The Holy Warrior (27 page)

Missy overheard the two men talking, and went into the next room and patted Dove softly on the shoulder. “I’ll fix you a good breakfast—some of those battered eggs and some honey for your hoecake,” she said. “Why don’t you get up and get dressed again?” After the doctor had gone, she told Chris, “You go get the boys; we’re almost ready to eat.” She finished cooking the food, and by the time Chris returned with Asa and Sky, she and Caroline had the table set and the piping-hot food spread out. “The last meal in this house,” Missy reminded them as she took her seat across from Chris.

“Will it be hard for you to leave here?” he asked.

“No—it was a good home—but now that Mother and Father are gone, it’s just another house,” Missy answered.

Caroline’s face was animated. “It’s going to be a good life.”

“Let’s hope so... but it’ll be the last meal you’ll have in a house until we get to St. Louis,” Chris remarked.

“I’m so anxious to meet the missionaries,” Caroline said. “I wish Bishop Asbury had told us more about them.” The bishop had written Chris, informing him that a small group of volunteers had been formed to work among the Indians, and that they would meet in St. Louis no later than the first of July.

“What was the name of the minister who’s heading the mission?” Missy asked.

“Rev. Aaron Small. He’s giving up a prosperous church in Georgia,” Chris stated. “Bishop Asbury speaks highly of him. He’s done some mission work with the blacks in his area.”

Finally the meal was finished, the pots and dishes cleaned and packed, and the teams hitched to the wagons. As they all assembled around the wagons, Chris asked, “Sky, you think you can handle that team?”

For once Sky spoke with some excitement. “Yes! I can drive.”

Chris nodded. “Let’s go to the mountains then.”

He helped Dove into one wagon, then Caroline, as Sky and Missy got into the other. Two riding mounts were tied behind each wagon, and Asa mounted Thunder. Chris spoke to the team and the wagons moved away from the house. As they passed the grove he looked back and saw that despite her brave words, Missy was dabbing at her eyes. Dove, who had been watching, said quietly, “She will be lonely.”

“For a while. But it’s good for you—getting away from this place. You’ll get rid of that cough in the mountain air.”

Dove did not reply, and he did not speak about it again. They reached the main road, turned west and settled down for the long journey to the mountains.

The trip to St. Louis was sheer joy to Asa; even Sky smiled from time to time as they made their way across the country. It was a dry June, and the sun was hot; but every night they camped beside rivers or small streams, stopping early enough to make a good evening meal. Missy and Caroline sunburned, then tanned under the hot sun, but both of them seemed to thrive. The fresh air and sunshine—along with the exercise of the trail—made Asa say, “Gosh! You two look bettern’ you ever did!”

Chris smiled. “Time we get to the Rockies, you two’ll be so pretty we’ll have to guard you day and night. I’d wager those poor trappers won’t ever have seen anything so beautiful as you girls!”

Caroline flushed scarlet, but Missy sniffed, “I’ve seen your trappers, Christmas Winslow. I’d just as soon cuddle up to a grizzly bear.”

Chris laughed at the remark. “I expect you’re right. Bear would probably smell better—and have better manners, too.”

Dove did not fare well on the trip. She coughed a great deal,
and although she tried to walk beside the wagon sometimes, as the others did, it soon became too much for her. Saying little, she would sit beside Chris for long stretches before she was forced to get inside the wagon and rest. Missy often drove Chris’s wagon, freeing him to roam ahead on his horse looking for game, and the two women became close.

Missy was never sure that Dove understood that she and Chris were to have been married. But if anyone had mentioned the fact to her, the small, thin woman never alluded to it.
Well—once, perhaps,
Missy conceded. Late one afternoon they had been sitting alone in the wagon while Chris and the boys were ahead hunting. Missy had been half asleep, lulled by the rocking of the wagon, when Dove said softly, “Your God will give you a good man, Missy, for the one you have lost.”

Startled, Missy turned to look at Dove, and saw a certainty in the dark eyes, a kind of wisdom that she’d never seen before.
So, she knows about Chris and me.
It occurred to her that there might be tension over the knowledge, but she was mistaken. Dove never again mentioned it, and spent most of her time talking about Sky and what could be done to help him.

“He will be neither white nor Sioux,” she whispered to Missy once. “Neither will claim him.”

“Oh no!” Missy said quickly. “Chris is a noted warrior, isn’t he? Sky will be accepted because of that.”

Dove shook her head. “He says that Black Elk is his father. The Pawnees taught him well to hate Bear Killer.”

“We must pray that he will learn to love his real father, Dove.”

There was a silence and Missy saw that Dove was considering her through half-closed eyes. “How I wish all Christians were as kind as you—but they are not.”

This was the first time Missy had heard Dove hint about how much the rejection of Chris’s congregation had hurt her. Laying her hand on the thin arm, Missy said, “I know. It’s
not right—but listen to me, Dove. Anyone who really loves God would love you, too.”

With all her heart Missy longed to win this woman to the Lord, to convince her that all Christians were not like the ones she had met so far. But she knew that words were useless, and wisely did not press the point, praying for the day when Dove would see the reality of Jesus acted out in the lives of His followers, and respond. As she drove she continued to pray silently for Dove and Sky, and urged the horses forward when she saw Chris and the boys ahead.

Two days later they reached St. Louis, a bustling town on the banks of the Mississippi. Chris inquired the way to the Methodist church, and found it without difficulty—a two-story red brick structure with a high steeple and the first stained-glass windows Chris had ever seen. A lanky man was cutting grass in the front and he looked up as the wagons stopped.

“Expect you must be Rev. Winslow,” he said. He pulled his shapeless felt hat off in greeting, exposing a homely face. “Rev. Small told me to wait till you came.” He put a hand out, and though he was thin as a rail, the meaty hand that took Chris’s closed with a tremendous grip. “I’m Barney Sinclair, Reverend.”

Chris liked the face, plain as it was. Sinclair was about thirty, with a receding hairline, large ears that stuck out, and a pair of faded blue eyes. “Are you one of the missionaries?” Chris asked.

“Oh no!” Sinclair said quickly, shaking his head. “I’m just goin’ along to help Rev. Small out.” The thought of being taken for a minister seemed to embarrass him. “The pastor of the church, he had to go out of town, so I’ve been waitin’ to show you our camp, Reverend.”

“Is it far, Barney?”

“Down by the river,” he nodded. “ ’Bout two sightings and a dog bark. Mebbe I can drive that team for you?”

“Sure.”

Sinclair followed him to the wagons and ducked his head when he was introduced, not looking either Missy or Caroline in the eye, but gave Asa and Sky a big grin. He climbed onto the wagon and Chris sat between him and Dove. When Chris introduced him to Dove, Barney pulled his hat off again and gave her a smile and a nod. “Real pleased to know you, Miz Winslow.” Sinclair was, Chris saw at once, an expert driver, with a look of capability in the large hands that belied the apparent frailty of his lath-shaped frame.
Tough as a buffer hide!
Chris thought.
If the rest of them are like this, we might make it.
“Where you from, Barney?” he asked aloud.

“Well, I guess I’m from all over more than I am from any particular place.” Barney flicked the reins, adding, “Spent the last five years on a two-hoss farm on the backside of Virginia.”

“How’d you get yourself in with this missionary crowd?”

The question seemed to bother the lanky driver. He shifted on his seat, considered the sky, then shrugged his bony shoulders. “Well, Reverend, to tell the truth, I always liked church, even when I was a sinner. Went to meetin’s every chance—even was a feeler fer a spell.”

Chris looked puzzled. “Don’t recall hearin’ that word before, Barney. What’s a ‘feeler’?”

“A feeler, Reverend? I guess you ain’t been around Baptists much. When we go down to the river to baptize, it’s the feeler’s job to go out and feel around for a good place to baptize folks—see there ain’t no deep holes or such like.”

Chris smiled. “You’re a Baptist? How’d you get in with the Methodists?”

“Well...” Barney hesitated and turned his eyes on Chris. He studied him carefully, then nodded as if satisfied by what he saw. “To tell the truth, I guess the name don’t matter much to me, Reverend. Like I said, I always liked church. Went to the big camp meetings: after the hymns were h’isted heavenward, there was all sorts of courtin’ and horse tradin’ and such goin’s-on, whilst the blessed and the saved gorged themselves on basket dinners spread out on waist-high tables!
It was a lot of fun—and two years ago I went to a meetin’ over near Lynchburg, and met the Lord somethin’ powerful.

“You were converted?”

>“Me? Oh, my Lord, I got a case of the jerks at that meetin’ that liked to have killed me!” The “jerks” occurred when worshipers were “struck down” by the power of the Holy Spirit—jerking and twisting in spasms that sometimes lasted for hours. Chris had some reservations about such things, but was loathe to say so to the lanky Sinclair. “I went out and when I come to, I was prayed for, and it was then I got all tangled up with God.”

“Never heard it put just that way, Barney,” Chris smiled.

“Well, it was the best thing that happened to me—but servin’ God ain’t no easy thing. You asked me how a Baptist got in with the Methodists. Well, don’t say a word about this to Rev. Small, but the Lord put it in my heart to go to the savages, and when I found out there wasn’t no Baptists headed in that direction—I became a Methodist.”

Chris chuckled at the simplicity of his answer. “Well, Barney, I’ll keep your secret—although I don’t think the Sioux will be particularly interested in the theological implications of water baptism.” Then he grew serious and said, “But it’s dangerous, Barney. I’m not sure any of you folks know how bad it can be. It’s hard living.”

Barney looked down at his big hands and made fists out of them. “As fer hard livin’, I ain’t never known nothing else. And no matter how dangerous it is, I reckon the Lord God can look out for me better than I can look out for myself.”

“I say amen to that.” Chris nodded. “What about the others? Are they pretty tough?”

“They act like they’re agoin’ for a picnic in a Boston city park! I tried to tell ’em different—but then I ain’t never been there myself, so it was a waste of time. Maybe they’ll listen to you. At least, Doc Spencer says so.”

“Tell me a little about them, Barney.”

“Well, Rev. Small, he’s the leader. Not a big man, but
shore knows a lot. Seems pretty confident, even though he’s not been west any farther than the rest of us—’cept you, of course. He’s a bachelor. Doc Spencer is a fine man, but he was raised in Philadelphia and don’t know one end of a cow from another—and his wife is kinda dainty. Real nice, but can’t see her livin’ in a cabin with a dirt floor. There’s Karl and Ellen Shultz. He’s a big, strong man—and she’s pretty stout her ownself. Good man with tools. Got two kids, Anna and Max, ’bout fifteen. Then there’s Rev. Tennyson and his wife. He’s a furriner from over the water. Shore can sing! Him and his wife was both teachers in Boston. And last is the Moores. His name is Thad. Hers is Bessie. Got a couple of kids. That’s it, more or less, ’cept fer me and two other single men—Neal Littlejohn and Leon Prince.”

Chris tried to imagine the group Barney had described surviving in hostile Indian country, and shook his head grimly. “Well, they’ll be in for a shock, I’m afraid. A Pawnee with his war paint on won’t see the difference between a minister of the gospel and any other white face.”

“Reckoned so,” Barney agreed. “One of the reasons I come was that folks always said I was too careless-like. Always laughing and never taking things serious.” He studied Chris a moment before he flashed a quick grin and said, “I reckon headin’ into Sioux country with this bunch is likely to add some sobriety to my moral character—don’t you reckon, Reverend?”

“Like as not, Barney,” Chris nodded, vaguely wondering if the tall, skinny fellow was indirectly trying to prepare him for something.

Sinclair took them to the river and pulled up beside a cluster of several wagons. Women were busy around a campfire and the smell of cooking meat was in the air. A short man walked toward them as Chris jumped out of the wagon. “Rev. Winslow? I’m Aaron Small.”

“Glad to meet you, Brother Small.” The preacher was a short chesty man with a blunt face and a full set of whiskers.
Chris turned and helped Dove down, saying, “I’d like you to meet my wife Dove.”

There was a slight alteration in Small’s black eyes that Chris did not miss.
Guess he doesn’t like me having an Indian wife.
Recovering, Small gave a short bow. “My pleasure, Sister Winslow.”