Edge of the Wilderness - By Stephanie Grace Whitson Page 0,25

across the open space to where the sawmill had stood. It was there, after a serious talk with Robert Lawrence about the merits of life at the mission, Daniel had caught his friend Otter drinking whiskey behind a woodpile. Daniel looked away from the blackened rubble and glanced toward the north. He hoped Otter was up there across the border, still living the old life, still hunting buffalo, still free.

A half-burned book lay on the ground near the school. The winter had nearly obliterated the print, but Daniel could tell it was a Dakota grammar book. For the first time, he wondered how the missionaries felt about what had happened. Their lives, too, had been destroyed.

Robert Lawrence had been talking about trying to have church services at the scouts’ camp. Big Amos and the army cook Edward Pope expressed interest. Daniel’s gaze lingered on what was left of the mission church. Dr. Riggs would be pleased to know that some of his converts had not forgotten Christ, Daniel thought. Perhaps they should try to have services. Perhaps it would help.

Dismounting, Daniel walked toward the place where a wild vine was sending green tendrils up over the blackened remains of the teachers’ cottage. He bent down and touched a green shoot, remembering how, by the end of last summer, the mature vine had nearly swallowed up the entire porch. He wondered what had become of the brilliantly colored little bird that used to flit around the orange blossoms, totally impervious to the presence of Miss Jane and Blue Eyes as they sat on the porch drinking tea.

Sitting down on the earth beside the vine, Daniel pulled Etienne LaCroix’s journal out of the blue sash at his waist. He leafed through it, watching Blue Eyes grow up in the sketches. Presently he closed the book and, standing up, tucked it back in his sash. He looked around at the mission and frowned. He should never have come here. Now he was in a darker mood than ever.

He looked down at the journal. He should throw it away, he told himself. Stop thinking about her. Both Robert and Big Amos had wives. Robert had children. Sacred Lodge had said they would be brought to the scouts’ camp. It had not yet happened, but neither Robert nor Big Amos brooded or complained. They simply went on with their duties. They seemed to be able to ignore Brady Jensen.

Daniel mounted his horse and trotted away from the mission. Following a line of trees along a ridge and down into a valley, he dismounted at the lowest part of a dry creek bed. Taking the sash from around his waist, he wound it around the journal. In a few moments he had found a crevice deep enough to hide the bundle. He piled several rocks across the hiding place, climbed back up the bank, and prepared to ride away. But then he stopped and looked behind him. If rain swelled the creek as it had in the past, the book would be swept away and ruined. Daniel sat for a moment arguing with himself. It put him in a dark mood to linger over the past. What did it matter if the book was ruined? Both it and the sash were part of a life that no longer existed.

His horse was growing restless, dancing nervously and pawing the earth. Finally, Daniel let him lower his head and graze. While the bay snatched up huge mouthfuls of the rich prairie grass, Daniel scrambled down the creek bank and retrieved the bundle.

Seven

He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.

—Psalm 147:3

Simon had lit the gas lamp in the kitchen just long enough to make coffee, then turned it back off. He sat alone in the darkened room, sipping from his cup and thinking back over the previous day’s events. His closed Bible lay before him. As soon as he finished his coffee he would walk up to the church. By then it would be light enough for him to be able to reread the first chapter of Philippians. The idea that Paul had written the letter from prison had struck him a few days before, and now he was reading it over and over again, with a new appreciation for Paul’s ability to look upon his imprisonment as a kind of blessing. Simon especially liked the passage that read, “But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out