Inheritance

by S. D. Matley

She arrived on foot, thin, proud, her skirt and vest made from tanned hides, a worn calico blouse underneath. Her high cheekbones contrasted with her elfin nose and ears, and dark, straight hair hinted at native ancestry, though the Indian wars had been put down and the tribes moved to reservations in recent years. The young stranger was certain of her destination: the Presbyterian mission of Reverend Wilson in the Touchet Valley.

No one in the six families who formed the tight-knit collection of homesteads, an unnamed community clustered along the westward portion of Mullan Military Road, could envisage where she came from. It was somewhere south in the new state of Oregon. She called the place Trappers Hollow, but couldn’t describe landmarks to satisfy those who considered themselves well-traveled in that region. She said her father had told her about the mission of Reverend Wilson, a place where she could find safety and a means of earning a living if she was ever in need. The reverend’s wife, a stout woman of pinched sensibilities, marshaled the girl to a bath, dressed her in a second-hand frock, and found her employment at the homestead of a distant cousin, Henry Harrison Atwood.

Henry Harrison Atwood had a child to raise, a homestead to prove up, and a herd to rebuild after the deadly winter of 1862 claimed most of his cattle. His wife, whom he’d known from childhood back home in Ohio, had died the month before. He was not a man that women found attractive: lanky and tall with somber gray eyes and a sparse beard covering an uneven complexion. The girl seated alongside Mrs. Wilson in the buckboard looked too scrawny for the demands of ranching in Washington Territory, but what with hands in short supply and Mrs. Wilson’s near insistence, he hired her on for room, board and a monthly pittance.

There was little space and less privacy in Henry’s cabin, a single room with a fireplace that served as cook stove making up an entire wall. The remaining walls were solid (excepting the door), built of logs he’d hauled up from the river, the chinks filled with a paste of mud and dried grass. A trunk with stamped metal decoration, the only piece of his wife’s furniture that had survived the long trek west, stood in contrast to three axe-hewn stools and a crude table, and two straw pallets, one large and one small, for beds.

Henry took both winter blankets from the trunk and hung them from a rope strung across one corner of the room. He slid the large straw pallet behind it, making a place for the girl and his three year old daughter, Abigail, to sleep.

Her name was Damia. She proved a capable housekeeper and a skilled seamstress, deftly altering his wife’s one good work dress and her heavy winter cloak when Henry offered these from the depths of the trunk. The girl was an adequate cook, better versed in stews and dishes made from wild berries than in making biscuits from the short supply of coarse, brown flour. Her face and figure filled out on this hearty fare. Henry realized she was older than he had thought – - likely in her late teens – - and something of a beauty. When he entered the cabin at dinner or supper, she’d often be singing to Abigail, the words unfamiliar to Henry as the lullabies, she explained, were French. Her father, a French-Canadian, had come to the Oregon Country as a young man; her mother was Nez Perce. Of them she said no more, except that they were dead.

In early autumn, when the garden had been brought in and the vegetables for winter were housed in the root cellar, Damia traced the letters of the alphabet in the fallow soil with her finger and sounded their names, which Abby repeated. Henry rode a half day to Delta to trade for goods and hear whatever news had traveled west. At the mercantile, men congregated around the potbellied stove and talked about the ongoing war over slavery that raged between the northern and southern states. The news interested Henry, but he didn’t linger, quickly trading a couple of hides and some choke cherry preserves that Damia had put up during the summer for coffee, sugar, and a length of homespun. When he arrived home that night she began stitching a new dividing curtain from the cloth so the blankets could be restored to the straw pallets for winter.

By late October there was frost on the ground. Damia took a book of fairy tales and a battered copy of Ivanhoe from the trunk and read by firelight, her soft, expressive voice lulling Abby to sleep. The nights grew long. After putting Abby to bed, Damia worked with the scraps left over from the curtain to make the child a Christmas doll. The little girl named it Noelle.

The winter of 1862-63 was relatively mild; in February each of Henry’s seven cows birthed a healthy calf. One of the deliveries was difficult, a breech birth. Damia stood by in the barn, petting and soothing the cow to discourage her from straining at her halter and rope. When Henry enlisted her help to pull the calf, the two of them worked together applying slow, even pressure in rhythm with the cow’s contractions, freeing the calf in time to save its life, the cow surviving with the least possible damage.

Winter thawed into spring. The calves grew and gained strength, and Damia proved an able hand at branding and the attendant chores. She and Abby sowed peas, onions and radishes in the garden patch outside the cabin door. The little girl clapped her hands in delight when the first tender green seedlings shot up, and beamed with pride when Damia asked her to carry the first plate of new radishes to the dinner table. Henry’s heart grew tender as he watched Abby’s happy life unfold; his admiration for Damia burned with increasing fire.

Mrs. Wilson visited the Atwood homestead twice that spring, first in mid-April when the ground was dry enough to be traveled by horse and again in early May. Each time she spent an hour or two with Damia, sharing ideas about homemaking and talking about the Great Spirit and the White Mans Book of Life, which the Nez Perce had sought in a journey to St. Louis, Missouri, decades before. Mrs. Wilson made a gift of a well-worn copy of the Book to Damia during her second visit. Both times she asked questions about the curtained area in the corner of the cabin; on the second visit, Mrs. Wilson trapped Henry Atwood, who was mending a harness in the barn, and settled in for a long conversation. After she’d gone, a satisfied smile on her thin lips, Henry sought out Damia, removed his hat, and humbly asked her to marry him.

Within a fortnight the ceremony took place. Henry’s heart drummed hard when Damia, beautiful in a full black skirt and a starched white blouse borrowed from Mrs. Wilson’s eldest daughter, entered the Wilson’s parlor from their bedroom where she’d changed from her work dress. Her hair, normally worn in a single plait down her back, lay loose and glistening around her shoulders. She carried a small bouquet of lilacs, flowers Henry had picked for her that morning from a bush he’d planted from slips his first wife had brought from Ohio. Reverend Wilson’s voice rang with pomp and gravity. Mrs. Wilson and a newly arrived young man, hired to teach school, served as witnesses, while Abby beamed and hugged the doll Noelle to her breast. After a supper that Henry could barely taste for his joy, Damia changed back into her work dress. The new family bid their friends goodbye and started the half-day journey home.

The Atwood garden flourished and the herd thrived on an abundance of bunch grass. By mid-summer, Damia told Henry she was with child.

Henry took the news with pride and a grain of fear. One more mouth to feed in this unsettled land, though those who’d lived here longer than he had predicted the coming winter would be mild. In the long summer evenings he worked until dark, felling trees by the river, hitching them to the team and dragging them over a mile to the home site. By the end of August the size of the cabin had doubled; the new room held the large straw pallet on a rough-hewn frame, the small straw pallet on the floor, and, in between, the cradle he’d made before Abby’s arrival nearly four years ago.

By mid-October the mornings glistened with frost and Damia’s middle had grown thick. She’d worked throughout summer and early autumn, bringing in the garden, storing potatoes and onions in the root cellar, drying apples and cherries for the pantry. For the most part she remained calm and patient, though she bristled at the thought of her coming confinement and the winter days spent indoors. Henry drove a few weaner steers into Delta and traded them for tools, yard goods, flour, sugar, coffee and a single, precious pane of glass for the main room of the cabin. When he returned, his work fell to hunting game to be salted down for the winter.

The moon was full the night of October twenty-sixth, the air cold but not biting, the ground still soft. Henry traveled alone, following white tail deer tracks, his rifle poised in the crook of his arm, his knife tucked into his belt. The tracks led toward the river, disappeared into a thicket near the bank. He trod softly, one foot in front of the other, conscious of each crackle of bunch grass. A sudden crash in the brush and a quick glimpse of four springing legs brought an instinctive and swift reaction; raise, aim, fire. A scream tore the air, a wild shriek but startlingly human, like the death cry of a tormented woman. A tawny blur launched at him from the thicket, powerful forelegs landed on his chest and knocked him on his back, winding him, his rifle thrown out of reach into the grass. Henry struggled to draw air into his lungs, struggled to get to his feet, his hand on the hilt of his knife. Before he was fully upright the animal struck him again, from the back, throwing him to his knees and pressing paws the size of human palms on each shoulder. Blood and the musky smell of cat fell damp and steaming around him as he sensed deadly jaws opening behind his neck.

With all his might he rolled sideways, pinning the cat to the ground with his back. The beast was forestalled but freed one paw to strike. Sharp-honed claws dug into Henry’s left shoulder; he roared with pain, drew his knife and hacked at the attacking foreleg. The animal screamed as it had before, scrambled out from under him, and disappeared into the thicket. Henry’s mauled shoulder seared with pain; for some minutes he couldn’t move, his body stiff with shock, his staring eyes dazzled by moonlight. Slowly his senses returned, slowly he rolled onto his unharmed shoulder and got to his knees, then his feet, the muscles in his back and legs bruised and throbbing. His rifle lay a few yards away. As he staggered toward it, his toe struck something solid. Reaching down to part the grass, he discovered a tawny foot about the size of his palm, claws frozen in extension, the ankle joint a bloody stump.

The cougar had retreated to the river; Henry said this to himself over and over again as he stumbled the long mile back to the cabin. Had Damia heard the screams, had she bolted herself and Abby inside? Smoke rose from the river rock chimney, the lamp glowed in the new window. All appeared well, but . . .

He staggered into the cabin, joyous with relief to see her kneeling before the fireplace tending the flames, though there was something odd, something twisted in her posture. A sweet, sickening smoke puffed from the fireplace opening. “Damia?” he said. She turned toward him and squared into a crouch, cheeks wet, her right hand supporting the blackened stump at the end of her left arm.

Henry recoiled. “Abby?” he called, turning his head from side to side, fruitlessly scanning the tiny room. He dashed through the curtained doorway to the bedroom. Staring into the darkness, his eyes adjusted to discern the small straw pallet where his daughter lay, her chest rising and falling in sleep.

Something rustled near the doorway. His hand moved to his knife, his fingers gripping the hilt.

“She’s asleep, Henry,” Damia said on the other side of the curtain, her voice weary and raw. “She was asleep before you went hunting.”

“And you?” he said, his voice tight. She said nothing. He didn’t move until he heard her walk away and sit on a wooden stool before the fire; then he pushed through the curtain. Her right side was in profile to him, her face lit by firelight, her back by moonlight. Her dark hair, pulled out of its braid, was littered with leaves and dry grass. Blood stained the front of her cape, a large spot on the left, a smaller one near her right shoulder; her bare feet and ankles alerted Henry that she wore nothing underneath. She stared into the fire.

“I didn’t think it would happen again,” she said after a long silence. “I – - the baby, I felt ill suddenly, dizzy. I thought it was the smoke from the fire, but when I stepped outside for air . . . I was so hungry! I had to eat, had to feed the baby, and . . . ”

Henry’s mind whirled in a maelstrom of suspicion, confusion. She’d bewitched him, this stranger he’d taken as wife. He stepped toward her, his wet palm curving around the knife hilt. “What are you, woman? What the devil are you?” His blood pumped hard, the wounds in his left shoulder throbbing as he raised his knife, poised above her heart.

“If you kill me you kill our baby. Our baby, Henry.” She turned her dark, sad eyes upon him.

It was no devil but his Damia, his love, who spoke to him. Henry lowered his knife and sank exhausted onto the stool alongside hers. “You must help me understand,” he said, reaching for her whole, right hand. Cold fingers wrapped around his. She looked back to the fire.

“I’ve told you of my father, a white man, French-Canadian, the son of a trapper and raised in that work. He met my mother’s people when they were fishing at Celilo Falls, west of here.” Damia paused for a moment, raised her stump and studied it, a furrow spanning her brow. “They said my father stole her because she was very beautiful. She was betrothed to the son of a Nez Perce chief, but my father told me she loved him, not the chief’s son, and went with him willingly. They ran away in darkness, on the night of the new moon. I never knew her.” She rested her stump on her swollen belly. “My mother died in childbirth. Her people cursed my father . . . and me . . . . Our sins against my mother, who was taken from them in the dark of the new moon, would be punished under the light of the full moon.”

She asked for some water. Henry returned his knife to its sheath and drew a ladle from the bucket by the door, without taking his eyes from her. He held the dipper under her chin; she cradled it in her hand, raised it to her mouth and drank. When the ladle was empty she nodded her thanks, then studied his face, her expression quizzical.

“I don’t know how to explain what happened but I will tell you what came to be. My father laughed at the curse, though he deeply mourned my mother’s death. Many times, when he thought I wouldn’t notice, I saw him touch his lips to a necklace that belonged to her and cry. He raised me himself, taught me how to set traps and cure hides and everything else he knew. For many years we lived this way, in the wilderness with mostly animals for company and an old Bible he taught me to read from for comfort. But as I grew older, when I turned from a child into a young woman . . .”

By the time she was fifteen she could build a fire, shoot and cook to her father’s satisfaction. That’s when he deemed she was old enough to look after herself and left her to mind the cabin when he made the long trip to the trading post to exchange furs for goods and supplies. Henry listened with horrified fascination as Damia recalled a bout of amnesia from which she awoke naked, her hands and mouth covered with blood. The next month she was more accustomed to the transformation and her memory strengthened; she understood that she shifted forms at the full moon. She first hunted small prey, then advanced to deer.

“In three months my father returned home. We were setting the trap lines. It was late in the year. The sun went down early and at moonrise I felt the transformation begin. I ran from my father and hid in the woods. He searched for me, calling my name. By the time I heard his voice I’d trailed into a gully lined with rocks; his words bounced all around me so I couldn’t tell where he was. Suddenly he stood in front of me, his rifle raised and pointed at my chest. But the rifle jammed and I . . .” She looked fearfully into Henry’s eyes. “It was the curse of my mother’s people. It was my legacy to avenge my mother by killing my father.”

She’d buried him with his Bible and her mother’s necklace. Damia then disabled the traps they’d set and rolled what provisions she could carry, along with her father’s rifle, into a heavy blanket. She left her home before the snows fell in 1861. Her father had often spoken of the mission in Washington Territory; one where her mother’s people had heard sermons from the white mans Bible, where they’d received food and medicine when needed. “If anything ever happens to me, look for Reverend Wilson in Washington Territory,” he’d said to her from the time she was old enough to understand. She traveled alone through that bitter, deadly winter, avoiding well-used trails for fear of harming someone in her next transformation, though, until tonight, it had not recurred. Taking her direction from the sun and the stars, she arrived at Reverend Wilson’s, burying her rifle along the river before she approached the mission.

The tale was fantastic to Henry, but there was her mangled left wrist as proof. With a battle of love and revulsion raging in his chest, he helped her dress her wrist and the wound where his bullet had grazed her right shoulder, slipped her into her night shift, and put her to bed.

November twenty-fifth brought the next full moon. Damia agreed to be locked in the root cellar until the sun rose on the twenty-sixth. At dawn Henry lifted the latch from the cellar door and stood back, his rifle raised. She emerged from the gloom fully clothed, hair tidy, dark half circles under her eyes. He set his rifle down and went to her, held her in his arms, wept onto her shoulder. Her hand rose to stroke his hair. “It’s over, my dear,” she whispered to him. “This time I believe it’s over.”

The baby arrived early, on the twenty-fourth of December. Damia’s labor started the night before; one moment she was gazing out the window at the stars and the waxing moon, the next she had doubled over with a sharp cry and sunk to her knees. Henry raised her to her feet and supported her as they walked to the large straw bed. Abby padded over from her straw tick, wide eyes staring from of her pale, sleepy face. “Don’t worry, Abby,” Damia said after she’d laid down and caught her breath. “Before long you’ll have a little brother or sister.”

Henry guided Abby back to bed, brought in a bucket of snow, dumped it in the kettle and set the kettle over the fire. The bundle of rags Damia had prepared for the delivery was taken from the trunk. He waited, holding her hand, even though her fingernails wounded him when the pain made her shudder. “My brave girl,” he said, stroking Damia’s brow when the spasms passed, moved by her strength, by the way she kept herself from crying out. Grateful he was that he’d seen Abby’s birth, grateful he could act as midwife, for Damia’s pains were close together and there was no time to ride miles in the snow for help.

Their child arrived shortly after midnight. She was tiny but perfectly formed and crying with good health. Henry swaddled the baby and set her in the crook of Damia’s arm, then woke Abby who had mercifully slept through it all. He lifted her onto his hip and said, “You have a little sister.”

“My Christmas sister,” Abby said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and gazing down at the baby. “Papa, we should call her Noelle.”

In the pre-dawn hours of Christmas Day, Damia slept, exhausted, as Henry watched over Abigail’s bed and the baby’s cradle, his rifle loaded and resting on his knees. He jerked awake, neck and shoulders stiff, when sunrise paled the full moon.

Eliza Noelle was baptized as soon as Henry could leave for a day, the time it took to get to the mission house and back to alert Reverend Wilson. Mrs. Wilson, who accompanied her husband for the ritual, presented the baby with a tiny golden cross on a chain and intervened when Abby insisted on being the baby’s godmother. Damia’s left arm was concealed by Eliza Noelle’s blanket. She held the baby throughout the ceremony, her secret hidden during the Wilsons’ stay, a brief visit as they needed to return home before dark.

The baby continued in good health, appearing normal in every respect, but Henry couldn’t clear his mind of that night in October, the night of the hunt. And every month, the night the moon was full, he sat sentinel, his rifle across his knees. Damia didn’t transform in the coming months, but the chillingly vivid memory of her attack wouldn’t die; Henry couldn’t keep it from his thoughts that she carried a curse, a curse that had caused her father’s death. Did Eliza, who had her mother’s dark eyes and elfin features, take after her mother’s spirit, or her father’s? Years might pass before they would know; meanwhile, the risk of having another child . . . . Damia recovered slowly from childbirth; by the time they could live fully as husband and wife again, doubt and fear had killed his passion for her.

Spring came. Abby practiced drawing the alphabet in the dirt, saying the letters out loud so her little sister could hear, and planted the garden with guidance from her Mama, who sat on a stool nearby, nursing the baby. More and more often when Henry arrived at the cabin for supper the table would be bare and Damia would be sitting on a stool, staring into the cold fire. She crooned the French lullabies she’d sung to Abby, the baby nestled to her breast, her cheeks wet with tears. One early summer afternoon Damia set the baby in the garden alongside Abby, who was intent on harvesting the last of the radishes, and wandered away. She went missing through the night; the next day Henry found her lifeless body in the thicket by the river.

* * *

December 19, 1877, found the Atwood family reunited for the holidays.  Abigail, now called Miss Atwood, had arrived home that afternoon from her first term as teacher in the metropolis of Walla Walla. She sat in the well-appointed parlor, regaling her young half-sister with news of city fashions while Eliza Noelle absently picked at her embroidery, excited over Abby’s homecoming and her own birthday five days hence. Their stepmother, Mrs. Henry Atwood (whose given name was Harriett), listened to the conversation with smiling approval as she sewed lace trim, the finishing touch, to Eliza Noelle’s first grown-up dress. She doted on the girls, had doted on them ever since marrying Henry Atwood eleven years ago, and didn’t seem to miss the joy of bearing her own children.

The area where Henry Harrison Atwood had settled had exploded with homesteaders since the early days, boasting a dozen thriving cattle ranches and a smattering of commercial concerns facing each other across the widened portion of Mullan Road that served as the main street. The local citizenry had formed a committee, hell bent on wooing the railroad to their locale in the next five years; their pitch included the honor of naming the unchristened town after the Oregon Steam Navigation Company’s manager. The rival town of Delta had grown, too, renaming itself first as Horsehead City before settling on the appellation of Waitsburg, after Sylvester Wait, who built a grist mill there.

The passing years had favored Henry Atwood, owner of the largest herd in the Touchet Valley. The Atwood cabin had grown with its master’s success, now a two-story house with all the modern conveniences Mrs. Atwood could procure.

The evening of Abigail’s return, Henry sat apart from the household’s female excitement, staring out the small, square window of the original cabin, a room he’d reserved as his den. The moon was rising, cold silver light spilling over the snow from its perfect sphere. His old rifle lay across his knees. He rarely used it these days, but it was his habit to give it a thorough cleaning every month. All these years he’d never been tempted to replace it, not even with a Winchester; when anybody tried to persuade him otherwise, he’d tell them some things were better left alone.

Mrs. Atwood’s voice chimed from the sitting room down the hallway. “Eliza Noelle, the hour is late! Put away your embroidery and kiss your Papa goodnight.” Henry smiled at the sound of Eliza wheedling with her stepmother, begging for just a few minutes more. When she conceded to Mrs. Atwood’s tut-tutting, he set his rifle aside, anticipating her appearance in the doorway.

“’Night Papa,” she said, advancing with delicate arms outstretched, her large, dark eyes betraying her need to sleep. A golden locket, a small gold cross mounted to the front and a lock of her mother’s hair inside, was suspended on a chain around her neck. Henry hated the ornament, made at Mrs. Wilson’s insistence shortly after Damia’s death, but Eliza wouldn’t part with it.

The girl touched her hands to Henry’s shoulders. He held out his weathered cheek for her kiss as was his custom, but something snapped inside, making his eyes tear. “My goodness, Eliza Noelle,” he said, with the slightest tremor in his voice, “you’re very nearly a young woman.”

“Don’t be sad, Papa,” she said, touching his face with the tips of her fingers and patting ever so lightly. “I’ll never be too grown up to kiss you goodnight.”

Eliza stepped away when Abigail appeared in the doorway. “Good night, Papa,” Abigail said as she leaned forward and pecked his cheek. “It’s good to be home.” She took Eliza’s hand. “I’m going up with Eliza Noelle so she can tell me all the important news since I’ve been gone.”

“You mean about Joe Brixton who runs the feed store!” Eliza chirped. “His sister Fannie says you’ve got your cap set for him.”

“Now you hush, that’s not so!” Abigail said, coloring a pretty shade of pink. “Papa, we’ll see you in the morning.” She pulled Eliza behind her, across the hall and up the stairs to the room they would share.

Henry listened to their indistinguishable chatter, punctuated by a giggle here, a pillow thrown there, until they settled into the quiet of sleep. Tonight he’d keep watch. He’d say goodnight to Mrs. Atwood when she adjourned to the store-bought four-poster he sometimes shared with her. But he’d not sleep, not with the moon as it was. Not until sunrise.

About the Author

S. D. Matley has been writing since age three, when her big sister first taught her how to spell. Two of her stories have been published in THEMA and her new one-act play will be produced in a melodrama festival in 2009. She and husband Bruce share the best “day” job in the world, performing cowboy music throughout the western states as duo Nevada Slim & Cimarron Sue. They make their home in Prescott, WA, surrounded by three cats, one dog and acres of wheat.

©2009 S. D. Matley