BLACK POWDER, GREY HOPE:
BOOK I: VENGEANCE

Chapter Two

The Road into New Ulm

     Her mother told Kelsey, ‘Be careful. Some men love their whiskey and it leads them into evil behavior…’ Kelsey watched her father across the room raise a jug of whiskey.

     The man and woman sat on the bench of the wagon behind two plodding horses. She was wearing a dark cloak over a homespun shawl and a cotton dress with a fur hat obscuring her face. Her arms were tucked into her cloak; her legs wrapped in a motley bearskin against the cold. His brown hair was dangling from under a mass of matted fur. His left foot, inside a dirty leather boot, was propped on the box of the wagon.
     Their wagon followed a worn road, across a stretch of grassy plain south of the ‘Big Woods.’ To their right a sheet of ice reflected the early afternoon sun. The lake was frozen, with bulrushes and cattails, mostly brown now in December, crowding the shore. A smaller pond, equally frozen, stood near the south shore. The remnants of white and yellow waterlillies could be seen inside the ice or reaching from the ice for an illusive warm ray of sun.
     Their two horses, a chestnut brown and a gray dappled with black spots, were pulling a wagon loaded with sacks of barley for a baker in New Ulm. The baker named Schell would roast the barley before selling it to a beer maker. Hermann and Adelaide were pleased. They had been warned that barley might not reach maturity in the early cold of a Minnesota fall. This fall of 1861 had been especially warm and pleasant in the valley of the Cottonwood River, south from Fort Ridgely and southwest from New Ulm, the German settlement.
     Life itself seemed pleasant. When they left Germany through the port of Hamburg, they were responding to a one-page leaflet printed by the German Land Verein, a group of businessmen intent on building a new city in a place west of the Wisconsin Territory. When they reached New Ulm in the Minnesota Territory in 1849, they found a growing town with several two story wooden warehouses near the river landing, and a city hall that was being built of brick. The city mayor told the new immigrants that much of New Ulm was going to be built of brick.
     To Hermann’s disappointment, much of the good farmland west of New Ulm had already been grabbed by land speculators9 who were demanding $4.00 and even $5.00 an acre. Hermann and his friends opted for the valley of the Cottonwood River, a meandering shallow river that flowed into the Minnesota. There they found and homesteaded land for fifty cents an acre that was relatively level and easy to clear. Hermann and his neighbors struggled but survived; hunting for game supplemented their diet. They were industrious and constantly making improvements on their farms.
     In last year’s presidential election, Hermann and Adelaide had voted for Mr. Abe Lincoln, the tall slender man of Illinois who everybody said would oppose those ‘Radicals’ in South Carolina. Hermann wasn’t exactly sure what a ‘radical’ was or how war would affect Minnesota. The news that Fort Sumter had surrendered to a bunch of southern ‘radicals’ bothered Hermann. When some of his workers wanted to leave for Fort Snelling to enlist in the Union Army, he had persuaded them to stay through harvest. Three days ago, four good men with rifles left for Fort Snelling. He sensed that the war out East might affect people in Minnesota but he wasn’t sure how. He did know there was a market for his barley.
     The Henrichs spent last night with the Klassen family in their cabin near Essen, a small village of six houses. Leaving Essen around noon, they were on the last stretch of river road into New Ulm when they spotted a man standing by the side of the road.

     “He’s not Indian,” said Adelaide under her breath.
     “How can you tell?”
     “His face seems youngish, but weathered.” She paused for a moment, trying to decide. “Stop here,” she added quickly.
     Hermann reined in the two horses. He reached down under his seat and brought out his shotgun. He was looking the man up and down. On the frontier it was important to be careful of strangers. The man was wearing trousers tucked into leather leggings painted in the tan of dried mud. His boots were equally muddy. His blue pea jacket was open, revealing a red flannel shirt. Around his waist a black leather belt held a pistol holster that rested against the man’s stomach. A large cap lined with sheepskin covered the man’s head down to his neck. A wisp of red hair trailed from under the sheepskin cap. The man was watching Hermann and stood next to a traveling pouch made of leather.
     “Could use a ride, I could,” said the man.
     On the seat next to Hermann, Adelaide shifted her weight. She coughed, trying to clear her throat. Then she laughed.
     “Who are you?” said Hermann, trying to ignore Adelaide.
     “For crying out loud, Hermann Henrichs,” said Adelaide with an apologetic tone. She looked down at the man. “Are you who I think you are?”
     “Yes, Mam. I am.”
     “And who is that?” said Hermann again.
     “Kelsey. Kelsey O’Welin. Of the O’Welins north of Fort Ridgely.”
     “You’re a woman. Aren’t you?” said Herman slowly.
     “Hermann, stop it. Stop being difficult,” said Adelaide with determination. “Put down your shotgun. This girl looks like she could use some help.”
     “Yes, Mam. I can. These boots I bought off a trades man back at the fort are getting stiff and I’ve walked near on to ten miles in the last four hours, or it seems like ten miles. The strap on my leather pouch here broke about six miles ago, and I don’t want to throw anything out.”
     “Well,” said Hermann. “That’s a good slice of story.” He looked at the girl’s eyes, trying to decide if they were blue or gray. She seemed tired and a little down at the mouth. “You say your kin are north of Fort Ridgely?”
     “My father John is. Mother died a year ago.” The girl looked away to the west, gauging the amount of sun left in the afternoon. She pulled her pea coat together and began to button it.
     “Where’d you get that gun?” said Hermann abruptly.
     “Bought it. From Captain Marsh at the Fort. He wanted me to have it. For protection, he said.” She looked Hermann in the eye without blinking. “You have a problem with that?” She turned to look to the west again. An emerald blinked in her eye.
     Hermann looked sideways at Adelaide. ‘Mussen wir das Kind helfen?’ he said quietly. Adelaide turned toward Hermann slightly before she punched him in the arm.
     “Yah, you dumpkopf. Of course. Es das manner wenn wir sind Christian, yah?” To Kelsey O’Welin she said, “We are going into New Ulm.”
     “I’d be obliged, Mam.”
     “See, Hermann. She’s polite.” The girl was already picking up her travel pouch, which she handed up to Adelaide. Mrs. Henrichs put the heavy bag behind the wagon bench, against the barley bags. The right hand horse, the gray with black spots stamped a foot. Kelsey O’Welin climbed aboard the wagon, sat next to Adelaide and leaned forward to look at Hermann.
     Sunlight sparkled in her eye. She didn’t say anything to Hermann. He sat for a moment, stunned. The girl had green eyes, and everyone knew that ‘green-eyed devils’ were put on the earth to lead men astray. Then he smiled to himself and snapped the reins against the rumps of his two horses. They both jumped, eager to get moving. The traces tightened; the wagon jerked and Kelsey grabbed the outside railing on the bench seat.

     In New Ulm, Hermann found his way to the street called Am Maine that ran north and south through the business district. The baker August Schell had been successful in twelve years. He sold his wooden store to a dry goods vendor and built a brick store two blocks farther up the street. Behind his store there was a loading dock two feet off the ground and two new baking ovens, round like beehives. They were almost constantly hot. Schell had painted them white with blue trim lines, “machen dem look good, yah?” he laughed with Hermann.
     Behind the store stood a substantial square house built of heavy logs, with plank doors, padlocked. The house had wooden shingles but no windows. Hermann pulled his wagon alongside the wooden dock that stood two feet off the ground. When he jumped down, Kelsey O’Welin did the same. Adelaide took a fair bit longer extricating her substantial bottom from the bench seat. Kelsey walked to the back of the wagon and began to lift one of the sixty-pound bags of barley.
     “Hold up, there. What do you think you are doing?”
     “Helping, obviously.”
     “Obvi-ush-what?”
     “It means, what do you see me doing?” She stopped with the bag of barley on her shoulder. Hermann was looking around to see who was watching. Herr Schell was just coming out of the back of his store, wearing a starched white apron with flour on his arms and a smudge of flour on his cheek.
     “Das ist werk fur der Herren,” Hermann stammered. “For a man,” he then added. From the front of the wagon he heard Adelaide chuckle.
     “Du bist ein fraulein,” he added.
     “So,” said Kelsey pausing. “Don’t tell a soul. I won’t.”
     “And stop trying to be die grosse Mensch, you big fool,” said Adelaide when she reached the back of the wagon.

     “You seem to get along with few problems,” said Adelaide casually when they were sitting down to supper in Der Kaiser Ratthaus. The Henrichs and Kelsey O’Welin were a little cleaner after washing up in their rooms in the Munchen Gasthaus. The noise from the saloon area in front of the Ratthaus was tolerable. The cook treated the three tired travelers to knockwurst with red cabbage and boiled potatoes. The kitchen was out of chocolate tort, so bread pudding with maple syrup was substituted.
     “A few problems, from men,” she answered then added, “How do I say this?” In her mind she saw the look on her father’s face when she told him she was going to work in the fort, with all those men. To Herman she said, “No man gets too close. I have a derringer at all times.”
     “Where?” said Hermann, breathlessly, chewing on a piece of knockwurst.
     The two women were silent for a long thirty seconds, before Adelaide reached out and rapped him on the knuckles with her fork. “A gentleman doesn’t ask personal questions.”
     “How was I supposed to know it was a personal question?”
     “I’ll explain later, dumbkopf,” said Adelaide. A touch of pink fluoresced her cheeks.
     Kelsey explained that she worked at Fort Ridgely as a cook’s helper, cleaning vegetables and pans and whatever ‘big mouthed’ Bertha wanted done. She also served the meals in the mess hall, distributing the bowls. After nine months she knew the routine; up at 4:30 a.m. to bank the fires in the stoves and to make coffee.
     Then ten days ago, Big Eagle10 was visiting the fort with some of his braves. They were coming back from a hunting party, and Big Eagle still wore the blood on his face from a deer kill. ‘He’s an ordinary enough man, but he stares at whites hard with both eyes. Lt. Sheehan told me the man is dangerous.’
     Captain Marsh (‘he’s in charge of the fort’) invited the chief and his braves to coffee. Kelsey explained that Big Eagle and Captain Marsh were sitting opposite each other when she brought out the tin cups they used for guests. She was placing them on the mess table when Big Eagle said something and his braves laughed. She was embarrassed and looked to Captain Marsh, who said he would tell her later.
     "So, there I was, bringing out the coffee and a pewter plate with cookies and this brave sticks out his hand and stops me, with his right hand on my breast." He said something and the other braves laughed. "I pounded him in the forehead with the pewter plate so hard he sat down on the floor."
     “Ach, mein Gott,” said Hermann.
     “What happened next?” asked Adelaide.
     “Two of the braves helped him to his feet; they were kinda smiling. Big Eagle said something to him and he stumbled out of the mess hall. Captain Marsh told me later that Big Eagle told his son to stay away from red-haired devils with green eyes.”
     “Then, wouldn’t you know it? Captain Marsh repeated this incident to young Lieutenant Sheehan, who repeated it to his company adjutant. In one day it’s all over the fort. One of those ‘bully boys’ tried to get familiar with me and I marched into the kitchen and got the same pewter plate. After I polished off the ‘bully boy’ there was dead silence in the mess hall. Turned out Captain Marsh was standing behind me. He told the entire company that the next man who touched me was going to get a month’s hard labor in the stables.”
     “Now I have a reputation up at that fort. Some of the women think I am a witch.”
“Machen …no, no, makes sense to me,” said Adelaide. “Scare the men. They keep their distance.”
     Hermann barely finished eating his bread pudding before Adelaide told him to go and rent a carriage for four days, explaining that she wanted to visit Mankato again. Kelsey told Adelaide privately that she was going to Mankato to look for work, to get ‘far enough’ away from Big Eagle and his son. ‘Captain Marsh told me to leave for Mankato.’
     Adelaide knew that tensions had been rising between the white farmers and the Dakota for the past two years. The land speculators sold land right up to the edge of the Lower Dakota reservation. The encroaching whites with their families and horses were cutting up the prairie putting it under the plow. Some of the Dakota were trying to learn how to be farmers. The young men, however, were aggressive and distant and disdainful of these ‘Dutch Indians’ and wanted to push the white man out of southern Minnesota. When Hermann returned, Adelaide told him that Kelsey was going to ride with them to Mankato the next day. The twenty-eight miles; about six hours. They would stop at Cambria on the way.
     “What’s the word?” said Hermann, “for spending too much money?”
     “Now, Hermann,” said Adelaide.
     “Six dollars. Can you believe it?” The carriage with one horse is one dollar a day plus twenty-five cents for feed and stable. Feed in a stable is twenty-five cents a day. And my horses have to be fed. That’s two dollars for my two horses for four days.”
     “That’s seven dollars, Mr. Henrichs,” said Kelsey, quietly.
     “And she can do mattay-matics, so good,” said Adelaide laughing.
     When it came time to pay the bill, Kelsey wanted to repay the Henrichs for their kindnesses. The bill was three meals at twenty-five cents, plus three desserts at a nickel each. Mr. Henrichs insisted that it was his place to pay for the meal.
     “Let the man feel good, ‘cause he gets to be the big man,” said Adelaide with nary a smile. Kelsey reached into her pea coat and took out a small bag of coins. She placed a dime and a nickel on the table. When she looked up she saw Herman watching her. As they started to walk toward the door, Hermann shook his head at Kelsey, and said,
     “Extravagance. Dat’s ’da word.”