“I need you,” she replied, and at that moment she loved more than he, because she knew by what a narrow margin she had escaped becoming the property of some tobacco-stained lout in search of beaver that no longer existed or gold that remained hidden.
The account of Clay Basket’s leading her daughter Lucinda McKeag off the river boat became part of the chronicles of St. Louis. Following McKeag up the hill to Fourth Street, they presented themselves at seven in the morning at the brass-knobbed door of Lise Bockweiss Pasquinel’s redbrick mansion. “I’ve come for my room,” McKeag announced when Lise recovered from her surprise. “Not for myself. For Clay Basket and my daughter Lucinda.”
There could have been few people in the world that morning less welcome at the mansion, for Lise Pasquinel was in the midst of the spring social season and was involved with numerous parties relating to her prominent son and daughter. This sudden arrival of people from a distant past could not have been pleasing to her, but when she saw how beautiful Lucinda was and how stately Clay Basket looked in morning sunlight, her heart went out to them and she cried, “What a splendid family you have, McKeag,” and he, without embarrassment, replied, “They’re Pasquinel’s, but I look after them.”
“The room is waiting,” she said with infectious enthusiasm, embracing Lucinda and telling her, “You’re a beautiful child. St. Louis will be kind to you.” She took the trio to a suite of four rooms, but McKeag said he’d lodge along the waterfront while he bought his trade goods. This Lise would not permit. “You earned much of the money that went into this house,” she said half in jest, “and you stay here.”
The afternoon she introduced the two women as “Mrs. Alexander McKeag, wife of my late husband’s partner, and her lovely daughter Lucinda,” and she continued this procedure throughout the spring and summer, until St. Louis society had to accept the two Indian women.
She knew what gossips were saying: “The older woman is really Pasquinel’s left-hand wife, which makes Lucinda the half sister of Captain Mercy’s wife! I wonder how he feels preparing for the war in Mexico and knowing that his sister-in-law is an Indian.” Lise Pasquinel spoke for her son-in-law when she said, “It’s an honor to have such a beautiful child living with us.
“I consider her my daughter,” she told everyone, “and she’s attending our convent to learn to read.” If eyebrows were raised over the fact that the girl was illiterate, Lise said with disarming frankness, “She was raised a savage, you know.”
When she was alone with Clay Basket she spoke easily of her life with Pasquinel and relished hearing of how the little trapper had lived on the prairies. She said jokingly that she and Clay Basket were half wives just as Lucinda and Lisette were half sisters: “There ought to be a name for our relationship.”
One day as they were talking she broke into laughter, crying impulsively, “The little bastard was fun, though, wasn’t he?”
“He was a good husband,” Clay Basket replied. “My father told me he would be.”
“Your father must have been a wonderful man,” Lise said. “Mine was, too, you know. It wasn’t easy to leave Munich with two daughters ... come to a place like St. Louis.” She reflected on this for a moment, then added, “I loved him very much.”
“I loved Lame Beaver the same way,” Clay Basket said, and without voicing their conclusions, the two women reflected on the fact that loving one person completely makes it much easier to love others.
“I know that people here in St. Louis look at me with pity,” Lise confided. “I can hear them whispering, ‘Poor Lise. She married a no-good French trapper who deserted her.’ But out of it I got two wonderful children. Cyprian’s married to an excellent girl who helps him in politics, and you met Captain Mercy at the fort.”
“The Indians trust him,” Clay Basket said.
Now Lise frowned and spoke with hesitation. “Your sons ... we hear such bad reports of them.” Before Clay Basket could respond, she added, “I’m sure they’re going to bring our name into disgrace, and I’m sure there’s nothing you and I can do about it.”
“It’s not easy to be half-Indian, half-white,” Clay Basket said.
The conversation was interrupted by a black boy who ran in to report that Captain Mercy had returned on the steamer from Fort Leavenworth. When the child departed, Lise felt required to explain, “We don’t keep slaves, of course. My father wouldn’t allow it. But we do hire the boy from next door. He’s a slave, so we pay his owners.”
For Clay Basket such explanation was unnecessary. Indians had always kept slaves of one kind or another, most often braves captured from another tribe, but sometimes women, too. These days many tribes traded for black slaves, who worked out rather well.
Captain Mercy’s arrival produced new problems. His wife Lisette was delighted to have her Indian cousins staying in the big house, for on his return from Fort John last year he had reported what fine women they were; the trouble arose with the captain. He was so eager that Lucinda have a good time that he kept introducing her to unmarried fellow officers, each of whom fell in love with her, for under Lise’s care she grew doubly attractive. There were dances and trips over to Cahokia and picnics on the mysterious Indian mounds back of the city, and best of all, excursions on river steamers. She became familiar with stratagems intended to lure her into some corner for a spate of kissing, and there were at least three young officers who commanded her serious attention. It became popular for the young men to joke, “When that girl learns to read, she’s going to become my wife.”
The St. Louis Republican spurred the courtships by printing bits of gossip that made the Indian girl additionally desirable:
Belle of our season is unquestionably Miss Lucinda McKeag, cousin of one of our leading families, the Lise Bockweiss Pasquinels. Miss Lucinda is not only unusually attractive, with her dark flashing eyes, but she is famed throughout the west as the granddaughter and only heir of Chief Lame Beaver, the Arapaho hero who discovered a gold mine in the Rockies. So as well as being a social delight, she is an heiress. Happy hunting, you young officers on whom the safety of this nation depends. See to it that this young lady remains in St. Louis and let others work her gold mine for her.
Lucinda was not bedazzled by such notices, nor was she swept off her feet by the young officers. She appreciated their attention and found that it was great fun to dance with them while the band played on the river boats, but she also remembered her weeks with that square-faced Dutchman at the foot of the chalk cliff and the more intense kind of love-making that he represented. But then Lieutenant John McIntosh of New Hampshire reported to army headquarters on his way to Mexico, and her attitudes changed.
In the meantime, Levi was having his problems. Left alone at the trading post when the McKeags departed for St. Louis, he occupied himself by building a corral so that when Indians did come to trade they could leave their horses, and one day as he worked he was pleased to see approaching from the east his first visitors. There were about ten in the group, riding carelessly along the Platte and obviously not a war party.
Dismounting casually and leaving their horses to roam, they surprised Levi by speaking English. “We Pawnee,” they told him, and he was reassured, for by this time the Pawnee were the plains Indians most trusted by the white man; during the remaining years of this century they would serve as scouts for the army and as the agency by which other tribes like the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux would be brought under control.
“McKeag, our old friend, send us here to help guard the place,” they explained. “He come back summer.” They pitched their tipis along the Platte, and after begging tobacco, settled in easily and shared with Levi such antelope as they shot.
On a July morning as Levi worked in one of the towers, he saw to the north a cloud of dust that came rapidly toward the protective stockade, and within minutes he knew that it was a large war party galloping their ponies. The Pawnee, seeing them approach, grew apprehensive, but the war party came so fast that escape was i
mpossible.
It was Jake and Mike Pasquinel, leading a band of Cheyenne, and without dismounting, the two brothers began shouting in English, “You Pawnee! Get the hell off this land. It’s ours.”
The intruders then dismounted and for a moment it looked as if there might be a battle, but Zendt stepped between the two factions, explaining that the Pawnee were friends of McKeag and Clay Basket. This did not satisfy Jake Pasquinel, who stormed among the Pawnee, yelling at them in Arapaho, which they did not comprehend. He returned to a broken English and commanded them to get out.
Since the Cheyenne outnumbered the Pawnee, the latter had no recourse but to depart, so they gathered their belongings, rolled up their tipis and attached them as travois to their ponies. At a signal from their leader they retreated eastward, to the gibes of the Cheyenne, who counted this a victory over their immemorial foe, and all would have passed easily except that one Pawnee lagged, his pinto proving fractious, and the farther behind he fell, the more abuse he took, until he turned on his horse and shouted something at the Cheyenne, whereupon Jake Pasquinel and two Cheyenne braves spurred their horses, overtook the laggard Pawnee and killed him. One of the Cheyenne leaped to the ground, knelt beside the corpse and scalped it, waving the bloody trophy in the air as he galloped back to the stockade.
“Don’t you let Pawnee invade our land,” Jake warned Levi.
“This land is McKeag’s,” Levi replied.
“Clay Basket’s!” Jake shouted, as Mike stood beside him nodding. “And when she dies, it’s ours. His and mine.” Again Mike nodded.
“And part of it’s mine,” Levi said stubbornly.
With snakelike speed Jake Pasquinel caught Levi by the Lancaster shirt he was wearing and jerked him close. Jake was eleven years older than Levi but much quicker. “This land is ours,” he snarled, “and on the day we tell you to get off, you get off. Like the Pawnee. You saw what happened when they didn’t move.” He released Levi and with his right forefinger tapped the scalp.
The feel of the scalp seemed to infuriate him, and to Zendt’s dismay he jerked out a knife and began leaping about the stockade, stabbing at the wooden objects as if he desired to kill them, shouting as he did so, “It will all go!” He then stood flame-eyed in the middle of the open area, grasping his knife in his right hand, and addressed the Cheyenne warriors, assuring them that this was their land, theirs and the Arapaho’s, and that it would remain so forever.
By this time he had worked himself into a frenzy. He leaped at Levi, pressing the point of his knife against the skin at the neck and shouted in English, “We’ll kill you all.” But almost as soon as he had said this, the wild passion departed, and he sheathed his knife and told Zendt reassuringly, “You can keep the trading post ... no harm ... till my mother gets back.”
And with these words he leaped on his horse and led his warriors back to the north. But Mike Pasquinel, hoping to see his mother, stayed behind and helped Levi with the building, and taught him sign language and fragments of the various Indian tongues.
Mike stayed at the store till August, when McKeag returned with three wagonloads of trading goods, and when Levi explained what Mike had done to help, McKeag wanted to thank him. But Mike, disappointed that Clay Basket had not returned, wished no conversation with his stepfather. He rode off to the north without even saying goodbye to Levi.
“The boys have always hated me,” McKeag said sadly.
“Why?”
“Stepsons often behave like that.”
“Lucinda doesn’t. To her, you’re her father.”
“For boys it’s harder. They see another man taking their father’s place.”
“Did Jake and Mike love their father so much?”
“They’ve never loved anyone.”
The trading post prospered, and for a curious reason. Throughout the region it came to be known as Zendt’s Farm. During the first summer, when buffalo were plentiful and work scarce, Levi returned to his old habits, and with McKeag’s help, started making large links of pemmican, which be considered as nothing but buffalo sausage. McKeag would kill a cow. Using ponies to pull the hide loose, they would tan it and bring back as much meat as they could handle, plus all the intestines. These Levi would clean and knot at one end. Then into the casing he would stuff chopped buffalo meat mixed with salt, pepper, chokecherries, sage, berries and an herb that tasted something like onion. To give the pemmican lightness, he liked to mix in deer meat, if available, and the result was so tasty that word passed among trappers and guides: “Stop at Zendt’s Farm and pick up some of that good pemmican.”
At the farm they kept an increasingly varied supply of goods, thousands of dollars’ worth, which they traded with various tribes for buffalo robes, now fashionable throughout the States and England. Instead of the compact bales of beaver which McKeag used to assemble on this spot, large, loose stacks of robes now went to St. Louis, and often in return came letters and newspapers from that capital. On the prairies men invariably referred to land east of the Missouri as ‘back in the United States’ and to the act of crossing that river as ‘leaving the States.’ What did they call the prairies? It was an alien land with no name, a place of exile where men worked for a while before ‘returning to the States.’ That it might one day become part of the United States was beyond their comprehension.
During the winter of 1846 two messages from the States reached Zendt’s Farm, creating much confusion. First came a letter from Lucinda, a devotee of phonetic spelling:
Dier Levi,
This is fast lettir I rite. I no who God is and Virgin Marie. I luv you.
Lusinda
The temporary exhilaration caused by this epistle was destroyed by a clipping from the St. Louis Republican which some well-meaning clerk had included in a package for McKeag. Since the Scotsman could not read, he passed it along to his partner, who read the words with deepening dismay:
Talk along the river is that our fair city may not be losing the lovely heiress Miss Lucinda McKeag, after all. It appears that a dashing lieutenant who boasts of New Hampshire as his home has been spending a good deal of time away from headquarters while his troop prepares for a punitive excursion into Old Mexico, and we are told on good authority that an announcement of more than passing interest to our community may be forthcoming at any moment. Viva, New Hampshire!
This news distressed Levi, but it did not surprise him. It was what had to be expected when a beautiful girl like Lucinda burst fresh upon a city which always contained more men than women. He was deeply pained but he could not blame Lucinda, for he remembered Captain Mercy and knew how attractive young officers could be.
“What will I do if she doesn’t come back?” he asked McKeag.
“Marry someone else.”
These days were not easy for Lucinda. There was much excitement in St. Louis as army detachments went downriver to embark for the war in Mexico, and several of the leave-takings were painful; the young officers had been kind to Lucinda and three had proposed to her, willing to incur the wrath of their relatives back east to whom an Indian was a savage, and she wept to think that they might be killed at war or depart never to be seen again.
But the real problem involved Lieutenant John McIntosh, a delightful young man from Yale University with a dry sense of humor, an intuitive distrust of Indians and a great love for this one. He was twenty-two and she was nineteen, and they made a handsome couple when they danced at the army base or dined together at Lise Pasquinel’s. They conducted a stately courtship and each grew more fond of the other, more respectful of personal preferences. Young McIntosh was a man to take seriously, and Lucinda knew that she could be happy with him, but there remained the memory of Levi Zendt and the prairies and prancing pintos, and rides through flowers, and she grew more and more perplexed.
As the time came for Lieutenant McIntosh’s departure, he became increasingly eager to formalize their engagement and pressed for a definite answer. It was at this time that she sought counsel with
her father’s two wives, Lise Pasquinel and Clay Basket, and one day the older women sat with her in a bay window overlooking the Mississippi, discussing her problem.
Lise Pasquinel said, “Young McIntosh reminds me of Maxwell Mercy when he first came into this room. I was delighted to see him ... knew at once that he was intended to make Lisette a good husband.”
Clay Basket said, “It’s strange that a half-Indian girl should have so many chances. Three of your men I have liked—Levi Zendt, McIntosh and the young man from Illinois.”