It is 1865. People are moving westward along the Oregon Trail, searching for freedom, land, and wealth. Sarah sets out with her new husband, Johnny, only to find he has been damaged in the Civil War. He abandons her and chases rumors of gold in the Black Hills. A young Indian finds her and takes her to his village. She is accepted on the condition she teach them language skills necessary to cope with the onslaught of white settlers. Sarah has no choice but to stay. She learns to appreciate their culture and their dilemma, is torn between that and white civilization as she knows it. The Indian chief, Makhpiya Luta, goes to Washington D.C. to make peace with President Grant, taking Sarah in his party. He returns to his lands, leaving Sarah to make her way in a world to which she no longer belongs. Boarding schools for Indian children open up possibilities for her. The experience of teaching in these is disillusioning. She goes back to live among and teach her adopted people.

Long Road Home

By Virginia van Druten

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 Virginia van Druten
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-3246-7

Chapter One

Liberty, Missouri, 1865

When Johnny came home to Liberty, Missouri, he was a damaged man. It was nothing that could be seen or touched, the scars were inside what some call the soul. The war had messed with his thinking. He couldn't put his mind to working the family farm or courting the girl he had returned to at home. Everything else had changed, maybe she had also.

"Sarah," he said one night, sitting with her on the porch, his arm stretched across the back of the swing, "I no longer belong here. The war turned me around, I can't find my direction." He peered at the ground beyond the farmyard, beyond the stubble in the harvested fields, his booted feet shuffling as though already on the move. "The sky here's too heavy, it weighs me down. I have to see what's out west, search until I find somewhere I fit."

Sarah hesitated, waiting for his next words. She studied his face, and gazed at the spot where a rebel bullet had parted his dark hair. The urge to touch the place nearly overcame her restraint. This was the man she had loved since they had been children.

"We'll marry, if you'll make the journey with me. No promises. No guarantees, except that I'll be with you."

Sarah glanced over her shoulder, where her parents sat in the parlor, saw Pa nodding over the accounts, and Ma mending socks on a wooden darning egg. She clasped Johnny's hand, followed his gaze into the dim twilight. Was this really the man she wanted to marry and follow wherever he might take them? She breathed a heart-felt, "Yes."

His pent-up hope escaped in a heave of relief.

"It won't be easy," he said, "there's a lot to get ready."

"I know," though she couldn't really picture what was involved.

"My buddy from the army, Josh Lipscomb, is emigrating with his wife and baby, wants me to meet them in Independence. Plans to leave in early spring. We could be gone from here after crop planting, and never see harvest."

"But that's only five months away. I haven't even told Ma and Pa." She shifted her position on the swing ever so slightly and looked at him. His face held a new resolve. It was now, or lose him.

"I have my mustering out pay, and I've been saving up since I got home."

Sarah nodded in agreement as he rushed on, laying plans for their future.

"The land out there isn't fenced in, and nobody can keep me off."

* * *

All the next morning, Sarah worked alongside her mother, setting the house in order.

Few words were exchanged, but from time to time she caught Ma glancing speculatively in her direction. While folding the sheets from the clothesline, they approached and retreated as in a dance step.

The family gathered together at midday for dinner. Pa came in from the fields and joined Ma, Sarah, 11 year-old Ned, and 15 year-old June. Ma prepared the meal of cornbread and chicken, set it down with the last of the string beans and tomatoes from the garden.

Following the blessing, Pa looked at Sarah from above his wire-framed eyeglasses. "Johnny stayed late last night, the two of you talking. Anything you want to tell us about?"

Sarah stared down at her plate as though the potatoes were the most interesting item in the world. She felt the rising heat color her cheeks. Ma leaned forward.

"He asked me to marry him."

Ma relaxed. "That's nothing new. I thought that was settled before he went away to fight the rebs."

"It was. It is. But last night Johhny told me he wants us to go away. West with a wagon train."

Pa's sharp intake of breath through his teeth was audible. "Well, what did you tell him?"

"I told him I would." Sarah stood abruptly and ran away from the table to hide her agitation, taking refuge in the room she and June shared. She would be leaving everyone and everything she had ever known-her past, and, she had thought, her future.

Ma should have followed her, should have cuddled and consoled her. But she didn't. Sarah couldn't remember a time when her mother was a comfort to her, only a judge of right and wrong. Sarah sighed with the imposibility of pleasing her.

Ma eventually came into the room, her eyes icy pools and her lips stretched in a thin line. "If that's what you intend to do, then go. Don't give a thought to how you could be a help to us. You made your bed, you lie in it."

Closing the door firmly behind her, Ma returned to the kitchen to clear the dishes, muffling Sarah's convulsive sobs in the pillow.

Later that evening, awakened from fevered dreams, Sarah overheard her parents whispers.

"Did you hear what she said?" her mother's voice carried through the puny wall. "She wants to leave us."

Her father answered, sensibly enough, "It's only right that she wants to be with Johnny."

"But does that mean she has to go away? Why can't they stay here, fit in like neighbors? We could be of help to one another."

"Johnny says he has to find his own path, and there's no stopping him."

Sarah could imagine her mother's tears, muffled against her father's shoulder as he said, "I wouldn't stop him, even if I could. We can't understand all that he saw in the war, and how that got to him" Her mother's tears escalated into sobs. Pa could be heard trying to comfort and quiet her. "Shh, now. She'll hear you. Remember how your folks didn't want you to leave home to marry a sodbuster."

Sarah held her hands over her ears and drifted again into sleep. Dark of night muted the room.

With the coming of morning light, she opened her eyes to see June sitting in a corner, rocking the chair with her toes, watchng her.

"Good, you're awake. Is it true you're marrying Johnny and going away?"

Sarah nodded. "I guess I am."

"Then is it all right if I give you a present now? I made it for your hope chest."

June knelt beside the bed and pulled out a box of her private belongings. She opened it, and held out a piece of embroidered linen.

"It says 'God Is Love.' Took me a long time, what with pulling out the threads on places I made mistakes."

"I'll treasure it. Thank you," Sarah hugged her sister tightly to ease the ineviitable separation. Sarah sat, smoothed the cloth over her knees, and folded it. Together she and June bent to open the chest that sat at the foot of her bed. About four feet long, more than a foot wide and nearly two feet high, Johnny had crafted this before going to war and presented it to her along with his marriage proposal. Scent of cedar wafted around her head, reminding Sarah of the bright dreams she and Johnny had shared and disturbing thoughts of the those she'd be leaving. The chest was nearly full of linens, collected and hemmed during the long wait for his return. Sarah placed June's offering with them.

Several times over the next few days, Sarah caught the disapproving looks and long silences from her mother She even restrained herself when Ma hissed, "Remember, when you wish yourselves back here, that I told you not to go.

Finally, tired of his wife's muttering, her father spoke out in exasperation. "Our daughter is going to have a proper send off. No one can say we stinted on her wedding." He lowered his chin, and with it his voice. "After all, we probably won't ever see her again in this lifetime."

* * *

The following February, after the frost left and the ground...