The Young Riders

The Journey

By Gabrielle Lawson

Chapter Eleven

It had not been a pleasant night. Teaspoon had dreamed of the shed, of Buck being chained to the wall like in old stories of castles and dungeons. Some shadowy man with no face tortured him, beating him until his limbs were broken, burning him with a glowing red iron. Buck screamed over and over, and Teaspoon found himself standing at the other side of the room. Standing, and doing nothing to stop the shadowy man, nothing to help Buck. Buck cried and pleaded with him, but he couldn't move forward, couldn't even shout at the man to stop.

And finally the screaming stopped. Buck hung limply from the chains. Teaspoon hoped he was unconscious, lost to the pain the man had inflicted. The shadowy man grabbed a fistful of hair and lifted Buck's head. Buck's eyes were open and glassy. Blood spilled from his mouth onto his chest. His chest did not rise or fall. Buck was dead. The man laughed and turned his face so that Teaspoon could see who it was that had done this to Buck. And then Teaspoon screamed. The face was his own.

Teaspoon jerked awake and sat up quickly, surprising Jenny. She turned toward him, but a remnant of his nightmare had stayed with him, and he feared that Buck had died. Ignoring the pain in his eyes from the bright morning light pouring in through the windows, Teaspoon stood and reached for Buck's chest. With his hand there to feel it, he could see the slight lift of the blankets as Buck inhaled. Satisfied and much relieved, he sat down where he was, right beside Jenny on the floor.

She touched his arm. "He's quiet," she said. "He hasn't changed. I would have woke you."

Teaspoon leaned against the other bed and let out a shaky breath. "I know," he said. "I just dreamed. . . ." He didn't want to tell her what he'd dreamed. He didn't want to remember. Even now the details were fading, vanishing as most dreams do. Only that face remained clear, and the sound of Buck's screams.

Satisfied that Buck had survived the night, Teaspoon looked closely at him. He still looked terrible. He was bruised and swollen, but at least he was clean and bandaged. His breaths were short and shallow, but they were steady.

"He never moved," Jenny said beside him. "His eyes didn't move like he was dreaming. His fingers never twitched. He never moved at all, not even when I changed the bandage on his arm."

"Ike was like that once," Teaspoon told her, holding onto the hope that Buck would wake as Ike had. "He was shot and fell and hit his head on a rock. He didn't wake up for a few days."

Teaspoon heard rustling in the other room, and soon the Kid stepped out, with his boots in his hand. "What time is it?" he asked.

"About nine, I think," Jenny answered. Then she turned back to Teaspoon. "I didn't want to wake you." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Though maybe I should have, considering your dream." Loud enough for the Kid and Jimmy who'd joined them, she said, "I put some coffee on. Would you like some, Teaspoon?"

She stood and walked to the stove before Teaspoon could answer. "Very kind of you," he said in response. He used the bed behind him to lift himself off the floor. Kid and Jimmy took a cup each and then just stood, watching Teaspoon. And he knew what they were waiting for. "You boys get the buckboard ready. Bring it up close to the house." He leaned over and softly touched Buck's face. "It's time to go home, son."


Buck and Ike stood at the edge of the school's land. It had not been easy for either of them there. "Why here, Ike?" Buck asked. While this school had been his introduction to the White world, it had not been an easy time.

"I don't decide," Ike said. "I just know where we're going."

Buck sighed. Ike also knew when it was time to leave, and Buck wondered about that. Was it because his body back in the physical world was dying, his life running out like sand in an hour glass? He found himself a little worried about that where before he almost felt relief. Why should it matter? If he died, he could be with Ike. He could see his mother. He wouldn't be hated anymore. He wouldn't have to scrape for the least bit of anyone's respect. He wouldn't hurt anymore. But his brother's words had reached him. He never could discount anything Red Bear said, even when they disagreed, such respect he had for his brother. Red Bear had said there were still joys to live for. He said that while faced with the slow annihilation of his people. How could he still see the joys when so much sorrow was awaiting him? Buck just couldn't see it.

And staring at the school in front of him wasn't helping. He'd had hope when he left the Kiowa. He was also fearful and sad about leaving his brother, but he had hoped that it could be better with the Whites. This school was supposed to be his doorway. He was supposed to learn here. To read, to write, to speak the white man's words. He had learned those things. But he'd also learned he wasn't white, no matter what the older Kiowa children had said. His skin was too dark, his way of life so very different. And white children were just as cruel as Kiowa children were. Here, he had no brother to protect him. Here he had felt truly alone, truly vulnerable, truly afraid for his life.

"I suppose we have to go in," he said, his voice completely lacking in enthusiasm at the prospect. "I wonder if Mother Augustine is still in charge."

Ike chuckled, oblivious to Buck's dour remembrances or ignoring them altogether. "She must be. Just look at the garden."

Buck did and saw the perfectly parallel rows of browning stalks. It was late enough in the year that the vegetables had already been harvested, but their stalks remained a testimony to Mother Augustine's legendary rigidity. Buck sighed again and stepped through the gate into the dusty schoolyard.

As soon as the little gate swung closed behind him, he knew he was alone. He could not see Ike on either side of him. "Ike?" he called.

He turned back quickly, not caring what he'd see so long as he saw his friend. But he did not. He saw a pouring rain under a blackened sky. He heard thunder and felt the earth shudder when the lightning struck. He saw a boy, tall, but much too thin, wearing buckskins a little too big and hugging his arms around himself as he slogged through the tall grass and mud. Lightning flashed again and he saw the boy's face as he saw the barn. He knew what the boy was thinking, because he knew that he was the boy.

He thought for a moment that maybe he should try and warn the boy away. But he felt no rain on his own shoulders, no chill from the wind. They were in two different worlds, looking at each other through a veil of years and experiences. Buck could see the boy, but the boy did not see him. Buck watched his younger self enter the school yard and pull open the barn door. He faced away from the fence then and the darkness faded. The rain stopped and the clouds cleared. It was morning again, and still Ike was not there.

He turned, and looking up at the three-story school, he felt little different than the boy he had just seen enter the barn. Alone and lost in a world he didn't understand. And afraid. The boy would be afraid for his life, but Buck, now, was afraid of his memories. Entering the school was sure to dredge up old hurts, just as standing in the yard was already doing. But Ike was gone, and Buck guessed he'd stay gone until it was time to leave the school.

Not for the first time, he thought it would have been easier if he had simply died. Did everyone get the kind of choice he was facing? Had Ike chosen to die, leaving Emily and Buck and all the riders? Had his mother chosen death over staying with her sons? Had Noah chosen to give up on life just when it seemed the country would tear itself apart over the question of his people's place in it? It didn't seem right. Ike loved Emily, and he had apologized to Buck for leaving him. His mother wouldn't have left him alone so young. Noah had wanted to see his people free. Why would they give up then?

Is that what he was really choosing? To give up or to keep going? Dying had seemed easy when it was only ending his suffering. But it was also giving up and his pride wrestled with that. He hadn't given up at this school, no matter how many times the older boys beat him, no matter how many times his teachers snapped the ruler on his knuckles, or embarrassed him at the front of the class. He could have slipped out at night and run back to the plains and the Kiowa any night in the three years he had stayed. But he hadn't.

Now the spirits had brought him back to the school. It was late morning, judging from the position of the sun. The students would be in their classes, which was good since Buck didn't want to disturb them. He wasn't even sure, at this point, if he could disturb them. Red Bear had seen him at the village but the dog soldiers had not. It was probably better not to risk it.

Taking a deep breath, he climbed the few steps to the porch and reached the door. He wasn't sure how to enter. Would the handle work? If he opened the door, would anyone see it—even if they didn't see him? Before he had time to decide, the door opened itself. Or rather a nun opened it. She stood in the doorway, peering out from her black habit as if looking for someone. Mother Augustine. Her face was a bit more lined than he remembered, but otherwise she had not changed at all. She stood ramrod straight and had a stern, serious expression on her face. He tried to remember if he'd ever seen her smile. She shook her head and stepped back to close the door. She hadn't seen him, and for that Buck was grateful. He hurried through the door before it closed and watched as the school's Reverend Mother went back upstairs to her class.

The children and most of the nuns would be upstairs on the second floor, so Buck decided to wander around the first floor until the spirits decided he'd been there long enough. He wasn't sure why he had come so he wasn't sure what he was supposed to find. He went first to the office, the first room he'd ever seen at the school. After being found in the barn, he'd been brought by two nuns into the office to face Mother Augustine, though, of course, back then he hadn't known her name or even that they were nuns.

The office had changed little over the years, except maybe to look a bit more worn. Sparsely furnished, it held only a desk, a chair, and a crucifix. The desk was large and its top empty with the exception of a Bible. The straight-backed chair's upholstery was fraying on the arms and its wine-colored fabric had been dulled by age and sunlight. The silver crucifix did not look aged at all, but then, he knew from his time here that it was regularly polished. It wasn't until after he'd learned to read that he understood the significance of the sculpted man pinned to crossed beams. The nuns revered it for the sacrifice made by Jesus. But to Buck, it had little religious meaning. It had, however, given him his name. Because Reverend Mother Mary Augustine could not have a student named Running Buck, she'd searched for a "Christian" name for him, finally deciding on Cross when she had touched the crucifix she wore around her neck.

He had been terrified that day. The nuns who had brought him in had taken his knife from him and Mother Augustine took his medicine pouch and earring. He had understood enough to know that he had traded them for school. He'd left the Kiowa to seek out a school like Little Bird had described and hearing that word spoken by these nuns, he'd wanted to learn. He could only understand a few English words, and the nuns made no attempt to help him understand. So when they took his things and cut his hair, he thought it was a high price to pay, perhaps too high, but he'd gone too far to turn back. Of course, he got everything back after graduating, but he didn't have any way of knowing that when he arrived, and he wasn't about to quit.

Bolstered by that resolve, he had endured the strict discipline and foreign culture and tried to learn. But the white world had obstacles he hadn't prepared for. The Kiowa had seen him as white, but at the school it was very obvious that he was not. He was a savage and a heathen. An Indian. And here he had no brother to protect him.

Buck turned to leave the office and found the rules were no different in the school than out on the plains. Directly before him were the two nuns and the frightened youth he had once been. Hungry and covered in grit and dirt from the storm the night before, the younger Buck looked about the room with wide eyes while the women in black discussed his intentions. Buck hadn't understood their words then, but they were perfectly clear to him now.

"He was carrying this, Reverend Mother," the one on the right, Sister Beatrice said. She held his knife between two fingers as if it might jump and slit her throat. "I shudder to think what he is capable of."

Mother Augustine stepped through Buck to walk around his younger self. Then she took the knife and held it close before setting it on the desk. "It is very possible that the knife is used for hunting," she said and then dismissed the nun on the left, Sister Margaret.

Sister Beatrice went on to tell how Michael Shaughnessy had found him in the barn, supposing that he had broken in. Mother Augustine remained calm in the face of Sister Beatrice's near panic, and explained that he could not have broken in since the barn was left unlocked. And when the younger nun asked why he wasn't in his own place with his own people, Mother Augustine surprised him further.

"I doubt that he has a place," she said. "Otherwise, he would not have been in our barn. He is not full-blooded. Look at the color of his hair: brown not black. I have heard that some tribes do not take well to mixed blood. He has probably been expelled or abandoned by his own people. Judging by the looks of him, he is fortunate to have found us."

To a stranger she might simply have sounded logical, and to the younger Buck, it was just indecipherable chatter. But to the older Buck watching, the whole conversation was a wonder! This short, stern woman had been the bane of his existence at Sorrow's. She had punished him when the other boys picked fights. She had slapped him with a ruler when he used the "wrong" hand, even though it was much harder for him to write or eat with his right. She had stood him in front of a class of much younger children and embarrassed him when he couldn't pronounce the words in his reader correctly. Even when he grew taller than her, she still intimidated him. Never once had she given him a kind word of encouragement. He had hated her.

But here she was, in this scene from his past, and she did not think him a savage out to scalp them all in the night. When Sister Beatrice succumbed to all the usual lies and suspicions white men had about Indians, Mother Augustine confronted her with reason and fairness. It was a side of the woman he had never seen before, and he wondered how different those three years might have been if he had understood her words that first day.


Jenny grabbed the ball of yarn again before she went outside. They had decided to move the whole bed to the porch so they wouldn't have to jar Buck around anymore than necessary. The buckboard was as close to the porch as the Kid and Jimmy could get it. In the back, they had placed the mattress from the second bed, several extra blankets and a heavy quilt. One horse was hitched to it and three others were tethered to the post nearby. Teaspoon had come out to inspect it but then walked off to the shed where Buck had been kept. Jenny looked to Kid, but he shrugged back. When Teaspoon returned, he was carrying a hammer and a nail. He climbed into the back of the buckboard and began to hammer the nail into the back of the seat.

"You won't need the string," he told her when he finished. "You can hang it here. You'll ride back here with him. I'll be up front. Kid and Jimmy, I need one of you to ride ahead of us and have Rachel and Lou prepare a place in the house and bring the doctor over."

"I'll go," Kid said. "I'm sure Lou is clawing at the walls to get back out here. This'll save her the trouble."

Teaspoon nodded and got down from the buckboard. "Okay, let's get him out here."

They all filed back into the house and found Buck lying as still and peaceful as he had the entire night. Jenny just hoped he wouldn't wake when they moved him. As much as she wanted to see his eyes and hear his voice, she wanted more for him to rest without pain. While they could not take his pain away, this death-like sleep he was in kept him beyond it.

All she really knew of him was the week they'd spent together before her mother died, and the stories Ike had told. Looking back into her memories, she saw him with new eyes. He was there, leading the Army into her village while the warriors were away. At the time, she had only noticed his actions in regards to her. He led the soldiers. He tried to stop her from running away. But now, the memories ran slower, clearer, in her mind. He did lead the soldiers, but his eyes were troubled, unhappy, but she knew the soldiers hadn't forced him to come. Reluctant. That was what his eyes told her. And then when the shooting started, he jumped down from his horse and raised his hands to the soldiers. He tried to stop them. He saw Two Ponies standing in the open, about to get trampled, and pulled him to safety. He did try to stop her from running away, but she slapped him and he fell. She got to her horse only to be shot in the shoulder and dropped to the ground. And after the soldiers had rounded them up, he had tried to help her by tending her wound.

She hadn't seen it then, but he had tried to help her even when he stopped her running away. If she had stayed, she would not have been shot. Either way, the soldiers would have taken her. He couldn't change that and neither could she. He had done his best, but he was just one man. The soldiers didn't listen to him, and she could see now the sadness that was in his eyes when it was all over.

She ignored him back in Sweetwater because she was still angry. She took her first opportunity to run away, but he caught her. They argued. She hated him, and all the while he treated her with kindness and patience. She yelled at him, insulted him, and he held her when she cried.

She had been worried when she rode out here with Ike. Would he love her? They'd only just begun to get along when he fought Black Wolf for her. Fought to the death. He had offered his life for her chance at freedom. Wasn't that love? Would she love him? Looking down at his bruised, swollen face, she knew now that she already did.

"Lift it easy," Teaspoon said, breaking into her thoughts.

She and Kid had taken the foot of the bed, leaving Jimmy and Teaspoon to the heavier end. Between the four of them, the bed wasn't too hard to lift. Buck's weight made it awkward, but they didn't have far to go. When they reached the door, Teaspoon stepped back, so that Jimmy could get through the door with the bed. It was just wide enough, but not for both men. Jenny did the same with Kid, taking up the bed again only after they were out on the porch.

They set the bed down near to the edge of the porch and Jenny took a folded blanket from the foot of the bed. Teaspoon helped her, lifting Buck little by little until she had the fresh blanket underneath him. This time only the men lifted Buck, by the blanket. Jenny untied the dreamcatcher and jumped into the back of the buckboard to hang it on the nail Teaspoon had put there. Then she returned to the edge and helped to pull the blanket when the men reached her. Jimmy climbed up with her and together they pulled Buck onto the mattress. Once he was settled, Jenny covered him with the blankets and tucked a pillow beneath his head. Through it all, Buck never so much as twitched.


The school was full of memories. No matter where he went, he had to turn at some point, either to leave a room or to go into another one. Every time he turned, he faced the past. The other boys tormenting him in the cafeteria or tripping him on the stairs. Getting beaten up and then punished for it, whether he fought back or not. Standing in front of the class of little children, trying to remember all the rules for pronouncing English spellings. While he had found encouragement in the office, he found it no where else in the school. What he did find though, was a bit of his spirit. Young Buck got so angry at Mother Augustine's constant insistence on humiliating him that he was sure she wanted him to fail. He vowed to himself to learn to speak the language to show her that he could, to beat her in that battle of minds.

There was only one room left so he went there, walking through another memory. It was rather mundane. Some boys knocked his books out of his younger self's arms and taunted him with names. He had seen enough of that. Sparing the boy who was him a sympathetic glance, he walked straight through the boys and into the infirmary.

It wasn't much of an infirmary. The doctor's office in Rock Creek was much larger, and more clinical-looking. But this room did give the sick or injured a bit of privacy not afforded to the students in the dormitories upstairs. Two small beds served the sick, while a chair and table gave Sister Francis a place to sleep while she watched over them. That was the memory now coming to him and it was so familiar, so real, that it backed him up against the wall. Two boys occupied the beds. One dark-skinned with short hair and the other light-skinned with none. It wasn't until just then that he realized none of the other memories had included Ike. Ike was there all along, scaring the other children and even watching when Buck was beaten. But this was different. He felt himself melting into the memory in front of him, becoming the younger boy that he once was and reliving this moment, one of the most precious times of his life.

Ike had come to Buck's aid after older boys in town had picked a fight. Both had ended up beaten badly and were brought to the infirmary to rest and convalesce. Sister Francis fell asleep at the table, and Buck stole curious glances at the silent boy beside him. He had seemed threatening before, maybe even crazy. Owl-boy, Buck had named him in his own mind because his wide eyes and bare head reminded him of that animal. He didn't look like that now, though. Buck knew that the other boy had tried to help him, and he owed him something. But he was very curious as to why, when he had only watched before, he had decided to act in town. So Buck, in his broken English, asked the quiet boy why he had fought. In the other's silence, Buck had finally learned that the boy was silent because he couldn't speak. Both sat up and met, really met, for the first time. When Buck asked the boy's name, Ike wrote it on a piece of paper. And then Buck offered Ike something very special. It was small to him, something every Kiowa learned. But for Ike, the Plains language of hand signs was the only form of communication he had beyond writing. Ike wrote a very special word on a piece of paper and handed it over to Buck. Buck read it, and mispronounced it but got it right at Ike's prompting.

"Friend," he said, and Ike's eyes lit up. Buck realized that Ike had offered him something of great value in return, something he'd longed for in this lonely place surrounded by so many children. Buck raised his out-turned fist to his neck, with his first two fingers extended and then raised his hand upward toward his face. Ike followed the movement with his eyes and made the sign himself.

"Friend," Buck repeated.

Once again, Buck found himself at the wall, watching as the two boys learned from each other. Ike would write a word and encourage Buck to pronounce it, and Buck would show him the sign. The scene faded like a mist, leaving two empty beds, covered in colorful, but faded, quilts. The chair where Sister Francis had slept was empty. Buck turned and walked out the door only to be met with more memories, but this time, Ike was in every one of them.

The school day ended, and children—of both the present and the past—ran outside to play. Buck went with them and found Ike again by the fence. And a younger Ike high in the cottonwood tree with his younger self. He heard himself as he passed the tree. He was laughing and the older Buck could see Ike smiling, too. Ike was only one friend, one friend out of all the children in the school, but he was more than enough to make the school bearable, even pleasant at times.

He reached the fence and Ike smiled. "It's time to go home."


(TBC)

A/N: Kim Roberts graciously gave me permission to use her "Sorrow's Children" as the back-story for the events in my story taking place at the mission school. Canonically, Buck did tell Emily that he and Ike met at a mission school and that they became friends after Ike jumped into a fight to help Buck. Everything else, events at the school and descriptions of the grounds, are based on the past events from Kim's story. I've paraphrased her scenes here, not wanting to plagiarize and not even hoping to write them as beautifully as she did. If what little I put in here intrigues you (and even if it doesn't!) go read her story. It's an excellent piece though you won't find it here. You can find it at the following: hem dot passagen dot se slash nesciri slash sc underscore pro dot htm. (ff dot net eats URL's so I had to write that one funny. The punctuation is written and spaced out. Remove the spaces and replace the words "dot" and "slash" with . and / and "underscore" with _.)