Chapter 5: 87264
Red Doe touched the girl's hand gently. For a moment the eyes didn't open, and Logan sucked in a breath of panic, but then they did open, and he sighed in relief.
She stared at Red Doe, at the Indian clothing she wore and then at Running Wolf's aquiline features, and began to shrink into herself, whimpering wildly. Logan hurried to her, distressed by her apparent terror. The child was afraid of the Indians.
"It's okay, kid, it's okay, they'll help make ya feel better. Settle down, now." He felt awkward. What did people say to kids when they were scared?
To his complete astonishment the child reached one thin grimy hand up to his, groping blindly for his hand. He slipped his hand under hers, letting her feel the solid strength of his own flesh and bones, giving her fingers a reassuring squeeze. She gave him a faint squeeze back, and relaxed. Logan nodded to Red Doe. "Go on."
Red Doe carefully pushed aside the now caked willow bark pulp and examined the whip lashes. Running Wolf handed her a cloth soaked in water, and she cleaned the grimy, dirty back with gentle fingers. She held a soft, whispered conversation with Running Wolf, and then the medicine man went to the table where he had dropped their bags and took out various packets of powders and herbs. Logan ignored them, content to let them work while he tried to comfort and quiet the child.
Red Doe spoke softly to Logan in her language, keeping her tone mild so as not to alarm the girl. "The white man calls us savages. What should he call himself, then, who can do this to a child?" Despite the tone, her words were angry.
Logan sighed and spoke in the Indian tongue. "I dunno. I'm as angry as you are, if not more. He tied her to the whippin' post in the middle o' town, an' everybody was just standin' round, watchin'. Nobody was tryin' ta help her or nothin'." He too, kept his tone quiet.
Red Doe placed a gentle hand on the child's other arm. "I need to check your side, child," she said quietly. "This might hurt, but I will do my best to keep it quick. Can you hold on?" The child gave a brief nod, then gritted her teeth as Red Doe touched the giant black bruise on her right ribs.
The child gasped in anguish, her head going all the way back on her neck. Her eyes screwed shut, and tears trickled down her bruised cheeks. Logan winced at the girl's obvious pain, and took her other hand as he sat down on the floor next to the low cot. "Squeeze my hand, darlin'," he said anxiously. "It might help." As Red Doe probed the swelling again, the child squeezed his hand.
When Red Doe pulled her hands back, Running Wolf appeared at her elbow with a questioning look. "The bone is not broken, but it is badly bruised. She is in great pain. John Logan, have you any of the white man's fire water?"
Logan blinked. "Ya wanna give her whiskey?" he let go of the limp hand and went to a high cabinet, taking down a bottle of the stuff and pouring some into a tin cup. He dunked the reed into it and held it close to the girl. She took the end between her lips and sucked up through the reed.
And then her face turned an alarming shade of red and she choked. Logan grinned a little as she spluttered. "I know, tastes awful, don't it, but it'll take the edge offa the pain," he said to her. She lifted her eyes to his, and he almost forgot to breathe.
Blue. Her eyes were the most incredible shade of summer-sky blue. He had never looked at her full in the face, and so had never seen her eyes. His heart almost stopped.
Red Doe looked into the child's face, and caught a glimpse of those brilliant eyes before the child lowered her lashes again. Her voice was soft. "Her eyes are the same color as the blue stones we use for decoration," she said, fingering the polished turquoise that hung from a thong around her neck. "Truly a special child. Only a child touched by the Great Spirit would have such eyes. No wonder she does not speak." Her hands gently stroked back a strand of lank, dirty hair from the sunburned shoulder as Running Wolf handed her a thick paste in the bottom of one of Logan's pots. He wrinkled his nose at the rank smell, but made no protest. Some of the best horse medicines he had smelled like day-old meat that had been left in the hot sun. Human medicines probably smelled just as bad.
Red Doe began to sing quietly in Cherokee as she slathered the paste onto the red shoulders and on the cut back. The child laid her bruised cheek on the pillow and closed her eyes as the soft, rhythmic singing went on. When Red Doe finished applying the paste, the combination of song, gentle hands, soft bed, and surcease from pain had lulled the child to sleep.
Keeping his voice low, Logan told Red Doe that something seemed to be wrong with the child's legs, and the woman switched her attention to the legs. She shook her head over the insect bites, set another pot of herbs to brew while she cleaned the dirt and grime off the thin, stick-like limbs. When the concoction was done she skimmed the thick oily stuff from the surface of the pot and put it in an empty jar. "There," she said. "That will help with the swelling and itching." She dipped her fingers into the ointment and dabbed it on the child's leg, then rubbed it gently into the flesh, stroking carefully over the bruises. "Apply it like this, rubbing it into the skin in one direction only, from the top of the leg down to the foot. Whenever it begins to itch more should be applied. You will have to do this for now, but in two suns when the cuts on her back have crusted, she can sit up and do it for herself." Red Doe and Running Wolf each took a pot and went outside. Curious, Logan followed them.
They headed down to the small stream he used for washing and began to clean his cooking utensils. Red Doe pointed to a plant growing near the bank of the stream. "Do you see that? When she awakens pick some of those and give that to her to eat. The leaves must be fresh; dried, they will not work as well. But it will ease her pain." She turned her attention to the pot she was scrubbing as her voice softened. "She has no clothing. We have some white woman's clothing at the village that our children play with. When I return tomorrow I shall bring some with me. I do not think you are overly eager to return to the town to purchase clothing for her."
"I ain't goin' ta return ta the town fer nothin'," Logan growled, free to unleash his anger now that they were outside and he wouldn't startle the girl. "I'm goin' ta start goin' to Jackson fer stuff I need. They ain't never goin' to see me again."
The child was still asleep when Red Doe and Running Wolf left, Red Doe promising to come the next day to check the child's condition. Logan walked back into his tiny cabin and checked on her. She was still asleep. She looked almost angelic, her face still and serene in the light coming from the dancing flames in his fireplace. He turned and surveyed his cabin.
He was a bachelor; he lived alone. With no woman around to nag at him about where he put his things, he simply left things where he wanted to and picked them up when he needed them. But with the child around, he couldn't do that. Let's see, he would need to make a bed for her, and would have to figure out where to put it. And he would need another chest for her woman's clothes. What else did a woman need? He had visited the minister and his wife in town on a few occasions; and got a vague impression of chests full of clothes and shoes and feminine fripperies. Would this child need that? He supposed she would.
He spent a great deal of time picking up and putting his things back where they were supposed to go. He picked up the pieces of dirty clothing and put them in a pile, to wash the next day; other things he put back in his chest. Afterward he did some rearranging, still trying to be quiet and not wake the sleeping girl. When he finally finished, one entire corner of his cabin was bare. He took his axe and went to the big stand of willows by the creek.
There was a full moon out, and it illuminated the prairie as bright as if it were noon. He set to work, cutting branches and stripping them of their leaves, then dropped them into the stream to soak. By tomorrow they would be supple enough for him to weave into a flat platform.
He took a scythe to a stand of tall grass he'd kept his eye on for most of the summer, cultivating it carefully so it would grow tall and full. He cut it all off now, close to the roots, leaving long strands. He gathered them up, took them to the back door, and spread them out on his back stoop, spreading them out. When they were dry in a few days, he'd stuff them into an old horse feed sack and put that on top of the sleeping platform. It would provide a soft, sweet-smelling cushion between her little body and the woven willow withes.
He checked the horses one last time, gave Storm the two lumps of sugar he'd promised the big gray, and rubbed the last of the dried sweat off Dark Star. Then he went back into the cabin, too tired to think of anything else he had to do, and flung himself down on a blanket beside the hearth. In a matter of moments he was asleep.
She woke slowly.
Her body hurt all over. She bit her lip to suppress her moans of pain, as was her usual habit; and started to push against the hard boxcar floor to sit up. And froze.
The surface under her throbbing palm wasn't the hard wooden boxcar floor, but something cloth-covered, and soft. Her eyes flew open. She didn't see the dim, dark, interior of the boxcar, with its rusted walls; what she saw, instead, were wooden log walls, the chinks filled in with mud hardened to the consistency of stone. The ceiling was the same, sloping up from the top of the walls on either side to a peak above her head. The floor was the same, wooden boards sanded smooth so there were no splinters. She was lying on a cloth-covered burlap sack stuffed with sweet-smelling sun-dried grasses, and a pillow under her cheek made of a cloth flour sack with what felt like more grass inside it.
It all came back to her, then, the events of the other day. The Railmaster's whipping, passing out, and being woken by the stranger who had helped her before. And this time he had taken her and put her on his horse, and ridden away with her like some fairy tale she had heard long ago and now forgotten. The Indian woman had done something to her that hurt a little and helped a lot, and then the stranger had given her something to drink that tasted vile but had put her to sleep. He was asleep too, lying on a blanket by the hearth.
Her back throbbed; she hurt, but more than that, she desperately had to relieve herself, and she was thirsty. She sat up as quietly as possible, put her feet on the floor and tried to shuffle to the door. At the first clink of her chained ankles on the polished floor the man woke. She kept an eye on him as he sat up. He had done nothing but try to help her so far, but he might turn and hurt her at any time. Men were dangerous like that.
Logan blinked as he saw the child standing warily by the bed. As he sat up, she tensed, but didn't try to flee. "Good mornin'," he said, his voice pleasant and friendly. "Ya shouldn't be up yet, y'know. Red Doe tol' me ya shouldn't get up fer two days, at least." He grinned at her. "Guess ya follow orders 'bout as well as I follow 'em." He stood and looked at her. "So where was ya plannin' on goin'? Ya ain't goin' back ta town. Ya don't belong there no more."
Her eyes widened, and she fixed those turquoise eyes on him again. Then her feet shuffled, the chain between them clinking, and he recognized it as the age-old sign for a need to heed the call of nature. He grinned and opened the back door. "See that little buildin' there? That's an outhouse. I built it to accommodate the Indian women as well as me, so yer welcome ta use it." She headed for the outhouse, without delay as without comment. He watched her go, her ankle chains dragging on the ground, and shook his head. Next thing was to get those things off her legs and arms. And neck.
He hunted out the tool he used to cut metal and waited for her to come back. As he expected, she did come back. It never occurred to her to run, not that she could, with those damn metal shackles rubbing her skin painfully with each little movement.
Her eyes widened as she stepped in and saw him holding his metal cutter, and stopped dead. He shook his head. "I ain't gonna hurt ya, kid. I wanna see if I can take those damn things off yer legs and arms and neck. Yer a free girl now; I bought ya from that Railmaster yesterday. I ain't goin' ta wait ta get no stinkin' papers that says yer free 'fore I get those things off ya." Her eyes widened.
"Yeah, yer free," he said as he sat her down on the single chair and started examining the locks on the metal shackles. "I seen the Railmaster whippin' ya yesterday, heard ya screamin' fer him ta stop, an' when he didn't I lost my temper. Wasn't nobody going to do nothin' else." He swore. "Yer so skinny, I can get the jaws of the cutter under the cuff between yer skin an' the metal, but I'm gonna haveta exert some pressure ta cut through the damn thick metal. It's gonna hurt some, darlin', but I promise I'll do it quick." She nodded, pressed her left elbow to the table and held it there with her right hand, keeping it still as he slid the lower jaw of the cutter under the shackle. He tried not to touch any of the raw, oozing sores under the metal, but he couldn't help it, and the tears in her eyes hurt him as much as he was hurting her.
It took all his strength to do it, but finally the cuff fell away from her wrist in two pieces, one on each side where he'd cut it. He stepped close, grabbed the hateful metal pieces, and flung it in a corner where he had a basket of scrap metal to take back to the smith in town. He'd struck a deal with the man; when Logan needed new bits for a bridle, he'd bring in the metal, and the smith would melt the scrap and make the bit. That way it didn't take any of his stores of raw metal, and Logan didn't have to pay for anything but the work and the time. Well, maybe the smith in Jackson would strike the same deal, because Logan sure as hell wasn't going back to Jonesboro.
He did the same to the shackle around the other wrist, and around the child's ankles. As he hefted the ankle shackles with their connecting chain, he was surprised at how much it weighed. A good couple of pounds at least, far heavier than a child should have to wear. He studied the raw sores around each limb, and winced. They were going to leave permanent scars. He tugged on her braids, pulling the straggling ends of her hair away from the collar as he studied it.
There were words cut into the metal. 'Property of the Union Railroad', it read. 'Slave 87264'. Logan bit back the expletive that threatened to slip past his lips and placed the cutter squarely in the middle of the word 'slave'. She was his girl now. She wasn't nobody's slave.
