“You can sleep in my barn,” Clorinda said after stuffing him with deer meat stew and biscuits with bull berry jam. “If you go straightways to your claim instead of going back the way you came, you can be back before week’s end.”
“So you won’t help us?” Pete said, staring steadfastly into his empty stew plate. Their dinner conversation had been light, about the weather and his ride. About the state of things down at the Indian agency and the condition of the neighbor’s head of cattle that grazed down the way.
“I don’t know that I can. Come, sit in the parlor for a bit,” Clorinda replied. She pushed a cup of coffee into his limp hands, her fingertips brushing his. He realized all at once that she wasn’t very much older than his sixteen years. The severe bun, black clothes, and her formal manners had all misled him.
“The chief’s man said that your granny taught you things. He said that you’re the only one who can help me.”
“Help you? I thought it was the mine that was in trouble.” Clorinda sat back in her rocking chair and looked him over, her fine dark brows pulled together in a frown.
“Thing is, Those things have been following me,” Pete said. “I crossed every creek three times just like my granny said. That puts them off for a while, but they’ll find me. They always do. If you won’t help me, I have to go before it’s too dark for me to set camp. He realized that he was snuffling again, and quickly drew himself up, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “I won’t bring those things to your barn.”
“Well, there’s nothing else for it. We’ll have to go stay with my grandmother tonight,” Clorinda said.
“Your grandmother is still alive?”
“Oh yes. It’s my mother who has passed on. As you might have noticed from your visit with the chief, my father’s people are very long-lived. Dad’s out hunting, and my grandmother is camping out in a wikkiup in the back pasture. Did you think I lived here alone?”
Pete had no answer to that other than to try to hide his red ears with a hunched shrug. She led the way through the garden behind the house to the back pasture. A large brush hut loomed against the darkening sky. He could see firelight flickering through the loose walls and could hear a low voice singing. Clorinda ducked around to the entrance and lifted the blanket. The singing stopped abruptly and segued into an argument. He peeked cautiously around the brush. A pair of fierce black eyes met his from within.
“Oh, company. Well, why didn’t you say so, Ugly Betsy’s daughter?”
“Did you give me space to explain?” Clorinda asked. “Grandma Reene, this is Pete Yetter. That meddling medicine man from the agency sent him out here.”
“To me? He knows I don’t sing no more for others.”
“No, to me,” Clorinda said.
“I told you it would be so,” the old woman said, and then the two women started arguing in earnest, segueing into Shoshone peppered with English curse words.
“I’ll just go make camp elsewhere,” Pete said. “It was nice meeting you ladies. Thank you for the fine dinner, Miss Clorinda.”
“You can’t go out there,” Reene said. “You’ll get nibbled up. She patted a pile of blankets arranged next to the fire. “You sleep. Ugly Betsy’s daughter and I will keep you safe tonight.”
“What about the horses?” Pete asked as he settled down to sleep.
The old woman brought her face down to his. “Don’t worry about the horses. Those things out there don’t want horses. They want you. Nice fresh young man meat!”
He flinched and the old woman laughed and pulled away, resuming her earlier singing. When he woke, it was well past dawn. The fire was out and only Clorinda remained, sitting cross-legged on the other side of the banked firepit. Her hair was down and her face was grumpy. Pete thought he had never seen anything so beautiful in all his life.
“Let’s go,” Clorinda said.
“Go where?” Pete asked. He jumped up and followed her as she stomped back towards the house.
“To your cursed mine, that’s where. Grandma says that I have to fix it, and I can’t fix it here.”
“I brought you a horse,” Pete offered.
“I don’t want your horse! I don’t want to be a medicine singer! I don’t want to follow in my grandmother’s footsteps.” Clorinda stopped at the kitchen door and burst into tears.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I really am.” He carefully stretched out a hand and patted her heaving shoulder. “If you know of somebody else to ask. . .”
“No,” she said, stepping away from his hand. “Grandmother says that because I am part white, I am the only one she knows of who can fix this problem.”
He went into the kitchen with her and watched as she stuffed supplies into a canvas sack. Like Syd Marely, Clorinda evidently thought that dealing with evil spirits required a large supply of vittles.
“My mother would be horrified,” Clorinda said as she stuffed the last few items into her sack and drew it closed. “She was a good Quaker woman. You know what Quakers are?” She watched him shake his head. “Very religious. They call them plain folk because they dress plain and work on being modest, good, God-fearing folk. Pennsylvania Dutch,” she explained. “Of course, they have their own ways, hex signs and the like.”
Clorinda pointed to the star painted under the ridgeline of the house as they went out to the horses. After she filled her saddlebags, she went back inside and returned wearing a split skirt and a fine flat-brimmed hat with her black mourning blouse. She carried a flat drum and her rifle. After they were stowed, she nodded her approval, ready to go.
“If the Quakers had all that hex stuff of their own, why would your mother disapprove of you fixing the mine?” Pete asked as they mounted up. He wished he had offered her help getting up, or done something gallant and manly. Her steady gaze seemed to be sizing him up, and he desperately didn’t want to fall short.
“It’s not that. She would disapprove of my riding off to parts unknown with some strange man.” Clorinda gave him a fierce glare, followed rapidly by a mocking grin. “Don’t try any funny stuff, or you’ll have Ugly Betsy’s ghost haunting you along with whatever other troubles you’ve stirred up!”
“It’s not parts unknown, ma’am. It’s the edge of Lusk.” Pete said.
“That is a very spooky place name. It doesn’t make it sound much better,” Clorinda said with a laugh.
On the way back to the mine, she questioned him more about the haunting spirits, and when he had nothing left to tell her, switched to asking him many other questions about the other miners and the mine itself.
“I have heard of spirits that live deep underground, and many more kinds. These things that pursue you are not anything that Grandma Reene has ever heard of.”
“Why didn’t she come with us? Even if she’s too old to drive off the spirits, couldn’t she have come to advise you?” Pete asked as they made camp the first night. Clorinda seemed entirely at ease setting up camp with him, but her words about her mother’s disapproval still rang in his ears.
“Well, because she’s dead,” Clorinda said as she made bannocks over the fire.
“Dead! But you said. . .”
“I know what I said. I lied. I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t take advantage of me all alone. Besides, I still live with her even if she doesn’t exactly live with me. You met her. She’s very fierce.”
“I met a ghost?” He took the offered bannock from her with shaky hands.
“You’re being chased by I don’t know what, and you’re worried about my grandmother? At least she doesn’t mean you any harm!” She gobbled the last of her share of the Bannocks, turned her back to him, and refused to speak to him the rest of the night.
Morning came and Clorinda was still silent, though her face seemed less angry. She had taken the first watch, had sang her strange songs that somehow kept the spirits at bay. He would have slept better than he had since Mike died if only she wasn’t angry with him.
“I didn’t mean to offend,” he finally said when they stopped at noon to water the horses and eat a bit of jerky. “I’ve never been chased by spirits and haunted by grandmothers before.”
“Hopefully after this, you won’t be again,” Clorinda replied.
Pete thought to himself that he wouldn’t mind a lifetime of being haunted by Reene if that meant he could live it with Clorinda. He kept this opinion to himself and allowed himself to hope that someday he would be encouraged to share it.
They passed by three crosses instead of just Mike’s as they rode into the miner’s camp late in the afternoon. Stu Campbell shook his hand and Clorinda’s, and the remaining crew trickled in from the mine to greet them as well. Pete anxiously scanned the faces and breathed a sigh of relief when he found his pa.
“We’ve lost Tommy McBride and Dade Williams since you’ve been gone,” Stu said. “Both crushed just like Mike. Dade wasn’t even at the mine when it happened to him. He was washing dishes in the creek and a big piece of embankment just fell down out of nowhere.”
“Let me rest until sunset,” Clorinda said as she untied her drum. “And then I will see what I can do.”
Stu Campbell took Pete aside after they showed her to Pete and Old Pete’s tent.
“Where’s the medicine man? Why did you bring this girl?” Stu asked.
“The medicine man wouldn’t come. He said that Miss Wagon was the only one who could help us, on account of her being the only trained half-breed around.”
“Trained in what?”
“Whatever kind of thing will get rid of this curse,” Pete replied.
At sunset, Clorinda came out with her drum and beckoned to Pete and the others. After she had them arranged in a circle to her liking, she showed them the dance. Pete could have predicted the grumbling that caused if she’d asked. She cut them short, bossing the miners around even better than Stu could.
“This is how are you going to get rid of this curse? By us dancing around like damn fools?” Stu asked, glaring at her from across the fire.
“I’m going to sing them away. It’s what we do. You dance to wake the ancestors to help, and then I will sing things back to the way they should be.”
“You’re just a girl, not much older than our Pete. Why do you think you can do all that?” One of the miners added his grumbling to Stu’s.
“It’s what I was trained to do. I’m all the help you’re going to get. Would you rather be crushed than take help from a girl? Do you want to get rid of these spirits or not?” Clorinda asked.
Looking around at the chastened group, she nodded and started playing her drum. The miners stomped around as she had shown, and she sang in her clear, carrying voice.
“All the spirits are gone to rest!”
“All the land is made firm.”
“All those come to test.”
All now return!”
On the horizon, a mass of a huge thunderstorm rolled their way, thunder and lightning descending in a wall. Through the sheets of rain and flashes of lightning, Clorinda’s singing never ceased. In between the thunderbolts, Pete could hear the gibbering spirits howling in dismay. He could almost see their wispy, toothy faces rush by as he turned and stomped and prayed.
The storm was finished with them just before dawn. As the sun rose, Clorinda, seemingly tireless, beat out a happy-sounding tattoo to the dawn and ended her song on an upward flourish. The air was fresh and the malaise that had hung in the air was gone, leaving stillness and a hint of autumnal chill.
“They’re gone!” Pete yelled.
“So’s the mine,” said Stu. He sat down heavily on a sodden bench at the camp table. “The whole thing slid down in the night. I guess it was the rain.”
“I’m sorry for your mine,” Clorinda said. “I could save the mine, or you men. I chose you men.” She smiled round at all of them as she re-braided her thick hair.
“We thank you anyhow,” Old Pete said as he joined them. “We’d worked that coal seam pretty good. We’ll not come away empty-handed.”
“And you come away alive,” Clorinda said.
“What do you want in payment?” Stu Campbell asked. “Besides that horse that Young Pete brought you.”
Clorinda, who had been stowing her drum, looked over her shoulder at the party of exhausted miners.
“I’ll take Young Pete’s escort home,” she said. “I might take Pete if my dad likes him.”
“Is he dead too?” Pete asked, unable to suppress his shudder.
“Grandma Reene was right. White boys can’t take a joke. Grandma Reene is as alive as you and me.” She jumped up in the saddle. “Well, are you coming or not?”
“I suppose I’d better,” Pete said, looking at the muddy mess where the coal seam had been, and then at the three forlorn crosses on the hill. “I don’t think I have the heart for mining no more.”
