Abigail was sound asleep as the sun rose the next day. Slowly though, she was roused to consciousness by a strange sensation: as if somebody was tickling her nose. At first she moved her hand up in her sleep, to brush away whatever it was causing the sensation. It stopped for a little and then there it was again, the lightest of touches, only this time accompanied by a slight noise.
Eventually, she came to and opened her eyes; whereupon she almost screamed out loud. There, just a few inches from her face, a pair of twinkling brown eyes were regarding her curiously. Abigail jerked back in fear and then saw that the owner of the eyes was a bear cub that wanted to play. As she watched it, it leaned forward and licked her nose, which was probably what had woken her up.
The bear cub was so adorable and cuddly that Abigail could not resist throwing off her blanket and sitting up. The cub jumped back in alarm when she did so and waited six feet away, as though making sure that there was no danger. Abigail stood up and walked over to the little bear and reached out a hand tentatively. To her delight, she found that the cub was happy for her to scratch his head and fondle his ears, as though he were a cat or a puppy. Then he jumped back again and moved further off. She followed him.
Saddler was snoring lightly while all this was going on. He had barely slept a wink on the night of the Apache attack and had been dog tired when he closed his eyes the previous night. As he slept, Abigail followed the bear cub further into the woods. Her eyes were shining with pleasure, and for the first time since the death of her parents she was smiling happily. It did not for a moment occur to her that she might be in any danger.
The bear led her to a little clearing, where the grass and undergrowth seemed to have been trampled down or crushed. The significance of this escaped her. She was so busy playing with the bear cub that she didn’t even hear the return of the creature’s mother, who had been out foraging for food. When it saw what it assumed was a predator pursuing its only cub, the she-bear gave a mighty roar and reared up on its hind legs. Abigail turned round and almost fainted in terror at the frightful sight of a fully grown black bear which was about to attack her.
The protracted snarl of the angry bear jolted Saddler from his slumbers. He knew at once what the sound meant and, on seeing that Abigail was not lying next to him, he leaped to his feet. Abigail was sprightly and young and that is what saved her life. The huge creature swung a paw at what she perceived to be the threat to her offspring. Had those razor sharp claws caught Abigail it would all have been up with her. She jumped back though, seeing what the bear was about to do. Just at that same instant Ben Saddler came running into the glade. He commenced to roar and shout at the mother bear in an effort to draw her attention away from Abigail. The bear turned round and for a fraction of a second Saddler’s life hung in the balance. Then, obeying some imperative of her own, the great beast lowered her bulk back on to all four of her paws and, shepherding her cub before her, ambled away into the forest.
‘Did she hurt you?’ Saddler asked.
‘No, I moved back in time.’
‘What in the hell were you thinking of, wandering off in that wise? You lost your senses or what?’
Hearing his cross voice, coming so soon after such a terrible scare, Abigail promptly burst into tears. Saddler felt remorseful for scolding her and at once went over to the child and put his arms round her. ‘There, there,’ he said, ‘don’t take on so. I was worried for you is all.’
Later on, as they breakfasted, Saddler told her about black bears.
‘Thing with those bears is that you can often scare them away by shouting and waving your arms at ’em. They don’t want to fight. Not like grizzlies, mind. Shout at one o’ them and they’re apt to rip your head clean off your shoulders.’
Abigail had recovered from her fright and said, ‘The cub was awful cute. I felt likeI could have cuddled it.’
‘Which,’ observed Saddler, ‘is how you damn near got yourself killed.’
When they started out that morning, Saddler said, ‘By late afternoon we should be at a little town called Fort Renown.’
‘Is it an Indian town or do white folks live there?’
‘Just white folks. It’s an old army fort and after the end of the war, a bunch o’ settlers moved in there to stake claim to some land in the territories. They’d no business doing it, but the Choctaw weren’t versed in law and so they couldn’t stop ’em.’
‘Didn’t the Indians try to fight them?’ asked Abigail.
‘No, they traded with ’em. Anyways, more people moved in until this fort has become a little white town, stuck right plumb-bang in the heart of the Choctaw nation.’
‘Why are we going there?’
‘Two reasons. First off, is where it’s on our way. Second is that you could do with sleeping in a bed for a night or two. There’s some kind of lodging house at Fort Renown. We’ll find you a bed for the night.’
Abigail found the ride a lot easier that day, notwithstanding the fact that she was still mighty sore from the previous day. As they travelled, Saddler gave her various hints and tips about controlling her mount, with the result that by the time they reached Fort Renown at about four that afternoon, she was able to keep the pony moving pretty well, despite his natural inclinations to laziness and sloth.
Fort Renown was a wooden stockade type fort which had been erected in somewhat of a hurry in the first few months of the war. It had originally consisted of little more than walls of whittled tree trunks, sharpened at the top and lined up side by side. There were watchtowers at each corner, and to begin with the soldiers quartered there had lived in tents, pitched inside the stockade. Gradually other buildings had been thrown up inside; a barracks, canteen, armoury and so on.
After the war had ended some settlers who did not feel inclined to join in land rushes heard about the abandoned forts in the Indian Territories and decided that there would be less competition for land and resources in such locations. This led to the founding of a half-dozen little towns, each surrounded by scatterings of farms. The whole thing was a flagrant violation of the treaties made with the five civilized tribes but, since the government in Washington was already breaking those same treaties, nobody felt inclined to stop these illegal settlers from drifting into the area.
The forts provided the focal point for the white settlers, who had in general as little to do with the Indians as they were able. There were stores, blacksmiths, saloons, brothels, churches and everything else that civilized people might require within the walls of the old stockades. There was no official law and so vigilance committees sprang up to administer beatings and the occasional hanging to keep the rougher elements in check.
There were great wooden gates at the entrance to Fort Renown, but they were seldom closed; even at night. The Choctaw, unlike some of their fiercer and more martial neighbours, could see which way the wind was blowing and knew that there was little enough point in fighting physically against the encroachment of white settlers on their lands. They made the best of things by driving hard bargains with the white folk for the raw materials they needed and, wherever possible, cheating them blind.
A sentry sat at the gate of the fort, whose job was to spot anybody entering the little town who might be after causing trouble. He nodded amiably to Saddler and Abigail, saying only,
‘Welcome to Fort Renown. Specially welcome to you, young lady. It ain’t often we get youngsters passing through here.’
‘Tell me now,’ said Saddler, ‘is there anywhere I can leave these horses for the night?’
‘Sure, there’s a man runs a corral over there. It’s outside the walls, but a boy watches the horses during the night. Nobody stolen one yet.’
Saddler and Abigail took their mounts over to the corral and removed the saddles and other gear. They left them in charge of the boy watching over the place, until they had somewhere to stay for the night.
The stockade of sharpened logs enclosed an area of just over eight acres. It had been made so large, because those who had built it had intended it to be a forward staging post for an entire army. It had never fulfilled its purpose and was for most of the war held only by a token force. A week after the surrender it had been abandoned.
The original buildings of the fort lined the walls and as newcomers arrived they threw up commercial premises built also of logs. Some of these were substantial: the saloon had three storeys, the top two of which were given over to a cathouse. It was a busy place, with white people bringing in produce from their farms, Indians selling ponies and hides, a few soldiers and many trappers and traders who spent a night or two in the place while they were moving across the territories. Saddler was pretty confident of finding somewhere for Abigail to be able to sleep soundly in a bed for the night.
‘Why,’ Abigail said in surprise, ‘this is quite a civilized location.’
‘You wouldn’t say so, not if’n you knew what half these rogues was up to,’ Saddler replied. ‘Places like this attract all the gamblers, no-counts, vagabonds and plain villains as are within a hundred miles.’
‘Can I go and look round by myself?’ the girl asked brightly, not at all discouraged by Saddler’s gloomy estimation of the types to found in Fort Renown.
Saddler stopped dead and said, ‘Listen to me right good, Abigail. This very morning you come within an ace of gettin’ yourself killed. You flat disobeyed me when I told you to stay in the wagon during that little shooting we had. I want now that you listen to what I say. You are not to stray from my side for a second. Not one second, you hear what I tell you? This ain’t a fit place for a little girl. No telling what would befall you. Some o’ the boys as hang out here are a sight worse than any she-bear.’
‘Perhaps later then,’ said Abigail brightly. Saddler shook his head in despair. He had discovered in recent days that tending to and keeping from harm a twelve-year-old girl child was the hardest enterprise he had undertaken since the end of the war. Breaking wild ponies and dealing with drunken killers was nothing compared with setting a watch upon a girl like Abigail. True, she made a better companion than many he had ridden with, but you never could gauge what was going on in the mind of such a one.
There was a respectable little hotel which was used by the better class of person who was travelling through the territories and it was to this that Saddler directed them. Calling the rough, wooden building a ‘hotel’ was perhaps flattering such a basic amenity, which in truth consisted of nothing more than six rooms, each containing an iron bedstead and little more. The owner of this enterprise lived in one of the rooms and had a minuscule sitting room at the front of the building, which doubled as an office. There were no eating facilities, the place was far too cramped for that, and anybody desirous of a bite to eat was obliged to try the saloon or buy their food from the store.
Saddler was all charm when he approached the owner of the hotel. The middle-aged woman eyed him with suspicion when he entered her office, but as soon as she caught sight of Abigail her mood changed. In her mind Saddler had been transformed from travel-stained vagabond into respectable family man.
‘Say ma’am,’ said Saddler, ‘I was wondering if you had such a thing as a room for the night for this young lady?’
‘Why surely we do. Will you be requiring a room for yourself too?’
‘Do you have two spare rooms?’
‘We have four tonight.’
‘Well then, yes. That would be right nice of you if you could rent us two rooms.’
‘Will that be just for tonight?’
Saddler thought for a moment and then said, ‘Yes, for now. But I suppose if we wanted, we could always keep them for another night?’
The matter was attended to briskly and Saddler and Abigail were shown to two spartan, but clean and tidy, little rooms.
When he had paid the owner and she had left, Abigail said to Saddler, ‘Are we going to look round the town now?’
It was so pleasant to observe the change in the child since first he had encountered her that Saddler did not like to repress her high spirits.
He said, ‘Abigail, I will show you round here in a space, but first off is where we need to get things straight.’
‘What things?’ asked the child.
‘You do not leave my side is one. Unless, that is, I tell you to. Is that plain?’
‘That’s fair, I guess. What else?’
‘You do just as I say an’ when I say. I say, “We’re leaving”, you just stand up and come right with me. Without any chatter or aught of that kind.’
‘I can do all that. I’m older than you mind. You treat me like I was six.’
‘Six or twelve, it makes no odds. You’re a child and I am answerable for you,’ said Saddler. ‘Mark now, ’less you agree, we are goin’ nowhere in this town.’
‘All right, Mr Saddler. I’ll do just as you say.’
Having settled the case to his own satisfaction, although not without some inward misgivings as to the girl’s ability to comply with such rules, Saddler suggested that they hunt out some food and then eat it out of doors.
‘But first,’ he said, ‘You set here quietly, while I fetch in the saddles and so on.’
There were three stores in Fort Renown. One specialized in kitchen wares, domestic utensils, lamp oil and other such useful commodities as the local farmers and settlers would be needing. The second sold agricultural implements like hoes and spades, and also seed. It stocked food as well. The third dealt chiefly in clothes and firearms.
They bought a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, some cold meat and a pitcher of buttermilk and then left the fort to sit on the grass outside.
‘This is nice,’ said Abigail. ‘It’s like having a picnic. We used sometimes to have those, my parents and I. They were fun.’
Saddler listened with half an ear to the girl’s chattering while keeping a sharp eye on those entering and leaving Fort Renown. Although it had been his own idea to come here he was a little uneasy in his mind and didn’t quite know why.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ asked Abigail.
‘No,’ Saddler said frankly, ‘I can’t truthfully say as I did. Repeat it.’
‘I said that I thought I saw that bad man who wanted to shoot you.’
‘What? The hell you did! When?’
‘While you were telling me to be good and follow your instructions. I was looking from the window and made sure that it was he, passing along the way. He had his arm in a sling.’
‘Abigail, why the devil did you not tell me this earlier?’
She shrugged. ‘Because I wouldn’t take oath on it in a court of law. My pa told me that that should be your touchstone for repeating tittle-tattle and relating what you have seen. He used to say, “If you wouldn’t be prepared to take oath and swear to the thing in a court of law, then remain silent and do not pass on the gossip you hear”.’
‘Lord, this ain’t exactly gossip. It could mean life or death to us. I surely wish you’d mentioned this before.’
‘I’m sorry. I hope I have not caused more trouble.’
‘No, you’re all right Abigail. Just speak out sooner next time, is all. If he’s here, then I must hunt him out and settle matters.’
‘You don’t mean to shoot him?’
‘No, but he might wish to kill me. If so, then I’d a heap sooner that I was facin’ him, rather than having him go for my back. I want anything that fires up to be on my terms, not his.’
Abigail thought for a bit and then said, ‘But we can still look around together, can’t we?’
‘Yes, but always recollecting what I told you. Which is to say, if I say “stay there” or “come here” or anything else, you do it at once.’
It was a beautiful sunny evening, and left to himself Ben Saddler would like as not have preferred to go for a stroll in the nearby woods. Howsoever, he could see that the child was just itching to look round Fort Renown and so, although he wasn’t wholly easy about it, he agreed to take a turn round the place.
Saddler had been to many little towns a lot more interesting than this, but to Abigail the fort was evidently as exciting as a fairground. She stopped to look at everything, smiled at passers-by and kept up a stream of chatter. It struck Saddler that her parents must have kept a tight rein on the child, discouraging inconsequential conversation and forbidding play, as she had intimated to him. With those restraints lifted, she had been given the opportunity to behave like any other child of her age and it did him good to hear her talking so merrily.
‘Can we visit the saloon?’ asked Abigail.
‘No, it’s not to be thought of,’ said Saddler, slightly appalled. ‘I never heard o’ such a thing. That ain’t a place for a well-brought up girl like you to be seeing.’
‘Oh, please. I never even looked in the window of a real saloon.’
It was this that caused Saddler to decide, against his better judgement, to let the girl at least look inside a saloon. In addition to being abolitionists and who knew what all else, he guessed that Abigail’s parents had probably been temperance types as well; sworn to abstain from intoxicating liquor. It surely would do no harm for her at least to look in the door or through the window of The Girl of the Period. Saddler’s reservations centered around the fact that the top two floors of that particular establishment were fitted out as a brothel, but he figured that if they just stood outside and looked in to the ground floor, where the drinking and gambling took place, it could not be likely to harm the child.
‘Well,’ said Saddler, ‘I tell you what. We’ll take a turn down that way and you can look through the windows and maybe see what’s to be seen from the doorway. But we ain’t going in no drinking hole, not while I got the care of you.’
Abigail smiled at him. ‘Oh, thank you, Mr Saddler. My mother and father were very particular about drink, which they both said was the root of a lot of the evil in this world. I signed the pledge myself when I was just seven year of age.’
‘Pledge?’ said Saddler curiously. ‘What pledge might that be?’
‘Why,’ said the child, scandalized at such ignorance, ‘the pledge to abstain my whole life long from strong drink. There’s scriptural backing for temperance, you know.’
Not for the first time since he had picked up with the child, Saddler uttered a silent malediction upon people who could bring up a lively little thing like this and hedge her in with so many harsh rules.
He said, ‘I recall that nigh on the first thing Noah did after the flood was make some wine. Doesn’t it say in the Bible that he was so liquored up that he fell over without his clothes on?’
‘I didn’t know that you read the Bible,’ said Abigail. ‘I got the feeling that you were a regular heathen.’
‘So I am,’ said Saddler. ‘I was made to learn a heap of scripture in the orphanage. It never took though. Those as were the hottest for the word of the Lord were the biggest bastards in the place, if you’ll pardon my language.’
By this time, they had reached the saloon and Saddler said to Abigail, ‘Mind now, we ain’t a goin’ inside. I don’t see no harm though in peeping in at the window.’
Abigail skipped up to the grimy window at the front of the building and looked through, into the dim and smoky interior. ‘Can I look through the door?’ she said.
‘Yeah, you go right ahead.’
Abigail was not however fated ever to have a clear view of the inside of the saloon, because as she approached the batwing doors they were pulled back and a man strode out. His left arm was carried in a sling and he looked as mean as all-get-out. He recognized Abigail at once, because as soon as he caught sight of her he began looking round for her erstwhile companion. When he saw Saddler, he smiled crookedly and said,
‘I got a crow to pluck with you, fellow.’
Like the story, it inspired me to rewatch Deadwood, haven't seen it for years.