The Girl from Fort Wicked by Dee Brown

Author:Dee Brown [Brown, Dee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-7429-3
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-09-28T21:27:00+00:00

TEN

DURING THE WINTER WEEKS that Yaneka Snell spent as an enforced guest in the log jail of a law-abiding mining community on Milk River, he was visited frequently by a wandering missionary named Obadiah Metcalfe. At first, Snell was churlish to his visitor, insulting him and attempting to shock him by using the vilest language at his command. But Metcalfe gave no evidence of being either shocked or outraged.

When the missionary asked the prisoner to pray for forgiveness for slaying a fellow man, Snell replied that he did not need to pray because he was innocent of wrongdoing. He had defended his own life, he declared, and was unjustly imprisoned.

“Then let us pray against man’s injustices,” Metcalfe cried. “How you must suffer, Mr. Snell, from this grievous wrong!”

“It ain’t so bad,” Snell said, patting his bulging belly. “They feed me plenty, and being’s it’s wintertime, I’d be holed up anyway in a cabin somewheres no bigger’n this. Only thing different, I’d have me a plump squaw. That’s all I miss.”

Instead of expressing disapproval at Snell’s remarks, Metcalfe appeared to be fascinated. His beady eyes gleamed under his bushy eyebrows, and he asked Snell if he had known many squaws.

Snell was not long in detecting rascality beneath the thin veneer of righteousness worn by Obadiah Metcalfe. He also discovered the missionary’s weakness for liquor, and they spent many a winter afternoon drinking together—good whiskey procured by Metcalfe with some of Snell’s secreted gold pieces.

Metcalfe sober was a drab little man with a corded neck, gray skin, and pointed prying nose. But under the influence of liquor his eyes shone, his arms gestured grandly, and words flowed from him in a river of disorganized eloquence.

He told Snell of his dream—of how he would bring his message to the heathen tribes in their reservation camps and create a new civilization. When Snell asked him what his message was, Metcalfe replied: “Glory. Grace and glory. A heavenly kingdom on earth.” His eyes blazed with an inner fire of madness. “Saints and the light. Glory. Power and glory. Praise ye the Lord!”

Snell passed him the bottle.

When spring came, Obadiah Metcalfe went south, armed with papers from his Baltimore missionary society authorizing him to bring the word of truth to the Oglala Sioux.

A few days later Snell was freed from jail, and ordered to leave the mining camp. He trimmed his black beard, purchased a pack mule, several gallons of alcohol and some molasses for coloring, and also turned south. While Obadiah Metcalfe preached his message of glory to the Oglalas, Snell established a base a few miles from the reservation and sold these same Indians a mixture of alcohol and molasses liberally cut with creek water. Before the summer ended, he narrowly escaped arrest by the military authorities, and quickly departed for the booming town of Goldfield.

There he found gambling tables and women in plenty, and by autumn much of his gold was gone. He joined on with a gang of buffalo hunters, and hunted all the way north into Canada.

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