunch of fools.” He spat out each word. Bunch. Of. Fools.

“Look at me!” Pa's voice roared.

My heart thudded in my chest, fearing what he might do. His hand grabbed hold of my face, and his rough fingers dug into my cheeks. “I won't stand to look like a fool,” he spat. “You ever do something like that again, I'll take a razor strop to you. You understand me?”

I nodded.

His fingers squeezed harder. “I'm your Pa. You answer me with a ‘yes sir.’” He leaned over and hollered in my face, so close I could smell the sour tobacco on his breath. My Pa's teeth were stained brown, and the corners of his mouth were yellowed like paper before it catches fire and burns.

“Yes sir,” I whispered.

“You ain't fit for the grease pot, you know that? You make me ashamed to have you as a daughter.” He swore and gave me a hard push. “Git back to the house.”

All the way through the woods, with the rain falling in buckets around me, I thought about how I purely hated my Pa.

My brother Amos was waiting for me when I got back. Most times, he had a softer heart than my Pa and the others. He was nearly twenty with my Pa's dark hair but my Ma's light-colored eyes. Every once in a while, Ma's eyes had given me the smallest flicker of kindness when they weren't filled up with worry or weariness. And Amos was the same way. If I looked up fast enough, there were times I caught something like Ma's kind look in his eyes.

“Seeing that Indian was a considerable surprise, I expect,” Amos said before I'd even closed the door. I gave a quick squint-look around. Our log house was big, but it was all one room. Except for the loft, you could see it in a single glance—the beds, the hearth, everything. There was no sign of Lorenzo. Just Amos
sitting by himself, with his wide plow shoulders hunched over our big dinner table.

“Yes,” I said low. “It was.”

“But that didn't give you no cause to run, Reb,” he continued. “You coulda got somebody kilt, the way you were hollering about Indians chasing you when there weren't none.”

I dug my fingernails into my palms. Last thing I wanted to hear from Amos was an echo of my Pa. I was always getting the blame for everything gone wrong. Slow in the head. Lazy. Not fit for the grease pot.

“I didn't mean to scare nobody,” I said, louder.

Amos kept his eyes on the table and picked up crumbs with the end of his finger. “Well, maybe Pa shoulda told you that he was bringing the Indian here, but that still didn't give you no cause to act like you did.” Amos frowned and shook his head. “You gotta turn the current of your mind to do more thinking, Reb. You are like a buzzing little fly that don't ever think. You just go headfirst right into things.”

I was not a buzzing little fly.

Both of us were silent for a while, with the rain drumming on the roof, Amos picking up more crumbs, and me not moving from where I stood as my cloak dripped water all over the floor.

Finally, Amos sighed loudly and said, “I don't mind telling you why the Indian's here, but you gotta promise you won't fall into a fit over this, Reb, or go running out of the house screaming for Pa and the men.”

Inside my mind, I thought that if the house caught fire right then, a windstorm was toppling all of the trees in the woods, and Indians were attacking— nothing, absolutely nothing, would make me run.

But I didn't say that to Amos. I just nodded and told him I would never do a fool-headed thing like that again. Ever. “Fine,” Amos said, leaning back in his chair. “Then I'll tell you what Pa and the other men have done.”

Amos told me that the men had gone across the Crooked River to find three Indians who had kilt a white trapper named Gibbs and stole all his traps. One of the three Indians was real young. But Amos said the young one got away and the second one, an older Indian, kilt himself with a gun. So, they brought back just one.

According to Amos, it took the men two days in the pouring rain to drag the Indian back to the settlement, and they had to pull him the whole way at the end of a chain. The savage Indian was known by the name Indian John, and the men were gonna put him on trial for murder and hang him.