Follow the Hawk

FOLLOW THE HAWK

BY
Emily . Ungerecht Horswill



A HISTORICAL NOVEL
1884 1889

Its sequel, MONTANA WINDS. Completes
The story of the last great open.






©2007 Emily Ungerecht Horswill
All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any means without the author’s permission.

Library of Congress Control Number 2006906522
Cover Photo: Istockphoto/photographers Alex Vaz & Cliff Wells

Book Design: Thomas Smith

Follow The Hawk is available from Lulu.com
(http://www.lulu.com).

OTHER books by Emily that are publisher--ready
Sometimes Better To Walk Than Fly A collection of weekly columns published in the Daily Olympian as Tread Lightly and in N.W, Travel and Leisure as Outside In. It is the story of an early environmental-journalist who walked it step by step and of her love song to the high meadows
Montana Winds Sequel to FOLLOW THE HAWK
(Completes the story of the Last Great Open)


TO HER READERS
I saw the first article with my byline published 73 years ago. I was13. Subsequently, 2,500 words a week appeared under my byline: eventually, 25 earned awards. In the interim, U.S. Congressman, Mike Lowry, read my work in Congress and I saw my name beside “First Place Award” with Stewart Udall, then Secretary of the Interior, in “Second Place.” When the side by side awards unleashed a wave of jokes and laughter with Stewart in the forefront I joined the fun.
Originally, he wasn’t expected at the banquet, it being a long jump from The Oval Office to Park City, Utah. But, with the smell of steak, the door banged against the wall, and Stewart strode in followed by three photographers. “Where is this woman who writes so much better than I do?” he demanded. “And how come she’s sitting at the wrong table?” Cameras clicking, he plucked me from her chair, and loudly lamenting his frustration with the situation, he studied and rejected table after table as his entourage toured the room. At the last one, he rubbed his hands and smiled. Ignoring the “Reserved for” sign, he introduced me as the laughing editors and publishers moved to make room for two more plates. Minutes later, as he rose to leave, Stewart whispered in my ear, “Hope this does it for you, kid.” He made a round triip across the nation to do this charade!! How I wish he was here today. But this is now. And that was then.


For 10 years editors and friends introduced me as the best writer of secular inspiration west of the Missouri River. Then, the other half of my life, my fine-artrist Ernie, had a deep stroke. For the first time in my life, my fountain of words dried up.


Three years ago, as I walked toward my apartment, I heard the thud of footsteps A voice called, “Wait! I know who you are..” Panting, she explained. “When I was 6 and my brother was 12, we spent Sunday mornings sprawled on his bed reading your column. Now when I can’t stand the world as it is, I read them again. Reaching into her pocket she extracted.one.Throwing both arms around me she whispered,” Thank you.
In my apartment, I opened a cabinet and pulled out drafts.
Now I invite you to enjoy all three. Follow the Hawk, Montana Winds and Sometimes Better to Walk than Fly, the collection of columns a six-year-old kept.

With all my love, . Emily Horswill
http://emhorswill.blogspot.com/






TO


ZOLA ROSS WHO TAUGHT ME HOW TO WRITE A BOOK


AND CRAIG LESLEY
WHO TAUGHT ME HOW TO MAKE TWO OUT OF ONE

FOR
Annette, my wonderful, precious daughter who, in spite of her handicap and her life of pain, has, for 60 years, been my guiding spirit and my inspiration






CHAPTER 1

The year is 1884. In the German farming village of Meadowfield, Wisconsin, an old woman sits on a milk stool watching Farmer Albricht's fifteen-year-old son, Jim. He is shoveling dirt. Long of bone and short of flesh, like all his people, Jim scoops troughs in the ground with long rhythmic bites.
"Better rest a minute, Jim," the old woman called. "After all them nights tending the sick, we're both wore out, and you're almost done here."
The shovel slowed in its path. Swiping at his bloodshot eyes with his shirt sleeve Jim asked, "This the last one, Nannie?"
"It's the last," she assured him.
The last grave, Jim thought. Means only Nannie and I are left. His gaze slid up the incline, past the rows of fresh graves to the church. Perched at the top, it sparkled white in the first rays of morning sun. Just painted it, he thought. Following the picket fence back, he thought, Just painted the fence, too.
Standing the shovel upright, Jim booted the blade deep into the soil. As he leaned on the handle for support, a shadow flicked past his head. Looking up, he saw the crippled red-tailed hawk and recognized his friend by the dangling leg. "He's hungry," Jim said as the hawk hovered over empty fields. "Figures we ought to be out there plowing up worms, moles, and those juicy baby mice he likes for his breakfast." Wiping his forehead on his sleeve, Jim asked. "How's he going to manage now, Nannie?"
"On his own, make it or not, like the rest of us," she answered.
Shading his eyes, Jim watched the bird circle higher and higher. When it leveled off and with slow, sweeping, wing strokes headed west, he nodded. Out in the new lands to the west hunting might be good, even for a crippled hawk. But, as a hunter, I wouldn't be worth powder and shot, he thought. What can I do? Light altar candles. Pass out hymnbooks. To Indians? Cowboys?
"We were all mighty proud of how you passed them university tests for Concordia Seminary," the old woman said. "But about that pledge to pay your tuition. Money was coming from the harvest. Don't suppose the Reverend had enough put by to send you down to St. Louie? No. Didn't figure so."
"Doesn't matter, Nannie. Not now." His gaze lingering on each row of fresh graves, he searched out the family plots. There were all his folks.
Up there next to the church--those six new mounds: the one on the corner with that tall tombstone: that was Uncle Abner's, to his congregation, The Reverend Abner Dodd; to Jim, the uncle who had been preparing him to shepherd the Meadowfield Congregation ever since he could remember. Next to Uncle Abner's, came Ma's with four years of sod, then Pa's, then Myra's, then Peter's and John's. The one with that tiny white cross, that's where they'd laid little Beth. His baby sister! A sob tore from his throat as he remembered cuddling her hot little body to his chest, her vomit cascading down the front of his shirt. They were all dead. Everyone was dead, but he and Nannie.
Still, at least, each of his folks had their own plot and a marker. The thought gave him some comfort. When had they gone to burying the dead in mass graves? He couldn't remember. He glanced down at the bodies they'd swathed in sheets and laid shoulder to shoulder--and saw a strand of hair spilling from a gap in one sheet. He stared at it. Hair the color of corn floss that felt like silk.
"Mary!" he gasped. "It's Mary's!" He’d know it anywhere. He ought to. It had brushed his robe in the choir loft ever since they were little kids. The horizon reeled. Clutching at the shovel for support, he hung over it retching.
"Stop that." His cheek stung from Nannie's slap. The nurse's brisk voice chided, "You're just exhausted. You had that light case early on. Remember? You can't give up now."
He shrugged erect. A cow lowed to be milked as he scooped up a shovelful of lime and sprinkled it on the grave. "I'm leaving, Nannie," he announced. "West--I guess. They're all dead. And you'll be going back to your folks." He glanced at her. "You can get yourself packed and off, Nanny?"
She waved a worn hand at the rows of new graves. "All them folks. I birthed them. And I laid them out. When my time comes, I'm laying beside them."
Birthed me, too, he remembered. Gave me my first bath. He focused on the hand she waved and saw the webbing of blue veins thickened with hard work, the skin spattered with the brown spots of old age. "But Nannie, how'll you manage?" he asked. "What'll you do here all by yourself?"
"First off, I'm going to milk that there cow. Then I'm going to sleep."
Sleep. All those days and nights with the sick. When had he last stretched out on a bed? His lips twitched in an effort to smile at her. "Sleep," he repeated. "What's that?"
Nannie scrambled to her feet. "West," she agreed. Go." She pulled a crumpled handbill from her apron pocket. Here's them instructions the railroad crew left--and take that collection money in the poor box." She waved back his protest. "Take it. You buried the poor. Be off with you," Nannie flipped her apron at him. "And Jim you’d do well to favor The Reverend in more than looks."
"I know," Jim muttered. Nannie's right. I do favor Uncle Dodd, Jim acknowledged. Running his fingers through his mop of brown hair, he picked up the shovel. "I'll finish up here," he said.






CHAPTER 2

In the chapel, Jim fingered the poor box. “Buried them. All of them.” He choked. He slumped into a pew. His shoulders shook with dry, rasping sobs.
The clock bonged. He dragged to his feet. He had a train to catch. Carrying the box of coins and the handbill to the rectory kitchen, he concentrated on following directions.
He poured water into the tub, stripped off his clothes, stuffed his underwear into the stove and struck a match. Clutching his suit, now soiled from his work in the graveyard, he hesitated: A good suit promised a brother. No brother--and pestilence. He threw the suit into the flames, too. It smoldered and the oily smell of good wool rebuked him. He banged the lid over the flames. From the cedar chest, he selected underwear, a pair of worn bib overalls, a chambray shirt, and a bandana handkerchief. Now that bottle of disinfectant Nannie had given him to scrub with. He groped in the chest for it. Ah, there it was, carbolic acid--just what the brochure asked for. He pulled the cork with his teeth, poured half into the tub, scrubbed and dressed, washed the coins in the solution, laid them on the handkerchief and tied the corners.
Shoving the handbill and the rest of the carbolic acid into his pocket, he hurried to his desk in his uncle's study, grabbed his Bible, then saw his other books. "Abelard's Essays." He smoothed the embossed leather cover. "Luther's Sermons." The book fell open and Jim stared at his notes. They trailed off in the middle of the page: Unfinished. He thought of St. Louis. "Unfinished," he repeated, and thought, Wrong word. Ought to be "finished"--"ended." Dropping the book, he ran.
Outside, his footsteps echoing, he ran past the neat, silent cottages, past greening fields, past his sister Myra's wilting flower beds bordering the big, square farm house where he'd been born. In the pasture he caught Old Gray. Leaving the old workhorse at the pump in the yard, Jim hurried into the house. Stairs creaked under his weight. In the attic room he found the battered work shoes he'd worn, "for the last time" when he'd helped his brothers with the spring plowing. Could that have been only three weeks ago?
Tucking the shoes under his arm, he hurried to the pantry picked up a milk pail and trotted back out to the pump. As he pushed the pump handle up and down, the dry gasket stuck to the sides of the pipe making a jerky, shuddering motion and a rasping sound. He primed it, dipping water from the horse trough and pouring it down the pipe onto the gasket. The motion became smooth. As the gasket swelled and softened to fit, the displaced air formed a vacuum making a sucking sound. Water rose in the pipe. The pump hiccoughed and belched forth a snout full of water followed by a steady, even flow.
Emptying the rest of the carbolic acid into the pail of water Jim gave the shoes the carbolic treatment, then treated Old Gray. As he scrubbed the saddle, he saw puffs of smoke funneling into the sky and heard the rumble of the train. It snaked into sight flipping its long back around curves on the downgrade. No time to say goodbye to Nannie, but it had already been said. Fumbling with the knots, Jim rolled his Bible and a change of clothing in blankets still smelling of Nannie's carbolic solution, tied the roll behind the saddle and hurried Old Gray across the fields toward the railway platform waving both arms at the engineer. The whistle shrieked. With each pull of the pistons sooty clouds spewed from the smoke stack spreading a grey ceiling. Rails bent under the pressure. The ground shook. Tortured couplings creaked and snapped. The train clattered to a stop. The conductor climbed onto the platform, and Jim concentrated on getting aboard. What was it he was supposed to say to this man? Something about washing? Only the cry of the Biblical leper, "Unclean, unclean," emerged from the jumble in his mind. Holding up the handbill, Jim focused on the conductor's cap.
"Come on, Son," the man called. "Never mind them instructions. I can smell you from here. What'd you do, pickle yourself in the stuff? Use any water?" As Jim dismounted, then reeled to the platform the conductor's smile faded. "Hell, kid, you're plumb worn out. Where you bound?"
Jim held out the handkerchief. "How far west will this take me?"
"West, eh? Good choice." The man tapped a time schedule. But west's a big place. You got folks?"
Folks. What was that word again? Jim concentrated. The one that sounded like church bells ringing for Vespers. He tried it in syllables. "Influenza."
The timetable in the man's hand shook. The whistle blew. Two short, impatient blasts. "Keep the change, Kid." The conductor pushed the handkerchief away. "We got cars running empty. Now all that carbolic, that won't take care of the quarantine, but...” His finger traveled down a column, stopped. This would keep the kid locked up for those ten days. "How's Montana Territory sound, Son?" the conductor asked. "Cattlemen there are yowling for help, too. We'll get you and your horse in a stock car all to yourselves."
In the boxcar, clutching his Bible, Jim slumped against Old Grey.




CHAPTER 3

Wheels squealed on rails. Wrapping himself in his blanket, Jim rolled close to the old horse hunkering down on the straw covering the floor of the boxcar.
He listened to the click of the wheels thinking of all the weeks and months he'd dreamed of getting on this train, of the maps and travel books he'd studied.
He thought of the new suit still in its box in the parish rectory, its black broadcloth meant to dignify him at Concordia College. His lips twisted in a wry grin when he remembered his dilemma six weeks ago: That, while he ought to pack it in the black valise with his books, clean linens, and night shirts, he longed to impress his fellow travelers in it. How many times had he imagined the admiring glances, as he selected a seat by a window and divided his time between observing other passengers and watching the sights?
Jim fingered a handful of straw. He was on the train sure enough. Locked in a boxcar! Might as well be in a coffin for all he'd see! And he ought to be traveling south: instead he was headed west! What a bizarre twist. Was the Devil laughing? What will I do out West? Jim asked himself. He'd read stories--about cowboys, and wild horses galloping across the plains. "Wild horses!" Jim exclaimed, rubbing Old Grey's torn ear. "How are you going to fit into that? For that matter, how am I? Between the two of us, we can spread a load of manure, plow a garden, rough out a sermon, sing for funerals and weddings, pinch hit for the organist or choirmaster, even parse a bit of Virgil! But Pa retired you two years ago." Jim slapped the aged plow horse on the hip. "What possible future is there for us on a cattle ranch? But don't worry about keeping your belly full, old fellow. We're in this together." Old Gray offered the other ear. Massaging both, Jim explained, "You and I, the two of us, we're all that's left."
He shivered. He knew it was a pleasant spring evening, but he felt cold. With stiff fingers he pulled the blankets tighter: exhaustion--and shock, he told himself. That's what Nannie would call it.
Nannie! Suddenly Jim realized there were three survivors: himself, Old Grey and Nannie. And he'd left her in Meadowfield. Abandoned her old, alone, and surely exhausted! How could he have? What would Uncle say? And Pa? "How can I ever forgive myself?" His hoarse voice echoed in the boxcar. Could God? How could it have happened?
He reviewed that last day with Nannie in the graveyard and remembered her crisp voice. "West. Go. Be off with you."
"She snapped it like a platoon sergeant," he argued. He stroked Old Gray. "And you know as well as I do that when Nannie snapped even three-year-olds jumped.
"But YOU are not three years old." Jim winced as he recalled his uncle's favorite rebuke.
"Nannie was so sure," Jim protested. "And the Deacon Hauser, too--the day he died."
That day, Nannie herself had left the sick to fetch Jim from the chapel: marched him off in the middle of the prayer he was leading at Vespers. At the door to the Grange Hall they'd turned into a hospital, the stench of vomit and chamber pots met them. Jim gagged.
"Down there. Fourth row," Nannie said, pointing at one of the straw pallets lining the floor. "You'd best hurry."
In the comparative gloom, Jim threaded his way past a gaunt form begging for water, someone praying, parents sobbing desperately over the tiny, still form of a child. I'll get used to the smell when I work with Nannie tonight, he reminded himself--but not of the wailing, miserable children: that never. At the last pallet, he knelt and murmured, "I'll pray with you, Deacon."
"Praying's done," the man gasped. He panted. Then, his voice had risen clear and strong, "But the Lord saved you for something, Son. Good luck."
Both of them, so positive, Jim thought. Slowly the realization sifted into his exhausted mind that they knew, knew that they would stay, but he must go.
I'll write Deacon Kruger in Brainard, Jim resolved. He'll get word to Nannie's brother there. Fellow worked at the railroad terminal--had a free pass: he could be in Meadowfield with Nannie in two days.
Warmth replaced numbness: Whispering a prayer of thanks to God for leading him to this haven, Jim slept.
A loud banging on the door half woke him. "Go way," he mumbled, burrowing deeper into the straw.
"Box lunch for you, Kid," a gruff voice, bellowed.
Hardware clattered. Rain spattered his face. The sliding door inched open and a shovel appeared. Tipping, it dropped a box on the floor. Jim caught a glimpse of a hand in a workman's glove withdrawing the shovel. The boxcar shook as the door slammed. Still dense with sleep, Jim sat up, sniffed, and opened the box. Bacon and egg sandwiches--still warm! He washed his first hot meal in weeks down with milk congratulating himself on how much better off he was than yesterday: and with every click of the wheels he got farther from the influenza epidemic and the Meadowfield Cemetery.
He wondered about the man who had brought the hot food. With that quarantine sign tacked on the boxcar as a warning that I could catch this plague, knowing what I know about it, would I open that door? He crawled to his blanket.
Old Gray stomped and nickered for attention. Jim fought back out of his haze.
He struggled to his knees, then to his feet, groaning. Every muscle and joint ached. His horse snuffled at a barrel. Removing the cover, Jim saw the dipper and a pail. Even the dipper felt heavy as he ladled water from the barrel into the pail repeatedly and waited for Old Gray to drink.
The train jerked into motion. Staggering back to his bed, Jim nestled into the straw and gave in to exhaustion.
Jim had no sense of passing time: only that he slept, woke, and slept, and that his wakeful periods passed as a sleepwalker's do.
When he woke fully, he laid for a moment before remembering where he was.
Bright sunlight poured through a hole in the roof, the usual hole for a stovepipe, and he knew that it had sometimes been open, sometimes closed. It had to have been closed some of the time. He felt of the floor. Dry. And it had rained prodigiously. The sunspot felt warm on his bed. He yawned.
Glancing around, he saw the cache of tinned foods: biscuit, beans, and Blue Hen Tomatoes, and a couple of empty and presumed he had eaten. The hinged panel in Old Gray's corner provided for shoveling out manure was familiar, too. So was the straddle hole. He'd balanced over it watching the rails slide by as he relieved himself. He recognized the pile of hay, and wondered who his benefactor was. Railroads didn't finance boxcar valet service. That he knew.
A shadow blocked the sunshine. Suddenly, he knew someone was watching him.