These Is My Words (2 page)

Well, my Papa has a hand for horses better than most anyone you could name, but he don’t have much hand for fixing houses and wagons and by the time we was pointing toward El Paso we lost another axle. Mr. Hoover got a spare two for himself but he can’t see it clear to lend us one, so we lay up for a whole day while Mr. Lawrence and Papa rig up a axle.

Mama rolls her eyes a lot that day and says there’s a dry wind coming but I don’t know what that is. Sure enough, it is dry and thirsty and you can drink but it don’t do no good, and before we get down to the Rio Grande Valley we is all wanting water and the horses drink our share. We had to go down some eighty miles to the old ruins of something that was called Fort Hancock. There by the banks we rest and drink and watch the horses drink a dry spot in the river.

August 11, 1881

Mrs. Hoover is carrying on about my brothers playing Indians and war party cause it makes her worrisome. Mama scolded Harland and Clover and said play it where she can’t hear you boys, she is a tenderfoot and libel to faint if she hears one more war hoop or rebel yell from you younguns. Also Mr. Hoover says tonight he won’t be able to take a watch cause his wife is feeling poorly from the travel. I think inside if he is worried he can watch nearby but I don’t say nothing.

It is becoming fun to have the Lawrence girls to play with. I never had sisters except to pretend. They tease each other and plait their hair under them little hats into a roll and they said they will do mine.

The girl Savannah made some questions about Albert, but I wanted to talk about other things. The littlest one, Louisianna, has a hand-turned doll dressed just like her and it is not fancy but I see by the stitches it is a fine piece of work. They is fun but none of these girls rides horses bare back only in buggies and wagons and they was sure surprised when I took my rifle and Rose and went past the trees and brought back a deer for venison stew. They said so many times oh my, oh my, that I thought I might of stood on my head and sang a song it was so strange to them. Well I lived in the territory all my life and I got four brothers and a girl has got to get along.

Papa and Mr. Lawrence are thinking about moving on a bit after supper to see the pass through which we must travel tomorrow. It looks like a place of ambush, Mr. Lawrence says, and they will wait until there is but a hour of daylight left to go see the area.

Clover and Harland been shooting each other with sticks and hollering give up you rascal and I got you and give up! as if they was a outlaw or sheriff in a wild town. After supper Clover declared he was about to turn in he was tired out. He spread himself a blanket under the wagon at the tongue bracing and soon was sleeping two rows at once, he was plum tuckered.

Up come Albert and Ernest to Harland and says lets fish in the river while there’s light and they do and sure enough they catch a big old ugly catfish. The boys laugh and think they are surprising little Clover and they throw the nasty thing on him and holler snake! snake! That blanket unloads Clover like a mule and he bucks his head real hard on the tongue brace and soon its blood everywhere.

Well, Mama is tendering Clover and scolding the big boys all in the same breath and it sounds like the most amazing bunch of speech I heard ever and all the Lawrence girls come over and say oh-oh over Clover. One gave him a peppermint she was saving and they patched up his head. He’s got a busted head big as an egg and a bloody bandage and before long he is a marching around with Harland being soldiers and they is fighting each other and hollering take that yankee and take that reb! at the top of their lungs.

I see Albert and Ernest is sorrowful for what they did but not too much and they is trying to skin that catfish and clean it and they are moaning at the smell. Mrs. Hoover is fit to be tied she never did see such goings on she declares and sniffs her smelling bottle and goes to bed without helping with the dishes.

August 13, 1881

We all put down for the night and its a dark one with a bit of cloud on the moon, and Clover suddenly calls out I’m hurt! and snake! again and again. He has got the whole place woke and is still hollering, and Mama has a terrible time to hush him and he is crying out louder and louder that his hand hurts. Finally she gets him hushed and we sleep till daylight starts in on us, then it is Mama calling out.

Clover is in a fever and there on his arm is two big old holes like I seen on my dog Buddy from a snake bite. Mr. Lawrence comes a rushing over and they is all talking at once about what and when and what to do now. There is a look on Clover of grey and yellow like I hope I never sees again, and right away Papa takes a live chicken and slits it open and lays it on the holes, as long as the heart is beating it is pulling out snake venom he says. As soon as the chicken is good and dead they cut another and try that but its doing no good. They speculate about cutting off his arm where the snake bit is only the doctor says it is too late and the poison is in his vanes now. I don’t know what that is but he says it with a look on his face I seen with my insides not my eyes.

Mr. Lawrence says he has got some laudanum and some bitters for snake bite but Clover chokes on it and can’t get it down but don’t seem to be in much pain except his arm. All there is to do is hold little Clover and wait. He says he is cold and Mama covers him around with her pilgrims progress quilt with the blue sprigged calico squares at the corners, then sets on the milking stool and rocks him in her arms.

The big boys is sniffing and Harland sets to bawling like a branded calf, then all the boys is bawling and the Lawrence girls and even the Hoovers. We just all set and cry sort of quiet into our sleeve and about halfway to noon Clover shivers real hard and is gone.

In the twilight I stood at Clover’s little grave and sang Jordan’s Stormy Banks.

He’s living in Canaan now, and I wonder what kind of good times he is having. But I remember he is dead and nothing about it seems happy or blest. No one can eat. We have drank our tears for food.

Little old Clover was a top notch fellow after he got out of diapers. I will sorely miss his little puckery smile and all.

August 16, 1881

Now I got a Angel Brother to be with my Angel Sister. The boys is about to bust with feeling they pestered Clover on his last day on earth.

Miss Savannah Lawrence—that is such a pretty name, she is my best friend—is beginning to share her reader and show me to write better.

Two days after burying Clover we is still at the spot cause Mama and Papa just walks around lost like and saying they can’t leave him. It is a hard time but I am making myself useful and then one morning there is uneasiness in the air. The horses is skitterish and high and even Mr. Lawrence who is used to them is having a hard time. He and Papa kept looking to the bushes and hills and that day put the wagons into a closed space hard against a hill and herded all them horses into it.

Noon comes high and hot and Mama cooks up catfish for dinner. As I am doing dishes first one arrow hit the wagon tongue right near where I am standing then another past my head so close I hear the feathers flick something and spang into a water bucket. Then the air is filled with arrows and we don’t know where to turn or hide. There is surprise from us and screaming from them Indians and they are riding around and around and scaring us to our death. Dust is strangling us like a hot dry blanket and I feel sick. Then a Indian hollers at us and does a lot of pointing and yelling and then waits like he is wanting us to answer him. As soon as he sees he is getting no answer he slipped into the dust and was gone.

All is quiet as we count noses and all unhurt, not even a dog or chicken or any of Mrs. Hoover’s fancy island geese. Papa and Mama is suddenly back to right and we spend all after noon loading rifles and packing shot wads and getting ready and nobody eats much supper either. I have tore a hole in my yellow gingham from catching it on an iron fire tender while running from the arrows, so I am fixing it before dark too, but the light is poor and I am purely tired.

In my sleep I see a canyon open up before me as I ride Rose full out and we can not stop and pitch headfirst over the edge and down in the bottom of the canyon is a little house with a open hole like a mouth and inside the mouth is my Angel Brother and Angel Sister. Ever time I sleep I see this over again and wake sweating and shaking like the fever so my teeth rattle together. It is a lost and mournful feeling. I won’t let myself sleep any more, so I just lay here and write this by the fire and wait for daylight.

August 17, 1881

Before the first light is clear, we hear whooping that comes from the open gates of hell. It is much more terrible than my brothers a playing in the yard. We have our rifles ready and begin firing back as arrows rain in on us. They are hitting the horses and the cows and all about me is the sound of screaming. Horses are screaming, the Lawrence girls are screaming, Mama and Harland are screaming and the Indians are making sure the devil knows we’re coming.

I think I was screaming too but it is too awful a noise to know and I am loading along side Mama. It just seems like it will never end. They are all about us and riding bare backed with their toes holding on, they fire arrows and a couple of repeater rifles with both hands free. Suddenly next to me Mr. Hoover takes a arrow plum in the throat and I will not write what next happened but he is gone to his reward. Mrs. Hoover is struck dumb for some minutes and then commenced to bawling at the same time she picked his rifle from under his body and shot a Indian surely in the chest as if she was a crack marksman.

My heart is aching and heavy as I remember this next, as bullets went past one went smack through my skirts and took Ernest in the leg at the knee. He hollered to make my bowels twist in a knot, and I began to think we are all going to die soon. Papa is a firing away, Mama at his side runs to Ernest and hugs him. At that second Mrs. Lawrence was hit deep in the stomach and doubled over into the dirt the scared horses was kicking up. Then sudden as the breath of death there is quiet except for Ernest moaning and some hurt horses crying.

Dear Mrs. Lawrence is gone, Mr. Hoover is gone, Papa has taken a ball clear through the arm but it is a small clean wound and not even much blood, and good old Ernest is in a frightful state as Mr. Lawrence looks him over.

He isn’t sure of his doctoring, he says with such tears in his eyes, but there had been many a boy in the war who didn’t live from less, and he says the leg must come off. All the laudanum that Mr. Lawrence had is broke and leaked out from a bullet that hit through their canvas and got the medicine bag and the doctor tells us to hold him down tight. It is a certain thing and quickly done. Luckily the doctor has much experience, but Ernest pleaded to God and Jesus and all the angels and Mama and Papa and everyone he knew to save him and afterward he is in bad shape.

I keep looking in on him and touching his hands and he squeezes me ever so softly, then I go so he can’t see me crying over him. My head aches bad. I asked Papa couldn’t we turn back and go home. He set his hand on my arm, and said, Girl, there’s never any turning back in life. But don’t you worry, he says. The Lord is watching over us. Then I felt real hollow and low and mean. If He is a watching us, I wish He’d lend a hand now and then.

Papa was cussing the Indians as he dug graves for our friends and it was decided to rest Ernest’s little leg with Mr. Hoover.

August 20, 1881

For a nineteen year old brother Ernest suddenly seems mighty small and there is nothing for his pain so he cries sometimes like a baby and then finds a dreadful and fitful sleep. God if you see us in here please help my Ernest I love him and we need him as a brother and a good boy who never had a mean bone in him.

Besides our folks, we lost one dray horse and two stock horses and a sheep, the Hoovers lost an ox and a pack horse, and the Lawrences lost one milking cow and a calf and a dray. Mama says we should pray and so does Mr. Lawrence but I can’t seem to put my mind to it much.

Mrs. Hoover is storming around like a tornado. She neatens up things and later sends buckets flying with a kick, she is fit to be tied for sure. Papa says to pack up, we will leave before sunup to get a jump on the Indians and beeline for Fort Stockton.

August 23, 1881

Fort Stockton is just a little settlement of soldiers, not a dozen souls there. As we rolled on down the Concho river we came to a creek coming in from the north called Rockey and some live oaks, and we drove the wagons under a big tree and camped. All seems hot and scorched here in Texas country. It is deader and more worrisome than the Territories we come from, and even Papa is feeling he may be wrong about San Angelo.

I am learning to write better from Savannah and I love her like a sister, she has given me a present of a reader and half a newspaper from last January which I can read without stopping. I learn to spell better from it too.

August 28, 1881

Rained in the evening and cool. Next day the mud on the trail and near the tracks is too thick to walk in or pull a wagon so we are stuck, but the air is fresh and dry and Savannah and Louisianna and the other sister I will tell about now have had a time and want to bathe in a stock tank deep among some near trees.

The water is fresh and rainy but Papa says no, not away from the wagons. We are low on food and he needs to go hunting, too, and there are signs of antelope all around, but his arm is hurting real bad from the bullet hole now. We set about to make the camp look like there’s plenty of men about, pointing rifles all about us just leaning on wagon seats and such, but they are gone hunting. I’m sure they are sorry we did not think before to butcher up the cow that was Indian killed.

When they were gone Mama said for us girls to all go together and watch carefully, and bring back two buckets of water and hurry. Mama and the boys will stay at camp and maybe have a bath in a wash pan.

The girls are glad to slip quiet as a deer into the trees and quick get out of their dresses and into the water. Savannah has brought a little piece of soap in a cloth. Alice is a little noisy until Savannah’s sister shushes her. I don’t know why but it felt wise to be quiet. The water felt like sweet fingers on my head but it still ached inside.