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Post #138
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NEWS FLASH: JMS Books has contracted with me for the publication of Wastelakapi… Beloved. At long last, the fifth book in the Cut Hand Series will be published. Tentative issue date is January, 2021. The publisher has also shown interest in republishing the first four books in the series should I be successful in reclaiming the rights.
Ergo, it’s not surprising that my post this week comes from that manuscript. I guest-posted on Don Travis’ website (dontravis.com) excerpts from the Epilogue, Chapter1, and Chapter 2 on September 24 and October 1, so I’ve selected a scene from the beginning of Chapter 3 for this post. John (Medicine Hair) is talking to his brother-in-law Captain Gideon Haleworthy. Let’s see what happens.
* * *
* *
WASTELAKAPI…
Beloved
According to Gideon, a murder trial was about to begin in Federal Court in Sioux Falls up on the Missouri River. The defendant was familiar to me. I had fought at Drexel Mission alongside a Brulé named Tasunka or Sanika-Wakan-Ota and remembered him as a pleasant-faced young man with a somewhat awkward manner. His white man’s name was Plenty Horses.
As
Gideon told the story, Plenty Horses had been sent by the government to the
Carlisle Boarding School in Pennsylvania for five years. He returned home just
in time to witness the Wounded Knee massacre. Ironically, Carlisle was the same
school I falsely claimed to have attended to explain away both my obvious
education and why no one knew me at Pine Ridge. After the battle at Drexel
Mission, I returned home with the body of my beloved while Plenty Horses rode
for Stronghold Table in the badlands of Pine Ridge. The Brulé rose after the
massacre and repaired to this natural fortress to protect themselves against an
attack by the very soldiers who had murdered their kinsmen at Wounded Knee.
On
the seventh of January of this year, Lt. Casey rode into the stronghold with
two Cheyenne scouts. He claimed to have come to determine if the uprising could
be settled peacefully. The chiefs refused to talk to him because they planned
to meet with General Nelson Miles on the following day. As Lt. Casey turned his
mount to leave, Plenty Horses raised a Winchester hidden in his blanket and
fired into the back of the officer’s head. The young Lakota was arrested and
taken to Fort Meade near Sturgis, South Dakota to be tried for murder.
Landreth’s
question about whether Bird and I acknowledged the “war” was over–asked in such
a strident tone–fell neatly into place when Gideon said the Brulé’s pro bono lawyers planned to defend him with
the claim the parties were at war. The thinking was that the slaying of one combatant
by another was not murder.
With
that understanding came another answer. The sheriff’s hostility toward Bear and
me, and now Winter Bird, was motivated at least in part by fear. He likely considered
Indians as mindless, no-account savages who didn’t have the backbone to stand
like a man alone, but who instantly became sly and treacherous when there were
two or more of them. He wasn’t singular in that opinion.
This
both empowered and alarmed me. I glanced at Bird. He’d paid close attention to
Gideon’s telling, but was his grasp of English sufficient to follow my
brother-in-law’s rapid Yankee speech? My friend’s eyes let me know he’d
followed enough of it. That increased my wariness. When a man knows someone
fears him, he may pursue the matter too vigorously. Besides, this raised
another question. Did Landreth
consider the war over?
Gideon
must have missed our reaction to his revelation because he moved on to other
things. Timo Bowers, the Yanube City blacksmith, was still going strong
although he must be in his sixties by now. Most men would have retired to the
grave well before that age, but his profession kept him in better shape than
most. During my eighteenth summer, he had been the first man to bring me to
ejaculation.
Caleb
Brown still ran Brown’s Emporium, established by his uncle, the original Caleb.
He remained a steadfast friend during all the troubles. He and Timo and Andre were
the reason why it was impossible to hate all white men.
Then
Gideon brought my attention back to him. “John, how are you really doing?”
I
waved away his question. “I’m functioning. That’s about all I can expect.
Matthew… Matthew was a great loss.”
He
nodded. A blond curl fell over his forehead, making him look younger than his
thirty-two years. We were of an age. “I understand, you know,” he said.
I
looked him straight in his blue eyes just like a white man. “You understand
what?”
“I
understand what your relationship was. And I saw for myself the depth of the feeling…
uh, the love you shared. I can’t imagine violence taking Rachel Ann away from
me like that.”
The
hair on my neck bristled, but I took a breath and relaxed. While Gideon and I
did not view things through the same eyes, he was a decent man capable of more
understanding than most of his kind. “How long have you known?”
“Quite
some time now. You weren’t obvious about your relationship, but I have some
insight into the Strobaw family that most people don’t, so I figured it out. I
also know the family secret,” he said.
I
raised an eyebrow.
“I
know you and Rachel Ann and your siblings are half-breeds, not quarter bloods.”
“I
wondered when Rachel Ann would share that with you.”
“Only
recently, and she revealed the reason for the deception. To make it easier for
Cuthan to inherit the Mead. But she never revealed your and Matthew’s secret.”
The
European part of my brain prompted me to ask a question. “Do you think less of
me now that you know I loved a man?”
He
shook his head. “No one who truly knows you could ever think of you as anything
but a man. A good man.”
“You
realize, of course, that’s what got Otter and James murdered.” I referred to my
spiritual grandfather and his mate, retired Major James Morrow.
He
hesitated before nodding mutely.
“And
the same thing could happen to me.”
“If
it does, it won’t be because of me. I respect you too much to decry you to
anyone.”
“I
wasn’t sure. We’ve crossed swords before,” I reminded him.
“We
look at things from different perspectives, that’s true. I don’t know about
you, but I’ve learned from that.”
“You
gave me my name and my reputation, you know.”
He
pursed his lips. “I did?”
“Back
in ’83, I repeated what you told me about those unusual sunsets and blue moons
and lavender suns caused by the eruption of Krakatoa over on the other side of
the world. The tribesmen I was talking to instantly named me Medicine Hair and
declared me a shaman.” I laughed with a trace of irony. “I told them I learned those
things from the army’s telegraph, but they decided I had medicine, anyway.”
“Be
damned. Didn’t know. Hope you don’t blame me for…?”
I held up a hand. “It
wasn’t you who sent Matthew and me to Pine Ridge. It was that shóta, that snake,
Raven. He’s the one who ambushed an army patrol in my front yard. By the way, I
know you came with the rest of the family to rebuild this place. I appreciate
that.”
Gideon
shrugged. “Wasn’t anything.”
I
laughed. A genuine one this time. “I imagine not. You merely had to find time
during the middle of an Indian war to come help your Indian in-laws rebuild a
farm your own command had burned to the ground.”
He
was silent for a long moment. “I was there, you know.”
“Where?”
“Wounded
Knee.”
My
jaw dropped. Something moved in my belly. Had I fired on Rachel Ann’s husband
like those families ripped apart in the American’s Civil War?
“Not
at the… uh, battle,” he said. “But they called in reinforcements when some of
the tribes rose afterward.”
“There
was no battle, Gideon.” My voice turned bitter. Chill bumps rippled my back. “It
was a massacre pure and simple. A rifle went off. No one will ever know whose, and
the soldiers on the hill opened on us with everything they had. They even shot
some of their own troops who’d come down to disarm us.” I paused, but he made
no response. “Were you at Drexel Mission, too?”
He
shook his head. “We remained at Wounded Knee Creek. I looked for you, John.
None of the bodies had been buried by the time we arrived, and I walked the
whole area afraid that with the next step, I’d find you or Matthew. I didn’t learn
about Matthew until later.”
Rachel
Ann interrupted that awkward moment and put both of us to work shifting the
furniture in the little house so everything was the way she wanted. Bird had
disappeared into the blacksmith shop at some point during my talk with Gideon.
I was teaching my Lakota friend the foundry trade and discovered him an apt
pupil. He took pride in learning to become a mazkape, as the Lakota
called a blacksmith. He did not emerge from the building again until
after Gideon had taken his leave for the fort. Doubtless, the sight of that
blue uniform bothered him beyond tolerating.
* * * * *
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Mark
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