Lucia had been awakened that morning early, around dawn, by gunfire in the distance, coming from the direction of Sitting Bull’s camp. She had hurriedly dressed and climbed to the top of the hill, on which the school stood, but she had seen nothing. Then, after a time, she had returned to the soddy, puzzled, a bit frightened, hoping there was nothing wrong. She had heard firing before, and usually it had been due, as it happened, to drunken Indians. But usually that sort of firing took place late at night, not at dawn.
The pile of kindling behind the soddy had been diminishing rapidly. All that was left of it now was a coal bucket filled with it, sitting beside the range.
Lucia, too, of course, preferred a meal prepared over a wood fire.
Several weeks ago Lucia had purchased a cord of fuel for one dollar from a man in a wagon who did business with the agency, but he no longer came as far into the reservation as the soddy.
If worse came to worse Lucia might hitch up the buckboard and drive down to the Grand River. There she might find a fallen cottonwood and get some of the dried branches. Perhaps she could hire Joseph Running Horse to cut the wood for her.
He had come by the soddy yesterday to ask for Mr. Chance’s medicine kit.
She had given it to him.
“I hope he is all right,” she had said, pretending not to be too much interested.
“Yes,” had said Running Horse, “I hope so,” and then he had taken the kit and left, leaving her.
She would have liked to have kept the kit. He might have come back for it. She might then have seen him again, once more, to see him, to speak to him.
She had only said, “I hope he is all right,” and Running Horse had said, “Yes, I hope so,” and then Running Horse had gone, taking the kit. It had been too quick, too simple, for the hours of remembering, for the not forgetting.
Yes, Mr. Chance, she said to herself, I might have some coffee on. You’ve shaved, I see. You know, I never expected to see you again. Naturally I’m pleased that you dropped by. William is fine. What brings you back to the reservation?
I’ll never see him again, never, said Lucia Turner to herself, hurting in the saying of it, the empty knowing of it to be true.
Never.
Never.
Never.
“Where is my breakfast?” asked Aunt Zita.
Lucia shook herself and puttered noisily about with the coffee pot, not answering.
Aunt Zita had been in a vicious mood since yesterday evening, when she had returned with the buckboard from the agency to find a dead horse only a few yards from the soddy and the soddy itself flaked with bullets.
Lucia had told her nothing.
Yesterday Lucia had taken the saddle and gear from Chance’s dead horse. She had then heaped dust over the animal. Today, hopefully, she would see some Indians and get them to take it away and bury it. If Joseph Running Horse passed by, he would help. Yesterday, when he had called for Chance’s medicine kit, she had forgotten to ask him. She also supposed she should give the saddle and the rest of the gear to him. But the entire matter had, yesterday, slipped her mind. If William Buckhorn’s father had returned from Fort Yates, he could probably be counted on to help Running Horse. The two of them could rig a travois. There probably wouldn’t be too much work, except maybe for the digging.
“You’ll have to get that horse out of here,” Aunt Zita had said.
“I know,” had said Lucia. “I’ll get some of the Indians to help.”
“They’ll probably eat it,” Aunt Zita had said.
“No,” Lucia had said, rather firmly, “they will not.”
Actually, Lucia had thought to herself, if the horse had been fresh killed, they might. She had learned from Aunt Zita how the rations had not been distributed Saturday and she had supposed, rightly, that supplies might well be scarce in the Standing Rock camps. And one could eat horse meat. She had heard that. At any rate Indians could. She herself, of course, could not do so. The thought of it, for no reason that she could clearly understand, turned her stomach.
“Indians will eat anything,” had said Aunt Zita.
Lucia grimaced. She had heard, and knew, that Indians would eat dog, too. She supposed they might indeed eat anything, or about anything. Of course they would have preferred buffalo. Or beef. Or mutton. Some of the younger Indians had never tasted buffalo. Lucia had had it only once, on a dining car on the way to Standing Rock. A rancher had shot it and given a shoulder to the conductor, and the conductor had given the steward a cut for the schoolmarm. Its taste was difficult to describe. Not like beef. Not just like beef. She had liked it. Aunt Zita would not touch it.
“Did you hear gunfire this morning?” asked Lucia.
“No,” said Aunt Zita.
“I did,” said Lucia.
“From Grand River, I imagine,” said Aunt Zita.
“Yes,” said Lucia, “it was.”
“I think I know what it’s all about,” said Aunt Zita.
“Tell me,” said Lucia.
“I want to know what happened here when I was gone,” snapped Zita.
Lucia looked down, and continued busying herself with the breakfast. With a fork she turned a piece of bread on the wire toast rack sitting on the black iron top of the range. She used a wooden spatula to loosen Aunt Zita’s eggs in the skillet.
“Well?” said Aunt Zita.
“All right,” said Lucia, “a man came by when you were gone, and two men were after him, and wanted to kill him, and I helped him get away, with the help of a friend of mine.”
Lucia had said all this in one breath and stiffened inside her cotton dress bending over the range, waiting.
“I want to hear a great deal about this,” said Aunt Zita, and the words might have been spoken by the head of a stone angel.
Lucia scooped the eggs on a plate with the spatula and quickly picked up the toast with two fingers and darted it onto the plate, not altogether displeased that she had left it too long on the wire rack.
She put the plate on the kitchen table in front of Aunt Zita.
“The toast is burned,” said Aunt Zita.
“I’ll make you some more,” said Lucia.
“I want my coffee now,” said Aunt Zita.
“I’ll get it,” said Lucia, and, using her apron as a potholder, picked up the coffee pot with two hands and poured Aunt Zita a large cup of the fragrant, black liquid. She then poured some milk from a jug which she had brought up earlier on its string from the well into the coffee, and put in two heaping tablespoons of white sugar, the way Aunt Zita liked it, and then gave her the cup.
“My toast,” said Aunt Zita.
Lucia cut a slice of bread from the loaf and put it on the toast rack.
“Why was there shooting at Grand River?” asked Lucia.
“Take this away,” said Aunt Zita, pointing a long white finger at the dark toast on her plate.
Lucia took it. She might have eaten it herself but instead she used the lid iron to move one of the flat circular lids on the range and drop the bread into the flames, and then she replaced the lid. She would later remember that she had thrown away a piece of bread.
Lucia turned around and faced Aunt Zita. “Please,” she said.
“My toast,” said Aunt Zita.
Lucia turned the toast and waited a minute until it had browned, and then served Aunt Zita.
Lucia sat down opposite her, and watched her knife press butter onto the toast.
“Please,” said Lucia.
“I heard yesterday,” said Aunt Zita, chopping at the eggs with the side of her fork, “from one of the men who drives one of the beef wagons who heard from a lieutenant at Fort Yates that the Ghost Dancing is about over.” Aunt Zita looked at her wisely, a flap of egg on her fork halfway to her mouth. Then the fork moved and the bit of egg disappeared between her thin lips.